3 ms·

These are very long term bets. MS isn't betting much here, just staying involved just in case. Which is prudent but not much of a commitment. A big commitment f

These are very long term bets. MS isn't betting much here, just staying involved just in case. Which is prudent but not much of a commitment. A big commitment for a trillion dollar company would have a big dollar value. Like billions of dollars. That's not what's happening here. I like the idea of small reactors from a technical point of view. But I'm also a realist. To match current renewables growth (or even put a minor dent in it), many tens of thousands of these things are needed. They don't put out a lot of energy. In wind number of turbines it's something like 2-5 turbines per reactor. There already are tens of thousands of wind turbines. Plonking down a few hundred wind turbines is routine business. Getting the first small reactor online is still in progress. In other words, small reactors are not happening anytime soon. Certainly not in the next decade. If there are a few hundred active small reactors in 15 years that would be really amazing. And if that happens at a reasonable cost (big if) relative to wind, solar, and batteries, that would be even better. But we'll be well into the second half of this century before these things are putting a dent into other sources of energy. And that's only if it all works out in terms of cost and technology. 25 years is not that long in nuclear. Long planning cycles are common. These things have a lot to prove. I'm skeptical on especially the cost aspect. Nuclear proponents tend to gloss over the fact that nuclear has always been expensive. Things like waste handling and security add extra cost and small reactors just complicate that further. Small reactors have a lot to prove and the rosy projections tend to dodge the harder issues here. There's a lot of magical thinking around this topic. In any case, a few hundred of these things would be a meaninglessly small drop in the ocean in terms of energy output. It's not coming even close to the yearly growth with solar, wind, and batteries. And MS needs data centers sooner than even those would be coming online. And the energy to power them. Wherever that's going to come from, it's (mostly) not going to be nuclear any time soon. Unless they drastically scale down their AI expansion plans. And long term this is a cost game. MS is going to need lots of cheap energy. Expensive energy just raises its cost. Unless small reactors fix the cost issue, MS won't be using a lot of small reactors.

