I'm reading "Microsoft AI Needs So Much Power It's Tapping Site of US Nuclear Meltdown/Constellation to invest $1.6 billion to restart dormant reactor as data-center power demand surges" (Bloomberg).
The decision is the latest sign of surging interest in the nuclear industry as power demand for AI soars. More than a dozen reactors went dark over roughly the past decade in the face of increasing competition from cheaper natural gas and renewable energy. But growing demand for electricity — from factories, cars and especially from data centers — has spurred interest in nuclear plants that can provide carbon-free power around the clock.
“Policymakers and the market have received a huge wake-up call,” Constellation Chief Executive Officer Joe Dominguez said in an interview. “There’s no version of the future of this country that doesn’t rely on these nuclear assets.”
Posts
95 comments:
Well, let's just hope that AI is like one of those biotrophic parasites.
Mom can’t have her school bus suv to pick up the soccer team bit if leftie nerds gots ta have their AI…
they "CLAIM" that AI is going to use this nuclear fuel for "peaceful purposes"..
BUT!
That is EXACTLY what Skynet told us too!
So ... nuclear power was a no-no for normal uses, but when AI needs a dependable supply, then let's do it! Will the remainder of the country still be stuck with solar and wind and intermittent energy in the coming years?
I"ve forgotten how man people died in Three Mile Island. ... Ah yes, zero.
There's a nice convergence of power needed in AI and power saved by LED lightbulbs.
Nuclear Power -- Clean. Safe. Reliable.
I hope that this becomes an example that others (governments, utilities and businesses) will follow.
What would be the reaction if Musk tried to do this?
Not sure about anyone else using long life LED bulbs, but mine do not last. And I’m being kind.
Beepers exploding are a traditional expression of the harvest season.
One of mine has been running for a decade. I think it has to do with how hot they get in the enclosure they're put in. This one is a garage light.
Our hillbilly grid sputters and spurts during most electrical storms and despite all the surge protections and power conditioners it still manages to fry expensive light bulbs. Thanks heaven for traditional filament incandescents
I thought it was six more weeks of winter
"Big Juice for me, but not for thee."
Hard to believe those environmentalists were so wrong for so long about nuclear power.
An exploding groundhog would be a new twist on an old tradition.
"More than a dozen reactors went dark over roughly the past decade in the face of increasing competition from cheaper natural gas and renewable energy."
This is a pure fabrication. They did not go dark in the face of competition. Every closure was a political decision. The cheapest electricity is always from the marginal cost of production after building a nuclear facility. Renewable can't compete with any form of production from a cost standpoint.
Politicians and other policy advocates ignore the basic laws of economics. 1) Our standard of living requires the consumption of energy.
2) The laws of supply and demand means that we will gravitate toward the lowest practical cost source of that energy. (e.g. coal is cheap, but can't run a car, gasoline is the next cheapest source)
3) Only government fiat changes the order rather than cost.
4) Cost changes through a) again government fiat through regulation, 2) technology changes that reduce one source's cost, 3) change in supply up or down.
5) Any forced change to a higher cost necessarily reduces our standard of living through higher energy costs.
We stopped producing nuclear power on account of a movie warning us about what might go wrong. When are they making the movie about a world wide financial meltdown due to our irresponsible monetary policies?
Exploding Groundhog - well, DeBlasio sort of did one. Maybe more like an imploding groundhog.
Now we’ve had an exploding hedgehog - Ron Jeremy!
JSM
They’ve made a few after the fact financial flicks that fingered the wrong actors. Hollywood is quite econ illiterate but they do know movie carve out and state tax credits
Will AI be the 3D printing and Segway of computing?
I had a ceiling fixture that went through bulbs pretty quickly until I replaced its wall switch. Now I have at least 11 years on the LED bulb, all but 6 months of them running continuously.
Ah. This will be the way the US finally gets off its ass to build scores of newly designed, safer nuclear plants to power the future. Not for the masses, but for the tech giants. They'll end up building their own. And, maybe throw in a few extras here and there to sell energy to the masses, so that the masses can continue to expand their use of AI, and do the other things that get them to their jobs, so that they can earn a living, to pay for more AI.
