Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Three Mile Island nuclear plant restart in Microsoft AI power deal

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 338 posts

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

#171

Post by sheepybloke »

otherme123 wrote: post #101
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…

Spaniard here: we have zero gas and zero uranium nationally sourced, yet thanks to solar, wind and hydro, our energy grid is among the best in the world. We are at 20% nuclear, above global average, and above USA or UK, no need to install more. Get down your "education" horse and solve your own problems first, asuming you are from the USA. In terms of energy we are good, thank you, and need no lessons from the USA.

Spain also has a hugely different energy market than the United States. Spain is around 5% of the size of the US, being closer to a state in our context. Different states have different climates, making them more aligned with different energy sources. It doesn't make sense to compare the US and Spain in this context.

> We are at 20% nuclear,

Doesn't this prove the parent comment's point, that the best mix of energy is renewables supplemented by a base of nuclear power?

> Get down your "education" horse and solve your own problems first, asuming you are from the USA

This feels unnecessary. Spain has done an amazing job building an energy base, let's talk about how we can export to different countries and climates instead of putting people down.

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

#172

Post by closewith »

pjc50 wrote: post #149
closewith wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, that's a false dichotomy, because no-one's (at least no-one reasonable and in good faith) is suggesting shifting the grid entirely to nuclear. Instead, a diverse set of generation sources is ideal, including solar, wind, nuclear and hydro.

Dunno, all the nuclear advocates seem to contrast it with wind/solar, which are also much cheaper and quicker capital investments.

Well, the point of this thread is that's only true until a sufficient level of availability is required, and then nuclear (and fossil thermal plants) all of a sudden become a viable option again.

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

#173

Post by Suppafly »

jakewins wrote: post #51
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…

> 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…

>“what if the sun and wind stop simultaneously for 2 months?”

Anything alive after that wouldn't be human and wouldn't be worried about electricity.

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

#174

Post by Suppafly »

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…

>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.

I'm in favor of nuclear too, but this is a ridiculous point. Your first sentence mentions solar and wind and your second only addresses solar. If the sun doesn't shine for n+1 days, the wind is still going to be available most or all of those days.

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

#175

Post by Suppafly »

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.

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

This. I'm surprised they didn't figure out a way to rename the place first.

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

#176

Post by Ancapistani »

berkes wrote: post #131
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…

No. An energy mix is the answer. One of the parts that is mixed in, can be nuclear. Probably should be. But always a small part of the mix. Nuclear is slow: slow to power up, slow to adjust to demand or supply from others in the mix. And extremely slow to build. Nuclear plants that already run, often take days, some even weeks to adjust significant: so if on monday the wind stops blowing, on tuesday it gets cloudy, a…

> One of the parts that is mixed in, can be nuclear. Probably should be. But always a small part of the mix. Nuclear is slow: slow to power up, slow to adjust to demand or supply from others in the mix. And extremely slow to build.

All of those things, to me, mean that it should be a large part of the mix. Nuclear should be the backbone of our energy production, and should be sufficient to supply our baseline needs.

That said, in places where hydro or geothermal are practical, those should be used in preference to nuclear. They're cheaper, more reliable, and just better in almost every way.

Solar, wind, tidal, wave action, and so on should be what we build on top of that baseline. They should be cheaper to build and operate, but far less consistent.

If you want to train a huge LLM, or smelt metals, or do anything that's energy-intensive but not very time-sensitive, you schedule those loads during times where energy production exceeds existing demand.

... and you know when that happens by pricing energy based on availability. Electricity should be cheapest when we have more than we need, and more expensive when the inconsistent sources listed above aren't producing. In other words, market forces are sufficient to make this happen.

In fact, one of the cool things about solar and wind in particular is that they are so aggressively cyclical that it's possible that energy prices could actually go negative - not often, or regularly, but possible. That opens the door to all kinds of use cases that would otherwise never be profitable, and using those types of technologies often leads to efficiency gains that can eventually make them more efficient than the current alternatives.

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

#177

Post by lm28469 »

jakewins wrote: post #51
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…

> 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…

The problem is that you need to plan for the absolute worst case, once in a century, scenario and size your batteries accordingly.

Same reason why almost no one goes 100% solar at home deep in the south/north because you'd need 20x your needed capacity in batteries to account for that once in a decade bleak winter week

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

#178

Post by Ancapistani »

EasyMark wrote: post #115
CuriousCosmic wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need battery farms to make renewables viable in the US. What you need is to replace the AC grid interconnect system in the US with a HVDC super grid system. The key difference here is that HVDC is exceedingly efficient in energy transfer and has effectively negligible losses compared to AC over distance. The US is big enough that any impact from weather should basically average out over that distance.

There are huge downsides though because moving power generation further and further from where it’s used opens you up to more disruption from terrorist attacks on the grid (and cyber attacks) unless you also do less centralized production which is going to be more expensive.

> moving power generation further and further from where it’s used opens you up to more disruption from terrorist attacks on the grid

Not arguing, just asking - how is this different from how the Internet works?

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

#179

Post by f154hfds »

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.

Why stop there? EVERYBODY deserves healthcare and education too!

I would say in a perfect world everyone should have all of these things.

The problem is that the marginal cost to giving each of these things to everyone increases to infinity as we approach 100% of a sufficiently large and diverse population. For example, creating a city water system should efficiently deliver clean water to a large proportion of an urban population. However, not everyone lives in an urban setting and delivering clean water to remote populations can get astronomically expensive.

As rational citizens we must acknowledge this unfortunate reality and figure out how to deal with it fairly and equitably. Profit seeking enterprise has been astoundingly effective at driving down these marginal costs for a whole host of goods for centuries. Many of these things you mention only exist because profit seekers developed and distributed them!

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

#180

Post by anticensor »

throwaway48540 wrote: post #163
llamaLord wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's talking about the economic consequences. AGI in an internet connected world is capitalism end-game. Once you have AGI, labour (both physical and intellectual) becomes redundant, humans have a "value to the system" approaching zero. Our economic system is built on a series of assumptions that fundamentally cannot survive AGI, and nobody is really even trying to grapple with that fact.

The economic system is not set in stone. If everyone is irrelevant to it, the economic system becomes irrelevant to everyone, and a parallel system gradually replaces it.

Sadly "earning a living" goes beyond economy, it is also deeply involved in societal and cultural values.
Post reply on HN