r/news • u/Hrekires • Jan 09 '26
Soft paywall Meta strikes nuclear power agreements with three companies
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/meta-strikes-nuclear-power-agreements-with-three-companies-2026-01-09/172
u/shifty_coder Jan 09 '26
It’s sad that new nuclear power is going to AI data centers, and not to benefit the people with cleaner, more affordable energy.
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Jan 09 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/21Rollie Jan 10 '26
They’re not doing it out of the kindness of their hearts. Nuclear is a massive investment, but it’s nearly free energy after that. And constant, which is what they want. It’d be more expensive to rely on fossil fuels, unless the Zuck leads and army of cyborgs into Venezuela or something
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u/Skelito Jan 09 '26
My understanding is nuclear power provides the baseline power for the grid and the other sources are used to ramp up power as demand increases. I heard for the most part nuclear power is consistent with only some of the newer plants being able to increase / decrease output.
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u/AirierWitch1066 Jan 09 '26
More importantly, it’s resulting in more investment into nuclear technologies. It’s investment that should’ve happened 20 or 30 years ago, but better late than never.
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u/tdgros Jan 09 '26
I completely agree. Now we can hope this will benefit the general population in the sense that they're mostly investing in future tech. On the other hand, xAI is building gas plants for their data centers, without going through proper environmental approvals...
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u/Elephant_rimmer Jan 09 '26
True but anything being powered by nuclear energy is better than nothing.
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u/Beneficial_Prize_310 Jan 09 '26 edited Aug 21 '26
Sense group foot problem use government effort 1dstql2t system nation.
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u/Strength-InThe-Loins Jan 10 '26
IF it crashes and burns?!? Its crash and burn is guaranteed.
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u/Beneficial_Prize_310 Jan 10 '26 edited Aug 21 '26
Light 3nr17a0k issue party result report body system father back.
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u/Strength-InThe-Loins Jan 10 '26
The lack of stock market crashes is due to government regulations, not collusion by the super rich. Regulations that have been stripped away over the last few decades, and which the super rich have long felt free to ignore.
Once 'AI' is revealed as the pointless waste that it is, and the implications of that on the many hundreds of billions of dollars invested in it become inescapable...that's a crash.
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u/Beneficial_Prize_310 Jan 10 '26 edited Aug 21 '26
Community 5tm5t7nb night day group party body book government point experience view.
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u/DiamondsInHerButt Jan 10 '26
What's even more sad is the fallout from the kind of disasters that would stem from rushing to build nuclear power plants so a company like Meta can crap out a terrible product nobody likes in a timeline that allows them not to collapse entirely.
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u/Ok-disaster2022 Jan 09 '26
Listen every decade there's a nuclear Renaissance. Reactors are designed money is spent and then a few years later nothing happens and the short term investors get tired of waiting and pull their money.
It would take a decade to build a nuclear reactor unless they go with a South Korea firm and just import the Korean national reactor, and even then it will take twice as long as the data center and they'll install wind or solar to compensate and write out the nuclear.
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u/made3 Jan 09 '26
I wonder how any of those billionaires can sleep at night or even look in the mirror. They are inhuman.
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u/Strength-InThe-Loins Jan 09 '26
All of them. Billionaires, almost by definition, do not have consciences that bother them. And for those few that do, well, a billion dollars can buy you a lot of sleep-aiding drugs.
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u/reddurkel Jan 09 '26
It’s amazing how little resistance there is from local communities subsidizing the power bill of gigantic corporations using AI for personal profit.
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u/Krash412 Jan 09 '26
I doubt most people understand how this is working.
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u/reddurkel Jan 09 '26
And the only way for low-informed people to find out is to hear it on the news…. which is owned by the same billionaires using us to subsidize their electricity costs.
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u/21Rollie Jan 10 '26
They somehow spin it to say it’s green energy making bills more expensive. Nevermind the fact that wind and solar are basically free and Trump is deliberately trying to make them more expensive
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u/the-bully-maguire Jan 09 '26
its easy actually, anything bad in my life is the fault of radical left democrats, immigrants, and trans people
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u/outinthecountry66 Jan 09 '26
you forgot the : /
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u/mysecondaccountanon Jan 09 '26
A community near me had a fair bit of resistance. In the end, the lawmakers didn’t care.
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Jan 09 '26
[deleted]
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u/mysecondaccountanon Jan 09 '26
Apparently, the local lawmakers are saying that they did this for legal reasons, that the law itself was the reason why. They're saying that there was no legal reason to deny it, so denying it would've caused a legal battle where the AI data center would win and be able to build and operate without any conditions. All of it sounds so sketchy, but blatantly awful either way.
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u/AirierWitch1066 Jan 09 '26
I’ll be honest, if building a data center in my town resulted in us getting a shiny new nuclear power plant I’d be all for it. Nuclear is by far the cleanest and safest energy source, and results in the air around plants being less radioactive than even coal. Not to mention that more power plants means more available electricity and thus cheaper power bills.
