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Sounds like it's time to stop hyperventilating over the biggest nuclear non-disaster in American history and build more reactors. Fun fact: in 1962, the Atomic

Sounds like it's time to stop hyperventilating over the biggest nuclear non-disaster in American history and build more reactors. Fun fact: in 1962, the Atomic Energy Commission projected there would be almost ten times as much available energy in 2060 as there was at the time. Today, I understand we consume just about two times as much. Anyone think we'll get across that finish line thirty years from now with the status quo?

Guthur 3y ago
Not while we allow gangsters to rule the world.
woodruffw 3y ago
I think the consensus on HN is generally pro-nuclear. Building nuclear plants because of pointlessly induced demand, however, is ridiculous: we should build nuclear capacity to replace existing capacities that we'd like to phase out. In addition to pointlessly raising the US's energy profile, Bitcoin has also made that aspect of the US's long-term power profile worse than it needs to be[1]. [1]: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/feb/18/bitcoin-miners-revive-fossil-fuel-plant-co2-emissions-soared https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/feb/18/bitcoin-m...
- nscalf 3y ago
  We should expand energy production where there is extra demand for energy. That new energy should likely be nuclear. To pass judgement on what the energy use should be is ridiculous, and very counter to the behavior of this country that let it grow.
  - matthewdgreen 3y ago
    Actually I think the idea of forcing crypto miners to use nuclear is brilliant. My proposal would require that they pay the full cost that nuclear charges to the grid, and also that they aren’t allowed to purchase power from any fossil sources or grid-connected renewables. I’m not sure this idea would be long-term economically sound but it would remove the major objection to crypto mining (carbon emissions) and if the crypto miners go out of business due to proof-of-stake becoming more common, they’ll hopefully have funded the construction of new nuclear plants for the rest of us.
- undersuit 3y ago
  Can we build the nuclear in Montana? Our prices are going up and the local utility is buying the Washington and Oregon ownerships of a MT coal plant.
- Phiwise_ 3y ago
  Thabk you for your contribution of a The Granuid article, the information that the United States is actually run by the Priestly Council of Bay Area /g/, and a second, not related to the thread reason to save the planet and cut everyone's energy bill by an order of magnitude that becomes a general case of the thread reason by the end. Truly we are all much better off.
  - woodruffw 3y ago
    I genuinely can’t parse this, sorry. What are you trying to say?
croes 3y ago
Energy consumption generates heat, let's avoid unnecessary heating.
- bequanna 3y ago
  Metabolism also generates heat. What’s your point here?
  - croes 3y ago
    Avoid additional unnecessary heating to necessary heating.
  - elbigbad 3y ago
    Not to put words in the posters mouth, but given that metabolism is necessary to maintain life and running server farms to generate imaginary lottery numbers at scale is not, the point is: Don’t waste time and energy on crypto nonsense.
    - bequanna 3y ago
      Ok, I follow you. But why is that for you to decide?
- dathinab 3y ago
  And entities which conversationally consume resources are normally seen as pests, plagues and similar with a tendency for their environment trying to eradicate them.
- Phiwise_ 3y ago
  There is probably zero electricity on the Moon, and yet it manages to get both much hotter and much colder than the Earth, somehow. Ever wondered why? Please read this, and then do us all a favor and read much more before trying to contribute to this subject's discussion again: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_effect
  - 3y ago
ceejayoz 3y ago
Do we need to get across that finish line?
- Phiwise_ 3y ago
  Do we need computers? Do we need indoor plumbing connected to active sewage treatment? Do we need heating out of anything more sophisticated than a wood-burning hearth of handmade bricks? Cutting the energy bill of the bottom half of the country by an order of magnitude seems to me a self-evident justification, and that's only the first-order effect. Manufactories of producer goods and specialty parts in Germany are shuttering right now because of newly-unmanageable energy cost fluctuations. That puts German workers on the curb, prices consumer goods for all of Germany's sub-median class higher while their wages fall from the labor glut and cratered investor/entrepreneur confidence, and bleeds the ability of producers still above water to maintain a healthy sales base through competitive international products and prices. With all these people in mind, I've started wondering something about your plea for frugality; what's your delta from the US median compensation, and do you tell it to people in politically-worrying husks like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, or Ohio after you're done reminding them they really could keep their heart beating without cheap energy if they just try a little harder?
  - ceejayoz 3y ago
    Long response that entirely misses the point. We don’t use 10x the energy because that guess from the 1960s entirely missed the technological revolution that is small, energy efficient computing. (And other similar advances. The 1960s never anticipated, say, how energy efficient a 787 could be. It was instead the era that thought you might slap a nuclear reactor in an aircraft. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convair_NB-36H https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convair_NB-36H) It’s not an appeal to frugality. It’s “raw energy usage alone is a goofy metric for a goal to increase”. Do we (including my relatives in the wasteland that is Ohio) need heating? Yep! But we don’t need 10x the energy to do it; my 97% efficient gas furnace replaced a 60% efficient one from the 1980s.
ajross 3y ago
Flogging a pet peeve[1] won't actually help in this case, no matter how popular it is in the local demographic. Mining is scale invariant, the value of the coins tends to the value of the energy, not the quantity. Make electricity cheaper and mining will just use more of it. [1] Standard response, which again isn't relevant to mining: Nuclear is simply way too expensive and by far the #1 reason it's not being built is because no one wants to write the checks to build it when solar is more than an order of magnitude cheaper. Fix that problem first, then start yelling about regulation.
- Phiwise_ 3y ago
  >Mining is scale invariant, the value of the coins tends to the value of the energy, not the quantity. Make electricity cheaper and mining will just use more of it. Isn't the value of mining really a function of the higher of both energy and computational availability, and, to my amateur understanding, don't most cryptocurrencies self-adjust their computational difficulty in response to more mining, which the return-value of each new miner less than the one before it? I'd wager that means the combination of time and silicon availability will cap the expansion long before it eats four-fifths of 2060 US' energy generation. >Nuclear is simply way too expensive and by far the #1 reason it's not being built is because no one wants to write the checks to build it when solar is more than an order of magnitude cheaper. Fix that problem first, then start yelling about regulation. You don't think there's a possibility the unjustifiable cost might come from the regulation more than the lack of value in displacing almost the entire electricity market?

