by Key Takeaways
- There are no longer any plans to construct a nuclear power plant for Meta’s data centers.
- According to reports, the cancellation was caused by a rare species of bee discovered at the construction site.
- With this setback, Meta now lags behind companies like Amazon, Google, and Microsoft, who are already preparing nuclear power plants specifically for data centers.
Meta’s plans to construct a nuclear-powered data center in the US have been derailed by a rare type of bee.
A unique circumstance has compelled Meta to reevaluate its intentions to construct a data center fueled by nuclear. The finding of a rare species of bee at the intended location of the nuclear reactor complicates construction.
To power its new data center, the parent company of Facebook had intended to work with an established nuclear supplier. According to the Financial Times, this revelation presents Meta with regulatory and environmental issues when it comes to completing the transaction.
The location of the future nuclear facility and the service provider’s whereabouts were not divulged. Although it is lagging behind other industry titans who have already made investments in cleaner energy sources, including nuclear, the corporation is already investigating other options.
In order to fulfill the growing demands for processing the massive volume of data needed to train AI models, nuclear is gradually taking the lead as the power source of choice for businesses taking part in the AI marathon. In an effort to reduce reliance on fossil fuels, corporations like Amazon, Google, and Microsoft have previously invested billions of dollars in reclaiming outdated nuclear infrastructure or building new ones.
At a company-wide meeting, Meta’s founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, broke the news to the staff. He added that if the deal had gone through, Meta would have been the first in the industry to use nuclear power for AI. He added that this would have been the largest nuclear power plant for data centers.
According to reports, stakeholders are putting pressure on Zuckerberg to reduce the costs of data processing for AI applications, which are primarily driven by its Llama family of AI models. This adds to the lack of GPUs, including the H100s from Nvidia and the more recent Blackwell series processors, which are in high demand from all of the big tech businesses.
In order to accommodate AI, Meta has had to refocus its plans for data center growth in recent years. In order to incorporate GPUs, which are essential to AI processing, Meta had to halt the construction of over a dozen processing centers worldwide in 2022.
The recent nuclear project’s cancellation puts more pressure on Meta. In less than a week, Amazon’s plan to connect a data center directly to a nuclear power plant in Susquehanna, Pennsylvania, was banned by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, marking the second setback for the company’s nuclear aspirations.
