[Amazon data center and Susquehanna nuclear power plant]
Benjamin Lee (interview): “The Amazon plan with the nuclear power plant here is interesting because Talen Energy operates the nuclear power plant and they essentially built a data center next to its power plant and sold it to Amazon. And they have been authorized to build up to 300 megawatts of data center capacity next to the power plant. And they wanted to increase that capacity out to 480 megawatts. And that was it… that was in a goal to increase the amount of computing that would be done and connected directly to a nuclear nuclear power plant, but also to to increase the cash flow going to to Talen Energy and and its infrastructure. So this is an advantage for Amazon because it gets direct access to a very large amount of energy. It can build two, three, maybe four very large AI-based data centers within that power budget, and it helps the nuclear power plant with with its revenue streams.”
[Susquehanna nuclear power plant and Amazon data center]
Benjamin Lee (interview): “FERC (Federal Energy Regulatory Commission) has rejected the decision to increase that out to 480. So there was an initial approval for 300 megawatts and a rejection at 480 megawatts. This decision really reflects increasing concerns about the extent to which this connection between Amazon and the nuclear power plant is truly independent of the broader grid. There are concerns that connecting that much data center power could compute directly to nuclear imposes a risk to grid stability. And it also may pose a risk to ratepayers who may have to share some of these significant costs associated with the grid, for example, interconnection costs, transmission line costs, etc.”
[Front view of cooling towers at Susquehanna nuclear plant]
[Side view of cooling towers at Susquehanna nuclear plant]
[Amazon data center and Susquehanna nuclear plant]
Benjamin Lee (interview): “Now, this is a departure from how data centers normally procure energy, because normally a data centers would connect with the grid operator and say, I would like to build a data center here and you will give me the electricity that we’ve contracted to purchase. And they could be coming from any source. They could be coming from nuclear, they could be coming from wind or solar, and they’re just electrons flowing through the grid. This setup with Amazon and the nuclear power plant is a more direct connection that we are beginning to see data centers explore.”
[Steam coming from cooling towers at Susquehanna nuclear plant]
[Susquehanna nuclear plant and fence]
Benjamin Lee (interview): “I think in the near term AI is moving so quickly. We are moving beyond language models to multiple modalities. So in encountering video and audio and other forms of data, and we don’t yet know the extent of the AI model’s capabilities. So I would be concerned if we start artificially constraining our analysis of what these models are capable of simply because we are constrained by the energy being used. I think we need to extend the frontier. We need to be on that frontier. And that means supplying the right amount of energy for these 100 megawatt data centers or larger. So I think we need to be able to build these data centers and supply them with energy. And in the near term, this may be continued investment in wind and solar. This may be refurbishing existing power plants that might have been decommissioned. Ideally, they are nuclear and not coal or or other other dirtier forms of energy. And to be honest, natural gas may have a role to play here because the US is so abundant in natural gas.”
[Susquehanna nuclear plant and homes]
This script was provided by The Associated Press.