Microsoft has cash reserves of $75 billion.
Microsoft - If you really want to convince us that nuclear power is part of the future, why can’t you use some of your own money? Why does every single nuclear suggestion always rely on bailouts from taxpayers? Here’s a thought, if you can’t pay for it yourself - just pick the cheaper option that taxpayers don’t have to pay for - you know renewables and grid storage? The stuff that everybody else, all over the world, is building near 99% of new electricity generation with.
Companies should EVER get tax payer money unless the taxpayers actually ask for something to be done by them.
If a company asks, it should be immediate denial since these companies don’t pay shit for taxes to begin with.
Proposals like this are exactly why corporations don’t pay much tax. They have tons of deals and situations like this that offset their profits/tax burden
But muh jobs! /s
Depressingly, a factory is tangible, and the economic benefits of not subsidising things randomly based on political expediency are subtle. Add in the occasional edge cases where subsidies actually make sense (idle military manufacturing capacity during peacetime, for example) and this is a law that tends not to be put in place or stay in place.
America: privatized profits, socialized costs.
How much longer y’all just going to keep taking it in the ass?
We really don’t have much say in it. Sure we vote but there’s an entire segment of the country that’s afraid of immigrants whose influence is very disproportional to the percentage of the population.
So when their AI prospects don’t prove as fruitful as they hope, they’re not holding the liability? Sounds about Reagan.
Why doesn’t the government just give the loan to Constellation to restart the reactor? What’s the point of Microsoft in this.
That’s sort of what is happening. Government is guaranteeing $1.6B of Constellation’s loans.
Constellation is sourcing a loan themselves, but if they can’t pay, government will pay $1.6B of what is left owing.
This makes Constellation’s loans cheaper
Aside from that, existing policy of government paying part of the cost of clean* power means Microsoft will pay less for the power
So taxpayers are on the hook for one and a half gigabucks if Constellation goes bust
Taxpayers are also on the hook for part of the cost of the power produced
I find it odd that Microsoft thinks that nuclear power is the cheapest way it can zero carbon its data centers
Wind and solar have been so much cheaper for so long now
Tech companies do something sane? Never.
Honestly I expect half the reason is the headlines
Fast computers are very expensive to the point where it makes sense to pay more for power to keep them running 24/7 instead of shutting them off every night when the sun sets.
That’s literally impossible by geometry if you mean everywhere.
Even in practice in one location, it varies enough to make it a problem if you need a steady supply. Sometimes is blows a little or barely at all, sometimes a lot, and occasionally so much you have to lock on the breaks and stop the thing to avoid damage.
