UK Needs More Nuclear To Power AI, Says Amazon Boss 66
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:5, Interesting)
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]
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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.
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Re:Build tidal power stations (Score:4, Interesting)
It looks like Severn barrage might be going ahead now in some form. Not really a barrage but still able to make use of the tides to generate reliable, consistent electricity.
The UK should abandon nuclear. We can't build it at a reasonable price or in a reasonable time frame. This guy says we need it for AI but if we start today then will it be at all relevant when it comes online in 25 years? Because that's how long it takes to build here.
Planning for demand in 25 years is difficult, and no commercial operator is daft enough to gamble on it being commercially viable that far into the future. Nuclear isn't commercially viable today, it's only the massive subsidies that make it possible to build. Do we really want to be subsidizing AI like that, in 25 years time?
Scotland subsidising England? In your dreams... (Score:2)
Scotland receives excessive transfers from the UK taxpayers because of the Barnett formula. It's underlying deficit is massive, and is likely to worsen even more rapidly than England's. Oil revenues are falling rapidly, and there's a large cost to the taxpayer to be paid as they decommission. The issue of the fiscal deficit, like that of 'which currency would an independent Scotland use?' remained largely unaddressed by either side at the time of the referendum.
Re:Build tidal power stations (Score:4, Interesting)
"We can't build it at a reasonable price or in a reasonable time frame. "
Building? Try dismantling.
Dismantling Sellafield will cost only £254 billions and need 100 years.
Billions that the UK does not have.
They also don't have the £600 billions needed to fix the waste-water infrastructure up to EU standards.
That won't happen either.
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"But my AI told me that nuclear power tastes better!"
Or some other variation of that joke... But on today's Slashdot it seems "These are not the jokes you are searching for..." If any.
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They don't need (much) more power. They want cheaper power. And doesn't care about the environment at all.
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.
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10 years is the time it takes for the Chinese to get a plant online from the point of breaking ground. It'll take another 10 years on top of that to permit, prepare an area, setup the project, resource the construction, etc.
Re:It can't be ready in time (Score:4, Interesting)
10 years is wildly optimistic. Hinkley Point C was supposed to be 20 years, but has been delayed. Sizewell C hasn't started construction yet, but even if it was greenlit tomorrow they are projecting 20 years.
Re: It can't be ready in time (Score:1)
Re: It can't be ready in time (Score:1)
Amazon is the Center of the Universe! (Score:5, Insightful)
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:5, Insightful)
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".
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Yeah, the implication here is that it's not worth building nuclear to power homes, hospitals, and airports. None of those things deserve reliable, low-carbon electricity. Only AI data centers.
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:4, Insightful)
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?
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Re: Let Amazon Pay (Score:2)
Dog bites man. (Score:4, Insightful)
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."
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Were they the sole funder of those renewable projects?
Are they the sole purchaser of the energy produced?
If the answer to either of those is "no" then they used other people's money.
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.
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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:1, Insightful)
... 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
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The UK government sees a need for more nuclear power, so this isn't just the opinion of some Amazon employees.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/uk-... [yahoo.com]
There's likely better sources to prove my point than the one I linked to above but it is difficult to find them given that there's so much talk out of UK about nuclear submarine deals with the USA and Australia, and the UK being involved with preventing various nations from building nuclear weapons. The UK government funded studies on how they could expect to meet t
Re: AI needs energy? check. Needs nuclear? Um... (Score:2)
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It's an argument of generation density.
They know they need a fuck ton of energy for their AI ambitions as they currently stand. And there's no better way to cut down on how much other infrastructure you're going to need for transmission, than to be able to stick your AI data center right next to a nuclear power plant where you can practically plug directly into the turbines. It also vastly cuts down on all the red tape - you only have to get permits and such for the one site, rather than many sites large
Re: AI needs energy? check. Needs nuclear? Um... (Score:2)
Central to their planning? (Score:2)
If it's so central for their planning, they could just pay to get them build.
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What are the regulators supposed to do?
EPR is approved, everything else isn't ready to approve. Not their fault almost everything is pie in the sky.
Alternatively.... (Score:3)
Alternatively, the UK (and indeed the world) can give a big F-you to AI and the tech bros pushing it.
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No, no, no, a country cannot allow an "AI" gap!
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Right... there will be a hallucination deficit!
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Hahaha
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Um...
https://www.gov.uk/government/... [www.gov.uk]
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/art... [bbc.co.uk]
On the other hand it's Starmer, so if he hears in the Daily Fail about Brexity little Englander sneezing while reading about his plans then tomorrow we'll hear that AI is just terrible and that's what he believes. He'll probably then have a few choice in his mind, but rather flabby insults for anyone who disagrees.
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hazardous radioactive waste that will be humanity's problem to deal with for tens of thousands of years to come
Nope. What makes radioactive substance hazardous is the rate of emissions, i.e. the rate of decay. Hazardous wastes have half lives measured in weeks or months or a few years.
Give me a lump of U-235 and I'll take it home with me. With a half life of 700 million years, the probability that I will die from it is vanishingly small.
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Mainly politics and the sound of the anti-nuke crowd screeching. They are releasing the stored contaminated water into the sea at controlled rates. In addition to the tank leaks that are ongoing. So far, no excess radiation levels have been detected. Of course, there are those who might argue against such dilution [wikipedia.org].
The only real improvement they could make with the release process would be to take the water offshore in tankers and distribute it around instead of dumping it at one point along their coastline
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:
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It's now thought that rats and mice did the worst damage on Easter Island, rather than tree felling. But yeah, still ultimately from human actions.
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The people cut down every last tree, likely to transport and erect their monumental Moai statues
Nope. It has been pretty well established that the Moai walked [bbc.com] from the quarries to their present locations.
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Regardless, the Rapa Nui people exhausted the islands resources in building those statues. Similar to how bitcoin is hoovering up resources in pursuit of generating more bitcoin.
LOL (Score:2)
These technology companies think that a solution that is 20 years away is going to solve their problem today. It's like time is not a variable in any of their thought process. You can plan all the nuclear power you want, all that will happen is your datacentre lights stay off for 2 decades at which point you will no longer exist because less stupid companies actually implemented solutions in a shorter timeframe.
Hey (Score:2)
That's Democracy (Score:3)
Who else should dictate European countries' energy policy if not an US corporation. We live in democratic states, after all and Amazon is the people, too.
then let the AI people pay for it (Score:2)