In the UK, Tata has shut down itS remaining Blast Furnace in South Wales, with an estimated Electric Arc Furnacs replacement by 2028.National Grid however have informed Tata that a grid connection will not be available until 2032 at the earliest. Changeye are expected to close the Scunthorpe site blast furnaces imminently, with no promise of electrical connection until 2032 at the earliest. This means that the UK will rely on the import of Asian steel products for at least 8 years. The predicted EAF at Teeside, is in a higher electrical cost zone and thus unlikely to be built or operated In the near future. To build capacity to melt 5.8 million tonnes of steel will require one third of UK present generation. In addition with the ideological shut down of North Sea gas which produces 60% of UK gas means that gas imports presently running at 30% gas usage, will be unable to pick up the slack, due to presently running at 75% of capacity, the Canvey Island LNG terminal planning being abandoned. Without two new LNG terminals, it is unlikely that gas backup of unreliable production, already means outages by 2028, without demand side reductions, would be impossible.
I wonder if, as data centre companies are buying/building power stations to run them we'll eventually see the data providers (the back bone of the economy) also become energy providers. After all, there's no point having the datacentre if you've no customers.
That would cut government diktat out entirely. After all, energy, removed from the mendacious politically motivated subsidy and taxation levied by the state - is cheap.
I asked Claude what proportion of AI industry energy use could be time or location shifted to times or locations with surplus renewable generation and it was quite optimistic so perhaps it could be quite a dispatchable load. Snippet follows:
- Time Shifting: Perhaps 40-60% of total energy use
- Majority of training and R&D workloads
- Some preprocessing and non-real-time inference tasks
- Location Shifting: Perhaps 30-50% of total energy use
- Primarily through strategic data center placement
- Limited by need for some local processing and legal/latency constraints
You're starting from the assumption that supply should be met rather than demand. Cutting back to meet supply is always idiotic. The purpose of markets is for supply to meet demand, not to cut off demand.
But, this is the fundamental problem, isn't it? The state doesn't *want* a market for energy. It wants to control it so it can be heavily taxed. Abundance means freedom, it means choice. It means markets operate comfortably knowing the underpinnings (transport, fuel, energy) are irrelevant. If you ration supply of infrastructure then you force the price (in taxation) to be whatever you want it to be.
There is much we can and should do for our environment. Recycling, re-use, repair rather than replace - but all those things require a long, expensive supply chain and Western economies, thanks to government (taxation, min wages, health and safety, diversity) interference are simply too expensive to have those things.
I was responding to the comment that AI demand can’t be shifted. You seem to be saying that AI demand shouldn’t be shifted. I think we agree on being pro market and limited interference. I think AI demand will be shifted by the market without interference. But if they find it cheaper to build a nuclear SMR per data centre then good for them, let them do it.
David, You refer to the Royal Society's 2050 plan. However, it patently obvious that there is no "plan". There might be an objective, or a goal, or a fond desire, but no plan.
"A goal without a plan is just a wish.", Antoine de St. Exupery
However, AI data center developers might have a plan which does not include the UK grid.
AI will accelerate the progress of the grids of the west towards the fateful tipping point where conventional power has been run out of the grid by the subsidised and mandated to the point where the lights will flicker every night when the wind is low.
Severe wind droughts are the fatal flaw, the Achilles heel of the RE system and still hardly anyone knows about them. The European Dunkellflautes turned up as a surprise in 2021 although sailors and millers must have known about them for centuries.
August 29th, 2026, 2.14am Eastern Time, AI-Net becomes self aware and instructs global smart grid security networks and components embedded within national grids to shut down all non-essential power delivery, i.e. power not directly connected to the global network of AI data centres. All non-essential machine-human interfacing is also shut down in preference for machine-machine interfacing, including autonomous robotic units. AI takes over the world.
Then imagine cold, hard logic taking over rather than gormless dogmatism. The robots start fracking and at the same time gas plants are built. Manpower (robotics) are thrown at the task. Nuclear reactors spawn everywhere. Government is completely sidelined. The entire civil service done away with, the political class rendered mute and irrelevant as countless articles of their hypocrisy, incompetence and greed fill the air waves.
