Earlier this year, the first offshore wind-powered data center was placed off the coast of Shanghai. A few years ago, China deployed another offshore data center, and an Oregon-based startup has models for a third. With the growing debates about where to place the AI data centers because of their resource demands and costs on the local community, some have once again turned to the ocean as a frontier for technological expansion.
This is not the first time companies have envisioned large infrastructural developments offshore in pursuit of “harvesting the bounty of the oceans.”[1]
In 1969, New Jersey-based Public Service Electric and Gas (PSE&G) went searching for new locations to place a nuclear power plant. Energy demand was predicted to outpace supply in the most densely populated state. The traditional nuclear facilities required hundreds of acres of land and millions of gallons of cooling water that the rivers could not provide. One employee proposed nuclear plants on floating platforms in the ocean.
From their perspective, the ocean was not only the last available space for large power facilities but also the most efficient location. PSE&G engineers described how the ocean functioned as the largest natural heat sink on the planet, making it ideal for dissipating the waste heat produced by nuclear reactors.
Advocates also emphasized the flexibility of floating plants, suggesting that such facilities could be relocated to areas with the greatest electricity demand. The PSE&G project manager anticipated that “once everyone is assured that we are going to get licensed, they are all going to come and jump into the water with us.”
Preserving coastal land for maintaining the aesthetics of the beach was appealing to the planners from PSE&G, who selected an offshore location just northeast of Atlantic City. Discussions were also emerging about the possibility of legalizing gambling in Atlantic City, a development that would bring more tourists to the area and potentially increase energy demand while placing greater pressure on coastal space.[2] One New Jersey resident proposed integrating nuclear plants with these recreational developments. Resort hotels or gambling venues could be built alongside them, with reactor waste heat used to warm buildings or swimming pools.[3]
The manufacturing facility would be based at Blount Island in Jacksonville, Florida, where Offshore Power Systems (OPS) planned to build floating nuclear plants for deployment across the Eastern Seaboard, including two plants intended for Jacksonville. City officials and businessmen saw OPS as an opportunity, citing its potential to create over 10,000 local jobs. City agencies approved the project within two months, despite calls for a slower review.[4]
When critics raised concerns about the environmental impacts of similar offshore nuclear proposals, U.S. representatives framed them as positive. The planners believed that warmer discharge water could improve the local marine environment by introducing new species and boosting fishing.[5]
So far, all things point toward an inevitable construction of the floating nuclear plants. But things did not go as planned.
The economic justifications for terminating the project eventually won out. The peak electricity demand fell from 8 percent to 2.8 percent growth in the 1970s. This, combined with pressure to make PSE&G’s stockholders rather than electricity customers bear the project’s costs, led the utility to delay the project, which was canceled in 1978. Looking to the present day, economic realities may once again slow the expansion of data centers. Demand for opening new data centers could decline, weakening the case for investing in new facilities.
Or if the demand materializes and construction proves to be necessary, it will be important to look at all possible long-term outcomes. The ocean came to be seen as a space for large-scale technological systems that are difficult to site on land, a perspective that continues today as the ocean’s value remains defined by its usefulness for infrastructure and development. In the 1970s, arguments regarding the harmful environmental impacts of the offshore plants may have been obscured, dismissed as hindering future progress, and deemed less credible.[6]But today we know much more about the effects of warming oceans, making the additional waste heat from offshore plants harder to dismiss.
[1] Gordon Selfridge, “Nuclear Power Plants: A Fleet on the Horizon?” Environmental Law 6, no. 3 (1976): 793.
[2] Public Hearing on Senate Concurrent Resolution No. 74, Before the New Jersey Senate Judiciary Comm, 194th General Assembly, 1st session, vol. 1, 2–3 (1970) (statement of George Somer, Mayor of Atlantic City).
[3] Coastal Effects of Offshore Energy Systems: An Assessment of Oil and Gas Systems Deepwater Ports, and Nuclear Powerplants Off the Coast of New Jersey and Delaware, vol. 1 (United States Congress Office of Technology Assessment, 1976), 92.
[4] Martin Dyckman, “Big Ifs Still Loom in Jacksonville,” St. Petersburg Times, June 5, 1972 in Blount Island Development: Environmental Statement Final (Jacksonville District, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, August 3, 1973), 154–55.
[5] 115 Cong. Rec. (Sept. 30, 1969) H27743 (statement of Rep. Hosmer).
[6] Sean Devereux, “Boosters in the Newsroom: The Jacksonville Case,” Columbia Journal Review 14, no. 1 (1976): 46; Blount Island Development: Environmental Statement Final (Jacksonville District, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, August 3, 1973), 62.
*Cover image: “Size Comparison of Proposed Atlantic Generating Station,” by Public Service Electric & Gas Company and Office of Technology Assessment in Coastal Effects of Offshore Energy Systems: An Assessment of Oil and Gas Systems, Deepwater Ports, and Nuclear Powerplants Off the Coast of New Jersey and Delaware, vol. 1 (United States Congress Office of Technology Assessment, 1976), 198.
[Cover image description: Two nuclear plants sit on a barge surrounded by a breakwater in the middle of the ocean, with a scale comparison above showing that the barge is seven football fields long.]
