In 2024, Microsoft signed a 20-year power purchase agreement to restart Three Mile Island. The nuclear plant. The one from the disaster. In 2025, Amazon bought a small modular reactor. In 2026, Meta locked up 20 years of natural gas at a cost nobody will put on record. We are watching hyperscalers become utilities. This episode covers the numbers, the deals, the grid bottleneck, the green accounting scandal, and the policy fight coming to your electric bill.

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📚 WHAT YOU'LL LEARN

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✅ The 2020 → 2030 data center power trajectory (spoiler: vertical)

✅ Training energy costs for GPT-4 class vs GPT-5 class models

✅ The PPA deals board — Microsoft/TMI, Amazon/SMR, Google/geo, Meta/gas

✅ Why the US grid can't take it — 5-to-7-year interconnect queues

✅ The Loudoun County story — one Virginia county, 35% of global cloud

✅ The Scope 3 carbon accounting scandal

✅ Who actually pays for this (hint: your electric bill)

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⏱ CHAPTERS

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0:00 Intro — Microsoft reopens Three Mile Island

0:44 The data center power trajectory (2020 → 2030)

2:00 The deals board — who bought what

3:38 The grid breaks — PJM, ERCOT, interconnect queues

5:10 Loudoun County, Virginia — the canary

6:29 The green accounting scandal

7:53 Who pays — your electric bill

9:09 Watch list — the 2027 indicators

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🎯 THE MEMORABLE LINES

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• "The thing about nuclear is, everyone's pro-nuclear until it shows up next to their data."

• "You cannot offset training a frontier model with forest credits. The carbon is burning. The trees are optional."

• "By 2030, data centers will consume the electricity of an always-on Japan that does nothing but run AI."

• "Most creative accounting since WeWork."

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📡 TECH UPDATES · THE PODCAST

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