Nuclear Energy

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.

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.