Where do you buy fuel grade uranium in order to run your own reactor?
I’m asking for a friend.
Why data centers want to have their own nuclear reactors
Submitted 6 months ago by boem@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world
Comments
Bishma@discuss.tchncs.de 6 months ago
Rakonat@lemmy.world 6 months ago
[deleted]Railcar8095@lemm.ee 6 months ago
Just one note, nuclear power plants run at around 35% efficiency. This is because they are basically steam generators and tend to not push as hard for safety. I think they can get up to 40-45% with combined cycles and such, but then we are in the “very large” territory
bitwaba@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Large scale data centers, like the ones that end up in the news for FAANG are ~100 megawatt footprints.
I have no idea where you’re getting 3.4 megawatts as the largest data center in the US, but that is wildly undersized.
Crack0n7uesday@lemmy.world 6 months ago
I think a lot of it is mined in Africa.
TexasDrunk@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Well if you’re in the US you can get it from New Mexico and Wyoming. We’ve even got a few mines here in Texas.
So in the US it’s a matter of getting licensed by the NRC and contacting one of the many processing facilities.
ShittyBeatlesFCPres@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Mali has a significant mine that France essentially controls. In America, we have mines but import a lot too.
We actually currently buy about 25% of our uranium supply from Russia, though Congress just passed a ban that’ll go in effect in 90 days. It allows for waivers if there are supply issues, though, so it might end up being more than 90 days. (I have no idea how quickly a country can find a new uranium supplier but it sounds complicated.)
You999@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
You have to talk to a Westinghouse sells rep. If you want uranium outside of a fuel rod most chemical supplier sell it.
dwalin@lemmy.world 6 months ago
No shopping cart? Was this site built on the 90s?
expr@programming.dev 6 months ago
I know it’s a joke, but just wanted to say that Uranium used for fuel is not something you can actually use for weaponry directly. It requires enrichment to increase the concentration of U-235 to weapons-grade levels.
Melvin_Ferd@lemmy.world 6 months ago
I heard my local data center had a few fall off the truck last week out by lakeview.
mariusafa@lemmy.sdf.org 6 months ago
Is this the plot of Mr.Robot or what?
AtariDump@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Hello, old friend
jbloggs777@discuss.tchncs.de 6 months ago
When you have cloud providers growing faster than the region’s grid capacity, something has to give … throttle growth there, or plan for mega growth? I guess it helps that nuclear is green again. 😁
billiam0202@lemmy.world 6 months ago
throttle growth
You don’t want line to go up? That smells like commie talk!
nehal3m@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
Throttle growth? But then how will we create believable bullshit generators? We have to stick an AI label on useless crap to sell damnit!
TheFerrango@lemmy.basedcount.com 6 months ago
Nuclear.AI here we come
Nomecks@lemmy.ca 6 months ago
It’s not cloud, it’s AI.
someguy3@lemmy.ca 6 months ago
Do it.
knobbysideup@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
I mean, that’s what Ford did. They had the tech to generate power for the factory, so were the city’s electric company.
Usernameblankface@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Yeah, do it. Quit being a consumer of mixed source power, start being a producer of steady, good energy.
(Dirty enough that calling it clean green energy gets pushback, but far better than non-green normal sources like coal or natural gas.)
echodot@feddit.uk 6 months ago
Nuclear power is complicated because it still involves mining. Which will inevitably damage the environment even if all the mining equipment are electric vehicles run on solar power.
abhibeckert@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Yeah I call bullshit on that. I get why they’re investing money in it, but this is a moonshot and I’m sure they don’t expect it to succeed.
These data centers can be built almost anywhere in the world. And there are places with very predictable weather patterns making solar/wind/hydro/etc extremely cheap compared to nuclear.
Nuclear power is so expensive, that it makes far more sense to build an entire solar farm and an entire wind farm, both capable of providing enough power to run the data center on their own in overcast conditions or moderate wind.
If you pick a good location, that’s lkely to work out to running off your own power 95% of the time and selling power to the grid something like 75% of the time. The 5% when you can’t run off your own power… you’d just draw power from the grid. Power produced by other data centers that have excess solar or wind power right now.
In the extremely rare disruption where power wouldn’t be available even from the grid… then you just shift your workload to another continent.
simplejack@lemmy.world 6 months ago
IMHO, data centers kind of need to be somewhat close to important population areas in order to ensure low latency.
