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Meta says it’s making a major investment in proposed nuclear power plants in Pike County
By: David Forster
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ATHENS, Ohio (WOUB) — Meta, the parent of Facebook, announced on Friday a multi-billion dollar investment in a company’s plans to build nuclear power plants in southeast Ohio.
Electricity generated by these plants would help power Meta’s data centers in Ohio. The plants would be built in phases and could start generating power as soon as 2030, creating many hundreds of jobs along the way, according to the announcement.
The plants would generate electricity using a new generation of nuclear reactors that promise to be safer than traditional reactors, according to Oklo, a Silicon Valley company that two and half years ago announced plans to build plants at the site of the old uranium enrichment plant in Pike County.
“Meta’s funding commitment in support of early procurement and development activity is a major step in moving advanced nuclear forward,” Jacob DeWitte, Oklo’s co-founder and CEO, said in a prepared statement.
The commitment also provides Oklo with more business certainty, which will help with additional fundraising, the company said.
Before the proposed power plants can be operated, however, Oklo needs the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to sign off on its new reactor technology.
Oklo has been working on the licensing process for several years for a next-generation plant it plans to build in Idaho and has so far completed two of the 16 steps. It will need to get a license for the Pike County plants as well.
Oklo has purchased 206 acres at the Pike County site from the Department of Energy and plans to build enough reactors to generate 1.2 gigawatts of power, enough to supply hundreds of thousands of homes.
Meta wants this power to fuel its data centers. The development of artificial intelligence in particular is driving a rapid expansion of data centers, which consume significant amounts of electricity.
“Innovation at this scale requires more electricity, and that’s where nuclear energy comes in,” Meta said in a news release.
Oklo expects construction will take several years, with each phase supporting more than 700 skilled-trades jobs. Each powerhouse, which will be much smaller than traditional nuclear plants, will support around 35 permanent jobs, including technical support, engineering, administration and maintenance.
Oklo says the full buildout to 1.2 gigawatts of power generation could be completed by 2034.
Oklo’s project aligns with the overall plan to redevelop the Pike County plant site into a hub for advanced manufacturing and clean energy. The site is undergoing a decades-long cleanup of radioactive and other toxic contamination by the federal government. As areas are cleaned, they become available for development.
“The project brings into focus the potential for the transformative impact the redevelopment of this site can have on our energy infrastructure and the reinvigoration of our community,” Kevin Shoemaker, general counsel of the Southern Ohio Diversification Initiative, said in a prepared statement. SODI is leading redevelopment efforts for the site.
Centrus Energy is already producing enriched uranium at the site that will be used as fuel for the next-generation reactors like those Oklo is developing. Another company is proposing to build a large data center at the site; the name of the company has not yet been disclosed. It’s unknown whether Meta is interested in locating a data center at the site.
Meta also announced on Friday investments to enhance and expand power generation at two existing nuclear plants in Ohio, one near Cleveland and the other near Toledo, and a plant in Pennsylvania.
These investments “make Meta one of the most significant corporate purchasers of nuclear energy in American history,” Joel Kaplan, chief global affairs officer for Meta, said in a prepared statement.