AWS to Pay Up to $650 Million For Nuclear Data Center Campus
Amazon Web Services is paying up to $650 million for a Pennsylvania data center campus next to a nuclear power plant, according to the seller, Talen Energy. It’s one of the first data center sites with direct access to nuclear power.
The Information first reported that the site had been drawing interest from cloud providers, which all rapidly needed to expand their data center capacity to handle AI, which consumes more energy than traditional computing.
AWS’ interest in the site is significant because cloud providers have been struggling to find enough power for their AI data centers, which contain Nvidia’s graphics processing units. Several people with knowledge of the Talen nuclear site said cloud providers in the past have hesitated to put data centers directly next to nuclear power plants for safety reasons. The AWS deal shows that the increasing need for power might outweigh those concerns. AWS plans to build multiple data centers on the campus, which could eventually use just under 1 gigawatt of power over the next several years.