Mark Zuckerberg nuclear project thwarted by bees

Deal caught in environmental and regulatory challenges

Plans by Meta to build a nuclear-powered datacentre in the US were stalled, partly because a rare species of bee was discovered on land earmarked for the project.

According to a report in The Financial Times, Zuckerberg told a Meta all-hands meeting last week, that the deal was on hold.

The deal with an existing nuclear power plant operator was intended to solve the problem of the construction of AI datacentres being held up due to concerns about the impact on electricity supplies and carbon emissions.

However, the deal became caught up in environmental and regulatory challenges, one of which was the discovery of the rare bee species on a location next to the plant where the data centre was to be built.

Big Tech is turning to nuclear power as a way of producing the vast quantities of energy that AI will demand. Nuclear power is viewed (at least in the US) is viewed as a route as a stable power supply, free of the challenges of renewables and without geopolitical instability.

Critics of the rush to embrace nuclear power have expressed concerns about the safety of radioactive waste, and accidents.

Nonetheless, Amazon, Google, and Microsoft have all struck deals recently with nuclear power plant operators to fulfill rising energy demands from their fast-growing datacentre estates.

In September, Microsoft announced it would revive the mothballed nuclear plant at Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania, site of a serious nuclear accident more than four decades ago.

Amazon paid $650 million in March to put a data centre next to the Susquehanna Steam Electric nuclear plant, also in Pennsylvania.

Google, meanwhile, said last month that it had ordered six to seven small modular nuclear reactors from US start-up Kairos Power, making itself the first tech company to commission new nuclear power plants.

Like other heads of Big Tech, Zuckerberg is coming under increasing pressure to prove to investors that the steeply rising capital costs necessary to build and equip the datacentres which will power Generative AI, are worth it for the return. There are signs that the patience of investors is beginning to wear a little thin, at least in some cases.

One person familiar with this deal said that Zuckerberg has been frustrated at what he views as the ceding of ground to China on this issue, with the US only building a handful of reactors in the last 20 years while China builds much faster.