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Amazon and Google have plans for fueling their data centers: nuclear power
Amazon on Wednesday said it has a plan to feed its growing need for power: investing in small nuclear reactors. The announcement comes just two days after Google said it’s pursuing a similar path by purchasing nuclear energy from Kairos Power.
The tech giants are seeking new sources of carbon-free electricity to meet surging demand from data centers and artificial intelligence, with their plans coming after Microsoft said last month that it will buy energy from the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant.
All three companies have been investing in solar and wind technologies, which make electricity without producing greenhouse gas emissions. Now they say they need to go further in the search for clean electricity to meet both demand and their own commitments to cut emissions.
The tech partnerships to buy nuclear power could be a “marriage made in heaven,” noted Tim Winter, a portfolio manager at Gabelli Funds, in an email to CBS MoneyWatch. “Big Tech wants power to fuel huge new AI data centers” because a lack of U.S. power supply could slow down technological developments.
Nuclear energy is a climate solution in that its reactors don’t emit the planet-warming greenhouse gases that come from power plants that burn fossil fuels, such as oil, coal and gas. The demand for power is surging globally as buildings and vehicles electrify, and with the rise of AI.
People used more electricity than ever last year, placing strain on electric grids around the world. Much of the demand comes from data centers and artificial intelligence.
The International Energy Agency forecasts that data centers’ total electricity consumption could reach more than 1,000 terawatt hours in 2026, more than doubling from 2022. Estimates suggest one terawatt hour can power 70,000 homes for a year.
“AI is driving a significant increase in the amount of data centers and power that are required on the grid,” Kevin Miller, Amazon Web Services’ vice president of global data centers, told The Associated Press, adding: “We view advanced new nuclear capacity as really key and essential.”
Modular reactors
The United States is pursuing small modular reactors, a type of nuclear reactor that can generate up to roughly one-third the amount of power of a traditional reactor. Developers say small reactors will be built faster and at a lower cost than large power reactors, scaling to fit needs of a particular location.
Developers aim to start spinning up electricity in the early 2030s, if the Nuclear Regulatory Commission gives permission to build and operate their designs and the technology succeeds.
If new clean power isn’t added as data centers are developed, the U.S. runs the risk of “browning the grid,” or including more power that isn’t made from clean sources, said Kathryn Huff, a former U.S. assistant secretary for nuclear energy who is now an associate professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
The reactors are currently under development, with none currently providing power to the electric grid in the U.S. Big investors can help change that, and these announcements could be the “inflection point” that makes scaling up this technology truly possible, Huff said.
Jacopo Buongiorno, professor of nuclear science and engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, echoed that, saying the industry needs customers who value the reliability and carbon-free attributes of nuclear energy enough to pay a premium for it at first, until a number of the next-generation reactors are deployed and the cost comes down.
Google’s deal with Kairos Power
On Monday, Google said it was signing a contract to purchase nuclear energy from multiple small modular reactors that Kairos Power, a nuclear technology company, plans to develop.
The news highlights “the technologies that we’re going to need to achieve round-the-clock clean energy, not only for Google but for the world,” Michael Terrell, Google’s senior director of energy and climate, told the AP.
With Kairos, Google said it expects to bring the first small modular reactor online by 2030, with more to come through 2035. The deal is projected to bring 500 megawatts of power to the grid. For context, Google consumed more than 24 terawatt hours of electricity last year, according to the company’s annual environmental report. One terawatt is equal to 1,000,000 megawatts.
Meanwhile, Amazon’s announcements Wednesday included working with utility company Dominion Energy to explore putting a small modular reactor near its existing North Anna nuclear power station in Virginia. The e-commerce giant is investing in reactor developer X-energy for its early development work, and collaborating with regional utility Energy Northwest in central Washington to put four of the X-energy reactors there.
Combined, the three announcements could account for more than 5,000 megawatts of power by the late 2030s with the possibility of more. All of that is still likely only a small fraction of the company’s total energy consumption, a figure that Amazon does not report publicly.
