Environmental regulators reportedly quashed Mark Zuckerberg’s nuclear plant partnership meant to help power Meta’s ongoing artificial intelligence projects. Details remain scarce, but the main reason for pausing plans allegedly comes down to one issue—rare bees.
The tech company’s setback, first reported on November 4th by Financial Times, came after surveyors discovered the currently unspecified pollinators while reviewing land meant for a new AI data center. The selected area offered easy access to tap into the nearby, unspecified nuclear plant. Zuckerberg, however, confirmed the project’s cancellation during a Meta all-hands meeting last week, according to FT. The company’s CEO added that, prior to the termination, Meta was on track to become the first company using nuclear power for AI through the largest plant currently available for data center use. (Meta did not respond to requests for comment at the time of writing.)
[Related: Massive AI energy demand is bringing Three Mile Island back from the dead.]
Meta and many other tech companies continue to face energy crunches thanks to their recent AI investments. Earlier this year, Microsoft confirmed its greenhouse gas emissions rose an estimated 29 percent since 2020 due to new data centers specifically “designed and optimized to support AI workloads.” Google has also calculated its own pollution generation has increased as much as 48 percent since 2019, largely because of data center energy needs.
“As we further integrate AI into our products, reducing emissions may be challenging,” Google researchers wrote in a July sustainability report.
Critics, meanwhile, continue to voice concerns about these often controversial AI projects’ staggering energy requirements. A single AI-integrated search query, for example, is estimated to require up to 10 times the energy of a standard Google search—equivalent to keeping one light bulb on for 20 minutes. In response, tech companies have announced multiple plans in recent months that hinge on nuclear power. Microsoft currently aims to bring the infamous Three Mile Island plant back online for its AI needs, while Amazon is funneling hundreds of millions of dollars into a partnership with Pennsylvania’s nuclear plant in Susquehanna. Google is currently investing in the development of modular “mini” nuclear reactors for its own energy requirements.
The United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission lists 94 operational commercial reactors at 55 nuclear power plants in 28 states that collectively provide about one-fifth of the nation’s energy. Dozens of bee species found across the US are currently considered at-risk or endangered, so it is difficult to determine which species caused Meta’s project setback, and where it happened.
While the specific nuclear plant and bee remains a mystery, Purdue University assistant professor of entomology Brock Harpur believes that the current status of US bee species points to a few possibilities.
“If it’s in California, there are now several protected bumble bees,” Harpur told Popular Science.
California’s only operational nuclear facility is currently Diablo Canyon Power Plant in San Luis Obispo County. Given that the process for approving and constructing any new nuclear plant takes years to accomplish, it’s possible Meta would have wanted to court Diablo Canyon’s owners at PG&E if the company hoped to keep up with its AI competition. Diablo Canyon representatives did not respond to Popular Science at the time of writing. With the majority of US nuclear plants located across the Midwest and East Coast, Harpur speculated that it’s also possible the rare pollinator in question is the Rusty Patched Bumble bee, the first bee added to the US Fish and Wildlife Service’s endangered species list in 2017.
