Google goes nuclear to power its AI data centers, committing to buy 890 megawatts of energy from Constellation

Google LLC said today it’s entering into a long-term strategic energy collaboration with Constellation Energy Corp. to secure significant nuclear power resources for its sprawling ecosystem of artificial intelligence data centers.

The 20-year power purchase agreement is being promoted as a “clean energy partnership.” It will enable Constellation to spend more than $4.3 billion on upgrading and modernizing 11 nuclear power units at six facilities in Illinois, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Those upgrades will include the installation of new, state-of-the-art turbines, modern steam generators and advanced digital control systems, Google said, and help to boost the efficiency of the plants.

Google said the deal will bring a massive 890 megawatts of new and reliable nuclear energy onto the PJM Interconnection grid, which is a regional transmission network that delivers power to 13 Mid-Atlantic and Midwest states, serving about 67 million people. Google didn’t say how much it will be paying for this new nuclear energy, but the agreement gives Constellation the revenue certainty it needs to perform the multibillion-dollar upgrades without having to increase costs to consumers, the company said. Beyond the 890-megawatt expansion, the two companies also struck a separate, 15-year supply deal for an additional 2,700 megawatts that will be powered by Constellation’s existing plants.

As part of the deal, Google Cloud has secured a new customer too. Constellation signed a five-year contract that will see Google provide it with cloud computing resources and the Gemini Enterprise platform, which will aid the power producer in “AI-driven site selection, outage management, critical infrastructure protection and generator dispatch optimization.”

Google promised that there will be significant economic benefits to the deal. The contract will sustain 4,400 existing high-skilled operational and union positions, while creating about 7,200 new construction jobs during the upgrade phase.

In a blog post, Google’s Global Head of Data Center Energy Amanda Peterson Corio said the agreement will enable Constellation to maximize its existing nuclear infrastructure to provide more energy for Americans without building entirely new facilities. “As electricity demand grows in the U.S., the fastest new megawatt is often the one that can be provided by existing infrastructure,” she wrote. “With 94 nuclear reactors operating across the U.S., there’s significant opportunity to unleash more nuclear capacity from the nation’s existing nuclear fleet both quickly and cost-effectively.”

With hyperscalers struggling to secure the energy they need to bring dozens of massive new AI data centers online, they have increasingly turned to nuclear power sources as a solution. Although nuclear energy carries a certain stigma due to its perceived dangers, the technology industry sees it as a lower-cost and climate-friendly alternative to carbon-based energy sources.

Google has already struck nuclear power purchase agreements with other energy producers, including a deal with NextEra Energy Inc. to restart the dormant Duane Arnold reactor in Iowa, and another one with Southern Co. that will see that company upgrade two of its existing plants.

Constellation has partnered with other hyperscalers, too. Just last week, it announced that Amazon Web Services Inc. had agreed to purchase 690 megawatts of atomic power from its Calvert Cliffs plant in Maryland, as part of a 20-year agreement. That deal will enable it to invest $3 billion in nuclear upgrades, it said. One of Constellation’s first direct deals with big tech companies dates back to 2024, when it announced a 20-year contract with Microsoft Corp. that enabled it to reopen the historic Three Mile Island nuclear power facility in Pennsylvania.

Other big tech firms investing in nuclear energy include Oracle Corp. and Meta Platforms Inc. The former is planning to use nuclear power at its massive new data center project in Wisconsin as part of a deal that it says will shift about $300 million in energy costs from utility customers, while the latter has signed 20-year power purchase agreements with Vistra Corp.

The thirst for nuclear energy has also led to significant support for startups such as Bluecore Energy Inc., which last month raised $50 million to fund its plan to build small nuclear reactors aboard barges. Others have raised significantly more money than this.

In August, Valar Atomics Inc. secured an impressive $1 billion in funding to mass produce its prototype small nuclear reactors. X-energy Reactor Co., another startup focused on small reactors, raised $700 million in November, just a month before Radiant Industries Inc. secured $300 million in backing for a similar plan.

Photo: Google