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Seriously, we need the less carbon-emitting plants to replace the dirty coal ones, not come online just to power the AI hype :smh:
this post was submitted on 20 Sep 2024
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If/when the ai hype train crashes, it would already be online and therefore a good argument can be made to redirect the power to the grid instead of the then-defunct project
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Maybe true. But if we have increased energy demand it might as well be nuclear.
Halting ai development might be nice according to many people, but we cant make that happen. Fraud alone is magnitudes more rampant. Its here to stay and we have to deal with it. I think this is a big win.
You're assuming "AI" isn't fraud?
This is a pretty fucking stupid comment lmao
What the hell are you talking about?
Probably they mean the way "AI" is presented to the public / investors. Most things that claim to be "AI" aren't, they're just regular boring ol' software, and even those things that do use AI are usually just using them for one tiny facet that doesn't actually require them.
There's potential for some incredible advances in AI right now, but outside of some novelty examples we really haven't figured out what it's actually useful for quite yet. It's one of the more interesting questions in the field.
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AI better cure cancer if we're using this much energy on it.
The development of ACP_196 did use AI for huge portions of the raw sequencing and simulation, for what thats worth...
for what that is worth
A lot if you ask me. Unfortunately this will mostly be LLMs and image generators using this power probably.
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If you hate nuclear energy because you think it's dangerous or polluting, that is as dumb as choosing to drive instead of taking the train for the same reasons.
Nuclear energy is one of the methods of generating electricity with the smallest environmental impact and also much, much safer than the alternatives. The number of nuclear accidents can be counted on one hand, while the number of people who have died from cancer from coal power plants is conservatively estimated to be in the millions.
We are installing gobs of distributed, cheap, safe solar and batteries to smooth load and nuclear proponents will still be running around advocating for expensive centralized nuclear reactors that generate either long-lasting radioactive waste or nuclear bombs.
🤷♂️
One kilogram of uranium produces more power than one hectare of solar panels does in two years.
Then there's the waste product to consider.
No, not from nuclear. That's an issue to be dealt with certainly, but I'm talking about the waste from the production and disposal of solar panels that is ongoing because they don't last forever.
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Now do the math on the cost of that uranium and the facility you need to turn it into power compared to the cost of the solar.
If you think cost isn't the primary factor in all energy production ... 🤷♂️
Edit: not to mention all the essentially free developed space we already have in spades to deploy solar to: rooftops.
Utility-scale solar comes out to around US$0.06 per kWh (source). Nuclear power comes out to US$0.07 per kWh (source).
Commercial-scale solar costs US$0.11 per kWh. Residential rooftop solar comes out to US$0.16 per kWh.
Edit: This does not take into account the cost of battery capacity or pumped-storage hydroelectric solutions, which are necessary for solar solutions but not nuclear ones. Lithium-ion battery storage costs US$139 per kWh. You'd need at least 500 MWh to accommodation a medium-size city, which would cost US$70 million. If you get 5,000 charge cycles out of the battery, this adds an additional US$0.03 per kWh.
Whoa real information
All of which ignores lots of real world factors that aren't being included in the costs the commenter outlines.
Again, if nuclear were cheaper, you wouldn't all be here downvoting my comments, you'd be discussing all the great new nuclear being onlined.
Renewables have won. They're cheaper and easier to deploy, they're distributed rather than concentrated, and they have lower impacts on the environment.
FWIW: I thought thorium reactors might have had some legs in the 00s, but it became clear those didn't make fiscal sense, either.
It does not ignore any information.
The cost per kWh is the totality of all information. It is the end product. That is the total costs of everything divided by the number of kilowatt-hours of electricity produced.
I understand that you're deeply invested in this argument, but you've lost. You're repeating the same claim over and over, and when proven wrong, you just said "nuh uh" and pretended that nothing I said is true.
Nuclear energy can be cheaper than solar or wind. It is more reliable than solar and wind. It uses less land than solar or wind. All of these are known facts. That's why actual scientists support expanding nuclear energy 2 to 1.
But people will still dislike it because they're scared of building the next Three Mile Island or Fukushima. That, as I explained, is the reason why fewer nuclear plants are being built. Because the scientists, the ones who know the most about these, are not in charge. Instead, it's the people in the last column that are calling the shots. Do not repeat this drivel of "iF nUcLeaR pOweR PlanTs So Good WhY aRen'T tHerE moRe of ThEM??". I have explained why. It is widely known why. Your refusal to accept reality does not make it less real.
That is the end of the argument. I will not respond to anything else you say, because it is clear to me that no amount of evidence will cause you to change your mind. So go ahead, post your non-chalant reply with laughing emojis and three instances of "lol" or "lmao" and strut over the chessboard like you've won.
Because I don't give a pigeon's shit what you have to say any more.
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A good chunk of the world is still stuck where the options are coal vs nuclear for base load coverage. Of course people are going to push for the safest option for large load needs.
We're generations away from worldwide energy needs being met entirely by green renewables and battery banks. I'll never be against expansion of those technologies, but nuclear is an important middle step that is far less dangerous than the most widely used technologies for meeting base load (coal).
Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
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Nuclear power plants don't make nuclear bombs...
