The U.S. government is shelling out a whopping $2.7 billion to three companies in an effort to strengthen domestic uranium enrichment, amid surging electricity demand from AI data centers.
The Department of Energy announced on Monday that it will award $900 million each to American Centrifuge Operating and Orano Federal Services, as well as General Matter, a nuclear startup backed by billionaire investor Peter Thiel.
The funding will be distributed through task orders over the next 10 years, under what the department described as a “strict milestone approach.”
Love me some nuclear investment.
It’s the best carbon-free base load power we have.
Yeah, I have no problem with government investing in industry, I have always liked nuclear. Where my concerns lie is in the obvious cronyism and the myriad government investments that have ended up not bearing fruit for anyone but the rich.
But this one may be different!
Too bad this is highly unlikely to benefit the public at large and just go to ensuring our tech overlords have enough juice for the surveillance state they are creating.
The cheapest choice for reliable power in the US is natural gas. Fossil fuels are often in the news for causing all kinds of issues. Therefore a statement like “this is highly unlikely to benefit the public at large” seems quite unfounded. That is, unless you don’t consider burning fossil fuels instead to be a harm.
If you give a shit about our future, investments in carbon-free power are to be celebrated.
Your missing my point. This is solely being driven by the need being created by data centers, not from any kind of environmental analysis. I have zero confidence the energy created from these projects will go to public infrastructure in a way that will drive down costs for the average American. This will likely solely benefit the tech oligarchs at the helm of these companies to keep their operational costs to a minimum.
Because AI is not about turning a profit, it’s about surveillance and if you give a shit about the future, that is not something you can forget.
We’re still burning coal in this country. If AI dies down and we shut down the coal plants because we have more nuclear, that’s a win
That ship has sailed. With renewables and storage nuclear makes no financial sense and dispatchable power doesn’t work well with base load generation.
Storage costs balloon when you go full renewable, because instead of just storing enough for the night, you need to charge up enough during the summer to last the winter since solar power dries up.
Having a constant 20% of power nuclear would decrease the need to make a huge amount of batteries, since you can serve the demand on a lower amount of sunlight.
But what about wind? It works in places that are windy and have space for it, and America doesn’t have super high voltage transmission to cover every area.
You just can’t connect everything to shore up needs of every area because the country is too big and we forgot how to build things
It’s called HVDC, it’s been in use for decades. Just admit you like nuclear because reasons and we’ll call it a day.
It’s not going to support 100% renewable usage. It is not built to transfer solar power from Nevada to Minnesota
Everything works better when you have baseline nuclear power, transmission losses decrease, storage costs decrease, coal and gas get phased out. Remember that batteries need to be replaced often and they are very much not green. Nuclear plants operate on the scale of decades before getting replaced.
Those are the reasons I like nuclear.
This exists and is longer than that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rio_Madeira_HVDC_system
Nope. Baseline isn’t helpful when you’re dealing with dispatchable generation, I already mentioned this.
Nope. I already mentioned that silicon ion is capable of thousands of charge cycles.
Nope. Not when you’re comparing it to the amount of concrete in a nuclear plant.
Like every other pro-nuclear person it’s all about feels with you. I’ve given you plenty of evidence, which you’ve rejected much like a cultist would do. I see no point continuing to discuss this with someone who has made an emotional decision to support nuclear in the face of all the evidence.
That’s in Brazil, though? What do you mean it exists. High speed rail exists in China, I’ve been promised it since early 2000s in California and yet…
What do you mean by dispatchable generation?
Thousands of charge cycles means a few years? 2000 days is just 6 years
That’s just… not true. Nuclear absolutely makes sense, it’s just that there’s not enough public appetite for it. In particular, small modular reactors (SMRs) are very much needed for distributed power generation.
There’s not enough storage with renewables that can compete with nuclear. The technology that currently exists doesn’t scale from a cost perspective, which is why the storage startup space has become so hot in the last 5 years.
Nuclear is way more expensive than renewables, it’s not public appetite, it’s that it’s impossible to get funding if you can’t get a government to cover the cost. Another reason lenders are jumpy is that nuclear frequently goes way over budget and takes longer than initially estimated.
By the way, last I checked SMRs don’t exist in any meaningful capacity.
Sodium ion batteries are already on the market, they’re much cheaper than lithium, work across a far wider range of temps, they don’t catch fire, don’t lose capacity over many charge cycles, and sodium is cheap and abundant. New nuclear takes at least 10 years to build, typically longer. By then sodium batteries will be everywhere, as well as repurposed batteries from older EVs.
What’s the argument for new nuclear? Make it make sense.
Nuclear has a better value-adjusted levelized cost of energy. SMRs are very much developing but have been deployed in some areas outside the US.
Sodium ion batteries are great for many reasons but also aren’t as energy dense, so you need a way larger footprint. I’m not saying we should only do one of the other, it’s all of the above. Also repurposed EVs aren’t really a thing at scale, nor does there seem to be that much investment into it from a quick search. The main investment is into full recycling of batteries.
I don’t think you can win the economic argument, everything I’ve seen suggests nuclear is far more expensive and it’s not getting cheaper, whereas renewables are but if you’ve got sources, by all means let’s see them.
Sodium batteries don’t require a way larger footprint, it’s true they’re not quite as energy dense but they’re being used in EVs in China, there’s a little reduction in range for the same size pack but they’re way better in extreme cold and heat so you’re not drawing as much power to condition the battery.
If we’re talking 10-15 years from now, when a new nuclear plant would come online, there’s going to be a lot of EV batteries around. Maybe they get recycled but that seems a waste when they’ve only lost a little capacity. I guess we’ll see.
https://www.iea.org/reports/projected-costs-of-generating-electricity-2020
That’s 6 years old and written in conjunction with the NEA.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Energy_Agency
Still there’s this from that report:
In the US, at least nuclear is much more expensive than wind and solar.
Here’s last year’s figures. Nuclear is crazy expensive.
https://www.lazard.com/research-insights/levelized-cost-of-energyplus-lcoeplus/
Renewables can’t do it alone. Nuclear can be a large help.
I mean … that’s just not true.
It is.
This is going well, isn’t it?
Typically it’s on the person making the assertion to back it up with evidence but you do you.
Didn’t you just say something without backing it up
Yeah - if I cared I probably would. But I don’t.