A bee kills Facebook’s nuclear dreams

Yes, a bee, the small-winged insect. I’ve been writing about the early stages of a nuclear power renaissance in America driven by the massive electrical demands of new computer data centers to back artificial intelligence (AI) development. Facebook, d/b/a Meta, is among the tech giants exploring this nuclear approach.

The U.K. Financial Times (FT) reports:

Plans by Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta to build an AI data centre in the US that runs on nuclear power were thwarted in part because a rare species of bee was discovered on land earmarked for the project, according to people familiar with the matter.

We aren’t sure where the data center was to be located or what kind of rare bee was discovered, but this was apparently a deal-breaker.

Meta (Facebook) will reportedly look elsewhere for a new (presumably bee-free) location.

Meanwhile, Amazon’s nuclear dreams have suffered their own setback. Federal regulators have denied permission for the Pennsylvania utility Constellation Energy’s nuclear deal with the tech giant.

Developing…