Lol. Seems the nuclear lobby is here and down-voting everyone who likes progress.
I read renewable energy is way cheaper than nuclear energy. And it comes with a low carbon footprint and without nuclear waste. (We have some actual historical numbers in the World Nuclear Report P. 293 which show nuclear is pretty expensive compared to renewable these days.)
So the solution is pretty obvious. Sign a contract over a few billion dollars with renewable energy instead of nuclear. It’ll be cheaper anyways. And has the added benefit that it’s available now. Whereas the SMR startups still have to figure out a few engineering challenges. And we’d avoid all the nuclear waste that’ll become a problem for future generations. And I mean it’s not that uranium or the other ores are super abundant anyways. Nuclear fission is a temporary solution in the first place. And not a particularly good one.
And investing in renewable will then grow that industry and make the energy even cheaper.
Only downside I see is: you can’t build renewable (and the datacentre) anywhere. It’d have to be for example in Texas for solar, or close to the mountains or some water flow for hydro. Or somewhere windy or at the shore for wind energy. The latter two have the benefit that they’re available during the night, too. And I guess the USA has some minor potential for thermal energy, too. But I don’t consider this a major issue since we have internet pretty much everywhere. They’d just need to lay some more fibre network to the site.
Lol. Seems the nuclear lobby is here and down-voting everyone who likes progress.
I read renewable energy is way cheaper than nuclear energy. And it comes with a low carbon footprint and without nuclear waste. (We have some actual historical numbers in the World Nuclear Report P. 293 which show nuclear is pretty expensive compared to renewable these days.)
So the solution is pretty obvious. Sign a contract over a few billion dollars with renewable energy instead of nuclear. It’ll be cheaper anyways. And has the added benefit that it’s available now. Whereas the SMR startups still have to figure out a few engineering challenges. And we’d avoid all the nuclear waste that’ll become a problem for future generations. And I mean it’s not that uranium or the other ores are super abundant anyways. Nuclear fission is a temporary solution in the first place. And not a particularly good one.
And investing in renewable will then grow that industry and make the energy even cheaper.
Only downside I see is: you can’t build renewable (and the datacentre) anywhere. It’d have to be for example in Texas for solar, or close to the mountains or some water flow for hydro. Or somewhere windy or at the shore for wind energy. The latter two have the benefit that they’re available during the night, too. And I guess the USA has some minor potential for thermal energy, too. But I don’t consider this a major issue since we have internet pretty much everywhere. They’d just need to lay some more fibre network to the site.