Earlier this 12 months, Meta tried to get its own nuclear powered data center the straightforward way, by constructing one next to an existing reactor. But after regulators threw cold water on the plan — the location was reportedly home to a rare bee species — the corporate is back with a brand new idea: discover a developer who will construct a number of nuclear power plants somewhere, anywhere.
Meta announced yesterday a request for proposals from nuclear power developers who would help the corporate add 1 to 4 gigawatts of electricity generating capability within the U.S. It’s willing to share costs early within the cycle, according to Axios, and it’ll commit to purchasing power once the reactors are up and running.
The hitch? Applicants should move fast. Initial proposals are due February 7, 2025, and Meta wants the ability plants to start operation within the early 2030s.
Other than the tight timeline, Meta is willing to be flexible. The brand new power plants don’t should be next to a preferred data center location, so long as they make the ability available “to support the expansion needs of the electrical grids that power each our data centers (the physical infrastructure on which Meta’s platforms operate) in addition to the communities around them,” the corporate said in a press release.
This stance which may help Meta skirt regulators’ views that data center power needs must be balanced with existing demand and the steadiness of the general grid. A planned Amazon data center, for instance, was tripped up when the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission denied its bid to expand an existing data center power agreement, anxious it could possibly cause brownouts or blackouts for other customers.
Traditional nuclear power plants built today are likely to be rated for around 1 gigawatt, so only one would fulfill Meta’s lowest ambitions. But those designs have proven to be costly and time-consuming to construct. Small modular reactors (SMR) promise to lower costs through modularization and mass production, but those claims remain untested at a industrial scale.
That uncertainty hasn’t slowed tech firms, though. Microsoft is hoping to restart a reactor at Three Mile Island by 2028. Google is betting that SMR technology will help it deliver on its AI and sustainability goals, signing a cope with startup Kairos Power for 500 megawatts of electricity. Amazon has thrown its weight behind SMR startup X-Energy, investing in the corporate and inking two development agreements for around 300 megawatts of generating capability.
The flurry of activity over the previous few months suggests that nuclear power is due for a renaissance in the approaching decade, at the least if tech firms can follow their guarantees. The surge in interest harkens back to tech’s early support of renewable power developers, which Meta points out in its announcement: “We would like to work creatively with developers to structure an agreement that can similarly enable development of nuclear technology,” the corporate said.
Still, quite a bit hinges on the timing. Renewable power and batteries proceed to get cheaper, and several other fusion power startups are promising to start out their first commercial-scale reactors early within the 2030s. Given forecasted demand, there must be loads of room for winners, but that doesn’t mean every competitor will succeed.
