Plans by Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta to build an AI data center in the US that runs on nuclear power were thwarted in part because a rare species of bee was discovered on land earmarked for the project, according to people familiar with the matter.

Nuclear-power stocks slumped on Monday after US regulators barred a plant from supplying extra power to an Amazon data center. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission rejected the deal between Amazon and Talen Energy late last week.

U.S. energy regulators rejected an amended interconnection agreement for an Amazon data center connected directly to a nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania, a filing showed on Friday. Members of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission said the agreement to increase the capacity of the data center located on the site of Talen Energy's Susquehanna nuclear generating facility could raise power bills for the public and affect the grid's reliability.

Supporting the development of data centers — including providing the enormous amounts of electricity they require — is a matter of national security, a top federal energy regulator said.

By Laila Kearney NEW YORK (Reuters) -Costs and reliability concerns related to the burgeoning trend of building energy-intensive data centers next to U.S. power plants were the focus of a technical conference held on Friday by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.