Walmart's First Nuclear Deal Shows Demand Beyond AI Data Centers
2 25An anonymous reader quotes a report from Barron's: Walmart is signing a long-term contract to buy nuclear power for the first time ever, a promising sign that the industry's future is supported by more than just the AI data center boom. The retail giant agreed on Tuesday to buy power from a nuclear plant in Illinois owned by Constellation Energy for its operations in the area, including its stores and a high-tech warehouse in Illinois that stores and sorts perishable food.
Walmart will buy 176 megawatts of power from the plant over a 15-year period, or enough power to serve around 150,000 homes. The Walmart deal will allow Constellation to expand the capacity of the Illinois plant by 30 megawatts, a process known as an uprate, which can involve replacing older equipment and improving efficiency. Walmart, which has pledged to eliminate net carbon emissions from its U.S. operations by 2040, will also receive the environmental attributes associated with the nuclear energy, which generates electricity without carbon emissions. Further reading: Trump Admin Announces $17.5 Billion In Loans For 10 New Large Nuclear Reactors
2 comments
2-for-one SMRs on asle twelve with coupon! (Score: 5, Interesting)
by MIPSPro ( 10156657 ) on Wednesday June 24, 2026 @04:18PM (#66208508)
Exactly! They are rolling back prices to three mile island! :-) In other news I remember once visiting a Wal Mart datacenter in Arkansas. Bruh..... Holy shit was it bad. They had regular PCs like fucking eMachines stacked on these plywood shelves that someone had hand built (like... with nails). So, not a server in sight. It also wasn't a datacenter. It was an old office space they'd just stripped the ceiling tiles out of and let the HVAC treat the whole space as the plenum. Some of the tiles were still there and they'd just knocked holes through them for network cables that were strung over/using the old supports for the false ceiling. I'm surprised the place didn't have it's own barn cats.
Re:Not quite immaculate conception (Score: 5, Interesting)
by Burdell ( 228580 ) on Wednesday June 24, 2026 @03:58PM (#66208456)
I expect plant construction (especially lots of concrete) is a much bigger emission concern than mining the fuel (a little fuel goes a long way, although it takes a fair amount of mining and refining to get that little bit of fuel). The further down the stack you go, NOTHING is absolutely carbon-neutral (solar and wind construction require raw materials too, as does all distribution no matter the generation source), but it's a matter of scale vs. return.
At this point, it's not clear that the construction emissions of big nuclear makes it a net win over its expected lifetime when compared to solar/wind. And small nuclear is still mostly vapor, and not clear that it's actually solved the scaling costs that made huge nuclear attractive in the first place. Continuing to operate the nuclear that's already been constructed for a long time probably makes it a reasonable win (of course, if we ever get a more reasonable way to deal with the waste).
As for the water... big plants are typically built directly at water sources and manage it directly, so they aren't really "consuming" it in the way datacenters do (where they just want to hook up to municipal water sources and outsource the management costs). Plants are restricted in output water temperature so as not to cause harm to animal/plant life downstream, and while some (depending on design) do evaporate a bunch, it's still right there where it came from. So I don't _think_ they have a significant impact in the way datacenters do.