Data centers

Although Bill Gates officially left Microsoft in 2020, he is still active in the company and one of his projects is building a molten salt nuclear reactor in Wyoming. The public hears that he is doing this as his contribution to clean energy but there is a ulterior motive. Microsoft, much like Amazon and Facebook, have large data centers that need lots of electricity and here is where this may directly effect the average consumer. With the coming of AI these big companies will need copious amounts of electric power to operate their new data centers and one course of action to get power is to build the data center next to an existing nuclear power plant and buy the power from their next door neighbor. Plants that are currently selling power at $50 per megawatt to consumers will soon be getting offers of $100 from their new neighbor. These data centers cannot use wind and solar because they must have continuous power. The new centers will be so large that they could easily use all of the power the plant can generate and they would be willing to sign long term contracts guaranteeing a profit to the power company many years into the future. They will have no concern about transmission lines since their only customer will be next door. As we speak Microsoft is opening the nuclear power plant at Three Mile Island that was closed in 1979 so they can build a data center next door.