Boosted by AI, Nuclear Power is Having a Moment

It’s a widely shared concern that artificial intelligence has the potential to create disaster of some kind for our species. It seems only fitting, then, that to feed the energy needs of its AI services, Microsoft has turned to the nuclear plant at Three Mile Island.

Located along the Susquehanna River near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Three Mile Island gained fame 45 years ago for all the wrong reasons – as the site of the worst nuclear accident in U.S. history. In 1979, one of the plant’s reactors partially melted down, spewing radioactive gases and substances into the surrounding environment. The disaster triggered opposition to the growth of the U.S. nuclear power sector, a movement strengthened by the catastrophic Chernobyl meltdown in the Soviet Union in 1986.

Earlier this month, Microsoft and Constellation Energy announced an agreement for Constellation to get Three Mile Island back online to generate power to sell to the technology giant. The plan is to have the plant back in operation by 2028 with the approval of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Microsoft will purchase electricity from the plant under a 20-year deal.

The arrangement essentially offers Microsoft a two-fer. First, Microsoft will receive the much-needed power to support the rapid growth of its data centers. Equally important, the company will get a carbon-free source to provide that power.

Microsoft is not alone in facing mounting tensions as it tries to balance satisfying the insatiable demand for power spurred by technological advancements and a commitment to cutting its own carbon emissions. In a three-year period, the company saw its emissions climb 40%. Meanwhile, Meta Platforms and Google have reported major surges in their emissions in recent years.

Researchers are pointing the finger at AI as one of the major drivers of increasing power demands. A report from Goldman Sachs released earlier this year estimated that a query using generative AI platform ChatGPT requires 10 times as much energy as a Google search. The need for power will only grow as AI applications become more sophisticated and commonplace. As a result, the demand for electricity from data centers is estimated to grow 160% by 2030, according to the report.

Such conditions could set the stage for the nuclear power industry’s comeback. The Constellation-Microsoft deal resembles an agreement reached earlier this year between by Amazon Web Services and Talen Energy for a nuclear-powered data center campus. Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison also revealed during a recent earnings call that the company is designing a new data center fueled by three of its own nuclear reactors. Additionally, major investment banks are indicating they are all-in on providing the capital to boost the industry’s power-generating capacity.

It all sounds like an ideal solution to facilitate the tech sector’s AI-powered energy surge. But even decades later, images of the devastation created by nuclear disasters still resonate. If the return of nuclear power produces another Three Mile Island, will that investment be for naught?