Technology

58303 readers

10 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

Follow the lemmy.world rules.
Only tech related content.
Be excellent to each another!
Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
Politics threads may be removed.
No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

404

Microsoft inks deal to restart Three Mile Island nuclear reactor to fuel its voracious AI ambitions (www.tomshardware.com)

submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

150 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Modern AI data centers consume enormous amounts of power, and it looks like they will get even more power-hungry in the coming years as companies like Google, Microsoft, Meta, and OpenAI strive towards artificial general intelligence (AGI). Oracle has already outlined plans to use nuclear power plants for its 1-gigawatt datacenters. It looks like Microsoft plans to do the same as it just inked a deal to restart a nuclear power plant to feed its data centers, reports Bloomberg.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago (6 children)

I don't think that math works out, even when looking over the entire 70+ year life cycle of a nuclear reactor. When it costs $35 billion to build two 1MW reactors, even if it will last 70 years, the construction cost being amortized over every year or every megawatt hour generated is still really expensive, especially when accounting for interest.

And it bakes in that huge cost irreversibly up front, so any future improvements will only make the existing plant less competitive. Wind and solar and geothermal and maybe even fusion will get cheaper over time, but a nuclear plant with most of its costs up front can't. 70 years is a long time to commit to something.

[–] grudan 6 points 2 months ago (5 children)

Can you explain how wind and solar get cheaper over time? Especially wind, those blades have to be replaced fairly often and they are expensive.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Wind and solar also have to be paired with either cheap natural gas or energy storage systems that are often monstrously expensive. Unfortunately these numbers are almost always left out when one discusses prices.

People do appreciate the lights staying on, after all.

[–] grudan 4 points 2 months ago

Yeah, we haven’t even gotten into the reliability. The have dead times where no output is created that nuclear doesn’t suffer from.

load more comments (3 replies)