[Kyle Orland at ArsTechnica]

"Microsoft and Constellation Energy have announced a deal that would re-open Pennsylvania's shuttered Three Mile Island nuclear plant. The agreement would let Microsoft purchase the entirety of the plant's roughly 835 megawatts of energy generation—enough to power approximately 800,000 homes—for a span of 20 years starting in 2028, pending regulatory approval."

This seems to be the new front in datacenter technology: purchasing or building entire nuclear plants in order to cover the energy cost. It is significantly better than high-emissions power from sources like coal, but it also speaks to the increased demand that new technologies like AI represent.

As ArsTechnica points out:

"Industry-wide, data centers demanded upward of 350 TWh of power in 2024, according to a Bloomberg analysis, up substantially from about 100 TWh in 2012. An IEA report expects those data center power needs to continue to rise in the near future, hitting the 620 to 1,050 TWh range by 2026."

AI is a huge and growing part of that, although let's not pretend that the internet industry overall has low emissions. We often pretend we're greener than we are, simply because we can't directly see the output - but there's a lot of work to do, and a lot of carbon footprint to own up to.

#AI

[Link]