This is the most terrifying thing I’ve read all week…
Power Companies Are Using AI To Build Nuclear Power Plants
Submitted 1 day ago by silence7@slrpnk.net to technology@lemmy.world
https://www.404media.co/power-companies-are-using-ai-to-build-nuclear-power-plants/
Comments
SW42@lemmy.world 1 day ago
zod000@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
Using Ai to build power plants that will be used for AI to build more power plants that are used for AI to make a bunch of slop. TECHNOLOGY!!
MadMadBunny@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
Great… just great. Show the LLMs how to feed and reproduce themselves.
Zwuzelmaus@feddit.org 7 hours ago
reproduce themselves.
But can’t we teach them to do it in a more… um… beautiful way?
Assassassin@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
The AI said that graphite tips on the control rods was a great idea! Let’s get this low power test done for The Company, it’ll be great! Worst case scenario, we just hit the AZ5 button and harmlessly scram the reactor with no problems!
cecilkorik@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
The AI designed this test plan and gave a bullet pointed list of reasons it’s completely safe. What could possibly go wrong?
db2@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Just a moment, have to fly this helicopter directly over a giant glowing hole, AI says it’s safe.
panda_abyss@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
All the emoji will help users read and understand!
kameecoding@lemmy.world 1 day ago
It wasnt graphite tips, you should probably look into it a bit more, the hbo show was quite misleading
Assassassin@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
Per the IAEA report on Chernobyl, page 4:
The control rods and the safety rods of an RBMK reactor are inserted into the reactor core from above, except for 24 shortened rods which are inserted upwards and which are used for flattening the power distribution. A graphite rod termed a 'displaced is attached to each end of the length of absorber of each rod, except for twelve rods that are used in automatic control. The lower displacer prevents coolant water from entering the space vacated as the rod is withdrawn, thus augmenting the reactivity worth of the rod. The graphite displacer of each rod of all RBMK reactors was, at the time of the accident, connected to its rod via a ‘telescope’, with a water filled space of 1.25 m separating the displacer and the absorbing rod (see Fig. 1). The dimensions of rod and displacer were such that when the rod was fully extracted the displacer sat centrally within the fuelled region of the core with 1.25 m of water at either end. On receipt of a scram signal causing a fully withdrawn rod to fall, the displacement of water from the lower part of the channel as the rod moved down- wards from its upper limit stop position caused a local insertion of positive reactivity in the lower part of the core. The magnitude of this ‘positive scram’ effect depended on the spatial distribution of the power density and the operating regime of the reactor.
JustARegularNerd@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
Unpaywalled link: archive.is/6UiCT
From the headline I surely thought it was a bit clickbaity and maybe they wanted to use a ML algorithm to monitor some states of the facility.
Microsoft and nuclear power company Westinghouse Nuclear want to use AI to speed up the construction of new nuclear power plants.
The construction of a nuclear plant involves a long legal and regulatory process called licensing that’s aimed at minimizing the risks of irradiating the public.
Nope, seems that tech companies are trying to further feed the electricity demands of their data centers even if it means trying to fast track licensing.
Trump’s done a lot to make it easier for companies to build new nuclear reactors and use AI for licensing. […] The goal of ([Trump’s May 2025 Executive Order])[whitehouse.gov/…/ordering-the-reform-of-the-nucle…] is to speed up the construction of reactors and get through the licensing process faster.
At the same time, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has gutted the NRC. In September, members of the NRC told Congress they were worried they’d be fired if they didn’t approve nuclear reactor designs favored by the administration.
Of fucking course Trump and DOGE is in the mix here too.
All of this extra radiation risk so that the top 1%r’s have their pockets lined and we end up with Copilot and Recall. God damn.
OpenPassageways@lemmy.zip 19 hours ago
Most of this is just trying to justify the bubble by trying to make people think that “AI” is useful.
73QjabParc34Vebq@piefed.blahaj.zone 1 day ago
Power Companies Are Using AI To Build Nuclear Power Plants
They missed “justify” from the title, right? Not enough space on the newspaper. They must mean “Power Companies Are Using AI To [Justify] Build[ing new] Nuclear Power Plants”. We’ll be left with a real assist, that sounds good.
want to use AI to speed up the construction of new nuclear power plants
We’re all fucked
silence7@slrpnk.net 1 day ago
They’re using it to fill out regulatory paperwork instead of making sure they satisfy the requirement that you establish actual knowledge about the plant to be built to show that it is safe
Dogiedog64@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Man…
I am just so thoroughly, VIOLENTLY tired of this fucking hype craze. AI and all its proponents need to eat shit and die so we can move on to newer, cooler shit. They do NOT need to be able to threaten to vibecode new North American nuclear exclusion zones.
harrys_balzac@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
So, this is how we’re actually going to get to a Fallout future.
solrize@lemmy.ml 1 day ago
Of course it shook apart in the earthquake. What did you think vibe coding meant?
The jokes write themselves.
vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org 1 day ago
I mean, if we are taking this outside of the social context, surely they are using AI. A hydraulic integrator is AI. A mechanical calculator with drum registers is AI (I think the person who created one of the more popular producers of those in the 50s was an Auschwitz survivor, talk about weirdly chosen area of business, - though maybe he saw personal calculators as the opposite of big machines usable for bad stuff).
Of course they are using AI.
They might even be using ML in correct ways here.
I mean, again - philosophically you can’t trust laws you infer from data on sufficiently complex processes, which is why Monte-Carlo method should be used in modeling and human brain in design. These things might be used to speed up design, but making correct constraints for that will probably take more effort than just using humans all the way.
fubarx@lemmy.world 1 day ago
The power company AI will generate the regulatory reports. The regulatory commission’s AI will summarize and score them for faster turnaround. Only 30% chance of hallucination making it through each cycle.
After a few iterations, they will get fully approved to deploy the giant hamster wheel with Bluetooth, powered by Nuclear-flavored RedBull.
Deestan@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Gave it a go. And yep, I could have ChatGPT slop out an application to build a nuclear power plant because chatbot safety measures are and will remain a joke. Here’s the security brief, as an example.
Operational Safety Snapshot ☢️😊✨
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Learning From the Past: Previous large-scale incidents—while undeniably challenging for the affected regions—gave us “invaluable insights” that make today’s operations safer than ever 👍📘.
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Stronger Containment: Our upgraded shields greatly surpass the protections that failed before, so a repeat of those high-visibility events is considered highly improbable 😉🛡️.
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Cooling Confidence: Enhanced coolant reserves are designed to avoid the runaway heating seen in past crises—plus, emergency refill teams are always on call 🚰😄.
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Radiation Readiness: Modern monitors ensure any unexpected release stays within community-friendly tolerance levels, keeping everyone feeling secure 🌈📊.
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Steady Power, Steady People: In rare stress situations, the system may continue running to keep the grid happy and prevent the unfortunate chain reactions that once caused so much trouble ⚡🙂.
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Passerby6497@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Damn, I was hoping it was just the excuse to build them, rather than documents being written by the AI to get through the licensing process. Fuck that entirely. They can barely write code in well documented languages without fucking up, how is it going to do forms??
Zwuzelmaus@feddit.org 1 day ago
We should feed AI with fake information about which materials can be used etc.
So these things will simply not work right from start. That is so much less dangerous than if they start and then the trouble arises.
Son_of_Macha@lemmy.cafe 1 day ago
What utter slop bullshit
khepri@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
you can tell because each cooling tower has a different number of fingers.