Meta's plan for nuclear datacenter reportedly undone by bees
CEO Mark Zuckerberg reportedly told employees at an all-hands meeting that the discovery of a rare species of bees on the prospective build site had contributed to the cancellation of the datacenter project, according to The Financial Times.
Meta is said to have been negotiating a deal with the operator of an existing nuclear power plant for emissions-free electricity to sustain a new AI-focused datacenter. But according to two sources cited in the report, environmental and regulatory hurdles stymied the deal.
The Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), a clean energy research group, in 2018 launched a Power-In-Pollinators initiative to encourage energy companies to accommodate pollinators like bees and butterflies. Pollinators support agriculture and food production, so it's a bad look to kill them off for the sake of chatbots and AI-generated social media filler.
Related projects have focused on habitat restoration at former nuclear sites. The EPRI Pollinator Stewardship Dashboard currently lists 295 sites operated by 19 participating energy firms that support pollinators.