We will be so addicted to social media and 'entertainment' that we'll become drones...working to get the means to access more. We'll forget to produce anything new. We'll forget to procreate. Oh wait...we've already forgotten all that. I hope we don't forget to feed ourselves with the food provided to us. That nourishing and swell tasting plant-based material that Bill Gates is always telling us we should be eating.
Well...nothing like a good rabbit hole to start the day.
Germany has gutted their economy by shutting down their established nuclear power generation capability, just to satisfy the small minority Green Party, a key swing bloc in any coalition government.
Democrats like Microsoft money, so this is getting approval. If Elon Musk tried this…
Microsoft was advertising for nuclear engineers over a year ago, so this has been in the works. Maybe some of this will calm the public's nerves about nuclear power.
Nuclear energy is reliable and emission-free. Natural gas is reliable (e.g. self-powered pumps) and emission-free. Both windows turbines and photovoltaic panels are a blight on the environment, unreliable (e.g. wind blows within a viable range), and produce electricity at a higher cost before federal subsidy (e g. Inflation Reduction Act) and outsourcing resource recovery and product manufacturing.
back in the '80's, there was an Nuc Eng professor's door (that i'd walk by on my way to my EM 274 class), with a bumpersticker on the door that said:
More People died in Teddy Kennedy's car, than at Three Mile Island
Artificial Intelligence is a derived knowledge and skill set without the conscious intellugence of Anthropogenic Intelligence that increases dynamic growth
"The plant is set to come online in 2028 and stay operational until at least 2054."
While Azure will continue to grow, I'm not sure if the massive excess energy consumption due to GenAI will last till 2028, let alone 2054. On the flip-side if GenAI turns out to be profitable, then even this may not be enough.
Nevertheless, having a ultra low emission producer is a net win for all.
"IT" was underwhelming demonstration of centuries old technology. 3D printing has niche applications, but underperforms anthropogenic versatility and range.
Carbon-based anthropogenic intelligence is creating the futuren, and natural and and anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions are greening the planet and fueling people's expectations. Don't be green, go green, not Green...
Blight.
I just asked Bing AI (which is Microsoft's AI product) to state in grams how much Iodine-131 was released into the atmosphere by the meltdown of the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor and it just refuses to tell me.
It starts talking about Chernobyl and Fukushima. It says a "small amount" of radioactive gas was released by TMI ... but refuses to quantify that any further and continually deflects to discussing other topics.
They aren't releasing the real AI to anyone. We are getting the "government approved" answer. Not the real answer. They're keeping such information for themselves.
Ironically, Inflation Reduction Act is forcing inflation complementary to the primary forcing: Medicare and Medicaid under the Obamacares umbrella that us further exacerbated through immigration reform and selective-child doctrine (e.g. abortive ideation) in progressive religious sects.
"Humperdink said...
Not sure about anyone else using long life LED bulbs, but mine do not last. And I’m being kind."
The LED lasts forever. The electronics that convert AC to low level DC, not so much. It's brand specific as some are rock solid and others fail fast and often so try a better brand.
To ask that question is to answer it at the same time. I think we all know what the (media) public response would be. Side note to Elon Musk : Get one of your passports ready for travel because you're going to get the "obscenely wealthy oligarch" treatment from the Harris-Walz regime. (Cf.Putin oligarch crisis).
IIRC there was no measurable radiation outside of the limits of the plant itself.
On the one hand -- Yay! Nuclear is returning and the oligarchs are fronting the considerable costs. When it's normalized, the rest of us will see the benefits.
On the other hand -- Boo! The oligarchs are unrestrained and unstoppable. We the little people are just bugs to be crushed as they walk forward. Government and society are inconsequential and we trick ourselves into believing otherwise.
More to the point, those radioactive elements will decay whether humans are intelligent enough to capture the energy released for our own benefit or not.
There has never been a nuclear explosion at a nuclear power plant. In each instance it has been a steam explosion.
