this post was submitted on 27 Jul 2024
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A Boring Dystopia

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[–] [email protected] 61 points 3 months ago (4 children)

This is focusing on the wrong thing. Electricity demands should be expected to drastically increase, with or without llms or other such programs. We need to be focusing on electrifying pretty much everything if we’re going to make a dent on carbon emissions, which will naturally lead to a significant increase in power demands. If that only leads to different and/or more carbon emissions, that’s a problem with the infrastructure of the grid, not what it’s powering.

And to be clear, I think these companies using stupid amounts of power to run these things is stupid as hell, but blaming them for problems that should have been addressed ages ago isn’t going to solve the problem. We need massive and sweeping infrastructure changes asap.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (3 children)

The problem is, there is no plan in the US to upgrade the power grid - either at privaty company level, state level or federal level. It's just not in the cards. And the grid is headed straight for a complete collapse with the double whammy of electric cars and AI.

The other problem is, if you keep using coal to meet electrical demands, this will certainly make zero dent on carbon emissions. The other thing that needs to happen besides upgrading the grid is a massive increase in combined renewables / battery storage solution, or of course viable fusion power (fat chance...)

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 months ago

a massive increase in combined renewables / battery storage solution

This is happening.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Power utilities frequently complain about declining base load generation capacity. On this particular issue, they are actually correct. You have to have a consistent level of base load generation capacity that is capable of scaling to meet peak demand. Wind and solar power are great but are not available on demand.

So, you can either store excess power generated by renewable sources or generate with non-renewable sources. Utility scale storage just isn't there at this point. Many of the coal plants that have been retired over the past two decades have been replaced by natural gas plants, which isn't really an improvement.

One thing that probably exacerbates this problem is the fact that much of the power generated in the US has historically been fairly localized. Meaning, it's generated pretty close to where it's consumed. Moving away from a "local" generation model is not as easy as it sounds and makes utilities nervous, for legitimate reasons.

What we need in the interim is more small scale nuclear development. It's far from a perfect solution but it's way better than what we currently have.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago

Yep! Base load generation is the amount of energy that is constantly required and it has to be consistent. Any city or area will always use a certain minimum amount of energy, at every hour of the day. There is never a minute that demand dips below and this is called the base load. Intermittent renewables without storage can’t cover it, yet.

The other problem is economics. Hydro, geothermal, natural gas, nuclear, and coal can be operated to generate consistent reliable amounts of energy to cover it but at different costs. Removing hydro and geothermal as not all regions can leverage it - leaves, generally, coal, nat gas, and nuclear. Coal has been generally actively phased out over the last decade (in the US at least, I’m sure elsewhere), leaving natural gas and nuclear as options.

Nuclear with a substantially lower, if not negligible, carbon footprint outside of construction has so much red tape and lack of expertise and economies of scale that each plant and part ends up being close to bespoke with high costs and long construction times. Something like eight years and multiple billions of dollars.

Natural gas plants can be brought online in something like 1.5 to 2 years for substantially lower costs due to mass production, broader expertise, and less regulation.

What this leads to is a price per kW for being something like $.80+ for nuclear and like ~$.20 for natural gas over the lifetime of the plant.

These are all figures I loosely recall and haven’t confirmed or updated in my mind in a few years so I’m sure I’m off but the differences are roughly the same.

Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) are looking to innovate to solve this economic problem with nuclear by providing mass production capabilities of nuclear power but we aren’t there yet.

So, for now, economically, natural gas is often chosen over nuclear just as coal was before it. Hopefully that changes in the future sooner rather than later.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago

There are plenty of plans. They’re just wholly inadequate.

Looking at my state. Coal is long gone. We plan offshore wind farms …. That keep getting blocked. We plan to buy huge amounts of long distance hydro … but transmission lines are blocked by intervening states. The ideas are there, the plans are there, but follow through is not. Clearing the obstacles is not

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[–] [email protected] 40 points 3 months ago (1 children)

When they say AI might destroy humanity, it's not due to some Terminator scenario...

It's just cause they're trashing the planet.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Do I need to go dig in Grand Central Station trash cans for a floppy disc?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Wait, is that a hackers reference?!?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Is this the account number of the hidden bank account in the Bahamas that the money was supposed to be deposited into?

I think so!

[–] [email protected] 23 points 3 months ago

we decided to slow plans to retire something no one wants to support something else that no one wants.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 3 months ago (9 children)

AI seems to be just more and more statistical probabilities hashed-out at record-breaking speeds and power-consumption of computing. Its like that adage, "sufficiently advanced that it is magic" we are doing that for AI. We are building more and more complex statistical analysis engines that spew out near-perfect answers from garbage inputs at the expense of actual analysis ,research and development.

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 3 months ago

lets fuck the planet up just a little bit more so that Russia and billionaires can spam the internet with chatgpt bots and create fake images.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 3 months ago (33 children)

Give me an N!

N!

Give me a U!

U!

Give me a C!

C!

Give me an L!

L!

Give me an E!

E!

Give me an A!

A!

Give me an R!

R!

What does that make?

NUCLEAR!

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Let the big tech pay for it.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago
[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Please don't let venture capital get it's fingers around the power grid that can't possibly end well

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)

A plant blew up one time due to being poorly mismanaged and an earthquake broke another one. Meanwhile nothing bad has ever happened in the history of non-nuclear power generation. /s

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Ofc! Oil gas and coal ONLY burn when placed in a funace. Attempt to light it on fire anywhere else and it will know and refuse catch fire. Its a safety feature. /s

With nuclear, you cant reason with it! Thats why we have to keep the brightest minds around th facility, to trick it into stopping via reverse psycology. /s

Centralia became a portal to hell... and they are claimimg it's burning coal. SMH! /s

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

I never said that nothing bad has happened with nuclear power.

Nuclear disasters are local, the ongoing climate change disaster powered by coal plants (which let our a hell of a lot more radiation than nuclear plants) is global.

I'll take a local disaster any day over a global disaster

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago (3 children)

Nuclear plants cannot be built fast enough for the ever growing demands of "AI".

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago
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