Nvidiably, the Diablo’s in the Details

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Nvidiably, the Diablo's in the Details 1

Another sign o’ the times a’ changin’ is happening. As technology rockets into the ‘gulping electricity stage’ and away from the ‘touchy-feely Gaia friendly’ pose they used to be able to pull off (until their power needs overcame their #feelz), we are seeing more and more couplings that, once upon a time, would have been unthinkable.

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Utility companies and the methods they used to generate power were the natural enemies of the ‘do no evil’ set.

Until, of course, that techy set needed reliable power sources for providing buttloads of power.

One such case I’ve touched on before is the proposed rebooting of the legendary Three Mile Island nuclear power plant. The downside is, as shaky as electrical generation is on the East Coast thanks to bull-headed, climate cultist Democratic governors shutting down natgas and coal-fired power plants before they even had enough unreliable renewables to replace them, all the rock-solid power emanating from a reborn Three Mile Island wouldn’t help. 

It’s already spoken for, as the rebirth itself is the brainchild of Bill Gates’ Microsoft with an exclusive deal to provide power to planned Artificial Intelligence (AI) data centers being built in the area near the reactors.

…Yes, Three Mile Island will glow again, but every last drop of juice will go not to illuminate and warm homes in Teaneck or the Catskills – it will all belong to Microsoft, who is financing the venture for their incoming data center plans.

…Use nearby available power generation resources that are sitting idle…and who cares why they shut down in the first place? Gates needs them now.

FIRE UP THOSE BIG, BEAUTIFUL TOWERS

Constellation Energy to restart Three Mile Island nuclear plant, sell the power to Microsoft for AI

Constellation Energy plans to restart the Three Mile Island nuclear plant and will sell the power to Microsoft, demonstrating the immense energy needs of the tech sector as they build out data centers to support artificial intelligence.

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Back in the spring of 2023, somehow California’s unctuous governor, Gavin ‘Randall Flagg-lite’ Newsom, had a rare rational light bulb go off in his oleaginous gourd. He realized in a bit of a panic that should he proceed with shutting down the state’s very last nuclear power plant at Diablo Canyon – which was already in the works, the state having let all the extension deadlines pass, environmental whacko heart-pleasing announcements of the plant’s demise read aloud, etc –  the state could be in a bit of a pickle, power-wise. Californians were already living in a land of threatened rolling brownouts and constant power shortage blackouts, and they were even contemplating using the EVs they were mandating state residents buy to eventually help power the grid itself.

If they lost old reliable on the coast there, the Sierra Club would be beside itself with glee but everyone else was boned.

So Newsom did what Newsom does best – reenact the shower scene at the end of Dallas and pretend closing Diablo Canyon never happened.

It was all a dream.

…In a volte-face worthy of a twinkle-toed Baryshnikov, Newsom went from climate cultist hero to dirty dog overnight when he realized – for once – not cutting the state’s energy throat was more important than not cutting his own. He said the plant, slated to close in 2025, should remain open until at least 2030. He also helped facilitate the panicked rush to get a Nuclear Regulatory Commission extension approved. The state had let their operating licenses expire in anticipation of shutting the facility down, and were shocked to find out the NRC wouldn’t just let them pick up where they’d left it. They were going to have to reapply for everything. Time crunch was on…

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A superior judge even lent a helping hand by throwing out the expected, swiftly filed lawsuit from outraged environmentalists. 

The state was on its way to asking for at least another twenty years of good, clean, glow, baby, glow.

And, in one of the more heartwarming fairy tales of modern life, people are coming to love and appreciate Diablo Canyon for its peculiar brand of steadfast power generation.

It might not be the prettiest thing ever, they’re realizing, but by God, its always ON.

…As California’s only remaining nuclear power plant, Diablo Canyon provides nearly 9% of the state’s electricity and generates 17% of its zero-carbon energy. The California Energy Commission estimates that power demand across the state will rise roughly 43% in the next 15 years, which PG&E argues will make Diablo Canyon a more critical clean energy asset.

