Thank goodness we can now get a little nuclear waste with our cat pics.
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?
So um. What happens when the white supremacists attacking FEMA and electrical grids starts attacking these nuclear reactors?
There are already existing nuclear reactors. Why would these new ones be any different in regards to their ability to be attacked?
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.
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. Probably 30+ years at the minimum.
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.
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.
-
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.
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.
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.
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
