GATES TALKS WITH SK, HD, MODERN NUCLEAR POWER COOPERATION, TARGETING AI POWER NEEDS

According to news from the Korean media on 14 August, Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft Joint and the next generation nuclear power company TerraPower, held a series of meetings on 14 August with the Chairman of the SK Group, Choi Tae-jin, the Chairman of the HD Modern Group, Zheng Ki-sheng, and other leading figures in the Korean political and business community to discuss cooperation in the areas of small modularized reactors (SMRs) and artificial intelligence (AI) power supply. In a meeting with Choi Tae-won, Gates discussed the programme to respond to the increased demand for electricity brought about by universal access to the AI data centre, the direction of the next generation of nuclear energy industry and the possibility of nuclear cooperation between the United States and Korea. SK and SK Innovation jointly invested a total of $250 million in TerraPower in 2022, making it the second largest shareholder of the company. On the same day, SK Innovation and TerraPower signed an operational cooperation agreement for sodium smodium SMR. Gates also met with Zheng Ki-sheng and the Chief Executive Officer of Modern Engineering Construction, Li Han Woo, to follow up on the previous signed commercial agreement. In May this year, the three companies agreed to work together to promote the commercialization of sodium cool reactors and to establish a division of labour structure. Kim Xian