Dec 4 (Reuters) - Facebook-parent Meta said on

Wednesday it plans to invest $10 billion to set up an AI data

center in Louisiana, in what would be the tech company's largest

data center in the world.

The hyperscaler data center, which is planned in Richland

Parish, is designed to process huge amounts of data required to

support digital infrastructure, including artificial

intelligence workloads.

The development comes a day after Meta said it was seeking

proposals from nuclear power developers to help meet its AI and

environment goals, adding that it wanted to add 1 to 4 gigawatts

of new U.S. nuclear generation capacity starting in the early

2030s.

AI computing has led to a massive surge in the energy needs

of Big tech companies such as Amazon ( AMZN ) and Microsoft, sparking a

renewed interest in nuclear power.

But it will be tough to swiftly meet soaring power demand

with just nuclear energy due to an ageing fleet of reactors, an

overburdened U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, potential

uranium fuel supply obstacles and local opposition.

The amount of electricity used by the Meta data center in

Louisiana, will be matched by renewable energy for which the

tech firm will be working with utility Entergy ( ETR ).

Entergy ( ETR ), which provides electricity to parts of Arkansas,

Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas, has two nuclear power plants

in Louisiana.

The utility previously received legislative approval for

investment in transmission and generation to serve Amazon's ( AMZN )

upcoming cloud services facility in Mississippi.

Meta expects construction of the Louisiana data center to

continue through 2030 with site work beginning in December.