• @Greyghoster@aussie.zone
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    183 months ago

    Interesting as old nuclear plants are always said to be expensive to operate due to maintenance and old technology issues. Microsoft must really be in a bind to go for an expensive and uncertain supply.

    • @sus@programming.dev
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      3 months ago

      Advanced bayesian estimations show that the risks of a nuclear plant that is not yet operational are very low. And the chance that they will still be employed at microsoft (after the bubble pops) by 2028 is exceedingly low, reducing effective risk significantly !

        • @corbin
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          33 months ago

          Nuclear power has fairly predictable amortized returns. I imagine that this is worth the cost to MS over the next two decades or so; we have no idea what their current energy premium is like, and this plant doesn’t have to be as cheap as a new plant, just cheaper than the current premium.

          • @Greyghoster@aussie.zone
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            -13 months ago

            If it was cheaper than the current premium, I expect that the plant would still be in operation, however as I don’t know the numbers so it must be worthwhile.

            • @froztbyte
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              43 months ago

              Constellation Energy shut down the Unit 1 reactor in 2019 — not the one that melted down in 1979, the other one — because it wasn’t economical. Inflation Reduction Act tax breaks made it viable again

              almost like it was literally in the article

    • @maol
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      93 months ago

      I assume this is pr to distract from their increasing use of fossil fuels

      • @gerikson
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        53 months ago

        Yeah but Three Mile Island? Seriously?

        Now it’s possible that the MSFT press release gave it a more anodyne name and the press sussed out where it was, but still.

        • @maol
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          63 months ago

          Well, it’s a hell of a distraction!

          Augh, augh, I’m starting to sound like one of those conspiracy nuts who think Beyoncé times her album releases to distract people from what the illuminati are getting up to. Time to stop…

  • @swlabr
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    83 months ago

    I hear they actually are planning to build a new campus there. They think they’ll create supersmart mutants to build their next gen AIs

    • @selfA
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      213 months ago

      my least favorite thing about nuclear power is the reply guys

      • David GerardOPMA
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        153 months ago

        i saw it in my email and thought “did he fucking read it” and looking through his history, he absolutely didn’t

        • @selfA
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          253 months ago

          lemmy-flavored redditors: uhm I came here expecting some nuance

          also lemmy-flavored redditors: nuclear power plants opening is always good, why would I care that the companies doing it have a history of ignoring regulations, are treating nuclear engineering as loosely as software engineering, and are generating vast amounts of power just to chase an awful fucking fad and explicitly not to power houses or any worthwhile infrastructure? what do you mean read the article? why would I ever do that?

          • @froztbyte
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            73 months ago

            SimCity infrastructure plans

            • @selfA
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              33 months ago

              Disasters->Basilisk

      • @gerikson
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        3 months ago

        There’s a specific kind of online commentator that’s a carrier of the meme that the public turn against nuclear power was the final nail in the coffin for Western civilization. I don’t have any proof of this, other than cultural. Nuke fondlers tend to be culturally and politically conservative, generally with engineering or science degrees, and seem to pine for the idealized 50s so present in tradwife media nowadays (although nuke love precedes that by decades).

        Opposition to nuclear power was sort of a death knell for the ideal of the technocrat.

        Now of course nuke enthusiasts tend to be libertarians too, and they run smack into the fact that nuclear is really capital-intensive and expensive to insure. Thus the pipe dream of the inherently safe “container reactor”.

        Sweden’s current gov is driven a lot by opposition to all things Green (both the party and the ideas) and pushed for the construction of 10 new reactors. It turns out that the industry has been burned by vacillating govs before and required hard financial guarantees, as well as a iron-clad price floor for electricity, to commit. So the pitch to the public would be: there’s no way you can lower your per-unit power cost for 30 years, and in return you get 10 items widely perceived as ugly and dangerous.

        • David GerardOPMA
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          3 months ago

          Nuclear at least doesn’t pump out CO2, so a lotta people who aren’t like you describe consider it worth considering. 850MW of nuclear is better than 850MW of gas on this scale.

          But the economics just completely fuck it. TMI unit 1 shut down cos it couldn’t compete economically and only an IRA tax break makes it even plausible.

          There’s a big thing in Australia at the moment where the LNP, beholden to some donor or other, is pushing economically nonviable nuclear hard. And even a lotta the green side is saying “nice idea, now make the numbers work in this universe.”

        • @V0ldek
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          3 months ago

          as well as a iron-clad price floor for electricity

          Lol isn’t the main cool thing of having a nuclear plant low electricity costs, why the fuck would you agree to that

          Let’s increase the supply but also add a price floor to reap none of the benefits, genius economics

  • @itsonlygeorge@reddthat.com
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    13 months ago

    Yeah, this is gonna turn out well. What could possibly go wrong connecting an AI to a nuclear reactor in a populated area?