Facebook owner Meta seeks up to 4 GW nuclear capacity
Meta is the latest tech company to seek nuclear as an energy source for its growing data needs as it seeks proposals for as much as 4 GW of nuclear capacity in the USA by the early 2030s.
The company, which includes Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp among its brands, is releasing a request for proposals "to identify nuclear energy developers to help us meet our AI innovation and sustainability objectives".
The target is between 1 and 4 GW of new nuclear generation capacity in the USA. "We are seeking developers with strong community engagement, development, and permitting, and execution expertise that have development opportunities for new nuclear energy resources - either small modular reactors or larger nuclear reactors," the notice announcing the request for proposals (RFP) says.
It adds "we are taking an open approach with this RFP so we can partner with others across the industry to bring new nuclear energy to the grid". Qualification to be considered closes on 3 January with initial RFP proposals due by 7 February.
In a blog post providing further background, it says: "We are looking to identify developers that can help accelerate the availability of new nuclear generators and create sufficient scale to achieve material cost reductions by deploying multiple units, both to provide for Meta’s future energy needs and to advance broader industry decarbonisation. We believe working with partners who will ultimately permit, design, engineer, finance, construct, and operate these power plants will ensure the long-term thinking necessary to accelerate nuclear technology."
Meta says that nuclear energy is more capital intensive, takes longer to develop, has more regulatory requirements and has a longer operational life so "we need to engage nuclear energy projects earlier in their development lifecycle and consider their operational requirements when designing a contract. And, as scaling deployments of nuclear technology offers the best chance of rapidly reducing cost, engaging with a partner across projects and locations will allow us to ensure that we can deploy strategically".
The decision of the Facebook-owner to bring on its own nuclear energy supply follows in the footsteps of fellow tech giants Microsoft, Google and Amazon, and is the result of the vast energy needs required for huge and growing data centres with artificial intelligence developments set to push those energy requirements even higher. As with renewables, nuclear provides carbon free power, but crucially it also provides that power round-the-clock, which is a key requirement of data centres.
