Why Google Just Locked In 3590 Megawatts of Nuclear Power for the Next 20 Years

-

TL;DR: Google just signed a deal with Constellation Energy for 3,590 megawatts of power, including 890 MW from upgraded nuclear plants in Illinois, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. The 20-year contract could drive more than $4.3 billion in new energy investment, with first nuclear output expected by 2028. This is what AI's appetite for electricity actually looks like at scale.

When people talk about the AI boom, they usually focus on chips, models, and funding rounds. But there is another number that keeps coming up that not enough people are paying attention to: megawatts.

Google just made that number impossible to ignore. The company signed one of the largest energy agreements in Silicon Valley history, locking in 3,590 megawatts of power with Constellation Energy under a deal that runs for 20 years. For context, a single megawatt powers about 750 to 1,000 average homes. This deal could theoretically power a small city.

What the Deal Actually Covers

Of the 3,590 MW total, 890 MW will come from upgrades at 11 nuclear units spread across Illinois, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. These are existing plants that Constellation plans to improve to increase their output capacity. The first nuclear power from the deal is expected to come online by 2028.

The other 2,700 MW will be sourced through supply arrangements within PJM, the regional transmission organization that operates the power grid across 13 states in the Eastern US. Constellation says the agreement could support more than $4.3 billion in total investment related to the deal.

Why Google Went Nuclear

Nuclear power offers something that solar and wind simply cannot: it runs 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, regardless of weather. AI data centers do not have off-peak hours. They consume power constantly, and that power needs to be reliable and clean.

Google has been under significant pressure from investors and regulators to reduce the carbon footprint of its growing data center infrastructure. As AI workloads have multiplied, so has Google's power consumption. Nuclear fits that picture almost perfectly: it is carbon-free, predictable, and available around the clock. The only downside is that it takes years to expand capacity, which is exactly why this deal locks in a 20-year window.

The Numbers Behind AI's Energy Problem

To understand why a deal this size makes sense, you need to understand how much power modern AI actually burns. Training a large language model can consume the equivalent of hundreds of households' annual electricity in a matter of weeks. Inference, meaning actually running the model for users, adds up quickly at scale. Google processes billions of searches, Workspace requests, and AI queries every day. The power requirements are staggering and growing.

According to the International Energy Agency, data centers are expected to double their electricity consumption by 2026. Google is not alone in scrambling for reliable power. Microsoft has signed nuclear deals for Three Mile Island output. Amazon has committed to nuclear power projects of its own. The hyperscalers are essentially in a race to secure clean, reliable energy before supply becomes a genuine constraint on AI growth.

What This Means for the Grid

There is a broader implication here that does not get enough attention. When Google or Microsoft signs a 20-year nuclear deal, they are effectively pulling that capacity off the public grid and reserving it for their own infrastructure. That is great for their carbon numbers and their AI roadmap. What it means for residential electricity consumers who share these grids is a more complicated question that regulators are only beginning to work through.

The PJM grid, which is part of this deal, serves over 65 million people. How tech companies' massive energy reservations interact with that broader obligation is a conversation worth having.

What's your experience? Drop a comment below! 👇

Do you think Big Tech's nuclear energy deals are good for the grid overall, or are you worried about what they mean for regular consumers?

#Google #NuclearEnergy #AI #DataCenters #CleanEnergy #TechNews #Constellation #AIEnergy #GoogleAI #PowerGrid

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Plank You App Support and Privacy

-
Plank You is a simple, ad-free interval timer for planks and core workouts. Set your work and rest times, hold your plank, and let the countdown beeps do the counting. Everything runs on your device. no ads, no accounts, no tracking. How to use Start / Pause / Resume: tap the main button to run or pause the timer. Reset returns to Rep 1 and the start of your work interval. Rep counter — counts up automatically after each full work + rest cycle. Beeps — the last 5 seconds of every phase beep down (5-4-3-2-1), with a longer tone when the phase changes. Changing intervals Tap the settings icon (top right) to choose an interval: 45 / 15 default (45s work, 15s rest) 30 / 30 50 / 10 Custom — set any work and rest time in 5-second steps You can also toggle Beep sounds and Haptics in Settings. FAQ I don't hear any sound. Sound plays even when your ringer is on silent, but make sure the media volume is up and that "Beep sounds" is turned on in Settings. If another app is ...
Read more

WWDC 2026 Preview: Apple Needs to Fix Siri or It's Game Over for Apple Intelligence

-
Apple's WWDC 2026 kicks off on June 8, and the stakes couldn't be higher. While Google announced 900 million Gemini users at I/O last week, Apple is heading into its biggest developer conference with one uncomfortable question hanging over the whole event: what happened to Siri? I've been using Apple devices daily since the original iPhone, and I'll say it plainly — Apple Intelligence has been the most underwhelming software launch in Apple's recent history. WWDC 2026 is Apple's chance to fix that. Here's what they need to announce, what we're expecting, and what a failure would mean. The Problem Apple Needs to Solve When Apple announced Apple Intelligence at WWDC 2024, the demos were impressive. When the features started rolling out through 2025, the reality was a different story. The "new Siri" was slower, less reliable, and often less capable than the old one for basic tasks. The "Personal Context" features that were supposed ...
Read more

This AI Startup Is Worth $26 Billion and Writes 90% of Its Own Code — Should Software Engineers Be Worried?

-
I've been watching the AI coding space very closely for the past year, and every few months something happens that forces me to recalibrate my sense of how fast things are moving. This week, that moment came from Cognition AI — the startup behind Devin, the AI software engineer — which just announced a $1 billion funding round at a $26 billion valuation . But the number that actually stopped me cold wasn't the valuation. It was this: 90% of Cognition's own code is now written by Devin. From $10B to $26B in Eight Months — The Numbers Are Staggering Let's put this in perspective. Just eight months ago, in September 2025, Cognition closed a $400 million round at a $10.2 billion valuation. Today, that valuation has more than doubled to $26 billion. The new round was co-led by Lux Capital, General Catalyst, and 8VC, with Ribbit Capital, Atreides Management, and Peter Thiel's Founders Fund also participating. But what's really driving this isn't hype — it...
Read more