2024-09-22 23:18:23
AI applications require electricity, and Microsoft now gets this from a nuclear power plant with a history. There was once a dramatic incident at Three Mile Island.
The reactor plant was once the scene of the largest nuclear power accident in the USA. In 1979, a leak in the cooling water circuit caused a reactor to overheat. Five years ago, Three Mile Island was taken off the grid. Now, however, a reactor – not affected by the accident – is to be switched back on for a special customer.
Tech giant Microsoft has signed a contract with the operating company Constellation Energy to supply nuclear power to the software company for the next 20 years. Unit 1 is expected to feed 835 megawatts into the Pennsylvania grid to power the energy-intensive artificial intelligence computers, reports the British Guardian.
“Before the plant was closed prematurely for economic reasons, it was one of the safest and most reliable nuclear power plants on the grid, and we look forward to bringing it back online under a new name and mission,” said Joe Dominguez, President and current CEO of Constellation.
The new name will be Crane Energy Center, named after former CEO Chris Crane.
The AI applications of tech companies such as Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Meta and OpenAI consume enormous amounts of electricity. According to an estimate by financial experts at Goldman Sachs, demand is expected to increase by 160 percent by 2030. By then, data centers are expected to consume eight percent of the USA’s total electricity needs. A query with ChatGPT consumes ten times more electricity than a search on Google, calculated specialists at Goldman Sachs.
The environmental impact is questionable. Constellation Energy pointed out that with the new contract, Microsoft is producing its electricity CO2-free. “Supplying industries that are critical to our country’s global economic and technological competitiveness, including data centers, requires an abundance of energy that is carbon-free and reliable every hour of the day, and nuclear power plants are the only energy sources that can consistently keep that promise,” said plant manager Joe Dominguez.
A study by the Guardian in mid-September found that emissions from data centers could be 662 percent higher than companies reported. AI applications are particularly energy-hungry.
The background to the criticism of the companies’ figures is the use of energy certificates. These can be purchased to offset the CO2 balance. However, it does not matter whether the electricity is actually used in the companies’ data centers or elsewhere. An unnamed Amazon employee spoke of a “creative calculation” of CO2 emissions.