Two Amazon.com Inc. and Meta Platforms Inc. initiatives to build data centers powered by nuclear energy are off to a bumpy start.

Axios reported today that Amazon’s project recently failed to secure a key regulatory approval. Meta’s planned data center campus, in turn, is said to have raised environmental concerns.

Earlier this year, Amazon inked a $650 million deal to buy a data center campus from power company Talen Energy. The site is located near the Susquehanna Steam Electric Station (pictured), a nuclear power plant that the utility operates in Pennsylvania. Talen has stated that the data center campus will have access to up to 960 megawatts of electricity.

Two other utilities, AEP and Exelon, filed a regulatory challenge to the company’s deal with Amazon. They argued that the data center campus could unfairly shift energy infrastructure costs to other parties. Axios reported that the U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the agency in charge of overseeing such deals, has sided with the utilities and decided not to greenlight the project.

Officials issued the decision on Friday at the end of an energy industry conference. The order doesn’t focus directly on the data center campus, but rather the power delivery infrastructure that connects the site to Talen’s power plant. Officials rejected a request to modify this infrastructure in a way that would have boosted the amount of electricity available to Amazon’s campus.

A parallel push by Meta to build data centers powered by nuclear energy is said to be facing challenges as well. Citing sources familiar with the matter, the Financial Times reported today the Facebook parent had at one point considered an infrastructure co-location deal similar to Amazon’s agreement with Talen. The plan was to build a data center next to an existing nuclear power plant.

According to the paper’s sources, Meta scrapped the project after identifying environmental and regulatory concerns. One of the factors behind the decision was the discovery of a rare bee species at the site where the data center would have been built. Meta, which has operated with zero emissions since 2020, reportedly continues to “explore various deals” for carbon-free energy.

Other tech giants are also looking to nuclear power to support their data center expansion plans. Last month, Google LLC inked a deal to purchase up to 500 megawatts of power from multiple small modular reactors, or SMRs. Earlier, the operator of the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant announced plans to reopen the facility and use it to generate electricity for Microsoft Corp. data centers.

Photo: Jakec/Wikipedia