Nuclear Power & AI

Hosts:
Colleen, Frankie, and Sal

The Data Pulse:
Microsoft announces $3.3 billion investment in Wisconsin to spur artificial intelligence innovation and economic growth
https://news.microsoft.com/2024/05/08/microsoft-announces-3-3-billion-investment-in-wisconsin-to-spur-artificial-intelligence-innovation-and-economic-growth/

DeepSeek sparks AI stock selloff; Nvidia posts record market-cap loss
https://www.reuters.com/technology/chinas-deepseek-sets-off-ai-market-rout-2025-01-27/

What is DeepSeek, and why is it causing Nvidia and other stocks to slump?
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/what-is-deepseek-ai-china-stock-nvidia-nvda-asml/

The Rise of DeepSeek: What the Headlines Miss
https://blog.heim.xyz/deepseek-what-the-headlines-miss/

Episode Discussion:
AI goes nuclear
https://thebulletin.org/2024/12/ai-goes-nuclear/

Hungry for Energy, Amazon, Google and Microsoft Turn to Nuclear Power
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/16/business/energy-environment/amazon-google-microsoft-nuclear-energy.html

South Carolina to Reboot Giant Nuclear Project to Meet AI Demand
https://www.wsj.com/business/energy-oil/ai-nuclear-power-south-carolina-57b7ad2a

Google turns to nuclear to power AI data centres
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c748gn94k95o

Microsoft Targets Nuclear to Power AI Operations
https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/microsoft-targets-nuclear-to-power-ai-operations-e10ff798

Bill Gates’ nuclear energy startup inks new data center deal
https://www.theverge.com/2025/1/23/24350335/bill-gates-terrapower-data-center-sabey-nuclear-energy-ai

Zombie nuclear reactors could be revived thanks to AI data center demand
https://techcrunch.com/2025/01/22/zombie-nuclear-reactors-could-be-revived-thanks-to-ai-data-center-demand/

The Advantages and Disadvantages of Nuclear Energy
https://earth.org/the-advantages-and-disadvantages-of-nuclear-energy/

