- A Gigawatt Nuclear Energy Data Center could open soon in France
- “Power is the number one consideration” for ai
- Models need more energy for training than ever
The French president, Emmanuel Macron, has announced 109 billion euros in private investments to improve the infrastructure of French.
The key to the investment is a gigawatt of nuclear energy energy, which will be intended for computers and high performance data centers necessary to feed the emerging AI tools.
Announced as part of the AI Action Summit in Paris, the power will be added to the already extensive nuclear infrastructure of France, which consists of 57 reactors in 18 different plants.
France will use nuclear energy to feed the AI
Around a third of all the country’s energy consumption comes from nuclear energy, and its infrastructure is so extensive that it exported surplus energy to other countries last year. The use of nuclear energy to feed their AI data centers seems natural progression.
Macron added: “Plug plan, baby, plug”: a reference to the “drill, baby, drill” plan of US President Donald Trump to expand oil drilling operations in the United States.
Josh Parker, senior director of corporate sustainability of Nvidia, said at the summit: “Power is the number one consideration to access AI and put our systems online” (through WSJ).
The first wave of the project will consist of 250 megawatts of nuclear energy deactivated by AI by the end of 2026. Fluidstack, the company behind the project, aims to start working in the third quarter of 2024. Wait to reach most of its height -Nvidia performance chosen: currently the second most valuable company in the world with an assessment of $ 3.27 billion.
Energy demands are only increasing. Separate WSJ The reports reveal that today’s main models used 30 megawatts of energy for training. That could increase to five gigawatts at the end of the decade.
The latest investments add France to the race of countries and companies that offer large sources of nuclear energy and others to feed future data centers.
