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

• morto@piefed.social ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ 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 ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  The datacenters.

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  • FauxLiving@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ 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 ⁨days⁩ 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 ⁨days⁩ 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 ⁨days⁩ 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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      • FauxLiving@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        1. Natural Gas is still fossil fuel.

        2. Ok. You still have to push electrons and also not destroy the global climate.

        3. As much as you think it is BS, datacenters exist and they are attached to the same grid as your house, so if you don’t want the power to your house to go away then the grid needs more generating capacity. Unless you want to live under the ocean or in a desert then that capacity can’t produce CO2. The only options which generate power are renewables and nuclear. Solar and Wind cannot provide baseline power generation and the renewables that can provide baseline power (hydroelectric, for example) are limited in where they can be deployed.

        So what power generating source exists that can generate baseline power, doesn’t produce CO2 and can be used without specific geological formations?

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