Chris Talgo at the American Thinker today has a post entitled We need nuclear power for AI and quantum computing. Talgo points to the fact that AI and quantum computing gobble up vastly more power than, say, a simple Google search. Of course, and I always want to point this out, AI and quantum computing are not generating new ideas. They just reveal what we already know (and think we know that isn't so) and regurgitate them faster than we can. People have been agape at what AI can apparently do, but it cannot generate new ideas. Only a genius human can do that. It only tells you very rapidly what is already known. If we had had AI in 1900, it would have told you that man could not fly, yet men thought up how to do it using God's plan with birds.
Talgo, and others look upon the wonders of AI and quantum computing, and he and they are right that we have no idea yet of the wonderful new technologies they will bring us. Just remember that everything man touches sooner or later is also used for corrupt purposes.
With those caveats, I repeat that Talgo is correct in his assessments that we are going to need vastly more power. We would need it even without the burden AI is going to place on our energy requirements. If we are ever to have most cars all electric, we would have to have vastly more power production and vastly more power lines connecting that power to the retail customer.
By far, the most important preparation that must be addressed as soon as possible is the lack of available electricity on demand that will be necessary to power the enormous energy consumption that AI and quantum computing will require.
Compared to traditional computing and search engine activities, AI and quantum computing consume vastly more energy. To put this into perspective, a ChatGPT query consumers 25 times more energy than a Google search. What’s more, a single AI image generation program requires about as much energy as it takes to fully charge a modern cell phone.
When one combines the sheer amount of energy that quantum computing, AI, and huge server farms will devour in the decades to come, it becomes glaringly obvious that the U.S. grid, in its current form, simply cannot provide enough energy to power the world of tomorrow.
Talgo makes the case then that the only way out of this hole we are digging is to build more nuclear power plants and reactivate those we have mothballed. I agree with Talgo again. Is nuclear power potentially dangerous? Well...sure. But we do many things that are potentially dangerous every day. How many times a week do you pump gasoline into your car? This is an extremely flammable liquid. Imagine pumping gasoline into your car on a very low humidity day, while wearing a wool suit and talking on your cell phone. What could go wrong? Yet we mitigate for all these potential factors. We do the same with nuclear.
The part that bothers me is this:
On the subject of nuclear power specifically being used to power AI, quantum computing, and the requisite server farms, Gates is also bullish. “Demand for electricity is going to go up a lot,” Gates says. “And now these data centers are adding to that. So the big tech companies are out looking at how they can help facilitate more power, so that these data centers can serve the exploding AI demand.” To supply this huge increase in power, Gates thinks nuclear power is going to play a vital role.
On this point, Microsoft, founded by Gates, recently announced a deal to restart a shuttered reactor at Three Mile Island to provide enough power for the company’s sprawling network of data centers. The Three Mile Island resurrection comes after Michigan officials approved a similar plan for the Palisades Nuclear Plant.
It is highly likely that the redeployment of these two nuclear power plants could serve as a tipping point. In fact, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, and Google CEO Sundar Pichai have made similar statements that they think nuclear power should be the primary energy source of these future technologies.
I am glad that the billionaire class is pushing nuclear on the government, now that they realize the need for their own purposes. But for the last 4 years Democrats have been trying to stuff the American people into worthless EVs without the power to charge them. The Democrats have pushed a "green energy agenda" that is anything but green against the best interests of the American people and that for all I can find, benefits China most of all. It makes my blood boil.
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