Some nuclear reactor designs can be used for breeding plutonium, as well as for producing power. It was a bigger issue in the past, though; nowadays there are plenty of well tested designs that aren't capable of breeding plutonium
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The actual quantity of radioactive waste generated is tiny, and even combining the storage space for waste products with the footprint of the reactor plant itself, nuclear is by far the most energy-dense and space-efficient form of power generation we have.
How long does that waste need to be safely stored and what are the projected costs there? How do they compare to solar that you can deploy today?
We are not running out of space to put power generation, but we definitely need to worry about costs.
Not entirely sure if this video covers costs but the short answer is that there are ways to safely store nuclear waste that won't impact the surrounding environment.
Are you paid to spew bs or is this something you enjoy doing?
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Nuclear has its advantages, but there is hardly anything as cheap and maintenance free as solar+batteries. Anyone can set it up, and it just runs all by itself for years and years.
In Europe, the price for electricity on the spot market regularly goes in the negative. Jep, you can get paid money to consume electricity because it's so abundant.
Look at France, their new NPP is taking 12 years and 12 billion euros more than planned. Is it really worth all that financial and environmental risk building something poisonous and explodey that needs constant attention?
- Not poisonous.
- Not explodey. Chernobyl destroyed all common sense and support for nuclear power, even though it was mostly terrible terrible management and horrible corrupt (Soviet) government that caused it. Nuclear reactors can't explode like Chernobyl unless someone purposely flips all the switches to red, does manual overrides aand it was specifically built to ignore all logical safety concerns.
The number of kille people by coal is orders of magnitude higher over the same period (lets say 60 years) per GW generated.
Any other arguments?
Uranium is a heavy metal and of course its poisonous. Just like lead, but radioactive. Why aren't we using uranium glassware or uranium paint anymore if it's supposedly not poisonous?
When was the last time a solar farm or a wind park had a catastrophic accident leading to large parts of land being uninhabitable for decades, even centuries?
Of course they are explodey. It's a fission reaction that has to be constantly modulated and cooled to not go critical.
The other argument is the cost of properly storing waste and decommissioning the plant, which is often conviently ignored. Not much of a NPP can be recycled, unlike solar.
Wait, so you think nuclear reactors spew out uranium?
While coal powerplants don't spew out radioactive coal ash??
Lets just say only one of these is true... and it is not the former.
They are not explodey, because they are by design not. The non RBMK (i.e. not cheap Russian, lied-about-safety-by-government) reactors are designed to literally cool off without any power or control, if all went to shit. You can try with all your expertise to make it explode, and short of rebuilding it you will fail. Even if you were to add explosives. At that point, just making your own nuclear bomb is cheaper and faster.
I think it is quite optimistic to think they will even recycle 5% of a solar powerplant. The silicon is not useful, hard to dismantle from metal. Additives make it unusable without special centrifuge processes. Take the easy metals, scrap the rest, use easy, cheap raw materials for controlled process. Most of the NPP can be recycled if you cared, apart from the irradiated reactor, which is a very tiny part of it. It's all wires, steel and other useful electric constructions. Nobody cares to recycle concrete.
I wont talk about storing waste, because I dont know why it is marketed as prohibitively expensive. Apart from it just being lead lined barrels in say an empty mineshaft (which there are an exceptional volume of everywhere). Literally enough space for forever, no need to put anything in the air.
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Batteries scale horribly and are extremely toxic themselves.
SOME parts of Europe are cheap some are expensive and are subject to bad price spikes.
The reality is we need everything. More solar/wind is great! But we also need secure stable baseline generation that works. Nothing comes close to nuclear.
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I mean, comparing that to coal isn't a very impressive feat. Nuclear power is very expensive, fission material is limited and sourced from dodgy countries, storage is difficult etc. The emissions are the only good thing about it. There are good alternatives to that. I guess using the existing ones until they need to be decommissioned is still a good idea though.
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bro just one more ~~lane~~ power plant bro, bro I swear just one more and it'll fix the ~~traffic~~ energy demands bro
Ohh amazing what happen when corpos need something done lol
Fuck u peasants, sucks to suck
Let's save money and have AI control the Nuclear Power Plant, see what happens >:]
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How dumb. Solar and Wind are SOO much cheaper per kWh than Nuclear and fossils. With them also comes the benefit of decentralisation. With 1.6B you could install so much more Watts of power with wind turbines and solar parks with the added benefit of less carbon and less nuclear waste and less chance of boom.
Not to mention that wind turbines and solar parks are faster to set up AND scalable. A nuclear plant is neither.
Interesting. What is the chance a nuclear plant goes boom? Sounds legit.
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I think it's fine if Microsoft has their own nuclear power plant as long as every Microsoft corporate officer is required to live downwind of it. ✌🏻
What?
Coal plants are the ones that produce radioactive smog. Nuclear plants just put off steam. The radioactive material doesn't come into contact with the clean water loop that is used to spin the turbine and generate power unless something is catastrophically wrong.
The dangerous byproduct, spent fuel rods, are stored in pools buried deep, and radioactivity is drastically abetted by the spent rods being submerged in water.
Seriously, you anti nuclear people are like anti vaxxers. It's very minimal reading to learn how this shit works so that you can have valid critique, but no, that's too tough.
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Um... you realize that nuclear doesn't give of any pollutants?
It does emit heat. If using a flowing water source like a river for cooling, it does raise the temperature of the water a measurable amount, which must be accounted for in an environmental impact analysis.
But that's still leagues better than burning fossil fuels.
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