Chapter 707 - 331: The Electricity-Devouring Monster

A private club on the Potomac Riverfront in Washington D.C.

The massive conference table was covered with complex technical diagrams and energy consumption reports. The air was thick with anxiety.

Seated on the left was Kevin Scott, Microsoft’s Global Head of Energy Strategy.

He wore a white T-shirt with the Microsoft logo and held a Surface tablet.

Across from him sat David Chen, Google’s Vice President of Infrastructure.

These two representatives from tech giants—men who typically held sway in Silicon Valley and couldn’t stand the sight of each other—now wore the exact same pained expression.

Just last month, the Eastern Power from across the ocean had released three open-source large-scale models, each with over a trillion parameters.

The brutal speed of their algorithmic iteration and the staggering accumulation of computing power had left all of Silicon Valley feeling an unprecedented sense of suffocation.

This AI offensive was accompanied by plummeting stock prices on the Nasdaq display.

Wall Street’s shareholders had lost their patience.

They furiously questioned management, demanding that Microsoft and Google deploy more computing nodes in the shortest possible time and expand their underlying computing infrastructure at any cost.

That was why they had rushed to Pennsylvania without hesitation to sign the agreement in that temporary tent.

Faced with the massive concept of the Computing Power Special Zone, everyone understood it offered enormous benefits to all parties involved.

The project was bound to happen; the only question was whether the execution would be good or bad.

The tech giants desperately needed a grand narrative to soothe market sentiment.

They had to push the signing forward first, prop up this multi-billion-dollar deal, and then discuss how to actually get the machines running behind closed doors.

Now, the signing was over, stock prices had rebounded, and the face-to-face, closed-door meeting had begun.

The show was over. They now had to solve the practical problems of implementation.

"Mr. Sterling, we need to talk about reality."

Kevin Scott pushed his tablet to the center of the table. On the screen was a depressing power load curve.

"Leo Wallace’s vision for a Computing Power Special Zone is certainly appealing. Building data centers next to energy sources, using Pennsylvania’s geography for natural cooling, and the promised low electricity prices—it all sounds perfect."

"But physics doesn’t lie."

"A supercomputing cluster with hundreds of thousands of H100 GPUs has astonishing power consumption at full load. We need a gigawatt-level power input, and it has to be a stable, rock-solid current, 24/7."

David Chen chimed in, his tone even sharper.

"Baseload power is the only metric we care about."

"Alright."

Sterling leaned back in his chair and gestured for his assistant to distribute a document to the two tech giant representatives.

"Let’s see what options the experts have provided us," Sterling said, his voice unhurried.

"Wind power."

Scott opened the document and frowned after a single glance.

It was a wind distribution map of Western Pennsylvania, vast swathes of which were a depressing blue, indicating low wind speeds.

"Pennsylvania isn’t Iowa," Sterling said flatly. "The wind resources here are poor and extremely unstable."

"If you pin your hopes on these big windmills, your servers might be down three days a week."

"Besides, to build a large enough wind farm, we’d have to clear vast stretches of forest. The environmental groups would be the first to object."

"Option two: solar power."

Sterling pointed to the next page of the document.

"Pennsylvania isn’t Arizona, either. The daylight hours here are short, it snows often in winter, and photovoltaic power generation is extremely inefficient."

"I trust none of you want your AIs to hibernate in the winter."

David Chen’s expression soured.

"The cost of energy storage technology is absurdly high right now. It could never support peak shaving and valley filling on this scale."

David Chen looked at Sterling, trying to toss the problem back into his court.

"So, that’s the problem. Leo gave us the land and the policies, but he can’t give us what we need most: clean electricity."

"What about coal and natural gas?" Sterling offered.

"Please, Mr. Sterling, that’s last-century technology. If we announce we’re using coal to train AI, Wall Street’s ESG ratings will get us kicked off investment lists. That’s tantamount to PR suicide."

Sterling leaned back in his chair, looking at the two tech representatives.

’They want computing power, they want the future, but they don’t want to get their hands dirty.’

’They want infinite energy, yet they also want to maintain their hypocritical moral purity.’

"PR suicide?"

Sterling sneered and lit a cigarette.

"You people from Silicon Valley always want to have it all."

