UK Needs More Nuclear To Power AI, Says Amazon Boss 31
In an exclusive interview with the BBC, AWS CEO Matt Garman said the UK must expand nuclear energy to meet the soaring electricity demands of AI-driven data centers. From the report: Amazon Web Services (AWS), which is part of the retail giant Amazon, plans to spend 8 billion pounds on new data centers in the UK over the next four years. Matt Garman, chief executive of AWS, told the BBC nuclear is a "great solution" to data centres' energy needs as "an excellent source of zero carbon, 24/7 power." AWS is the single largest corporate buyer of renewable energy in the world and has funded more than 40 renewable solar and wind farm projects in the UK.
The UK's 500 data centres currently consume 2.5% of all electricity in the UK, while Ireland's 80 hoover up 21% of the country's total power, with those numbers projected to hit 6% and 30% respectively by 2030. The body that runs the UK's power grid estimates that by 2050 data centers alone will use nearly as much energy as all industrial users consume today.
In an exclusive interview with the BBC, Matt Garman said that future energy needs were central to AWS planning process. "It's something we plan many years out," he said. "We invest ahead. I think the world is going to have to build new technologies. I believe nuclear is a big part of that particularly as we look 10 years out."
The UK's 500 data centres currently consume 2.5% of all electricity in the UK, while Ireland's 80 hoover up 21% of the country's total power, with those numbers projected to hit 6% and 30% respectively by 2030. The body that runs the UK's power grid estimates that by 2050 data centers alone will use nearly as much energy as all industrial users consume today.
In an exclusive interview with the BBC, Matt Garman said that future energy needs were central to AWS planning process. "It's something we plan many years out," he said. "We invest ahead. I think the world is going to have to build new technologies. I believe nuclear is a big part of that particularly as we look 10 years out."
Build tidal power stations (Score:4, Insightful)
The technology has never been developed; if a proportion of what is thrown at nuclear was spent on tidal generation we'd all be far better off, and especially in the UK where we've got BIG tides to harness!
The French did it in 1966 - but since then it's largely fallen out of fashion.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:2)
It's still being worked on in some places. Oregon State University just partnered to create a tidal energy proving ground [pacwaveenergy.org] off the US west coast.
Hopefully it remains open in light of certain political situations. Oregon State gets a hell of a lot of research grants.
Re: (Score:3)
It can't be ready in time (Score:5, Interesting)
This is a pipe dream - at best it would take 10 years to bring new plants online. The state of AI will be very different by then.
Not that I'm against a push for nuclear, I'm very in favor of that for a variety of reasons, but feeding the AI behemoth isn't one of the use cases.
Amazon is the Center of the Universe! (Score:2)
Translation: All government and private policy and spending exists solely to increase the personal wealth of Bezos, Trump, and the oligarch clique.
As the saying goes (Score:3)
Translation: All government and private policy and spending exists solely to increase the personal wealth of Bezos, Trump, and the oligarch clique.
Just another example of, "Socialize the risk, privatize the profits".
You pay for it then (Score:3)
Dear Mr Garman, ... that aren't any better than a search engine.
No one needs your hallucinating pieces of garbage
Let Amazon Pay (Score:2)
Other users should not have to pay for Amazon's insatiable diet for electricity. If Amazon want more, they should pay for it. That is also true elsewhere, especially in the U.S., where state utility regulators keep raising the cost of electricity on everyone to meet the demand from growing data centers.
Re: Let Amazon Pay (Score:3)
The problem with private companies starting power stations for their personal ventures is, what happens if this whole AI thing doesn't really turn out to be the greatest thing since sliced bread? I feel like we're already starting to find that to be the case now. Do we end up with a half-finished megaproject sitting abandoned (like Foxconn's WI plant), or worse, a fully built nuclear reactor Amazon wants to shutdown and abandon to become a Superfund site they won't have to pay to decommission?
Dog bites man. (Score:2)
Massive consumer of electricity comes out in favor of building massive amounts of electrical generation with other people's money.
May as well have said "water still makes things wet."
Does it really? (Score:2)
Is that worth building nuclear power plants for?
Not that anyone's going to ask any of us. We gave up our rights and our political power and our right to vote. And we got the stupidest things imaginable in exchange for them.
Re: (Score:2)
AI will be used to improve robots which will replace most menial work but at least some of us will be useful as spare parts for the superior humans
AI needs energy? check. Needs nuclear? Um... (Score:2)
... not necessarily.
I'm not saying the energy can't or shouldn't come from nuclear, I'm saying you shouldn't be saying up front where it must come from (unless there is only one viable source, which isn't the case here).
There are obvious reasons to avoid anything that will contribute to global warming of there are feasible/cost-effective alternatives, but that's not the same as saying "we must have nuclear plants."
Until you've put solar panels, wind plants, wave generation, geothermal, etc. everywhere that
Central to their planning? (Score:2)
If it's so central for their planning, they could just pay to get them build.
Alternatively.... (Score:2)
Alternatively, the UK (and indeed the world) can give a big F-you to AI and the tech bros pushing it.
Re: (Score:2)
No, no, no, a country cannot allow an "AI" gap!
Re: (Score:2)
Right... there will be a hallucination deficit!
AI nuclear civilisation :o (Score:3)
In doing so, they undermined their ecological foundation: no trees meant no canoes (so no fishing), soil erosion (so poor agriculture), and eventual famine, conflict, and population collapse.
Now, in the modern world, we’re seeing something eerily similar: