A fresh report suggests that Meta could soon join the leagues of Google and Amazon in addressing global carbon emissions by shifting towards nuclear energy. The company is reportedly seeking proposals from potential nuclear energy suppliers to run its power-hungry data center across the US.
Meta aims to integrate nuclear reactors into its operations by 2030. These reactors could generate between one and four gigawatts of power, sufficient to sustain millions of homes. For context, a typical US nuclear reactor plant can generate 1 gigawatt of power. It was reported earlier this year, that Meta was planning to build a nuclear-powered data center but scrapped the plan because of the sighting of a rare species of bees near the proposed site.
Facebook"s parent, Meta, is considering a shift towards nuclear energy, as the company believes that "nuclear energy will play a pivotal role in the transition to a cleaner, more reliable, and diversified electric grid." In the official form for suppliers, Meta has outlined that it will take submissions from interested suppliers until Jan 3, 2025.
In a statement, Meta states, "As new innovations bring impactful technological advancements across sectors and support economic growth, we believe that nuclear energy can help provide firm, baseload power to support the growth needs of the electric grids that power both our data centers (the physical infrastructure on which Meta’s platforms operate) as well as the communities around them."
Reportedly, while the company is soliciting proposals from partners "having experience in both Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) and larger nuclear reactors," Meta is more interested in Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) since they are compact and a flexible alternative to traditional nuclear plants.
Nuclear plants may pose a lot of challenges such as public skepticism, and regulatory hurdles, however, the benefits that they offer outweigh the challenges for companies with massive computational centers. This move is also in line with Meta"s efforts to introduce additional clean energy sources to the grid, which already includes solar, wind, battery storage, and, most recently, geothermal sources.
Source: Axios