Americans would rather live near a nuclear power plant than a data center

According to a March Gallup poll, 71% of US adults oppose building an AI data center in their area, with nearly half (48%) strongly opposed and just 27% in favor. But perhaps the most surprising number from the survey is that only 53% opposed a nuclear plant in their backyard instead, nearly 20 percentage points less than the number of data center opponents.

Since Gallup began asking the core question in 2001, opposition has never exceeded 63 percent. This year, Gallup is asking about data centers for the first time, and they surpassed that ceiling in their first appearance.

« Isn’t that crazy? » asked Wannie Park, energy industry veteran and CEO of PADO AI LG A NOVA-supported platform that handles energy management – ​​for data centers. « I think it’s just ignorant stakeholders who don’t really understand the opportunities. »

Park said the resistance often stems from a lack of knowledge about data centers — and this is something the industry needs to better explain.

« It was just a lack of education. There’s a lack of proper marketing and communication about what this does. And I would argue that we haven’t done a good job of that, have we? »

Which is… better?

Park emphasized that education is the first step in ensuring that there is community support at the local level — or at least a smaller percentage of people who are vocally opposed.

Perhaps none other than nuclear power explains this best. The irony is that nuclear power has risks that data centers don’t: the potential for meltdown, radioactive waste that remains dangerous for thousands of years, and again, the ever-present, ever-growing fear of the countdown clock, which is still the focus of many movies to this day. Despite this – perhaps due to a lack of memory of the old Cold War days – Americans are now more afraid of data centers.

This likely reflects the nature of the effects. The effects of the server centers are immediate and visible to the residents of the surrounding area, and they can be seen in increased noise, traffic, electricity bills and water consumption. Nuclear’s worst-case scenarios seem abstract to most people, and it took decades to become normalized. Data centers became obscure everywhere in just a few years.

Regarding coal, nuclear power is one of the least emitting energy sources, as it produces approximately 12 grams of CO₂ equivalent per kilowatt hour and competes with wind power. Cornell study The sustainability of nature found that by 2030, the growth of AI alone could produce 24-44 million tons of carbon dioxide per year, equivalent to adding 5-10 million cars on US roads.

Both are water intensive, but in different ways. Nuclear power plants release heated cooling water that can disrupt aquatic ecosystems, which is their most significant ongoing environmental impact. Instead, data centers will use an estimated 17 billion gallons in 2023, triple the amount in 2014. By 2030, artificial intelligence-driven water demand could match the annual use of 6-10 million American households.

U.S. data centers also now consume about 4.4 percent of national electricity consumption, up from 1.9 percent in 2018, and that figure could rise to 12 percent by 2028. According to the Bloom Energy report, total US data center demand will nearly double between 2025 and 2028 – from 80 gigawatts to 150 gigawatts as energy demand increases in three years.

When Gallup asked for an open-ended survey in April, half of those opposed cited strain on resources, including strain on water and energy systems and loss of farmland. About 22% cited quality of life issues such as traffic, while one in five cited higher electricity bills. Sixteen percent reported pollution, especially noise. A smaller proportion expressed uneasiness about artificial intelligence itself.

Park sees the backlash as a communication breakdown. « What you hear is a lot of doom and gloom. We’re using all the water, prices are going up, » Park said. Luck. « But there hasn’t been a really strong articulated message about what this really means. » He compared it to the Obama-era smart grid rollout, when residents showed up at city council meetings claiming smart meters were spying on them or causing cancer. « When you fast forward, none of that is there. It was just a lack of education. »

Moratoriums do not prevent construction

Sixty-nine U.S. jurisdictions have suspended construction of data centers, but Park warned that the bans simply redistribute development. « The people who develop these sites kind of don’t care, » he said. « If you want to shut us down here, we’ll go somewhere else. » He adds that economics supports the push: the value generated by electricity can be 20-100 times the price of electricity itself.

Often it is because the need and demand for the calculation has already been taken into account

« Even if you’re tracking things where, hey, I’m an XYZ developer and I have this site that’s going to be developed, it’s coming online in three years, that compute is already booked, like three years ahead of time. That’s demand. »