BRING IT ON NITPICKY NUKE NERDS
This is promising. The high energy demands of AI has big tech investing in the field of small modular reactors (SMR).
how do you do, fellow kid. tell me more about the field of shitty muclear reactors (SMR)
Criticize all you’d like. I just think it’s better to let corporations foot the research, especially if it turns out to be a fruitless attempt at progress.
For the non-banned people who think this is a good take. It is not. Corps due to competing with each other keep the research private, which if it doesn’t work out will lead others to do similar research (wasting that time/money again) or they will patent it which causes a slowdown in further research due to all the license payment shit. (Or worse, they go the before patents were a thing way, and keep it all a secret, wasting more time and money).
Alright so you can have them funding the next generation of nuclear power, which would eventually bring this new form into the mainstream by having them deal with the costs associated with ironing out any issues they have and very likely making it economically viable…
Or…
These tech companies can use fossil fuels to power their AI. Like it or not, they arent going to stop developing AI and data centers. They need the power either way. Solar and wind won’t keep up with that level of demand and tech companies know it. So choose. Nuclear, or fossil fuels?
You’re correct that I can’t stop them from making pants on head stupid decisions, but I’m not going to stop making fun of them.
very likely making it economically viable…
They’re going to fund currently economically nonviable nuclear plants to power their currently economically nonviable genAI schemes? Over the time horizon of 25 years a decade (edit: misread the article) before they scale up energy capacity at all past the rnd stage? Maybe pants on head is too generous.
I’m not crunching the numbers over here, but they must be making money off AI if they’re doing this. I’m sure they have further plans that aren’t public yet.
I’m not a fan of AI, so if Microsoft or Google ends up in a dumpster fire because of all this I will never stop laughing about it. I just don’t expect it.
they’re not. chatgpt4 burns more energy than subscription is worth, and that was text only and before that 4o shitshow
but they must be making money off X if they’re doing this.
is such a laughable, ridiculous thing to say, like what the fuck dude, where did you get this idea from even
but they must be making money off AI if they’re doing this.
They don’t have to be, just the fear of another platform developing the same AI SaaS shit which could drive customers away/make it harder to convince C-level management to up their spending could cause fomo at the people building the AI. similar as with the same with the cryptocurrency/blockchain shit. Think we linked an article talking about things like this here a short while ago.
E: Here
as you will discover if you read, the use case for SMRs is to keep doing coal
Like it or not, they arent going to stop developing AI and data centers.
Well they should. I’m not giving them credit for investing in vaporware nuclear plants when the ostensible plan is to waste all the power on glue pizza recipes.
I wish they at least put that money in real and known working designs available right now so at least when the fad is dead, we can maybe use that power for something else. Or they can maybe have the tiniest decency to unfuck their search engine or whatever.
BRING IT ON NITPICKY NUKE NERDS
Well acthtually we prefer to be called fission/fusion nerds
“greenwashing is cheaper than action” indeed. (edit2) On that note, storytime about the clownshow that is Dutch politics. So our radical right wing government is pro nuclear power, of course, and they want to build more powerplants. So what are they planning on doing? They are going to start a study on which locations are best. Which is maddening, as these studies have already been done before (so it prob is just an attempt to hopefully have the study finish when it isn’t them in power anymore so they are not at risk of starting an too expensive megaproject). But it gets worse, the absolute clowns of our farmers party just went ‘fuck the studies’ and they just pointed at a province where there are a lot of farmers and went ‘we will put a powerplant there’. And this is how they discovered nuclear powerplants need running water and they picked one of the areas without a major river. ('im ignoring the clownshow re ‘the immigration crisis’ (not a crisis) as this post is already too long, and there is a big risk of honk overdose if I go into that).
wouldn’t it make more sense to put NPP on seashore and just dump waste heat to ocean like everyone else does
Our local Swedish right-wingers in gov have a chubby for nukes too[1], because their main motivation besides hating on brown people is pissing off Greens. But in the Swedish way they handed this off to a researcher (“utredning”) who found out that to get the industry on board you need a) rock-solid political promises (so need to get the Social Democrats at least on board) and b) have a price guarantee for power for at least a decade, along with massive government loan guarantees.
It’s gonna be hard to get voters interested in 10 new reactor sites (NIMBY gets supercharged when it comes to nukes) if it slightly pushes up lending rates and power bills.
[1] the right-wing part of the opposition social democrats like them too to be fair
I’m looking forward to seeing the tech attitude of “move fast and break things” being brought to nuclear reactors.
At least is technically feasible (although completely impossible to do in that timeframe)
Unlike the cold fusion energy deal that Microsoft greenwashed last year that’s pure science fiction (invent, create, test and build a cold fusion reactor in just 4 years: impossible unless they got a time machine or found some alien tech in a remote cave)