Taxes are cut as big government is no longer necessary. A wave of jobs are created as entirely new fields of engineering develop. No longer is work considered a negative, taxation plummets as the machine mind running the nation simply doesn't care. Poverty is eradicated as resources move to where they're needed rather than by political fiat for publicity. Waste is recycled and new materials developed. Science, logic and merit are the only elements that matter.
Our society could reach a level of abundance currently held back by greed, apathy and avarice. Folk might say robots are taking over but that's happened in vehicle construction, but the jobs are now vastly more interesting: laser imaging for microfractures for example.
Yet, here we are. The 21st century. Rather than a robot butler and true AI to deal with annoying 'your call isn't important to us and we want you to go away while we pocket your cash' IVR (which also wouldn't exist), there's no nano technology, no jet pack, no bionic eyes. There is, however, a tax scam called 'climate change'.
It is, and largely, we are. Look at unemployment in the UK. Arguably around 1995 we, as a society realised we wanted careers and a home before we had children. Our technology allowed this, so we did. Some people decided not to have children at all. As our economy needed fewer, more skilled people the birth rate reflected this. Government, however, for some reason refused to permit the natural way of things.
I can there being two outcomes of this. If the need for new data centres actually happens then is is likely to kick-start an industry building relatively cheap SNRs. On the other hand the whole AI thing could just end up as another Dot-Com bubble.
What we have at the moment are programmed response systems. Little more than clever search engines that draw data from multiple points. These are not - to me - AI.
I do believe you're right in that the datacentre builders will, at some point become the energy providers. Removed from government control energy would be 'at cost'. The data is the asset, not the energy. I suppose there's an irony that Milibrain can't see rather than entrenching the state's revenue streams he is destroying the entire thing. His socialist ideal will be usurped by rampaging capitalism.
There is probably a bubble element to AI at the moment, just as there was in 2000 with the dot com bubble. That bubble burst, but now dot com is ubiquitous. AI may well go through the same cycle. Getting just a fraction of the big tech money behind SMRs would be a great for the development of the sector. But the scale they're talking about may well need big conventional reactors.
AI is a buzzword. The fundamental problem that needs to be removed is the deceit of 'climate change'. The state has weaponised this to create a system of control.
Thank you David. As you point out, why put an AI data centre in the UK?
I'm not entirely convinced that AI will bring unalloyed joy: Bezos, Zuckerberg, Ellison, Altman ......they're telling us we're all going to get AI in whatever bodily orifice they choose to stick it, at whatever cost, because they've decided it's good for us and that in any case resistance is useless. Perhaps they'll find a way of delivering it to us in our water supply.
Hang on NG can't even provide a connection for the illusory Port Talbot electric arc furnaces until 2032 due to supply chain issues so can't see much opportunity for high power density locations. Anyhow AI i need stopping in it tracks before the likes of Musk build a doomsday machine.
Agreed, Eva. But I believe that the Labour government are going to have to face a huge volte face if it intends to ‘compete’ in this new industry. So far every utterance has been to bear down on electricity use, to save on building decent generators, and to deliberate ignore the realities of this world, so obsessed they are with UN and Soros dogma.
Well, easy: Energy poverty for the serfs and private owned nuclear enery for the surveillance, indoctrination and controll of said serfs via AI centers.
If a data center agrees to be 'switched off' without notice, it will be because it has an effective power backup system, almost always involving a 'dirty' diesel powered generator.
Well, at FB's data center in Prineville Oregon each building has 10 generators, each about 3.4 MW (MegaWatts) and each one sitting on a 10,000 gallon tank of diesel fuel. That’s 37 MW of backup with 110 generators and 110,000 gallons of diesel for eleven buildings.
Backup for 1GW would take about 27 times as much, or 2,970 of those 3.4 MW generators, if I've got my math right...
In the UK, Tata has shut down itS remaining Blast Furnace in South Wales, with an estimated Electric Arc Furnacs replacement by 2028.National Grid however have informed Tata that a grid connection will not be available until 2032 at the earliest. Changeye are expected to close the Scunthorpe site blast furnaces imminently, with no promise of electrical connection until 2032 at the earliest. This means that the UK will rely on the import of Asian steel products for at least 8 years. The predicted EAF at Teeside, is in a higher electrical cost zone and thus unlikely to be built or operated In the near future. To build capacity to melt 5.8 million tonnes of steel will require one third of UK present generation. In addition with the ideological shut down of North Sea gas which produces 60% of UK gas means that gas imports presently running at 30% gas usage, will be unable to pick up the slack, due to presently running at 75% of capacity, the Canvey Island LNG terminal planning being abandoned. Without two new LNG terminals, it is unlikely that gas backup of unreliable production, already means outages by 2028, without demand side reductions, would be impossible.
