679
Well no shit. One of those things is actually useful.
this post was submitted on 14 May 2026
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I want both nuclear power and AI to be commonplace.
Where the latter is concerned, it should be decentralized by law: Individual households can own a home server, and in turn, rent or loan their compute to organizations. The reason for this, is to limit the power of corporations and force them to abide by the will of ordinary people, rather than being able to hoard technological power to fuck over the government and citizens. The same applies to robots capable of replacing human labor.
We should not reject AI nor automation, and instead seek to ensure that they can't be used against the interests of the public good. Mindless rejection, just ensures that bad actors will eventually have sole mastery over these resources.
I want to say "no shit" but then I remembered that most people have no idea how safe nuclear reactors actually are
There's a huge anti-nuclear crowd, I'd prefer we focus on renewables as much as possible but it's stupid not to phase out oil/gas for nuclear as a more consistent source.
There's a huge anti-nuclear crowd
Which was grass-rooted by oil companies back in the 70s.
Source? Most if not all in “anti-nuclear crowd“ (in Germany) are also against the burning of fossil fuels. Instead they really like renewable energy like solar or wind. See the history of the German Green party for reference which was founded out of the anti-nuclear grass roots movement and they are also opposed to the burning of fossil fuels. I don‘t know if that‘s different in other countries.
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I'm anti-nuclear, but it's because nuclear is so much slower to build and more expensive than solar or wind so the fossil fuel industry is pushing for nuclear to delay the transition away from fossil fuels and use up all the funding.
If you have nuclear plants, you've paid to build them and you're on the hook for decommissioning costs, sure, keep running them. Starting construction on new nuclear in 2026? That's a terrible idea.
You won't be up and running before 2040 and you're not going to be competitive against 2040's renewables and batteries, never mind 2070's.
The 20+ year time to build is at best the direct result of lobbying and NIMBY and realistically just propoganda by antinuclear. The US mean for nuclear construction to production is 8 years. Japan has it down to under 5.
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China is building them in 5-6 years, the best time to plant a tree was 30 years ago and the second best time is now.
We can't build them in China, though. Only China can do that. My country doesn't even have an existing nuclear industry.
Sure we could start building reactors now, but we can get enough solar and battery storage through the night for less than nuclear would cost.
Props to China, but I know how long building projects take in my country. The plan will say 15 years and it will be done in 25 for 3x the price. And all that to have it produce a kWh for 0.50€. No, thanks.
So don't build 1-off designs, look at the most expensive parts of plant construction, and lower those costs. China's nuclear industry isn't just some construction company that commissions bespoke parts for each nuclear plant, it extends to from heavy forging capacity shared with ship-building to colleges producing construction managers.
Given the massive amount of land we have renewables are the clear winner. Densely populated countries, with little to no coastline, would get better use out of nuclear.
Yes that's why I said both, renewables require a lot of space both for generation and storage and generally has peaks and valleys on generation, vs nuclear which can consistently provide a stable amount generally.
Even if/when we replace fossil fuels with renewables, we still need a solution for surges, and nuclear would fit that very well
I'm in favor of nuclear, but no. Nuclear can't handle surges. It takes up to 3 days for a plant to sync to the grid.
The only power sources that can handle surges are hydro, batteries, and natural gas turbines.
Then nuclear power is good at is providing baseline power and slowly ramping that up and down to handle seasonal fluctuations, since solar power peaks during summer. Something else is needed to pick up the slack during winter
I thought nuclear was slow to ramp up and down and basically has to operate 24/7, providing a baseload. Batteries otoh are the quickest source to respond to surges from my understanding. Renewables+batteries are have been cheap enough for years that they're also good for baseload.
I live in a dry but mountainous area. I'd like to see them pump water uphill with any overpower so we can just use turbines to recapture that energy later. The average american keeps impressing me with their turnip-level intellect to the point where I don't want them running a carwash, much less a nuclear reactor. There are a lot of IRL Homer Simpsons out there.
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Well when annoying orange decided to cut the safety regulations on nuclear they became a bit more sketchy but yeah still would rather have that than a data center... One benefits all and the other benefits shareholders feelings till the bubble pops
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Well nuclear power plants create something more useful than ai data centers, nuclear waste.
Much of which can be used in hospitals for life saving medical uses! Double dunk on AI failures.
Hell, some of the more modern designs barely produce that...
I still remember learning that and about breeder reactors (they produce fissile material from common isotopes) and feeling so betrayed by the common zeitgeist
Indeed, nuclear is among the safest and cleanest forms of energy currently available to us! All the waste in the world for life barely fills a few football fields' worth of space, if I recall correctly.
The issue with waste is not the volume but the duration.
One football field 10 meters high to be precise.
One football field 10 meters high
You're mixing US and metric measurement systems there. You should either stick to meters or come up with a sports analogy for the height.
What if their from the parts of the world that call "soccer" football and also use metric? Which is basically everyone.
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I knew it was something around there, thanks!
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Masterful comment delivery, kudos
Some groups have started to extract materials from nuclear waste that can provide Targeted Alpha Therapy for cancer patients, so very true.
Electricity too
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Nearly 50,000 residents of Lake Tahoe, a popular tourist destination in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, have been told their utility company will stop providing them with electricity in 2027. The utility, NV Energy, will instead use that power for data centers in northern Nevada, one of the fastest growing data center corridors in the nation and where Google, Microsoft and Apple have all either built or planned facilities, Fortune reported. Residents have until next May to find a new electric provider.
Wow, that's rather appalling. Ars has a longer write-up about it.
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Unpopular opinion: wouldn't it be nice if the government wasn't against renewable energy? That way the data centers could use that instead of leech off of our supply.
Doesn't fix the issue with water though...
If they would use a closed water cooling system it would be less of an issue.
They could also use geothermal for significantly cheaper and environmentally friendly long term climate control but they don't want to pay the up front construction costs.
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Electricity production vs electricity waste, the choice is pretty obvious honestly.
Ignoring the fact that I also don't think I could trust any company in 2026 to maintain a nuclear power plant well, it feels like we've actually gone backwards in that front specifically.
Nuclear means cheap power and skilled jobs. DCs mean a draw on power and just take up everything that makes a community worth having. Stop them from coming in and eliminate the ones they got past us.