He blew a smoke ring, which slowly dissipated under the lights.

"You want stable, you want large-scale, and you want clean. On this planet, there’s only one form of energy that meets all three conditions."

Sterling raised a finger and pointed north.

"Nuclear power."

The conference room fell silent in an instant.

Kevin and David glanced at each other, both seeing the fear in the other’s eyes.

"Nuclear power?" Kevin’s voice trembled slightly. "Sterling, are you joking? We’re talking about Pennsylvania."

"Three Mile Island."

Sterling uttered the name calmly.

It was an eternal scar on the history of nuclear energy in the United States.

In 1979, right there in Pennsylvania, the Three Mile Island Nuclear Power Plant was the site of the most serious nuclear accident in U.S. history.

Although it caused no direct fatalities, its massive cooling tower has since become a totem of fear.

"There’s a decommissioned but structurally sound nuclear power plant there."

Sterling ignored their fear and continued.

"Its infrastructure is still there, the transmission lines are still there, and even the cooling water source is readily available."

"All we have to do is restart it."

"Or, we could build SMRs on the original site. That new technology is safer, more efficient, and has a shorter construction time."

"It’s a dormant volcano. If we light it, you’ll have all the power you could ever want."

"And it’s zero-carbon, absolutely clean energy."

Sterling stared at the two men.

"This is the only solution."

David Chen shook his head, as if trying to shake off the insane idea.

"Impossible. Absolutely impossible."

"Restarting a nuclear plant in Democratic Party territory? At Three Mile Island, of all places? The Progressives would go insane. Environmental groups would surround the place and form a blockade. It’s their taboo, an absolute red line that cannot be crossed."

"We’re here to solve a problem, not to start World War Three."

Sterling looked at the mixture of desire and fear on their faces and sneered inwardly.

’These two vetoed every other option, all while implying that only nuclear power can satisfy their appetite. Now that I’ve put the only option on the table, they’re acting all scandalized. They want to play the whore but still get a monument to their virtue. What a bunch of drama queens from the West Coast.’

"Alright, since restarting Three Mile Island is difficult," Sterling said, deliberately changing tack to push them further. "Then why don’t we just pick a new site in Western Pennsylvania and build a brand-new nuclear power plant?"

"We can use the latest fourth-generation reactor technology. It’s safer, more efficient... though the timeline would be a bit longer. Maybe ten years..."

"Ten years?" Kevin and David practically jumped out of their seats.

"In ten years, AI might already be ruling the world, and we’d still be waiting for power plant approvals?" Kevin shook his head. "Our shareholders can’t wait ten years, and neither can the market."

Sterling spread his hands, his expression saying, ’Well, my hands are tied.’

"It seems we’ve hit an impasse."

The room fell silent again.

Kevin and David glanced at each other, both seeing the same cornered desperation in the other’s eyes.

They knew Sterling was putting on an act.

They also knew that, besides restarting Three Mile Island, they had no other choice.

All they needed now was a way to accept this option gracefully.

Sterling stood up with a scoff.

"In this country, there’s no taboo that can’t be broken, as long as the price is right."

"You don’t dare to touch it because you aren’t Politicians."

"But there is someone who dares."

Sterling turned around.

"That’s why we went to Leo Wallace."

"He’s a pragmatist, a Machiavellian disciple who will do whatever it takes to achieve his goals. That madman was willing to create the Mutual Aid Alliance—an act that challenged the very financial bedrock of the Federation. Compared to that, restarting the Three Mile Island Nuclear Power Plant is nothing."

"Let him do it."

Sterling gestured in the direction of Pittsburgh.

"Let him handle the environmentalists. Let him convince the voters."

"We just need to give him money, technology, and our endorsement."

"If he succeeds, we get our power. If he fails, he’s the one who takes the heat, not us."

"Will he agree?" Kevin asked. "Restarting a nuclear plant could cost him a lot of supporters."

"He’ll agree."

Sterling said with conviction.

"Because he has no choice."

"Without nuclear power, his Computing Power Special Zone is an empty shell. Without the Computing Power Special Zone, his industrial revival is just empty talk."

"He’s a smart man."

"He knows that to survive in this era, you have to embrace the beast known as nuclear power."