Meta wants to use nuclear power for its data centers

Meta has confirmed its plans to power US data centers. The company said it was accepting proposals from nuclear energy developers to work on the project, with the aim of adding between one and four gigawatts of nuclear capacity “starting in the early 2030s.”

The company says Meta is looking for partners who have experience with “either small modular reactors (SMR) or larger nuclear reactors.” Axios that the company is “geographically agnostic” regarding the location of potential nuclear sites. The company previously had plans to build a nuclear-powered data center. The Financial Times However, plans were scrapped earlier this year after a rare species of bee was discovered near the site.

“As new innovations bring impactful technological advances across all sectors and support economic growth, we believe nuclear energy can help provide firm baseload power to meet the growth needs of the power grids that power our two data centers (the physical infrastructure on which the meta platforms run) and the communities around them,” the company wrote in a statement.

Meta isn’t the only major tech company relying on nuclear energy to advance its AI ambitions. Google recently announced the construction of several reactors in the US, with the goal of adding 500 megawatts of nuclear energy from SMRs. Microsoft also said this year that the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania would advance its AI development.