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In the energy section, they talk about using nuclear fusion to power AI... but not solar. What a joke.
by mlsu 1y ago
In the energy section, they talk about using nuclear fusion to power AI... but not solar. What a joke.
- yoyohello13 1y ago[flagged]
- dinkumthinkum 1y agoI don't know if they are woke but I think people vastly overestimate their efficacy and efficiency because they believe it means that they have correct opinions and are part of the group of "good people."
- noodletheworld 1y ago“I don’t know if they’re woke” Yes you do. They’re not. > I think people vastly overestimate their efficacy and efficiency Of course, you can argue that people doctor the numbers (for example, failing to take into account the lifetime cost of nuclear power, or failing to note how hopelessly optimistic a pure solar power grid with no batteries might be) when they present said numbers… but the idea that any kind of power generation can be “woke” is beyond belief. That isn’t an adjective that can be applied to physical processes. Solar power is not woke. Gravity is not woke. Electricity is not woke. Don’t be daft.
- rcxdude 1y ago>people vastly overestimate their efficacy and efficiency If anything, solar has demonstrated over the past 2 decades that it is a lot more effective and economical than even the most bullish of predictions that have been made about it. (Seriously, look at projections for solar deployment and generation vs what actually happened, it's kind of crazy how much it was underestimated)
- josh-sematic 1y agoTechnically solar power is just fusion power transmitted via photons across space. Maybe solar qualifies ;-)
- tombakt 1y agoTechnically most sources of available energy on or near the planet are the output of fusion in some way, so this tracks.
- tbrownaw 1y agoEverything except geothermal and fission. Unless you count where the fissionable elements came from, in which case you're only left with the portion of geothermal that's from gravity (residual heat from the earth compacting itself into a planet).
- Jensson 1y agoTidal waves comes from earths rotation, so not fusion nor fission.
- markburns 1y agowhat set off the spinning?
- gattr 1y agoEarth's spin comes from the parent molecular cloud which formed the Solar System (including any impacts during the protoplanetary phase.) And that ultimately from density fluctuations after Big Bang, and the way they led to coalescence of galaxies and galaxy clusters.
- gattr 1y agoTo be nitpicky, our uranium and thorium were made via r-process (rapid neutron capture), which is not the kind of fusion occurring in the Sun at present. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R-process https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R-process
- davidmurdoch 1y agoHow much land mass would need to be covered by solar panels to power this future AI infrastructure. Yes, I'm implying that solar would be impractical, but I'm also genuinely curious.
- dismalpedigree 1y ago3,000-4,000 acres per GW of production capacity in the US Southwest. According to AI :) Considering how little use there is for most of that land anyways, it seems like a good option to me. Also AI training seems like the perfect fit for solar. Run it when the sun is shining. Inference is significantly less power hungry, so it can run base load 24/7.
- creato 1y ago> Also AI training seems like the perfect fit for solar. Run it when the sun is shining. Inference is significantly less power hungry, so it can run base load 24/7. If you're talking about just not running your data center when the sun isn't out, that effectively triples the cost of the building+ hardware. It would require a hell of a carbon tax to make the economics of this make sense.
- rapsey 1y ago> Inference is significantly less power hungry, so it can run base load 24/7. All major AI providers need to throttle usage because their GPU clusters are at capacity. There is absolutely no way inference is less power hungry when you have many thousands of users hammering your servers at all times.
- blitzar 1y agoFurthermore NVIDIAs 80% profit margin makes idling your biggest capital expense a huge ROI problem. Google and Apple should have a big advantage in this regard. If the balance between capital outlay and running costs was more balanced - then optimising the running cost becomes a big line item on the accounts.
- 1y ago
- andsoitis 1y agoNothing stops the AI companies from using only energy from renewable sources, right?
- NewJazz 1y agoTariffs, regulatory quick sand, political pressure...
- andsoitis 1y agoSure anyone can come up with hypothetical threats. What’s your concrete evidence to suggest this will happen?
- NewJazz 1y agohttps://www.cnn.com/2025/04/22/business/us-tariffs-southeast-asia-solar-panels-intl/ https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/22/business/us-tariffs-southeast...
- andsoitis 1y agoopening sentence in that article: "... a key step toward wrapping up a year-old trade case in which American manufacturers accused Chinese companies of flooding the market with unfairly cheap goods."
- LinXitoW 1y agoAre those really going to be bigger for renewables than for nuclear power?
- NewJazz 1y agoProbably in this administration at least tariffs will be more of an obstacle for renewables.
- bluefirebrand 1y agoNothing other than the fact that renewables won't be able to keep up if the AI demand keeps growing the way it has been
- wyager 1y agoWell yeah, AI power consumption doesn't match the solar production curve.
- andyferris 1y agoThat's interesting - I would generally like to use something like Cluade Code heavily during work hours and sparsely otherwise. Plus I assume most LLM-for-knowledge-work-at-industrial-scale demand will be similar as these datacentres are built out.
- foxglacier 1y agoAmerica has a few time zones to move the peaks around in a little bit. The world has plenty. Luckily AI power consumption doesn't have to be located where the consumer is.
- jcattle 1y ago[citation needed]
- saalweachter 1y agoI mean, it could. As we build out solar, daytime power will become cheaper than nighttime power. Some people will eventually find it economical to time-shift their consumption to daytime hours, including saving any non-interactive computation for those hours, and shutting down unneeded compute at night.
- mlsu 1y agoI'll tell ya, it certainly doesn't match the nuclear fusion production curve!
- newsclues 1y agoThe joke is my hometown that put acres of solar on prime farmland. Solar is great for rooftops of houses, it’s not really great to run a DC 24/7 without batteries.
- sim7c00 1y agoit needs to be better connected over larger distances i guess. Some 'sunny' countries around the equator are working on it. laying gridlines to other less sunny places and trying to offer solar to reduce carbon taxes or whatever. i know Saudi, Morocco and China are all massively dumping panels into their deserts, likely more places too. these are great places to put them as it has less impact on environment (less wildlife etc.) and it's pretty much always sunny during the daytime, so it's high efficient per m/2 comparted to colder more cloudy places. Morocco already is connected for energy providing to Europe via Spain afaik, though i think that is currently not used yet, so they are in a good position to leverage that as power demands surge across EU datacenters trying to compete in AI :'D (absolutely no clue if they will actually go that route but it seems logical!)