this post was submitted on 04 Oct 2024
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Three Mile Island owner seeks $1.6 billion federal loan to restart nuclear plant for Microsoft AI facility (www.phillyvoice.com)
submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/technology
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[–] chaospatterns -3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

While I'm not a fan of the loan nor the massive waste of power most LLMs are, I actually think that's its a good thing because if Microsoft can break through some of the excessive red tape on nuclear plants then they'll bring this online and hopefully prove that nuclear power can be safe and a good source of large amounts of power, when the huge demand for AI dies down, then maybe they'll keep the plant around and provide power to the grid.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

when the huge demand for AI dies down, then ~~maybe they'll keep the plant around and provide power to the grid.~~ they'll abandon it to cut costs leaving the government to mop up after them as they always do

FTFY

[–] chaospatterns 1 points 2 months ago

I have my doubts that a company would be able to just abandon a live and operational nuclear power plant. I'm no nuclear or power engineer, but I am familiar with data center power consumption. There are companies in the region that would absolutely build more data centers, but are power constrained from the utility companies in the area, that are not just for AI, but for general compute. Even then, it's low carbon production energy. If you have a ton of excess power, just start forcing high carbon production facilities in the area to close and now you've greened the grid.