Modern AI data centers consume enormous amounts of power, and it looks like they will get even more power-hungry in the coming years as companies like Google, Microsoft, Meta, and OpenAI strive towards artificial general intelligence (AGI). Oracle has already outlined plans to use nuclear power plants for its 1-gigawatt datacenters. It looks like Microsoft plans to do the same as it just inked a deal to restart a nuclear power plant to feed its data centers, reports Bloomberg.
Lol. I just love it how so many people complain that Nuclear doesnt make financial sense, and then the most financially motivated companies just actually figure out that using a nuclear reactor completely privately is best.
Every once in a while they get faced with a line on a chart somewhere so unbelievably vertical that they have no choice but to look beyond next quarter. Power consumption going 10x in 2 years is one of those times.
Mostly, yes. Use breeder reactors to turn long term radioactive waste to sort term radioactive waste, store for short time and done. The downside: it’s more expensive to move and process the stuff so nobody wants to do that.
Relatively yes. There are disposal sites under construction that are in highly stable and environmentally safe locations. One good thing right now is that radioactive waste is temporarily easily stored. Transport of waste is an issue still, but far less of a problem than transporting oil and oil products.
Microsoft jumped fully on the AI hype bandwagon with their partnership in OpenAI and their strategy of forcing GenAI down our throats. Instead of realizing that GenAI is not much more than a novel parlor trick that can’t really solve problems, they are now fully committing.
Microsoft invested $1 billion in OpenAI, and reactivating 3 Mile Island is estimated at $1.6 billion. And any return on these investments are not guaranteed. Generally, GenAI is failing to live up to its promises and there is hardly any GenAI use case that actually makes money.
This actually has the potential of greatly damaging Microsoft, so I wouldn’t say all their decisions are financially rational and sound.
if they ever admit the whole genAI thing doesn’t work
. . . The entire multi-billion-dollar hype train goes off the cliff. All the executives that backed it look like clowns, the layoffs come back to bite them - hard - and Microsoft wont recover for a decade.
I’m firmly in the “building new nuclear doesn’t make financial sense” camp, but I do think that extending the life of any existing nuclear plant does. Restarting a previously operational nuclear plant lies somewhere in between.
The fact that they want to buy an old nuclear reactor instead of building a new one should be all you need to know to realise that it’s not financially viable.
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Lol. I just love it how so many people complain that Nuclear doesnt make financial sense, and then the most financially motivated companies just actually figure out that using a nuclear reactor completely privately is best.
Fuck sake, world.
Honestly it seems crazy that companies that are so focused on short-term profits in 2024 would be able to make nuclear work.
Every once in a while they get faced with a line on a chart somewhere so unbelievably vertical that they have no choice but to look beyond next quarter. Power consumption going 10x in 2 years is one of those times.
Have they solved the disposal questions?
Like most things with environmental impact, we just let later generations deal with it. Somehow.
Mostly, yes. Use breeder reactors to turn long term radioactive waste to sort term radioactive waste, store for short time and done. The downside: it’s more expensive to move and process the stuff so nobody wants to do that.
Relatively yes. There are disposal sites under construction that are in highly stable and environmentally safe locations. One good thing right now is that radioactive waste is temporarily easily stored. Transport of waste is an issue still, but far less of a problem than transporting oil and oil products.
Microsoft jumped fully on the AI hype bandwagon with their partnership in OpenAI and their strategy of forcing GenAI down our throats. Instead of realizing that GenAI is not much more than a novel parlor trick that can’t really solve problems, they are now fully committing.
Microsoft invested $1 billion in OpenAI, and reactivating 3 Mile Island is estimated at $1.6 billion. And any return on these investments are not guaranteed. Generally, GenAI is failing to live up to its promises and there is hardly any GenAI use case that actually makes money.
This actually has the potential of greatly damaging Microsoft, so I wouldn’t say all their decisions are financially rational and sound.
On the other hand, if they ever admit the whole genAI thing doesn’t work, they could just sell the electricity produced by the plant.
. . . The entire multi-billion-dollar hype train goes off the cliff. All the executives that backed it look like clowns, the layoffs come back to bite them - hard - and Microsoft wont recover for a decade.
I mean . . . a boy can dream
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I’m firmly in the “building new nuclear doesn’t make financial sense” camp, but I do think that extending the life of any existing nuclear plant does. Restarting a previously operational nuclear plant lies somewhere in between.
The fact that they want to buy an old nuclear reactor instead of building a new one should be all you need to know to realise that it’s not financially viable.
Nuclear safety and penny-pinchers don’t make good bedfellows.
ftfy. Possibly ironically, nuclear safety and communism (or totalitarianism) don’t work either. It’s odd, innit.
Pretty sure it has to do with how the plant is designed and operated as opposed to what economic or governmental system it happens to exist under.
Doesn’t that design and operation get created by the economic or governmental system it’s under?
I think with the USSR at least, that their reactor designs were supposed to be less safe than western reactor designs.
Was it because they were a shitty oligarchy claiming to be communist? Maybe, they did make a lot of garbage decisions.
I think the US has the record for most nuclear disasters by a lot but two of the worst were in the USSR.