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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

#291

Post by Ukv »

anigbrowl wrote: post #246
Ukv wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sola…

I specifically made my comment about wind and solar. I am not a big fan of large scale hydro for just this reason, as well as the impact on aquatic ecosystems.

> I specifically made my comment about wind and solar

You said "Suppose you have a devastating earthquake that wrecks renewable power sources in an area" - hydropower is considered renewable. I also did address a similar risk of solar (barely anything compared to fossil fuels, but same applies to nuclear).

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

#292

Post by sgarland »

wahern wrote: post #182
lm28469 wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I don't mean to be cynical, but manifestly this isn't necessary. It's why widespread power outages remain a thing even in rich, highly industrialized countries. American Gulf Coast utilities don't spend astronomical sums on distribution infrastructure to ensure 100% uptime through hurricanes; entire regions end up going hours if not days without power on a regular basis. Likewise, Texas doesn't maintain enough genera…

> Likewise, Texas doesn't maintain enough generation and robust infrastructure to make it through every cold snap unscathed.

Correction: Texas, the state, doesn't require producers to maintain adequate reserve generation or robust infrastructure, and since they are not (except for a couple of small exceptions) connected to other regional grids, they can't be made to do so by the federal government. This is by design. It's a bad design, but one that greatly pleases corporations.

> People say one thing--"we require 100% uptime"--but do another--"but I'm only willing to pay a fraction of the price it would take to achieve that, and then I'll complain bitterly during the inevitable power outages."

This was not my experience when I lived in Texas. There was a brief moment in time for me (~2017 – 2019) where it was actually substantially cheaper, but only if you had the time and knowledge to scour all of the available plans and run some kind of modeling on them, since some had a lot of weird rules. Around COVID, that changed, and the cost savings evaporated. I check periodically, and it still hasn't recovered. Cheapest I could find for where I lived was 10.1¢/kWh, but that's just the base price. In contrast, my base price in North Carolina, on an REMC, is an annual average of 7.48¢/kWh.

All that to say, Texans were/are paying more than many others for sub-standard service. I bought a generator while there, and had to use it many, many times. I have used it precisely once here in NC, and that wasn't even a real need – sunny, pleasant afternoon, and someone hit a transformer with their car. Lost power for about 2 hours. Could've easily just done without and been fine.

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

#293

Post by RhysU »

anigbrowl wrote: post #208
RhysU wrote: post #181

Earlier 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.

Geopolitics and nuclear power are not always such a great combination - consider the Russian occupation of the nuclear power plant in Ukraine. I'm not against nuclear power in general, but saying it's a great hedge against political risks involved with wind and solar is quite a stretch.

That required a war. Turning off gas to Eastern Europe does not.

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

#294

Post by pona-a »

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.

But were said people well-informed to begin with? Voting can only work if everyone's on the same page regarding both the policy being implemented and its consequences, thus being able to defend their best interests. If the people have been consuming provably false messaging pushed by a fossil fuel industry lobby and sensationalist media, can they be trusted to make a choice that affects not just themselves their entire city, nation, and planet?

The representative democracy does attempt to solve this problem; you pick a representative you understand is aligned with your interests on the issues you do understand and trust they and their experts will do well on the rest.

It's not a perfect system, but unless the populace can be given free time and education to consider individual policies based on reliable evidence and not hearsay from biased sources, it's the best we can do.

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

#295

Post by sgarland »

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?

They did when they were led by people passionate about the technology. As soon as MBAs got ahold of them, it was all about enriching shareholders in the short-term.

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

#296

Post by credit_guy »

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…

I am pro-nuclear, but I don't think that's exactly the correct argument for nuclear power. I think we can cover the current level of energy consumption with solar and wind. The problem is that we want to live in a future where the world consumes at least 10 times more energy than now. This might seem like an outrageous number, but it's not. The average energy use per capita in the world is 3.5 times lower than in the US. At the least we want the rest of the world to reach the living standards of the current average American person. But we also know that AI will consume exponentially increasing amounts of electricity. The exponential function is funny, you don't notice it until it explodes in your face. Right now AI uses a non-negligible but still small amount of energy, but the growth is clearly exponential. In a world where the energy is not a constraint, in a few decades AI will consume more energy than the rest of the economy combined, although it will be difficult to say what "the rest of the economy" will mean with a world where everything will be powered by AI.

Nuclear has the potential to fulfill all this future growth in energy requirements. The fundamental problem of nuclear is not safety, or waste, or proliferation. It is cost. And this is a solvable problem. The total cost of the 4 Barakah reactors you mentioned was $32 billion, or $5.7 billion/GW. The cost of utility solar is about $1 billion/GW, but the capacity factor is only about 30%, while the capacity factor of nuclear is about 90%. So $5.7 at 90% is still a bit more expensive than $1 at 30%, but if the cost of nuclear goes down by a factor of 2, it's at the same level as solar. And there is no reason to think such a reduction is not possible.

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

#297

Post by bryanlarsen »

mpweiher wrote: post #278
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Renewables are too expensive. Especially once you take systems costs into account, which you must, but renewable fanbois never do. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03605...

If you use old numbers for something that drops 80% in cost in a decade, you get bad numbers.

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

#298

Post by ZeroGravitas »

mpweiher wrote: post #278
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Renewables are too expensive. Especially once you take systems costs into account, which you must, but renewable fanbois never do. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03605...

Your source suggests that providing 95% of Texas energy with wind and solar and batteries will cost the same as providing it with nuclear and batteries.

I'm dubious about many of their assumptions but even your source shows that renewables are the obvious choice to power the world.

It's also interesting that the cost drops 50% if you don't need to cover the last 5%. A shame he didn't go further and calculate at 80% and so on like the recent Australian working paper.

I guess that would show that starting the rollout now would provide lots of savings that could be used to deploy the later percentiles.

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

#300

Post by bryanlarsen »

incrudible wrote: post #270
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The cost of the renewables rollout in Germany is on the order of 2 trillion euros. They produce so much renewable energy that the prices regularly go negative, but then import at much higher prices when they don’t. They pay among the highest prices in Europe, and still their CO2 emissions are among the worst. If wind/solar as a whole were both as cheap as touted and as environmentally friendly, that should not be the…

The whole world owes Germany a massive debt for their overpayment for renewables. Investing in renewables on a massive scale in the 90's is what really kicked off the virtuous cycle that led to the low costs of renewables today.

Germany would have been much better off building nuclear in the 90's. But because they invested in renewables instead, everybody (including Germany) has a much better option of building renewables in the 2020s.

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