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Three Mile Island nuclear plant restart in Microsoft AI power deal

reuters.com

151–160 of 338 posts

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

#151
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ESG ended up being a scam. Lots of these things are nothing but cover to make money off of people’s concern for the enviro. All you need to look at is the carbon footprint of people who clamor and demonstrate for green policies. Including idiots gluing themselves to roadways —all the idle traffic they create and the manpower necessary to remove them and repair the damage. It’s a sucker’s game.

Ah yes. Some people use airplanes so we need to keep burning coal, who cares when the sea levels rise and the water wars begin! The important thing is that some people acted silly by gluing themselves to the road! Can't give in to them, even if it would save the world for our children.

You're not trying to convince the choir, you're trying to convince the masses.

Sure, Leonardo DiCaprio, Richard Branson, Albert Gore, Barrack Obama and high schoolers are impressed, but not the mom and dad working jobs that are teetering, driving beaters and facing pressure from cheap labor. They see these people jet-setting being hyper-overconsumers and think, what the hell? They see these people increasing their wealth promoting change, but they don't change. Why should I change, they're not changing, they're adding more!

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

#152

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…

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…

> Nuclear is not safe

Nothing is 100.0% safe - but as far as I can find nuclear comes incredibly close[0] even when including Chernobyl and Fukushima.

[0]: https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy

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

#153
post #66

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…

The problem you describe seems to be one targeted by the TerraPower project in Wyoming. It plans to operate at 100% capacity at all times (345 MWe), but makes itself more akin to other renewables by incorporating energy storage into its design. It is supposed to be able to increase capacity to 150% (500 MWe), allowing it to respond to energy scarcity. But it can also respond to energy abundance by storing excess production in molten salt storage tanks.

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

#154

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…

> No battery farm can protect a solar/wind grid from an arbitrarily extended period of bad weather. I don’t understand why wind solar is subject to absolutes devoid of probability - “what if the sun and wind stop simultaneously for 2 months?” We know the probability that the sun stops shining and the wind stops blowing for N days, we can calculate it from historical data. You can absolutely build solar+wind+storage s…

Nuclear isn’t a replacement for solar and wind. It’s additive.

Build all of it.

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

#155
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 c…

But the actual investor is Constellation, which has operated the plant for decades. Microsoft is just committing to buy power.

Are you suggesting Constellation will be surprised at the hidden costs?

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

#156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not to mention this nuclear reactor was only shut down in 2019. They're upgrading and recommissioning something that was mothballed because the economics didn't work, all of five years ago.

People reacting to the name are imagining that this means re-opening the other unit, which melted down in 1979. It's more fun to imagine and react to that than to learn that this was an operational plant until a few years ago.

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

#157

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…

You know nuclear power plants have issues in extreme weather too, right? [1]

[1] https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/07/climate-events-are-t...

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

#158
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without profit there is no reason anybody will provide those. Countries that tried socializing food - starved. Capitalism is the only one that brought plenty - because there is an incentive to do so.

It certainly brought plenty to some people, didn't it? Other people still get nothing.

Fewer and fewer get nothing. Capitalism raised billions out of poverty and continues to do so, in every place it is allowed to work.

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

#159
post #152

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…

> Nuclear is not safe Nothing is 100.0% safe - but as far as I can find nuclear comes incredibly close[0] even when including Chernobyl and Fukushima. [0]: https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy

Taking about just deaths is misleading. Accidents in other energy sources don't render 1,000 square miles of land uninhabitable.

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

#160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 c…

But the actual investor is Constellation, which has operated the plant for decades. Microsoft is just committing to buy power. Are you suggesting Constellation will be surprised at the hidden costs?

It's hard to say without knowing the details of the contract. I highly doubt Constellation put themselves in a position to be vulnerable to cost overruns. Or perhaps they see the deal as a shiny pendant they can dangle in front of dumb PE money when they want to cash out in the future.

Trust me, cynicism is well warranted with these ancient plants.

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