There was chernobyl but that was something else
If the market were allowed to work, it wouldn't matter so much who gets the nuclear power, as long as it is a significant part of the grid (and solar and wind power virtually nonexistent). But MS being the driving force behind restoring nuclear power only demonstrates the political, rather than economics and science, basis of the decisions about energy.
I think the point of it is that when there is a steam explosion, there is the release of radioactive steam and - in the case of TMI - radioactive Iodine-131 - into the atmosphere. That is a "nuclear explosion" in that nuclear materials are being blasted into the sky and immediately begin killing human beings (usually very slowly, but if you are close enough, much quicker and more painfully as your insides essentially melt.)
According to whom?
AOC solution: “We need LED computers for future data farms!”
When we had our kitchen and dining room remodeled in 2013, the contractor put in all-LED lighting - must have been around 30 separate fixtures. In late 2022 when we sold our house and moved, there were no LEDs that failed (9 yrs later). My new house is all LED, but I’ve noticed a few that have failed. Cheaper electronics? Non-compatible dimmer switches? Not sure.
Ah - what a Brave New World that will be!
Last Thursday I told the OPPD Board they needed to build a 3,000
MW natgas power plant north of Omaha.
They ignored me.
^^ Nuclear electricity is very expensive.
Nuclear electricity might be a bit cheaper if you could create a reactor design that is safe, quick to build, standardized and modular and repeat that design many hundreds of times. It would still not be cheap compared to renewable electricity, which is already safe, quick to build, standardized and modular and very cheap.
In practice, nuclear power continues to be extremely expensive.
Further ….
All nuclear power is likely to require overt or covert subsidies. That’s because if you factor in proper safety engineering, painstaking supervision of construction, careful cleanup of the site at the end of life and proper storage of the nuclear wastes it is unbelievably expensive. You do get a huge amount of electricity generated steadily and reliably for many decades, but the price per MWh generated remains very high.
The whole idea of building Small Modular Reactors is to bring the costs down considerably by:-
(1) Reducing the amount of engineering design input and safety engineering that is specific to each plant.
(2) Reducing the regulatory input and delays for each plant because they are all the same or almost the same.
(3) Increasing the standardization of components so that parts suppliers can expect to make thirty or sixty of each unique item rather than one or two. This reduces tooling and setup costs.
(4) Reducing the spare parts cost. With a custom-designed reactor, you have to hold at least one spare part in storage for every major part of the reactor that might fail or need to be replaced. With a fleet of Modular reactors you probably only need to hold three or four spare parts ant any one time across a fleet of thirty or sixty reactors.
(5) Reducing manufacturing times and assembly times as parts manufacturers and reactor builders gain experience of the design and learn to do things better and quicker. This is a large effect as a lot of the cost of traditional nuclear build is the rolled-up interest of taking 7 to 9 years to build the plant.
(6) Reducing the possibility of mistakes or delays in construction because the design has been built many times before and all the mistakes and delays have been ironed out.
(7) Making the design such that it is cheaper and quicker to shut down the reactor and carry out repairs if needed. In particular the “Modular” nature of the design should allow items that fail to be swapped out more quickly instead of requiring a complex removal, redesign, new safety case and rebuild.
(8) Providing much greater certainty as regards the design time and the build time to investors and funders. This potentially lowers the effective interest rate or implied interest rate that will be charged on finance.
(9) By reducing the size of the reactors, allowing any failures or incidents that require a shutdown to affect only a smaller amount of electricity production. With large traditional reactors any shutdown is a big deal. With six or eight SMRs on a similar site supplying the same amount of electricity any shutdown of one of them is only affecting a smaller amount of power.
(10) By allowing the site owner / power utility to stagger the build on any site so that units are built at intervals and come to the end of their life at intervals thus stretching out the construction and decommissioning / site cleanup activities over many decades and avoiding peak requirements in workforce or in financing.
I would add — SMR technology cannot arrive in time to make any serious difference to the climate crisis.
Iodine-131 has a half life of "about 8 days".. so, if "usually very slowly", slowly Must mean something different to Dixcus, than to me.
Of course; Dixcus (who is OBVIOUSLY MUCH smarter than me); does say, that "if you are close enough".. "your insides essentially melt".
