The scramble for clean, firm power for data centers has renewed enthusiasm for nuclear energy — both for small modular reactor startups, and for reopening shuttered traditional nuclear plants.
But that enthusiasm is also blunted by the enormous challenge of building the technology. The Financial Times reported this week that Meta’s plans to build a nuclear-powered AI data center were scrapped after a rare species of bee was identified in the planned build location. And late last week, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission blocked Amazon’s attempts to pull power for a data center from a nuclear plant in Pennsylvania.
FERC also held a hearing last week to address lingering concerns about colocating data centers at power plants, including about pricing and reliability.
Of course, utilities are critical players in plans to revive existing nuclear power and to bring new generation online — and the difficulties of building nuclear power is no surprise to them.
Dominion Energy, which serves the part of Virginia known as “data center alley,” has seen data center demand grow steadily in the last decade. So already, the utility has vast troves of data on how large computing facilities use electricity.
Stan Blackwell, who leads Dominion’s data center practice, said that information is critical to the utility’s ability to serve new AI load. Dominion’s decades of experience with data center customers has helped the utility to standardize their offerings for data center customers.
Dominion currently has 53 discrete data center customers — and has “probably 40 to 50 gigawatts worth of load letter requests,” Blackwell explained on a webinar hosted by Power Grid International this week. The utility is forecasting around 15 gigawatts of data center load by 2040. “And we have contractual support for virtually all of that,” he added.
Historically, Dominion, which has a peak generation capacity of about 23 GW, would build two new substations a year, Blackwell said. Today, the company has more than 50 substations in construction for data centers alone.
It’s “very difficult” to serve data centers with 100% renewables, he added. “Not very many areas of the country can do that, so we have to build some conventional generation like gas in our IRP.”
In that IRP, small modular reactors will start to enter into Dominion’s mix in about ten years, Blackwell said. And most data center customers are already on board. “There’s a recognition that nuclear has its place in our generation mix or the customer’s mix,” he added. “And we’re seeing a significant interest by our customer base in nuclear power.”
Last month, Dominion inked a deal with Amazon to help advance next-generation nuclear technology, and on an earnings call this week CEO Robert Blue said the utility was also talking to other hyperscalers about collaborations on that front.
Blackwell said there is a certain amount of misalignment between data center expectations and the reality of building nuclear. For instance, the consensus among large utilities is that “you’re probably not going to see a custom-built nuclear facility,” he said, in part because of manufacturing timelines and cost.
“We have data center customers…call us up and say ‘hey can you put an SMR right next to my facility?’” Blackwell said. Those requests reflect a misunderstanding of what’s realistic, he added: “You’re not ever going to get the permit to put that in a major metropolitan area.”
“There’s a lot of talk about building [nuclear] where the load is,” Blackwell said. “The downside to that is it’s a protected asset…you’re most likely going to see [SMRs] at existing nuclear facilities or other generation type facilities where you have control of the surrounding areas.”
Kevin Jones, manager of strategic initiatives at Dominion, will be speaking at our upcoming Transition-AI conference in Washington, DC. Registration is open now!
