Reconciliation of the giants of the information technology world with nuclear energy

Microsoft announced last week that it had reached an agreement with Constellation Energy to restart a nuclear reactor at Three Mile Island; This agreement was in order to meet the growing needs of data center electricity.

In the past decade, seven nuclear reactors in the United States have been decommissioned, and only two new reactors have been turned on in that time span. Meanwhile, the number of data centers has increased. With more than ten thousand data centers worldwide, half of which are in the United States, and with the growth of cloud computing, a power industry research organization predicts that the sector’s energy demand will increase from 29 percent to 166 percent by 2030.

Today, data centers consume about 4% of US electricity. By the end of the decade, this number may reach 9%.

Hyperscale data centers, such as those relied on by Microsoft, Google and Amazon, and startups such as OpenAI and Anthropic, are responsible for 60 to 70 percent of all data center energy consumption, according to a report by the American Electric Power Research Institute.

For companies like Microsoft, which wants to eliminate its carbon emissions by 2030, the growth of cloud computing and artificial intelligence creates a special challenge; The company’s carbon emissions have increased by about 40% in the last four years, mainly as a result of the expansion of data center operations. Google’s carbon emissions have also increased by 48% in the last five years.

All of this has led companies to look to nuclear power as a way to reconcile their data center boom with their commitment to net zero. In this context, it is easy to see why nuclear power is attractive.

Fission reactors can operate for years without interruption and operate at maximum capacity more than 90% of the time. Outages and repairs are usually planned months or years in advance, giving data centers plenty of time to prepare. Not surprisingly, Microsoft signed a 20-year contract with Constellation.

Outside of the new deal, Amazon recently purchased a large-scale data center directly connected to a nuclear power plant and has hired a nuclear engineer to develop and acquire nuclear power.

The investment of the giants of the information technology world on nuclear energy has also increased; For example, Bill Gates is one of the founders of TerraPower and he has personally invested more than a billion dollars in this company. Former Microsoft CTO Nathan Myhrvold’s name is also on the main table through Intellectual Ventures. Sam Altman has also recently entered the game through his startup oklo.