Now Dixcus (who is OBVIOUSLY MUCH smarter than me), help me out..
ACCORDING TO YOU, just How Much Iodine-131 was released by TMI?
Remember, YOU stated that "if you are close enough" "your insides essentially melt".
I'll wait to hear your answer, because OBVIOUSLY, you are MUCH smarter than me)
Three Mile Island nuclear plant is basically just a great big pager.
Very subtle Mr. Fled
Everyone needs to watch China Syndrome again. It has the odious Hanoi Jane but offset by Jack Lemmon and wilfrid brimley.
Best pro-nuke propaganda film EVER!
I've been a fan of nuclear power since 1968 perhaps knowing how it works helps.
John Henry
A total of approximately 629 billion becquerels of radioactive Iodine-131 was released during the TMI explosion.
According to "the internet" there was measurable radiation outside the plant up to 6 miles and reduced from there out to 20 miles from the plant. Hundreds of thousands of people lived in that surrounding area.
It would be better if you watch the movie Silkwood (featuring Cher! girlfriends - finger snap.)
The government used to say that you could fly an aircraft into a nuclear power plant and it would withstand that impact. Then 9-11 happened. The government doesn't say that any more because they don't want to give people any ideas and they certainly don't want them proving that the government is lying about that just like they lied about a plane hitting the Twin Towers.
So 'Green' Gates wants a nuke reactor for his electrical needs but... us common folk need windmills and solar... that is how the rich think.
I just asked Bing AI (which is Microsoft's AI product) to state in grams how much Iodine-131 was released into the atmosphere by the meltdown of the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor and it just refuses to tell me.
I asked Grok a similar question, to wit: “Can you tell me how much radioactive iodine was released into the air as a result of the Three Mile Island nuclear incident?” This is its reply: {quoting…}
The Three Mile Island accident, which occurred in 1979, did result in the release of radioactive gases and iodine into the environment, but quantifying the exact amount of radioactive iodine released can be challenging due to varying reports and measurements at the time. However, here's what we know based on historical data and reports:
- **Types of Releases**: The accident led to the release of noble gases like xenon and krypton, along with a small amount of radioactive iodine (iodine-131) and other radioactive isotopes.
- **Amount of Iodine-131**: While exact figures for iodine-131 release vary, it's generally accepted that the release was significant enough to be detected but not catastrophic in terms of public health impact. According to some reports, the release of iodine-131 was estimated to be around **2.4 million curies** in total, but this includes all radioactive isotopes, not just iodine-131. The specific amount of iodine-131 directly released into the air was much less than this total figure.
- **Health and Environmental Impact**: The levels of radioactive iodine and other isotopes released were diluted significantly by the time they reached the public, leading to very low levels of exposure.
- **Comparative Exposure**: For context, the radiation exposure to the local population was compared to that from a chest X-ray, indicating that while there was a release, the exposure levels were not considered to pose significant health risks.
- **Detection and Monitoring**: After the incident, extensive monitoring was conducted, which detected the presence of iodine-131, but the concentrations were found to be below levels that would cause immediate health concerns.
Given the information available from historical reports and studies:
- The exact amount of iodine-131 released into the air is hard to pinpoint with current precision due to the nature of the incident and differences in measurement techniques at the time. However, it was part of the broader release of radioactive materials which, in total, included 2.4 million curies of radioactive isotopes.
- **Public Health Perspective**: From a public health standpoint, the release of iodine-131, while significant in the context of nuclear safety, did not lead to detectable health effects in the population, largely due to the low levels of exposure.
If you're looking for more detailed figures or specific studies on the iodine-131 release, you might need to consult historical documents from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) or related scientific publications, but remember, exact numbers can differ slightly between sources due to the methodology of estimation and the chaotic nature of such an event.
{/unQuote}
So true. The utilities were glad to virtue signal their agreement with the shutting down of dependable, dispatchable power sources to bow/genuflect at the altar of the green energy tyrants. There will be some really cold and dark winters up in the MISO grid very soon.
Damn it Dixcus! Now you made me look it up. I SAID IIRC. Don’t you know what that means?
