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Chicago, IL|Chicago Marriott Downtown
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AI and productivity growth
Craig Piercycpiercy@ans.org
This month’s issue of Nuclear News focuses on supply and demand. The “supply” part of the story highlights nuclear’s continued success in providing electricity to the grid more than 90 percent of the time, while the “demand” part explores the seemingly insatiable appetite of hyperscale data centers for steady, carbon-free energy.
Technically, we are in the second year of our AI epiphany, the collective realization that Big Tech’s energy demands are so large that they cannot be met without a historic build-out of new generation capacity. Yet the enormity of it all still seems hard to grasp.
or the better part of two decades, U.S. electricity demand has been flat. Sure, we’ve seen annual fluctuations that correlate with weather patterns and the overall domestic economic performance, but the gigawatt-hours of electricity America consumed in 2021 are almost identical to our 2007 numbers.
J.E. Quinn, M.L. Thompson, W.D. Burch, J.J. Laidler
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 20 | Number 4 | December 1991 | Pages 605-609
Advanced Fission Reactors | doi.org/10.13182/FST91-A11946905
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
An approach to balancing the nuclear fuel cycle equation utilizing the Advanced Liquid Metal Reactor System (ALMRS) using synergistic components currently under development by the United States Department of Energy is described. These components include the modular, passively safe ALMR design; the Integral Fast Reactor (IFR) metal fuel cycle; and the processing of LWR spent fuel to use as startup fuel for the ALMRs. Each of these components will be briefly described along with an overall system perspective, including potential optional approaches. Assessments of beneficial impact of the ALMRS in the United States will be presented based on the United States Department of Energy National Energy Strategy energy use growth scenarios through the mid-21st century. Potential applications in other international energy infrastructures will also be considered. Preliminary evaluation of the economics of this balanced approach leads to the conclusion that the concept is feasible; thus the approach appears attractive from both resource management and overall system economics perspectives.