Amazon, Google & Microsoft Embrace Nuclear Power to Fuel Massive AI & Cryptocurrency Energy Demands

Tech companies are turning to nuclear to fulfill the skyrocketing energy needs of artificial intelligence, with major corporations like Amazon, Google and Microsoft announcing plans to invest in nuclear power. But the speed at which energy needs are growing may not align with the construction or revitalization of nuclear infrastructure, says Alex de Vries, who researches the unintended consequences of AI and cryptocurrencies. There may be a "mismatch between the needs of tech companies today" and the future, while nuclear power continues to carry the same safety risks that led to its phasing out in the first place.

Despite nuclear boosters' promotion of the energy source, Tim Judson of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service calls nuclear power an "elaborate greenwashing scheme." Nuclear is "not carbon-free," says Diné organizer Leona Morgan, who highlights the fuel costs and environmental contamination — particularly within and around Indigenous communities in the southwest United States — of the uranium mining required to produce nuclear power. Because the carbon costs before and after nuclear generation are not factored into energy calculations, says Morgan, "it's really not going to solve the energy crisis."

[Shtoops]

This would be something id be in favor of if it wasnt being driven by AI, crypto, and these tech companies specifically. I dont trust Google to work with the best, safest companies tbh.

[patriciabray]

Leona Morgan's comments about the realities for Native communities is excellent. We still have 600 superfund sites of toxic and hazardous chemicals from WWII in the Northern Hemisphere. Dialog and sharing are so vital going forward.

[JP-JustSayin]

Saying nuclear doesn't count as carbon-free energy because its supply chain is not carbon-free seems ... intentionally obtuse.

Thats why its called a "transition." The first solar panel was not built using solar power. The first oil was not drilled using oil. The first steam engine was not made possible by steam power. The first coal was not mined using coal. The first tools were built without tools. The first fire was built without fire.

... what's your point?

[adampeterson]

Something else the US taxpayer can pay for so they can make more profits rather than pay livable wages? Great plan.

[marybranning]

Can't get rid of nuclear waste, and it lasts forever. I'd rather not have AI, and I'm tired of these decisions being made for me.

[longshank]

My City invested in Palo Verde in AZ while it was being built. They are running out of water from Colorado River. WTF are they going to use when they have to cool down the bars after they've been spent?

[JMcMact]

The level of greed is astonishing today… no cure for that. .Dorothy Parker wrote a poem entitled The Flaw in Paganism, “Drink and dance, laugh and lie, love the reeling midnight through for tomorrow we shall die, (but alas we never do.”) seems fitting.

[ICHope]

You want to study the effects of Uranium/depleted Uranium look at the US Military troops that served in the Iraq war and the civilians in Iraq who were all exposed to depleted Uranium by the US Military.

[orlandocrespo]

Why do you have someone on claiming that nuclear is not carbon free? This is such a bad faith argument. All power sources take energy to build and setup so the same thing could be said of wind/solar.

Nuclear plants have a higher energy density than wind and solar farms. Idk why this person is arguing about land use when this is the case. You need to have people on who have not been biased against nuclear for decades already.

[beansnrice]

As crazy as it sounds, they may have the ability to transform the energy sector away from fossil fuels with this move. Nuclear is indeed greener than solar when mining, manufacturing and maintenance costs are included.

Nuclear power also spreads less radioactive waste into the environment, that honor goes to coal with natural gas from fracking coming in second. Because the radioactive isotopes are what are desired, mining for fuel for nuclear power in fact removes radioactive material from the environment that was naturally there.

[truthdisseminator]

Whatever the power source, the server centers run extremely hot, so you'd need huge volume of water for cooling.

[JaneDoe-bd]

Nuclear engineer here. This is a terrible idea and will not end well.

[JP-JustSayin]

Do we need nuclear power... i think we probably do.
Do we need AI data centers... nah!

[SamWilkinsonn]

It’s *not* carbon neutral. It takes carbon to build, maintain, employees commutes etc. People thought AI could be our saviour but it’s just making our predicament much worse.

[TheMkII]

We NEED nuclear energy for any realistic transition to net zero. I'm ok with this. While it's not ideal tech oligarchs are the ones investing in this for AI, for general population energy demands nuclear energy is very safe, modern reactor design is so much safer than the ones such as Chernobyl and Fukushima, and small modular reactors are very promising. Nuclear energy good.

[stevengill]

It's not just LLMs and other machine learning systems, it's the massive digital storage we all need for our pictures, videos, etc!
Then there's Google indexing all the scientific literature, magazines, books, newspapers, etc etc.
Finally all those cryptocurrencies, yikes....
Oh yeah, all that data Google, Apple and Microsoft collect, on all those phones out there....every time I pick up this Motorola Android device sixteen accelerometers tell Google where I am, what I'm doing with the phone physically, as well as every web site I read, every video I watch, every picture & video I upload....I mean, man, it must add up!
Back in the late 60s I had a prescient high school teacher that, along with biology, physiology and other life sciences sciences talked about something called "the greenhouse effect" - he made it clear that it was in our future. One of the thought experiments he ran us through was the question, "even after we clean up the pollution, invent a environmentally safe power source and make all our transportation electric, what's the single pollutant we can never eliminate?

The answer, of course, was

[MattSeremet]

Nuclear is greener than any fossil fuel and is more reliable. Let's keep the nuclear industry on its toes with ever-increasing safety, but not get distracted by a misguided total distrust of it. It's worth noting even some of Chernobyl was still running in the year 2000.

[lukewarren]

Thanks, I didn't realize exactly our current situation now I will act even more appropriate to circumstances

[krampus]

I live 2 miles from a nuclear power plant. Very safe and my utility bill is cheap.

[MattSeremet]

The activists worried about mining and cleanup for nuclear are honestly heroes. As much as the power plant is great (imho), the externalities need to be addressed as with any industry. I hope people who agree also worry about how much (more) radiation is released from the coal industry (as a specific concern, not just the blanket term "pollution").