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Microsoft Needs So Much Power to Train AI That It's Considering Small Nuclear Reactors (futurism.com)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 7 points 2 years ago (1 child)

This is false. Nuclear has a very competitive levelized cost of energy (LCOE). Nuclear has high upfront costs but fuel is cheap and the reactor can last much longer than solar panels. The big picture matters not just upfront costs.

Source: https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2015/08/f25/LCOE.pdf

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Yo better check your fuel prices: https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2023/09/21/why-uranium-prices-are-soaring

    Plus imagine how expensive uranium will get once we start relying on nuclear. It'll be the new oil.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago

    Raw material is usually a small fraction of the cost of refueling. I would also argue that the Russian-Ukrainian conflict is a small blip in the lifetime of a reactor, ~80 years. Transient pricing will have a negligible effect on the LCOE.

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  • [–] 0 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Not only that, imagine how thrilled nature and the environment will be at massive extraction efforts ripping apart landscapes to provide fuel for a method of generating power that is obsolete since at least three decades by now.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago*

    Don’t need to, just down-blend from the available fuel used from weapons put out of commission as a result of disarmament treaties.

    Now, about those materials used to construct solar panels…

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