Thought Leadership
Microsoft is an AI pioneer, but the technology requires an enormous amount of electricity. In order not to jeopardize its climate targets, the software company relies on nuclear power – from a plant with a history.
A reactor at the decommissioned US nuclear power plant Three Mile Island is being restarted to supply electricity for Microsoft’s data centers. The software giant has agreed to purchase the energy produced for 20 years, according to the operating company Constellation Energy. This would be the first time that a decommissioned nuclear power plant in the USA has been reconnected to the grid.
Microsoft is currently a pioneer in the use of artificial intelligence. The Windows and Office company has teamed up with ChatGPT inventor OpenAI and is integrating the technology behind the chatbot into practically all of its products. However, AI requires a lot of energy in data centers. This clashes with the climate goals of tech companies.
Microsoft has big climate protection promises
So far, companies have tried to switch to renewable energies and otherwise balance out their emissions of climate-damaging CO2 by planting trees, for example. At the beginning of 2020, Microsoft announced that it would more than offset its CO2 emissions by 2030. By 2050, Microsoft promised that it would even offset all of the company’s carbon dioxide emissions since it was founded.
However, the AI boom that has since occurred has increased the energy requirements of the tech giants. In an analysis, experts from the bank Goldman Sachs referred to estimates that a query on ChatGPT could consume six to ten times more energy than a traditional Google search.
In an interview with the financial service Bloomberg, Microsoft manager Bobby Hollis also pointed out that the energy production of wind turbines and solar plants can fluctuate, while it remains the same for nuclear power plants – and requires a customer who can purchase the electricity. “We run around the clock, they run around the clock,” said Hollis.
Reactor could be running again in 2027
Constellation CEO Joe Dominquez told Bloomberg that the plant could be up and running again in 2027 if the feed-in to the power grid is resolved by then. The company had shut down the reactor in 2019 on the grounds that it had become uneconomical to operate.
The other reactor at Three Mile Island had suffered an accident with a partial meltdown in 1979. Radiation from the radioactive cloud was measured several hundred kilometers away from the site of the accident and more than 200,000 people had to leave their homes. The incident is still considered the most serious in the commercial use of nuclear energy in the USA.
dpa