Anyway:
“The NRC conducted detailed studies of the accident’s radiological consequences, as did the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Health, Education and Welfare (now Health and Human Services), the Department of Energy, and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Several independent groups also conducted studies. The approximately 2 million people around TMI-2 during the accident are estimated to have received an average radiation dose of only about 1 millirem above the usual background dose. To put this into context, exposure from a chest X ray is about 6 millirem and the area’s natural radioactive background dose is about 100 125 millirem per year for the area. The accident’s maximum dose to a person at the site boundary would have been less than 100 millirem above background.
In the months following the accident, although questions were raised about possible adverse effects from radiation on human, animal, and plant life in the TMI area, none could be directly correlated to the accident. Thousands of environmental samples of air, water, milk, vegetation, soil, and foodstuffs were collected by various government agencies monitoring the area. Very low levels of radionuclides could be attributed to releases from the accident. However, comprehensive investigations and assessments by several well respected organizations, such as Columbia University and the University of Pittsburgh, have concluded that in spite of serious damage to the reactor, the actual release had negligible effects on the physical health of individuals or the environment.”
Source: NRC
(That’s Nuclear Regulatory Commission in case you didn’t know)
Has anyone here been inside a nuclear power plant?
I have. It is so ridiculously over-engineered that I believe it would withstand an airplane crash a la 9/11.
I was going to make a similar comment, but you made it better.
Cheaper renewable energy is a prime example of The Big Lie.
What climate crisis?
When Elon scales up starlink to beam gigawatt power instead of microwatt data nuclear will become somewhat obsolete.
Main problem at the moment is cost of getting gear to orbit. Space X is rapidly solving that.
I
I don’t know why I waste my time responding to Dixcus.
There was no steam explosion. The reactor containment structure was not breached. The only steam that was released was from a release valve on the cooling water system. Cooling water is only marginally radioactive due to N-16 contamination and is not considered a significant health hazard.
To repeat, no explosion.
Source: NRC
The unit ‘becquerel‘ is a unit of radioactivity (disintegrations per sec) and is not a unit of ‘how much’ Iodine-131 was released. The unit is a very small amount of radioactivity; also, over what volume was this figure quoted at? Quoting big scary sounding numbers for physical quantities that are not understood by the public is a MSM scare tactic.
Besides, the becquerel is not how you would assess danger to the public. You would have to determine the amount of absorbed does (Gy) that the public would encounter, which would take a whole hell of a lot of measurements, assumptions, health physics and math to get to any kind of a reasonable estimate. Such estimates were indeed carried out, and the answer was that the public was exposed to bupkis absorbed dose when compared against naturally occurring background radiation.
A big problem with power plants in general including is with how utility prices are set. Extremely complex but basically a percentage over cost.
So Acme Power and Light builds a nuclear plant. I the rate of return is set by govt at 10% they get to make $100mm per year.
If they can goose the cost to $2bn,they can make $200mm.
Doesn't matter the cost, rate payers have to pick it up. No choice.
So not only no incentive to cut cost, positive incentive to raise costs.
John Henry
They're killing the cats says that renewables are cheap and effective. He is wrong on both counts. He is, however right about the best ways to make nuclear even cheaper. We actually had a good way to dispose of the waste but Harry Reid wouldn't allow it. And please define safe, IIRC, there was a flap about how the storage would be unsafe because they couldn't devise warning signs that would last and still be readable in 10,000 years.
If you mean China Syndrome, you, and most everyone else have it backwards. Properly viewed, it is an incredible piece of pro-nuke propaganda.
The producers started by imagining every possible thing that could go wrong wit a nuke plant.
Then they dialed it up past 11 to about 17.
And in the end nothing happened. The plant shut down safely. Nobody died but Jack Lemmon and he was shot by government agents.
Watch it again
John Henry
The opposition to nuclear power is still the KGB's biggest success.
Very true and ignored.
That has such people in’t.’
You're right, Jersey. The pressure relief valve at TMI operated exactly as it was intended to.
The Chernobyl containment vessel did not operate as intended. The contaimnment vessel lid, which weighed 500 kilos was blown off.
