Amazon just bought a 100% nuclear-powered data center

[Think. Again.]

Michelle Lewis, Mar 5 2024 - 8:06 am PT
Full Article; https://electrek.co/2024/03/05/amazon-just-bought-a-100-nuclear-powered-data-center/

One of the US’s largest nuclear power plants will directly power cloud service provider Amazon Web Services’ new data center.

Power provider Talen Energy sold its data center campus, Cumulus Data Assets, to Amazon Web Services for $650 million. Amazon will develop an up to 960-megawatt (MW) data center at the Salem Township site in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania.


Photo: Talen Energy

The 1,200-acre campus is directly powered by an adjacent 2.5 gigawatt (GW) nuclear power station also owned by Talen Energy.

The 1,075-acre Susquehanna Steam Electric Station is the sixth-largest nuclear power plant in the US. It’s been online since 1983 and produces 63 million kilowatt hours per day. The plant has two General Electric boiling water reactors within a Mark II containment building that are licensed through 2042 and 2044.

According to Talen Energy’s investor presentation, it will supply fixed-price nuclear power to Amazon’s new data center as it’s built. Amazon has minimum contractual power commitments that ramp up in 120 MW increments over several years. The cloud service giant has a one-time option to cap commitments at 480 MW and two 10-year extension options tied to nuclear license renewals.

[OKIsItJustMe]

1. It's not as if this helps in any way

Pennsylvania has a relatively large number of nuclear plants, which have for years supplied a significant amount of their electicity. Their primary source of electricity is natural gas.



Amazon is getting power from a 40 year old plant, It’s not that they’ve built a new one, or added this one to the grid.

[Think. Again.]

2. Correct, they also won't be using CO2-based energy for their new data center.

[OKIsItJustMe]

3. They may as well be

if they’re using this nuclear generated electricity, then, someone else cannot be. This is pure greenwashing.

[Think. Again.]

4. Amazon isn't in the energy business (yet?)...

...but as a business, they have chosen a non-CO2 source of energy for a very energy intensive sector of what they do.

Yes, they could have built a new non-CO2 energy plant dedicated to their own use. You and I and everyone else could individually go off-grid also. If that is what you are arguing for, I agree to a certain extent.

[OKIsItJustMe]

5. Let me see if I can help you understand

Up through July 2018, Luzerne County produced virtually all electricity using their nuclear plant, then, they brought natural gas plants on-line:

(By-the-way, notice that nuclear production has decreased over the years.)

Up through July, 2018, Luzerne County produced very little greenhouse emissions from electrical generation. Then, they started to.


If Amazon increases electricity consumption, without increasing the supply of nuclear-generated electricity, that increased consumption will be supplied some other way (i.e. by burning “frack gas.”)

If Amazon had built a new data center, and a new nuclear plant was built (by anyone) to supply its electricity, that would be meaningful. This is not. This is just greenwashing. Amazon claims they’re using "green electricity," while causing an overall increase in GHG emissions. Meanwhile, the plant they’re using is 40 years old. How much longer do you think it will remain on-line?

[Think. Again.]

6. Are you entirely off-grid with your own non-CO2 source of any energy you might use?

If not, Amazon should be, I mean, you should be.

[OKIsItJustMe]

7. You're not getting it

FWIW: I purchase solar “credits” from a “farm” which did not exist before (I was on the waiting list, waiting for them to come “on-line.”) Now, I’m not naive, my power comes from “the grid” but I’m partly responsible for solar being put onto the grid which was not there before. (Believe it or not, despite our latitude, New York leads the nation in “community solar.”)

This is not the same situation at all. For 40 years, a nuclear plant has been producing electricity. Now, some of that production is being purchased by Amazon, and the customers which had been purchasing that production are now purchasing electricity generated by other means (i.e. primarily from gas-burning plants, although there is a small amount of “renewable” electricity being generated in Luzerne County.)

This is greenwashing, pure and simple, and you’ve swallowed it, hook, line and sinker.

[Think. Again.]

8. So, YOUR purchase of non-CO2 on-grid power...

...is better than someone else's purchase of non-CO2 on-grid power.

Got it.

