this post was submitted on 17 Oct 2024
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Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here's the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.

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BRING IT ON NITPICKY NUKE NERDS

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[–] BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 21 points 2 months ago (1 children)

If these nuclear plants manage to come to fruition, it'll be the sole miniscule silver lining of the bubble. Considering its AI, though, I expect they'll probably suffer some kind of horrific Chernobyl-grade accident which kills nuclear power for good, because we can't have nice things when there's AI involved.

[–] dgerard@awful.systems 17 points 2 months ago (1 children)

even if you're ardently pro-nuclear, SMRs are just a failure purely on the economics and always have been. And that's before wind/solar/battery made them just obsolete. So SMRs are the perfect tech when you don't want to do anything useful.

See, I feel like AI might have the actual solution to this problem. We can overcome the economic issues with setting up SMR infrastructure the same way AI has powered through all their economic problems: setting VC money in fire and trust that the smokescreen will hold out for another funding round.

Once the reactors exist, I'm assuming that their operation can be relatively cheap for whoever ends up owning the actual plants once the AI bubble pops and the datacenters around them are shut down or repurposed.