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kulahanyesterday at 6:39 PM9 repliesview on HN

With AI on the horizon and each server farm using as much energy as a medium-sized city, I have no idea how they hope to meet demand otherwise, unless the plan is just some equivalent to "drill baby drill".


Replies

oceanplexianyesterday at 6:57 PM

It’s simple, Germany isn’t going to be participating in the next industrial revolution. It will be the US vs. China. You can already see it happening with their car industry as they struggle to keep up with new technology.

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RandomLensmanyesterday at 6:42 PM

It would take a long time to build new reactors, so not sure that would help.

Germany could also do more wind, solar, tidal, geothermal (fossil fuels aside).

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i5heuyesterday at 7:59 PM

Not with a tech that needs 15 years to be build

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fuzzy2yesterday at 7:14 PM

If AI server farm operators conclude that nuclear is the way to go, they should be free to do so, yes. If they manage to fulfill all regulatory requirements. (Which means it'll be at least $2 per kWh, yay.)

toomuchtodoyesterday at 6:49 PM

You limit data center power demand until the AI bubble pops.

Peak Bubble - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45218790 - September 2025

US Data center projects blocked or delayed amid local opposition - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44097350 - May 2025

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ThinkBeatyesterday at 8:05 PM

A country is not forced to have AI farms running in it. Building giant powerplant for the AI tech (possible) bubble not seems wise.

The plant will take 5 - 10 years to build, who knows what demands AI will have at that point.

SO let some countries that want to spent enormous amounts of their energy on AI do so, adn the rest can connect to those.

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pstuartyesterday at 7:02 PM

There's a new kind of "drill baby drill" which we should be embracing: geothermal energy. There's a lot of advancements in that space and it is a perfect base load generation source.

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V__yesterday at 7:18 PM

I willing to wager that the AI bubble will burst before you could even begin to build power plants for them.

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croesyesterday at 8:38 PM

The wait until after the AI bubble and buy the cheap surplus of energy.

AI is useful but nit as useful as the AI companied claim it to be and the ROI isn’t as great neither.