Yann LeCun (Vice-President, Chief AI Scientist at Meta):
AI datacenters will be built next to energy production sites that can produce
gigawatt-scale, low-cost, low-emission electricity continuously.
Basically, next to nuclear power plants.
The advantage is that there is no need for expensive and wasteful
long-distance distribution infrastructure.
Note: yes, solar and wind are nice and all, but they require lots of land
and massive-scale energy storage systems for when there is too little sun
and/or wind. Neither simple nor cheap.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41621097
See also:
Microsoft paying $100/MWh to restart Three Mile Island nuclear power plant:
He is French, so there's a bit of national pride mixed in there.
But, in the real world, AI data centers are going to be what say 4% of global electricity in 2030, nuclear will probably maintain their 10% as electricity usage goes up.
So data centers are going to absorb half of the nuclear rollout, most of which exists today, so they can claim to be green and get priority access to this reliable source while the other 96% of the global economy has a slight setback in carbon and puts up with the scraps he leaves us?
They'd be doing a greater service to the world if they connected to the grid and just paid for clean renewables energy to be fed into the grid.
Which is indeed what the 3 Mile Island announcement will do, except with an expensive nuclear refurb.
Let freedom ring their ears. Noisy Neighbor: Bitcoin's Hidden Health Cost: