The advent of artificial intelligence (AI), which requires far more processing power than standard computing, has put rocket boosters under the data centre world.

Chris Sharp is the chief technology officer at Digital Realty, a US business that builds data centres, the anonymous warehouses full of computers that keep the online world spinning.

Sharp predicts that data centres in the not-too-distant future will come with their own dedicated, built-in nuclear reactors.

AI systems are using all this extra electricity simply because they are doing so much more processing than standard computing.

The technology in question is the much-touted Small Modular Reactor (SMR). These are designs for advanced reactors with about a third of the power generation of a traditional, large nuclear plant.

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