The growing enthusiasm for new nuclear power plants powering artificial intelligence is tainted by the smell of gas.
Meta Platforms Inc. just announced that it will issue a formal request for proposals to developers to build between one and four gigawatts of new nuclear capacity to help it meet its growing demand for energy to run its centers of data. This is potentially important. So far, Big Tech deals in nuclear power have mostly focused on drawing power from existing plants or reviving a recently shuttered reactor. Yet such arrangements are inherently limited, particularly after federal utility regulators ruled against Amazon.com Inc.’s deal for a co-located nuclear-powered data center.
The holy grail, however, is for a motivated, deep-pocketed company to take the risk of underwriting a brand new nuclear power plant. A recent agreement in which Alphabet Inc.’s Google committed to sourcing energy from small modular reactors built by Kairos Power LLC represented a tentative step forward in this regard. Meta’s tender is on a larger scale, up to eight times the capacity of the Kairos deal, encompassing both modular and traditional reactors. At the high end of the capacity range, building these reactors would cost north of $30 billion, according to (probably optimistic) Department of Energy estimates.
However, timing is the most important factor here. Google plans to get Kairos’ 500 megawatts in just over a decade. Meta, meanwhile, expects fission to begin “from the early 2030s.” This is not surprising; building new nuclear power plants, large or small, in the United States will take years. Even if the initial investment by data center operators is small, their intent is important to nuclear developers, who can promote it during fundraising and to government agencies granting grants.
It is clear, however, that the companies fighting to dominate AI are not going to wait a decade (and perhaps more) to connect with it.
A few weeks ago, the Shreveport Times reported that a Louisiana utility regulator had indicated that Meta would be the customer for a proposed multibillion-dollar expansion of gas-fired power plants in the state by Entergy Corp. (The identity of the customer was something of a mystery after Entergy filed a redacted proposal with regulators.) The three plants total about 2.3 gigawatts of new capacity, two-thirds of which would be located near the data center planned by Meta in the northeast. Louisiana. According to Entergy’s filing, Meta also committed to financing 1.5 gigawatts of solar and battery capacity for Entergy’s “long-range planning needs” as well as contributing to a proposed water capture project. carbon.
Big Tech’s interest in new nuclear power is part of its own long-term planning needs, given the sector’s much-vaunted commitments to carbon-free energy. But Meta’s contract with Entergy is just the latest sign that immediate energy needs will be met with what’s immediately available. “The nuclear project is a competitive bidding process – the Louisiana projects are PPAs (power purchase agreements) and that’s a gulf of difference,” observes Chris Ruppel, director of onsite energy at MARA Holdings Inc., a crypto mining and energy services company.
In September, Energy Capital Partners LLC, a private equity firm, purchased four power plants – three of them gas-fired and one, notably, a giant old coal burner – perfectly located to meet the growing needs of data centers on the PJM network serving broadband. Midwest and Mid-Atlantic states. Meanwhile, a unit of Southern Co., a large Southeast utility, won approval earlier this year to build 1.4 gigawatts of gas- and oil-fired capacity to meet the expected increase of demand linked in part to data centers. Last month, Energy Transfer LP, a major pipeline operator, said it had received interconnection requests from more than 40 potential data center projects, totaling 10 billion cubic feet per day of additional demand, or the equivalent to more than 10% of current gas demand in the United States. .
Needless to say, there is a lot of hype surrounding the data center energy boom. Yet one of the most measured estimates, from Andy DeVries of CreditSights, projects an additional 600 terawatt hours of demand for data centers by 2030 (equivalent to about 15% of current U.S. grid demand ). There will be no new reactors available to accommodate this, so it will be powered by a mix of older plants that remain open rather than retiring, as well as new renewables and, yes, electricity gas (DeVries estimates this will require a net consumption of 4.6 billion cubic meters). additional feet per day, 5% of total current demand). For the rest of the decade, we can expect new nuclear projects to generate all the buzz, while gas provides much of the actual production.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)