OpEd: The Irony of Powering AI on Atomic Energy

Sunday, October 27, 2024

The former visitor center for the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant, or TMI, was overrun by greenery when I conducted an interview there in 2020 for my graduate research. The ivy had climbed to the second-story observation deck, once a carefully crafted vantage point for visitors to look across the street at the power plant and onto the atomic future it heralded.

Posted by LampLighter at 10:32 PM | 7 COMMENTS | permalink

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More from the OpEd...

... On March 28, 1979, TMI's Unit 2 reactor suffered a catastrophic loss of coolant, resulting in a partial meltdown that shook public confidence in the growing nuclear power industry. In 2019, the remaining Unit 1 reactor began its 60-year decommissioning. But on Sept. 20, 2024, Microsoft announced its deal with Constellation Energy, the current owner of the plant, to restart Unit 1 by 2028 to power the technology giant's data centers, many of which are devoted to artificial intelligence.
Mockup of a the top third of a small module reactor made by NuScale, the only SMR developer with a design approved by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Related
Opinion: Small Nuclear Reactors' Big Flaw

On the surface, nuclear power offers a seemingly reliable, carbon-free energy source to support AI's voracious energy demands. But belying that proposed solution is the irony of reviving a dying and dangerous 20th century technology to power a 21st century technology that also promises miracles and has high environmental and human costs.

I had been to the visitor center many times from 2019 to 2023 when I was an anthropology Ph.D. student researching the impact of TMI's decommissioning on Middletown, Pennsylvania, the small community that hosts the plant. In September 2019, I huddled with a handful of journalists, antinuclear activists, and residents at the funereal press conference that marked TMI's closing. We listened to the utility's senior vice president and chief nuclear officer lament the socioeconomic and environmental loss from the shutdown.

The speech mourned the lost promise of nuclear energy, indirectly drawing on the atom's 1953 rebranding at the height of the Cold War. In his "Atoms for Peace" speech to the United Nations General Assembly that year, President Dwight D. Eisenhower rhetorically transformed the atom from a global weapon of war into an abundant source of energy.

But Eisenhower and other experts believed the atom's potential extended beyond the energy sector.

In 1957 at the ratification of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Eisenhower declared that "the splitting of the atom may lead to the unifying of the entire divided world." ...

#1 | Posted by LampLighter at 2024-10-26 12:45 AM

"Too Cheap to Meter": A History of the Phrase
www.nrc.gov

... Donald Hintz, Chairman of the Nuclear Energy Institute, said at 2003 conference that the nuclear industry had been "plagued since the early days by the unfortunate quote: 'Too cheap to meter'." Those four words had become a standard catchphrase for what critics claim were impossibly sunny promises of nuclear power's potential.

Not so fast, Hintz countered. He noted that Atomic Energy Commission Chairman Lewis Strauss, in a 1954 address to science writers, had coined the phrase to describe fusion power, not fission. Nuclear power may be a victim of mistaken identity.

Hintz was not alone in this view. Over the past four decades, antinuclear and pronuclear versions of what Strauss meant by "too cheap to meter" have appeared in articles, blogs, and books. Even Wikipedia has weighed in, on the pro-nuclear side. Reconciling the two versions isn't easy b ...

#2 | Posted by LampLighter at 2024-10-26 12:49 AM

@#2 ... since Strauss wasn't explicit about what power source would electrify the utopian future he predicted.

Yeah, exactly that.

But from what remember back in the day, the promise seemed to be "free electricity" with no qualifications.

#3 | Posted by LampLighter at 2024-10-26 12:51 AM

... and a blast from the ancient times of 1979...

John Hall - Plutonium is forever (1979)
www.youtube.com

Lyrics excerpt...

genius.com

...
Everybody's wondering if mankind is cursed
He's ruining the sky and the ocean even worse
But I'll predict the cause of his eradication from the earth
Oh, oh, oh, oh, plutonium is forever

Now, oil slicks someday will disappear
We'll stop dumping PCBs in a few years
But there is one pollutant that we should really fear
Oh, oh, oh, oh, plutonium is forever
But will it go away?
For our purposes, never
It will be here past today
Yes, plutonium is forever

Now, carbon monoxide can only steal your breath
Asbestos poisoning give the workers a horrible death
The aerosol and the Concorde make sure there's no ozone left

Now, some want the oil companies to have to face divestment

And some want the utility to be denied the rate adjustment

But now they're all after plutonium, they think it's such a good investment
Because oh, oh, oh, oh, plutonium is forever
...

An amazing tune But I have to ask...

Prescient?

#4 | Posted by LampLighter at 2024-10-26 12:59 AM

@#4 ... Prescient? ...

Big Tech companies to invest in nuclear energy for AI needs (October 2024)
www.nbcbayarea.com

... The demand for energy to support the increasing need for artificial intelligence content is rapidly growing, leading several tech giants to consider investing in nuclear power to meet this demand.

Microsoft, an AI leader, is also leading the charge in transitioning to nuclear power. The Redmond, Wash.-based company said it will restart a reactor at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant.

"I think the Three Mile Island deal, where they're restarting Three Mile Island, is a great step, but we need to do more," said Josh Smith, the energy policy lead at Abundance Insitute. "That's gonna look like reforming regulations around nuclear and making it easier to build new plants." ...

#5 | Posted by LampLighter at 2024-10-28 02:38 AM

Then there seems to be this, which I have only seen so far on more obscure sites...

AI engineers claim new algorithm reduces AI power consumption by 95%
www.tomshardware.com

... Addition is simpler than multiplication, after all. ...

OK, that view seems to originate around this ...

Addition is All You Need for Energy-efficient Language Models
arxiv.org

So, apparently, not a published paper.

Worded diffeerntly...

Dido - White Flag (2003)
www.youtube.com

#6 | Posted by LampLighter at 2024-10-28 02:49 AM

OK, wow, I blew the formatting of that comment. Forgot a closing slash.

Oops.

#7 | Posted by LampLighter at 2024-10-28 02:51 AM

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