<
https://reneweconomy.com.au/former-miss-americas-australian-nuclear-tour-clouded-by-chinese-ai-blow-to-her-employer/>
"Miss America 2023 winner Grace Stanke has begun her Australian tour to promote
nuclear power, just as the US energy giant that employs her has taken a big
market hit after Chinese company DeepSeek claimed to have found a cheaper way
to make AI.
Stanke, who flew into Perth on Wednesday, is a nuclear engineer who works in
public relations for Constellation to promote nuclear technology, and has been
brought out for an Australian tour by campaign group Nuclear For Australia in
an attempt to drum up local support for the technology.
Nuclear For Australia is nominally headed by 18-year-old Will Shackel. But
Stanke’s tour has reportedly been bankrolled by Australian businessman Dick
Smith, who also provided the funding to establish the group.
The tour comes amid an aggressive expansion drive by Constellation, which holds
a suite of nuclear and fossil fuel assets. According to the company’s
2024
Sustainability Report, nuclear makes up 67% of its generation capacity, with
natural gas and oil making up 25% and renewables and storage accounting for 8%.
Constellation has increasingly been looking to capitalise on the development of
AI as a driver in future electricity demand that it hopes to meet with nuclear
power.
In September last year the company announced it would buy the Three Mile
[Island] nuclear facility under a deal to supply Microsoft with power to run
its AI data centres.
Earlier in January, Constellation bought out rival Calvine for $US 27 billion,
a move that meant it acquired the company’s gas-plants.
As gas-peaking plants currently help smooth out spikes in the wholesale
electricity market by turning on during periods of high demand — at the expense
of nuclear generators — the acquisition potentially gives Constellation greater
influence over wholesale prices.
Late last week, President Donald Trump announced the US would pour $US 500
billion into AI development in what has been described as an “arms race” with
China, a decision welcomed by Constellation CEO Joe Dominguez.
“President Trump is right that sustaining and enhancing America’s global AI
dominance goes hand in hand with reliable, abundant American electricity,” he
said. “Data center developers, generators, utilities, and other stakeholders
should continue to work together to accomplish the President’s goals on behalf
of the American people.”
On Tuesday, however, the assumption that power-hungry chipsets needed to train
and run AI data centres would continue to drive demand for “clean” nuclear
power ran into a wall.
Chinese firm DeepSeek announced it developed an open large-language model (LLM)
that provides roughly the same service as ChatGPT with a smaller team and a
fraction of the hardware as their US counterparts."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