Transcript

0:00

Welcome to the Cream City Calculations podcast. We're three colleagues and friends that love data and to talk about how data is impacting our lives. I'm Colleen. I'm Frankie. And I'm Sal. Welcome to the Data Pulse, where your hard hitting source for month's most impactful data news. This one is going to be a lot of AI talk. And before we dive into any of the articles, I just want to preference before that we're going to try to take a unbiased view, but these are very polarizing topics that we're going to probably talk about and the articles that we brought up go both ways on some of this, and we're going to try our best to be unbiased, but please, I hope you, you listen and you enjoy. The 1st article is the AI data center boom and it's creating a job creation bust. We don't really like that title. We'll be honest with you because I think it looks at. the AI side and saying that this is not going to cause a boom. But we do think that it is really important to understand where the jobs are coming from around the data center. And because there's a lot more data centers because of AI boom. So I think the first part that we want to get into is really understanding the numbers around how many jobs are actually going to be at these data centers. On average, it takes about 1500 people according to this article to build in a data center for Stargate artificial intelligence venture led by open AI. But of those 1500 people, most of the people are actually the construction workers to build the whole thing electricians. And those are not long term jobs. Yes, it's probably going to take. Multiple months or years to build these out, but the long term jobs there are, they think around a hundred people will be full time employed. When you're starting to think through this and read these articles, keep in mind that when you're seeing AI booms or data center booms or data center moving your area, and you're like, oh, this is going to add a bunch of jobs to our area. Again, these might be short term. It's good. I think growth clearly all those electricians and dry wallers and painters and construction workers. It's great that they're going to have more work. But the people that are working on that job site. On day 1 are not the same people that will be employed in that building on, the beginning of year 2. Yeah, I think this is actually a really interesting thing. In comparison, you could say that these plants are probably going to be around as we're from Wisconsin, like a cheese making cheese packaging plant. So I don't know the square footage of a cheese packaging plant, but you can understand you've seen those going up to the Packer game and all that. Those typically have around 500 people employed, so one fifth of those is what's going to be employed from data centers. And just to keep that in mind, we're not talking anything like these numbers are coming out false. Just, I think, as observers of data, and as you listen to the news and hear data centers popping up, just keep in mind that. Yeah, another interesting piece there, too, is that this is a rural friendly industry. And when you think about a lot of jobs, they're located in cities I think that data centers being located rurally is nice because it allows for more jobs in those rural locations. Bring some opportunities to areas that maybe didn't have them before. Exactly. Yeah. It looks like there's going to be about 249, roughly new data centers in development. That over the next year, so you can see that these are going to pop up quite a bit. And I think down in Racine, right? Yeah, or Kenosha they're putting one. Yeah, I think it's Mount Pleasant, technically, but yeah, Racine, Kenosha area, not that anybody not from this area would know that, but, all right, our next article that we want to touch upon is data centers need for machines, more machines than people. And so relating to that same topic they, as we said, there, these data centers are going to be less human friendly, human employable, which makes sense with AI, right? A little bit, but just they're thinking that they're going to be a lot less Of that, of those people, there's gonna be a lot less humans running the machines. There's far more machines running in the place instead of more than people. I think the next article we have here is called your gaming PC could help train AI models. And Frankie, I think you found this article and brought it to our attention. Do you want to maybe speak to this one a little bit? Sure, the highlight of this article is that underused GPU chips and game consoles or offices have inspired startups to stitch together virtual distributed networks to compete with AI data centers. So this is really interesting because their gaming computers are using an inexpensive chip called a graphics processing unit, so GPU. And that being said, they're re utilizing their GPU chip availability from their gaming systems to support their AI workloads. Yeah. I think the whole idea in general is that if you've got a like a PlayStation or something sitting in your dorm room and it's not being used, can you farm out the GPU in that unit to be part of a network that could run processing for AI while you're not using it? I wonder how long that PlayStation will last. It's being constantly farmed on, their GPUs are being used all the time. I don't know, but somehow in my mind, I draw a picture of that backfiring somehow in that machine. Like you said, maybe it's just as minor as like you burn out the processing chip on that machine because it maybe wasn't intended for that purpose. But, but it's interesting. There's this planned obsolescence. Yeah, it could be. I think everything that is made these days is obsolete very shortly anyway, but. Or maybe this is the gamers way of getting their new system they want. Yeah. Maybe we should think of it that way. And that, if it's this thing, Hey, I can opt into this, I really love gaming, but Hey, I'm in college now. I'm just going with