yes, let's use nuclear energy to generate half assed AI assistants, images and videos instead of making clean energy cheaper
this post was submitted on 15 Oct 2024
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Nuclear energy is clean, but I agree this energy should be used for a useful purpose, which would bring down costs.
that is the point? when big tech monopolizes sources of clean energy, it becomes more expensive (or can become cheaper at best) because there is less availability
Every Google search should include an AI answer! Who cares about energy usage, we'll just buy a nuclear power plant!
What is the motive behind this push to ram AI down out throats?
They already have all my emails, photographs. location and browsing data.
What do they gain from providing unreliable information at many times the power use? Or having me ask "write a sincere-sounding thank-you email".
I feel like I'm missing some big revelation that will make it make sense.
I say this as someone that works in AI.
It's all a smoke-screen. It shows that Google (and every other big tech company) is producing super secret, super high tech stuff that should make their shareholders super happy. The reality is that Google and co haven't produced shit for years, have laid off hundreds of thousands of people worldwide, and don't have long term plans to improve outside of enshittifcation.
Money.
AI will improve and this will be a multi trillion dollar market. Big tech is in a race to be the biggest.
We don't need it and should be focussing on important things but yay capitalism right?
Yeah but big tech is also the customer. So it doesnt make sense. How will they make money if the only way to do so is to trick other giant tech companies into buying and using your product?
break up big tech. regulate monopolies before we get the second great depression.
Google, like Microsoft then begs for taxpayer money to run this operation and the government, being in bed with all companies agrees to sell its citizens out...yet again.
Inb4 Microsoft and google electricity services for residents.
If it results in the nuclear plants remaining online and providing energy after the AI bubble pops, that doesn't seem so bad.
Fission is one of the cleanest energy sources we have today.
The AI bubble isn't going to pop, it's just going to transition to a rebranded cloud computing business.
A nuclear fission power plant generates about as much CO2 as wind turbines if you have a look at it's whole lifecycle. That's because just operation doesn't generate CO2. But nonetheless that power plant is made from materials like lots of concrete. It needs to be built, decommissioned, etc. You need to mine the uranium ore, ... All of that generates quite some CO2. So it's far off from being carbon neutral. And we already have alternatives that are in the same ballpark as a nuclear power plant with that. Just that the fission also generates this additional nuclear waste that is a nightmare to deal with. And SMRs are less efficient than big nuclear power plants. So they'll be considerably less "clean" than for example regenerative energy. I'd say they're definitely not amongst the cleanest energy sources we have today. That'd be something like a hydroelectric power. However, it's way better than oil or natural gas or coal. At least if comparing CO2 emissions.
For over a century, the standard way we’ve been disposing of hazardous materials that can’t be easily recycled is to permanently bury it. We’re doing it with thousands of tonnes of hazardous materials daily.
A nuclear power plant only generates about 3 cubic meters of hazardous nuclear waste per year.
At the typical sizes we’re currently building them, you need 50-100 solar or wind farms to match the electricity output of a single nuclear reactor.
When we eventually dispose of the solar panels from those farms we literally end up with more toxic waste in heavy metals like cadmium than the nuclear power plant produced.
No solution is perfect.
But contrary to the propaganda, nuclear is one of our cleanest options.
The question is, why do we look at recycling solar panels, but compare that to nuclear and ignore that these have to be decomissioned and dismantled, too? And the whole process of mining uranium etc. While it may be true that the depleted uranium is low in volume, that's far from being the actual amount of waste in the end. You'd have to compare the entire lifecycle of the plant to the entire lifecycle of a solar panel. (And solar isn't the best option anyways.) Also who's paying for 40.000 years of storage of those 3 cubic meters? The power companies certainly aren't.
For over a century, the standard way we’ve been disposing of hazardous materials [...]
Until 1994, one standard way of disposing of radioactive waste was throwing it into the ocean. There are at least 90.000 containers that got dumped along the shores of the USA alone. (Source: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altlasten_in_den_Meeren#Atomm%C3%BCllverklappung )
I'd agree that "No solution is perfect" qualifies for the history of nuclear energy.
Yes that’s correct.
To be more clear, nuclear waste is only a small percentage of the hazardous waste we’ve been disposing of by permanently burying it.
