Three Mile Island nuclear plant restart in Microsoft AI power deal • Hacker News Board

Re: Three Mile Island nuclear plant restart in Microsoft AI power deal

#121

Post by wonderwonder » Fri, Sep 20, 2024, 2:21 PM UTC

UI_at_80x24 wrote: post #74

akamaka wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you didn’t mention is the effect that renewables have on the cost of nuclear power. When you get plentiful and nearly free solar energy at certain times of the year, the utilization of your nuclear power plant will drop. Because nuclear power has high up front costs, its economics are increasingly eroded as more renewables and batteries are added to the grid. You’re totally correct that renewables and batteries…

And thank-you for making the point that utilities should be socialized and not a profit center. EVERYBODY deserves clean water, electricity, housing and food.

Who pays for it? If everybody gets all of the above for free, then why would they ever work and contribute to covering the cost of these free for everyone services?

Once a large number of people stop working, who actually works to grow the food? Who builds the houses?

Communism does not work.

Re: Three Mile Island nuclear plant restart in Microsoft AI power deal

#122

Post by bayindirh » Fri, Sep 20, 2024, 2:21 PM UTC

qwytw wrote: post #111

bayindirh wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men, for the nastiest of reasons, will somehow work for the benefit of us all. -- John Maynard Keynes. I think he's onto something as I see the lengths Boing, Intel, FAANG, et. al going to benefit us all everyday...

Well they did overall, throughout their entire existence, didn't they?

There are so few corporations which build things to better the world and make money in the process.

99% of the corporations build things to earn money. Their wares sometimes do no harm, but it's the exception.

In many cases, the desire for money, not the need, is the driving force behind the technology. See n startups which are discussed here and categorized as "this is better as X. they're just trying to earn money with no real benefit to anyone".

Did Exxon hide their global warming research to benefit humanity? Of course not. Did Tetra Ethyl Lead added to gasoline instead of Ethanol, just because it was better? No because it was patentable and ethanol was not. Did WV created "better" diesel engines to benefit the humanity? No the engines were only "better" for their bottom line and problematic for every one. Did DuPont hid the effects of forever chemicals because it was beneficial/harmless to the nature? On the contrary.

Companies do whatever they can without breaking laws (or bending them with money) to earn more money. The products we get are side effects of it.

I like this take about current (Generative) AI hype:

    The true purpose of AI is to allow wealth to access skill without allowing skill to access wealth.
    -- jeffowski (at Twitter/X)

Re: Three Mile Island nuclear plant restart in Microsoft AI power deal

#123

Post by greenthrow » Fri, Sep 20, 2024, 2:23 PM UTC

edmundsauto wrote: post #106

greenthrow wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is nonsense. If you're going to cite arbitrary "N+1 days of bad weather" then I can cite "N+1 severe natural disasters" where the nuclear reactor is engineered to withstand N. And unlike the theoretical "disaster" due to extended bad weather taking renewables down, this has actually happened in recent memory with Fukushima. And this was a true disaster, not just a power outage. Nuclear is not safe. Every time pr…

To be fair, the unsafe designs are all 50 years old because of FUD from incidents that are also generally pretty old. I’m not sure it’s comparable to modern designs - this isn’t a “new iPhone every year” deal.

Get out of here with this lie. Before the disaster, nuclear proponents cited Fukushima as an example of how safe modern nuclear was.

Re: Three Mile Island nuclear plant restart in Microsoft AI power deal

#124

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Sep 20, 2024, 2:23 PM UTC

himinlomax wrote: post #100

fergonco wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are nimby crowds insane? Accidents may happen. And did happen in the past in that same place: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Mile_Island_accident

Nobody died at TMI. 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 th…

[deleted]

Re: Three Mile Island nuclear plant restart in Microsoft AI power deal

#125

Post by mpweiher » Fri, Sep 20, 2024, 2:26 PM UTC

akamaka wrote: post #66

atomic128 wrote: post #30

No battery farm can protect a solar/wind grid from an arbitrarily extended period of bad weather. If you have N days of battery storage and the sun doesn't shine for N+1 days, you're in trouble. Nuclear fission is the answer. Today there are 440 nuclear reactors operating in 32 countries. Nuclear fission power plants are expensive to build but once built the plant can last 50 years (maybe 80 years, maybe more) and th…

What you didn’t mention is the effect that renewables have on the cost of nuclear power. When you get plentiful and nearly free solar energy at certain times of the year, the utilization of your nuclear power plant will drop. Because nuclear power has high up front costs, its economics are increasingly eroded as more renewables and batteries are added to the grid. You’re totally correct that renewables and batteries…

There is nothing inherent or natural about that scenario, it is all due to the failure to properly design electricity markets.

