Meta has signed a 20-year agreement with Constellation Energy that will allow it to purchase nuclear power supplied by the Clinton Clean Energy Center in southern Illinois. To help fuel its AI ambitions, Meta said in a statement that it is prioritizing 100 percent clean, renewable energy for its data centers and recognizes the "immense value of nuclear power in providing reliable, firm electricity."
Rather than building a new nuclear plant, Meta says its deal with Constellation for its existing Clinton center will ensure the plant can remain in operation long-term, preserving over 1,000 local jobs. The deal, the first of its kind for Meta, commences in 2027, and will see Facebook’s parent company buy in full the approximately 1.1 gigawatts of emissions-free nuclear energy currently being generated at the site. Meta also committed to expanding the grid by an additional 30 megawatts. The exact financial details of the landmark agreement are not detailed in the statement.
Meta has been behind the curve on nuclear, with big tech rivals Google and Microsoft already buying up significant capacity. In December last year, Meta confirmed its ambition to add between one and gour gigawatts of nuclear energy capacity to its US data centers by the early 2030s, so the Constellation agreement is something of a headstart for Mark Zuckerberg’s company.
Meta did actually plan to build a nuclear-powered data center of its own, but was reportedly forced to scrap it when a rare bee species was discovered on the land it had earmarked for the project. According to the Financial Times, Zuckerberg told staff at the time that Meta would have had the first nuclear energy AI if the bee-related pivot hadn’t been necessary.
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