AI uses a lot of power. Some of the next generation data centers may use as much power as one million U.S. households. Technology companies like Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Meta hope nuclear power will offer a climate solution for this energy use. Nuclear power plants can deliver hundreds of megawatts of power without producing greenhouse gas emissions. But some long-time watchers of the nuclear industry are skeptical that it's the right investment for big tech companies to make. Read more of science correspondent Geoff Brumfiel's reporting here. Interested in more stories about the future of energy? Email us at [email protected]. We'd love to hear from you!Listen to every episode of Short Wave sponsor-free and support our work at NPR by signing up for Short Wave+ at plus.npr.org/shortwave.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
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You're listening to Shortwave from NPR.
Hey there, short wavers. Regina Barber here. And today I'm joined by NPR's most radioactive correspondent, Jeff Brumfield. Hey, Jeff.
Hi, Gina.
OK, so Jeff, we joke about this because you cover all things nuclear. You also sometimes cover artificial intelligence or AI.
And recently, those two sides of my beat have been coming much closer together because the big tech companies who are all leading this AI revolution—I'm talking about Microsoft, Meta, Google, Amazon— They're also making big investments in nuclear power right now. And they're doing it because they need a lot more juice to run their AI programs.
Some researchers estimate that a search using AI uses as much as 10 times the power of a normal Google search.
Yeah. I mean, when I think of AI and nuclear power together, it just sounds like this, like, dystopian sci-fi movie. Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, in all the movies, you know, Terminator or whatever, when the AI gets a hold of the nukes, it all goes wrong. But in real life, we got a way to go because before AI can somehow use its nuclear power to destroy us all, Silicon Valley has to remake the nuclear industry, which has been, frankly, stagnant for years.
So today on the show, the AI and nuclear power collab. Why does big tech want to go nuclear?
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