'Not the bees!' says Meta, probably.
The course of big tech construction never did run smooth. If you’re not contending with straightforward money issues, then you’re stumbling upon human remains and have no choice but to put the whole project on pause while you figure out the best home for those bones. That said, I’m not sure this latest spanner in the works of big tech’s machinations was on my bingo card.
As we’ve previously covered, AI requires an enormous amount of power and major players are manoeuvring to meet that demand in a way that facilitates a carbon-free future. Meta had hoped to follow Google and Amazon’s lead, aiming to strike a deal with a nuclear energy provider to power their AI ambitions. The plan was to build a new data centre right next to an existing nuclear power plant. Unfortunately the land that was earmarked for development is close to the home of a rare endangered species of bee, according to Ars Technica—that’s gotta sting.
Sorry bug buffs, but we don’t yet know which species of bee is involved, though we do know the arthropods in question are buzzing happily on a site next to the plot currently being pitched for data centre development. However, their hive is far from the only obstacle Meta is having to contend with.
The company itself has not yet commented on the situation, but sources close to the matter at Meta told Ars Technica that the project is facing additional challenges both regulatory and environmental in nature. Considering Meta is hoping to not only cook up nuclear powered AI before the competition, but also wants to hold onto its 2020 achievement of “net zero” emissions, it’s definitely not ideal.
Sources also say that Meta head Mark Zuckerberg has in the past expressed frustration at the lack of nuclear options in the US compared to China. For example, we’ve already covered big tech’s mounting interest in small modular reactors, but even so only one SMR design has been approved in the US—whereas China is already building the Linglong One SMR.
China has also apparently built more nuclear reactors that aren’t SMRs than the US has over the last twenty years. In other words, if Meta still wants to build close to a power plant, there are few other options.
Nuclear continues to be an appealing source of energy for big tech companies as it can easily address the round the clock power needs of data centres, whereas renewable energy sources would instead require workarounds such as massive batteries. That said, nuclear power is far from the most straightforward option. Besides a number of accidents still in living memory (or the massive strides in nuclear safety that have followed since), there’s also the matter of harmful nuclear waste and how to properly store it.
It’s often touted as a carbon-free option, but improperly managed nuclear power can still present a serious risk to the environment (to put it mildly). With that in mind, it’s hard not to be a little tickled by where these bees call home. Nature and nuclear may well have a future together, but for the time being Meta’s AI ambitions seem to have been scuppered—and for the endangered hive, that’s the bee’s knees.
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