News NVIDIA and Intel to Develop AI Infrastructure and Personal Computing Products

[Joe NYC]

They need to switch to Thorium power plants. Uranium is partially used because they want dual use for military, which is asinine because it's basically promoting extinction. So plan to decomissioning all existing plants for thorium ones.

By the way, Nuclear isn't completely clean. Regular operation itself slowly leaks radiation around the environment. It doesn't need 3-mile island or Chernobyl to do so.

Also, if it results in electric costs for average people, there should be curbing on datacenters. Priorities are really screwed up in countries where everything is comfortable and cushy like West.

It just happens that coal burning power plants emit more radiation than nuclear power plants, so the amount must be very low.

Gen IV nuclear power plants typically sodium cooled fast breeding reactors have quite a leap in efficiency and safety. Both Russia and China are building them. The West is now lagging quite a bit in nuclear energy.

 

[DavidC1]

Gen IV nuclear power plants typically sodium cooled fast breeding reactors have quite a leap in efficiency and safety. Both Russia and China are building them. The West is now lagging quite a bit in nuclear energy.

Moral degradation propagates into technical issues. Like the problems Boeing is having now. In turns out "traditional" values like family and religion is really good for focus, memory, goals, and an overall good person, or you know just not doing unhuman things.

 

[inquiss]

Moral degradation propagates into technical issues. Like the problems Boeing is having now. In turns out "traditional" values like family and religion is really good for focus, memory, goals, and an overall good person, or you know just not doing unhuman things.

What the hell are you talking about?

 

[Joe NYC]

Moral degradation propagates into technical issues. Like the problems Boeing is having now. In turns out "traditional" values like family and religion is really good for focus, memory, goals, and an overall good person, or you know just not doing unhuman things.

The issues holding back nuclear power in the West are political and ideological. Ideological are the funniest ones, since in the goal to lower carbon footprint, they instead transfer power generation from no footprint nuclear to high footprint gas, and the dirtiest of all - coal.

Building leading edge foundries in Taiwan will continue to face this issue.

As far as technological issues, it's all just down to engineering. Physical principles have all been solved on the theoretical.

Even a country as broke as Russia, since 1990s, has been able to complete Gen 4 prototypes, operate them on experimental bases and is finally near completion of commercial level. This was just on basis of their technology level from 1980s and minimum additional investment.

China, OTOH, wasn't even on the map, had no commercial nuclear power plants just ~35 years ago, has caught up or even overtaken Russia.

Even France, which is operating one of the largest fleets of nuclear plants has mostly stopped investment in new generations of nuclear power plants.

Features that Gen 4 offers are:
- safety: you can disconnect it from power and from human operators and it will safely shut itself down, on its own, in case of accident
- efficiency: instead of ~5% energy extracted by current nuclear power plants, it can extract up to ~95% of energy, by using fast breeding reactors and fuel reprocessing
- nuclear waste: because of how well it burns the energy, the amount waste that is left over is less, and degrades in terms of years and decades, rather than 1000s of years
- existing stockpiles of nuclear waste: these plants can re-use this spent fuel. There are tons of this spent fuel around the world, and it can be reused, unlocking the remaining ~90% of its energy. Which can in turn reduce the need for new uranium mining.

 

[adroc_thurston]

Ideological are the funniest ones, since in the goal to lower carbon footprint, they instead transfer power generation from no footprint nuclear to high footprint gas, and the dirtiest of all - coal.

you can just say 'Merkel'.

 

[Joe NYC]

you can just say 'Merkel'.

Merkel is the poster child for this bad energy / environmental policy.

But everyone knows about Merkel. What most people (including people who follow semiconductor industry) are unaware of is that Taiwan did the same. At its highest point, nuclear energy contributed 50% of Taiwan energy needs, and now it is zero. The last nuclear plant was apparently decommissioned just in August of this year.

Aside from high energy needs of semiconductor fabs, the AI datacenters are pure energy hogs, and lack of any surplus power generation in most of the Western countries is going to hold back this industry, most notably NVidia - if we project to the future the use of energy vs. new power generation coming online.

