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
    3·
    4 hours 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.

    • Graydon@canada.masto.host
      2·
      1 hour 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

      • Frezik@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
        3·
        1 hour 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.

          • Frezik@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
            2·
            32 minutes ago

            The conclusion of the NS Savannah was that it would have been economical after the oil crisis of the 1970s caused a price spike in fuel costs. Ports also need facilities and training to handle nuclear fuel. Once you have that, it’s perfectly viable.

            Unlike energy generation on land, there isn’t a lot of alternatives for decarbonizing marine transport.

    • David Gerard@awful.systemsOPMEnglish
      5·
      2 hours 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.

      • Cadbury Moose@wandering.shop
        3·
        1 hour ago

        @dgerard @frezik

        The problem is alway interconnects.

        (There aren’t that many of them, and they tend to be scaled for fossil-fuelled power stations, probably 1MW being the smallest unless there were CHP setups with a grid feed.)