To Power Data Centers, Meta Goes Nuclear

Meta has cut a trio of deals to power its artificial intelligence data centers, securing enough energy to light up the equivalent of about 5 million homes. The parent company of Facebook announced agreements with TerraPower, Oklo, and Vistra for nuclear power for its Prometheus AI data center being built in New Albany, Ohio. Prometheus will be a 1-gigawatt cluster spanning across multiple data center buildings that's anticipated to come online this year, reports the AP. Meta said the three deals will support up to 6.6 gigawatts of new and existing clean energy by 2035. A single gigawatt can power about 750,000 homes.

Meta said its agreement with TerraPower will provide funding that supports the development of two new Natrium units capable of generating up to 690 megawatts of firm power with delivery as early as 2032. The deal also provides Meta with rights for energy from up to six other Natrium units capable of producing 2.1 gigawatts and targeted for delivery by 2035. Meta will also buy more than 2.1 gigawatts of energy from two operating Vistra nuclear power plants in Ohio, in addition to the energy from expansions at the two Ohio plants and a third Vistra nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania.

Vistra said that electricity from the three power plants—Beaver Valley in Pennsylvania and Davis-Besse and Perry in Ohio—will still run through the mid-Atlantic grid for all electricity customers. It also said the agreements with Meta "provide certainty" for it to ask federal regulators for 20-year license renewals for the reactors. Tech companies have been under pressure in the stressed mid-Atlantic grid to build new power sources to supply the entire electricity needs of their new data centers there. Jesse Jenkins, an assistant professor of engineering at Princeton University who specializes in energy systems, said bringing Prometheus online without a new power source for it will only increase electricity rates across the mid-Atlantic grid.

Ratepayers in the mid-Atlantic are already paying higher electricity bills to support new and proposed data centers. The deal with Oklo, which counts OpenAI's Sam Altman as one of its largest investors, will help to develop a 1.2 gigawatt power campus in Pike County, Ohio to support Meta's data centers in the region.