The AI industry is desperate for data centre power anywhere it can get it. They can’t get gas turbines without years of delay. Even the repurposed jet engine gas turbines they were really hoping wo…
    • Frezik@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      0·
      17 days ago

      Even ignoring AI datacenter builds, we still need clean energy. I would be all for nuclear fission if it were at all economically viable. It just isn’t.

      • David Gerard@awful.systemsOPMEnglish
        1·
        17 days ago

        yeah, even the green case for nuclear - which has been around for a long time - falters on wind and solar with battery just being hilariously cheaper. At this point the funding problem is interconnects.

      • Graydon@canada.masto.host
        0·
        17 days ago

        @frezik there is an economic case for three nuclear reactor applications.

        Medical isotopes need to come from somewhere, and so far as I’m aware, you can’t do all of them with particle accelerators.

        Marine power; your 250,000 DWT bulk transport or large container ship pollute significantly, can’t go solar, and marine nuclear is not obviously a bad technical option. (They can maybe go with some sort of fuel cell, but that’s not developed tech.)

        High-latitude baseline power.

        @kgMadee2

        • fullsquare@awful.systemsEnglish
          1·
          17 days ago

          high latitude is sort of served by hydro because there’s lot of river per person in some of areas that are in any significant way populated (norway, russian north)

          medical isotopes are research reactor thing because of frequent loading/unloading - either that or some kind of channel reactors so either CANDU or RBMK. neither are exactly industry standard

          marine power requires small reactors = way more enriched than usual sub 5% = expensive and a lot of diplomatic noise about proliferation

          • Graydon@canada.masto.host
            1·
            17 days ago

            @fullsquare Sub reactors use enriched for service life (and some compactness); having to get things through the pressure hull is such a pain you will pay high upfront costs to not do it. A reactor designed to push a large cargo vessel around doesn’t have those constraints and could be designed for easy refueling. (There are some marine thermal siphon designs with very few moving parts, come to that.)

            High latitude hydro has “and it froze” issues, same after anything else outside up there.

        • Frezik@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
          0·
          17 days ago

          Medical isotopes don’t necessarily need to be created in power reactors.

          High-latitudes is a very limited application. Very few people live in areas where solar isn’t viable. They also tend to have a lot of space for wind power and some potential geothermal. Long distance HVDC lines shouldn’t be discounted, either.

          Marine power is where I hope SMRs actually work out.

            • fullsquare@awful.systemsEnglish
              0·
              17 days ago

              iirc us navy loads their reactors with 93% enriched uranium, the same grade that is used in (american) nukes (and also in couple of very special use cases like oak ridge high flux reactor fuel). can’t hand this out just like that. one fuel load is expected to last entire ship lifetime. the less enriched grade you use, the bigger reactor becomes and refueling has to be more frequent

              • David Gerard@awful.systemsOPMEnglish
                1·
                17 days ago

                Trump was ready to give some Sam Altman project highly enriched uranium, though I’m not clear on whether that was 20% (already considered a serious proliferation risk) or full bomb-grade 95%.

                • fullsquare@awful.systemsEnglish
                  0·
                  17 days ago

                  uranium or plutonium, because i’ve heard of some plutonium that was slated to be disposed of this way 20 years ago and just sat there unused (not that saltman has facilities or people to do anything with it)

                  • David Gerard@awful.systemsOPMEnglish
                    1·
                    17 days ago

                    plutonium, looks like:

                    US offers nuclear energy companies access to weapons-grade plutonium - Oct 21st https://www.ft.com/content/2fbbc621-405e-4a29-850c-f0079b116216 https://archive.is/Pc949

                    The Department of Energy on Tuesday published an application that nuclear energy groups can use to seek up to 19 metric tonnes of the government’s weapons-grade plutonium from cold war-era warheads.

                    …

                    At least two companies, Oklo, which is backed by OpenAI’s Sam Altman, and France’s Newcleo, are expected to apply to access the government’s plutonium stockpile.

                    may I just say:

                    JESUS FUCKING CHRIST

                    However, experts have raised concerns about the commercial use of plutonium and the risk of the material falling into the wrong hands.

                    NO SHIT

      • JFranek@awful.systemsEnglish
        0·
        16 days ago

        If we’re talking about the general West, then there new nuclear is probably fucked. Rest of the world still builds for reasonable costs. Not nuclear bro amounts, but still.

        I think we could see a future where nuclear makes 5-10% of the world’s electricity, which would technically make it a niche source of power, but it would also be a massive increase from today.