A nuclear power plant in Clinton, Illinois, has gone from nearing the end of its lifespan to becoming the latest example of a power plant saved by the technology industry. Meta Platforms Inc. signed a 20-year agreement Tuesday, June 3, with the plant’s owner, Constellation Energy, to purchase electricity and upgrade the facility.
The Clinton Clean Energy Center was scheduled to be decommissioned in 2027 when taxpayer funds for the zero-emissions electricity-producing plant were set to expire. Under the new power purchase agreement, Meta, which needs abundant power sources for new data centers powering the artificial intelligence boom, will pay Constellation to keep the plant running through 2047 and increase its total electric capacity by 30 megawatts. The plant’s current capacity is 1092 megawatts, or 1.092 gigawatts, which is enough to power more than 200,000 homes.
“Data companies are looking for the fastest way to get access to power,” Todd Allen, an expert on the nuclear power industry and chair of the nuclear engineering department at the University of Michigan, told Straight Arrow News.
Allen called the partnership unsurprising and said he expects that the Meta-Constellation deal will not be the last of its kind because it’s faster and less costly to invest in an existing power plant than to start from scratch.
Why is Big Tech power-hungry?
Modern artificial intelligence tools are energy-intensive, and the data centers that power them need to operate around the clock. The International Energy Agency estimates that global energy demand from data centers will double by 2030, consuming as much electricity as the entire country of Japan does today. In the U.S., data centers are projected to consume nearly half of all new energy added between now and 2030, according to the IEA.
To meet the surging need for reliable electricity, Meta is not the only Big Tech company choosing the nuclear energy option. In fall of 2024, Amazon, Google and Microsoft each unveiled plans to partner with nuclear power companies to bolster the electricity supply in the face of AI needs and help ensure the companies meet targets for fighting climate change, which include getting power from zero-emissions sources.
Constellation Energy is already partnering with Microsoft to restart a unit at Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island nuclear plant, now renamed the Crane Clean Energy Center. Google and Amazon are collaborating with companies to develop new small modular reactors, which are more cost-effective to build and offer greater flexibility than traditional large nuclear plants.
How does Big Tech help the nuclear power industry?
Long-term commitments from the tech industry are providing hope to the nuclear power sector. In recent history, nuclear has stagnated, providing around 18-20% of the country’s power for the past 30 years. The total capacity of active nuclear power plants in the U.S. peaked in 2012 and declined about 7% over the following decade as plants built in the 1970s and ’80s began to be decommissioned.
Nuclear plants, depending on where they are located, can also face competition from less expensive sources of power, such as natural gas or wind and solar, according to Allen.
“If you look over the course of the nuclear plants that have shut down in the U.S., it’s usually the local economic conditions are such that they can’t compete,” he said.
That was the story in Clinton, where the power plant fell on hard economic times, and in 2016, the plant’s former owner, Exelon Corporation, announced plans to shut it down. At the end of that year, the state of Illinois stepped in with the passage of a bill setting up zero-emissions credits (ZECs) for nuclear power, aiming to help meet the state’s environmental goals.
The state agreed to start out paying $16.50 per megawatt-hour of electricity produced by nuclear plants in a 10-year deal that is set to expire in 2027. In 2024, Constellation would have received about $177 million in taxpayer funding for running the Clinton plant, according to an analysis by Straight Arrow News. Constellation did not confirm the number or respond to questions from SAN.
In a press release, the company wrote, “Constellation’s agreement with Meta is a market-based solution that essentially replaces the ZEC program and ensures long-term operations of the plant.”
Meta’s nuclear plans
The deal in Illinois will not coincide with the establishment of a new data center in the area, although Meta does have existing operations in the region. Instead, nuclear power will help offset carbon emissions from data centers elsewhere that rely on power from coal or natural gas. Meta’s environmental goals include offsetting 100% of their energy needs with zero-emissions sources.
Along with Google, Amazon and several other companies, Meta has signed onto a pledge to help triple the global capacity of nuclear power by 2050. In support of that goal, the company is in the process of selecting partners to build between one and four gigawatts of new nuclear power generation.
Allen sees the tech industry’s investments as a significant “accelerator” for the nuclear industry’s growth. However, he warns that although interest in nuclear technology has been on the rise, a major challenge will be developing the workforce capable of building a new generation of nuclear reactors.