Small nuclear footprint
New reactor designs pair well with industrial applications because they can be built on a small footprint and generate reliable power, with some able to provide high-temperature heat, too, at the site, said Doug True, chief nuclear officer at the industry trade association, Nuclear Energy Institute.
“It seems like a really good fit to support those facilities, and for a lot of different applications depending upon the amount of power that’s needed by the customer,” he said.
Both Amazon and Google have committed to using renewable energy to address climate change. By 2030, Google has pledged to meet net-zero emissions, and run carbon-free energy every hour of every day on every grid where it operates. The tech behemoth says it has already matched 100% of its global electricity consumption with renewable energy purchases on an annual basis. However, the company has fallen short on decreasing its emissions.
Amazon has said it would match all of its global electricity consumption with 100% renewable energy by 2030, and recently announced it met that goal early in 2023. Though the company has matched its consumption as far as offset purchases of an equivalent amount of renewable energy, that does not necessarily mean it is using the renewable energy to power its operations.
Amazon saw its electricity emissions drop 11% from 2022 to 2023, but its direct emissions, which includes fuel used to transport and deliver packages, increased 7%, according to its 2023 sustainability report. The company is also targeting net zero-carbon by 2040.
A federal grand jury unsealed an indictment against two Sudanese brothers Wednesday, charging them with running “Anonymous Sudan,” one of the most prolific cyberattack-for-hire gangs of all time and allegedly behind tens of thousands of attacks.
Federal prosecutors accused Ahmed Salah Yousif Omer, 22, and Alaa Salah Yusuuf Omer, 27, of carrying out 35,000 denial-of-service attacks against hundreds of organizations in just one year, taking down websites and other networks as part of an ideologically motivated extortion scheme affecting thousands of customers.
According to prosecutors, the pair targeted a long list of high-profile victims worldwide and across the U.S., including Microsoft, ChatGPT, PayPal, X, Yahoo, airports, the Pentagon, the Department of Justice, Alabama’s state government, as well as at least one hospital: Cedars-Sinai in the Los Angeles area.
The group held a “Sudanese nationalist ideology,” Martin Estrada, the U.S. attorney for the Central District of California, said in a press conference on Wednesday, charging customers $600 or less to launch major attacks.
“Anonymous Sudan sought to maximize havoc and destruction against governments and businesses around the world by perpetrating tens of thousands of cyberattacks,” Estrada said. “This group’s attacks were callous and brazen — the defendants went so far as to attack hospitals providing emergency and urgent care to patients,” he added.
The group also targeted governmental and private organizations in the Netherlands, Bahrain, United Arab Emirates, Chad, Israel and the U.K.
According to federal prosecutors, Ahmed Salah allegedly created the DDoS attack infrastructure of Anonymous Sudan and then posted messages on Telegram taking credit for the attacks. Alaa Salah allegedly provided computer code and programming support.
A grand jury indictment charged the pair with one count of conspiracy to damage protected computers. Ahmed Salah was also charged with three counts of damaging protected computers.
If convicted of all charges, Ahmed Salah faces a maximum sentence of life in prison related to the attack on Cedars-Sinai hospital, which endangered patients’ lives, according to the indictment. Alaa Salah would face a maximum sentence of five years, if convicted.
Estrada said that if found guilty, it would mark the first cybercrime conviction tied to physical harm in the U.S.
Anonymous Sudan’s attack on Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in February shuttered emergency services temporarily, causing incoming patients to be redirected to other medical facilities for approximately eight hours.
According to the indictment, Anonymous Sudan operated several Telegram channels, posting “information about their attacks, their DDoS tools and pricing, and their victims,” and boasted as many as 80,000 subscribers at one time. The group’s operations resulted in more than $10 million in damages to victims in the U.S.
Federal prosecutors allege that since early 2023, the brothers have used the group’s Distributed Cloud Attack Tool (DCAT) to conduct devastating and often dayslong DDoS attacks. DDoS attacks — or “distributed denial of service” — barrage websites with traffic, rendering them unusable.
