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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

#331

Post by chickenbig »

piva00 wrote: post #197
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.

> 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.

> Nukes require lots of cooling

Two units cooling for every unit of electricity, at least with PWR/BWR. At a 10 degree C rise it requires about 50ml of water (per second) per kW of electrical power.

Palo Verde NPP in Arizona happens to be in a rather dry area. It uses treated sewage for cooling and is trying to use rather poor quality groundwater too.

https://cronkitenews.azpbs.org/2020/02/25/palo-verde-nuclear...

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

#332

Post by chickenbig »

akamaka wrote: post #75
kaliqt wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not how this works though, energy abundance means industrial abundance, more energy availability (for cheap) would simply mean that demand will scale to meet the output. The only time it won't scale to meet output is if the price stays high, but if the nuclear energy is already on the grid and has elastic pricing, the rest will take care of itself.

But the price of energy can be negative, so a new nuclear plant might never pay off its cost, even if it provides the public benefit of cheap electricity.

> But the price of energy can be negative

Is this a sign of over-investment?

Is it case that the metric we're using does not show the actual price? https://www.squeaky.energy/blog/the-unintended-consequences-... shows a way to get "free" electricity on a regular basis, while it still costs consumers a very non-zero amount. In the case of solar, revenue could be achieved through out-of-market payments (CfD, power purchase agreements, renewable energy certificates).

Or is it the sign that the nightmare battery dominated grid is starting to happen? https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2021/05/20/the-unstoppabl... Battery operators can choose between strategies designed to maximize revenue, profit, competitive advantage, or competitor losses, over any given timescale and with almost perfect deniability.

(or is it something else?)

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

#333

Post by chickenbig »

berkes wrote: post #321
Ancapistani wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.…

This market thing is in place already. At least in Europe it is, I've done a project during my energy engineering study for APEX. The irony, however, is that it's not all that good for nuclear. When prices go down or even negative, a CHP or windmill is shut down in minutes. The nuclear plant (or ancient coal, or even hydro) will go below cost price, or even havs to pay to deliver electricity, because they can't not d…

> When prices go down or even negative, a CHP or windmill is shut down in minutes.

Negative prices are a symptom that the (day ahead) market is not the real game being played. CfD, production subsidies and renewable credits are the order of the day.

> The nuclear plant ... will go below cost price > its fuel is expensive as hell

The fuel is cheap. https://www.iea.org/reports/projected-costs-of-generating-el... estimates 9.33 USD/MWh (2018 prices) for fuel.

> in France some plants were shut down because rivers dried up too much and they'd be heating up the remaining "trickle" too much with these plants.

https://www.politico.eu/article/when-the-water-runs-dry-why-...

  The Bugey plant is also the main reason France must ask the Swiss to let more water through the Seujet Dam. While most of the water is released back into the river, the reactors need a constant, cool flow — and climate change isn’t only making the Rhône’s water scarcer, but also warmer.
> in France some plants were shut down because rivers dried up too much and they'd be heating up the remaining "trickle" too much with these plants

Looking at https://www.euronews.com/green/2023/07/13/frances-nuclear-po... it appears power was reduced due to river temperatures, not river levels. That makes it more a regulatory issue, and probably one solvable with more hardware (extra cooling towers or greater extraction).

One might also ask whether it is worth EDF investing to get the extra few percent total output across the year; the solar peaks during hot weather will tend to reduce the price of electricity, so why not just schedule maintenance at that time of year. Thus PV creates a problem that it partially solves.

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

#334

Post by chickenbig »

janice1999 wrote: post #159
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

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

> Accidents in other energy sources don't render 1,000 square miles of land uninhabitable.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Texas_power_crisis

  The grid came within minutes of overloading and shutting down completely, which would have required a slow and costly black start.
That would have rendered 268,596 square miles uninhabitable, at least for several weeks plus recovery time.

How about https://www.ferc.gov/media/winter-storm-elliott-report-inqui... ?

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

#335

Post by chickenbig »

piva00 wrote: post #200
doublepg23 wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s most places humans live isn’t it?

If you ever done a tour on a nuclear facility you'd hear about how careful they need to be managing water temperatures in their discharge pools, you don't want a nuke frying off all wildlife on the rivers and/or lakes nearby. You don't want to create massive ponds of still water for cooling, and you definitely don't want to have a nuke potentially discharging contaminated water near population centres (in case someth…

> you definitely don't want to have a nuke potentially discharging contaminated water near population centres

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingston_Fossil_Plant_coal_fly...

And Brits are not exactly leaping into action about raw sewage discharges into rivers.

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

#336

Post by hronecviktor »

burningChrome wrote: post #211
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.

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…

I assume you mean sanctions in general, not UN sanctions specifically. Russia as a permanent member of the UN security council can veto any resolution, so there is little point in even trying to push something through UN.

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

#337

Post by berkes »

nradov wrote: post #205
Ancapistani wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.…

Scheduling loads based on energy spot price tends to wreck the economics of manufacturing. If you have to shut down when energy prices spike then you're still paying fixed expenses for PP&E plus at least some labor. It's tough to finance that.

Depends a bit on the "manufactoring". It's not "black"-"white". While it's certainly true for e.g. a brewery or a bike-factory-line, it's less so for aluminum, or chemicals. And even less so for systems like a freezer.

A friend who makes juices and dried fruits on medium scale, plans his production ahead based on the spot pricing: steaming or deep-freezing can be postponed for days, apparently; I helped him with some dashboards and integrations of the pricing-APIs for this.

What I'm trying to say is: yes, a lot of industry won't be able to profit much from these markets. But many can, if they are just willing to change their current ways a little. Not all: many.

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

#338

Post by llamaLord »

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.

IMO we've had the EXACT same economic system since we were living in caves, it's called "supply and demand".

What do you do when "demand" for human labour drops to zero and "supply" stays at >8 billion.

No account of tinkering at the edges is going to fix that. We're in a much deeper fundamental problem than you might seem to think we are.

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