We know it uses a lot of water to cool the 'puters.
You know that AI is taking off when...Microsoft plans to power data centers with nuclear reactors: https://t.co/DZJyIsV7TR
— Max Tegmark (@tegmark) September 23, 2023
If interested see also:
And:
"Aluminum Prices Hit Decade High Amid China's Drive To Cut Carbon Emissions"
What? You forgot the entire rationale for this exercise is to raise prices enough to change behavior?
Regarding aluminum in particular, just as with data centers, all the cheapest spots have already been taken. As coal-fired electricity is phased out we will come to understand why Intel said they would never again build a manufacturing plant in California and have shut down the fabs they had built in their glory days. And why Columbia River hydro was the electricity of choice* for the server farms of Microsoft and Yahoo....
*Washington’s Advantage: Electricity Costs
Washington’s north central data center market enjoys the lowest power costs in the nation,
absent subsidies in other jurisdictions. A megawatt of power in Washington can be less than a
third the cost of what it would cost in California – that difference is worth approximately
$800,000 per year per megawatt. On a 5 MW project, that differential is worth $4 million per
year. Data center owners also look at reliability, and Washington’s hydropower is considered to
be highly reliable. Where, as in virtually all competitive markets, sales taxes are not levied on
data center equipment, power represents about 70 percent of a data center owner’s operating
costs, and are therefore a key market differentiator.
And:
"Study shows advantages of charging electric heavy-duty vehicles with small modular nuclear reactors"
You didn't think we posted Build Your Own Nuclear Power Plant to no practical purpose did you?........Coincidentally:
From The Oregonian, January 20
Regulators sign off on NuScale small modular nuclear reactor, first to get approval
Even more coincidentally, tech behemoths and billionaires, think Bill Gates and Microsoft's Azure cloud, Jeff Bezos and Amazon's cloud and Google's cloud have all been putting money into SMR research for their own purposes. From The Register, December 30, 2022:
Miniature nuclear reactors could be the answer to sustainable datacenter growth
Previously on NuScale:
And many, many more on SMR's in general including:
