Modern artificial intelligence (AI) data centres require the use of large amounts of power and they are expected to become more power-hungry in the coming years as tech giants such as Google, Microsoft, Meta and OpenAI work towards artificial general intelligence (AGI). That said, Microsoft has bought a nuclear plant for its future plans.
For your information, Microsoft agreed to buy a nuclear power plant to power its data centre. It is after the owner of the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania, Constellation Energy Corp. will invest a total of $1.6 billion (~RM6.72 billion) to revive the closed nuclear plant by selling all production power to Microsoft Corp.
In addition, the operator of the largest US reactor expects the Three Mile Island plant to be back online in 2028. Although one of the site's two units was permanently shut down nearly half a century ago after the worst US nuclear accident ever, Constellation plans to reopen the other reactor that was shut down in 2019 first.
Purchasing energy from this plant for two decades makes it Microsoft's first to acquire a 100% dedicated nuclear facility.
Furthermore, the purchase of the nuclear plant will help Microsoft's plan to run all of its large global data center network on clean energy by 2025 which will be used to fuel the expansion of data centers in areas such as Chicago, Virginia, Pennsylvania and Ohio.
Moreover, Microsoft isn't the only tech company looking to nuclear power to fuel its AI ambitions. Earlier this year, the cloud computing division of Amazon.com Inc. has agreed to spend $650 million (~RM2.73 billion) to acquire a data center campus connected to Talen Energy Corp.'s nuclear power plant. which is 40 years old on the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania.
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