You need a spot with attainable land, room to scale, close proximity to users, and decent infrastructure for power / connectivity. You can’t actually plop something out in the middle of BFE.
empireOfLove2@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 months ago
You can’t actually plop something out in the middle of BFE.
The number of data centers in Prineville/Hermiston/Umatilla, OR beg to differ
While latnecy matters sometimes, there’s still a lot of data center services that care a lot less and can be put anywhere.
I_Has_A_Hat@lemmy.world 6 months ago
I remember reading a story about an email server that was limited to sending emails within 150 miles. Through a lot of digging, they found it was due to an auto-timeout timer getting reset to 0ms. Anything further than 150 miles would cause a 1ms delay and thus get rejected for taking too long.
abhibeckert@lemmy.world 6 months ago
They really don’t. I live in regional Australia - the nearest data center is 1300 miles away. It’s perfectly fine.
Xtallll@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 months ago
The earth has a circumference of 25,000 miles, and the speed of light in a fiber cable is 124,000 miles per second, so going the whole way around the earth would take .2 seconds(assuming you could send a signal that far).
Cocodapuf@lemmy.world 6 months ago
For the majority of applications you need data centers for, latency just doesn’t matter. Bandwidth, storage space, and energy costs for example are all generally far more important.
treadful@lemmy.zip 6 months ago
This isn’t a moonshot at all. Checkout these eVinci microcreactors by Westinghouse. They’re currently being deployed in industrial settings around the country. They’re modular too so you just add more to scale. Pretty wild.
abhibeckert@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Utah made a big splash about that as part of a climate change based election campaign.
They got real quite about a year later… and the website for the project is now a domain-for-sale page. The stated reason was what I said, it’s just too expensive.
IchNichtenLichten@lemmy.world 6 months ago
They’re currently being deployed in industrial settings around the US.
I searched and I can’t find any cases of such a reactor being deployed anywhere in the US.
“Microreactors for civilian use are currently in the earliest stages of development, with individual designs ranging in various stages of maturity.”
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_microreactor
The reactor you’re referring to doesn’t even had a Wikipedia page.
Weird.
asbestos@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Hey, is Signal down? Ah, reactor exploded, destroying the datacenter along with the staff on prem
Jk, cool stuff
CrimeDad@lemmy.crimedad.work 6 months ago
We should be building them in every cold climate city to take advantage of cogeneration heating.
Emi@ani.social 6 months ago
Would be cool if they pushed for SMRs in general which are better imo.
lucullus@discuss.tchncs.de 6 months ago
What is currently the state of things for nuclear waste in the US? In germany they still search for a place for storing it long term. Gets in the news now and then. Did the US have more success with finding a good site? Or is this again just companies betting to hand over the waste to the public when they are done? As I remember in germany the companies got a cheap buy out for the waste after the closure of nuclear power plants where setup.
theFibonacciEffect@feddit.de 6 months ago
The US does not have a final deposit for nuclear waste. But nuclear waste is not more dangerous than other chemical waste which already has final deposits in Germany. The specifications are deliberately made harder for nuclear because of politics.
douglasg14b@lemmy.world 6 months ago
The US has an ideal location for it.
Unfortunately State politics and news fear mongering are preventing it from being developed and utilized.
Just more footgunning.
survirtual@lemmy.world 6 months ago
*unfortunately oil companies that control the entire energy sector, NRC, and most politicians have created a fictional State politics and news fear cycle, since nuclear energy is the primary way to eradicate their business and profits
Fixed it for you.
Friendly reminder that the government is a facade and is run to major corporations and nations like Saudi Arabia & Israel. The people have completely lost control of the government in the US. Voting is a construct hijacked to release the steam of rebellion and institutionalize hopelessness.
SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 months ago
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WNP-3_and_WNP-5
WNP-2 was the only unit of the five that was completed and put into operation. WNP-3 and WNP-5 are located on 1,600 acres (650 ha) on the Satsop Site near Elma in Grays Harbor County, Washington. Today the site hosts the Satsop Business Park and the Overstock.com Call Center.
Not sure if this is still accurate, but definitely know that they never actually finished or started up these reactors and now it’s a generic business park. So it at least has some sort of precedent, even though this isn’t exactly the same as having the facilities generating power for the business.
NegativeLookBehind@lemmy.world 6 months ago
AWS CloudNuke
Entropywins@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Maybe AWS Mushroom Cloud
NegativeLookBehind@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Microsoft Mutually Azured Destruction