See also: the 2001 California electricity crisis.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000–2001_California_electrici...

Re: Three Mile Island nuclear plant restart in Microsoft AI power deal

#126

Post by dylan604 » Fri, Sep 20, 2024, 2:27 PM UTC

RandomLensman wrote: post #87

closewith wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can absolutely build solar+wind+storage systems that deliver 24/7/365 energy with many nines SLAs, on the real earth with real statistics on weather. Once you start adding nines, nuclear starts to be become attractive again. Hence these deals.

Practically, a lot of nuclear power plants can be down at the same time for maintenance etc., so you need to overbuild quite a bit there as well then

Hopefully you have multiple reactor designs so that if an issue with one is found, you don't stop all reactors just reactors of the same design.

Re: Three Mile Island nuclear plant restart in Microsoft AI power deal

#127

Post by mpweiher » Fri, Sep 20, 2024, 2:27 PM UTC

wonderwonder wrote: post #121

UI_at_80x24 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And thank-you for making the point that utilities should be socialized and not a profit center. EVERYBODY deserves clean water, electricity, housing and food.

Who pays for it? If everybody gets all of the above for free, then why would they ever work and contribute to covering the cost of these free for everyone services? Once a large number of people stop working, who actually works to grow the food? Who builds the houses? Communism does not work.

Who said anything about "free"?

Re: Three Mile Island nuclear plant restart in Microsoft AI power deal

#128

Post by 39896880 » Fri, Sep 20, 2024, 2:27 PM UTC

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #97

freeqaz wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe the lead time is faster because refurbishing a plant is easier than building one from scratch? Just speculating but that comes to mind for me. If their need is immediate term then this could be the "throw some money at the problem to make it go away". Also maybe good for PR?

I doubt that anything that connects to the name "Three Mile Island" is going to be good for PR.

No one died from the incident at Three Mile Island, so I hope that with better access to information people can be persuaded to change their minds.

Re: Three Mile Island nuclear plant restart in Microsoft AI power deal

#129

Post by mpweiher » Fri, Sep 20, 2024, 2:28 PM UTC

akamaka wrote: post #75

kaliqt wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not how this works though, energy abundance means industrial abundance, more energy availability (for cheap) would simply mean that demand will scale to meet the output. The only time it won't scale to meet output is if the price stays high, but if the nuclear energy is already on the grid and has elastic pricing, the rest will take care of itself.

But the price of energy can be negative, so a new nuclear plant might never pay off its cost, even if it provides the public benefit of cheap electricity.

I'll take "What is market failure?" for 400, Alex.

Re: Three Mile Island nuclear plant restart in Microsoft AI power deal

#130

Post by Workaccount2 » Fri, Sep 20, 2024, 2:29 PM UTC

V__ wrote: post #65

> Constellation, which plans to spend about $1.6 billion to restart the plant, is awaiting permits and expects the facility to come online by 2028 [and] would provide Microsoft with 835 megawatts of energy. I don't quite understand how this makes sense financially for Microsoft. A 1 GW offshore wind farm costs about 1 billion [1]. The Gemini Solar + Battery Storage Project in Nevada is about 1.1 billion (690 MW + 380…

As some with contact to the the nuclear industry:

These old plants are ridden with hidden costs, and I would bet all of my money no one at Microsoft is aware of the scale of this. I'm not talking "hidden costs" like you didn't do your homework. I'm talking hidden costs like you need to be on the inside, on the ground, to know about. Hidden costs like "everyone subtly nods but doesn't say it out loud" kind of hidden costs.

The NRC has beyond suffocating regulation for nuclear energy. This is maybe a good thing in some regards. But let me put it this way:

Imagine you bought a car from 1975 and could _only_ put in original parts. Need a new battery? Better find out how to get a factory one from 1975. Can't get one from 1975? Be prepared to pay millions, perhaps tens of millions, for a mountain of testing and certification for a new $100 part that is still just an off the shelf battery.