Jan. 20 (ZFJ) — Microsoft, Google, and Amazon are investing in nuclear energy as the race to develop artificial intelligence technologies heats up.
AI technologies, which are currently rapidly gaining traction, demand significant computational power to train and operate. Data centers house the hardware for them and are consuming increasingly more energy.
According to a December 2024 report from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, a U.S. Department of Energy research facility, total American data center electricity usage increased from 58 TWh in 2014 to 176 TWh in 2023.
Nov. 24 (ZFJ) — The United Kingdom’s last coal power plant shut down on Sept. 30, ending over 140 years of coal energy in the nation and making it the first major economy to completely phase out coal power.
The Ratcliffe-on-Soar Power Station, owned by Uniper, is located near Nottingham. It began generating power in 1967 and officially ended generation at midnight on Sept. 30.
Coal was responsible for 40% of the U.
Feb. 8 (ZFJ) — Joint European Torus (JET) researchers announced on Thursday, Feb. 8, that their tokamak set a new world record of 69.26 megajoules released in controlled nuclear fusion energy on Oct. 3, 2023, at 19:14 GMT.
The record, equivalent to the energy released from burning two kilograms of coal, was set during a single pulse of JET over six seconds with only 0.21 milligrams of fuel. JET’s previous record from 2022 was 59 MJ.
Nov. 10 (ZFJ) — Ørsted has pulled out of developing two offshore wind farms, set to have been New Jersey’s first ones, due to economic challenges, the company announced on Tuesday, Oct. 31.
“Macroeconomic factors have changed dramatically over a short period of time, with high inflation, rising interest rates, and supply chain bottlenecks impacting our long-term capital investments,” said David Hardy, group executive vice president and CEO of Ørsted Americas.
