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Microsoft made waves last calendar week when it announced a deal with Constellation Energy to resume a atomic nuclear reactor at Three Mile Island to meet its surging data center power need , go against the power root ’s seemingly terminal decline .
In the last decade , seven atomic reactors have beendecommissionedin the U.S. , while onlytwo new oneshave been switched on . Meanwhile , the number of data point core has exploded , with over 10,000 worldwide , half of which are in the U.S. And as cloud calculation grows , EPRI , an electric industry enquiry organization , look to that the sector ’s energy requirement will grow by anywhere from 29 % to 166 % by 2030 .
Today , data gist take about 4 % of U.S. electricity . By the end of the decennary , they might use 9 % , all while overall demand grows . Hyperscale datum heart , like what Microsoft , Google , and Amazon go — and that startup like OpenAI and Anthropic rely on — are the primary culprit , responsible for 60 % to 70 % of all datum center energy use , accord to EPRI .
For ship’s company like Microsoft , which has ambitions toeliminate its C emissions by 2030 , growth in cloud computing and AI pose a particular challenge : The firm ’s carbon emissions have balloonedsome 40%over the last four years , largely a result of expatiate data point center operations . Google ’s C emissions have grown , too , some 48%in the last five years . ( Amazonsaysall of its data centers ’ energy use is matched by an equivalent amount of renewable power . )
All of that has companies eyeball nuclear as a fashion to reconcile their breakneck data center growth with their commitments to hit lucre - zero . In that setting , it ’s easy to see why atomic is appealing : Fission reactors can consort uninterrupted for year , working at maximal capacityover 90%of the time . Maintenance outages tend to be be after month or age in advance , give data centers plenty of time to make . No wonder Microsoft sign a 20 - year agreement with Constellation .
alfresco of the young batch , Amazonrecently boughta hyperscale data center that ’s flat touch base to a atomic plant , and it’shiring a nuclear engineerto facilitate AWS develop and take nuclear major power .
investor connected to Big Tech have placed their stake , too . Bill Gates co - found TerraPower , and he has personally invested over $ 1 billion in the ship’s company ; former Microsoft CTO Nathan Myhrvold , through Intellectual Ventures , is also on the cap table . Sam Altman back the diminished modular nuclear reactor startup Oklo before it merged with a special - determination skill company .
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But Microsoft ’s deal with Constellation suggests that the company is hedging its bets . The company ’s rapid data center growth may have force it to secure power more quick than it had anticipate . It ’s also potential that the company realized the current undulation of atomic startups wo n’t be beget electrical energy anytime before long .
The latter is n’t surprising . atomic reactors are n’t exactly simple , and many startups are still relatively young , having bring forth only plans or concepts of design .
But even more mature startups have stumble . Two years ago , the Nuclear Regulatory Commissiondenied Oklo ’s applicationto work up a reactor for the Department of Energy in Idaho , and last yr the Air Force lift a$100 million price - plus contract bridge . Competitor NuScale Power , another nuclear fission startup that blend SPAC , lost a self-aggrandizing contractin 2023 .
Even if nuclear fission startup are able to overcome their engineering science and regulative hurdling , they ’ll still have to find somewhere to build them . That remains the biggest challenge , I ’d argue . It ’s no mystery that nuclear has an double problem . How many of you cringe a snatch when Microsoft herald it was reopening Three Mile Island , even if the nuclear reactor in query was operational as of late as 2019 ? And while the majority of Americans nowsupport atomic power , the engineering science lags in acceptance to wind and solar . Plus , that supportmay vanish once concrete plans come forth . hoi polloi might like atomic in the synopsis , but what about in their backyards ?
Meanwhile , the cost of renewable mogul has grownincreasingly attractive , even when add up the cost of batteries to enable 24/7 operation .
In the near term , restart old atomic power plants will help tech companies keep up with growing power requirement while minimizing its clime impact . But there are only so many mothball nuclear power plants waiting for a savior . finally , cloud computing and AI companies will require alternative sources . The sentence to start reckon for them is now .
Update : Last Energy says it has not received an investment from Microsoft .
