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Data centers want to tap existing nuclear power. Is that good or bad?

Tech giants are working to divert round-the-clock nuclear power to massive new data centers. Regulators and climate advocates are concerned.

Canary Media, By Jeff St. John, 14 Aug 24

Across the U.S. East Coast, nuclear power plant owners are proposing marriages to tech giants who are both desperate for electricity to fuel their massive data-center expansion plans and publicly committed to using clean energy. The proposals go like this: Build data centers that connect directly to our round-the-clock, carbon-free nuclear power, and secure long-term financial and clean-energy benefits for the both of us.

The companies looking to tie the knot say these are matches made in heaven. But a growing number of critics are objecting at the altar.

The first such announcement came in March, when Amazon Web Services agreed to spend $650 million to buy an existing 960 megawatt data center campus that’s already hooked up to Talen Energy’s 2.5 gigawatt Susquehanna nuclear power plant in northeastern Pennsylvania. Several similar proposals are in the works, with nuclear power plant owners Constellation Energy, Vistra, Dominion Energy, and Public Service Enterprise Group eyeing prospects, according to company statements and analyst reports.

Nuclear energy and tech company trade groups say these ​“colocation” projects will bring stability to a nuclear industry that provides the country’s largest share of zero-carbon energy. By allowing data centers to circumvent the overtaxed U.S. grid and get online faster, these linkups will also bolster U.S. competitiveness in artificial intelligence and other high-tech fields, they say, positioning the deals as a partial solution to the problem of meeting fast-rising electricity demand from industrial customers.

…mounting scrutiny from energy analysts and climate advocates, who fear that a rush to divert existing zero-carbon nuclear energy to power-hungry data centers could end up raising ratepayer bills, reducing grid reliability, and increasing power sector emissions overall.

Those are the risks outlined in a July blog post by Jackson Morris, director of state power sector policy at the Natural Resources Defense Council. ​“We’re not anti–data center and anti–load growth,” Morris told Canary Media. ​“But we want to make sure that actions being taken don’t lead to negative impacts in terms of emissions reductions or costs to consumers.”

Lawmakers and regulators in Connecticut, Maryland, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania are raising similar concerns……………………..

When a new data center comes online, new electricity generation has to be built — either to support the facility directly or to plug the massive hole created when the data center siphons off electricity from an existing power source.

Unless those data center owners can build enough clean energy to make up that gap, that replacement power will largely come from existing fossil-fueled power plants………………………………………………………………………………………………….more https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/nuclear/data-centers-want-to-tap-existing-nuclear-power-is-that-good-or-bad

August 16, 2024 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | ENERGY