Guthur 3y ago

Not while we allow gangsters to rule the world.

woodruffw 3y ago

I think the consensus on HN is generally pro-nuclear. Building nuclear plants because of pointlessly induced demand, however, is ridiculous: we should build nuclear capacity to replace existing capacities that we'd like to phase out. In addition to pointlessly raising the US's energy profile, Bitcoin has also made that aspect of the US's long-term power profile worse than it needs to be[1]. [1]: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/feb/18/bitcoin-miners-revive-fossil-fuel-plant-co2-emissions-soared https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/feb/18/bitcoin-m...

nscalf 3y ago
We should expand energy production where there is extra demand for energy. That new energy should likely be nuclear. To pass judgement on what the energy use should be is ridiculous, and very counter to the behavior of this country that let it grow.
- matthewdgreen 3y ago
  Actually I think the idea of forcing crypto miners to use nuclear is brilliant. My proposal would require that they pay the full cost that nuclear charges to the grid, and also that they aren’t allowed to purchase power from any fossil sources or grid-connected renewables. I’m not sure this idea would be long-term economically sound but it would remove the major objection to crypto mining (carbon emissions) and if the crypto miners go out of business due to proof-of-stake becoming more common, they’ll hopefully have funded the construction of new nuclear plants for the rest of us.
undersuit 3y ago
Can we build the nuclear in Montana? Our prices are going up and the local utility is buying the Washington and Oregon ownerships of a MT coal plant.
Phiwise_ 3y ago
Thabk you for your contribution of a The Granuid article, the information that the United States is actually run by the Priestly Council of Bay Area /g/, and a second, not related to the thread reason to save the planet and cut everyone's energy bill by an order of magnitude that becomes a general case of the thread reason by the end. Truly we are all much better off.
- woodruffw 3y ago
  I genuinely can’t parse this, sorry. What are you trying to say?

