With all the talk about AI along with it comes the discussion of the enormous increase in power generation required. I have even heard discussion of Three Mile Island being brought back on line to deal with this requirement. I don't really get it. Is AI destined to be banks and banks of super computers?
I've uttered these words on too many occasions in my lifetime, and here they apply once again . . . Just because something is possible doesn't mean that it should be done.
Considering Bitcoin, AI, EV mandates and ect. - Over/Under proposition - US per capita consumption of electricity increases 100% by 2040.
That is not a difficult math problem. As I mentioned in another Thread on PL recently, simply looking at the projected population increase by 2035 reveals there will be a hell of a lot more problems than giving a damn about AI and enough electricity in 2040. That issue is already here. And now the plan is retrofit 3 Mile Island? I assume some Brainiac in the decision making process used AI for a solution. Jesus. We get stupider and stupider.
I think to lessen the issue with power, unless we want rolling blackouts like they have in South Africa, we need to invest more in nuclear power. It's more efficient, takes up less space than wind farms, and can run regardless of weather. I know someone may bring up nuclear disasters such as Chernobyl, but that was 40 years ago. Even the most recent one was 2011 in Japan, 13 years ago. Nuclear disasters are infrequent and not nearly as devastating as Chernobyl was 40 years ago. With more resources and research invested into nuclear power, I would bet that the chance of a disaster can be reduced to effectively zero percent.
Oh, I don't know about that. Even if we invested everything into nuclear power that we invested in the Manhattan Project, we could still end up with Kamala Harris in the White House . . .
I want to agree, but it's my understanding there's issues with scaling. You can't just build a bigger reactor and get proportionally more power, you'd have to build many smaller ones to meet demand. The startup is also comparatively expensive and time consuming per reactor compared to other power sources. There's some promise with using fusion instead of fission, but we're not quite there yet. Long term I think it's pretty clear the future should be wind and solar. How could the future be anything but the "infinite" power generation resources already occurring and waiting to be gathered? So I'd say research and resources should go into efficiency in gathering, transfer, and storage from these resources.
I'd hoped putting it in quotes would clarify I didn't literally mean infinite. The sun is a generator that is "infinite" because there's no way humanity comes even close to out-living the sun. Same for wind, if it stops for some magical reason we have much bigger problems than power. In the practical sense, those and other natural forces are effectively infinite generators.
What's more infinite than either solar or wind is a reversal in consumption . . . Conservatism. Try it . . . you'll like it!
