Moving our electricity consumption onto nuclear is quite possibly the single best thing we can do to combat climate change.
Not enough capacity and not enough plans to bring more online. It is difficult for data center customers to expand in Northern Virginia because Dominion is struggling to deliver enough electricity given the limitations of the current infrastructure.
If the datacenter is literally right nice to the power station, it seems that capacity of the power grid isn't going to be an issue?
You need to just go back 20 years, and build that power station.
New builds will appear, since there is a lot of demand
This isn't doing that though. It would be if Amazon commissioned a new plant for their own needs but it seems like they will be sucking power from the existing grid.
Presumably there's a reason this complex was built right next to the nuclear plant rather than built somewhere else and plugged into the grid. It gives them guaranteed demand which helps them operate more efficiently, it avoids transmission losses, it avoids putting load on the grid since it's not going via the grid...
Talen Energy Corporation just wanted to make a zero carbon data center attached to their power plant. A cool side-project for them. Microsoft made them a deal they couldn't refuse.
Climate change could actually get a lot worse. Just ask Mars and Venus.
Shortage of transformers is already a thing and has been for years. That's not even a prediction. The lead time for large transformers is years and there is no inventory.
In that case, according to capitalism there should be massive private equity investment in transformers right about now.