AI is going to solve the energy crisis

It is easy to find articles bemoaning the fact that the energy used by AI to process queries and to provide answers is using many times the energy needed to process a simple search engine query. Some of these articles talk about the inadequacy of the current electric grid to handle the increased data center load.

All true. But the search engine companies (e.g. Microsoft, Google, others) are recognizing that nuclear power is the solution. And in particular, small modular reactors (SMR) and microreactors are going to be a big part of the solution. Have a huge data center with increasing power demands from AI? Drop a small modular reactor right next to the data center--problem solved. Need more power? Drop a second small modular reactor next to the data center.

These small modular reactors and microreactors can be manufactured in a plant and trucked to the site, unlike the hugely expensive purpose-built reactors that have been built in the past seventy-five years. Nuclear is clean energy, and the SMRs have very large safety margins that make them safer than traditional reactors. Think of them as extremely efficient batteries that can generate power for years before needing to be recharged with new fuel.