They could just invest in a solar farm or something, they are just a lot more economical.
Nuclear is okay, but the costs compared to renewables are very high, and you have to put a lot of effort and security into building a reactor, compared to a solar panel that you can basically just put up and replace if it snaps.
You probably know this discussion already through.
Edit: Glad to see a nice instance of the discussion going here.
In their specific use case that won’t really work.
They want to use all of their available property for server racks. Covering the roof with solar won’t give enough power/area for them. A small reactor would use a tiny fraction of the space, and generate several times the power. That’s why it’d be worth the extra cost.
This is false. Nuclear has a very competitive levelized cost of energy (LCOE). Nuclear has high upfront costs but fuel is cheap and the reactor can last much longer than solar panels. The big picture matters not just upfront costs.
Not only that, imagine how thrilled nature and the environment will be at massive extraction efforts ripping apart landscapes to provide fuel for a method of generating power that is obsolete since at least three decades by now.
Raw material is usually a small fraction of the cost of refueling. I would also argue that the Russian-Ukrainian conflict is a small blip in the lifetime of a reactor, ~80 years. Transient pricing will have a negligible effect on the LCOE.
I can’t imagine they are. What would the training data of those models be? Why would you train the model when the user sent a request? Why would you wait responding to the request until the model is trained?
Sure, but that’s not done with the kind of model this thread is about (separate training and inference). You’re talking about classical ML models with continuous updates, which you wouldn’t run on this kind of GPU infrastructure.
Yeah, I don’t know where nuclear advocates got the idea that their preferred method is the cheapest. It’s ludicrously untrue. Just a bunch of talking points that were designed to take on Greenpeace in the 90s, but were never updated with changing economics of energy.
I can see why Microsoft would go for it in this use case. It’s a steady load of power all the time. Their use case is also of questionable benefit to the rest of humanity, but I see why they’d go for it.
The people who actually put money into energy projects are signalling their preferences quite clearly. They took a look at nuclear’s long history of cost and schedule overruns, and then invested in the one that can be up and running in six months. The US government has been willing to issue licenses for new nuclear if companies have their shit in order. Nobody is buying.
Invest in a next generation technology that is yet unproven, but hopes to solve the financial problems that have plagued traditional reactor projects. And years away from actual implementation, if it happens at all.
Right, let’s welcome throwing millions or billions of
dollars at wasting enormous quantities of concrete and water and at generating highly toxic waste that will irradiate its environment for millennia, and at ripping apart landscapes to extract uranium, I mean that’s such a nice thing, we need much more of it! It’s not like we already have perfectly renewable solutions to providing power…
The reason is ultimately irrelevant, but I welcome more nuclear energy.
They could just invest in a solar farm or something, they are just a lot more economical.
Nuclear is okay, but the costs compared to renewables are very high, and you have to put a lot of effort and security into building a reactor, compared to a solar panel that you can basically just put up and replace if it snaps.
You probably know this discussion already through.
Edit: Glad to see a nice instance of the discussion going here.
In their specific use case that won’t really work.
They want to use all of their available property for server racks. Covering the roof with solar won’t give enough power/area for them. A small reactor would use a tiny fraction of the space, and generate several times the power. That’s why it’d be worth the extra cost.
The more people who invest the better the tech becomes the more the price comes down. Nuclear is excellent base energy
This is false. Nuclear has a very competitive levelized cost of energy (LCOE). Nuclear has high upfront costs but fuel is cheap and the reactor can last much longer than solar panels. The big picture matters not just upfront costs.
Source: https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2015/08/f25/LCOE.pdf
Yo better check your fuel prices: https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2023/09/21/why-uranium-prices-are-soaring
Plus imagine how expensive uranium will get once we start relying on nuclear. It’ll be the new oil.
Not only that, imagine how thrilled nature and the environment will be at massive extraction efforts ripping apart landscapes to provide fuel for a method of generating power that is obsolete since at least three decades by now.
Don’t need to, just down-blend from the available fuel used from weapons put out of commission as a result of disarmament treaties.
Now, about those materials used to construct solar panels…
Raw material is usually a small fraction of the cost of refueling. I would also argue that the Russian-Ukrainian conflict is a small blip in the lifetime of a reactor, ~80 years. Transient pricing will have a negligible effect on the LCOE.
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Sucks to wait for the sun to come out to make Bing answer though. “Disclaimer: Answer dependent on cloud cover or night time”.
Do you seriously think that Bing trains an AI model when you send a request? Why would they do that?
Oh, they’re working on it. It’s dumb, but it’s happening.
I can’t imagine they are. What would the training data of those models be? Why would you train the model when the user sent a request? Why would you wait responding to the request until the model is trained?
Often, these models are a feedback loop. The input from one search query is itself training data that affects the result of the next query.
Sure, but that’s not done with the kind of model this thread is about (separate training and inference). You’re talking about classical ML models with continuous updates, which you wouldn’t run on this kind of GPU infrastructure.
are you arguing solar is more economical than nucleae cause if so youre wrong by a longshot
That was true 20 years ago. You are working off extremely outdated information.
No, you are. Solar is much cheaper than nuclear is.
Yeah, I don’t know where nuclear advocates got the idea that their preferred method is the cheapest. It’s ludicrously untrue. Just a bunch of talking points that were designed to take on Greenpeace in the 90s, but were never updated with changing economics of energy.
I can see why Microsoft would go for it in this use case. It’s a steady load of power all the time. Their use case is also of questionable benefit to the rest of humanity, but I see why they’d go for it.
The people who actually put money into energy projects are signalling their preferences quite clearly. They took a look at nuclear’s long history of cost and schedule overruns, and then invested in the one that can be up and running in six months. The US government has been willing to issue licenses for new nuclear if companies have their shit in order. Nobody is buying.
The article here is literally talking about a company that wants to.
Invest in a next generation technology that is yet unproven, but hopes to solve the financial problems that have plagued traditional reactor projects. And years away from actual implementation, if it happens at all.
Right, let’s welcome throwing millions or billions of dollars at wasting enormous quantities of concrete and water and at generating highly toxic waste that will irradiate its environment for millennia, and at ripping apart landscapes to extract uranium, I mean that’s such a nice thing, we need much more of it! It’s not like we already have perfectly renewable solutions to providing power…