* Utility Dive last month…
Meta will purchase the clean energy attributes of Constellation’s 1,092-MW Clinton Clean Energy Center in central Illinois beginning in June 2027, as its home state’s 10-year, ratepayer-funded Zero Emissions Credit program winds down. The ZEC program saved Clinton from premature closure in 2017 “after years of financial losses,” Constellation said on June 3.
The virtual power purchase agreement will support a 30-MW power uprate and a 20-year operating license extension, which will allow the plant to operate until at least 2047. Meta’s power purchases will support its “clean energy goals and operations in the region,” rather than power data centers directly, Constellation said. […]
Nuclear plants in Illinois and other states with “pay to stay” subsidies are ripe for similar deals in the near future, energy consultancy ClearView Energy partners said Monday. Constellation’s 1,870-MW Quad Cities Clean Energy Center is one to watch as its reactors come up for relicensing in 2029 and 2031, ClearView said.
* The Tribune today…
Constellation views its agreement with Zuckerberg as a potential template for four other Illinois nuclear plants where ratepayer subsidies are also set to expire in 2027, said Mason Emnett, Constellation’s senior vice president for public policy.
The biggest nuclear provider in the United States, Constellation owns all six Illinois nuclear plants and has close ties with other artificial intelligence giants. This includes Microsoft, with which Constellation agreed last year to restart a nuclear reactor at the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania. [..]
Meta hopes to decide on its nuclear expansion plans at Clinton and elsewhere by the end of the year, [Urvi Parekh, head of global energy for Meta,] said. […]
The key question, according to Jackson Morris, director of state energy policy for the Natural Resources Defense Council, is whether the company will add deliverable, carbon-free generating capacity such as new wind, solar or nuclear at the same rate at which it’s building data centers.
“It takes 18 to 24 months to build a data center and 10 years to build a nuclear plant,” Morris said. “There’s going to be this messy middle period where we have to speed up the interconnection of new zero-emissions generating resources dramatically to avoid bad consumer and emissions impacts.”
* Related…
* Utility Dive | New nuclear power could meet 10% of projected data center demand increase by 2035: Deloitte: Along with transportation electrification, data center growth will drive an expected 50% increase in U.S. electricity demand through 2050, the National Electrical Manufacturers Association said earlier this month in a separate report. Deloitte’s forecast is sensitive to changes in the rate and scale of data center deployment, but nuclear has inherent advantages — reliability, high capacity factor, low emissions, compact physical footprint and competitive energy costs over assets’ multi-decade operational lives — that make it attractive across a range of scenarios, the consultancy said.
* AP News | Amazon to spend $20B on data centers in Pennsylvania, including one next to a nuclear power plant: One data center is being built next to northeastern Pennsylvania’s Susquehanna nuclear power plant, where it intends to get its power. The other will be in Fairless Hills at a logistics campus, the Keystone Trade Center, on what was once a U.S. Steel mill. Amazon said that data center will get its power through the electricity grid. At a news conference in Berwick in the shadow of the power plant, Gov. Josh Shapiro called it the largest private sector investment in Pennsylvania’s history. Monday’s announcement, he said, is “just the beginning” because his administration is working with Amazon on additional data center projects in Pennsylvania.
* Trellis | 7 companies helping Amazon, Google, Meta and Microsoft go nuclear: The Baltimore-based producer, which operates the largest U.S. nuclear fleet with 21 reactors, is Microsoft’s partner for the Three Mile Island restart. It’s also the supplier for Meta’s 20-year-long power purchase agreement, announced June 3, to buy 1.1 gigawatts of nuclear energy from the Clinton Clean Energy Center in Illinois. Meta’s commitment will support an expansion of the facility’s output and deliver $13.5 million in annual tax revenue, according to the announcement. The site had been slated for retirement.
* Center Square | Meta involvement in Clinton nuclear plant sparks debate over IL energy future: Halbrook said that Illinoisans aren’t losing electricity in this deal, Meta is only buying credit for clean energy, not the power itself. When state subsidies for the Clinton plant expire in 2027, Meta will take over that cost, easing the burden on ratepayers. “Meta will pick up where [the Future Energy Jobs Act] ratepayer subsidy sunsets in 2027 and carry that forward,” Halbrook said. “That’s a good thing for ratepayers. But there are still a lot of questions that need answering.”