We’re [burying] thousands of tonnes of hazardous materials daily.
Are we though?
About 400,000 tonnes of used fuel has been discharged from reactors worldwide, but only about one-third has been reprocessed.
Yes. Nuclear waste is tiny. That’s the point.
Nuclear isn’t the only hazardous waste we dispose of burying it.
We’re disposing of tonnes of hazardous waste daily. Only a tiny percentage of that is nuclear waste.
Yet for some reason everyone loses their mind about the comparatively tiny amount of hazardous waste from nuclear and no one cares about the significantly larger about of hazardous waste from the eventual disposal of solar panels and 100s of other sources of hazardous waste.
It definitely is amongst the cleanest energy sources we have today, especially when the choice for most is either oil, coal or nuclear, the choice is easy. Hydro, solar or wind are often not viable because of climate or location reasons. Not to mention that all of these need to be built using concrete, that is not unique to nuclear. Also important is that hydro electricity also dramatically alters the area, killing many animals and moving many species out of their home.
You don't need much concrete for wind, and only a single slab for the solar transformer.
The problem is the assumption that the datacenter must be running at 100% power 24/7
Btw, wind turbines aren't made of concrete, the towers are metal tubes. But the blades are problematic, since they're made from fiberglass. And solar panels aren't concrete either. While - if I drive past a nuclear power plant, those are really huge concrete structures. And the problematic things about hydro plants are the reservoirs. It's flooding a vast area to build a new reservoir and changing the flow in the river that destroys ecosystems. The plant itself isn't that bad. So ideally you build it into an existing flow of water or use tidal energy instead of building a new dam. And that concern wouldn't apply. I'm not an expert on north american geography, but I bet there are some opportunities left for power plants with a lesser impact on the ecosystem.
Until you get the bill, again.
I don't see where this is being paid for with tax dollars. It looks like it's all privately funded to me.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/10/03/nuclear-microsoft-ai-constellation/
Here's the one for Microsoft. Google will follow suit sooner or later. These companies don't get this loaded by spending their money on big projects like this
It's a loan, not a grant. I agree they should go to the private sector for the load if they want to keep the energy for private use only, but they are required to pay it back, with interest. The company is worth far more than the loan is, so it's very low risk.
Actually, it's billions of public dollars. And if we don't find a proper permanent solution, it's going to become more: https://sustainability.stanford.edu/news/steep-costs-nuclear-waste-us
That article is pretty inflammatory, on purpose I believe. It rolls all of the costs into one, including nuclear weapons testing, costs of the Manhattan project, and even the costs other forms of energy entail at times. It's clearly an anti-nuclear article doing it's best to make the reader believe the costs are higher than they actually are.
I do agree with the article that we need to implement solutions, but they aren't difficult. We know how to solve it, and it isn't particularly expensive. These videos give good insight into how easy to contain nuclear waste is and solutions that we already have for it.
"clean energy"
Don't nuclear power plants produce waste which is highly problematic because it's hazardous and radioactive? I wouldn't call that clean. And SMRs generate even more waste than big nuclear plants.
Burying the small amount of waste in a stable non-actively forming mountain for a few thousand years is 1000x better than burning things and putting them into the air.
highly problematic because it's hazardous and radioactive?
Thing is, there's very little of that waste, with much less impact than say, burning coal.
Also, it's highly radioactive only when taken fresh out of reactor - this waste is stored in pools, until it decays. What you're left is weakly radioactive, long term waste that needs to be buried for a long time.
much less impact than say, burning coal.
Why compare to coal, not wind & solar + batteries.
Because wind and solar don't have the on-demand capacity. Even with batteries, you can't count on them to deliver power reliably
Adding to this. The waste has been used to fuel subsequent reactions and could be used to produce more power
I mean they seem to be still figuring this out... But isn't the whole SMR harardous waste after it got decommissioned? That depends a bit on the technology used. But that'd be a huge pile of mildly radioactive steel, plumbing and concrete in addition to the depleted fuel, which is highly radioactive. And as far as I know the re-use to get the rest of the energy out also isn't solved yet. I mean obviously that should be done. Only taking out parts of the energy and wasting the rest isn't very efficient. Sadly that seems to be exactly what we're doing in reality.