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For a Thing That Will Supposedly Fix the Climate, AI Sure Needs a Lot of Fossil Fuels
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this post was submitted on 06 Dec 2024
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Plants that take ten years to build don’t seem like a very good response to a boom that measures dataceneter build time in months and will probably collapse in a year or two as hype is replaced by the reality of the technology. Battery backed solar and wind on the other hand are both cheaper, and can be built faster than the ‘AI’ datacenters they are ment to power.
Don’t get me wrong, I think nuclear power is important to the energy transition, and will find its use in certain use cases like large scale marine transport or places near the artic circle, but the window to build it was 1970 to 2010. At a point when the biggest thing slowing down green energy if finding financing for it, it makes sense to go with the lowest cost option available, which is battery backed solar.
Plants take 10 year to build because of a purposely complicated burocratic process. We churn out at least 1 nuclear submarines a year.
Edit: I still think you're right, renewables and batteries are cheaper than nuclear in most first world countries, but the building process doesn't have to be that long.