“Generating more energy, not less, improves the quality of life for everyone. “ Through this maxim, accompanied by the small yellow logo with three rays symbolizing nuclear power, Twitter founder Jack Dorsey took a stand for atomic energy on Tuesday, Jan.4. In the process, he republished, also on the social network, a cartoon ironic on the fact that the closure of nuclear power plants decided “To save the planet” was thwarted by rising energy prices.
Surprising? The display of this opinion shows it, the clichés on the tech industry are simplistic: Mr. Dorsey is often portrayed as the symbol of a new age, libertarian California Silicon Valley, keen on meditation and renewable energies. However, he is not the only digital boss to have declared his love for nuclear power, seen as a ground for innovation and a means of meeting growing needs.
To colonize space
On December 8, 2021, Elon Musk, the founding provocateur of Tesla and SpaceX, had already made this award on Twitter : “Unless they are exposed to natural disasters, nuclear power plants should not be shut down. “ “I am not saying that we must build a whole package of new reactors, but that we must not stop those which operate in a safe way”, he said in September 2021 at a conference criticizing Germany’s policy, reported the site Business Insider. A proponent of wind and solar power, Mr. Musk has also regularly praised nuclear power for his space dream: this energy could propel interplanetary rockets or heat the atmosphere of Mars through controlled fusion, modeled on the Sun, has he imagined.
Fusion and space also fascinate his rival Jeff Bezos: the founder of Amazon has long invested in the start-up General Fusion, which, in June 2021, chose the suburbs of London for its future prototype. And, to colonize space, it will take “Adapted nuclear reactors”, because “Solar energy becomes problematic the further you move from the Sun”, said the boss of Blue Origin, in 2016, at Washington post.
These new nuclear apostles join their predecessor in tech, Bill Gates: the founder of Microsoft is chairman of the board of TerraPower, a start-up specializing in small reactors (SMR).
Google is not so militant. But this pioneer of renewable energies has, since 2018, admitted nuclear energy “Carbon free” with which it ultimately wants to supply its sites twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.