Thirty-eight years and humming has its advantages. The still intriguing, cutting-edge idea of nuclear even attracts the cool kids nowadays who appreciate both the engineering marvel that it was and the fact that they have a chance to make it even better.

Enter the gamers.

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…Nvidia, the world’s most valuable company, has just made its first move into nuclear power: it is partnering with PG&E’s recently-saved Diablo Canyon Nuclear plant to build AI inside the plant. 

The deal is being announced right now at an event with PG&E in California. 

For security reasons, nuclear plants are “air gapped”, disconnected from outside networks. 

This limits the use of powerful AI in working with immense amounts of data being generated by the plant’s reactor and other systems. 

Solution? Bring the AI inside. Nvidia will work with Atomic Canyon, a nuclear AI company, to build its computing power inside the plant walls.

What is onboard AI going to do for the once-condemned nuclear power plant? 

Paperwork. Lots of paperwork.

Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) is deploying Atomic Canyon’s artificial intelligence-powered solutions for the nuclear energy sector at PG&E’s Diablo Canyon Power Plant, marking the inaugural commercial installation of the first on-site generative AI deployment at a U.S. generating facility.

The announcement was made at the PG&E Innovation Summit presented by DISTRIBUTECH. Atomic Canyon’s Neutron Enterprise generative AI solution, built and running on NVIDIA’s full-stack AI platform, is being deployed at Diablo Canyon for document search and retrieval processes. PG&E also says the AI technology will deliver cost savings and improved operational efficiency.

Federal and state regulations require utilities that operate nuclear power plants to manage “billions of pages” of technical documentation, PG&E said, which are spread across multiple systems. Power plant personnel must spend both time and resources to retrieve this essential data – something PG&E argues the AI will help avoid. Neutron Enterprise is meant to integrate with Diablo Canyon’s systems, using the latest optical character recognition (OCR), retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) and AI-powered search technology meant to cut search times from hours to seconds.

“Atomic Canyon’s AI solutions will enable faster data retrieval, boosting collaboration and ensuring continued safe, but more efficient operations. Accessing critical information in seconds will let us focus on what truly matters—delivering reliable clean energy safely and affordably,” said Maureen Zawalick, vice president of business and technical services at Diablo Canyon Power Plant.

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There’s no worry about brownouts when they’re collecting data at the plant, either. 

Much of that data is in all sorts of different formats – think how we’ve gone just from floppies to now – as technology for storing it changed rapidly over the decades the plant has been in operation. It’s definitely a logistical nightmare to track down one individual piece using what they have now, and it’s believed the AI will alleviate many of the issues.

I mean, much of it was scanned from microfiche? Remember when that – and those horrid readers – was THE thing?  *shudders*

…Maureen Zawalick, vice president of business and technical services at Diablo Canyon, told Reuters the facility has about 9,000 procedures in place and 9 million documents stored in its systems, many of them scanned from paper or microfiche. As part of the PG&E’s federal license keep the facility running for up to 20 more years, the company must create plans to manage it as it ages, with much of the information drawn from decades-old documents.

Atomic Canyon’s software, which will run on computers supplied by Nvidia (NVDA.O), opens new tab, will read the documents and make them searchable in natural language. The startup worked with researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee to develop an AI model trained to understand the specialized terms used in nuclear regulatory documents.

Most nuclear plants “have this huge corpus of data, but it can be really challenging to find documents when you have so much data that’s available,” Trey Lauderdale, Atomic Canyon’s founder, told Reuters. “A lot of this data is microfiche. It’s not like they went and labeled what all this data was.”

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It will also help the case for extending the plant’s operating license – better, faster, and more efficient is always a plus improvement for regulators.

On the upside, too, is the fact that the electricity still goes out of the plant to Californians who need it desperately – it’s not being swallowed exclusively by a data center.

Nuclear advocates are ecstatic.

Ignoring the whackos in orca costumes, Californians should be, too.

Green light, GLOW.

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