TechTakes

BRING IT ON NITPICKY NUKE NERDS

Well acthtually we prefer to be called fission/fusion nerds

"greenwashing is cheaper than action" indeed. (edit2) On that note, storytime about the clownshow that is Dutch politics. So our radical right wing government is pro nuclear power, of course, and they want to build more powerplants. So what are they planning on doing? They are going to start a study on which locations are best. Which is maddening, as these studies have already been done before (so it prob is just an attempt to hopefully have the study finish when it isn't them in power anymore so they are not at risk of starting an too expensive megaproject). But it gets worse, the absolute clowns of our farmers party just went 'fuck the studies' and they just pointed at a province where there are a lot of farmers and went 'we will put a powerplant there'. And this is how they discovered nuclear powerplants need running water and they picked one of the areas without a major river. ('im ignoring the clownshow re 'the immigration crisis' (not a crisis) as this post is already too long, and there is a big risk of honk overdose if I go into that).

I'm looking forward to seeing the tech attitude of "move fast and break things" being brought to nuclear reactors.

BRB making a video for a cold fusion based kickstarter. I smell money

I don't claim to be an expert on nuclear power, so take what I say with a grain of salt, but from what I've seen, smaller reactors don't seem to make much sense. The trend seems to be towards bigger reactors with bigger power output. Some of it thanks to the bureaucracy of getting permits per reactor, but also the physics, engineering, real estate and economics involved. Conventional (i.e. existent) reactors are typically a fairly small part of a nuclear power plant's footprint, so no matter how much you miniaturize them you will have the overhead of security, operations, cooling and electrical infrastucture.

If someone can fill me in on the benefits of smaller, more modular nuclear reactors and how they might outweight those of large installations, I'm interested.

how come all these botfans talking points are just repackaged cryptobros talking points

it keeps happening

If these nuclear plants manage to come to fruition, it'll be the sole miniscule silver lining of the bubble. Considering its AI, though, I expect they'll probably suffer some kind of horrific Chernobyl-grade accident which kills nuclear power for good, because we can't have nice things when there's AI involved.

Google has signed a deal with California startup Kairos Power for six or seven small modular reactors. The first is due in 2030

So, well after the bubble is going to pop.

I am 100% in support of deploying nukes to Google and Amazon

Of all the things that will never happen, this is the one that will never happen the most.

Thanks for posting this good collection of links. HN has as hard-on for SMRs and as a first-order approximation that means they're wrong, but it's good to have something more than vibes backing it up.

I swear they looked at Bill Gates failing to launch SMRs and thought: "he's a smart guy"

We buy tech of the future that might or might not work/get government approval/make actual sense to build so we can't be blamed for ruining the climate with AI using up all the energy. That's the more earth bound version of: I don't care about climate change because we will live on Mars soon^(tm)^.

At least is technically feasible (although completely impossible to do in that timeframe)

Unlike the cold fusion energy deal that Microsoft greenwashed last year that's pure science fiction (invent, create, test and build a cold fusion reactor in just 4 years: impossible unless they got a time machine or found some alien tech in a remote cave)

Honestly thank god they're vaporware. Somehow I don't think we should have startups building actual nuclear reactors.

hol up google wants 500MW? that's 1. one regular sized reactor that could be delivered in the same timeframe, and 2. google uses already almost 3GW on average (2023), this is compared to about 2.5GW for ms of which something in the ballpark of 700MW just for ai. they're gonna need much more, like five regular sized reactors if they want to use entire baseload (that's how NPPs work best. the french made load-following NPPs but i guess it'd be harder to make them small) or swing wildly with power consumption to conform to renewables

500 megawatts? Pshhj that's not even though to power the flux capacitor.

I got into the wrong business.

@dgerard somebody should found a startup and sell ASMRs to Google and Amazon

related: Peter Theil-backed startup “General Matter” bags federal contract to enrich uranium to just below weapon grade