“The FBI’s seizure of this powerful DDoS tool successfully disabled the attack platform that caused widespread damage and disruptions to critical infrastructure and networks around the world,” said Special Agent in Charge Rebecca Day of the FBI Anchorage Field Office, in a statement. “With the FBI’s mix of unique authorities, capabilities, and partnerships, there is no limit to our reach when it comes to combating all forms of cybercrime and defending global cybersecurity.”
According to Estrada, both brothers were arrested abroad in March and have been in custody since then, though the U.S. attorney declined to name the country holding them or comment on potential extradition.
Former One Direction singer Liam Payne died Wednesday after falling into the interior patio of a hotel in Buenos Aires, Argentina, the Argentine Director of Emergency Medical Services, Alberto Crescenti, confirmed to CBS News.
He was 31 years old.
Crescenti said an ambulance arrived seven minutes later. He declined to answer questions about the incident, including whether Payne jumped from the balcony or fell by accident, The Associated Press reported.
Payne, who was from the U.K., had attended a show in Argentina of his former bandmate, Niall Horan, according to media reports. Payne posted a series of social media videos showing him headed to Argentina.
Last year, Payne postponed his South American tour — with shows in Peru, Colombia, Chile, Brazil, Argentina and Mexico — after a serious kidney infection. He told fans he was hospitalized with illness in a video explaining his decision.
Jeff Spicer/Getty Images for Atlantis The Royal
Payne, who struggled with alcohol, announced in 2023 that he was 100 days sober. During a podcast interview in 2021, he detailed how One Direction members became too famous too fast — and said he often turned to drinking to deal with the mounting pressures of being in the globally famous boy band.
Formed in 2010 during “X Factor’s Boot Camp,” One Direction members Harry Styles, Liam Payne, Louis Tomlinson, Niall Horan and Zayn Malik went on to sell 70 million records by 2020, according to the BBC.
In 2016, Payne signed a solo deal with Capitol Records’ U.K. division. He had a son in 2017 with former “X Factor” judge Cheryl Cole.
contributed to this report.
For months, former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris have been making promises to the American people about what they’d do to improve the lives of Americans if elected president in the 2024 election. Their promises encompass climate, foreign policy, social issues, health care and, of course, taxes.
Some campaign promises may be fulfilled through the power of the pen with an executive action, while others would require congressional approval.
Here’s what Trump and Harris have been promising Americans during their campaigns.
Trump’s campaign promises:
End the war in Ukraine before Inauguration Day
Trump has more than once promised to end Russia’s war on Ukraine before he’s inaugurated.
“That is a war that’s dying to be settled. I will get it settled before I even become president,” Trump said in the September presidential debate against Harris.
He has also said in a May 2023 CNN town hall that he’d end the conflict “in 24 hours.” Trump has repeatedly been asked how he’d do this but has never outlined a plan.
When asked in late September by CBS News’ Caitlin Huey-Burns what an end to the fighting would look like, he responded, “I don’t want to tell you what that looks like.” And in response to a question from reporters about whether Ukraine should cede land to Russia to end the war, Trump did not answer directly. “Let’s get some peace,” he said.
Carry out the largest mass deportation in U.S. history
Trump frequently vows to carry out the “largest deportation” effort in U.S. history. In September, he said he’d begin by targeting migrants in Aurora, Colorado, and Springfield, Ohio. A Trump spokesperson told the Associated Press that Trump “would marshal every federal and state power necessary to institute the largest deportation operation of illegal criminals, drug dealers, and human traffickers.”
Cut federal funding to schools that teach “critical race theory” and “transgender” matters
Trump says he’d cut federal funding for schools that teach “critical race theory” and “transgender” matters, which he calls “transgender insanity.” He has suggested launching civil rights investigations into schools that support transgender rights. Shortly after becoming president in 2017, Trump withdrew Obama-era protections that permitted transgender students to use public school restrooms according to how they identified.
Local taxes provide the vast majority of funding for school districts, not federal tax dollars. The Department of Education estimates that tax dollars account for about 8% of funding for U.S. public schools.
