The data centers that power AI technologies require such prodigious – and reliable – volumes of electricity, that tech giants like Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) and Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) “rediscovered” nuclear power as an ideal energy source.
Microsoft and Constellation Energy, the utility that owns Three Mile Island, announced a new deal on September 20th that will lead to the restart of Unit 1 at the Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station. This will be the first time a nuclear reactor in the United States has been brought back online after being shut down.
The deal is for 20 years and is a power purchase agreement in which Microsoft will buy the power generated by Unit 1 for an estimated $110-$115 per megawatt hour in order to reliably power its Artificial Intelligence (AI) data center demand while meeting the companies clean energy goals. Unit one will reopen as the “Crane Clean Energy Center” by 2028 so long as the Nuclear Regulatory Commission approves the plan.
Amazon Web Services is paying as much as $650 million for a data center campus adjacent to a nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania. The cloud provider reportedly plans to build several data centers there, according to The Information.
The recent Amazon and Microsoft nuclear deals are not outliers. Earlier this month, Oracle Corp. (ORCL) Chairman and Co-founder Larry Ellison announced that his company had obtained “building permits for three nuclear reactors. These are small modular nuclear reactors to power the data center.
Along with this surprising announcement, Ellison also mentioned that some of the newest data centers under construction will require ten times more power than the typical facilities in operation today. Oracle, he said, is building an 800-megawatt data center that will have “acres of Nvidia GPU clusters” that will be used to train one of the world’s largest AI models.
For perspective, 800 MW is nearly identical to the entire power supply that Microsoft expects the Three Mile Island plant to produce once it reopens. In other words, one modern data center will need the entire output of one nuclear reactor.
In many important respects, nuclear energy has no equal, especially when it comes to powering data centers. Electricity that is intermittent, or susceptible to interruption, is electricity that could cause a big, expensive mess for data centers. Nukes prevent that problem. They can run continuously for long periods of time without needing maintenance or refueling.
Importantly, nukes also require a relatively small footprint, compared to renewable energy sources. Theoretically, a square plot of land, 22 miles long on each side, could accommodate enough nuclear reactors to power the entire United States.
Looks like Dutton may be onto a winner by bringing Nuclear Energy into our Power Mix. Because of the need for lots of land, batteries, digitalisation, and new infrastructure (grid upgrade and expansion) with wind, and solar the renewables option is more expensive and less reliable than Nuclear.
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Thankyou. I believe Dutton has done his homework. Years ago Fred and Elaine Nile (Christian Democratic Party) did a world tour as MP’S studying Nuclear. They found it clean , reliable, no longer dangerous, and felt it was the power source of the future. Albanese is so out of touch with the future. His handling if the Pro Palestinian uprisng is another example. They are a threat to all of us, not.just Jews, bad as that is. When will Australia wake upg?
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The Internet with AI is going to require a lot of power and its interesting that Google and Microsoft in the USA have entered into agreements to get nuclear power for their Data Centres. It makes sense to include nuclear in our energy mix. Wind and Solar are not dependable sources of power.
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