Meta Platforms Inc has cut a 20-year deal to secure nuclear power to help meet surging demand for artificial intelligence (AI) and other computing needs at Facebook’s parent company.
The investment with Meta would also expand the output of a Constellation Energy Corp nuclear plant in Illinois.
The agreement announced on Tuesday is just the latest in a string of tech-nuclear partnerships as the use of AI expands. Financial details of the agreement were not disclosed.
Photo: AFP
“Securing clean, reliable energy is necessary to continue advancing our AI ambitions,” Meta head of global energy Urvi Parekh said.
Surging investments in small nuclear reactors come at a time when large tech companies are facing two major demands — a need to increase their energy supply for AI and data centers, among other needs, while also trying to meet their long-term goals to significantly cut greenhouse gas emissions.
Constellation, the owner of the shuttered Three Mile Island nuclear power plant, in September last year said that it planned to restart the reactor so tech giant Microsoft Corp could secure power to supply its data centers.
Three Mile Island, located on the Susquehanna River just outside Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, was the site of the nation’s worst commercial nuclear power accident in 1979.
Amazon.com Inc last year said that it was investing in small nuclear reactors, two days after a similar announcement by Alphabet Inc’s Google. Additionally, Google announced last month that it was investing in three advanced nuclear energy projects with Elementl Power Inc.
US states have been positioning themselves to meet the tech industry’s power needs as policymakers consider expanding subsidies and gutting regulatory obstacles.
Last year, 25 states passed legislation to support advanced nuclear energy, and lawmakers this year have introduced more than 200 bills supportive of nuclear energy, according to the Nuclear Energy Institute trade association.
However, it is unlikely that the US could quadruple its nuclear production in the next 25 years, as the White House wants. The US lacks any next-generation reactors operating commercially and only two new large reactors have been built from scratch in nearly 50 years. Those two reactors, at a nuclear plant in Georgia, were completed years late and at least US$17 billion over budget.
Amazon, Google and Microsoft have also been investing in solar and wind technologies, which make electricity without producing greenhouse gas emissions.
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