Microsoft Needs So Much Power to Train AI That It's Considering Small Nuclear Reactors
Microsoft Needs So Much Power to Train AI That It's Considering Small Nuclear Reactors
Microsoft is betting on small modular nuclear reactors to grow its energy infrastructure for training AI, a highly ambitious plan.
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Better than coal or oil, it might even result in more R&D into reactor designs.
Yeah, I don't understand why building a relatively clean energy source is a bad thing. Reactors are now like 3+ generations past the versions that were super dangerous. Hell, they even have reactors that can use spent fuel from other reactors.
Oil lobby and other interests. Follow the money. Plus it's easy to play on people's fears about radioactive waste.
Oh well, countries that know what's what just quietly build and use their reactors and go about their business. Finland for example is set for a while now.
Environmental groups are the biggest opposition to new nuclear builds.
Which is ironic because they like electric vehicles, and spent car batteries will soon become just as big of a problem as nuclear waste.
It's a bit of "not seeing the forest for the trees" situation, we have an immediate climate problem we're trying to stave off, if these are the things that will wean us off fossil energy than that's what we have to do for now and we'll cross that other bridge when we come to it.
The fallacy here is that any reactor that you initiate for planning even immediately at this very moment will come years or decades too late to affect our power composition and keep us under 1.5°C, which means that such projects distract society from the importance of green/renewable energy solutions like wind or solar, which we CAN expand very quickly and which WILL have a measurable effect on mitigating the effects of climate change. Solar and wind are the only things that can replace fossil in time.
True, but let's not forget that there are lots of perfectly good reactors sitting around unused, who could be brought back online within a practical time frame. Existing reactors is really what the debate is about, not those that don't exist.
You can recycle lithium batteries.
Someone on here made an interesting argument showing how conservative politicians are actually pushing nuclear hard. They do this to steer interest away from other renewables, but also because they know nuclear will go nowhere. It’s politically unviable with voters and regulatory bodies. The point is that the bottommost issue is public perception and bias against it. If we could overcome that, we’d at least have a fighting chance.
There’s no shortage of modern reactor designs. We have amazing stuff designed and even prototyped and proven - low waste, safely-failing reactors that basically can’t melt down. All we really lack is funding and regulatory clearance to build more.
Cortana, can you design a nuclear reactor to train you better?
Yes daddy
Searching “Design a nuclear reactor to train you better” on Bing…
This is part of their plan to reduce carbon emissions.
This is what corporations mean when they say "reduce carbon emissions"
You say that like it's a bad thing
It is, because corporate greenwashing will tell you that they reduced their emissions when all they did was scale up production using green energy. Their actual emissions didn't go down they just went down relative to their growth.
I thought this was a generic nuclear bad response, but in that case I definitely agree.