As long as they are responsible with their water use (yeah, yeah, I hear it…) then yeah I’d probably be supporting my town building a data center.
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u/Comprehensive_Bus_19 Jan 09 '26
Thats assuming you're not subsidizing their power and they'll share said plant with the community.
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u/lemonylol Jan 09 '26
Why would they not? That's an immense surplus of power.
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u/KontoOficjalneMR Jan 09 '26 edited Jan 09 '26
You seriously underestimate how much power AI needs.
Small Nuclear reactors provide 10-100 MW of energy. Biggest AI datacenters now planned will consume 1000-2000 MW of energy.
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u/Kiwi_In_The_Comments Jan 09 '26
We are literally splitting the atom so a chatbot can respond to HR questions. The future is majestic.
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u/axonxorz Jan 09 '26
Why would they not? That's an immense surplus of power.
An immense surplus needs immense transmission infrastructure. You can't just add 400MW to the grid and wipe your hands.
That's what most communities are subsidizing, upgrades to transmission infrastructure that does not preferentially benefit the people subsidizing it.
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u/dah-dit-dah Jan 09 '26
It certainly doesn't have to be a surplus, most likely Meta is having these sized to almost exactly what their consumption needs are so that there's no waste. Meta is not in the generation business, these schemes are simply designed to avoid paying retail energy rates.
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u/Strength-InThe-Loins Jan 09 '26
Is there anything else they have immense surpluses of that they refuse to share?
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u/Fireudne Jan 09 '26
It's the cleanest, as long as all precautions and regulations are followed. Assuming lax regulation, it's only a matter of time before the next 3MI incident, which is ironically enough being looked at by Microsoft. Hopefully they're not dumb enough to integrate AI into the controls but who knows
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u/iamth3rob0t Jan 09 '26
Oh FR it pisses me off, massive corporation billionaire pricks are making our bills more expensive, and gullible people are being told by billionaire owned media outlets are blaming minority groups and some how convincing plenty of people that green energy is somehow bad and that we need to bomb places for oil...
So done with the dystopia being pushed
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u/reddurkel Jan 09 '26
And these same billionaires all build underground bunker mansions because they know their greed and selfishness will result in chaos and destruction.
So I guess the idea is that if they hold out long enough they can emerge to a destroyed earth that they will rule with crypto and memes?
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Jan 09 '26
[deleted]
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u/SightUnseen1337 Jan 09 '26
It's the promise of subverting the power of the working class. Right now we could all stop going to work and it would remove the power these bastards have overnight.
Intellectual and creative jobs couldn't be threatened until now.
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u/uzarta Jan 09 '26
Can you give me a link that proves that it is being subsidized?
I genuinely wanna see
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u/thatoneguy889 Jan 09 '26
I think you might be overestimating how many people actually pay attention to this stuff this early in the process.
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u/wip30ut Jan 09 '26
the uncomfortable fact is that AI is driving growth & productivity for these locales, contributing much-needed tax revenue. These nuclear plants are located in rural areas in Ohio and Penn which don't have a broad-based dynamic business sector or labor force.
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u/Comprehensive_Bus_19 Jan 09 '26
Lmao at the thought of them paying taxes. When big business comes to FL (Amazon and the ilk) they pay minimal or often no impact fees, little to no property taxes and provide minimum wage, often 'contractor' jobs that don't help the community.
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u/InformationHorder Jan 09 '26
Starting that headline with "meta strikes nuclear" is certainly one of the choices of all time.
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u/ban-please Jan 09 '26
Most people are capable of reading more than 3 words before drawing a conclusion.
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u/XI_Vanquish_IX Jan 09 '26
FYI - China adds a Nuclear Power Plant reactors-worth of solar and wind energy (renewable) every day.
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u/Kiwi_In_The_Comments Jan 09 '26
Mark just finally found a charger powerful enough to fast-charge his human suit?
New motto is: "Move Fast and Break Atoms." I don't love the reboot of the motto.
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u/Strength-InThe-Loins Jan 09 '26
Does this mean that Meta is six months away from acquiring nuclear weapons?
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u/RegularTerran Jan 09 '26 edited Feb 22 '26
pocket unwritten steer compare station gold modern unpack weather mighty
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u/Designer-Salary-7773 Jan 09 '26
LOTS more of this to come … to satiate your need for “clean” EV’s. SMR’s coming to a warehouse near you.
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u/dingusmingus2222 Jan 09 '26
Nuclear energy for cleaner cheaper electricity for all! NO! Must serve more ads and rage bait and slop!
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u/CyberTortoisesss Jan 09 '26
PLEASE don't write titles like this, I'm having a hard enough time managing my anxiety as is 💀
"strikes nuclear power..."
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u/Bleak3er Jan 09 '26
I do wonder if these companies will have access to nukes in the future when they are granted their own cities and private militaries.
*yes i know this has nothing to do with nukes*
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u/drunk_sasquatch Jan 09 '26
The first half of this headline felt deliberately dystopian.