that example. And I don't have as much time to play games as I used to. Maybe that's the best use of that resource is to like, maybe let that student make more, some money on the side by letting whatever data center use its GPU. And then by the time that person's got time. To play more games, they can buy a new machine with the money they've earned. I want to know network, how does the network, there's GPUs and connecting to these people's machines, right? Yeah. And then it goes over the network. How is the network going to handle that? Yeah. I think that there's going to be definitely things. I think some of the biggest things are privacy and security around that. So you're exposing that you're exposing your personal network, no matter what you have out on it to a third party, right? And there's always inherent risk with that of not just that third party being able to dive into more of your information, but hackers getting through and then getting into your network and then getting into your information through a different way. You've got an inherent risk there that you're Taking on by opting into that. Yeah, I know most gamers, they have a gaming account has their credit card on it. And so they can purchase games and they can, they are, you're going to be exposed probably a lot of that information as well. Yeah, and part of it, the article actually references that they're asking for donations. GPU chips as well for charitable AI work. That seems like an oxymoron. Yeah. We look at those software licenses as donations to an AI. Yeah, I feel like you can make a lot of money in AI, like charitable AI work. Giving back to the unneeded GPUs there. Yeah. Our final article, again, This one is probably more political than most of them is around the Department of Government Efficiency, otherwise known as DOGE and Elon Musk and they're won't say misleading, but how they're using data to go. Share information around budget cuts or sorry of contracts or claims that they're making. And then how third party, like NPR or Politico or a lot of these other ones are actually going in and fact checking that data and finding that it's not exactly right. And the importance of. Doge, making sure that they're providing the correct information out to, to individuals is extremely important. And the misuse of data is. Or I won't say misuse, I'll say I'm gonna bring that back and I'll say the misinformation, missed info on that I is a concern around I think again, we would be remiss to not mention all of the activities going on with Doge in recent times, like as data people, there are. Clearly very poignant things that they are doing that touch upon security and privacy and those sorts of things. But I think we decided to focus on what they are claiming as far as what they're saving the country as a way to provide like an example as to maybe data transparency and why it's important to have data to back up what you're claiming. And so some of the outlets, the news outlets that Sal just mentioned, political, Politico and NPR are doing great. Service to the people by doing audits of what is on quote, unquote, the wall of receipts that DOJ has shared with the public. And so if you're interested in that, that at all, and you want a good deep dive into the data, like what is actually being saved. We'll put some links in our show notes to those articles so that you have access to them. But hopefully everyone is aware. Hopefully through things like our podcast, where we've brought these issues to you in the past to make you aware of things like privacy and security issues. Hopefully you've been able to identify those things because of resources like our show. Just to close off while reducing government waste is Commendable accurate reporting and realistic targets are critical for public trust. So this is a big thing on log. Absolutely. Are you guys hungry for nuclear? No. No? No. So, there's been a huge AI boom, as all of us have already known, but one of the major factors around nuclear getting AI and running AI and having it powered because it takes a ton of power is nuclear energy and whether or not there's appetite for especially in the United States, appetite for nuclear energy to help power some of these on smaller plants. So today's podcast is going to be talking about nuclear energy and how it is supporting our AI boom. And how Microsoft Oracle, and several other large tech companies are kind of putting their best foot forward and putting in a lot of money to see if they can get nuclear built that could help them support their, their data centers. Yeah. And kind of leading from our last data pulse are we had. We, we heard about our Microsoft putting in a new data center in Pleasant Prairie. Part of that is energy, giving energy to that. So a really kind of pressing topic to, to Milwaukee, to Wisconsin and to the world. Yeah, absolutely. And I think one of the interesting things that's come up since president Trump's inauguration is that he also is wanting to invest like as the United States invests in these companies and Invest in AI, but I think one thing that They've got to be cautious of is the amount of energy that's going to be consumed through that huge investment, right? Yeah, they said a stargate I think is the term or the group that they're using and that's like where it's a collaboration between Microsoft, OpenAI, I believe some, several others and they're going to invest, I've heard different numbers, but like 100 billion or I've heard 600 billion. A lot. And I knew, we probably all saw on the news, Elon Musk saying, they don't have that. But, yeah, there's going to be a lot of money invested in, data centers and these projects into power ai. In power ai. Yeah. It's gonna get interesting. Yeah. I found an article that's$500 billion in ai and it, it's just ai. So it's not powering ai. So that's the part that, so that's just the investment into the ai like architecture and things that they're thinking. Unless you guys have