Modern AI data centers consume enormous amounts of power, and it looks like they will get even more power-hungry in the coming years as companies like Google, Microsoft, Meta, and OpenAI strive towards artificial general intelligence (AGI). Oracle has already outlined plans to use nuclear power plants for its 1-gigawatt datacenters. It looks like Microsoft plans to do the same as it just inked a deal to restart a nuclear power plant to feed its data centers, reports Bloomberg.
I love how the ‘Death rates per unit of electricity production’ graphic highlights deaths from a 1975 dam break in China, therefore making hydro seem less safe than nuclear, when the dam in question up to that point hadn’t produced a single megawatt of electricity (and by the looks of it, still hasn’t to this day). At the same time it appears to conveniently ignore the increased mortality among uranium miners.
Equally then, the nuclear disasters shouldn’t count, right? No, we count everything, including the accidents, even if measures have been put in place to prevent them from happening again. The dam was made to produce electricity. The construction of that is still a factor in the deaths. Same with solar, coal, wind, nuclear, and everything else. If the deaths wouldn’t have happened otherwise then they are to blame.
How do you assume it’s ignoring their increased mortality?