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Head Of Congressional AI Task Force Urges Regulators To Allow Data Centers At Nuclear Power Plants

A month after U.S. energy regulators stalled a planned Amazon data center adjacent to a Pennsylvania nuclear power plant, a co-chair of the congressional Task Force on Artificial Intelligence is pushing the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to change its tune on colocated nuclear data center campuses. 

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The Susquehanna Steam Electric Station in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania.

Rep. Jay Obernolte, a Republican from California, urged FERC commissioners in a Dec. 5 letter to move quickly to remove regulatory barriers preventing nuclear power plants from selling electricity directly to the data centers that developers are increasingly seeking to build alongside them.

Obernolte’s letter, first reported by Reuters, frames the issue as a matter of national security and critical to maintaining the country's leading position in the global AI arms race.

“As their energy requirements increase, the development of co-located energy production will be instrumental in mitigating grid strain, improving resilience, and reducing carbon emissions,” Obernolte wrote. “I urge the Commission to reject any continued delay on these decisions as you move forward shaping the nation's energy future.”

House leaders launched the bipartisan task force in February to explore ways Congress can help maintain the U.S.' leading position in AI innovation while protecting against potential risks of the technology. Obernolte earned a master's degree in artificial intelligence and founded a video game development company. 

The letter follows an early November FERC ruling that blocked a power agreement underpinning Amazon Web Services’ planned data center campus at Talen Energy’s Susquehanna Steam Electric Station in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, one of the largest nuclear power plants in the country.

AWS and Talen had agreed to a $650M deal in March under which the cloud computing behemoth acquired 1,200 acres adjacent to the 2.5-gigawatt power station. AWS planned to build as many as 15 data centers on the site, largely for artificial intelligence, which would be powered by nearly a gigawatt of electricity purchased directly from the nuclear plant next door. 

But FERC rejected an agreement between Talen and regional grid operators needed for the “behind-the-meter” deal with AWS to move forward. Commissioners expressed concern that Amazon would be taking power that previously supplied the regional grid, potentially raising electricity prices for other consumers and increasing the risk of grid instability.

“These co-location arrangements are a fairly new phenomenon that entails huge ramifications for grid reliability and consumer costs,” FERC Commissioner Mark Christie wrote in the decision. “Given these ramifications, the Commission truly needs to ‘get it right’ when it comes to evaluating co-location issues.”

The impact of FERC’s decision, which AWS has since formally asked the body to reconsider, has extended well beyond the cloud provider’s specific plans in rural Pennsylvania.

The company's deal with Talen was the first of its kind between a nuclear operator and a data center firm, and it provided a model that other utilities and data center firms had quickly sought to replicate in markets across the U.S. as a key tool in addressing power shortages slowing the build-out of data centers to support AI.  

FERC commissioners said their decision to block Talen’s agreement with AWS was intended to avoid setting a precedent that would trigger a wave of similar projects before the consequences were fully understood. 

Constellation Energy, which filed a complaint with FERC over its AWS decision, is in talks with firms interested in building data centers adjacent to a Maryland nuclear plant. Dominion Energy has also indicated interest in developing a data center campus connected directly to a nuclear facility in Connecticut, while power provider Vistra is reportedly considering behind-the-meter deals with data center operators in Texas and Ohio.