this post was submitted on 16 Oct 2024
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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 1 month ago by silence7@slrpnk.net to c/technology@lemmy.world
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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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[–] silence7@slrpnk.net 15 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month 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.

[–] bizzle@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month 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.

[–] 0x0@programming.dev 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.

[–] silence7@slrpnk.net 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.

[–] 0x0@programming.dev 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.

[–] silence7@slrpnk.net 1 points 4 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.