Meta, Google, Amazon Back Push To Triple Global Nuclear Power Capacity Amid Data Center Surge

A trio of the world’s largest data center users have signed on to an effort to dramatically increase global nuclear power production. 

Amazon, Google and Meta are among the founding signatories of the Large Energy Users Pledge announced last week at a nuclear energy event in Houston. A consortium of 14 large-scale corporate electricity consumers signed the pledge, agreeing to support the goal of at least tripling global nuclear capacity by 2050. 

The pledge was organized by the World Nuclear Association, which promotes nuclear power. Other signatories include chemical giant Dow, renewable energy developer Carbon 3 Energy and the Clean Energy Buyers Association.

“There is a significant role for nuclear technologies to provide generation for a wide range of economic activity, including the technology sector, increased electrification, the provision of high temperature industrial process heat, hydrogen production, district heating and the production of synthetic fuels,” the pledge says.

“By ensuring that nuclear and other energy sources have equal access to finance, governments can enable nuclear capacity deployment at scale worldwide.”

The public show of support for expanding nuclear energy from three of the four largest data center hyperscalers is the latest sign of the tech and data center industries’ growing embrace of the technology amid an increasingly acute power pinch. 

An artificial intelligence-driven data center building boom is expected to more than double the industry’s electricity consumption by 2030 as data centers add the energy equivalent of New York City to regional power grids each year. For tech behemoths like Meta, Amazon and Google, nuclear presents a path to large quantities of stable power while still abiding by the firms’ ambitious carbon reduction commitments. 

Amazon is planning a data center campus next to an existing nuclear power station in Pennsylvania, a 960-megawatt project that is awaiting federal approval. In December, Meta published a request for proposals seeking up to 4 gigawatts of new nuclear power generation for its data centers. 

Microsoft signed a 20-year power purchase agreement with Constellation Energy that will see the nuclear operator restart a shuttered reactor at the Three Mile Island power station in the coming years. 

In addition to acquiring power from existing large-scale nuclear generating facilities, tech and data center firms are betting on the potential of small modular reactors. Also known as microreactors, these nuclear reactors range in output from less than a megawatt to 300 MW and are closer in scale to the power plant on a Navy submarine than a traditional utility-owned nuclear power station. While SMRs have been held up as a potential silver bullet for the data center industry’s power woes, the technology isn't expected to be commercially viable for at least five years, by even the most optimistic projections. 

Still, tech giants and data center operators alike continue to sign deals with firms developing SMRs. In October, Google signed a deal with Kairos Power to purchase nuclear energy from multiple SMRs in U.S. markets, with the first slated to be deployed in 2030. Amazon has invested in SMR firm X-energy, while microreactor firm Oklo is backed by OpenAI’s Sam Altman.  

Several data center providers have also signed power procurement deals with SMR firms, including Equinix, Switch and Sabey.