Why Are Tech Companies Buying Up All The Nuclear Power Plants Around The World?

This is LAke Anna, in Virginia.

Apart from its beautiful cottage country environment, It’s a place that you could pass without a second thought. But something is happening here now, something that represents a massive shift in the way energy, power, and corporate control are evolving in the 21st century.

Amazon, a company you might associate more with next-day deliveries or endless movie recommendations, is making moves in a very different sector: nuclear energy. In a quiet but monumental deal, Amazon has bought up a nuclear reactor here in North Anna. It’s a head-turning development, yet it’s not entirely surprising.

Because Lake Anna is not alone.

In recent years, tech companies have begun buying nuclear reactors across the world. Just days ago, google announced it was buying and setting up nuclear reactors in california. Meanwhile, Microsoft followed suit with a reactor project on three mile island, a site that notoriously shut down after a partial nuclear meltdown. And let’s not forget aboutLarry Ellisons’s Oracle. Larry Ellison a few weeks ago said this on a strange earnings call.
“Let me say something that’s going to sound really bizarre…The location and the power place we’ve located, they’ve already got building permits for three nuclear reactors. These are the small modular nuclear reactors to power the data center. This is how crazy it’s getting. This is what’s going on.”

It’s not just the odd deal here or there. These purchases are part of a growing trend — tech giants are acquiring nuclear reactors as though they were grabbing prime real estate in Manhattan.

Why is this happening?

To understand, we have to rewind a bit. The tech industry today isn’t just about the gadgets in our pockets or the apps we use to navigate the world. It’s built on immense, unseen networks of data centers, high-performance computing clusters, and increasingly, artificial intelligence. And all these systems, in turn, rely on one thing: energy.

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[ecogreen]

because duh, nuclear is the best energy source we have at the moment, like i love renewables but the only problem with nuclear nowadays is the public opinion but you and i both know how little that matters in this case.

[bigmike]

They need virtually unlimited clean energy for data centers and A.I.

[johnjakson]

Water that is used in reactor or any thermal power plant cooling does not disappear, it just gets a bit warmer and the extra heat moves on to the environment, so it's still an endless resource.
Many of the future molten salt reactors will be cooled by molten salt. Only at the power generation stage does the molten salt have to exchange heat to another medium, water/steam or better still super critical CO2. The higher the temperature of the reactor, the higher the efficiency of the power generation cycle, with close to 60% being possible in CO2 systems.

Todays water cooled reactors run at a miserable 33% or so and water is not a good coolant for reactors because it generally has to be pressurized since it needs to work with reactors at around 350c, while molten salt reactors can run around 700c or more without pressure. Various molten salts can be in liquid state from around 400c to 1600c.

After the AI rush for electricity, we could start seeing nuclear desalination on a large scale where potable water is difficult.

[riddell]

Letting mega corporations over diversify holdings is just as bad as letting them have a monopoly over a single resource. No single interest should have that much sway over such a wide array of physical and economic resources.

[jackbrownio]

One thing that could make this provide a social/environmental benefit is if the tech companies are forced to provide a portion of energy to the local areas. It would be the same as a housing developer being forced to improve local roads to support their planning application.

[KatrinaLeFaye]

No coal power plant is forced to remain open. States just need to approve licensing for modern nuclear reactors, solar, and wind farms, as well as geo-thermal where possible.

[LJ]

These same companies have been pushing green energy to us for years. ChatGPT requires almost an entire small country of energy to run

[waldensmith]

This is a concern for this type of energy to be in the hands of Tech Giants. I encourage all Govts to analyze the objectives of the Tech Giants in terms of putting populations on the planet at nuclear risk. Also how will the uranium rods be disposed of with radioactive properties. META Microsoft Google Oracle etc. Needs to appear before the US Govt in open debate and questioning fir such an undertaking .

[ohiasdxfcghbljokasdjhnfvawehr]

companies should not be allowed to buy other companies.

[Sacto]

This is why I wonder why Iceland hasn't tried to entice the major players in AI to build data centers in that country. There is a huge amount of untapped geothermal energy that could be used to power these data centers, and Iceland could be connected back to the rest of the world with a lot more high-speed undersea optical fiber data lines.

[agoosecalledxaro]

I do not think water is a limiting factor as we will just build data centers closer to our polls. I do think global warming is a limiting factor however.

[mrjumbly]

This has been known and unacknowledged by most people, I do not understand why we keep pushing for Solar and wind those are just not reliable. The thing that underpins all of this is the Mining, transport, smelting and processing of the materials needed to even do any of this. I also have an issue with the amount and resistance to new mining and processing plants here in the USA, we continually export all the really dirty stuff to those countries with less regulations. I see coal trains from Wyoming being exported to China so they can generate electricity for the production of metals and solar panels. For wind where are we producing all the copper and metal components. All of this is insanity once you start to truly acknowledge it as a whole.

[TheInternetIsDeadToMe]

Because people with money are basically playing Minecraft with reality, whilst us humble villagers just passively watch.

[smokek]

nuclear weapons in the hands of companies, cyberpunk is close

[danog]

Great to see one of your videos that doesn't have any weird AI videos.

[creativemindplay]

Why say "bought up" if it was just one plant?

[rescuemethod]

My new favorite YT channel. Fantastic!

[Dr_Doctor_Lee]

i can already see the superstructures, towering on the horizon, containing datacenters and supercomputers
large enough you can see them until the earths curveture hides them.

[elevatormechanic]

So the Data centers are responsible for the torrential rains we’ve witnessed lately.

[Danji_Coppersmoke]

Cooling with air-condition is worse than evaporative cooling. Moving AI from data center to device is just moving around the problem just to make it worse.