* Tech Crunch | Meta buys over 1 GW of renewables to power its data centers: The social media company announced Thursday it will buy 791 megawatts of solar and wind power in Ohio, Arkansas, and Texas from project developer Invenergy. And on Wednesday, Meta said it would buy the environmental attributes from two of Adapture Renewables’ solar farms in Texas, totaling 360 megawatts. Meta has been on a renewable buying spree. Last month, it signed a deal to buy 650 megawatts across two solar projects being built by AES, a utility and power-generation company. Earlier this month, the tech company inked a deal with XGS Energy to build a 150-megawatt enhanced geothermal power plant in New Mexico.
- Three Dimensional Checkers - Tuesday, Jul 8, 25 @ 9:51 am:
It seems like a dispatch match. Nuclear plants produce a constant supply of low cost power. Data centers need power at all hours of the day. I’m for nukes. It does not seem wise to remove zero emission generation.
- The Real Downstate - Tuesday, Jul 8, 25 @ 10:20 am:
This is why it kills me to see our state’s enviros lobby against nuclear energy. This megacorporations are going to eat up a lot of energy to power AI and data centers. As someone who care for our environment, I’d much rather these folks use nuclear than coal or gas.
- hisgirlfriday - Tuesday, Jul 8, 25 @ 10:32 am:
Can someone tell me what all these tech companies’ data centers are actually doing and how that benefits society at large?
If we as a country are so gung-ho about these energy-hoovering data centers that it could lead to rolling blackouts in just a few years, I feel like we should have some idea what Meta is doing with the output of the data centers.
Just wondering because my Facebook experience is currently hot garbage. I barely see any content on my feed from people I know and the rest of the time the algorithm is spitting out slop content I didn’t ask for, I don’t want, which is deceptive and/or is AI-generated content.
Are these data centers about automating away computer programming jobs humans used to do?
When the interests of the tech broligarchs are intruding on the public utility sector I feel like govt. officials should get more answers on this stuff.
- Demoralized - Tuesday, Jul 8, 25 @ 10:47 am:
@hisgirlfriday:
That’s where they house their servers and all of their networking equipment.
- Remember the Alamo II - Tuesday, Jul 8, 25 @ 10:48 am:
=== Can someone tell me what all these tech companies’ data centers are actually doing ===
https://datacenters.atmeta.com/
- Anotheretiree - Tuesday, Jul 8, 25 @ 10:56 am:
==hisgilrfriday== I beleive they are starting give Skynet,Or Collussus from the Forbin Project if you are that old,its early education. Also agree that with the BBB cutbacks on reneawable, rolling Summer blackouts may be comming !
- Joseph M - Tuesday, Jul 8, 25 @ 11:08 am:
Every normal, non-political person I know is surprised when I tell them that new traditionally-sized nuclear power plants are banned in IL. Most people are happy to hear that most of our power is nuclear. Springfield better be ready to pounce at the next chance they get to re-legalize them, otherwise they should explain to their angry constituents why their electricity bills keep spiking.
- hisgirlfriday - Tuesday, Jul 8, 25 @ 11:18 am:
@Demoralized and @Remember the Alamo II - I appreciate you responding to my question by ecplaining the data centers provide server storage/networking purposes. I get that.
But perhaps my earlier question was poorly worded. Meta is getting this increased data/storage networking power… to what end?
Just to make artificial slop content to keep users hooked on social media?
Are rolling blackouts worth that?
.
- Excitable Boy - Tuesday, Jul 8, 25 @ 11:36 am:
- Can someone tell me what all these tech companies’ data centers are actually doing and how that benefits society at large? -
From what I’m reading there are many doubts about how profitable this technology will ultimately be. I wouldn’t be surprised if one or more of these companies ends up failing because of all the money they’re spending on these projects.
