Thursday, December 26, 2024

We need more nuclear plants like Three Mile Island

We need more nuclear plants like Three Mile Island - André Béliveau
...Twelve days after Fonda's film hit theaters, a reactor at Three Mile Island (TMI) in central Pennsylvania partially melted down...
There were no documented fatalities, illnesses, or injuries..
The ensuing fearmongering campaign effectively killed nuclear energy in the United States...
But now nuclear power is on the verge of a comeback, with Silicon Valley leading the way...
  • Artificial intelligence (AI) devours electricity. A ChatGPT search requires about 10 times more watt-hours than a traditional Google search. Training GPT-3, a large language model that uses AI to generate text, requires about 1,300 megawatt-hours (MWh)—the same as the annual energy consumption of 130 households.
  • Our grids will need an additional capacity of at least 18 gigawatts (GWs) to service AI's data centers by 2030. New York City's grid is about 6 GW annually, so the grid needs about three Big Apples' worth of capacity to satiate AI's energy needs.
  • Intermittent sources, such as wind and solar, cannot meet that need...

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