seen something different, but so, I mean, that kind of leads us into a couple of things. Like first area that maybe we want to focus on on this podcast is around, do you think that this is a sustainable energy for this? Do you think it's, we're capable of doing this safely? Really? That's the main question that I have. I think it is an option when you need a lot of power and you need to generate a lot of power for something. I think nuclear. Is a potential for that source, but whether or not we as human beings can develop nuclear power that's safe and continues to be so, that's the big question. There have been incidents, even in recent history, where there have been huge catastrophes on nuclear power plants that caused the displacement of, you know, How many people? Yeah, we were talking about it before in March 2011 in Fukushima, nuclear power station was impacted by an earthquake that was like a, I don't know, pretty large earthquake and displaced 150, 000 people after the earthquake because it was unsafe to be in that area. Yeah. A magnitude of 9. 0. You know, and they're talking about restarting some of the reactors on Three Mile Island. Which is in the United States. It's in Pennsylvania. For those who don't know, there were reactors that experienced issues in 1979. Yeah, I think it exposed like 100, 000 people to nuclear. I'm sorry if the numbers aren't perfectly correct. I apologize. But yeah, they exposed 100, 000 people to nuclear. Or radiation which is, I mean, I think that's gonna be a significant risk. But I also think some of these AI companies want to help invest and build out some of these energy companies that are building this out, but they're going to do it on a microscale, so it's gonna be a lot smaller. They're going to be attached to other power plants to kind of take advantage of their infrastructure. Because you've got to build the plant, then you got to get the energy out, is a big thing. Right. And so you're going to have to invest in the power lines and everything like that, but if you're close to another Oh, infrastructure. Yeah. Yeah. You absolutely can do that. I think part of that is like, if you're going to have multiple micro nuclear plants, like, is that less risky or more risky? Because you're kind of spreading it out, but you're also going, you're probably adding more quantity. Yeah. Interesting question. But one thing I do want to call out, too, is that nuclear power is nothing new. Like, kind of what Colleen said, like, it's been around for a long time and there have been issues in the past. But like, for example, I was just looking up, grabbing a couple facts around the Three Mile Island, and nuclear power provides 32 percent of Pennsylvania's current power generation mix. Yeah, some people think that it doesn't exist at all, and that's not even true. Right. Right on the case. We actually have one here in Wisconsin. It's not old news. It's been happening for a long time, but it is a kind of a hot topic right now just because, you know, we're hearing about all these data centers and how they need more power. Well, and it begs the question, like, if we're going to be scaling up our production of nuclear power on the scale that's maybe required for AI efforts, or even just for power consumption by the country as a whole, the potential for there to be a disaster gets much bigger because the scope of your nuclear solution is bigger, right? The more power plants you have, the more potentials for disaster there could be there. There could be things like earthquakes that are causing issues with power plants. There's the whole Chernobyl disaster from the 80s that we know of that happened in the Ukraine. It's not even like a matter of like, can we do it safely? As human beings, it's a matter of, like, can it be safe with the natural disasters that happen around our area? Yeah. Yeah. Like, I imagine, like, what if a tornado wiped out your nuclear power area? And blew the nuclear waste around, or whatever, And I say tornado because we're in Wisconsin, but Right. Or a hurricane, I mean, absolutely, I think there has to be protocols, and that's why, regulation around building these is going to be the number one thing Can they get them built? How do they get them built within a reasonable time frame? And then also have them not going to be regulated and make sure they're being monitored. Because there's also not just nuclear energy or nuclear disasters, but there's also nuclear waste that comes along with it because they've got to store it somewhere. And I guess, based on some of these articles that we have read you could, there are actually more potential though, you know, Creating uranium, which is now a nuclear bomb. So like if you're outsourcing this to other countries, could you have more capabilities of having them become a nuclear power as well? So there's a lot of little things that can kind of dotted line come from this. I mean, just imagine the implications that there were just some sort of leaking, right? Like you've got a lot of chemicals that are used in the production of nuclear energy and if that gets into the groundwater supply, that could affect millions of people and it's not unheard of where big companies have chemical leaks that, affect big populations and it takes a lot of fighting for those people to have those organizations clean up the waste and take care of the byproducts that came out of that. Do you think that? The potential risk outweighs, in this case, the benefit that we get from AI and all that. Like, I think that's the thing that we're going to have to weigh. Well, you know, even if we take the AI part out of it, it's not going to go away. But just theoretically, like, if we just were looking at nuclear power as another source for power in this country, I would like to think that we are at a point in our history where we are smart enough to Come up with solutions for this and proactively incorporate certain things into the building of new nuclear power