QInsight - S3:E5 - The Nuclear Option

In this episode of QInsight, Steve Clarke and Alastair Jupp are joined by Jamie Plumridge, Channel Director at nLighten, to explore the infrastructure that sits beneath every AI model, chatbot, agent, and productivity tool.

As AI adoption accelerates, demand for computing power is rising faster than the infrastructure supporting it. The discussion examines what happens when technology starts colliding with physical limits, from power consumption and cooling requirements to the growing pressure on energy networks and data centre capacity.

Jamie explains why the cloud is far less abstract than most people imagine, how modern AI workloads are changing the economics of infrastructure, and why the industry is now considering solutions that would have sounded like science fiction only a few years ago. The conversation covers hyperscale data centres, liquid cooling, regional AI infrastructure, and the growing role of nuclear energy in supporting the next phase of AI growth.

The episode also explores what this means for businesses. Most organisations will never build their own AI infrastructure, but every organisation will depend on it. Understanding those dependencies is becoming just as important as understanding the tools themselves.

If AI feels limitless, this episode is a useful reminder that every prompt, model, and agent still depends on power, hardware, and the laws of physics.