Thanks for your input.

[OKIsItJustMe]

9. My purchase comes from a new clean generating capacity

Amazon’s purchase is leading to more dirty energy.

https://www.thetimes-tribune.com/news/fracking-arrives-in-luzerne-county-community/article_9ab654be-54a7-5cd8-8dd8-1138a638f136.html

Fracking arrives in Luzerne County community
BY ANDREW STAUB (STAFF WRITER) Nov 10, 2010 Updated Apr 15, 2020

LAKE TWP. - A low hum rolled through the chilly country air Wednesday afternoon, traveling about 1,000 feet from a natural gas well to Robert Anderson's home on muddy Zosh Road.

"That sounds like they're fracking," Mr. Anderson said. "I didn't hear that before."

For all the hand-wringing that has accompanied the Marcellus Shale natural gas boom in Luzerne County, the controversial fracking process arrived in Lake Twp. with little noise - save for the low hum and the occasional clanging metal emanating from Encana Oil & Gas USA Inc.'s exploratory gas well.

About three football fields from Mr. Anderson's small trailer, crews injected water, sand and other chemicals into the ground, a process intended to break up underground shale and draw natural gas from the earth.

…

New electrical supply in Luzerne County:
https://caithnessmoxiefreedom.com/

Project Updates

The Caithness Moxie Freedom Generating Station in Salem Township, Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, is online and selling power into the markets of PJM Interconnection, a regional transmission organization that coordinates the movement of wholesale electricity in thirteen Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states.

This $1 billion, highly efficient facility uses Pennsylvania-produced, clean-burning natural gas to generate more than 1,000 megawatts of electric power, enough to supply approximately 900,000 homes throughout the region.

Using state-of-the-art technology, the plant is the highest efficiency user of natural gas in the region. The dry-cooling technology used by the plant means that water usage is 95 percent lower than a plant of the same size using traditional cooling technology. A 1,050-megawatt, highly efficient combined cycle plant such as Freedom reduces CO2 emissions by 3.2 million tons per year compared to the older steam plants.

During construction, employment peaked at more than 650 workers per day at the site. Overall, it took more than 2 million man-hours to safely complete construction while remaining vigilant to the highest safety and environmental standards.

The Freedom Generating Station transitioned to commercial operation in September 2018.

…

[Think. Again.]

10. You write...

"Amazon’s purchase is leading to more dirty energy."

But that's quite a bit of an assumption. Amazon is reducing it's future non-CO2 energy use by planning their new heavy energy useage facility to be powered by a non-CO2 source.

Amazon does not have authority over the entire grid or where that grid energy comes from.

Yes, we need to transition ALL of our energy sources to non-CO2 sources. But your barking up the wrong tree if you think Amazon is going to take on that cost.

If anything, YOU are encouraging more CO2-emitting energy usage by DIScouraging individual attempts to find non-CO2 sources while we still have CO2 emitting sources available.

Energy is a market vulnerable to demand. If more of us demand non-CO2 sources like Amazon has, that transition will come a lot faster.

(And just to be clear, I do not like the Amazon business model in the least for many reasons, and I strongly suspect this decision to purchase this particular location was based on monetary factors, not a desire to be green for green's sake.)

[OKIsItJustMe]

11. I believe you're being intentionally obtuse

Scenario #1: Amazon comes to town, and helps finance a new nuclear plant which generates more electricity than they need, leading to a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. That’s helpful!

Scenario #2: Amazon comes to town, and builds a solar farm to power their operations. OK, that’s carbon neutral.

Scenario #3: Amazon comes to town and purchases nuclear power from an existing plant, driving existing customers of the plant to buy electricity from a new natural gas facility. That’s counter-productive, but, since they’re purchasing their power from a nuclear plant, they brag about it being clean. That’s greenwashing.

[Think. Again.]

12. Okay, you believe Amazon has an obligation...

...to spend extra money creating their own non-CO2 energy source.

I doubt they feel that same obligation.

I notice you don't expect the 'existing customers' to have an obligation to demand the new facility be non-CO2 emitting.

And my apologies, but I simply don't have time to continue going around and around with you on this as you seem to like to do. Thank you for your input.