At last, we’ll be seeing nuclear reactors being created using Agile! Fail early, fail often, hopefully don’t kill everyone!
I am suprised to see all the negativity. I for one think this is awesome and would love to see SMRs become more mainstream.
I agree, and it is possibly the only good thing to come out of AI.
Like people asking “why do we need to go to the moon?!”.
Fly-by-wire (ie pilot controls decoupled from physical actuators), so modern air travel.
Integrated circuits (IE multiple transistors - and other components - in the same silicon package). Basically miniaturisation and reduction in power consumption of computers.
GPS. The Apollo missions lead to the rocket tech/science for geosynchronous orbits require for GPS.
This time it is commercial.
I’d rather the power requirements were covered by non-carbon sources. However it proves the tech for future use.
For a similar example, I have a strong dislike of Elon Musk. He has ruined the potential of Twitter and Tesla, but SpaceX has had some impressive accomplishments.
Google are a shitty company. I wish the nuclear power went towards shutting down carbon power.
But SOMEONE has to take the risk. I wish that someone was a government. But it’s Google. So… Kind of a win?
Crazy how quickly we’ve gone from “Nuclear is a dead technology, it can’t work and its simply too expensive to build more of. Y’all have to use fossil fuels instead” to “We’re building nuclear plants as quickly as our contractors can draft them, but only for doing experiments in high end algorithmic brute-forcing”.
Would be nice if some of that dirt-cheap, low-emission, industrial capacity electricity was available for the rest of us.
-
Tax them enough that they don’t have the cash to just up and build their own personal-use nuclear powered, nation spanning infrastructure.
-
Use those taxes to build a nation spanning nuclear infrastructure that everyone can use.
I’ve got so many ads so far for how adding new taxes is bad even if it pays for good things, and all of the issues they are arguing about aren’t even adding any taxes. Actually adding taxes seems like a great way to make political enemies, even though it’s often the best tool there is for a thing.
Eh, I would say investment into R&D should be encouraged and maybe allow tax write offs. Even of the end goal is a private power source. Once that R&D turns into workable, operable, sellable products, then tax the fuck out of them. Perhaps disallow making things that can be a boon to public infrastructure from being deem proprietary, so that it can be more easily adapted to public use.
I dunno, I’m typing from my couch after a few beers.
Fun Times! Because everyone pays for the waste and when something goes wrong. Privatizing Profits while Socializing Losses. The core motor of capitalism.
The cleanup for fossil fuels is an order of magnitude more expensive, and an order of magnitude more difficult. It also impacts so many things that its true cost is impossible to calculate.
I’m aware of the issues with nuclear, but for a lot of places it’s the only low/zero emission tech we can do until we have a serious improvement in batteries.
Very few countries can have a large stable base load of renewable energy. Not every country has the geography for dams (which have their own massive ecological and environmental impacts) or geothermal energy.
Seriously, we need to cut emissions now. So what’s the option that anti-nuclear people want? Continue to use fossil fuels and hope battery tech gets good enough, then expand renewables? That will take decades.
Nuclear should only be done by the state. Any commercial company doing nuclear HAS TO CARE FOR THE WASTE. It has to be in the calculation, but no on ecan guarantee 10000 years of anything. Same with fossils… execute the fossil fuel industry. They destroyed so much, they don’t deserve to earn a single cent.
That funky startup is producing waste. Imagine a startup selling Asbestos as the new hot shit in 2024.
We’re talking 11 years for 7 “small” reactors. The first decade just to establish a business, but no real difference in the overall picture. How many years, decades after that to make a noticeable difference?
Meanwhile we’re building out more power generation in renewables every year. Renewables are already well developed, can be deployed quickly, and are already scaling up, renewables make a difference NOW.
It’s almost like the brand spanking new tech to make small nuclear reactors are extremely cost prohibitive and risky, and to lower the cost someone needs to spend money to increase supply.
If only that was the government that invested in the R&D and tech to make it happen.
Gaining funds from taxes (meaningful taxes), and investing that money in making their country better.
Hopefully this decision is because carbon taxes that will make consumer products representative of the actual cost of the item (not the exploitative cost). >
No no, let the free market decide.
Fucking AI threatening to replace basic jobs (when it’s more suited to replace the C-Suite) gobling up energy and money, too-big-to-fail bailouts and loophole tax rules bullshit.
