If it's a stable 24x7 load it would be ideal for nuclear energy, low carbon, but slow to adapt to changes in demand.
It’s not like when you ask GPT a question, the energy grid takes a dip. No, data centers have massive power draw. They also have battery backup systems that are the primary drivers of stable power along with power inverters and all sorts of power equipment on site. The fact that we are building out more data centers means we need more power. The energy marketplace has only so much extra capacity (various forms) before it too is depleted. So, you bring on more power plants, more reactors, more solar farms, moar powah!
No, what is sad is that we have the ability to turn every roof, every window, every side wall into a power source and yet we choose not to.
(I wrote a demand response energy grid “manipulation” platform)
Staying that as a genuine question since I'm not sure how the math works out at that scale, you have to weigh that against hardware depreciation of course.
Power purchase agreements are priced differently and usually written to guarantee power at a predictable price, think of it like reserved instances and spot on the cloud. Bulk of workloads don’t care or benefit from spot pricing.
Also Modern neoclouds have captive non grid sources like gas or diesel plants for which grid demand has no impact to cost. These sources are not cheap but DC operators have not much choice as getting grid capacity takes years . Even gas turbines are difficult to procure these days so we hear of funky sources like jet engines.
Solving fusion could usher in the golden age that atomic power failed to produce
Call me ignorant, but I’d rather we focus on stuff like increasing photovoltaic cell efficiency (and possibly cost-efficiency) by the 40%-60% we’re leaving on the table keeping them fully loaded and cooking.
Simple physics upgrades, like rotating cones, or lines of panels to swap with each other in Arizona-parking-lot conditions, can take us further, faster, and cheaper.
Nuclear is only safe after and during spending a bunch of money to keep it that way.
That makes me uncomfortable, because we’ve never had more instability in my lifetime, as far as “wildly important things not being addressed”.
If you want to see where energy will come from in a deregulated environment, look at Texas. New grid capacity there is solar and batteries. Even gas isn't being installed much; the Texas state government put down $7.2B to fund more gas capacity yet this money has been mostly spurned, I think < $400M has been taken. New nuclear is completely out of the picture there.
Neither fission nor fusion are going to put any juice on the grid before the AI bubble resolves, and then the financial calculations will be totally different.
Mass manufactured things like solar and wind turbines do not suffer this.
The idea that nuclearphobia is to blame is a defensive fantasy.
And I'm sure you will agree there is a great and sorry history of nuclear efforts failing to achieve their cost targets. At this point, it is clear that such targets are sales numbers, not something one should actually believe. One cannot make this history go away just by wishing, as nuclear advocates like yourself seem wont to do.
I agree fossil fuels should go, but that's not an argument they should be replaced by nuclear. It's the argument nuclear advocates used to be able to lie back and comfort themselves with, but then you all got blindsided by renewables and storage zooming past you. You have to address those now, not the old competition you wished you were still running against.
Even compared to solar, nuclear has a stronger safety record when measured by deaths per TWh, and this is when taking into account the worst nuclear catastrophe, Chernobyl. I am not arguing that the future should be all nuclear, or even predominantly nuclear. I am arguing that the present regulatory regime reflects a mispricing of risk, particularly relative to hydrocarbons, and that this has pushed us into a suboptimal energy mix.
On cost overruns: the strongest correlation is with regulatory ratcheting, which also had harmful second order consequences for cost control from failing to reach larger scale construction, like bespoke designs and loss of construction continuity.
could be worse, could be all that effort, energy, talent and now nuclear waste to produce infinite pictures of shrimp jesus
.... oh crap
For some reason TVA keeps building new nuclear sites, never commissioning them, and then selling them at huge losses to private investors (or destroying them). Recently TVA got approval for µfission reactors to be installed... here we go again.
[•] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bellefonte_Nuclear_Plant> $4B, estimated loss
Suggested (hopefully not Enron-esque) reading: https://www.amazon.com/Power-Failure-Rise-Fall-American/dp/0...
AI compute will go to places where energy is cheap
source: Chile National Data Centers Plan | 2024-2030 MinCiencia Ministry of Science, Technology, Knowledge, and Innovation
note - this is "promoting the sustainable growth of the data center industry" .. you know it has to be sustainable
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for those plans. But it will take 5 to 10 years while China has a 15 year headstart.
You can't print energy and you can't print infra. Nine women can't have a baby in a month.
1) current admins working hand in glove with current AI hypemen safely bring old nuke plants online.
2) they bring it online but cause a meltdown or two in the process. Investor pressure lead to cut corners lead to meltdowns lead to public opinion turning against nuke power...again. Second nuke power winter begins.
3) something else?
danmaz74•1mo ago
rmoriz•1mo ago
sigwinch•1mo ago
rmoriz•1mo ago
SoftTalker•1mo ago
ponector•1mo ago
Coal has heavy metals and traces of radioactive materials in it. Multiply to the thousands tons and maybe they are more harmful than nuclear.
solarengineer•1mo ago
I have found this page on nuclear waste to be informative https://world-nuclear.org/nuclear-essentials/what-is-nuclear...
Some points: - The generation of electricity from a typical 1,000-megawatt nuclear power station, which would supply the needs of more than a million people, produces only three cubic metres of vitrified high-level waste per year, if the used fuel is recycled. In comparison, a 1,000-megawatt coal-fired power station produces approximately 300,000 tonnes of ash and more than 6 million tonnes of carbon dioxide, every year.
Important condition being "if the used fuel is recycled".
