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Hungry for Energy, Amazon, Google and Microsoft Turn to Nuclear Power | Large technology companies are investing billions of dollars in nuclear energy as an emissions-free source of electricity for AI (www.nytimes.com)

submitted 4 weeks ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

21 comments fedilink hide all child comments

My impression is that this is a PR push, designed to avoid having to invest in renewables, and let them keep on burning gas and coal, rather than something likely to come to fruition.

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[–] [email protected] 29 points 4 weeks ago (3 children)

Honestly, I know this is a polarizing issue, but nuclear is clean and pretty much safe and you don't need batteries for it. Lithium batteries of course being an ecological nightmare. Bring it on I say.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago) (2 children)

Mostly:

New nuclear is really expensive
It also takes a long time to deliver
The new reactor examples in here consist of reactors from suppliers who haven't done that before

So it has the feel of a plan to promise to spend a lot of money several years from now, and get a lot of PR points today, and quietly cancel the project later.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 weeks ago

Well that is, indeed, wack. I appreciate your perspective, I can't believe I missed the "corporations lying for money" angle. I'm usually on top of it.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

It also takes a long time to deliver

Not that much. Do remember there's a lot of oil money pouring into FUDing about nuclear.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago) (1 children)

They're talking about 5+ years on the new nuclear in these. And they haven't done it before, so a 30% deadline slip is realistic.

You can put up a lot of wind and solar in that time.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

You can put up a lot of wind and solar in that time.

Which needs a stable baseline to counteract lack of supply and/or a lot of lithium. And space.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago

The existing large-scale batteries are largely lithium. There are a bunch of iron-chemistry ones and sodium-ion ones which have been deployed over the past year, with factories going up to scale them up. I'm not expecting to be limited by lithium availability for stationary batteries.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 weeks ago (2 children)

Mining for nuclear is an ecological disaster, and is often done in poor countries under awful conditions, especially lung cancer due to the radon emissions of uranium.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 weeks ago

Arguably it is better than mining for coal, lithium, etc. since those have similar issues, but one gram of uranium contains energy similar to 3 tons of coal.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 weeks ago

Try Thorium.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 weeks ago

Bring it on I say.

As long as regulation stays in place. Or, better, add even harder regulation (for from security standpoints as well as fiscal) to ensure these fuckers are forced to be actively responsible for the safety and give them no way to back off and abandon a plant.

Let them donate excess power to the grid as well. Eh, fund housing nearby for the homeless.