> This will also suck for rural people who don't want these reactors in their community.

It'll sure suck less for them than a bunch of coal or other fossil fuel plants. NIMBYing the nuclear power rather than the data centers would be the worst situation.

We need more power, but nuclear isn't the way anymore. I was a supporter of nuclear until around 2020, when I saw how fast solar and wind were gaining. Both have consistently shown enormous growth because they are not as specific in their land requirements, can be installed in small numbers, and the levelized cost of energy (LCOE) for them has plummeted to become profitable even without subsidies. Storage is still a challenge, but we're seeing rapid improvements in that, too, with sodium batteries rapidly c

My hope is that this will be a case of useful idiots - the data center folks are going to overbuild in the boom and claim they'll need all of this power forever. They get the power industry to build their demand, and then when the data center market crashes, all of that power production gets used for more general purposes, where it is very much needed.

A second best scenario from a power production perspective, which I could also maybe see, is that the data centers *don't* fail, but their need for power driv

> Honestly there is so much room around Comanche Nuclear (it has a massive man made reservoir instead of using river water) they could easily expand it to 4 or 6 units without much issue.

One reason Vogtle added two was the original site analysis called for four units so they didn’t have to get a site approved. I suspect, ifvthey do build these plants, most if not all will be built on existing sites that were licensed for more units than they built.

But it's the big cities that have the political clout to put data center moratoriums in place. Seattle, I'm looking at you. But who are the big users of data centers? The very same big cities, in the form of software development and service businesses.

Rural people can't even get decent broadband connections that are needed to use them.

> Sadly I'm sure the same massive building campaigns will happen with reactors. This will also suck for rural people who don't want these reactors in their community. I guess the saving grace is that nuclear sites don't have the massive noise pollution that data centers do.

It will suck more if these are poorly built. Given how Trump normally does things, I am confident that no bid construction contracts will be awarded to loyal campaign contributors who had no experience with construction. After billions are spent, these reactors are found to be so dismally constructed that they must be torn down and rebuilt.

Speaking of Browns Ferry have you seen the huge solar farm across the river from it near Hillsboro?

You are begging the question.

The answer to that question is no.

There is some truth to this. Maybe it should be deemed a form a fraud, but it probably won't as that's not the type of fraud that the current regime is interested in.

I am no right winger. I'm trying to be as non-partisan as possible here, so here goes...

The US government historically has a poor track record of efficiently disbursing funds of any program be it social, or corporate. There is never a real throat to choke (accountability sink) in the government who risks going to prison if things aren't efficie

How about limiting when lawsuits can be filed against construction? Like, once the plans are accepted and construction begins, no more lawsuits.

"Good things"? Where? The choice is between completely unproven designs that rest on the fragile hope of mass-production, and outdated, inefficient, overpriced and likely unsafe designs. I do not see any "good things" there, but a ton of abject stupidity and wishful thinking.

No SMR designs have reached anywhere close to production ready but AP1000 reactors exist and more and more of them are going up around the world.

Going with a proven design isn't the issue, to me it's more just putting loans out there and relying on private energy companies to build it (unless the loans are going to the data center companies, and then, well, that's a mess) instead of just, say, building the plants directly, like what was done for Watt's Bar (TVA) and almost every other nuclear plant in the w

The use and business case for SMRs is still pretty flimsy. Nuclear is expensive. No amount of internet-bro-9.0 jargon is gonna change that. AI and crypto technology won't change the costs. If you're dealing with a nuclear reactor and you fu*k something up, you render a chunk of the planet uninhabitable for basically forever and slightly increase the chances of getting cancer for, oh, just the entire human population. That means that everything requires overdesign, redundancy and careful planning. And it's h

We can't do both? Aren't we doing both?

You're lost in aspirational futurism. Large plants bring economies of scale, safety, and security. SMRs bring risk, insecurity, and inefficiencies.

They have always lied about cost to build, cost to run, time to build, safety and some other things. There are enough deranged "useful idiots" to make the scam work.

Indeed but I do give them credit for one part of the story, they acknowledged that they won't start construction until 2030. That's at least more realistic than those idiots who think the construction period is the actual full project timeline for a nuclear reactor.

When the project is pushed by the government regulators that cause a lot of the delays and also not having cruise missiles flying during construction, might be possible to shorten the timeline from the comparison 9 years.

But I think few people are gullible enough to think that 5 years in "political promise time" really means 5 literal years.

It's Trump, so it's almost certainly just corruption.

That made sense in 1960. Today we have devices that passively generate electricity just from sunlight. Cover roofs and parking lots with them because it’s energy otherwise wasted.

Sounds about right for Trump then. Gotta wonder how he's grifting this?

"I assume someone is a criminal until they prove otherwise."

I'm so glad you aren't a DA.

Well, Fukushima was the engineers (or whoever decides where to put it) fault... why would you put a nuclear reactor right on a breakwater that'll also be the first thing to get hit by typhoons?

If it'd been further inland, it would've probably been fine.

> There was a nuclear renaissance in progress until the Fukushima accident derailed it completely.

Was there? Where? Best I could see a couple of projects were underway, and those projects were universally over budget and over time. While EDF purchased Areva in 2017 the latter was in financial dire straits since the mid 00s. Westinghouse also went bankrupt only a couple of years before Fukushima.

So if there was a renaissance, the industry has a strange way of financially accounting for it.

> Yes it was bad and expensive but if you looked at it rationally and with perspective, statistically nuclear was still safer than almost every other power source.

This is truly sad. Fear is a powerful motivator especially for those who understand statistics. However... the breaks

Also credit [1]Obama [energy.gov] for the same sort of plan. And Trump for going beyond loans to [2]direct funding for coal. [apnews.com]

And also why the scoreboard between two right wing parties on energy policy?

[1] https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/obama-administration-announces-loan-guarantees-construct-new-nuclear-power-reactors

[2] https://apnews.com/article/trump-coal-mining-power-plant-climate-electricity-0a7126d66de97b10f32eaa39b1af669f

What in the world are you watching to make you think such silly things? Come visit and see for yourself.

And also note that the Federal government won't be building these reactors. The White House isn't rolling out anyhting, all they did was issue regulatory approval.

Exactly. I can only hope this admin will be replaced in 2029 with more sensible people.

Yeah, we're going to keep it in your basement. Between the holiday decorations and the washing machine.

It's all a grift and a reality show. Someone is getting paid to pretend to do something.

Pretty much. The US has had several really bad nuclear accidents and close-to accidents by now, including a reactor pressure vessel that very nearly blew up in operation. I guess a catastrophe with some larger land-area becoming uninhabitable is needed before the nuclear dimwits begin to understand something.

No idea why they fetishize this outdated and failed technology so much.

> we could power basically everything with wind and solar and do it safely and effectively

Wind and solar is great and cheap, but vanish at night, during calm periods, or under clouds.

> These are going to be quick and dirty installations in order to power AI data centers for people that bribed trump. It's your taxpayer dollars going to finance AI slop.

Construction isn't expected to start until 2030 at the earliest. From TFA:

> Energy Secretary Chris Wright cited “tremendous interest” among developers of data centers that would buy the power, as well as utilities and energy companies. The nuclear plants could begin construction by 2030 and become operational in the mid-2030s, Wright and other officials said Tuesday.

By that time, the AI bubble may have burst, or the grid may have gone even further into renewables, or both.