 

[adroc_thurston]

What most people (including people who follow semiconductor industry) are unaware of is that Taiwan did the same. At its highest point, nuclear energy contributed 50% of Taiwan energy needs, and now it is zero. The last nuclear plant was apparently decommissioned just in August of this year.

Taiwan's just kinda of in an pickle since NPPs tend to be extra vulnerable to IRBMs.

 

[Joe NYC]

Taiwan's just kinda of in an pickle since NPPs tend to be extra vulnerable to IRBMs.

But that's not really even needed if there was anyone sick enough who would want to turn Taiwan into Chernobyl. IRBM with nuclear warhead can do that job alone just fine.

So, if Taiwan is to be screwed one day, having nuclear power plants would not have made an iota of difference. Taiwan "disarmed" itself (as far as its energy needs) for nothing, other than ideological reason, similar to Germany.

 

[adroc_thurston]

IRBM with nuclear warhead can do that job alone just fine.

Well see, nukes are a no-go in terms of actual usage.

 

[Thunder 57]

It just happens that coal burning power plants emit more radiation than nuclear power plants, so the amount must be very low.

Gen IV nuclear power plants typically sodium cooled fast breeding reactors have quite a leap in efficiency and safety. Both Russia and China are building them. The West is now lagging quite a bit in nuclear energy.

Russia and China don't have all kinds of issues stopping them like the West does. What really sucks is that what is stopping progress is all nonsense.

 

[DavidC1]

The issues holding back nuclear power in the West are political and ideological. Ideological are the funniest ones, since in the goal to lower carbon footprint, they instead transfer power generation from no footprint nuclear to high footprint gas, and the dirtiest of all - coal.

It's not just ideological. If it was, you wouldn't have issues such as with Boeing.

Asking whether corruption started at the leadership level or general population level is almost akin to asking chicken or the egg question. Corruption is a moral thing, and and they feedback into each other. As the population degrades, so does leadership since you eventually pick among them or influence them.

 

[Joe NYC]

It's not just ideological. If it was, you wouldn't have issues such as with Boeing.

Asking whether corruption started at the leadership level or general population level is almost akin to asking chicken or the egg question. Corruption is a moral thing, and and they feedback into each other. As the population degrades, so does leadership since you eventually pick among them or influence them.

I think you are mostly right, but corruption tends to imply financial benefit, but if you include political benefit, then sure. Politicians running on fear, lies and ignorance, benefiting politically could be considered corruption.

One of the worst examples happened on New York's Long Island. Local private utility, Lilco (Long Island Lighting Company) that went back to year 1911, invested in a nuclear power plant that would power most, if not all of Long Island and part of New York City as well.

The politicians kept a finished power plant from being able to start operation, by coming up with hurdles, like "present a plan on how you evacuate 2-3 million people of Long Island in case of a meltdown".

This lead eventually with politicians completely seizing of this power company, never allowing the nuclear power plant to start operation. It was also a big warning to all the other independent power companies to not even think about building a nuclear power plant.

This example, among others, lead to ending of construction of all new power plants in US that lasted almost half a century.

If you starve industry of all resources for nearly half a century, it is not going to have any resources for R&D to modernize further.

In the meantime (nearly financially broke Russia) just announced a project for "closed fuel cycle" project, to be completed by 2030.

The nature of this is to take spent nuclear fuel, "reprocess it" by adding some highly fissile material to spent fuel. Doing this repeatedly allows up to 95% of all energy to be used up from nuclear fuel, unlike current rate of ~5%. This would result in being able to run nuclear power plants for some century or more just on reprocessing current stocks of nuclear waste, minimizing the need for new Uranium mining.

This fuel technology combined in Gen IV nuclear reactors, which can in one go already extract greater percentage of available power from fuel in one go would allow all of the northern regions of the globe to be powered by nuclear power, while the more southern region can more effectively use solar power.

Another proposal is to operate these big, power hungry datacenters in space, to get all the solar power in the world from there. That will also take a lot of datacenter / space janitors to operate these...