plants, but That's just it if this needs to be done on some sort of speedy scale to get this ready for the AI that we know is coming You'd hate to think that you overlook those regulations in order to get it done faster. Absolutely. But I can see as human beings, they'll want to do that because hurry up and get it done. It's going to make us a lot of money. And that's the part that I think is really the kicker there. Not that we can't do it safely, but that we won't do it safely because we'll see the dollars and signs, you know, cents instead of doing it the proper way. Real facts. Real facts. What actually is surprising too is like, we're going to have such energy consumption. So AI is one part of it. We also have EVs, right, or electric vehicles that are probably taking out, like, so these are probably going to help support both of those industries really a ton and so I think there, there is high risk, but as long as we do it right, I think, and you really, we actually put regulation in for it I think it can be doable for sure. Absolutely. And one of the advantages of nuclear energy that we haven't really touched on yet, is that it's considered to be the cleanest energy source. So, a lot of countries are switching to nuclear energy, just looking to reduce their carbon emissions. France, I think, is one that was focusing in on nuclear energy. According to data from 2023, they have the second most reactors in use. The first is the United States and third is China, and China and France are really close. So, but yeah, just very interesting that like, if it can be a good source of, I think there's potential for it. It's just a matter, of whether we can do it safely and do it well. Absolutely. There's a fact in earth. org, an article that I, I just kind of found last minute. It says in 2018 alone, fossil fuels killed 8. 7 million people globally, as a result from toxic chemicals, that like anything that is considered an invisible killer, like coal and oil. So yeah, that's an interesting fact. I was trying to look for a source before I mentioned it, because it's kind of a startling statistic, and I was like, is that right? Yeah, I think you've got to think of things in terms of like, you've got, if you're, let's say you're powering your city with coal, for example, there's byproducts, there's waste from that, that lead to, you know, things like global warming. Right? And when you think about climate change and all of the catastrophes and things that we're seeing happen on a larger scale now. That's, I think, where some of that dollar number comes from. It's not that somebody walks outside and, starts to, choke and, like, Oh, no, they died of, coal poisoning or something. It's that, it's 15 steps away. It could be, an inflated number. Or maybe not inflated, but a thing that's fed by multiple other factors. Sure, absolutely. But, yeah, they were comparing that to, in contrast, The 70 years since the beginning of nuclear power, it's only had three accidents that have raised public alarm. That 1979 Three Mile Island accident one in Fukushima, 2011, and one in Chernobyl in the 80s. Yep. There's a really good documentary that they made on HBO about that one That was really good. Yeah, and also scared the heck out. Oh, yeah the events about how the reactors? Overheated and what happened and how they had to evacuate people so quickly from that city And that if you go back now, there are still Dogs roaming the area because people left their pets, they had to evacuate as quickly as they could. And they're studying these dogs now because there's been multiple generations of these dogs that have had these really high levels of contamination or radioactivity contamination. They're studying them because they're still alive and well, and they're living their lives in Chernobyl, like wild. I think they probably can learn a lot from studying those dogs, but I wouldn't want to go there. No, no, but it is interesting. What's also amazing is that the how much it says it's less maintenance, more capable and within two years or it takes two years before they have to even refuel. It has like a 93 percent, max power it'll get to ninety three percent of their max power in the first two years. Which is a substantial amount of energy that can go through you, so. It'll be interesting to see what we can learn from those past nuclear disasters and see what we can do to make things better. For sure. So let's talk about disposing of radioactive nuclear waste yeah, so one thing that we want to make sure that we're kind of touching along with this is disposing of nuclear waste. I touched on it a little bit earlier, but I want to make sure that we kind of talk about it a little bit more, like, I believe the half life on it is really pretty substantial. Yeah, very long. And you have to like store it underground in mountains in Utah or wherever, or Nevada. Yeah, it's been a long time since I've talked about half lives. I know. Since science class, right? Yeah. Yeah, so it says that, you know, like, radioactive nuclear waste contains highly poisonous chemicals like plutonium and uranium pellets and what are we going to do with that? Where are we going to put it? Yeah. That's a, that's a huge question. It says that since 1950s, there's been 250, 000 tons of highly radioactive nuclear waste. And so they have just distributed this across the world. Makes me kind of wonder where they're putting it. It just says everywhere. I'm just kidding. Well, and that's where they're shipping all our clothing too. Yeah. All our single use clothing. Yeah, so it's like, you know, we really want to think about that because that's a huge consequences where you put that waste. Yeah. So there's both waste. So that's one thing is where are we going to put the waste? Right. The other part is how are we getting the energy? So like you have waste from after the plant uses it, it's disposable. But When we have to pull it out of the ground, we pull uranium or whatever, plutonium. I