Australia’s two major parties are divided over nuclear energy and the future mix of the nation’s power sources. But they are missing Australia’s opportunity to power the next generation of AI models.

During the election campaign, the Liberals advocated adopting nuclear power as an alternative green energy source for Australia, especially using small-scale nuclear power generators. Labor criticised the plan as being too vague and the technology as too immature, and said they will continue to rely on fossil fuels to smooth the transition to green technology by 2050.

Although small-scale nuclear power technology has been proven in many submarines cruising around the world—and some are questioning if Labor’s plans will even get Australia to net zero by 2050—we are missing out on a massive national security and economic opportunity for Australia.

The training of AI models requires significant power. OpenAI’s GPT-4 was estimated to use 50 times more electricity to train than its GPT-3 model. This trend is likely to continue for frontier models. By 2030, power consumption by data centres is set to double, and AI is forecast to consume more than 9 percent of total US power generation.

In the United States, AI companies are worried that there won’t be enough electricity base load (the background power generation capacity) to train future models in the West. It is not surprising that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s side project is a nuclear fusion startup.

To help, Britain is planning AI growth zones to accelerate building AI data centres,  repurposing post-industrial areas with an oversupply of electricity due to closures of physical manufacturing facilities. These zones will benefit from a streamlined planning approvals process and accelerate the provisioning of clean power. However, Britain is still limited by power base load supply. Hinkley Point (Britain’s latest nuclear power site) is delayed and over budget. In some regions, there isn’t enough power to support more high-performance computers.

To train the next generation of models, AI companies are considering moving to countries with excess power—most likely in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states are trying to attract AI companies with the promise of low-cost or completely free power supply based on their oil production. However, training in these countries opens companies up to political interference and influence. Physical data centres are always vulnerable to different types of cyberattacks.

China understands that AI powered by clean nuclear technology is the future. In February 2023, China had 55 nuclear plants in operation, 22 under construction and more than 70 planned. Using their centralised planning process, they can build nuclear power stations at will and are more likely to be able to scale power production in line with growing power requirements.

If AI companies want to keep training in democratically aligned countries and use green electricity sources, where can they train the next generation of models? Britain is too small and broke to fund more nuclear power and the US is too science-sceptical and politically divided to adopt such a forward-looking approach. Canada has the space and an abundance of fossil fuels, but in the short-term Australia can provide more consistent green electricity using solar. Australia sits in the right security and political spheres of influence to develop the technology without becoming a nuclear threat. International defence and security institutions, such as the US, would baulk at other smaller and unaligned countries developing such nuclear technologies.

Much like the supply of critical and rare earth minerals, Australia is well positioned to be the energy supplier to Five Eyes nations and other democratically aligned Western countries. Australia has a lot of space to build power stations and can mine the uranium directly from the earth. Other forms of power generation, including such green alternatives as solar panels—even if combined with massive battery storage—won’t provide enough base load power to train AI models in the long term.

Yes, in the short-term it wouldn’t be cheap and it wouldn’t meet AI’s immediate power requirements before 2030, but nuclear power is a long-term opportunity for Australia. Plus, small-scale nuclear power generators are significantly cheaper and quicker to build, and international sales will drive economic growth in Australia’s manufacturing sector. Australia needs more policies to onshore large data centre companies such as AWS and Google.

While this election showed that nuclear power remains a political football, our adversaries are seizing the opportunity to build for the long term. Market factors will force the training of AI models into areas with an oversupply of electricity, playing even further into their hands. Unfortunately, we don’t have the luxury of time to argue—we need to get building.