Nonsense, Microsoft will just put lots of PMs and Scrum masters on the task and they’ll have a working reactor in 1 year max.
/s, just in case any PMs are reading this and think it’s totally reasonable
Comment on Microsoft Needs So Much Power to Train AI That It's Considering Small Nuclear Reactors
Nobsi@feddit.de 1 year ago
Just fill the Country with Solar, Wind and Water… won’t take 10 years and will be cheaper too.
SpiderShoeCult@sopuli.xyz 1 year ago
Luvs2Spuj@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Estimate is 10 years? OK let’s 10x the workforce and get it done in 1
SpiderShoeCult@sopuli.xyz 1 year ago
Also, little known fact, 9 women can deliver one single baby in 1 month from conception!
ekky43@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 year ago
… And cause a lot of pollution and ecological stress, unless you funnel a LARGE amount of money and time into it.
Nobsi@feddit.de 1 year ago
Do you want to argue, that the construction of a nuclear power plant causes significantly less ecological stress and pollution than solar panels and windturbines?
Think about if you really want to claim that as a thing you actually believe in.
I’m just gonna throw some words in a pool.
concrete, steel, space, deforestation, river, 10+ Years construction time, heavy machinery, dust, natural habitats, fuel, mining, waste, noise, cost, france…
Thank you. i rest my case.dustyData@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Building dams literally kills whole ecosystems. Reduce biodiversity and razes woodland. They also do tend to take 10+ year of construction, just like nuclear power, while taking several times more materials. Your point is really stupid, nuclear power plants do not cause any more ecological stress than a moderate building in any city. They do consume vasts amounts of water, which can be an ecological issue, but not to the level that a dam creates. Wind turbines, for example, are not recyclable (materials used are too complex and use a lot of plastic) and they disrupt birds population. Just like solar panels, they have a very very short lifespan. Windturbines must be replaced every 5 years or so. So does solar panels but for different reasons. A nuclear power plant can create power for several decades if well maintained.
The thing is, no human intervention in any place is sustainable. Our mere mode of existence is so energy intensive that we are going to destroy the planet’s habitability no matter what we do. The time to change to 100% nuclear was 5 decades ago. The time to stop using fossil fuels was 4 decades ago. The time to change to sustainable energy was 3 decades ago. We lost the train. The planet won’t support us in any form in the long run. Hell, mammals might also be fucked withing the next million years. The planet will never ever be the same it was during the past 2 million years. And it’s because of us.
Nobsi@feddit.de 1 year ago
Look at France to see how 100% nuclear would have gone.
eclectic_electron@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
Those wind turbines and solar panels also get constructed, and affect a much larger area. It’s not an obvious comparison
Nobsi@feddit.de 1 year ago
Duh, Yes things have to be built. A Windmill is built in a few weeks by way less people and has no risk of exploding into a huge cloud of death.
ekky43@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 year ago
Half of those aren’t even relevant.
The actual construction takes about 4 years, but legal issues such as rules changing and politics tend to push this up to 6-15 years in extreme cases. To draw a parallel: building a 1GW windmill farm, such as the Thorsminde off shore windmill farm is estimated to take 5 years of pure construction time, and politics and legal issues have so far added 4 years to this from the day it was announced, giving a total construction time of about 9 years without delays.
Cost wise, Thorsminde is projected to cost 2.1 billion USD, and that’s without running costs, possible delays, or deconstruction costs at its 30 year end of life. The construction of a nuclear plant usually ( as in the projects that have been finished and we know the total construction costs of) costs anywhere from 6 to 9 billion USD. So yes, nuclear is more expensive, as you said.
Of course windmills don’t just pop out of the ground, so heavy machinery will also be required, and the sound of the hammers building the foundation will likely drive away any sound sensitive life in a 100-200 km radius, such as whales. This can be partly mitigated by running the hammers at lower power, adding about 30-50% (might be more, foundations take a long time to build) additional construction time and driving up the price.
The windmills will also change the life of the area dramatically throughout its life, VS nuclear, which requires mines that cause decent damage, but do not pollute in any significant way at the reactor site (unless you pump the waste water from the usually closed first loop directly out to the rivers and sea, or swear on running the power plant without cooling towers during droughts).
Also the resources needed to make a 1GW wind farm are immense, and contrary to nuclear, we can’t currently reuse the waste from deconstruction, which there also is quite a lot more of. Furthermore, maintenance will be hell, as you have much more moving parts (not per windmill, but per farm, which has multiple windmills) as a nuclear plant.
Nobsi@feddit.de 1 year ago
Do you realise that you can also build windmills… where you would put the Power Plant? On Land? And that would reduce the time and cost of construction?
You could also fill barren fields with solar panels and use space that not even a solar plant could use, this in turn also gives animals shade and helps biodiversity and bug species.
And doesnt have a third of its construction cost as running costs forever.
You can also scale wind turbines in minutes. Look at France how much it costs to have nuclear plants not running.In what way can we reuse the nuclear waste?
Mango@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Goddamnit France. Classic France.
bemenaker@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Microreactors aren’t that big. The one in the picture is from terrapower, the nuclear company Gates is funding, but they aren’t that close to production. The ones that have or are close to have DOE approval, are the size of a garden shed, and can power something like a couple of neighborhoods, or a datacenter. Might need two for a datacenter. They are self-sufficient, small, clean, and take almost no hand holding.
www.energy.gov/ne/…/what-nuclear-microreactor
The article is talking about small modular reactors, which is basically taking hte micro reactor concept and scaling it just a little larger, and creating a power plant, that you can add more modules on to increase the size and power output. It’s kind of a hybrid concept between a standard power plant and a classic nuclear plant. They don’t take 10 years to build, you’re not bulding that giant containment building, because the reactors are small and easy to replace and manage. China has already done this in several places while we dwaddle and waste time being scared of old ways of thinking.
UFODivebomb@programming.dev 1 year ago
Power density matters. And nuclear is pretty fucking dense haha
… for some applications. Not most tho. Really like 5. Everything else should be solar/wind/hydro
Rakonat@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Hydropower is about as bad for most ecosystems as burning fossil fuels. And its definitely not something that can be done quick or cheaply.
eclectic_electron@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
And a dam failure isn’t that much better than a nuclear accident, and far more common and less regulated
Rakonat@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Just building and completing a damn is worse for the environment and local ecosystems than a category seven catastrophic nuclear accident.
Stumblinbear@pawb.social 1 year ago
You’re getting downvoted, but there’s some truth in it. You don’t just build a dam, you flood thousands of square miles and destroy hundreds of microcosms. Species have gone extinct due to dams.
Nobsi@feddit.de 1 year ago
Whats the source on it being about as bad?
It releases methane, yes.
We don’t have to do hydro. Wind and the Sun are already plenty enough.
nga105@lemmy.world 1 year ago
UNs IPCC Reports www.ipcc.ch/site/…/Chapter-5-Hydropower-1.pdf See fig 5.15. The outliers are the concern (and yes, it’s pretty much methane)
Nobsi@feddit.de 1 year ago
Thank you for the paper.
This does indeed clarify exact numbers that i didnt have.
Rakonat@lemmy.world 1 year ago
ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy
Nuclear produces the least emissions over it’s life cycle and has a safety rating that flip flops with solar depending on how they want to classify accidents in construction and preparation.
If you want a sustainable, clean and reliable future, your power grid needs Wind, Solar and Nuclear. There is absolutely no reason to exclude Nuclear Power from any green energy plan.
netchami@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
OWID is probably the shittiest source on this topic. It’s funded by Bill Gates, who also directly funds nuclear power companies.