Big Tech goes nuclear (and fossil fuels)

[brenthutch 444]

Looks like the big brains in Silicon Valley are eschewing renewables and going nuclear with fossil fuels as a bridge 

“Across the tech sector, companies like Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Metaare all getting into nuclear tech”

“until these plants are running, many AI data centers will have to operate using natural gas.”

https://www.npr.org/2024/12/09/nx-s1-5171063/artificial-intelligence-wants-to-go-nuclear-will-it-work

[nigel99 560]

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2v48003l8o

The Brits have come up with a pretty amazing solution. These diamond batteries are the size of a coin cell and last 5000 years. 

It also recycles nuclear waste which is pretty cool. 

Screw Elon I’m waiting for my nuclear powered Aston Martin

[billvon 3,063]

19 minutes ago, brenthutch said:

Looks like the big brains in Silicon Valley are  . . . going nuclear

Been hearing that for 50 years.

[brenthutch 444]

Just now, billvon said:

Been hearing that for 50 years.

The Three Mile Island reactor is built, functional and ready to power Microsoft’s AI center as soon as it is built. The other projects will use natural gas as a bridge source until nuclear gets up and running. Funny how wind and solar were considered unreliable and uneconomical.

[SkyDekker 1,465]

1 minute ago, brenthutch said:

The Three Mile Island reactor is built, functional and ready to power Microsoft’s AI center as soon as it is built.

Priceless.

[brenthutch 444]

20 minutes ago, nigel99 said:

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2v48003l8o

The Brits have come up with a pretty amazing solution. These diamond batteries are the size of a coin cell and last 5000 years. 

It also recycles nuclear waste which is pretty cool. 

Screw Elon I’m waiting for my nuclear powered Aston Martin

https://www.etsy.com/listing/1329502903/007-james-bond-aston-martin-goldfinger
 

With those batteries, this is the only Aston Martin you will be powering 

[brenthutch 444]

2 minutes ago, SkyDekker said:

Priceless.

Why do you say that? TMI had two reactors. One was shut down in ‘79 after an incident, the other continued to provide electricity until 2019 when the abundance of natural gas made it non competitive. Microsoft has locked in a profitable price and TMI is scheduled to provide electricity for the next 20 years.

[nigel99 560]

Just now, brenthutch said:

https://www.etsy.com/listing/1329502903/007-james-bond-aston-martin-goldfinger
 

With those batteries, this is the only Aston Martin you will be powering 

Do you always argue? 

Probably one of very few posts supporting nuclear energy and you can’t even be interested in the story?

I’m not sure if you’re aware but 10 x 10 0.5mm is very small. Of course there are practical limitations and peak current draw to consider, but you can pack 2.5 million batteries into 500 x 500 x 500mm. That amount of diamond is going to cost a little though!

[billvon 3,063]

10 minutes ago, brenthutch said:

The Three Mile Island reactor is built, functional and ready to power Microsoft’s AI center as soon as it is built. 

So it took 45 years to fix that reactor, and the new Vogtle reactors took 20 years from planning to first power.

In the meantime, people are turning to renewables to fill the gap.  Solar alone in the US will grow 75% in the next two years - 163 billion kilowatthours (kWh) in 2023 to 286 billion kWh in 2025.   You'd need 56 new nuclear plants to replace that amount of energy.  Given that from now until 2025 exactly one is going to open, the growth of renewables really faces no threat from nuclear.

[brenthutch 444]

2 minutes ago, billvon said:

So it took 45 years to fix that reactor, and the new Vogtle reactors took 20 years from planning to first power.

In the meantime, people are turning to renewables to fill the gap.  Solar alone in the US will grow 75% in the next two years - 163 billion kilowatthours (kWh) in 2023 to 286 billion kWh in 2025.   You'd need 56 new nuclear plants to replace that amount of energy.  Given that from now until 2025 exactly one is going to open, the growth of renewables really faces no threat from nuclear.

Renewables can grow all they want, it’s just not enough to cover the increase in energy demand and that is why fossils fuels will continue to grow and provide even more energy than wind and solar for the foreseeable future.

[billvon 3,063]

12 minutes ago, brenthutch said:

Renewables can grow all they want, it’s just not enough to cover the increase in energy demand and that is why fossils fuels will continue to grow and provide even more energy than wind and solar for the foreseeable future.

Sounds like the facts have got your panties in a wad!  Sorry about that.

[brenthutch 444]

34 minutes ago, billvon said:

Sounds like the facts have got your panties in a wad!  Sorry about that.

Nope, just sharing some reality with my lefty buddies. 
BTW why aren’t data centers using renewables and instead using fossil fuels and making big investments in nuclear?

[olofscience 489]

10 hours ago, nigel99 said:

Do you always argue? 

Probably one of very few posts supporting nuclear energy and you can’t even be interested in the story?

He's too angry to notice, even in the other threads.

The impeding shutdown of this site must have hit him hard.

He spent years and thousands of posts here saying that "global warming isn't happening" and when he turned out to be completely wrong, he now has to move the goalposts to "yeah it's warmed up but NOTHING is happening!" and without the forums, how can he continue to attempt to get the validation that he so desperately needs?