energy123 1y ago
This for me is the real crux. Safety, nuclear waste, land-use, etc, are all issues of relatively trivial concern. They're fixations on the wrong question. The dominant issue is delivering competitive unit economics. For SMRs, all their work is still ahead of them. To get the learning rate going, you need to start mass production. Then you need to double that production again, and again, and again. Then, after 2-3 decades of doublings, you may be able to deliver $/Wh in the ballpark of where solar & storage is today. Never mind that solar & storage will undergo multiple more doublings between now and then, and never mind that private industry will struggle to fund the required doublings for SMRs because it's not the maximally profitable choice on the margin. It's just a very difficult pragmatic picture for nuclear.
- jacquesm 1y ago
  > Then, after 2-3 decades of doublings, you may be able to deliver $/Wh in the ballpark of where solar & storage is today. I highly doubt that will be the case. Even if solar and wind do not get better costwise (which is likely not true) the cost of maintaining and decommissioning SMRs is likely only to go up. This based on every other nuclear power plant to date, I have seen zero good arguments on why SMRs would be an exception to that rule.
  - energy123 1y ago
    It's worth noting that the nuclear power plants of the 1960s follow different scale economics to SMRs. Casey Handmer makes this point in his online interviews and debates. The 1960s plants get their scale benefits from their sheer size. Similar to building a few massive aircraft carriers or massive olympic stadiums, however inefficiently each one is built. SMRs are more akin to mass manufactured widgets, where the scale benefits come solely from manufacturing efficiencies gained through volume. They'll have a learning rate that governs the price declines for each doubling in production volumes. From a unit economics POV, it's probably more useful to think of SMRs as a solar/battery-like technology rather than a 1960s nuclear-like technology. The problem for SMR proponents is that solar/batteries have had 50 years of this feedback loop playing out, but SMRs are starting from no volume.
    - jacquesm 1y ago
      All of the plans that I've seen for SMR 'farms' were hopelessly naive when it came to security, decommissioning and compliance costs. They were just a hair above that 'swimming turtle island' when it comes to design phase realism. I really see them more as a way to milk subsidies than something that will actually happen in the next 30 years or so, especially not given the rate at which we are putting up solar and stringing HVDC interconnects, which in my opinion are the answer to the storage problem.
      - energy123 1y ago
        > stringing HVDC interconnects Agree that this solves many of the same problems as storage (as does overbuilding). The PR problem with renewables is that the solutions are invariably cognitively complicated and multifactorial. The solution is going to be some kind of optimized result that mixes various storage forms, HVDC interconnects, overbuilding, and diversifying with solar and wind, and the exact nature of the solution is going to vary by geography. It's just a hopelessly difficult communication challenge. If so many HN people can't grasp these concepts and jump to provably incorrect catchphrases like "storage is too expensive", then what hope is there for the general public.
torginus 1y ago
Renewables can't meet the base energy needs. You can't only run your datacenters and factories when the wind blows or the sun shines. They also have low power density, making them problematic at grid scale. SMRs fix all the issues of modern nuclear reactors. SMR's are not 'small' in the absolute sense, they're on the scale of traditional power plants, not existing nuclear reactors. They have a ton of advantages: - They are inherently safe, no need to worry about meltdowns. - They produce power comparable to existing power plants. Nuclear plants have huge issues with producing tons of power in a centralized manner, meaning the energy infrastructure needs to be designed around them, and probably you need a centralized infrastrucure for power distribution, which might not jive well with local politics. They also need huge concentrated cooling capacity, which might have negative ecological effects, and present a huge risk should they need to be shut down. The recent issues in France with global warming, where the rivers water level got lower and the water warmer, cutting down on cooling margins dramatically leading to shutdowns comes to mind. - In contrast SMRs can be slotted into current energy infrastructure. Modern reactor designs can be throttled to match grid needs. - SMRs are standardized, smaller and don't need to be built on site and can be built relatively quicker and cheaper. This is huge. If a traditional plant costs $20B and takes 20 years to build, the interest on the loans could mean it's never going to be financially viable. If you cound do something that makes quarter the power, but costs $5B and 5 years to build, it's an entirely different value proposition. China is already building these, and they are the main country of origin for solar panels and equipment. Renewables make a ton of sense, but can't solve every issue.
- energy123 1y ago
  > You can't only run your datacenters and factories when the wind blows or the sun shines. You're going to need more work than a bare assertion to demonstrate this, given that storage exists, and given that gas peaking exists, and given that interconnects exist. Consider these: - https://www.offgridai.us/ https://www.offgridai.us/ - https://sci-hub.se/10.1039/c7ee03029k https://sci-hub.se/10.1039/c7ee03029k
- jillesvangurp 1y ago
  > Renewables can't meet the base energy needs. That assertion is not something everyone agrees with. And baseload is hardly ever qualified with even a ballpark estimate in GW or GWH of capacity needed. So, it's a fairly hollow and meaningless term. And the reality is that for every 100GW added to grids world wide, about 80% or more is renewable. Nuclear is only small portion of the remaining capacity. And SMRs are a rounding error on that. Most of the rest is gas based generation. Besides, data centers are a great example of something that can easily scale up and down its energy consumption based on price signals, user demand, etc. So, it's actually ideal to pair with fluctuating supply and demand from renewables. Using e.g. spot instances makes it easy for data centers to scale down their demand if energy is scarce and expensive. Other things they could do is throttle CPUs/GPUs based on energy pricing or encourage people to time shift non critical jobs to when energy is plentiful. SMRs won't have fixed anything until there are lots of them. Whether you believe this will happen or not, it won't be happening very soon. Realistically, SMRs will remain a niche solution for decades to come; even if they do work at reasonable cost levels.

energy123 1y ago

This for me is the real crux. Safety, nuclear waste, land-use, etc, are all issues of relatively trivial concern. They're fixations on the wrong question. The dominant issue is delivering competitive unit economics. For SMRs, all their work is still ahead of them. To get the learning rate going, you need to start mass production. Then you need to double that production again, and again, and again. Then, after 2-3 decades of doublings, you may be able to deliver $/Wh in the ballpark of where solar & storage is today. Never mind that solar & storage will undergo multiple more doublings between now and then, and never mind that private industry will struggle to fund the required doublings for SMRs because it's not the maximally profitable choice on the margin. It's just a very difficult pragmatic picture for nuclear.

