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A power shortage could short-circuit Nvidia's rise

economist.com

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Re: A power shortage could short-circuit Nvidia's rise

#31

Post by jeffbee »

protocolture wrote: post #27
jeffbee wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> after permitting Load-bearing parenthetical! > Nuclear power plants take something like a decade to build The most-recently completed fission power station on this planet needed 23 years under construction and it is still in testing. A recent American one took 15 years.

When the brits were at it (With insourced nuclear engineering and low regulatory overhead) they could crank them out every 6 - 8 years. The brits let all that technical capability wither and could not do it again right now. But if someone was willing its still theoretically possible. Just takes total alignment between government and private.

OK, but people who want these actually have to build them in the countries that exist. This isn't Civilization. You cannot switch to a civic that gets more hammers at the beginning of your next turn.

Re: A power shortage could short-circuit Nvidia's rise

#33

Post by jdboyd »

jedberg wrote: post #2

I worked for a company making GPU clouds. The biggest problem we had for deployments was not getting GPUs -- we had plenty of those sitting in warehouses. The biggest issue was finding data center space with sufficient power and cooling. There was plenty of square footage, just not enough power for it all. They're now building gigawatt datacenters to handle all the GPUs. The big question is were to build them. There…

In my part of PA there are 3 in the process of going in nearby. I think the largest of the 3 is "only" 828 megawatts though. One of the others is supposed to be 300MW, and I'm not sure about the 3rd. There is another group talking about 3 more campuses with a combined power budget of 1.3GW about 55 miles from here. But then while we don't have cheap land, we do have nuclear and hydroelectric in the area, so I guess the makes it attractive.

Re: A power shortage could short-circuit Nvidia's rise

#34

Post by iainctduncan »

MadnessASAP wrote: post #10
tehjoker wrote: post #9

What is the point of all this? Why are we using so much power for hallucinated google search?

Because, for the time being, people are buying it.

Well .... investors are funding it. Take those away and nowhere near enough people want the price on the tin.

Re: A power shortage could short-circuit Nvidia's rise

#35

Post by mullingitover »

One really interesting strategy the US could pursue here would be to heavily tariff solar[1] and just randomly attack wind projects[2]. Just completely self-own itself on the two cheapest energy sources.

It wouldn't make any sense, but it would be provocative, really drive engagement.

[1] https://seia.org/news/solar-tariff-impacts/

[2] https://www.npr.org/2025/08/31/nx-s1-5522943/trump-offshore-...

Re: A power shortage could short-circuit Nvidia's rise

#36

Post by nemomarx »

protocolture wrote: post #27
jeffbee wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> after permitting Load-bearing parenthetical! > Nuclear power plants take something like a decade to build The most-recently completed fission power station on this planet needed 23 years under construction and it is still in testing. A recent American one took 15 years.

When the brits were at it (With insourced nuclear engineering and low regulatory overhead) they could crank them out every 6 - 8 years. The brits let all that technical capability wither and could not do it again right now. But if someone was willing its still theoretically possible. Just takes total alignment between government and private.

How do you get the expertise back on a dime?

You have to tack on a few slow builds that create talent and local knowledge for that, or poaching people from China Operation Paperclip style maybe.

Re: A power shortage could short-circuit Nvidia's rise

#37

Post by zetazzed »

senectus1 wrote: post #18
joak wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear power plants take something like a decade to build (after permitting) It makes more sense to go for PV plus batteries that can be installed in a matter of weeks

South Korea built 13 nuclear reactors in recent decades, with an average construction period of 56 months... Apparently Japan is the fastest builder (46 months). the 10 year+ issue is a western problem.

Ok but telling someone they can have GPUs online in a mere 5 years if they build as fast as SK is still going to be a very painful pill. How do we get a DC in a year?

Re: A power shortage could short-circuit Nvidia's rise

#38

Post by sghiassy »

jedberg wrote: post #2

I worked for a company making GPU clouds. The biggest problem we had for deployments was not getting GPUs -- we had plenty of those sitting in warehouses. The biggest issue was finding data center space with sufficient power and cooling. There was plenty of square footage, just not enough power for it all. They're now building gigawatt datacenters to handle all the GPUs. The big question is were to build them. There…

Curious what you think about Oregon.

Has a lot of hydroelectric and the nights get super-cold, so you could open the roof for free ventilation

Re: A power shortage could short-circuit Nvidia's rise

#39

Post by beeflet »

mullingitover wrote: post #35

One really interesting strategy the US could pursue here would be to heavily tariff solar[1] and just randomly attack wind projects[2]. Just completely self-own itself on the two cheapest energy sources. It wouldn't make any sense, but it would be provocative , really drive engagement. [1] https://seia.org/news/solar-tariff-impacts/ [2] https://www.npr.org/2025/08/31/nx-s1-5522943/trump-offshore-...

Maybe the tariff could encourage local manufacturing of solar? I have no idea, but I suppose that our local manufacturing could be getting killed by economies of scale abroad.

Or I am overthinking it and solar is something that (D) politicians support so the (R) president tautologically must oppose it. Therefore we must not have nice things

Re: A power shortage could short-circuit Nvidia's rise

#40

Post by walterbell »

zetazzed wrote: post #37
senectus1 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

South Korea built 13 nuclear reactors in recent decades, with an average construction period of 56 months... Apparently Japan is the fastest builder (46 months). the 10 year+ issue is a western problem.

Ok but telling someone they can have GPUs online in a mere 5 years if they build as fast as SK is still going to be a very painful pill. How do we get a DC in a year?

  How do we get a DC in a year?
Migrate an existing plant? https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/elon-musks-xai-bu...

> The company has apparently been thinking outside the box to meet its power needs, with Musk stating a couple of weeks ago that it intends to buy a power plant from abroad and import it into the US to provide energy for its data centers.

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