[ideonexus]

I realize this headline means nothing, but there is something to nuclear power futures. I live in Northern Virginia and my recent 20 mile bike ride in Loudon county was nothing but massive datacenters and crisscrossing powerlines to support them. The western side of neighboring Prince William County is now being consumed for data centers. The Washington Post recently had an article on how the demand for electricity for these centers is getting so desperate that they are running powerlines deep into West Virginia and bringing coal plants back online to meet the demand. Estimates are that it's going to take multiple nuclear powerplants to meet future demand in just this locality.

I have very mixed feelings about this. I love the possibilities of all these datacenters and their potential, but I'm worried about the massive amount of energy they are consuming. If this is all just so much hype and marketing, then it's incredibly wasteful.

[hannob]

So your solution is to power these datacenters for another 1-2 decades with coal power while you wait for new nuclear plants? Because that's the realistic timeframe for any new nuclear. Vogtle 3 took 14 years to build.

Of course, any "advanced nuclear" that doesn't even have a prototype yet will take longer than that. If it will ever happen.

[halJordan]

Don't know why you're saying "your solution" like that guy is in charge of us energy policy, but Virginia already has nuclear reactors. And Dominion has the permits and plans and facility to construct another 1500 megawatts.

[dmurray]

> my recent 20 mile bike ride in Loudon county was nothing but massive datacenters and crisscrossing powerlines to support them. The western side of neighboring Prince William County is now being consumed for data centers.

Is this actually true or hyperbole? Ireland has the same size and population as Virginia is described as a major location for data centres, but all the data centres on the island combined take up less than one square km [0]. By comparison, Dublin Airport is 10 square km.

Sounds like Virginia needs to be two orders of magnitude more dense in DCs, or have them developed exactly in a ribbon along your route, to really dominate the landscape like that.

[0] https://baxtel.com/data-center/republic-of-ireland

[ideonexus]

What does Ireland having the same size and population as Virginia have to do with my comment? Virginia is a state and I was specifically referring to Loudon and Prince William Counties, which are very tiny in proportion to the entire state of Virginia. Look up "Loudon County Data Center Alley" to understand the proportions and density of this project.

https://biz.loudoun.gov/datacenteralley/

[halJordan]

It's hyperbolic of course, but there is an ongoing NIMBY battle over the next datacenter. And it is a huge datacenter, dont get me wrong. The company bidding recently said it would convert a shitton of the land it would be given into greenspaces that yon biker could bike through. And we can be clear here too, if you can afford to bike in Loudon then you work for one of the companies directly requiring this new datacenter, so not sure why he's "conflicted" (nimbyism)

[ideonexus]

"if you can afford to bike in Loudon"

I don't follow your reasoning. It costs nothing to ride a bicycle in most of America. We have bike paths everywhere that are free for anyone to enjoy. You also don't have to live in a locality to enjoy the bike paths there.

For the record, on this specific outing I was doing volunteer trail-surveying. I live in Prince William County. I think the Data Centers are awesome and I love them, the tax revenues they bring in, and the jobs that come with them. It was clear from my comment that I am conflicted about the incredible energy-consumption, not the data centers themselves.

[tazjin]

I'd love to see average hardware utilisation stats for "average Joe" (i.e. not Google) data centres. I don't think they're well-utilised.

[violet13]

How many times in history have we regretted over-building this kind of infrastructure? We have no shortage of good ways to use electric energy. If AI turns out to be a fad, others will benefit.

Pollution is a concern, but I think don't think that anti-growth or anti-consumption sentiments are useful. All this money pouring in is an opportunity to invest in clean energy.