By Zak Gainey
What will 2024 be remembered for: the conflict in Gaza; the end of Basher al-Assad’s dictatorial rule in Syria; failed coups in Africa; world record global temperatures? Will any but close observers, however, notice that 2024 also heralded a period of significant change in the world of energy.
Energy disputes retained their place in the 24-hour news cycle due ongoing conflicts in Eastern Europe and the Middle East, but this was far from novel. What was new in 2024 was the setting of the stage for the revival of nuclear energy, with the big three American tech companies (Google, Microsoft and Amazon) becoming partly or fully involved in the development, establishment or reopening of nuclear power plants. This post summarises those developments, the stated intentions the revival and discusses in brief what this return to the atom could mean for the future of energy and energy politics.
Why “revival”? Nuclear energy is neither new nor unfamiliar. Thirty-Three countries currently use energy created from nuclear fission reactors. Only a very small minority of these countries, however, depend on nuclear energy. France is the best, and arguably only, example of a “nuclear country” and even then, nuclear only makes up 68% of the energy it produces. Once seen as the future, several high-profile reactor meltdowns, most notably Chernobyl (1986) and Fukushima (2011), and two generations of mass proliferation of nuclear weapons, have soured many to the possibility of nuclear’ s viability and necessity. It is important to briefly note that though nuclear energy production does not produce carbon dioxide as a waste product (except during construction) it is not a sustainable energy source as it relies on supplies of radioactive materials. A revival, therefore, means not just opening new nuclear power plants, but changing the discussion around nuclear as an energy source, reframing it as a means to a better future.
Amazon began its flirtation with nuclear energy in March 2024. It’s cloud computing department, Amazon Web Services (AWS), discreetly purchased a Pennsylvanian nuclear powered data centre and simultaneously signed a Power Purchasing Agreement (PPA) with an associated nuclear power plant. A PPA affords the purchaser the ease of separation from the production of energy while providing it with a continuous and guaranteed amount of energy annually at a fixed rate for a specified period of time, in this instance ten years. Perhaps influenced by the stigma surrounding nuclear energy, Amazon communications about the deal were limited, steering well clear of the world “nuclear”. Instead, Amazon announced the agreement as an exploration of “new [energy] innovations and technologies”. By framing this controversial technology as novel, Amazon sidestepped longstanding safety concerns. Similarly, by highlighting the deal as producing “carbon-free energy”, it linked this ‘old’ and controversial technology to contemporary debates around climate crisis and the transition away from fossil fuels.
In September 2024, Microsoft joined the ranks of the nuclear-powered company, announcing that they too had signed a PPA with the American energy corporation Palisades. The deal promises Microsoft access to all the energy produced by the soon to be reopened Three Mile Island Nuclear Power Plant. The decision was controversial as in 1979 Three Mile Island was the site of America’s worst nuclear disaster. Although there were, fortunately, no casualties of the disaster, it led to the evacuation of thousands. The damage to the reactor itself was so serious that it had to be entirely shut down, leaving only one other reactor operational. Although this foreshadowed the closure of the entire plant in 2022, Three Mile Island has retained its place in the minds of millions of Americans.
Image courtesy of Constellation Energy.
In its initial announcement, Microsoft, in line with Amazon, was tight-lipped about aspects of this new nuclear agreement. Although Microsoft did refer to nuclear as being the source of the energy to be produced, it simply referred to the plant’s location as a “nuclear facility in Pennsylvania that was retired in 2019”. Microsoft emphasised emission targets as the motivation for the agreement, outlining its aspiration to “decarbonized grid for our company, our customers, and the world”. It is notable, however, that previous Microsoft energy projects serve only “the locations where Microsoft consumes electricity”. The company has yet to outline how, if at all, it will distribute the energy provided through this PPA.
