More nuclear is a good thing. FAANG nuclear is even better, because they will be be ready and equipped to push back the insane NIMBY crowd(s) and also don't need to be worried about getting reelected.
But power needs are increasing whether this datacenter is built or not, so the discussion regarding nuclear has to happen in some context regardless.
But when a few hundred people, or really just 0 people[2] die in one place at one time, people lose their minds.
[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/nov/23/coal-pow... [2]: An inter-agency analysis concluded that the accident did not raise radioactivity far enough above background levels to cause even one additional cancer death among the people in the area https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Mile_Island_accident
There is a reason all the growth is happening in Asia. Their focus is on improving their wealth and material standard of living.
Coal also has a much wider low-level impact: for instance, it's not safe to consume more than small amounts of fish from the great lakes because of mercury levels, largely due to coal power plants.
I'm not really answering your question, but it does seem like nuclear NIMBYs are more effective than other ones.
Far more will die due to other kinds of pollution it emits, and an unknowable number will die due to the effects of climate change caused by CO2 emissions.
https://hopefullyintersting.blogspot.com/2013/12/fukushima-v...
My point is that it is not insane. Maybe selfish. Not willing to have risks with potential catastrophic results near your home is the most normal thing.
And with nuclear, the probability is very low, as with planes. Yet it happens. All the time. Our generation went through three once in a lifetime crisis in the last two decades.
Nuclear power plants, in contrast, very rarely have issues: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-p...
Nobody died at Fukushima (from the nuclear incident that is, 10000 died because of the Tsunami)
Hundreds of people died at Chernobyl.
Those are all the major accidents at production nuclear power plant that have ever occured. There are no others.
There is just one that was deadly, and it is about as representative of the safety of nuclear power as flying in a 1920s' plane compared to a state of the art Airbus.
That would not be a problem. FAANG controls the OSs and the media. /s
Generally a NIMBY is anti-progress and very selfish, putting themselves ahead of everyone. My dad was called to help resolve TMI during the meltdown and was part of the engineering design group the the Beaver Valley nuclear power station. People were complaining they had cows dying of radiation years before the plant was completed. NIMBYs suck.
And what is "progress"? We both have ideas about what progress is. Are mine the same as yours?
The representative democracy does attempt to solve this problem; you pick a representative you understand is aligned with your interests on the issues you do understand and trust they and their experts will do well on the rest.
It's not a perfect system, but unless the populace can be given free time and education to consider individual policies based on reliable evidence and not hearsay from biased sources, it's the best we can do.