jacquesm 1y ago
> Then, after 2-3 decades of doublings, you may be able to deliver $/Wh in the ballpark of where solar & storage is today. I highly doubt that will be the case. Even if solar and wind do not get better costwise (which is likely not true) the cost of maintaining and decommissioning SMRs is likely only to go up. This based on every other nuclear power plant to date, I have seen zero good arguments on why SMRs would be an exception to that rule.
- energy123 1y ago
  It's worth noting that the nuclear power plants of the 1960s follow different scale economics to SMRs. Casey Handmer makes this point in his online interviews and debates. The 1960s plants get their scale benefits from their sheer size. Similar to building a few massive aircraft carriers or massive olympic stadiums, however inefficiently each one is built. SMRs are more akin to mass manufactured widgets, where the scale benefits come solely from manufacturing efficiencies gained through volume. They'll have a learning rate that governs the price declines for each doubling in production volumes. From a unit economics POV, it's probably more useful to think of SMRs as a solar/battery-like technology rather than a 1960s nuclear-like technology. The problem for SMR proponents is that solar/batteries have had 50 years of this feedback loop playing out, but SMRs are starting from no volume.
  - jacquesm 1y ago
    All of the plans that I've seen for SMR 'farms' were hopelessly naive when it came to security, decommissioning and compliance costs. They were just a hair above that 'swimming turtle island' when it comes to design phase realism. I really see them more as a way to milk subsidies than something that will actually happen in the next 30 years or so, especially not given the rate at which we are putting up solar and stringing HVDC interconnects, which in my opinion are the answer to the storage problem.
    - energy123 1y ago
      > stringing HVDC interconnects Agree that this solves many of the same problems as storage (as does overbuilding). The PR problem with renewables is that the solutions are invariably cognitively complicated and multifactorial. The solution is going to be some kind of optimized result that mixes various storage forms, HVDC interconnects, overbuilding, and diversifying with solar and wind, and the exact nature of the solution is going to vary by geography. It's just a hopelessly difficult communication challenge. If so many HN people can't grasp these concepts and jump to provably incorrect catchphrases like "storage is too expensive", then what hope is there for the general public.

torginus 1y ago

Renewables can't meet the base energy needs. You can't only run your datacenters and factories when the wind blows or the sun shines. They also have low power density, making them problematic at grid scale. SMRs fix all the issues of modern nuclear reactors. SMR's are not 'small' in the absolute sense, they're on the scale of traditional power plants, not existing nuclear reactors. They have a ton of advantages: - They are inherently safe, no need to worry about meltdowns. - They produce power comparable to existing power plants. Nuclear plants have huge issues with producing tons of power in a centralized manner, meaning the energy infrastructure needs to be designed around them, and probably you need a centralized infrastrucure for power distribution, which might not jive well with local politics. They also need huge concentrated cooling capacity, which might have negative ecological effects, and present a huge risk should they need to be shut down. The recent issues in France with global warming, where the rivers water level got lower and the water warmer, cutting down on cooling margins dramatically leading to shutdowns comes to mind. - In contrast SMRs can be slotted into current energy infrastructure. Modern reactor designs can be throttled to match grid needs. - SMRs are standardized, smaller and don't need to be built on site and can be built relatively quicker and cheaper. This is huge. If a traditional plant costs $20B and takes 20 years to build, the interest on the loans could mean it's never going to be financially viable. If you cound do something that makes quarter the power, but costs $5B and 5 years to build, it's an entirely different value proposition. China is already building these, and they are the main country of origin for solar panels and equipment. Renewables make a ton of sense, but can't solve every issue.

energy123 1y ago
> You can't only run your datacenters and factories when the wind blows or the sun shines. You're going to need more work than a bare assertion to demonstrate this, given that storage exists, and given that gas peaking exists, and given that interconnects exist. Consider these: - https://www.offgridai.us/ https://www.offgridai.us/ - https://sci-hub.se/10.1039/c7ee03029k https://sci-hub.se/10.1039/c7ee03029k
jillesvangurp 1y ago
> Renewables can't meet the base energy needs. That assertion is not something everyone agrees with. And baseload is hardly ever qualified with even a ballpark estimate in GW or GWH of capacity needed. So, it's a fairly hollow and meaningless term. And the reality is that for every 100GW added to grids world wide, about 80% or more is renewable. Nuclear is only small portion of the remaining capacity. And SMRs are a rounding error on that. Most of the rest is gas based generation. Besides, data centers are a great example of something that can easily scale up and down its energy consumption based on price signals, user demand, etc. So, it's actually ideal to pair with fluctuating supply and demand from renewables. Using e.g. spot instances makes it easy for data centers to scale down their demand if energy is scarce and expensive. Other things they could do is throttle CPUs/GPUs based on energy pricing or encourage people to time shift non critical jobs to when energy is plentiful. SMRs won't have fixed anything until there are lots of them. Whether you believe this will happen or not, it won't be happening very soon. Realistically, SMRs will remain a niche solution for decades to come; even if they do work at reasonable cost levels.