Breaking News: VIRGINIA PLANNING NUMEROUS NEW NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS
Our beautiful state of Viginia is fast becoming an industrial landfill for the Data Center Industry.
Things to note:
- The state of Virginia needs well over 23 gigawatts of power (current demand)
- One nuclear power plant produces merely one gigawatt
- The Digital Gateway alone, from recent reporting, has an estimated load demand of 7 gigawatts
Are we the residents of Virginia willing to sacrifice our homes, our history, our beautiful landscapes for the greed of one industry? And politicians – regardless of pollical affiliation – who benefit from that industry’s donations to their campaigns?
Data centers see pushback across the country (axios.com)
“Threat level: Data centers are also driving a surge in electricity demand — especially amid the rapid growth of new AI tools.
- Utilities now estimate data centers will need nearly 40 gigawatts of additional electricity by 2028, per a December 2023 report from consulting firm Grid Strategies — nearly double their prior guess.
- Barclays researchers see data centers accounting for at least 9% of overall electricity demand by 2030, up from 3.5% today.
- Demand is so high that at least one mothballed nuclear reactor, Pennsylvania’s infamous Three Mile Island, might come back online to power them.
Zoom in: In Northern Virginia, which houses the world’s biggest collection of data centers, some residents are advocating for regulations on what they consider noisy eyesores gobbling up land and power.
- A contentious meeting last year to approve a huge data center complex in Virginia’s Prince William County lasted 27 hours.
- Residents are suing to stop its construction.
What they’re saying: Data centers are “driving up the price of land, and it’s hard for anyone else to compete with them,” says Deshundra Jefferson, chair of the Prince William Board of County Supervisors, who adds that data center pushback helped her get elected.”
The robber barons of this industry have distorted every level of government to fulfill their tech dreams.
In our last blast email, we shared that the Federal DOE was planning for 200 New Nuclear Power Plants to meet the nationwide load demand of data centers.
“The U.S. needs to add 200 gigawatts of nuclear, Goff told CNBC in an interview. This is roughly equivalent to building 200 new plants, based on the current average reactor size in the U.S. fleet of about a gigawatt.”
“Microsoft will purchase electricity from the plant to help power its data centers. Goff said the advent of large data centers that consume up to a gigawatt of electricity only reinforces the need for new reactors.”
“A lot of the data centers are coming in and saying they do need firm, 24/7, baseload clean electricity,” Goff said. “Nuclear is obviously a perfect match for that,” he said.”
In a recent video, we predicted 12 nuclear power plants would be needed just in Virginia. Apparently, we are starting with four.
https://youtu.be/OYSIC4Ansik?si=z19y_T9Nst0Jwtjb
How does this impact you? Look at the Virginia Dept of Energy Press release below. Quantico is on the list now. What’s next for Prince William County as the burgeoning largest data center concentration in the world??
Is MORE coming to Possum Point? We believe Possum Point is in the cross hairs for power generation — Because Possum Point is a retired coal facility, it qualifies for more gas and possible nuclear generation. Don’t believe us? – read this article:
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Natural-Gas/EQT-Sees-Strong-Data-Center-Driven-Gas-Demand-Growth-by-2030.html
Retired Coal Plants are proposed sites to build new nuclear energy, as outlined in a recent study from the Federal Department of Energy. We know that Possum Point is included in multiple PJM “Dominion Data Center Alley” proposals.
Could the Nation’s Coal Plant Sites Help Drive a Clean Energy Transition? | Department of Energy
“A new U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) study finds that hundreds of coal power plant sites across the country could be converted to nuclear power plant sites. This would dramatically increase the supply of firm and dispatchable clean electricity to the grid and deliver huge gains to the nation’s goal of net-zero emissions by 2050.”
Enough is Enough.
Do something:
- Write Glenn Davis (Va. Dept of Energy)
- Write Governor Glenn Youngkin
- Write Tim Kaine, Mark Warner, Abigail Spanberger, Danica Roem, Josh Thomas, Ian Lovejoy, Dan Helmer, Suhas Subramanyam, Richard Stuart
- Write the Board of Supervisors
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Your donation helps with our on-going activities.
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SO MUCH MORE BEING PUT AT RISK:
20241008-item-09—reliability-analysis-update.ashx (pjm.com)
These multiple proposals for massive 765kV transmission lines and substations (in addition to even more 500kV lines and substations) coming east through West Virginia, Maryland, Southern and Western Virginia, crisscrossing our area, and proceeding beyond – are ALL VERY ATTRACTIVE to PJM.
What more will it take for YOU to speak out and take action against the decimation of our communities because of impossible data center demands, nuclear power plants being dropped everywhere, and VERY BAD votes by the Board of Supervisors to approve even more data centers???
