Meta has confirmed its plans to use nuclear energy to power U.S. data centers. The company announced that it is accepting proposals from nuclear power developers to work on the project, which aims to add one to four gigawatts of nuclear power capacity “starting in the early 2030s.”
The request for proposals states that Meta is looking for partners with experience with “small modular reactors (SMRs) or larger nuclear reactors.” Axios reports that the company is “geographically agnostic” about the location of potential nuclear sites. The company had previously planned to build a nuclear-powered data center, as reported by the Financial Times earlier this year, but those plans were canceled after a rare species of bee was discovered near the site.
“As new innovations bring significant technological advances across sectors and support economic growth, we believe nuclear power can help provide a stable base load to support the needs of the power grids that power both our data centers (the physical infrastructure on which Meta platforms run) and the communities around them,” the company said in a statement.
Meta is not the only major tech company using nuclear power to realize its artificial intelligence ambitions. Google recently announced a deal to build several reactors in the United States to add 500 megawatts of nuclear power from the SMR. Microsoft also announced this year that it wants to revive the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania to fuel its AI development.