Roll back Biden’s electric vehicle mandate
Trump often says he’d repeal President Biden’s electric vehicle mandate. Mr. Biden has not issued an EV mandate, though he is urging Americans to adopt EVs and is offering incentives to move the country to the point where 50% of new vehicles sold are zero-emission, a goal he hopes to reach by 2030. Rolling back an EPA rule entails logistical hurdles, but it is something a president can accomplish without Congress.
End taxes on tips
A few months ago, Trump began saying he’d end federal taxes on tips, and soon afterward, Harris followed suit. Doing so would require Congress to pass legislation so that tipped workers would no longer be subject to federal taxes on those tips. Trump has not said how he’d pay for this plan.
The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget has estimated the cost of this promise to be as high as $250 billion.
No taxes on Social Security income
Trump has also pledged to stop taxing Social Security benefits for seniors. About 40% of Social Security recipients pay federal income taxes on those benefits, according to the Social Security Administration. Federal taxes on Social Security income don’t kick in until an individual’s combined income reaches $25,000. An individual filer with a total income between $25,000 and $34,000 may have to pay income tax on up to 50% of those benefits, and above $34,000, up to 85% of Social Security benefits may be taxable, according to the SSA.
This, too, would require legislation. Trump has not said how he’d pay for this plan.
“Replace” Obamacare
In his debate against Harris, Trump pledged to replace the Affordable Care Act, something he was unable to do in the four years he was president. In 2016, he also campaigned in 2016 on repealing the health care law.
“Obamacare was lousy health care,” Trump said during the debate. “Always was. It’s not very good today. And what I said, that if we come up with something, and we are working on things, we’re going to do it and we’re going to replace it.”
Pressed during the debate on what his replacement plan would be, Trump replied that he had “concepts of a plan.”
Congress would have to pass a repeal, and Republicans’ best chance to do so failed with the late Sen. John McCain’s thumbs-down vote in 2017. Trump and Republicans tried to dismantle Obamacare through the courts, too, but the Supreme Court rejected the challenge.
Expand the child tax credit
The Trump campaign has proposed expanding the child tax credit to up to $5,000 a year per child. Congress which holds the power of the purse, would have to sign off on this expansion. The CTC is currently $2,000 per child, with only $1,600 of that being refundable. Refundable tax credits can be received as a refund even if the filer owes no tax to the federal government.That means filers who owe the federal government little or nothing in federal income taxes are eligible for a tax credit of $1,600 per child.
Harris’ campaign promises:
Take on pharmaceutical companies
Harris has pledged to continue President Biden’s campaign to take on pharmaceutical companies, particularly by addressing high drug prices. Americans pay more for prescription drugs than do citizens of other countries. The Inflation Reduction Act, passed in 2022, gave Medicare the authority to negotiate lower prices with drug companies. The Biden administration has lowered the cost of a number of popular prescription drugs covered by Medicare, and Harris has pledged to continue that effort.
Ban price gouging on groceries
It’s not completely clear how Harris would accomplish this, but she’s said she wants to eliminate price gouging on groceries. Grocery prices have jumped 25% since 2020, and the price tag of many individual items has increased much more than 25%. Price gouging is when businesses charge excessively high prices on items that become scarce, such as during a hurricane. But experts have told CBS News there are a number of factors behind the higher prices at the supermarket.
However, economists agree with Harris that adding more competition to the grocery and food industries could help tackle rising food prices by adding to the supply of products on the market. That in turn would give consumers more choice while curtailing companies’ ability to set unreasonably high prices. Economist Mark Zandi suggested the Justice Department should keep a close eye on any proposed mergers or acquisitions of food companies.
Expand the child tax credit
Harris says she’d expand the child tax credit to up to $6,000 for newborn children, $1,000 more than Trump VP candidate Sen. JD Vance proposed, although his expanded tax credit would not be restricted to those with newborn children. Any expansion of the tax credit would require congressional approval. It’s not clear how Harris would pay for the proposal.
Nominate a Republican to her Cabinet
Harris says she’ll appoint a Republican to her Cabinet, which would set her apart from President Biden, who has no Republicans in his Cabinet.
“It would be to the benefit of the American public to have a member of my Cabinet who is a Republican,” Harris told CNN in August.