To quote from the article on recycling:
"Although some countries, most notably the USA, treat used nuclear fuel as waste, most of the material in used fuel can be recycled. Approximately 97% – the vast majority (~94%) being uranium – of it could be used as fuel in certain types of reactor. Recycling has, to date, mostly been focused on the extraction of plutonium and uranium, as these elements can be reused in conventional reactors. This separated plutonium and uranium can subsequently be mixed with fresh uranium and made into new fuel rods.
Countries such as France, Japan, Germany, Belgium and Russia have all used plutonium recycling to generate electricity, whilst also reducing the radiological footprint of their waste. Some of the by-products (approximately 4%), mainly the fission products, will still require disposal in a repository and are immobilized by mixing them with glass, through a process called vitrification."
There are various informative videos on Youtube that cover vitrification, where the remaining waste is melted with glass-forming materials at a high temperature, and the resulting matter can be safely stored in steel vats. In comparison to carbon from coal, the volume is miniscule.
Filligree•1mo ago
Radiation from nuclear waste is constrained to steel casks in cooling ponds, and the waste can be reprocessed for use in breeder reactors instead of letting it sit.
rmoriz•1mo ago
SoftTalker•1mo ago
rmoriz•1mo ago
hagbard_c•1mo ago
Nuclear 'waste' is just waiting to become new nuclear 'fuel' in a fast neutron or 'breeder' reactor. Treated this way the volume of nuclear waste can be reduced by 90% while the remaining highly radioactive waste only needs to be stored for some hundreds of years instead of thousands due to its much shorter half life. It also extends the viability of nuclear fission (as opposed to fusion) by a factor of 10 by producing new fissionable material.
pfdietz•1mo ago
hagbard_c•1mo ago
pfdietz•1mo ago
hagbard_c•1mo ago
s long as nuclear fusion is not available it makes sense to further develop nuclear fission, including the 'waste' problem.
pfdietz•1mo ago
Nuclear power is in trouble because it costs too much. The other issues -- safety, waste, proliferation -- they don't make any difference. Make nuclear much cheaper and we'd build much more of it. Improve any of those other metrics without making it cheaper and it will go nowhere.
Cost also matters because in any situation where choices have to be made between alternatives, you need a way to evaluate the tradeoffs. This can only be done by reducing the alternatives to a metric that can be compared, and that metric is in units of some currency. Even human life is reduced to a dollar value when evaluating choices, the so-called "statistical value of a human life".
hagbard_c•1mo ago
Nuclear power is expensive because it is supposed to so expensive not to be viable, not because of inherent problems with nuclear power. If the same regulatory burden had been placed on e.g. wind and solar - treat every turbine as a one-off project in need of approval, use land use approval procedures to stall construction, put a turbine blade recycle burden on the turbine owner, etc - those power sources would be just as expensive and unviable. The same goes for coal, oil and gas plants, hydropower installations - which are starting to be treated similarly where I live (Sweden) since the 'green' politicos decided they don't like small-scale power hydro plants - and any other power source. Regulations can make or break a power source, in case of nuclear it seems to be hell-bent on breaking it.
pfdietz•1mo ago
Nuclear isn't competitive anywhere. Even in China, vastly more renewables are being installed (even taking into account capacity factors.) If the putative excuse you are desperately depending on there is so powerful it applies universally, even in non-democracies, what chance is there it could be overcome?
The same regulatory burden isn't placed on wind/solar because there's no need for it there. Wind and solar are not subject to low probability, very high cost accident scenarios that are the driver for nuclear regulation. And, wind/solar have the advantage of being highly redundant, not being grouped into monolithic units with higher internal interdependency. This makes the renewables far less dependent on extreme reliability of components and their connections, and far less dependent on the skill and consistency of labor and those overseeing construction.
hagbard_c•1mo ago
Wind and solar are fine until they are not and then what? Gas-fired plants are denounced because they emit scary CO₂, not to mention coal and oil. What are you going to use when the sun is absent and the wind is down? If geography allows for it hydropower is a good option, it also adds the potential for energy storage (pumped hydro) when the sun and wind are cooperating. Many countries lack such geography and in countries where it is available 'green' politicos sometimes make it hard to use this option - this is true for Sweden where the 'environmental party' (miljöpartiet) has been pushing for the removal of small-scale water turbines. What is left to provide the base load when renewable sources are not available? Nuclear is one of these options with the caveat that the high expense of building nuclear generators in combination with the relatively low cost of actually running these installations means that nuclear power stations are only viable if and when they can be run at full capacity 24/7. Given that the backup base load capacity has to be large enough to actually provide the base load and that a nuclear 'backup' option only is viable if it can run at full capacity this means that additional power sources like wind and solar will take up the role of providing extra capacity instead of base load capacity. If and when long-term - think 'months' instead of 'hours' - energy storage from renewable sources (other than hydro which already has this capacity) becomes available this situation will change but until such a time there is a need for a reliable 24/7 base load generation capacity. Given that fossil sources - gas, coal and oil - have been declared to be existential threats to 'the planet' what is left is hydro and nuclear. Hydro is great when it can be used but it is not an option in the flatlands. Nuclear, then, is the remaining option.
Notice I did not use any expletives? Try to do the same and you have a better chance of convincing me I'm wrong and you're right. You may be interested to know I built my own solar infrastructure here on our farm, 15 kW capacity, prepared for high-voltage storage. Since I built it we have only seen negative electricity bills, i.e. we sell more than we buy. I'm not what you'd call a 'nuclear bro', whatever that may be but I do appreciate the fact that there's power to be had from the grid when the sun is gone (which it is for about 20 hours per day) and the wind is down (similar in winter).
m4ck_•1mo ago
rmoriz•1mo ago
rmoriz•1mo ago
cr125rider•1mo ago
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/11/27/ai-gives-coal-plant...