Less than a month later, the trifecta was completed when Google signed a very similar contract with the Kairos energy company. Unlike Microsoft’s PPA, the Google-Kairos deal states that that Google’s energy will be sourced from a fleet of brand-new Small Module Reactors (SMRs) Kairos plans to build by 2030. SMRs are a relatively novel type of reactor. SMRs owe their reduced physical size to the fact that they have a much less complicated cooling system, which has the knock-on effect of increasing the number of locations they can be installed due to their limited water requirements. Moreover, the modular nature of the reactor type means that their construction can be standardised, and costs kept low. Modular construction also means that SMR plants can scale in output based on demand. Currently there are only two operational SMR reactors, located in China and Russia. Although as many as eighty other countries are also exploring the viability of this technology.
Google also produced somewhat different justifications for moving towards nuclear. Unsurprisingly, like its two competitors, Google highlights the importance of climate in its decision to embark on this road. It trumpeted that, “nuclear solutions offer a clean, round-the-clock power source”. However, Google also alluded to what is likely to be the more pressing motivation for all three companies; that the deal with provide the “electricity sources [needed] to support AI technologies”.
Environmental concerns seem to be a motivating factor behind each company’s decision; each has set specific, and in some cases, world leading climate and carbon goals. The environment, however, is only an element behind nuclear’s second wind. Equally new to this decade is available AI technologies. One only has to look at ChatGPT’s meteoric rise from an unknown piece of software when it was released in November 2022 to its present position as a household name and classroom nuisance. In the last few days, even the U.K. government has set out its stall to become a world leader in AI development.
In 2023 alone, AI technology received over twenty-five billion dollars in funding. AI has not only become a new profit frontier for each member of this techno-triumvirate; it has also created a new battleground. AI technology demands a huge, constant supply of energy to store and process the data it requires and captures. Currently, nuclear is the only source of carbon-free energy which can meet this demand. More sustainable options such as wind and solar suffer from patch efficiency and battery limitations, and hydro-based energy production has such a negative impact on river and lake ecology that its best left out of the discussion. It is not difficult, therefore, to make the assumption that it is this demand for a constant, stable energy source which is the primary motivation which lies behind the nuclearization of these three companies.
Likely emboldened by Microsoft and Google, Amazon publicly announced its romance with nuclear energy and made their relationship official. On the 16th October 2024, barely forty-eight hours after the publication of Google’s PPA, Amazon proudly set out that it would be actively involved in the development and construction of SMRs technology in partnership with Virginia’s Dominion Energy. Their announcement highlighted that SMRs had been chosen due to their “smaller physical footprint, allowing them to be built closer to the grid”. This, the company argued, was desirable as it will enable them to use the energy produced to power its existing infrastructure, which is primarily located in, or adjacent to, urban centres. To legitimise this decision around the geographical placing of nuclear near to where workers and their families live, Amazon embraced the branding of its competitors in stating that nuclear technology “a safe source of carbon-free energy”.
In the space of only a few months, nuclear energy and discussions around its possible global future have been reinvigorated, not by government but by big business. Google, Microsoft and Amazon have adopted climate-based arguments to reinvigorate the production and use of nuclear energy, simultaneously redefining it as a facilitator of cutting-edge technology. What 2025 will hold for these projects, the companies which are leading them and nuclear energy itself is unclear, but this “nuclear revival” does invite some interesting questions.
Dominic Boyer coined the term “energopolitics” to describe a rethinking of the history of modern democracy which accounts for energy and different fuel source’s role in its development (Boyer, 2011, p.325). A major tenet of his argument is that every time a new fuel source is popularised, it fundamentally impacts the course of democracy. With this in mind, the first question we should then ask of this revival is, ‘how will the acquisition of the ability to generate energy from nuclear fission by private tech companies impact governance? Will these companies have an increased role in where, and who, we receive our energy from? How will this impact our relationships with these companies?
President Donald Trump once again took office on the 20th of January 2025. Given his infamous support for the reinvigoration of the American fossil fuel industry – encapsulated in his slogan “Drill Baby, Drill” – how will the new executive shape the future of this revival and the American government’s relationship with these companies and their new sources of energy? So far in his first week in office, he has suggested that he will “invoke… emergency powers to power artificial intelligence”. The President recognises that the technology requires “tremendous energy” but has yet to outline how he will achieve his goal. For all his rhetoric about carbon-based fuels, this statement could imply his recognition for a revaluation of the atom’s increasing importance to American business interests.
