- Nuclear power for Microsoft data centres.
- Three Mile Island brought back online.
- Demand for AI means extraordinary measures.
Microsoft is addressing the huge energy demands of artificial intelligence technology. It has announced a deal with Constellation Energy to buy all the output from the Three Mile Island nuclear power station, once that facility comes back to life.
Site of a famous malfunction in 1979 that led to the shutdown of the plant’s Unit 2, the facility continued operations until 2019, when the price of its electricity became uncompetitive compared to the then much-cheaper fossil fuel-generated power.
“Diagram of the Three Mile Island, Unit 2” by NRCgov is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
Instead of continuing its decommissioning of Unit 1, Constellation Energy will bring the power plant back online by 2026, and Microsoft has agreed to buy its entire output for 30 years. Three Mile Island will produce enough power annually to run around 800,000 homes.
Nuclear-powered Microsoft data centres
Many campaigners see nuclear power as unsafe, with high-profile accidents at Three Mile Island, Fukushima, and Chernobyl making those names watchwords for disaster sites. Nuclear power is also the subject of debate in environmental circles, with ecological ‘debt‘ from construction and research activities often quoted as negating nuclear power’s negligible carbon output while in production. The difficulties of disposing of spent fuel rods and the long half-lives of waste also raise concerns about the long-term effects of nuclear energy.
Large data centres running AI workloads will, according to Goldman Sachs Research, increase the total power draw by centres by 160% by 2030, and both big tech companies and DC operators (the two are often the same) have to be seen to balance their ecological impact with satisfying demand for the perceived benefits of machine learning.
Obtaining power direct from source rather than via national infrastructure is seen by investors as removing risk from investments in the technology, as dedicated power sources remove fluctuations in market power prices from the equation.
Nuclear power plant designs are considered mature enough to allow large-scale roll-outs of new nuclear facilities, with 27 such plants under construction in China.
According to a report from the nonpartisan Information Technology & Innovation Foundation (ITIF), most of China’s nuclear building work uses so-called ‘third-generation’ designs from US company Westinghouse. Mark Nelson, a nuclear engineer and industry advocate, says there is a strong case for revitalisating nuclear power in the US. Speaking on Yahoo! Finance, he advocated “building […] reactors, (if we do it in series) with the same design, the same plant layout, and […] do it over and over.”
But China’s nuclear building programme benefits from state planning and coordination, with carefully engineered feed-in tariffs, subsidies and cheap financing for companies building and maintaining new nuclear facilities.
Without a centralised approach to a national-level nuclear building programme, big tech and large data centre operators have little choice but to pick and choose from the available power options. In areas like Scandinavia and Iceland, natural resources mean that energy production can be low- or no-carbon, using water or geothermal power. The same is true in parts of the US, where certain states benefit from access to similar geography.
Demand for AI continues
But as long as demand for high-energy use data centres that run AI workloads continues, sourcing electricity will remain a numbers game, with DC operators choosing the power supply based on its relative cheapness. In many areas of the world, the lowest-cost option remains fossil fuel-derived energy. Microsoft data centres use, on average, energy that’s 60% fossil fuel-derived.
Companies like Microsoft are already backpedalling on their ‘green commitments’ to pay shareholders who are keen to capitalise on the public demand for second-rate ‘content’ and as yet largely unrealised ‘business benefits’.
Microsoft’s carbon emission figures will certainly improve in the short term if it pursues the type of nuclear option it’s taking in the form of the deal at Three Mile Island. It’s unlikely that the company will be concerned about any responsibility anyone claims it has for safety throughout the 100,000-year lifespan of nuclear waste. That will be, like so much else, a problem for future generations.
