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TerraPower in deal with Meta for eight Natrium 345 MW nuclear plants
81–90 of 108 posts
Re: TerraPower in deal with Meta for eight Natrium 345 MW nuclear plants
#82Does anyone understand how Meta is able to spend so much money on AI with basically no AI product to speak of? Especially after sinking billions of dollars into a failed VR product? I just don't really understand why they are investing in data centers, I don't know of any actual product they offer that anyone is seriously considering using in the space.
> with basically no AI product to speak of? I don't use Meta products regularly, but they've crowbarred the "Meta AI" feature into everything - FB Messenger, Whatsapp, Instagram... There's even a standalone website to chat with the Meta AI model similar to chatgpt: > https://www.meta.ai/ I'm certainly prepared to agree that they don't have a huge amount of traction or marketshare, but they absolutely have already bui…
Meta has, to my understanding, been quite successfully deploying AI towards its ad business [1]. The consumer-facing stuff isn’t the point.
Re: TerraPower in deal with Meta for eight Natrium 345 MW nuclear plants
#83> The eight 345 MW advanced sodium cooled reactors would provide Meta with up to 2.8 GW of carbon-free, baseload energy. Each reactor comes with the Natrium technology’s innovative built-in energy storage system providing the capacity to boost total output to 4 GW of power. For energy storage, is it storing the hot water, or using batteries to store generated electricity?
Sodium cooled. They will store heat in a big thermos of molten salt.
> molten salt
Metal.
Re: TerraPower in deal with Meta for eight Natrium 345 MW nuclear plants
#84imo, theres a reasonable chance we will have functioning fusion reactors before these are turned on.
Re: TerraPower in deal with Meta for eight Natrium 345 MW nuclear plants
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes. The refueling takes the most time but that is planned years in advance. A one-year planned outage every decade can still be 24/7/365 in the other nine years.
Ah yes, the ol' GitHub method of reporting. "When we're up, we have lots of nines!"
Which is why people who run websites shouldnt be allowed anywhere near powerplants.
Re: TerraPower in deal with Meta for eight Natrium 345 MW nuclear plants
#86imo, theres a reasonable chance we will have functioning fusion reactors before these are turned on.
20 more years
Re: TerraPower in deal with Meta for eight Natrium 345 MW nuclear plants
#87Their first demonstration reactor is scheduled to go online in 2031. But they’re going to build 8 production reactors, with all the regulatory hurdles, in any reasonable length of time? Right. The headline should probably be, “Meta invests in nuclear startup” and leave it there. My guess is this deal is quietly swept under the rug when the first reactor fails to go fully online by 2032.
While Wyoming is a demonstration plant, it is a demonstration plant of exactly the reactor they plan to build in series. And they have received NRC approval. https://thebreakthrough.org/press/release-the-nrc-issues-con... So not sure what additional regulatory hurdles you see. Can you enlighten us?
That's just federal permission saying they're allowed to even proceed with the process. Nuclear projects cannot begin at all unless they get federal permission. Now that they have permission to do a project related to nuclear energy, I think they will still need to go through all the normal design, planning, permitting processes at federal/state/local levels. Unless they're building on federal land that is exempt from state/local oversight.
Re: TerraPower in deal with Meta for eight Natrium 345 MW nuclear plants
#88yes, and hopefully all of them will be set up in his garden and his children kindergarten. Because why somebody else should bear the risk of a nuclear disaster. This is nonsense. State/society is the last backstop, the last resort insurer in nuclear risk. Why shall we insure nuclear risks so Mark gets richer with more clicks ? again socializing the costs and privatizing de profits. Not in my backyard.
If they let me buy the heat for cheap, yes in my backyard. Well, not literally in my back yard, but only because there's a great space several blocks over where there's already lots of freeway noise, so any process noise will be overwhelmed. My city needs tax revenue too, so this would be great.
Re: TerraPower in deal with Meta for eight Natrium 345 MW nuclear plants
#89> DOE Awards $2.7 Billion for Uranium Enrichment
Why are they getting so much money for this? Isn't there private capital with Meta involved?
> The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced $2.7 billion to strengthen domestic enrichment services over the next ten years. The historic investment expands U.S. capacity for low-enriched uranium (LEU) and jumpstarts new supply chains and innovations for high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) to create American jobs and usher in the nation’s nuclear renaissance.
hmm, seems like a pretty steep investment. Hopefully it returns some tax money
Re: TerraPower in deal with Meta for eight Natrium 345 MW nuclear plants
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is a molten salt reactor, just not a molten salt thorium reactor.
Sodium (without chlorine or similar) is a metal, not a salt. They plan to use molten salt for energy storage, but the reactor itself is liquid metal cooled.
Ah, you're right. I think the linked article makes this quite unclear, but TerraPower's own website does a better job of it.