By Jo Nova

A fork in the road…

At this moment in history, as AI takes off, France has a couple of gigawatts of reliable baseload power to spare.  It has a vision of being one of the global Big Three industrial hubs of AI development along with China and the USA. The French Energy giant EDF is offering land near the power plants to build big new AI datacenters, and is already signing those deals.

With AI on the cusp of self-directed robots it could be remaking whole economies soon.

Ten or twenty years ago, Australia could have joined this party. We could have expanded our economy vastly, putting us at the front of the new technology. Instead we wrecked the grid, blew up the coal plants, stopped exploring for gas in key spots and destroyed frequency stability.

World Nuclear News

UK-based AI cloud provider Fluidstack has signed a memorandum of understanding with the French government to construct one of the world’s largest decarbonised AI supercomputers in France. Meanwhile, utility EDF has identified four sites on its own land that it will offer for data centres. AI firms with its nuclear electricity.

It added: “Fluidstack and the French government recognise that AI’s future hinges on three core pillars: energy, compute power, and AI models. By leveraging France’s nuclear assets, the advanced grid infrastructure enabled by [grid operator] RTE, leading AI talent, and cutting-edge compute technologies, this partnership will establish France amongst the world’s top three AI hubs alongside the United States and China.”

Nobody tempts anyone with solar panels, voltage surges, price rises and unreliable power.

Fifty years ago France built 56 nuclear plants in just 15 years, and they’re still reaping rewards and opportunities from them.