[brenthutch 444]

“Another analysis of the energy dilemma facing Virginia, this one commissioned by a Democrat-controlled legislative panel, has concluded that use of natural gas to make electricity is going to have to grow over coming decades, not shrink.  Virginia’s anti-hydrocarbon energy laws are doomed to fail because of Virginia’s global dominance in the data center industry.”

Yet another reality check.

[billvon 3,063]

14 minutes ago, brenthutch said:

“Another analysis of the energy dilemma facing Virginia, this one commissioned by a Democrat-controlled legislative panel, has concluded that use of natural gas to make electricity is going to have to grow over coming decades, not shrink."

And renewables - specifically solar and wind - will grow even faster.  Big Tech is demanding renewables for their data centers.

Sorry.

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/06/19/solar-is-growing-faster-than-any-energy-source-as-clean-power-for-data-centers.html

[SkyDekker 1,465]

17 minutes ago, billvon said:

And renewables - specifically solar and wind - will grow even faster.  Big Tech is demanding renewables for their data centers.

Sorry.

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/06/19/solar-is-growing-faster-than-any-energy-source-as-clean-power-for-data-centers.html

He is so lost when it comes to rates and percentages. Sad really.

[brenthutch 444]

18 minutes ago, SkyDekker said:

He is so lost when it comes to rates and percentages. Sad really.

Here’s a percentage for you…

To be sure, solar remains a small portion of total electricity generation in the U.S., standing at just 3.9% of the nation’s power mix in 2023 compared to the 43% share held by natural gas, according to the Energy Information Administration,

[brenthutch 444]

Sept 20 (Reuters) - Constellation Energy (CEG.O), opens new tab and Microsoft (MSFT.O), opens new tab have signed a power deal to help resurrect a unit of the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania in what would be the first-ever restart of its kind, the companies said on Friday.

Big tech has led to a sudden surge in U.S. electricity demand for data centers needed to expand technologies like artificial intelligence and cloud computing. Nuclear energy, which is nearly carbon-free and broadly considered more reliable than energy sources like solar and wind, has become a popular option for technology companies with uninterrupted power needs and climate pledges.

Did you catch that part about wind and solar are insufficiently reliable? Data centers require vast amounts of power 24/7 something wind and solar just can’t provide.

[billvon 3,063]

2 minutes ago, brenthutch said:

Did you catch that part about wind and solar are insufficiently reliable?

My solar power system has been far more reliable than the nuclear power plant just down the road from me.  It had a leak in 2012 and has been closed ever since.

But in any case, you keep listing all these reasons that wind and solar will never be successful, while they keep succeeding year after year.  You've been saying this for about a decade now and you're always wrong.   At some point will you reconsider your position?  Or will you never budge from your FOX-supplied talking points?

[brenthutch 444]

2 hours ago, billvon said:

My solar power system has been far more reliable than the nuclear power plant just down the road from me.  It had a leak in 2012 and has been closed ever since.

But in any case, you keep listing all these reasons that wind and solar will never be successful, while they keep succeeding year after year.  You've been saying this for about a decade now and you're always wrong.   At some point will you reconsider your position?  Or will you never budge from your FOX-supplied talking points?

3.9% is hardly succeeding. The skyrocketing energy costs in California and Germany are cautionary tales about what happens when you rely too much on renewables. I said we can’t run the country on renewables for more than a decade and I am as right today as I was ten years ago. (Ten years ago I also said that rising CO2 would not result in global calamity. Looks like I was right about that as well)

Edited December 18, 2024 by brenthutch

[SkyDekker 1,465]

47 minutes ago, brenthutch said:

3.9% is hardly succeeding. The skyrocketing energy costs in California and Germany are cautionary tales about what happens when you rely too much on renewables. I said we can’t run the country on renewables for more than a decade and I am as right today as I was ten years ago. (Ten years ago I also said that rising CO2 would not result in global calamity. Looks like I was right about that as well)

"We can't run the country on renewables" and "renewables succeeding"  are two very different things.

What you is is flip flop back and forth to try and keeping thinking you are right.

[billvon 3,063]

3 hours ago, brenthutch said:

3.9% is hardly succeeding. 

30% is - which is what California is at now.  And as California goes, the country goes, like it or not.  That's why all gas cars have catalytic converters now, for example.

More than half our power generation comes from non fossil fuel sources.  Fossil fuels have already lost in California.  And again, as California goes, so does the country.

Sorry!

[brenthutch 444]

2 hours ago, SkyDekker said:

"We can't run the country on renewables" and "renewables succeeding"  are two very different things.

What you is is flip flop back and forth to try and keeping thinking you are right.

Never flip flopped. The other side went from “renewables will replace fossil fuels” to “we went from 2% to 3%, yay for us! #winning?”

[brenthutch 444]

3 minutes ago, billvon said:

30% is - which is what California is at now.  And as California goes, the country goes, like it or not.  That's why all gas cars have catalytic converters now, for example.

More than half our power generation comes from non fossil fuel sources.  Fossil fuels have already lost in California.  And again, as California goes, so does the country.

Sorry!

Is that why Virginia just dropped its EV mandate? Isn’t that just the opposite of following California’s lead?

Edited December 19, 2024 by brenthutch

[billvon 3,063]

Just now, brenthutch said:

Is that why Virginia just dropped its EV mandate? Isn’t that just the opposite? 

Perhaps you are a bit confused over the difference between an EV (a vehicle) and solar-PV (an energy generation technology?)