In the wake of political climate alarm "net-zero" warfare on abundant fossil energy while piling millions more electric vehicles (EVs) on already overloaded grids, now add staggeringly colossal new artificial intelligence (AI) power demands.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates that electricity demand from AI, data centers, and crypto currency could more than double by 2026, an added equivalent of all the electricity used in Sweden or — in the high-usage case — Germany.
Consequently, large AI tech companies which require reliable 24/7 power are looking seriously at partnering with or owning nuclear facilities that they can count on, kindling hope that such developments will drive long-overdue investments to develop safer, more efficient technologies to address increasingly critical national needs.
As Federal Energy Regulatory Commissioner Mark Christie warned in April, "The problem is that utilities are rapidly retiring fossil-fuel and nuclear plants.
"We are subtracting dispatchable [fossil fuel] resources at a pace that’s not sustainable, and we can’t build dispatchable resources to replace the dispatchable resources we’re shutting down."
Subject to government regulatory approval, tech giant Microsoft is entering into a deal with Constellation Energy to refurbish and reopen one of two dormant reactors at its Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania by 2028.
The four-year restart plan would cost Constellation about $1.6 billion and is dependent on federal subsidies in the form of tax breaks earmarked for nuclear power in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act.
If approved by regulators, Three Mile Island would provide Microsoft with the energy equivalent it takes to power 800,000 homes, or 835 megawatts.
The IEA report forecasts that peak electricity demand in the U.S. will grow by 38 gigawatts by 2028, roughly equivalent to 46 times the output of one reactor at Three Mile Island.
Microsoft has agreed to use as much power as possible from the plant over the next 20 years.
That reactor had operated safely up until five years ago before closing for economic reasons, having been reopened after the other reactor partly melted down in 1979 fueling great public concern about nuclear safety risks.
In addition, as reported in The Washington Post, Microsoft is also pursuing power from nuclear fusion, a "potentially abundant, cheap and clean form of electricity that scientists have been trying to develop for decades."
While noting "most say [it] is still a decade or more away from generating electricity," the Post observes that Microsoft is ahead of the game in having signed a contract to buy fusion energy "from a start-up that claims it can deliver it by 2028."
The number of U.S. operating nuclear fission reactors peaked at 112 in 1990, then declined to 92 by 2022. The latest new one — the Vogtle power plant in Georgia — took more than 14 years to build.
As noted by Bloomberg, the Microsoft deal is the "latest sign of surging interest in the nuclear industry as power demand for AI soars.
"Over the past decade, over a dozen nuclear reactors have gone dark in the face of increasing competition from cheaper natural gas and renewable energy."
But now, Bloomberg adds, the growing demand for electricity, "especially from data centers," has led many to turn to nuclear plants that can "provide carbon-free power around the clock."
The rise of ChatGPT and similar large-language AI models require huge amounts of computing power which has turbocharged data-center demand.
Dominion Energy, which supplies electricity to most of the Virginia data centers, projects their power requirements to quadruple over the next 15 years, representing 40% of the utility’s demand in the entire state.
Meanwhile, according to The Wall Street Journal, electricity demand by power data centers is projected to increase by 13% to 15%, compounded annually through 2030.
Nevertheless, power shortages are already delaying new centers by two to six years.
These potentially lengthy timescales are part of the reason why Microsoft is interested in developing small modular reactors, which should be quicker and cheaper to build.
By comparison, China seems to build nuclear power plants much more quickly, so speeding up is possible, meaning that to remain competitive, the U.S. must step up its game.
In March, Amazon Web Services closed a deal similar to Microsoft’s, acquiring a data center campus connected to Talen Energy Corp.'s nuclear power plant on the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania for $650 million.
Last week the DOE has also announced it has finalized a $1.52 billion loan guarantee to help Holtec International reopen a shuttered Palisades nuclear plant in Covert Township, Michigan which ceased operating in 2022.
Two rural electricity providers that planned to buy power from the reactor would also receive $1.3 billion in federal grants under a program already approved by Congress.
Regarding the Microsoft deal with his company, Constellation CEO Joseph Dominguez told The Washington Post, "This plant never should have been allowed to shut down. . . . It will produce as much clean energy as all of the renewables [wind and solar] built in Pennsylvania over the last 30 years."
"The symbolism" Dominguez added, is enormous," whereby even though Three Mile Island was the site of the [nuclear] industry's greatest failure," it can now be a "place of rebirth."
Let’s sincerely hope he’s right.
Larry Bell is an endowed professor of space architecture at the University of Houston where he founded the Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture and the graduate space architecture program. His latest of 12 books is "Architectures Beyond Boxes and Boundaries: My Life By Design" (2022). Read Larry Bell's Reports — More Here.