Meta wants enough nuclear power to go back to the year 1955 about three times
Key Takeaways
- Meta is releasing an RFP for nuclear energy developers to partner with and build up to 4GW of clean, sustainable nuclear energy in the US.
- Mark Zuckerberg’s company is venturing into nuclear power as part of its ambitious plans for AI and clean energy investments.
- Meta aims to secure partners through the RFP process to help build the capacity it envisions for a future powered by AI.
Meta is going nuclear. The company announced it will release a request for proposals (RFP) for nuclear energy developers to partner up and build nuclear reactors across the country. It hopes this investment will be enough to meet the energy demands of AI in the future.
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Meta made the announcement in a blog post, where it stated it believes nuclear power is the key to unlocking up to 4GW of energy in a clean, sustainable manner. The company just needs some partners who know how to build nuclear power plants to do it.
How much energy is 4GW?
Mark Zuckerberg’s company has been investing heavily in AI, VR, and clean energy research for over a decade. However, this is the first time a social media company has decided to tackle something as capital-intensive as nuclear power. And it’s not just one nuclear energy plant, either. Meta wants to add up to 4GW of capacity to the national energy grid.
How much is that? According to the US Department of Energy, 1GW would power 100 million LED light bulbs. A watt is a measurement of power and a Gigawatt (GW) has one billion watts.
A single nuclear power reactor will produce up to 1,000 megawatts (MW) of power a day, or 1/1000th of a gigawatt. The average plant, with four reactors, can produce up to 1GW of energy a year. There are currently 61 nuclear power plants with 98 reactors in the US. Zuckerberg’s plan would mean the construction of at least four more plants, and possibly up to six, depending on the number of reactors per plant and any new technologies to make nuclear energy production more efficient.
Meta’s RFP is just the beginning of the process, but it shows the company is serious. It is tackling things on a level beyond many governments. For example, the company has begun laying a globe-spanning undersea fiber optic cable, one of the largest ever. Meta aims to provide the energy and data connections it needs for the future, which the company is betting will be powered entirely by AI.
But it needs partners to do so. The RFP process will allow the company to meet with potential experts, firms, and investors to discuss how to get these projects off the ground. There has not been any mention of it from regulators yet, but that will surely be a big part of Meta’s plans.
What this means for the future
Meta will continue to prioritize AI as it moves forward with its plans. The company sees the future internet as an AI-powered platform it can own through strategic investments today. 4GW of clean nuclear energy surely won’t hurt the energy grid, either.