So yeh, someone needs to spend the money and that should be the government.
Because they should realise that carbon fuel sources are a death sentence.
I’m glad you don’t make the decisions because I don’t want my taxes, that I work hard for and pay money into, to be spent by the government on highly-likely dogshit experimental brand new nuke tech that may eventually cost more money later on to maintain, and I prefer they spend it renovating existing infrastructure or building tried/true legacy nuke plant designs.
To be fair here, no one’s certain this will be cost-effective either. The new techs make it worth trying though.
no one’s certain this will be cost-effective either
One of the great sins of nuclear energy programs implemented during the 50s, 60s, and 70s was that it was too cost effective. Very difficult to turn a profit on electricity when you’re practically giving it away. Nuclear energy functions great as a kind-of loss-leader, a spur to your economy in the form of ultra-low-cost utilities that can incentivize high-energy consumption activities (like steel manufacturing and bulk shipping and commercial grade city-wide climate control). But its miserable as a profit center, because you can’t easily regulate the rate of power generation to gouge the market during periods of relatively high demand. Nuclear has enormous up-front costs and a long payoff window. It can take over a decade to break even on operation, assuming you’re operating at market rates.
By contrast, natural gas generators are perfect for profit-maximzing. Turning the electric generation on or off is not much more difficult than operating a gas stove. You can form a cartel with your friends, then wait for electric price-demand to peak, and command thousands of dollars a MWh to fill the sudden acute need for electricity. Natural gas plants can pay for themselves in a matter of months, under ideal conditions.
So I wouldn’t say the problem is that we don’t know their cost-efficiency. I’d say the problem is that we do know. And for consumer electricity, nuclear doesn’t make investment sense. But for internally consumed electricity on the scale of industrial data centers, it is exactly what a profit-motivated power consumer wants.
Plus time. My perspective was that building a new nuclear power industry and any significant number of reactors would take too long: we need to have fixed climate change in less time.
So seven “small” reactors over the next eleven years …… faster than I expected but still takes decades to make a noticeable difference.
I don’t think they’re even building many. The article uses the word “adopt” because they’re kinda reviving old power plants. Three Mile Island being one of them.
Cyberpunk dystopias weren’t supposed to be guidelines dammit
CorpoNations.
Not yet we’re not!
Still plenty of nature to kill before humanity cannot survive in any capacity without corpo supply chains.
If you’re breathing free air, drinking real water, and actual food can grow out of the ground we’re comparably in cyber paradise given how much worse AI spycraft and corporate ownership will worsen everything exponentially for the non-connected over the next decades
Still plenty of nature to kill before humanity cannot survive
I think there may be debate on this point. Climate change may be self perpetuating soon (if it isn’t already) due to thawing meant reserves, etc.
I’m not sure if anyone in the scientific mainstream thinks that’ll push the climate to a point where we can’t survive, but that probably depends on our behaviour over the next few decades.
Could NOT get the nuclear power plant in Georgia off the ground for how long?
Did it ever get finished?
But when corporate wants it just fucking happens 🤡
Let me preface this that I’m not a huge fan of nuclear, but I do like factual information.
Could NOT get the nuclear power plant in Georgia off the ground for how long?
If you’re talking about Vogtle, it took about 13 years and 14 years. (two reactors)
Did it ever get finished?
Yes. If you want to be specific the original two reactors were finished in 2008. The new work was for the other two reactors. That’s what took 14 years. Of the two new reactors, one started providing commercial power for the first time in June of 2023. The second new reactor only started providing commercial power in Feb of 2024.
But when corporate wants it just fucking happens 🤡
Different type of power plants between what is being discussed for Google and what was put in at Vogtle in Georgia.
Vogtle was completing construction of an existing older design. Think of this like a bespoke tailored suit. It is crazy expensive, and only fits you.
What most of these tech companies are going for is called Small Modular Reactors (SMR). Think of this as like buying a ready-to-wear suit off the rack. Its not nearly as fancy or as impressive (usually much smaller power generation), but its not custom made so its much cheaper.
Businesses generating their own power is not anything new. The big auto manufacturers used to do it back in the day, and if you scale down the concept, every windmill (the grain grinding kind) and waterwheel built and operated for profit is the same thing. I’m just happy that Google is seemingly having their own built, instead of getting taxpayers to build it for them.
