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Three Mile Island nuclear plant restart in Microsoft AI power deal
251–260 of 338 posts
Re: Three Mile Island nuclear plant restart in Microsoft AI power deal
#252Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think everyone knew the Mark I boiling water reactors designed in the 1960s was not a “safe by default” design. Open to receipts if folks with some understanding of nuclear designs were on record before that touting its safety.
"Citation needed" is the lamest response. I am not your personal Google assistant. Nuclear proponents just like you cited Fukushima as a hallmark of reliability to "disprove" its dangers to me. There were articles highlighting it. These are obviously hard to find now with the digital rot of the last decade. Sorry I didn't print out copies to hand out to you many years later.
People touted the safety of cars in the 1920s. Compared to today’s standards, they were wildly unsafe. The mere fact people were wrong before doesn’t mean they are wrong today. “What some people once said” is not as strong an argument as “designs are demonstrably better engineered”
That doesn’t mean there is no risk. It’s still ok to be scared of nuclear power for new unknown reasons. But let’s not pretend that designs aren’t wildly better now.
Re: Three Mile Island nuclear plant restart in Microsoft AI power deal
#253https://www.energytransitioncrisis.org/
If this story shocked you, do yourself a favor and check out Erik Townsend's docuseries on the need for nuclear to even come close to filling humanity's need for energy in the coming decades.
Re: Three Mile Island nuclear plant restart in Microsoft AI power deal
#254Earlier quoted context omitted.
Geopolitics is largely determined by who controls energy resources. We've seen, over and over, how borders between energy producers and consumers are inevitably messy. Nuclear can be built most places. Sun and wind cannot.
> Nuclear can be built most places. Nukes require lots of cooling, needing access to large amounts of water from water bodies, that's definitely not "most places" by definition.
I mean, classical plants and those based around the regulations that the US currently has on the books thanks to some questionable lobbying in the 60s require large amounts of water, sure.
These are hardly the only viable plant designs that exist. Molten Salt, Pebble Bed, and other designs exist.
China is currently underway building a molten salt cooled Thorium reactor.
Re: Three Mile Island nuclear plant restart in Microsoft AI power deal
#255Earlier quoted context omitted.
Somehow you never hear these people say "What if the nuclear fuel supply chain becomes compromised for an arbitrarily extended period."
Because it’s reasonably cheap to buy two decades of fuel in advance, and it won’t take up much space. If such a thing were a concern, then people would do precisely that. If it were still a problem towards the end of that period, then you can in fact extract uranium from seawater.
This is true even before you start talking about reprocessing spent fuel with breeder reactors.
Re: Three Mile Island nuclear plant restart in Microsoft AI power deal
#256No 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…
It's worth remembering that the anti-nuclear crowd was always backed by big oil, and even in the age where solar and wind are being pushed, big oil benefits as the unmet demand for base load power, in the absence of nuclear, means that they get the business as there is no alternative.
They pulled the green crowd along for the ride hook, line, and sinker.
Re: Three Mile Island nuclear plant restart in Microsoft AI power deal
#257Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
> 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?” Something close to that happens almost every year in Europe. Last year there was nearly 3 weeks in winter where there was very little wind across the continent (<20% capacity production on all wind farms), and obviously little to no solar (high latitudes).
Another way to look at that is we only need to increase wind capacity by 5x to cover that event.
Re: Three Mile Island nuclear plant restart in Microsoft AI power deal
#258Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
No real effort? >50% of Germany's power came from renewables in 2023. That sounds like a massive effort to me.
There was definitely a period where the "renewables are too expensive" propaganda was winning and right wing German parties were successful in slowing renewables, particularly offshore wind rollout in Germany.
This will have cost them Billions, similar to the British right wing effectively banning onshore wind in Emgland at roughly the same time.
Both nations have done well with renewables, but could have done better and saved money and supported local business at the same time.
Re: Three Mile Island nuclear plant restart in Microsoft AI power deal
#259Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
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.
> We have a whole freaking energy grid!
You actually don't. Not one fit for that purpose, at least without significant investment, permitting hurdles, delays etc etc.
Re: Three Mile Island nuclear plant restart in Microsoft AI power deal
#260Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 st…
You did not explain anything, you just said that something would happen, without any reasoning why or why no counter effects would happen.
Yes, both sides of the debate use scifi as facts, I agree. I don't think the other side does it more than you do, though.