A lot of power for AI and cloud datacenters.

Modern AI data centers consume enormous amounts of power, and it looks like they will get even more power-hungry in the coming years as companies like Google, Microsoft, Meta, and OpenAI strive towards artificial general intelligence (AGI). Oracle has already outlined plans to use nuclear power plants for its 1-gigawatt datacenters. It looks like Microsoft plans to do the same as it just inked a deal to restart a nuclear power plant to feed its data centers, reports Bloomberg.

  • Cethin@lemmy.zipEnglish
    1·
    4 hours ago

    Even if you call it conventional (I don’t think anyone would, but sure) it isn’t dirty. Dirty energy is stuff that releases pollution that isn’t contained. Nuclear releases water vapor and that’s all.

    Nuclear is also anything but clean. People love to call nuclear ‘clean’ because its low in emissions, but that’s ignoring the requirement for either safe storage of radioactive material or reprocessing thereof, as well as the emission of radioactivity in the water cycled through the reactor.

    It is very clean. The radioactive material it produces that must be contained is very easy to contain safely. It really isn’t an issue. Check these videos out if you want to learn more about it. (The second video is another plant owned and operated by the same company that is being contracted here.)

    https://youtu.be/4aUODXeAM-k?si=VhZ6LZJcA0HJsz2z

    https://youtu.be/lhHHbgIy9jU?si=6Wn_1t-vNwSFYCMP

    Edit: It’s also the cleanest and nearly the safest source of energy, including the disasters. https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy

    • rainynight65@feddit.orgEnglish
      1·
      1 hour ago

      Edit: It’s also the cleanest and nearly the safest source of energy, including the disasters. https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy

      I love how the ‘Death rates per unit of electricity production’ graphic highlights deaths from a 1975 dam break in China, therefore making hydro seem less safe than nuclear, when the dam in question up to that point hadn’t produced a single megawatt of electricity (and by the looks of it, still hasn’t to this day). At the same time it appears to conveniently ignore the increased mortality among uranium miners.