Depending on what the data center is for the power use could be relatively consistent around the clock. Any of the more recent trends in AI aren't something where there're off-peak hours since training a neural network can be done at any time. Nuclear works well for cases where there's this kind of consistent demand. I suspect the companies want the power all to themselves and will build out for their needs as opposed to caring about the grid as a whole.

> It seems to me this is a potentially good marriage - let the data centers throttle themselves based on current power grid load, keeping the nuke plant at a steady output.

In principle, I agree with you. In practice, Big Tech companies are hardly models of restraint, and they're also empire builders in the worst sense. I predict that eventually the larger grid will take a back seat to data centre "needs".

Of course, refining and rolling out better grid storage solutions could make that point moot. But then, with enough storage to handle fluctuations on both the supply side and the load side, why go nuclear at all? Wind and solar should be enough.

I'd rather see this whole out-o

No one will be doing load shedding without being paid for it. Many data centres are not backing real-time applications, they are backing profitable applications. There's little profit in not getting your next 2 trillion parameter LLM to market. A datacentre which has the ability to drastically throttle away on demand is a datacentre which was over provisioned.

I'd think they'd produce more energy than they use and sell the excess to the grid. Hopefully the grid will have enough battery capacity to handle the excess energy produced that isn't needed at that time.

Yes, it is highly unlikely that Amazon or Microsoft would use a nuclear power plant in Ukraine for their data centers in the US. I'm not saying it is impossible just very impractical to transmit power from continental Europe to the US.

TMI was a wet squib.

> Anyone opposed to nuclear power is a climate change denier, whether they admit it or not.

Nice gaslighting. But no, we can very much realise climate change is a problem while at the same time reflecting on the fact that any investment you make now will not bring a single nuclear reactor online in any meaningful timeframe to avert climate change.

You're standing on train tracks looking at an oncoming train knowing it will hit you. Do you take the nuclear approach: Lobby the government to enact a 20 year project to move the train tracks away from where you're standing? Or do you do something else i

They are, after all, the ones who sold the idea of organic being good to the unwashed masses despite how incredibly wasteful it is. Food was getting too cheap. Food with higher profit margins is better for you. Just slap meaningless words like "superfood" and "natural" on it and they'll literally eat it up.

Don't worry, their stooges like drinkypoo will come over with fresh from the farm propaganda like falsely claiming that regenerative agriculture is exclusive to organic superfoods. He'll then talk about h

If the outcome is truck-portable, inexpensively produced stable nuclear power production, it's worth the spin. The technology exists to make nuclear power clean, safe, and inexpensive but only at scale. Regulations have been holding back progress for decades.

Don't worry, there will be an AI bubble poppage soon that will pause AI server farm building for about 20 years until they figure out how to make it profitable. (It won't go away, but overcapacity will take a while to adjust.) So we got about 20 more years until the Apocalypse Machines are cranked back up.

Roughly 3/4 of investment-inducing "breakthroughs" have a bubble hiccup before they are forced to be efficient.

Man, my karma is still in the dumpster from when I flamed out on some awful people 10 years ago, but I'm gonna go right back in the trash by posting some sincerity.

Nuclear is green energy, by virtually any measurable standard(besides a vague sense of how "natural" it is). By amount of radiation put into the environment, it's clean. By CO2 generated, it's very clean. By smog and soot, it's incredibly clean. What it isn't is cheap, but as long as that money is coming from easily duped AI hype investors any

Errr no, that's revisionist. Tech Bros are still all in for green energy (not for 30 years though, largely no one gave a fuck about this even 20 years ago), if they weren't they wouldn't be inking deals with nuclear plants, they'd be in for cheaper power.

And Tech Bros have largely been proponents of nuclear energy. The only thing which has changed now is that there's enough money to be made to buy more expensive power from nuclear plants that have already been built and are standing idle because they aren't viable without a customer willing to pay a premium.

> I hope they energy sector remembers the absolute hatchet jobs tech bros like Gates and others did on the energy industry, and tells Silly-con Valley to go fuck itself.

What the actual fuck are you talking about. Bill Gates literally funded a nuclear power startup (Terrapower) just shy of 20 years ago, when not only very few people were giving any fucks about CO2 emissions, but when the nuclear industry was still big-bad-number-1 in the energy sector even before people were talking about shutting down coal.

> Tech Bros spent the past 30 years all-in for "green energy."

> Suddenly they need much much more, and fast -- to fuel their new money factory, AI -- so now they're cozying up to their prior enemy.

> The duplicity is stunning, and revealing of their character.

> I hope they energy sector remembers the absolute hatchet jobs tech bros like Gates and others did on the energy industry, and tells Silly-con Valley to go fuck itself.

It's definitely ironic.

I mean, welcome aboard, but ... some of us knew we'd need nuclear. You know, those of us that the tech overlords and their disciples have been calling crazy and stupid for decades.

Eye mate!

What if each one owns one?

Or two even?

Or more?

Or a country. Musk just offered to pay for your vote. The only thing that surprised me was the lowball offer. I would have thought democracy is worth more than 47 bucks to most, but I guess I'm wrong. I knew democracy was fragile, but a weeks worth of starbucks?

Nuclear is a good way of spending lots of money while not having any positive impact on carbon emissions for 2 decades. It is literally how you get to your incorrect view of the Germany situation: spend lots of money and achieve nothing.

> They spent 700 billion euros on renewables and failed to deep decarbonize their grid.

Only a fraction of the 700 billion euros was spent on the grid. The 700 billion euro figure is the sum total of all green energy programs spent over the past 2 decades, this includes building quite a few gas plants and investing in new gas pipelines among other things.

As for

Long-term nuclear waste storage is such a bullshit excuse to oppose nuclear energy. Guess what DF, used fuel (aka nuclear waste from nuclear power plants) has a world wide kill county of zero. Zero! Meanwhile the waste from fossil fuels and biofuels kill 8.7 million a year.

Also decommissioning/cleanup costs are included in the price. As for accidents all NPP's pay into a government ran insurance fund that has never been tapped(since nuclear has been historically safe). There is almost 100 billion in

> Are these companies going to shell out for long-term nuclear waste storage, decommissioning and clean-up, and if there's any sort of accident?

Are you counting the toxic waste [1]required for your precious solar [americanexperiment.org] — despite its anemic output?

Or the [2]lithium [institutef...search.org] needed for those massive batteries required to store the solar-generated energy on cloudy days?

> More corporate welfare coming down the pipe

Sure, commie, corporations are the root of all evil. Communal-owned power-stations, with energy generated by voluntee

[1] https://www.americanexperiment.org/solar-panels-produce-tons-of-toxic-waste-literally/

[2] https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/renewable/environmental-impacts-of-lithium-ion-batteries/

Well, at least in the US, yes, nuke plant operators have been on the hook for containment, clean up, etc. It's up to We the People to hold them to that by ensuring proper regulations and enforcement.

We'd have a nice long-term storage facility if the idiot NIMBYs in Nevada hadn't somehow successfully shit on Yucca Mountain. Maybe we can get that unfucked.