Regulators thwart Amazon and Meta’s nuclear plans
Amazon and Meta’s plans to secure electricity for their data centers from nuclear power centers—to serve their ever-increasing AI and cloud computing needs—have been thwarted by federal and environmental regulations.
Key Points:
- Meta was due to build an AI data center, situated next to an operational nuclear power plant so it could tap into its power, but a rare species of bees has been found on-site, so they’ve been forced to scrap the project.
- Amazon signed a $650M deal with nuclear power company, Talen Energy, to expand the plant and directly connect to its power, but the US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has rejected the proposal.
- They felt that consumers would suffer from lower electricity reliability, blackouts, and higher bills as a significant portion of power would be diverted from the region’s electricity grid to Amazon’s data centers.
Why you should care:
Advancements in AI are driving a huge surge in demand for power—studies show that a single AI query uses 10x more energy than a Google search—so big tech companies like Meta and Amazon, and also Google and Microsoft, are increasingly turning to nuclear power to tap into carbon-free power sources that can run 24/7, but, although Microsoft’s plans to revive a nuclear reactor at Three Mile Island are still going ahead, it’s likely the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (who have eight other, similar proposals to review) will step in and impose restrictions, which could significantly slow US AI advancement.