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Speaker 1: You're listening to the Saturday Morning with Jack team podcast

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Speaker 1: from News Talks at BE How.

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Speaker 2: Do we power the rise of Artificial intelligence? Artificial intelligence,

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Speaker 2: of course, needs crazy, crazy amounts of computing power. Crazy

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Speaker 2: amounts of computing power require crazy amounts of energy, and

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Speaker 2: our Textbert Paul Stenhouses here with some fascinating new details

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Speaker 2: on what Microsoft is planning to do to try and

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Speaker 2: power some of its AI systems.

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Speaker 3: Morning A, Paul, Good morning Jack. Yeah, the future is

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Speaker 3: nuclear when it comes to AI. That's at least what

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Speaker 3: we're looking at at the moment with Microsoft. Okay, so

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Speaker 3: they have partnered with a shuttered nuclear power plant in

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Speaker 3: a place in the States, in Pennsylvania known as Three

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Speaker 3: Mile Islands.

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Speaker 2: And that's a name that's going to be very familiar

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Speaker 2: to most people listening right now.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, because that was maybe back in the what late

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Speaker 3: seventies and seventy nine, that Unit two kind of melted down.

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Speaker 3: Well another site there that Unit two hasn't been used

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Speaker 3: since that meltdown, but there's Unit one and it's been

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Speaker 3: shut down since twenty nineteen. Okay, so that one didn't

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Speaker 3: melt down, but it's basically shut down because there was

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Speaker 3: so much competition between natural gas and solar and wind power,

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Speaker 3: and you know, let's be real, twenty nineteen, you know,

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Speaker 3: solar wind power very much like the energy kind of

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Speaker 3: the green energy choices of the moment. So they shut

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Speaker 3: it down. Well, we need a whole lot more power

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Speaker 3: for AI. And Microsoft has now partnered with them to say,

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Speaker 3: we will do a deal with you for twenty years,

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Speaker 3: will buy all of the power off you for twenty years.

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Speaker 3: The owner of the plants basically said, okay, So they

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Speaker 3: are going to spend one point six billion dollars to

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Speaker 3: get that plant back up and running, the hoping to

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Speaker 3: do that by twenty twenty eight, as long as obviously

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Speaker 3: the regulators allowed that type of thing, and Microsoft will

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Speaker 3: use it the power the data centers of now and

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Speaker 3: obviously the data centers over the next twenty years that

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Speaker 3: you can only assume are going to be more and

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Speaker 3: more and more energy hungry as AI begins to little

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Speaker 3: fingers into everything.

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Speaker 2: And this is interesting because this is one of the challenges,

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Speaker 2: you know, facing the energy transition. Right. Obviously, the renewable

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Speaker 2: sources of electricity are becoming cheaper and cheaper, and solar

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Speaker 2: and wind and stuff becoming cheaper and cheaper, but also

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Speaker 2: our energy demands, especially in big developed economies, well yeah,

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Speaker 2: I mean energy demands right across different economies are massively

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Speaker 2: increasing because of this kind of technology. And I mean

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Speaker 2: we remember with bitcoin people were coming up and cryptocurrency

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Speaker 2: people were coming up with creative ways to try and

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Speaker 2: power their computing. But if artificial intelligence is even you know,

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Speaker 2: reaches half of the hype, they're going to need vast

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Speaker 2: quantities of energy to try and support these systems. So,

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Speaker 2: you know, nuclear could be a good option.

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Speaker 3: But there seems to be a little bit of a

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Speaker 3: turning point too, I think with nuclear because okay, it

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Speaker 3: doesn't exactly It's a tough decision, right, because yes, the

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Speaker 3: risk of nuclear going wrong is obviously catastrophic, but the

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Speaker 3: amount of energy you can produce for very cheaply clean

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Speaker 3: energi's pretty minimal of cleanage, of minimal impact of the

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Speaker 3: environment is rather large. It just can go very wrong

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Speaker 3: very quickly.

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Speaker 2: Well, you know, you look at you look at so Germany,

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Speaker 2: for example, Germany after the Fukushima disaster. We're going on

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Speaker 2: a bit of a side track here, but after Fukushima,

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Speaker 2: Germany decided to scrap its nuclear energy basically, and that

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Speaker 2: meant that they had a spike in using fossil fuels

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Speaker 2: for energy, and as a result of that decision, in

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Speaker 2: the however many years it is ten, twelve, thirteen years

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Speaker 2: since since Fukushima, the number of excess deaths in Germany

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Speaker 2: has increased, I think by several thousand because of the

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Speaker 2: air pollution, because they've said our nuclear is unsafe, so

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Speaker 2: we're going to have fossil fuels instead. Fossil fuels a

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Speaker 2: result in higher air pollution, which has actually killed many

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Speaker 2: more people than likely would have been killed by nuclear.

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Speaker 2: So yeah, it's just a and.

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Speaker 3: Remember when the Ukraine Russia issue happens, they also found

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Speaker 3: it much more difficult to get excesses.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, anyway, Yeah, that is fascinating and very interesting

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Speaker 2: that like private companies would be supporting whole nuclear power

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Speaker 2: stations like that are at three Mile Island, So that's fascinating. Now,

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Speaker 2: tell us the US government is looking at forcing cars

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Speaker 2: to have AM radio.

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Speaker 3: Why, yeah, Well, you know you love radio. I love radio.

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Speaker 3: We all love radio, and it just has a different

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Speaker 3: form with the rise of internet connected electric vehicles, doesn't it.

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Speaker 3: You don't really need it over the over the air.

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Speaker 3: If you've got like your Tesla or your BMW or

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Speaker 3: your Volkswagon, they're largely connected to the Internet, so you

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Speaker 3: can just stream it on your Spotify's, your Pandoras, your Ihearts.

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Speaker 3: But and there's the button. This is what US lawmakers

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Speaker 3: are focused in on. What happens if you can't get

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Speaker 3: Internet connectivity, what happens if you're out of a coverage area,

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Speaker 3: what happens if there's a with those communications systems? How

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Speaker 3: do you get immergent information? The AM radio is basically

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Speaker 3: how it is hardwired into all of the US emergency systems. Today.

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Speaker 3: Those US lawmakers believe that it was a great solution.

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Speaker 3: It still should be a great solution, and so they

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Speaker 3: have passed the Wait for It AM for Every Vehicle Act.

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Speaker 3: It was overwhelmingly approved by a House committee. It's now

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Speaker 3: going to go to the House floor for a vote,

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Speaker 3: and if it's successful, will actually end up on President

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Speaker 3: Biden's desk to sign because they say, Jack that when

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Speaker 3: there's a crisis, information's key and the radio you just

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Speaker 3: can't beat it.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, this is the thing. I mean, I think that

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Speaker 2: they're becoming sensitive a to having big networks and systems

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Speaker 2: potentially taken down in attacks. Yeah, so you know, there

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Speaker 2: was concern about clouded broke Yeah, yeah, for the potential

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Speaker 2: and for foreign actors to wipe out part of the

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Speaker 2: energy grid or something like that. So sometimes actually having

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Speaker 2: some good old school technology can be a good thing. Hey,

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Speaker 2: thank you so much, Paul, really appreciate your time. As always,

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Speaker 2: that's our Textbert Paul Stenhouse.

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Speaker 1: For more from Saturday Morning with Jack Tame, listen live

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Speaker 1: to News Talks ed B from nine am Saturday, or

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Speaker 1: follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.