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Three Mile Island nuclear plant restart in Microsoft AI power deal

reuters.com

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

#221

Post by km144 »

hintymad wrote: post #219
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…

> Nuclear fission is safe, clean, secure, and reliable. I never understood the hysteria of the anti-nuclear people. I mean, the stats are out there for everyone to verify. Even the worst nuclear disaster killed no more than 100 people[1]. Plus, the new generation of the nuclear reactor can auto shut down when the temperature keeps rising. As for the nuclear waste, we need just one football field to store all the wast…

For the explanation of hysteria: 1) Nuclear disasters are acute, traumatic events that can have drastic effects on health of people and ecosystems for generations 2) Nuclear power sounds like nuclear bombs and nuclear radiation, both of which are scary and resonate with long-held cultural fears of nuclear technology that have existed since the Cold War.

Basically, yes most fears of nuclear power are irrational. But that's part of the problem—even if nuclear power polluted in a manner similar to coal power and there wasn't the risk of acute disaster, I still think Americans would be quite wary of the technology purely due to cultural priors.

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

#222

Post by duckmysick »

greenthrow wrote: post #214
burningChrome wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't we do both? This is what happened to Germany. They tried going 100% renewables and then had Russia take up the slack for the rest of what they needed. Then they realized they had a massive shortfall and then was leaning far too much on Russia to take up the slack. As someone else pointed out, geopolitics always weighs heavy in energy production. Just like in Germany's case where they relied too heavy on Russia…

Germany did not make a real effort at truly going 100% renewable. There are other European countries doing it for real and having wild success.

The most successful ones have a combination of favorable geographic/geological conditions (geothermal vents, suitable rivers, good offshore to land ratio) and small size. It would be hard for Germany to copy solutions from let's say Iceland or Norway.

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

#223

Post by mpweiher »

RandomLensman wrote: post #139
mpweiher wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Nuclear power plants are super reliable and available. German und US plants had/have capacity factors of well over 90%, and the downtimes are scheduled . The "overbuild" is minimal.

France in 2022 didn't have a lot of capacity down at the same time? Availability was at 40% of maximum capacity for about a month at it's lowest. How these things will be managed in the real world matters, too, not just how it could play out hypothetically.

Yep. That was a one-time occurrence, due to (a) inspections being deferred during COVID and (b) France's long time catastrophic underinvestment in their nuclear fleet.

Until March 2023, there was a law in France that made it illegal to increase nuclear capacity in absolute terms and mandated reduction to under 50% in relative terms.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=isgu-VrD0oM

But again, a one-time event, and it doesn't change the high capacity factors world-wide (over 80%) and the extremely high capacity factors in reasonably well run fleets ( > 90% in the US, and also inGermany when they still had nuclear ).

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

#224

Post by RandomLensman »

mpweiher wrote: post #223
RandomLensman wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

France in 2022 didn't have a lot of capacity down at the same time? Availability was at 40% of maximum capacity for about a month at it's lowest. How these things will be managed in the real world matters, too, not just how it could play out hypothetically.

Yep. That was a one-time occurrence, due to (a) inspections being deferred during COVID and (b) France's long time catastrophic underinvestment in their nuclear fleet. Until March 2023, there was a law in France that made it illegal to increase nuclear capacity in absolute terms and mandated reduction to under 50% in relative terms. https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=isgu-VrD0oM But again, a one-time event,…

One time or not, need to be able to deal with it, as need to be able deal with the possibility of underinvestment etc. - especially if fleets get much bigger.

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

#225

Post by KerrAvon »

nradov wrote: post #201
bloopernova wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plus if it's not sunny/windy in one part of the country, it may well be very sunny or windy in other parts of the country. We have a whole freaking energy grid! This isn't aimed at you, but more at the people dismissing the utility of solar and wind power.

That doesn't work very well for the Western North America. After sunset there is nowhere to obtain much solar or wind power. We're not going to build a transmission cable to Hawaii.

the wind doesn't stop blowing after sunset, and grid-scale batteries are a thing

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

#227

Post by kwere »

VoodooJuJu wrote: post #63
1970-01-01 wrote: post #14

More nuclear is a good thing. FAANG nuclear is even better, because they will be be ready and equipped to push back the insane NIMBY crowd(s) and also don't need to be worried about getting reelected.

A corporation getting its way, irrespective of the democratic will of the people, or rather, those "insane NIMBYs". Corporatocracy truly is a beautiful thing.

the democratic will should be only on state or common goods. On their land persons should be able to do whatever whitlist following safety guidelines. including operating a nuclear facility

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

#229

Post by Ukv »

anigbrowl wrote: post #213
Ukv wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

Suppose you have a devastating earthquake that wrecks renewable power sources in an area. Bad part is you're out of power for a good while. But the second-order risks are very low - maybe some people are killed by falling wind turbines or solar panels, but there isn't any equivalent of radioactive contamination making the place uninhabitable for years.

Banqiao Dam failure alone flooded over 12,000 square kilometers, killing ~30k directly then ~100k more from water contamination and famine.

Even solar still requires various minerals the extraction and processing of which has environmental impact - like tailing ponds of toxic substances that frequently leak, particularly from earthquakes and extreme weather.

But to be clear, the human and environmental impact of solar, wind, nuclear and hydro pales in comparison to that of fossil fuels.

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

#230

Post by tivert »

throwaway48540 wrote: post #33
tivert wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is it all due to the prospect of finally seeing a feasible road to AGI?! Or just hope. AGI is a capitalist's wet dream: it would completely undercut labor's power or allow it to be replaced completely, and it could also allow the developer to muscle out a large fraction of other capitalists from the economy. Even though AGI would be terrible for the rest of us, it's got so much upside for VC types they can't help t…

You're claiming it would be terrible for the rest of us, without supporting that assumption in any way. It's not a fact, pseudo scifi action movies don't count as facts.

> You're claiming it would be terrible for the rest of us, without supporting that assumption in any way.

I literally explained it. I straightforwardly applied the technology to our existing social/economic structure.

And changing the social/economic structure is probably harder than developing the technology and requires precisely the kind of power that a successful AGI technology would remove (e.g. workers can't strike to keep their jobs when the boss is planning to lay them all off).

> It's not a fact, pseudo scifi action movies don't count as facts.

Honestly, the "AGI will be so great/everything will be fine" assumption relies less on facts and more on sci-fi fantasy than anything I said.

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