 

[Thunder 57]

I think you are mostly right, but corruption tends to imply financial benefit, but if you include political benefit, then sure. Politicians running on fear, lies and ignorance, benefiting politically could be considered corruption.

One of the worst examples happened on New York's Long Island. Local private utility, Lilco (Long Island Lighting Company) that went back to year 1911, invested in a nuclear power plant that would power most, if not all of Long Island and part of New York City as well.

The politicians kept a finished power plant from being able to start operation, by coming up with hurdles, like "present a plan on how you evacuate 2-3 million people of Long Island in case of a meltdown".

This lead eventually with politicians completely seizing of this power company, never allowing the nuclear power plant to start operation. It was also a big warning to all the other independent power companies to not even think about building a nuclear power plant.

This example, among others, lead to ending of construction of all new power plants in US that lasted almost half a century.

If you starve industry of all resources for nearly half a century, it is not going to have any resources for R&D to modernize further.

In the meantime (nearly financially broke Russia) just announced a project for "closed fuel cycle" project, to be completed by 2030.

The nature of this is to take spent nuclear fuel, "reprocess it" by adding some highly fissile material to spent fuel. Doing this repeatedly allows up to 95% of all energy to be used up from nuclear fuel, unlike current rate of ~5%. This would result in being able to run nuclear power plants for some century or more just on reprocessing current stocks of nuclear waste, minimizing the need for new Uranium mining.

This fuel technology combined in Gen IV nuclear reactors, which can in one go already extract greater percentage of available power from fuel in one go would allow all of the northern regions of the globe to be powered by nuclear power, while the more southern region can more effectively use solar power.

Another proposal is to operate these big, power hungry datacenters in space, to get all the solar power in the world from there. That will also take a lot of datacenter / space janitors to operate these...

The space idea is honestly a joke. No way to get the power needed through solar realisticly, and as you mentioned, maitenance? What's that?

 

[LightningZ71]

Power is the LEAST of your worries in space. The harsh radiation environment out there will cause no end of problems with multi-bit memory errors in the kind of lithography that terrestrial servers use. Radiation hardened servers will either be excessively heavy (dense shielding method) or not performant enough (special lithography nodes) to make any of it worth it.

 

[Racan]

Power is the LEAST of your worries in space. The harsh radiation environment out there will cause no end of problems with multi-bit memory errors in the kind of lithography that terrestrial servers use. Radiation hardened servers will either be excessively heavy (dense shielding method) or not performant enough (special lithography nodes) to make any of it worth it.

At the end of the day there are loads of factors that would drive costs way too much to be feasible in the foreseeable future.

 

[Joe NYC]

It looks like the SMR (Small Modular Reactors) that was supposed to be the future, may finally be happening. Amazon is investing in total of what looks like 12 of them for 960 MW power generating capacity. 80 MW per reactor.

Full size nuclear reactors tend to in 2 sizes either ~400-500 MW per reactor or 1,000-1,200 MW per reactor.

So it looks like the AI race, that is bottlenecked by power generation capacity, may finally cause the SMRs to finally take off.

Amazon plans to triple the size of debut X-energy nuclear plant

The nearly 1-gigawatt Cascade Advanced Energy Facility could transform the Pacific Northwest.

www.latitudemedia.com

 

[desrever]

It looks like the SMR (Small Modular Reactors) that was supposed to be the future, may finally be happening. Amazon is investing in total of what looks like 12 of them for 960 MW power generating capacity. 80 MW per reactor.

Full size nuclear reactors tend to in 2 sizes either ~400-500 MW per reactor or 1,000-1,200 MW per reactor.

So it looks like the AI race, that is bottlenecked by power generation capacity, may finally cause the SMRs to finally take off.

Amazon plans to triple the size of debut X-energy nuclear plant

The nearly 1-gigawatt Cascade Advanced Energy Facility could transform the Pacific Northwest.

www.latitudemedia.com

SMRs are stupid and wastes a lot efficiency to solve a self imposed problem. They are all hype and no substance and have been for 30 years. Over promise on their price and scaling to make them seem "economical".

