The growth of artificial intelligence drove a lot of other trends in 2024, which in turn are driving other trends. One was the continued development of additional data centers. That has led to the development of nuclear energy to fill the need for power.
By the end of 2024, ABI Research has projected 5,709 public data centers worldwide—5,186 colocation sites and 523 hyperscale sites. Growing at a compound annual growth rate of 6.6 percent, the number of colocation data centers is expected to increase to 7,640 by 2030.
However, there was also more awareness (and some concern) of the gigantic energy needs of these data centers. Municipalities recognized that the demand might outstrip the supply. As a result, 2024 saw a resurgence of interest in nuclear power.
Standard Power partnered with NuScale to develop small modular reactor-powered facilities for the data centers. Three Mile Island is reopening and selling power to Microsoft, and Meta is releasing a request for proposals to identify nuclear energy developers targeting 1-4 gigawatts of new nuclear generation capacity.
“Most of the new electricity production] growth in the future will be driven by the needs of data centers and their operators, who are scrambling to secure large amounts of reliable power while keeping their carbon neutral goals,” IEEE said.
