Meta’s Nuclear Bet Is an Endorsement of Trump’s Energy Vision

By Anthony Watts H. Sterling Burnett

Donald Trump’s call for “American energy dominance” once drew eyerolling from Silicon Valley. Now, in a twist no one saw coming, Meta and other big-tech AI giants are beginning to embrace Trump’s energy vision.

The Wall Street Journal recently reported that Meta has struck sweeping agreements to develop nuclear power with Oklo, Bill Gates–backed TerraPower, and Vistra Corp. The company will anchor new small-reactor projects while buying secure output from existing nuclear plants in Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Meta’s AI data centers consume electricity on the scale of small cities. They can’t tolerate disruptions every time the wind stalls or clouds roll in. These facilities need constant 24-hour-per-day power, disqualifying unreliable and weather dependent wind and solar. 

For years, Big Tech was part of the problem, lobbying for wind and solar and embracing a “net-zero” marketing campaign, in which their companies bought renewable energy credits to appear green while their servers quietly drew from fossil fuel and nuclear power. Meta’s new approach drops the pretense. Its 20-year deal with Vistra will add upgrades to boost output at existing nuclear power plants while funding the construction of the next generation of reactors.

On the latter point, Meta is partnering with Oklo, a company building advanced small modular reactors. If they prove out, Oklo’s Aurora microreactors will produce roughly 15 to 50 megawatts each, making them available for rapid deployment with long operating lifetimes without refueling and designed for small factory manufacturing. This would make them ideal for hyperscale data centers that need constant, on-site power. 

Meta is also partnering with TerraPower, the advanced-reactor company founded by Bill Gates. Gates once championed climate doomerism, insisting that only drastic limits on modern energy could prevent a so-called climate disaster. His support for nuclear now represents an acknowledgement of the reality that  reliable power is necessary for growth. TerraPower’s Natrium reactors are projected to add up to 2.8 gigawatts of new nuclear capacity by 2035. 

If Meta keeps it commitments, helping bring new plants to fruition, it will be precisely the kind of private-sector initiative the Trump administration hoped to unleash when it cut red tape around nuclear licensing and revived interest in small modular reactors. Trump’s critics mocked “energy dominance” as a campaign slogan, but in fact it was a call for reliability, affordability, and independence. Nuclear power can deliver on those goals.

Intermittent power never truly worked for household lighting, not without fossil fuel and nuclear power to underpin it, and it certainly doesn’t work for data centers that run supercomputers. The more society electrifies, from AI to electric vehicles, the more dangerous dependence on unstable wind and solar becomes. Reliability isn’t a luxury; it’s the backbone of modern civilization.

That said, Big Tech’s wind and solar lobbying contributed to higher costs and increased blackouts. Meta’s power-purchase agreements are anchored to existing nuclear plants that were already licensed to operate well into the 2030s and 2040s. The equipment upgrades are promises for the future. Most of the contracted power would have served the grid anyway, meaning that in the near term, other consumers could be saddled with higher costs for power, while Meta locks in premium firm power. 

This arrangement is defensible only if regulators require that the promised reactor upgrades and new reactors are completed, perhaps with bonding requirements. If Meta changes its mind and decides not to fund the plants to completion, its access to power from the existing plants should be cut off, and money paid from the bonds be returned not to the utilities but to ratepayers. This would incentivize Meta to keep its contract. If they want special dispensations for power, they should be part of the solution for everyone else. Without such accountability, today’s nuclear buildout risks becoming tomorrow’s quiet cost shift. 

Companies like Meta and Microsoft must also cease green lobbying. If they want reliable power for themselves, they should oppose further wind and solar mandates and instead support efforts to keep existing coal and nuclear power plants online, and even reopening recently closed, but still usable, coal plants. Residential and business power users want and deserve affordable, reliable power. 

Trump’s “energy dominance” agenda isn’t nostalgia. It is foresight, a belief that a strong America must control its own energy destiny, powered by sources that are abundant, affordable, and reliable. Silicon Valley is finally catching up.

AI may be the future of computing, but nuclear, along with natural gas and coal, remain the present and future of dependable and affordable power. Big tech working alongside the Trump administration to keep the lights on and the computers humming might make American energy dominant again.

Anthony Watts awatts@heartland.org is a Senior Fellow with and H. Sterling Burnett, Ph.D. is director of the Arthur B. Robinson Center for Climate and Environmental Policy at The Heartland Institute. 

This article was originally published by RealClearEnergy and made available via RealClearWire.