In the US, data centres will be powered by small modular nuclear reactors to help cope with demands of AI. What is the plan for Ireland?
The power required to meet AI’s data processing demands will dwarf the current power requirements of data centres. Photograph: Jim Wilson/The New York Timesfor a reason. Driving around the area recently, the industrial landscape is astonishing. Loudoun County has 199 data centres. They loom roadside, some made to look like offices, with fake windows barely taking the edge off their ugliness.clustering is, of course, Dublin.
Dublin and Loudoun County are obviously not like-for-like. But both are contending with huge energy demands from data centres. Loudoun County earns a lot from taxing data centres. “The reality is,” Turner says, “on our budget this year, we will get $895 million from our data centres”.
“It’s not going to happen. Like I said in the paper, solar is a 23.3 capacity factor. Wind is a 35.5 capacity factor.” In Turner’s paper, nuclear power is cited as having a 93.1 per cent capacity factor, biomass 50.6 and gas 61.7. In June, the. “Ireland needs to keep an open mind about the possibility of SMRs contributing to the achievement of net zero energy by 2050,” the report said.
Turner is a serious man. A former air rescue helicopter and fighter pilot, he is a Gulf War veteran, who served on the US Central Command before and during that war, and on the joint staff in the Pentagon in the mid-90s. At one point during our conversation, he turned to a staff member to express his shock. “They’re using 21 per cent of their electricity to feed their data centres, nationally,” he told her, “Ireland. Twenty-one per cent.
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