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Microsoft inks deal to restart Three Mile Island nuclear reactor to fuel its voracious AI ambitions
(www.tomshardware.com)
this post was submitted on 21 Sep 2024
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I don't think that math works out, even when looking over the entire 70+ year life cycle of a nuclear reactor. When it costs $35 billion to build two 1MW reactors, even if it will last 70 years, the construction cost being amortized over every year or every megawatt hour generated is still really expensive, especially when accounting for interest.
And it bakes in that huge cost irreversibly up front, so any future improvements will only make the existing plant less competitive. Wind and solar and geothermal and maybe even fusion will get cheaper over time, but a nuclear plant with most of its costs up front can't. 70 years is a long time to commit to something.
Can you explain how wind and solar get cheaper over time? Especially wind, those blades have to be replaced fairly often and they are expensive.
Wind and solar also have to be paired with either cheap natural gas or energy storage systems that are often monstrously expensive. Unfortunately these numbers are almost always left out when one discusses prices.
People do appreciate the lights staying on, after all.
Yeah, we haven’t even gotten into the reliability. The have dead times where no output is created that nuclear doesn’t suffer from.