There is something wrong with your tech if you need your own nuclear plant to run it.
I mean, it’s better than coal, but still.
I’m all right with it really because it doesn’t really matter. Radioactive material isn’t really dangerous at least in any sensible context and it doesn’t really put out a lot of carbon so if Microsoft want to restart nuclear power station then I don’t really have any objection.
As to whether they need to be doing this is another question, but the fact that they’re doing it at all doesn’t really bother me.
There’s always the outside possibility that they decide that the nuclear power station isn’t enough and end up building a Dyson Sphere or something.
I’m not scared of nuclear power
but hearing it in the same sentence as ‘Microsoft AI’ sent a shiver down my spine
Like in Westworld, the Hoover Dam was allocated to power the AI. This is very dystopian on one level but on another level, the notion that so muchreal engineering is being used to feed a computer that generates incorrect bullshit is kinda comical.
A 20 year deal, with no power produced until 2028?
Either MS really do know something we don’t, or this bubble has grained a layer of strontium.
It’s the second one. They are all in on this AI bullshit because they’ve got nothing else. There are no other exponential growth markets left. Capitalism has gotten so autocanibalistic that simply being a global monopoly in multiple different fields isn’t good enough. For investors it’s not about how big your company is, how reliable your yearly returns are, how stable your customer base; the only thing that matters is how fast your business is growing. But small businesses have no space to grow because of the monopolies filling every available space, and the monopolies are already monopolies. There are no worlds left to conquer. They’ve already turned every single piece of our digital lives into a subscription, blockchain was a total bust, the metaverse was a demented fever dream, VR turned out to be a niche toy at best; unless someone comes up with some brand new thing that no one has ever heard of before, AI is the last big boondoggle they have left to hit the public with.
So long as it’s not Microsoft managing the plant nor are they using any MS product to do so…
It’s an experiment to see how OpenAI can control a nuclear power plant! Imagine the efficiency!
This sounds like the opening animatic for a new Fallout game.
I assume actual nuclear engineers will be the ones operating the power plant.
So… now nuclear is considered “green power”. Okay boomers.
Nuclear is definitely more green than fossil fuels.
Even with the radioactive waste material, in 20 years that will just be more fuel for fission reactors. Even taking into account the deaths from atomic bombs, the death rate from nuclear materials is a factor of a few hundred lower than coal power.
Nuclear is even less killy than hydroelectric (dams sometimes burst and drown a bunch of people downriver) and wind (sometimes technicians fall off when fixing a turbine) per kilowatt hour, despite the potential for really scary failures, largely because it generates so much power when it’s working.
Why in the world would you want to revive a clearly dangerous design of a plant.
Not only did you not read the article, but you apparently don’t know that much about TMI either. There are multiple reactors at TMI, the one that had the accident is not the one they’re restarting.
The one they’re restarting shut down a few years ago, along with several other nuclear plants, due to being too expensive to compete on cost with all the cheap gas post fracking boom.
Yes, for reasons passing understanding the state and federal government allowed existing, functional nuclear plants to close in favor of natural gas plants.
I saw that it was a different reactor, but is the design that much different from the one they had the problem with?
A poof of radioactive steam let loose. That’s it, the whole incident. People freaked out on March 28, 1979.
In totally unrelated news, The China Syndrome, about a reactor meltdown, came out March 16, 1979.
Given how faulty and untrustworthy AI is it only makes sense to give it the keys to nuclear power plants.
Fucking geniuses.
The plant is being started back up to meet new power demands from AI, AI won’t be controlling the plants.
Yeah, but think of the marketing and the cost savings from firing nuclear scientists. Can’t wait for 3 mill island to get the enshittificatiom treatment
That’s ridiculous you’re blaming them for something that you’re imagining is going to happen in the future.
That is like being mad at your partner for cheating on you, in your dream.