don't even know all the uraniums and ums that you have to pull out. They, we actually have a ton of waste that goes along there. So there's pre and post waste just to have it run. Yes, it is extremely efficient. Yes, technically it's really safe in comparison to other energy sources. But yet there are a lot of environmental issues that could arise from that. Not that there aren't environmental issues now too, but just something to think about for sure. But it's like you don't want to be thinking you're making this great change for the better, for the planet, and it's really not. Right. It's kind of like the whole argument for, you know, EV vehicles. Some people will argue that the amount of energy it takes to make the batteries that go into your EV vehicles negates the benefit that you get out of using an electric vehicle anyway. And disposal, disposal of the batteries. And like, they've talked about that too with solar panels and such, like all these different energy sources. It comes from the whole like, hey, it's not costing us anything, it's costing other people. Yeah. Not saying that's right. Right. That's it. And people think, you know, obviously it's, that's a whole area that's right for, you know, exploration and to find better ways to, like you said, extract these compounds from the earth or create them or find a way to dispose of them or neutralize them so that they're no longer hazardous after the fact. With this, so again, we're getting back to the data center and why companies are doing it. Do you think there's an advantage? Like we're going to hit. Probably economy of scale or something like that where we're going to become more efficient with AI and like we said With some of the new AI models that are coming out here That they're probably going to use less energy. Do you think we might be? Putting the cart before the horse a little bit here in thinking or these companies thinking that hey We should build out these these plants to feed this But not really taking advantage of, hey, we might have economies of scale or be more efficient so that they, they actually don't need as much energy. In the future. No, no, no. I was just gonna say, maybe, right? Like, I feel like that happens regularly. That you get so focused on solving the first, first problem that you forget that, well, really there's another way to solve for that. And it's that, let's make these models less energy needy. Yeah. So we don't need quite as much power. Yeah, what I was thinking too is like, there's so many companies that aren't even using AI and they're not even using data really. Right, everything's going to be ramping up. And yeah, it really wasn't that long ago where like people were like, yeah, we got to use data and we've got to create these models and such. And I think that given that and how much excitement there is for AI and moving your data to the cloud and all that I think that they're getting prepared because even if there are economies of scale, I think it's going to be overtaken by the number of people that are using data and AI. There was a stat in one of the articles that we read, and I apologize, I'll have to find it, I can link it to our description at the end of this. But it was like for one AI image, it costs like. The same as a house, like the powerhouse for a year or whatever. I gotta remember the stat, or I gotta find it. I read the same thing recently. I wish I could remember the numbers exactly. Like how much water something used. It was crazy. Yeah. One article that we want to focus in on is from BBC, and It's called Google Turns to Nuclear Power AI Data Centers. And, so they talk about how they're partnering with this company Keros Power out in California, and it's the first reactor in this decade, and they're bringing more online by 2035. And to do this, since they're out in California, they had to get permission, and the U. S. regulators gave California's Carol's Power the first permit in 50 years to build a new type of nuclear reactor. Yeah. Yeah, I think it's, I think, where you're gonna see a lot of collaboration is around these energy companies partnering with large tech companies. I think like this example, the power company knows, or energy company, utility company, knows how to get it done, how to go through the regulations, how to do that. And so this is, I think it's going to be really impactful into that industry, the utility industry, because We're going to see massive growth of these companies wanting to take advantage of this AI boom and this energy boom. Yeah, I think there's just so much opportunity for innovation in this space on all fronts. And I'm sure there's all sorts of things we didn't even think of that would be part of this whole ecosystem. There's probably other things that come out of a partnership like that, like you said. More money? The money part of it. A lot of money. Lots of money. What does it take so now you've got an energy company that's spinning up these nuclear reactors Hopefully you've got your energy providers and things that are working with them to power the nuclear plant and you've got the facets of it that we were speaking about before which is how do you extract the things that you need from the earth safely And therefore get rid of the waste byproducts safely But what are the things that companies like that need, right? There's probably a whole lot of data that they need to make informed decisions as to how you do those things. Probably all sorts of scientists in realms we probably don't know a whole lot about that could help, I'm just thinking about chemists that could come in there and help them. Maybe there's people who could do research to figure out what can you do to change this nuclear by product, this waste into something that's not Gonna hurt. Yeah, that'll be substantial. Yeah. They can do that. But I was, like, kidding about the more money, but also not. Because I'm thinking you know how the energy industry is so regulated by the