This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
I think I saw a movie like this.
It doesn't end well. π
Lol. I just love it how so many people complain that Nuclear doesnt make financial sense, and then the most financially motivated companies just actually figure out that using a nuclear reactor completely privately is best.
Fuck sake, world.
Yeah for sure it is cheaper, if they only have to pay the operational costs. Not the ones of building and decomissioning the plant. Lol.
Microsoft jumped fully on the AI hype bandwagon with their partnership in OpenAI and their strategy of forcing GenAI down our throats. Instead of realizing that GenAI is not much more than a novel parlor trick that can't really solve problems, they are now fully committing.
Microsoft invested $1 billion in OpenAI, and reactivating 3 Mile Island is estimated at $1.6 billion. And any return on these investments are not guaranteed. Generally, GenAI is failing to live up to its promises and there is hardly any GenAI use case that actually makes money.
This actually has the potential of greatly damaging Microsoft, so I wouldn't say all their decisions are financially rational and sound.
My org's Microsoft reps gave a demo of their upcoming copilot 365 stuff. It can summarize an email chain, use the transcript of a teams meeting to write a report, generate a PowerPoint of the key parts of that report, and write python code that generates charts and whatnot in excel. Assuming it works as advertised, this is going to be really big in offices. All of that would save a ton of time.
On the other hand, if they ever admit the whole genAI thing doesn't work, they could just sell the electricity produced by the plant.
Nuclear safety and penny-pinchers don't make good bedfellows.
Nuclear safety and ~~penny-pinchers~~ capitalism don't make good bedfellows.
ftfy. Possibly ironically, nuclear safety and communism (or totalitarianism) donβt work either. Itβs odd, innit.
Honestly it seems crazy that companies that are so focused on short-term profits in 2024 would be able to make nuclear work.
Every once in a while they get faced with a line on a chart somewhere so unbelievably vertical that they have no choice but to look beyond next quarter. Power consumption going 10x in 2 years is one of those times.
Personally? I don't think this is a bad idea. The less they drain from the grid, the less they consume fossil fuel.
The reactor isn't active right now, and they are a PWR design, and like the 1979 incident showed, they do fail safely.
So long as Microsoft pays for the operation of the plant? Seems reasonable to me if they're going to consume an assload of energy with or without public support.
I remember I had to do the 3 mile Island incident as part of my university degree. Apparently one of the biggest problems was that the control interface was hard to understand for the human operators.
So I guess if they just replaced the control system with a modern computer that would fix most of the problems. Obviously not a Windows system, otherwise we've just got the same issue all over again.
So I guess if they just replaced the control system with a modern computer that would fix most of the problems
Introducing new Clippy For Reactors.
It continued operating for decades after the event. I'm sure they already solved that issue. It can still be improved I'm sure though.
we could use that extra energy to offset a bunch of existing carbon emissions now. This is still waste. If it's going to be started up again, and its energy used for something useless, it's waste.
Is it going to be started up again?
If M$ doesnβt invest into this for their own purposes, is it still going to be started up? Or is your position that M$ should be investing in a nuclear power plant for the good of the world?
Because while I can agree with the idea, we all know that would never happen. So if it was never going to be started up again, we are at 0 gain or loss no matter what they do with it.
And thatβs ignoring the fact that they are apparently intending on using that energy anyway.
it would be a missed opportunity in the sense of "if they can allow it to be turned it back on to waste its power on this dead-end tech, why couldn't it have been allowed to operate again (earlier) for reasons we actually need?"
I'm not putting the blame on microsoft here, even though it might seem that way. But it's not microsoft who need to give the go-ahead for this to happen. It's the higher ups who decided to give the capacity to microsoft.
Yes it was still going to be used, but they could have been paying out the ass for it, which could fund other projects.
It operated for a long time profitably. It ceased operations in 2019 because it became unprofitable, largely because Methane undercut it. Methane should cost a lot more, but they don't have to pay for negative externalities. Nuclear has to contain all of its waste, and handle it carefully.
Microsoft would do it with or without the power plant. Make no mistake about that.
The same argument could be said if they made a 1GW solar farm, or any other form of power generation. Unless you have a way to legislatively prevent Microsoft from producing their own energy or prevent acquisition of decommissioned plants, I don't see how you can prevent waste.
That argument presupposes that the reactor would otherwise be brought back into operation, which I don't think is necessarily the case.
Holy sunk cost fallacy, batman. How fucking much does it cost to operate an ENTIRE GODDAMN NUCLEAR REACTOR just to fuel a tech project that nobody wants???
Just because you don't want it doesn't mean others don't.
And just because you don't know much about the actual tech product itself doesn't mean that it's as narrow as you consider it to be.
There is a ton of vapid hype that everyone including myself is getting sick and tired of. I'm more than happy to recognize that. However, there are still real world problems and continued advancements being made daily.
It's not all about LLMs either, there are many other types of science being done to develop improve and augment various other flavors of artificial intelligence. This has been a pretty constant trend for at least the last 10 years, we've just had a recent explosion in language capabilities with the introduction of generative AI. Thus fueling the hype.
That's a really weird stance that I keep seeing on here which is to be proud of being ignorant. Being proud of hating something without actually understanding what it is. Being proud of not knowing how something works so that you can be more contrare.
Investors want it, because they want to ride the wave towards profit. It doesn't matter if it's good, sustainable or not. That is what matters.
that nobody wants
lol
Ironically, the power hungriness of AI might actually do good for the environment if it normalizes nuclear energy.
Quite the twist
I'm sure that everyone will recognize that this was a great idea in a couple of years when generative LLM AI goes the way of the NFT.
Honestly, it probably is a great idea regardless. The plant operated for a very long time profitably. I'm sure it can again with some maintenance and upgrades. People only know three mile island for the (not so disastrous) disaster, but the rest of the plant operated for decades after without any issues.
with some maintenance and upgrades.
Hopefully we can trust these tech bros to do that properly and without using their usual "move fast and break things" approach.
They are only buying 100% of the output. The old owners are still owning and operating it.
Nfts were a scam from the start something that has no actual purpose utility or value being given value through hype.
Generative AI is very different. In my honest opinion you have to have your head in the sand if you don't believe that AI is only going to incrementally improve and expand in capabilities. Just like it has year over year for the last 5 to 10 years. And just like for the last decade it continues to solve more and more real-world problems in increasingly effective manners.
It isn't just constrained to llms either.
I just hope this deal doesnβt involve using their AI to monitor the reactor β¦
There actually has been good work on using AI to control fusion plasmas its at the point where it can keep them stable significantly better than any human or simple automated system.
I had to do a double take to make sure this wasn't an onion article.
Are we eventually gonna get more fusion because billionaires are demanding more energy for their stupid projects?
Sure, knock yourselves out.
I am all for nuclear power, but I'd rather it be from modern reactor designs and builds, and I'd rather it not be wasted on bullshit.
