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Yasuhiro Matsuda for AWS Community Builders

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The Relationship between AI and Electricity Supply and Japan's Situation

This article is a further elaboration of a question-and-answer session I had with an audience member when I taught a class on marketing practice and digital applications as a guest speaker at the Nippon Institute of Technology's Graduate School of Professional Studies on November 16.

Photos of the University School Building
Photos of the lecture
Photos of the lecture

In developing AI models, unlike inference, learning requires machine power and large amounts of electricity.

The demand for cloud computing has been driving the construction of data centers for some time now, and Japan is no exception to this trend of increasing speed.

The blackout at Hokkaido Electric Power Company is still fresh in our minds, and this month Shikoku Electric Power Company also experienced a blackout.

We do not know if the blackout was caused by the learning of the AI model, but it is becoming uncontrollable by the way electricity demand has been controlled up to now and is caused by an imbalance.

It is a well-known fact that the nuclear power plants are under strain due to outages, but the fact that this has been spurred on by AI is nothing short of ironic.

Originally promoting the use of green energy, the power grid is fragile, and the renewable energy output control continues, with Kyushu Electric Power Co. and others dumping the power they generate without being able to transmit it.

On the other hand, nuclear power generation still retains the phrase "cheapest power" and the best solution to the power crunch is to speed up the resumption of operations.

The other day, NHK's “Butterfly Effect” program reported that those who returned to Japan after the war and had nowhere to live were given land that was completely unsuitable for cultivation and worked hard to cultivate it, but the Great East Japan Earthquake has made it a no-go zone.

The fact that the standards for the siting of nuclear power plants have been revised is necessary to ensure that they can operate safely in the event of unexpected situations.

On the other hand, it appears that little progress has been made in the past 13 years in controlling nuclear power plants in the event of an eventuality.

In addition, the decommissioning of the Fukushima Daiichi NPP is still in a state where only a very small amount of debris has finally been removed, and the future still remains to be seen.

Although progress has been made in dealing with natural disasters at nuclear power plants in this way, by continuing to restart nuclear power plants, even under such circumstances, will we accept the fact that cyber security and physical attacks on nuclear power plants were unforeseen?

History repeats itself, but we do not learn from the past.
Japan, as a disaster-prone country, should not forget the heat of the moment when the heat of the moment passes.

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