New power plants are likely at least a decade away. The current AI boom will have to be powered by natural gas or by reactivating old nuclear plants. Perhaps this will incentivize companies like Google, Apple, and Amazon to promote natural gas as the comparatively clean and extremely cheap (amazing) power source that it is.
Just in case, for long term safety reasons I’d suggest avoiding powering AI with Nuclear Energy. A dependency on sunlight is a good incentive to keep the atmosphere in a good condition.
The alternative to nuclear isn’t solar, it’s gas. We’re already deploying solar and wind and batteries as quickly as we can. Follow the money: the anti-nuclear establishment is now funded by gas. (Which is being deployed at a similar clip to solar.)
The clean, dense, non-intermittent power provided by nuclear reactors is extremely valuable.
Unless you are located near a hydroelectric dam, there is really no substitute.
The government will not allow the technology companies to "hog" existing reactors.
Presumably this will force the technology companies to build their own reactors. Good.
I'll end with a quote from 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.
