Can nuclear power really fuel the rise of AI?

These somewhat unlikely partnerships can be a victory for both nuclear power industry and large technology companies. Technology giants need guaranteed energy sources, and many are looking for low emissions to strike their climatic goals. For nuclear factories operators and nuclear technology developers, financial support for huge customers can help keep old nuclear power plants open and push new technologies forward.

“there [are] Michael Terril, the great director of clean energy and carbon reduction in Google, says many advantages of the nuclear. (Fixed energy sources are those that provide continuous energy.)

But there is one blatant road barrier: timing. “There are needs of different time scales,” says Patrick White, a former research director of the Nuclear Innovation Alliance. White says that many of these technology companies will require large amounts of energy in the three years to the next five, but building new nuclear factories can approach a decade.

Some nuclear technologies may take from the next generation, especially small standard reactors, less time, but promising companies have not yet returned to their first reactors-and in some cases still are years away even from modest demonstrations.

This timing mismatch means that even with technology companies planning nuclear energy, they will actually be largely dependent on fossil fuels, maintaining open coal factories, and even building new natural gas factories that can remain open for decades. Artificial and nuclear intelligence can help grow each other, but the reality is that growth can be much slower than the main headlines.

Artificial intelligence need speed

In the United States alone there are approximately 3,000 data centers, and current expectations say that the mutation of artificial intelligence can add thousands by the end of the contract. The rush of the global energy demand for the data center can increase by up to 165 % by 2030, according to one modern analysis of Goldman Sachs. In the United States, estimates from industry and academic circles indicate that the energy demand for data centers may reach 400 hours of Terawatt by 2030-less than 100 hours of Terawatt in 2020 and higher than the total electricity demand from the entire country of Mexico.

There are indications that the data center boom may be slowing, with some companies slowing down or stopping some projects in recent weeks. But even the most measured projections, in analyzes such as a recent report from the International Energy Agency, expect the demand for energy to increase. The only question is how much.

Many of the same technology giants who are currently scrambling to build databases have also set climate targets, pledging to reach clear yellow emissions or carbon -free energy over the next two decades. So they have an interest from where this electricity comes from.