Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Three Mile Island nuclear plant restart in Microsoft AI power deal

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 338 posts

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

#91

Post by christina97 »

jakewins wrote: post #51
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…

> 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…

It’s literally just that having a solar+wind grid that can survive 3 days of bad weather costs 6x as much as a grid that can survive normal day to day.

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

#92

Post by VoodooJuJu »

burnte wrote: post #89
VoodooJuJu wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> A corporation getting its way, irrespective of the democratic will of the people, or rather, those "insane NIMBYs". Corporatocracy truly is a beautiful thing. Generally a NIMBY is anti-progress and very selfish, putting themselves ahead of everyone. My dad was called to help resolve TMI during the meltdown and was part of the engineering design group the the Beaver Valley nuclear power station. People were complain…

>a NIMBY is anti-progress

And what is "progress"? We both have ideas about what progress is. Are mine the same as yours?

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

#94

Post by llamaLord »

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.

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.

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

#95

Post by phil21 »

V__ wrote: post #65

> Constellation, which plans to spend about $1.6 billion to restart the plant, is awaiting permits and expects the facility to come online by 2028 [and] would provide Microsoft with 835 megawatts of energy. I don't quite understand how this makes sense financially for Microsoft. A 1 GW offshore wind farm costs about 1 billion [1]. The Gemini Solar + Battery Storage Project in Nevada is about 1.1 billion (690 MW + 380…

How many MWH does that battery array store? MW is a useless number for energy storage. HN should know better.

Edit:

The article linked states:

> Roughly, one could assume that the energy storage portion of the project – 1.4 GWh worth

So, at the 690GW (which is unrealistic) nameplate capacity of the solar field, they are installing roughly 120 minutes worth of energy storage to back it. This is actually a better number than most projects I've seen, but still utterly inadequate and representative of the typical project.

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

#96

Post by himinlomax »

jakewins wrote: post #51
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…

> 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).

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

#97

Post by AnimalMuppet »

freeqaz wrote: post #85
V__ wrote: post #65

> Constellation, which plans to spend about $1.6 billion to restart the plant, is awaiting permits and expects the facility to come online by 2028 [and] would provide Microsoft with 835 megawatts of energy. I don't quite understand how this makes sense financially for Microsoft. A 1 GW offshore wind farm costs about 1 billion [1]. The Gemini Solar + Battery Storage Project in Nevada is about 1.1 billion (690 MW + 380…

Maybe the lead time is faster because refurbishing a plant is easier than building one from scratch? Just speculating but that comes to mind for me. If their need is immediate term then this could be the "throw some money at the problem to make it go away". Also maybe good for PR?

I doubt that anything that connects to the name "Three Mile Island" is going to be good for PR.

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

#98

Post by himinlomax »

V__ wrote: post #65

> Constellation, which plans to spend about $1.6 billion to restart the plant, is awaiting permits and expects the facility to come online by 2028 [and] would provide Microsoft with 835 megawatts of energy. I don't quite understand how this makes sense financially for Microsoft. A 1 GW offshore wind farm costs about 1 billion [1]. The Gemini Solar + Battery Storage Project in Nevada is about 1.1 billion (690 MW + 380…

> A 1 GW offshore wind farm costs about 1 billion

A 1 GW offshore wind farm does not produce anywhere close to 1 GW most of the time.

A 1 GW nuclear reactor can produce 1 GW 90%+ of the time, with the downtime being _scheduled_ maintenance.

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

#99

Post by Symmetry »

alright2565 wrote: post #35
fergonco wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are nimby crowds insane? Accidents may happen. And did happen in the past in that same place: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Mile_Island_accident

Coal plants have killed a minimum of 500k people over the past 20 years[1]. It's not an accident in that case, it's known and planned for (or at least easily predicted enough that it should have been). But when a few hundred people, or really just 0 people[2] die in one place at one time, people lose their minds. [1]: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/nov/23/coal-pow... [2]: An inter-agency analysis conclu…

I tried to do the math once to figure out if Japan would have been better off building a coal power plant instead of Fukushima, the nuclear plant that had the worst disaster in any western country. It was a surprisingly tough question.

https://hopefullyintersting.blogspot.com/2013/12/fukushima-v...

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

#100

Post by himinlomax »

fergonco wrote: post #19
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.

How are nimby crowds insane? Accidents may happen. And did happen in the past in that same place: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Mile_Island_accident

Nobody died at TMI.

Nobody died at Fukushima (from the nuclear incident that is, 10000 died because of the Tsunami)

Hundreds of people died at Chernobyl.

Those are all the major accidents at production nuclear power plant that have ever occured. There are no others.

There is just one that was deadly, and it is about as representative of the safety of nuclear power as flying in a 1920s' plane compared to a state of the art Airbus.

Post reply on HN