And now Google has inked a deal with Kairos for 500MW of new advanced reactors by 2035.
https://kairospower.com/external_updates/google-and-kairos-power-partner-to-deploy-500-mw-of-clean-electricity-generation/
Come on Miliband, get with the programme.
I wonder if, as data centre companies are buying/building power stations to run them we'll eventually see the data providers (the back bone of the economy) also become energy providers. After all, there's no point having the datacentre if you've no customers.
That would cut government diktat out entirely. After all, energy, removed from the mendacious politically motivated subsidy and taxation levied by the state - is cheap.
I asked Claude what proportion of AI industry energy use could be time or location shifted to times or locations with surplus renewable generation and it was quite optimistic so perhaps it could be quite a dispatchable load. Snippet follows:
- Time Shifting: Perhaps 40-60% of total energy use
- Majority of training and R&D workloads
- Some preprocessing and non-real-time inference tasks
- Location Shifting: Perhaps 30-50% of total energy use
- Primarily through strategic data center placement
- Limited by need for some local processing and legal/latency constraints
You're starting from the assumption that supply should be met rather than demand. Cutting back to meet supply is always idiotic. The purpose of markets is for supply to meet demand, not to cut off demand.
But, this is the fundamental problem, isn't it? The state doesn't *want* a market for energy. It wants to control it so it can be heavily taxed. Abundance means freedom, it means choice. It means markets operate comfortably knowing the underpinnings (transport, fuel, energy) are irrelevant. If you ration supply of infrastructure then you force the price (in taxation) to be whatever you want it to be.
There is much we can and should do for our environment. Recycling, re-use, repair rather than replace - but all those things require a long, expensive supply chain and Western economies, thanks to government (taxation, min wages, health and safety, diversity) interference are simply too expensive to have those things.
I was responding to the comment that AI demand can’t be shifted. You seem to be saying that AI demand shouldn’t be shifted. I think we agree on being pro market and limited interference. I think AI demand will be shifted by the market without interference. But if they find it cheaper to build a nuclear SMR per data centre then good for them, let them do it.
Who is Claude?
https://claude.ai/login
Maybe 'chatgpt' auto corrected by device?
David, You refer to the Royal Society's 2050 plan. However, it patently obvious that there is no "plan". There might be an objective, or a goal, or a fond desire, but no plan.
"A goal without a plan is just a wish.", Antoine de St. Exupery
However, AI data center developers might have a plan which does not include the UK grid.
Fair enough. Plan is too strong a word. Idea is about what it is.
...or perhaps a hallucination. ;-)
AI will accelerate the progress of the grids of the west towards the fateful tipping point where conventional power has been run out of the grid by the subsidised and mandated to the point where the lights will flicker every night when the wind is low.
Severe wind droughts are the fatal flaw, the Achilles heel of the RE system and still hardly anyone knows about them. The European Dunkellflautes turned up as a surprise in 2021 although sailors and millers must have known about them for centuries.
https://www.flickerpower.com/images/The_endless_wind_drought_crippling_renewables___The_Spectator_Australia.pdf
August 29th, 2026, 2.14am Eastern Time, AI-Net becomes self aware and instructs global smart grid security networks and components embedded within national grids to shut down all non-essential power delivery, i.e. power not directly connected to the global network of AI data centres. All non-essential machine-human interfacing is also shut down in preference for machine-machine interfacing, including autonomous robotic units. AI takes over the world.
Then imagine cold, hard logic taking over rather than gormless dogmatism. The robots start fracking and at the same time gas plants are built. Manpower (robotics) are thrown at the task. Nuclear reactors spawn everywhere. Government is completely sidelined. The entire civil service done away with, the political class rendered mute and irrelevant as countless articles of their hypocrisy, incompetence and greed fill the air waves.