I've been waiting for this panic to set in, ever since they started shutting down nukes early because of the then-popular panic about renewables.
It's not A-I that is driving this - it's bitcoin mining that kicked it off. Not to mention the government's overweening need to collect and store the data they're continually collecting on all of us. The amount of energy required to keep this beast breathing is astonishing, and A-I represents only the top layer of that energy mountain. And all of those categories continue to grow.
Pay Attention ! Keep your eyes on those server farms, because they will sprout and grow anyplace that can provide access to large amounts of electrical power. Old manufacturing sites that are shut down often have substations nearby. Old mines, too. And municipalities often place their substations short distances away from their developments. Substations are the plug & play option for server farms, and they also can generate large amounts of noise pollution - the climate control requirements are not a small consideration, and that means big blowers to air out the heat exchangers. What does that mean? That means the rust belt is going to become prime territory, centrally located, dead industries everywhere, and blue cities to accommodate the sellout.
Watch your local substations ! You'll see. I've already seen the bitcoin mining server farms popping up, all of them right next to the substations, in Texas.
Old Alcoa clay mine, Rockdale: https://www.google.com/maps/@30.575585,-97.085182,2795m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI0MDkxNi4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D
Riot Platforms, Inc. Substation across the street.
All the nuclear waste that is created in our nuclear power plants is stored at those nuclear power plants. With room for a lot more.
Bill Gates is a big investor in the new "compact" nukes. Lots of things about Bill not to like, but he is showing leadership in the only field that will shut people up about "our climate crisis" and provide the reliable power the country needs.
Bich finally reveals the idiocy behind his attempts to sound intelligent and educated.
It's already here and a bunch of private investors including Bill Gates are supporting it.Your points below are out of date. These reactors are factory built and recycle their fuel to a certain degree. They are the answer.
Nuc power will save us. The lefties and D aversion to Nuc power over the last 40 plus years has hurt the world and the environmental movement.
Good point, MFG.
i, for one, look forward with horror to a nuclear plant run on Microsoft software. Someone is bound to change position of a jpeg in the instruction manual and melt down the core.
I think you are wrong about 3d printing. Perhaps because it is not sexy it gets little press. As it has scaled up into actual manufacturing beyond protyping it has been incredibly transformative.
A client 3d prints insulin pumps. The previous version had 5 pieces to be purchased, inspected, managed and assembled (and more) they now have a bunch of printers printing the final assembly. Instead of managing 5 parts, the manage pallets of resin.
A single piece is always going to be better than an assembly of 5 and more rigid and so on.
GE 3d prints turbine blades wit complex internal geometries that could not be made any other way.
Cummins 3d prints sandmolds to Cas inlet manifolds that could not be made before.
We are just barely scratching the surface.
I think ultimately 3d printing will be more transformative than Ai.
Also much more energy efficient than traditional manufacturing of
John Henry
No discussion of the Thorium fuel cycle vs Uranium fuel cycle yet?
Microsoft is likely to find themselves shoveling money into a pit over this. The political grifting involved in getting any of these old plants back to working will be far more expensive than the actual work itself.
I'm not going to say any of you are wrong about the Three Mile Island meltdown, but go to a bar in Middletown, PA and tell one of the old-timers that there was no exposure. It will not go well for you.
I lived through it. We evacuated. It was pure panic, and many people in this area do not believe the official assessments.
Another advantage related to your 2nd point is that will be the reduction of spare parts. Instead of buying and storing every kind of replacement parts, many could be printed ad hoc as needed.
will Microsoft train AI on Chernobyl protocol?
accesstoenergy Petr Bedkman
accesstoenergy Petr Bedkman
does not Microsoft also fan climate and other fears?
I lived through it. We evacuated. It was pure panic, and many people in this area do not believe the official assessments.
Shades of Covid-19.
I knew that AI required a lot of electricity, but I was surprised that Microsoft will be the sole customer of this power plant. That's a lot of power. (About 7 million megawatts.) Plus, Microsoft is just one of the players in AI.
Notice how you don't see a lot of people screaming about Climate Change when it comes to the energy needed for AI?
Post a Comment