- froganon - Tuesday, Jul 8, 25 @ 11:40 am:
What to do with the nuclear waste generated by these reactors is the issue for opponents from the environmental community. The other issue is breakdowns, staff incompetence and terrorist attacks. A failure is quasi-permanent for people downwind or down stream. The private sector is notorious for scaling back safeguards and pushing legislation to reduce safety regulations with pipelines and oil tankers. The results are often catastrophic for those unlucky neighbors whose homes, communities and lives are upended if not destroyed by leaks and system failures. Who believes this industry will be any different? The devastation from the Fukushima reactor failures is ongoing. Radiation from the site continues to leach into the ocean. Radiation is being detected off the U.S. Pacific coast. The levels are low now but radioactive waste water continues to pour into the ocean off of the coast of Japan. The area around Chernobyl is still contaminated. Wind carried radiation over Scandinavia. Reindeer showed enough radiation in their meat three decades later to make them unsafe to eat or to be sold.(cnduk.org and change.org). No thanks to nuclear, it’s great until it isn’t. When it fails, swaths of the planet become unlivable. No more sacrifice zones for nuclear or anything else.
- TJ - Tuesday, Jul 8, 25 @ 11:53 am:
Call me a luddite if you want, but it seems like this only benefits a very small number of actual Illinoisans while giving tech companies the resources to further make the internet worse, continue to erode basic intellectual property rights, allow for the replacement of more and more jobs, continually strain the electrical grid, and have a progressively deleterious impact on the environment.
What’s the benefit to us as a society here beyond enriching some jerks and maybe providing a couple dozen local jobs for the actual power plant operations compared to everything mentioned above?
- JS Mill - Tuesday, Jul 8, 25 @ 12:10 pm:
=and terrorist attacks.=.
Most people have no idea what kind of security these plants have but I can tell you that each Illinois plant (and all in the US since they are under the same regs) have their own paramilitary style security force that trains constantly and is reviewed by NRC oversight with in person drills observations.
As far as comparing US plants to any other, the redundancy is very different here and the safety record, while not perfect, is far better than that of other types of power plants. The potential for catastrophic events exists, but in the US that has proven remote. It is our best option right now.
- Irreverent - Tuesday, Jul 8, 25 @ 12:15 pm:
“The private sector is notorious for scaling back safeguards and pushing legislation to reduce safety regulations”
This is really what keeps me from being 100% pro-nuclear. For nuclear power to work, it needs to be credibly and competently regulated. Given the potential to have the federal government gutted and rebuilt with DUI hires every few years, any consistent good-faith regulation is going to have to come from the state.
Maybe we can snatch up some of the federal regulators who got canned for refusing to pretend the moon is made of cheese.
- Irreverent - Tuesday, Jul 8, 25 @ 12:16 pm:
@JS
I’m more than hesitant at this point to trust the feds with anything that has the potential to hurt our state.
- Mister Ed - Tuesday, Jul 8, 25 @ 1:17 pm:
I concur with froganon, the waste storage issue, lack of regulation and transparency, and accidents/environmental disasters or terrorism. It is bad JuJu in my opinion.
- Jibba - Tuesday, Jul 8, 25 @ 3:01 pm:
If small modular nuclear energy is the way to go, then let’s site it at current nuclear power plant locations rather than within cities as planned. It would go well because there is already security and monitoring going on for the existing plant.
- Soccermom - Tuesday, Jul 8, 25 @ 3:22 pm:
I am concerned about the health and safety risks of nuclear, but I'’m not sure they are worse than the fossil fuel baseline. It’s kind of like boiling the frog vs exploding the frog
- Demoralized - Tuesday, Jul 8, 25 @ 4:04 pm:
I grew up 10 miles from a nuclear plant and didn’t think twice about it. I worried more about the oil storage facility just outside of town than I did about anything nuclear.
- Brian - Tuesday, Jul 8, 25 @ 4:10 pm:
- Can someone tell me what all these tech companies’ data centers are actually doing and how that benefits society at large? -
Running complex software to drive value out of large data sets, automate away human labor, and/or do existing computer automated tasks better.
- Brian - Tuesday, Jul 8, 25 @ 4:13 pm:
…with the theoretical value of increased productivity per unit of human labor, and faster technological improvement.
- Excitable Boy - Tuesday, Jul 8, 25 @ 7:01 pm:
Thanks for the AI generated answer, Brian.
- Brian - Tuesday, Jul 8, 25 @ 8:37 pm:
Not ai, rather 30 years experience discussing tech, sometimes with non technical audiences.