government and such? But it makes me wonder how that will change with these partnership announcements, right? If they're partnering with these power companies And they're, like, these huge companies are, asking these other the power companies to build nuclear power and, provide more power for them. Are they going to be able to increase that cost? Because it's an investment for them to make, right? And are they able to accept those dollars that are invested in them by Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and I'm sure they are. I'm sure there's a way to accept money, but it's interesting and how that will change some of the dynamics of the power grid and will the power companies be more focused on these big companies because it's more dollars instead of the little houses in Milwaukee? Yeah. This skeptic in me is also concerned, because this is who I am is around when it doesn't benefit the shareholders of these large companies. If it's for the good of the people, when does that get overridden by the will of the shareholders? Or the energy companies just stop production midway through. Exactly what I'm thinking. It's no longer profitable, so therefore we'll just turn this off completely. Wasn't there a Cal, like a California power company that had this, where they were like turning off the power for certain areas? Yeah, I mean they had the rolling blackouts way back. But they were doing it to try to raise the prices, and they were saying to the California government that They needed more money because they were having all these blackouts and infrastructure issues when in reality it was them actually turning the power off. Yeah. Yeah, and to that point too, like the one reactor that was still running on Three Mile Island was actually shut down. It received a license. Contract extension until 2034, but they decided to shut it down in 2019 after they were unable to secure subsidies from the state of Pennsylvania, and it was deemed a financial albatross, so it was no longer profitable enough to them despite whatever energy it was producing for that region. They just shut it down. Yeah, and then what's happened already? What happens to their waste? What happens to that? It's just sitting there. I imagine that they From a regulatory perspective, they have to maintain it. God, do I hope. I found the company. It was Pacific Gas and Electric. And there was a lawsuit from the government against the company because they found out that they were doing that. And the government won that lawsuit. I learned about that in my blog post. But it stuck with me. But it's interesting though, right? The company is going to do what's in their best interest. Yeah. And it's a psychological thing, right? Everybody acts in their best interest, but especially companies that have to report to the shareholders and such. One other thing in this BBC article, I actually was blown away, I didn't really even think about, is the United Nations Climate Change Conference last year. The U. S. joined it. And wanted to triple their nuclear energy capacity by 2050 as part of their move away from fossil fuels. However, critics say nuclear power is not a risk free energy and it's long lasting radioactive. But to counteract, I didn't even think about could this actually counteract fossil fuels and global warming and all that. Overall is it a better approach? I love that the two sides of this whole thing. Yeah. No one has like a perfect thing. there's no perfect solution, which is probably the solution. I feel like anytime things get messy, the solution is a little bit of everything. Yeah. And if you can lessen the effects of some of the bad things from one area, I don't think there's a perfect answer. It's hard to take a stance on it. There's some good, there's some bad on both sides. For all of it, right? There's for fossil fuels, there's good and there's negative. And same thing for nuclear power. Absolutely. This earth. org article wraps up with a paragraph heading called who wins the nuclear debate. And I think that's the point we're just alluding to in that there is no perfect winner. It'd be great to see how this all shakes out over the next five or ten years. I do think we'll probably find that we'll have implemented a lot more nuclear power just because of its clean benefits. We'll be onto something new by then. And what a great thing that could be too. Fusion, yeah, overall, there is no debate, right? Because they're doing this. We already have these nuclear data centers that are being put up. And we already have nuclear power. So it's just more so being aware. I think, yeah, there's one takeaway from this. Yes, they are doing it. But be aware, understand what they're doing and how they're using it. It's going to impact us all, not just from an AI perspective, from an infrastructure, from a tax perspective, from our own utilities, these companies are going to start to, probably, they're going to be owned by the metas of the world, right? And for better or worse. So we just got to make sure that we're aware of that and if there are changes, just know. Your congressman is probably the only person that needs to go to. Yeah. One last thing that I did just want to call out is that I want to take back what I said before. That Trump announced That 500 billion dollar AI infrastructure investment in the U. S. So when he's working with Oracle and OpenAI they're actually working on getting some of these nuclear power data centers spun up. So that investment is going to be super helpful for these companies, but also for the good and bad, right? We have better power sources as individuals in theory, because These huge companies won't be sucking up the power anymore but it's also an enormous investment and we're paying for it, so either way fun stuff. I feel like it's going to be like a stadium, where we reach out, the billionaires own it, but we pay 50 percent of it. Exactly.

Frankie: 37:23

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