US Nuclear Plant to Restart Powering AI Data Centers

Unit 1 of the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania, US, has completed preparations to resume electricity production seven years after its shutdown in 2019. This reactivation is thanks to a 20-year long-term Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) signed with Microsoft (MS), under which the electricity generated will be exclusively used to operate MS's Artificial Intelligence (AI) data centers.

As AI technology advances, the electricity consumption of data centers worldwide is surging, intensifying competition among US big tech companies to secure stable energy sources. AI services like ChatGPT consume about 10 times more electricity than standard search engines, and the International Energy Agency (IEA) projects data center electricity consumption to more than double from current levels.

US big tech companies are moving to establish their own power supply chains. Amazon Web Services (AWS) has acquired data center sites directly connected to nuclear power plants, and Google is investing in Small Modular Reactor (SMR) developers. These moves indicate that the battle for AI supremacy is shifting beyond securing advanced Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) to acquiring massive amounts of power and physical infrastructure.

China is focusing on securing AI infrastructure through a national project called 'East Data West Computing' (東數西算). This plan involves relocating data generated on the economically developed eastern coast to the power-rich western inland regions for processing, with the construction of massive data centers underway across these western inland areas.

The AI development race highlights the urgent need for power infrastructure development domestically as well. More than half of South Korea's data centers are concentrated in the Seoul metropolitan area, which has low power self-sufficiency. The construction of High-Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) transmission lines to send electricity from the eastern coast, where nuclear and thermal power plants are concentrated, to the Seoul metropolitan area is delayed due to complex permit processes and local community consultations. Beyond securing GPU supplies, comprehensive energy and security strategies that organically link power, cooling facilities, and transmission networks are necessary to realize 'Sovereign AI'.

The AI boom is also exacerbating a shortage of computing power. With the increasing use of 'Agent AI' capable of performing tasks like software development or financial accounting autonomously, AI companies are facing difficulties securing computing power. The tokens used in OpenAI's API increased from an average of 6 billion per minute in October last year to 15 billion by the end of March this year. GPU rental costs are also soaring, and building new data centers takes years.