Topics
Latest
AI
Amazon
Image Credits:Sean Gallup / Getty Images
Apps
Biotech & Health
Climate
Image Credits:Sean Gallup / Getty Images
Cloud Computing
commercialism
Crypto
enterprisingness
EVs
Fintech
Fundraising
gadget
punt
Government & Policy
Hardware
layoff
Media & Entertainment
Meta
Microsoft
privateness
Robotics
Security
Social
Space
inauguration
TikTok
Transportation
Venture
More from TechCrunch
Events
Startup Battlefield
StrictlyVC
Podcasts
picture
Partner Content
TechCrunch Brand Studio
Crunchboard
Contact Us
Amazon , Meta , and Microsoft have placedbig stakes on nuclear powerto fix electricity for their data eye as AI and cloud computing have sent world power use surging .
But as Amazon and Meta discovered last week , those bets are far from a sure thing . A series of recent ruling from regulators dashed their Leslie Townes Hope of finding a quick fix for their electricity motivation . For now , Microsoft ’s program to animate a nuclear reactor at Three Mile Island are moving ahead .
Perhaps unexpectedly , the roadblocks have nothing to dowith nuclear power itself , instance the challenges of make monolithic information centers without first locking up new germ of electrical energy .
Meta , for example , is planning to build an AI information center next to an already go atomic superpower plant . But as the project progressed , regulatory hurdles began mob up . CEO Mark Zuckerberg told faculty in an all - hands encounter that one hurdle was the sighting of a rare bee metal money on the solid ground , accordingto a Financial Times study . ( Many bee populations are presently thin , at best , after tenner of exposure to a new generation of pesticides , among other stressor . )
Amazon ’s plans have alsohit a split . The ship’s company is contrive to work up a novel hyperscale data point center next to the nuclear power plant life near Susquehanna , Pennsylvania , and apply a pregnant portion of the works ’s electrical energy . The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission ( FERC ) , which manage the U.S. electricity and innate gas grids , vote 2 - 1 on November 1 to abnegate the expansion of an live data point centre mightiness agreement that would have let Amazon to connect directly to the power plant .
The concern in Amazon ’s example was that other customer would potentially brook lower reliability — brownouts or blackouts — and in high spirits costs as the data center would divert a important portion of the massive might plant away from the quietus of the region ’s electricity grid .
This likely wo n’t be the last clip FERC ram into the power question for hyperscale data point centers : The commission has at leastanother eightlarge carbon monoxide gas - location requests to refresh .
