Earlier this year, Meta tried to get its own nuclear powered data center the easy way, by building one next to an existing reactor. But after regulators threw cold water on the plan — the site was reportedly home to a rare bee species — the company is back with a new idea: find a developer who will build one or more nuclear power plants somewhere, anywhere.
Meta announced yesterday a request for proposals from nuclear power developers who would help the company add 1 to 4 gigawatts of electricity generating capacity in the U.S. It’s willing to share costs early in the cycle, according to Axios, and it’ll commit to buying power once the reactors are up and running.
The hitch? Applicants have to move fast. Initial proposals are due February 7, 2025, and Meta wants the power plants to begin operation in the early 2030s.
Apart from the tight timeline, Meta is willing to be flexible. The new power plants don’t have to be next to a preferred data center location, as long as they make the power available “to support the growth needs of the electric grids that power both our data centers (the physical infrastructure on which Meta’s platforms operate) as well as the communities around them,” the company said in a press release.
This stance that might help Meta skirt regulators’ views that data center power needs should be balanced with existing demand and the stability of the overall grid. A planned Amazon data center, for example, was tripped up when the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission denied its bid to expand an existing data center power agreement, worried it would possibly cause brownouts or blackouts for other customers.
Traditional nuclear power plants built today tend to be rated for around 1 gigawatt, so just one would fulfill Meta’s lowest ambitions. But those designs have proven to be costly and time consuming to build. Small modular reactors (SMR) promise to lower costs through modularization and mass production, but those claims remain untested at a commercial scale.
That uncertainty hasn’t slowed tech companies, though. Microsoft is hoping to restart a reactor at Three Mile Island by 2028. Google is betting that SMR technology can help it deliver on its AI and sustainability goals, signing a deal with startup Kairos Power for 500 megawatts of electricity. Amazon has thrown its weight behind SMR startup X-Energy, investing in the company and inking two development agreements for around 300 megawatts of generating capacity.
The flurry of activity over the last few months suggests that nuclear power is due for a renaissance in the coming decade, at least if tech companies can stick to their promises. The surge in interest harkens back to tech’s early support of renewable power developers, which Meta points out in its announcement: “We want to work creatively with developers to structure an agreement that will similarly enable development of nuclear technology,” the company said.
Still, a lot hinges on the timing. Renewable power and batteries continue to get cheaper, and several fusion power startups are promising to start their first commercial-scale reactors early in the 2030s. Given forecasted demand, there should be plenty of room for winners, but that doesn’t mean every competitor will succeed.
