Comment on ‘Just an unbelievable amount of pollution’: how big a threat is AI to the climate?

• FauxLiving@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Is Coal and Gas is your preferred energy source? Because that’s what nuclear would be replacing.

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  • morto@piefed.social ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Nuclear investments will probably just meet the increase in energy consumption due to new datacenters, not make an energy transition

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  • frongt@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    The datacenters.

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    • FauxLiving@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      I’d rather it didn’t rain today, but it did and I still needed to bring an umbrella no matter how much I didn’t like the rain.

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  • kalkulat@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    That expenditure would displace the 10x the power which renewables + storage have already proven to do all over the world… that’s what nuclear would replace. Nuclear is never good news.

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    • FauxLiving@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      There are no other alternatives for baseline power generation.

      You can’t run a national grid on 100% renewables and batteries. If you’re not using nuclear then you’re using fossil and fossil fuels are not only polluting but the dependence on them creates a huge amount of political instability around the world.

      Nuclear plants use less uranium than Coal plants burn into the atmosphere. Coal has trace amount of radioactive uranium and if you burn hundreds of thousands of tons of it every year then you’re putting pounds of radioactive uranium into the atmosphere.

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      • kalkulat@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        There are no other alternatives for baseline power generation.

        1. Natural gas is FAR preferable to coal. I completely agree that coal is unacceptable.
        2. Efficient use of existing capacity: How many heat pumps can be purchased by the decades-long costs of a 1GB nuke? Can your country subsidize low-energy lighting? Installing more insulation in old homes?
        3. Datacenter urgency is B.S. … AI slop was supposed to be the topic of this post

        You can’t run a national grid on 100% renewables and batteries Of course not, but the quickest and lowest-cost solutions should have much high priority. Ergo nukes should be lowest.

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