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PJM Reliability Analysis Update June 9, 2024
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Proliferation of PWC Data Centers ~86.9+M sq ft Potential – 26.5 gigawatts
Coalition Digital Gateway Lawsuit – Access the latest details
HELP WITH YOUR DONATION NOW
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Morrisville to Wishing Star: Part of PJM’s 1st approved segment of ongoing Data Center Planning Initiative for transmission grid expansions (PJM map below):
Transmission Line & Substation EXPANSION Plans
Caused by Explosive DATA CENTER Growth in Northern VA
“Am I affected by this?”
The first “bite of the apple” – APPROVED BY PJM 12/11/23
WHAT DO YOU WANT?
OR 
Write to your national, state, and local leaders, and local planning commissioners. Get their contact details…
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It’s not.” The Lorax
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Video: Hidden Costs of the Cloud: Data Centers in Virginia
This French video – produced 5 years ago – makes digital/data centers easily understood – now imagine today’s data centers 5-10X larger, requiring 5-8% more power!
“I’ll Take Virginia!” Watch this video and listen to this song – by someone who clearly LOVES VIRGINIA!
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Make a donation and order your own! Multiple designs available for both t-shirts and signs.
Get your message out there – to be seen by others!
All of US are FIGHTING for the FUTURE of this ENTIRE County!
The most significant change in the Pathway to 2040 Comprehensive Plan approved Dec. 13, 2022 update: the elimination of the county’s rural area designation from the map, known to many as the “rural crescent.”
But we know the cure. The cure is citizens engaging.
The challenge before us is about more than the Pageland landowner’s data center application.
The new land use map creates a picture of residential and industrial sprawl county-wide.
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Don’t let data centers ruin what makes Prince William unique
Setting us apart from every county in the state of Virginia, the expanse of Prince William County’s landscape stretches from the Bull Run mountains to the tidal basin of the Potomac River. Our county leadership has yet to embrace and capitalize on these assets.
Do not be bamboozled. The introduction of data center campuses will truly only benefit a handful of landowners, Dominion Energy, and the billion- or trillion-dollar profit-making tech companies.
Jim Witham, CEO of GaN Systems, notes the destruction caused by data centers in his 2018 op-ed for industry publication, “Data Center Knowledge.”
“Are we creating a better world through data, but at the same time sowing a few seeds of destruction by not paying appropriate attention to the increasing requirement for — and inefficiencies around — the resources data centers require: from the steel, concrete and copper needed to build them to the electricity required to run them all day, every day?” Witham writes. “There may be a heavy bill to pay, for individual businesses and the planet, if we don’t rethink the practice and metrics of success and efficiency in data centers – today.”
These facts must not be ignored:
Data centers are bulk-load energy customers like few others. The power needed for just one campus of four buildings is as much as a small city, 200 megawatts or more.
Unlike private landowners who are required to pay for their own distribution line if they build outside the electrical network, these massive bulk-load customers get a pass, making all of us pay for billions of dollars of transmission lines and substation infrastructure to ensure their bottom-line profits are never impacted.
Data centers’ carbon footprints are matched by few other industries. An update to a 2016 peer-reviewed study found that without dramatic increases in efficiencies, the information and technology industry “could use 20% of the world’s electricity and emit 5.5% of the world’s carbon by 2025.”
What must be addressed are the impacts these bulk-load customers have directly on our communities, on our environment, on our historic assets and on our everyday quality of life.
The Virginia State Corporate Commission legal staff said it best in the Haymarket Amazon Transmission line hearing when they noted the commission “may wish to require [Amazon] to put some of its own skin into the game. Otherwise, the general public [all of us], already burdened by the environmental and aesthetic impacts of otherwise unneeded transmission projects, [are] also burdened with 100% of the otherwise unnecessary costs.”
This statement from the SCC was remarkable and cannot be dismissed by our board of supervisors.
The board’s number one priority is to act on behalf of the people of Prince William County, not for just a few landowners looking to cash out, and certainly not to benefit the wealthiest corporations in the world.
Common sense dictates that compatibility of land uses be a priority. Rural and housing areas are NOT compatible with data centers.
Losing rural crescent acres to data centers is an environmental double whammy. It isn’t just the unimaginable amounts of energy and water required to run and cool the massive buildings; it’s also the actual physical footprint of millions of square feet of concrete buildings and impervious surfaces, robbing us of green spaces mandatory for our own sustenance.
This folly would introduce obscene levels of carbon while removing the lungs required to filter our environment. These actions will be tantamount to holding a drowning person under water.
It is incumbent on localities to act responsibly about where data centers are placed.
We have in Prince William County a very real opportunity to demonstrate a conscientious regard for ecology, rural life, and the self-determination that has been the hallmark of some of our best achievements as a nation. This is not a refusal of progress or development. It is an embrace of good, sustainable communities, and can point towards a better future for all.
Saying no to inappropriate development is saying yes to preserving a better future for all of Northern Virginia.
An informed citizenry is the best defense to save the Rural Crescent.