{"id":56942,"date":"2024-10-18T12:15:39","date_gmt":"2024-10-18T16:15:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=56942"},"modified":"2024-10-18T12:15:39","modified_gmt":"2024-10-18T16:15:39","slug":"a-new-twist-in-americas-search-for-energy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=56942","title":{"rendered":"A New Twist In America’s Search For Energy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Every morning, my husband gets a news update from a news site called 1440<\/a>. Thursday morning’s update included the following:<\/p>\n

Big Tech Goes Nuclear<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n

Amazon is investing $500M\u00a0toward nuclear power<\/a> to meet the rising energy demands of its data centers and artificial intelligence initiatives. Yesterday’s announcement comes two days after Google unveiled plans to purchase nuclear power and less than a month after Microsoft said it would reopen the Three Mile Island plant\u2014home to the worst nuclear accident in US history\u2014to fuel its AI efforts.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Nuclear\u00a0power\u00a0accounts for 19% of US electricity generation\u00a0and comes from energy released when the nucleus of a heavy atom splits into lighter atoms. While expensive and potentially hazardous, proponents pitch nuclear power (see 101<\/a>) as a clean alternative to greenhouse gas-emitting energy sources like coal, oil, and gas. Energy-intensive<\/a> generative AI applications and data centers are expected to account for roughly 9% of total US power consumption by 2030.\u00a0<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Amazon and Google are investing in small modular reactors<\/a>, which are cheaper and easier to build than traditional nuclear reactors and generate up to 300 megawatts of power or\u00a0about one-third the amount of power of a traditional reactor. Only two SMRs currently operate in the world, in China and Russia.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

As the negatives on wind and solar become better known to the public, nuclear energy will emerge as a viable alternative. We have come a long way since Three Mile Island and the Fukushima nuclear accident, and I believe that the SMRs are going to be the energy source of the future (along with fossil fuel). Much of Europe has already had to turn away from ‘green’ energy and revert back to coal and fossil fuel. I believe that at some point America will do that and explore SMRs.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Every morning, my husband gets a news update from a news site called 1440. Thursday morning’s update included the following: Big Tech Goes Nuclear Amazon is investing $500M\u00a0toward nuclear power to meet the rising energy demands of its data centers … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[17299,1401,7741,17300,17301],"class_list":["post-56942","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-17299","tag-google","tag-microsoft","tag-nuclear-power","tag-small-modular-reactors"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56942","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=56942"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56942\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56943,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56942\/revisions\/56943"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=56942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=56942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=56942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}