croes 3y ago

Energy consumption generates heat, let's avoid unnecessary heating.

bequanna 3y ago
Metabolism also generates heat. What’s your point here?
- croes 3y ago
  Avoid additional unnecessary heating to necessary heating.
- elbigbad 3y ago
  Not to put words in the posters mouth, but given that metabolism is necessary to maintain life and running server farms to generate imaginary lottery numbers at scale is not, the point is: Don’t waste time and energy on crypto nonsense.
  - bequanna 3y ago
    Ok, I follow you. But why is that for you to decide?
dathinab 3y ago
And entities which conversationally consume resources are normally seen as pests, plagues and similar with a tendency for their environment trying to eradicate them.
Phiwise_ 3y ago
There is probably zero electricity on the Moon, and yet it manages to get both much hotter and much colder than the Earth, somehow. Ever wondered why? Please read this, and then do us all a favor and read much more before trying to contribute to this subject's discussion again: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_effect
- 3y ago

ceejayoz 3y ago

Do we need to get across that finish line?

Phiwise_ 3y ago
Do we need computers? Do we need indoor plumbing connected to active sewage treatment? Do we need heating out of anything more sophisticated than a wood-burning hearth of handmade bricks? Cutting the energy bill of the bottom half of the country by an order of magnitude seems to me a self-evident justification, and that's only the first-order effect. Manufactories of producer goods and specialty parts in Germany are shuttering right now because of newly-unmanageable energy cost fluctuations. That puts German workers on the curb, prices consumer goods for all of Germany's sub-median class higher while their wages fall from the labor glut and cratered investor/entrepreneur confidence, and bleeds the ability of producers still above water to maintain a healthy sales base through competitive international products and prices. With all these people in mind, I've started wondering something about your plea for frugality; what's your delta from the US median compensation, and do you tell it to people in politically-worrying husks like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, or Ohio after you're done reminding them they really could keep their heart beating without cheap energy if they just try a little harder?
- ceejayoz 3y ago
  Long response that entirely misses the point. We don’t use 10x the energy because that guess from the 1960s entirely missed the technological revolution that is small, energy efficient computing. (And other similar advances. The 1960s never anticipated, say, how energy efficient a 787 could be. It was instead the era that thought you might slap a nuclear reactor in an aircraft. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convair_NB-36H https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convair_NB-36H) It’s not an appeal to frugality. It’s “raw energy usage alone is a goofy metric for a goal to increase”. Do we (including my relatives in the wasteland that is Ohio) need heating? Yep! But we don’t need 10x the energy to do it; my 97% efficient gas furnace replaced a 60% efficient one from the 1980s.

ajross 3y ago

Flogging a pet peeve[1] won't actually help in this case, no matter how popular it is in the local demographic. Mining is scale invariant, the value of the coins tends to the value of the energy, not the quantity. Make electricity cheaper and mining will just use more of it. [1] Standard response, which again isn't relevant to mining: Nuclear is simply way too expensive and by far the #1 reason it's not being built is because no one wants to write the checks to build it when solar is more than an order of magnitude cheaper. Fix that problem first, then start yelling about regulation.

Phiwise_ 3y ago
>Mining is scale invariant, the value of the coins tends to the value of the energy, not the quantity. Make electricity cheaper and mining will just use more of it. Isn't the value of mining really a function of the higher of both energy and computational availability, and, to my amateur understanding, don't most cryptocurrencies self-adjust their computational difficulty in response to more mining, which the return-value of each new miner less than the one before it? I'd wager that means the combination of time and silicon availability will cap the expansion long before it eats four-fifths of 2060 US' energy generation. >Nuclear is simply way too expensive and by far the #1 reason it's not being built is because no one wants to write the checks to build it when solar is more than an order of magnitude cheaper. Fix that problem first, then start yelling about regulation. You don't think there's a possibility the unjustifiable cost might come from the regulation more than the lack of value in displacing almost the entire electricity market?