Amazon could fund a full size reactor if it wanted for much less than getting 10 or 20 SMRs for the same capacity. And with the power demand of AI, theres no reason why they can't make use of all that capacity.

 

[Doug S]

The space idea is honestly a joke. No way to get the power needed through solar realisticly, and as you mentioned, maitenance? What's that?

This is another way you can tell we're in a huge bubble. People running huge companies posit insanely stupid ideas like putting datacenters in space and people are like "sounds great how do I invest it that?"

Cooling is problem the biggest problem of all. The dumbest thing I see is when articles are written about it clueless journalists (even tech journalists who you wish would know better considering the subjects they write about) talk about taking advantage of "free cooling" since space is near absolute zero as if there's a stiff northerly breeze blowing by at 2.7K.

 

[LightningZ71]

Transmission is just as big of a problem as generation. SMRs help get the reactor closer to the DC.

 

[Joe NYC]

This is another way you can tell we're in a huge bubble. People running huge companies posit insanely stupid ideas like putting datacenters in space and people are like "sounds great how do I invest it that?"

Cooling is problem the biggest problem of all. The dumbest thing I see is when articles are written about it clueless journalists (even tech journalists who you wish would know better considering the subjects they write about) talk about taking advantage of "free cooling" since space is near absolute zero as if there's a stiff northerly breeze blowing by at 2.7K.

Cooling was my first question as well. You can get all the power in space, but how do you remove the heat?

 

[Joe NYC]

Transmission is just as big of a problem as generation. SMRs help get the reactor closer to the DC.

That should not be a problem, since you can bring the datacenter close to the nuclear plant.

 

[Thunder 57]

That should not be a problem, since you can bring the datacenter close to the nuclear plant.

Mind you, I didn't check any of these numbers myself and it is from Tom's so errors are likely, but here is what they said:

Solar constant on earth is around 1,366W/m2, it should be around the same on the Earth orbit. High-efficiency triple-junction solar cells can convert about 35% of that into electricity, and after accounting for system-level losses like wiring, thermal inefficiency, and other factors, the net usable output is typically 300 – 410 W/m² depending on various factors. That means the project would need 2.4 to 3.3 million square meters of solar panel area — roughly equivalent to a square array between 1.56 and 1.82 km per side. Such an array would likely weigh 9,000 – 11,250 metric tons just for the photovoltaic material, not including structural supports, power routing, and control electronics.

Lifting 9,000 – 11,250 metric tons of space-grade solar panels into low Earth orbit (LEO) using today's best commercial launch vehicles — such as SpaceX's Falcon Heavy with an up to 64 metric tons payload — would cost between $13.7 and $17.1 billion at an optimistic ~$1,520/kg, assuming near-max efficiency in payload mass per launch. However, at a more conservative cost of over $2,000/kg, that cost will increase to $25+ billions and will require well over 150 launches only for solar panels.

 

[DrMrLordX]

@Thunder 57 If you use orbital solar arrays, you're also risking micrometeors and space junk/debris that isn't an issue for terrestrial installations. It's not a huge issue for smaller arrays on satellites (per se), but anything sufficiently-large will take hits eventually.

 

[Doug S]

@Thunder 57 If you use orbital solar arrays, you're also risking micrometeors and space junk/debris that isn't an issue for terrestrial installations. It's not a huge issue for smaller arrays on satellites (per se), but anything sufficiently-large will take hits eventually.

Solar arrays launched into space are designed to be pretty tolerant of impacts, since maintenance isn't an option the way it is for the panels on your roof or in a large field somewhere. Yes you'll lose power from small sections over time due to impacts, but it won't affect overall power production by a meaningful amount.

 

[LightningZ71]

That should not be a problem, since you can bring the datacenter close to the nuclear plant.

Existing US nuclear plants have large keep-out zones and are typically in locations that aren't ideal for data centers. Notable exceptions are locations where the DC company purchased the plant itself. Modern DCs are massive projects. It makes FAR more sense for them to find unused land near water, build out an SNR, and build the DC around it. There will then be near zero transmission losses and no grid impact, allowing for both maximum efficiency and flexibility.