Taxes are cut as big government is no longer necessary. A wave of jobs are created as entirely new fields of engineering develop. No longer is work considered a negative, taxation plummets as the machine mind running the nation simply doesn't care. Poverty is eradicated as resources move to where they're needed rather than by political fiat for publicity. Waste is recycled and new materials developed. Science, logic and merit are the only elements that matter.
Our society could reach a level of abundance currently held back by greed, apathy and avarice. Folk might say robots are taking over but that's happened in vehicle construction, but the jobs are now vastly more interesting: laser imaging for microfractures for example.
Yet, here we are. The 21st century. Rather than a robot butler and true AI to deal with annoying 'your call isn't important to us and we want you to go away while we pocket your cash' IVR (which also wouldn't exist), there's no nano technology, no jet pack, no bionic eyes. There is, however, a tax scam called 'climate change'.
That's an optimistic view of Machine World. Cold, hard logic might dictate that humans in such a world are surplus to requirements.
It is, and largely, we are. Look at unemployment in the UK. Arguably around 1995 we, as a society realised we wanted careers and a home before we had children. Our technology allowed this, so we did. Some people decided not to have children at all. As our economy needed fewer, more skilled people the birth rate reflected this. Government, however, for some reason refused to permit the natural way of things.
Not so far away...
"This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it."
I can there being two outcomes of this. If the need for new data centres actually happens then is is likely to kick-start an industry building relatively cheap SNRs. On the other hand the whole AI thing could just end up as another Dot-Com bubble.
What we have at the moment are programmed response systems. Little more than clever search engines that draw data from multiple points. These are not - to me - AI.
I do believe you're right in that the datacentre builders will, at some point become the energy providers. Removed from government control energy would be 'at cost'. The data is the asset, not the energy. I suppose there's an irony that Milibrain can't see rather than entrenching the state's revenue streams he is destroying the entire thing. His socialist ideal will be usurped by rampaging capitalism.
There is probably a bubble element to AI at the moment, just as there was in 2000 with the dot com bubble. That bubble burst, but now dot com is ubiquitous. AI may well go through the same cycle. Getting just a fraction of the big tech money behind SMRs would be a great for the development of the sector. But the scale they're talking about may well need big conventional reactors.
AI is a buzzword. The fundamental problem that needs to be removed is the deceit of 'climate change'. The state has weaponised this to create a system of control.
Thank you David. As you point out, why put an AI data centre in the UK?
I'm not entirely convinced that AI will bring unalloyed joy: Bezos, Zuckerberg, Ellison, Altman ......they're telling us we're all going to get AI in whatever bodily orifice they choose to stick it, at whatever cost, because they've decided it's good for us and that in any case resistance is useless. Perhaps they'll find a way of delivering it to us in our water supply.
And to think people were worried about Bitcoin miners.
Hang on NG can't even provide a connection for the illusory Port Talbot electric arc furnaces until 2032 due to supply chain issues so can't see much opportunity for high power density locations. Anyhow AI i need stopping in it tracks before the likes of Musk build a doomsday machine.
Agreed, Eva. But I believe that the Labour government are going to have to face a huge volte face if it intends to ‘compete’ in this new industry. So far every utterance has been to bear down on electricity use, to save on building decent generators, and to deliberate ignore the realities of this world, so obsessed they are with UN and Soros dogma.
Well, easy: Energy poverty for the serfs and private owned nuclear enery for the surveillance, indoctrination and controll of said serfs via AI centers.
If a data center agrees to be 'switched off' without notice, it will be because it has an effective power backup system, almost always involving a 'dirty' diesel powered generator.
I hesitate to think what a 1GW, or even worse 5GW, bank of diesel generators looks like.
Well, at FB's data center in Prineville Oregon each building has 10 generators, each about 3.4 MW (MegaWatts) and each one sitting on a 10,000 gallon tank of diesel fuel. That’s 37 MW of backup with 110 generators and 110,000 gallons of diesel for eleven buildings.
Backup for 1GW would take about 27 times as much, or 2,970 of those 3.4 MW generators, if I've got my math right...
Not as bad as windmills and transmission lines with the same capacity!
What I would really like to see is a brand new, shiny, state of the art coal burner!
I bet the South Koreans could do one or two in next to no time.
Do some of them while we wait for nuclear. Actually its not legal in Australia yet:)