Right, but in the context of data centers, it’s all about baseload anyway, right? If data centers become a big driver of energy use, there will be a lot lower fluctuation between peak and trough demand.
I can imagine a future in which every data center has a little baby nuclear plant built right next to it. Watts per acre may become a significant measurement of density. Solar’s environmental impact is of course dramatically overstated by its opponents, but it won’t be when we scale it up and have to start slashing forests for it.
If it were simply an option between nuclear or gas for that, nuclear would, generally, be the obvious choice. But it would be quite atypical to build a gas plant to provide base power. Typically they are being built to back up renewables.
Fair point that renewables may have a practical expansion limit, but for the time being are, by far, the cheapest option so a data centre is still going to prefer that source of power to the greatest extent possible, thereby leaving gas/nuclear only as reserve — of which nuclear has not proven to be cost effective at. Geothermal, hydro, etc. are hard to beat, but where you aren't sitting on the perfect environment, generally speaking, wind+solar+gas is about as good as it gets on a cost basis.
Yeah, and I'm all for all of it. I just can see a future in which nuclear (through some combination of regulatory reform and new technology) ends up becoming cost-feasible and fossil fuels fade away.