Comment by dangus

Comment by dangus 3 hours ago

4 replies

Nuclear power works too, it’s clean and low carbon impact.

Can Microsoft and Google not afford to build a battery factory or nuclear power plant? Are they broke or something?

Why is the solution to scarcity of supply to bend over backwards and roll back regulations? The scarcity of supply itself should be a hint to society to stop supporting unfettered growth. Or maybe these mega-corporations need to get over it and pay fair market value for the projects they want to build.

Why do we have to breathe coal power emissions so that we can have one more ChatGPT wrapper nobody asked for?

nradov 39 minutes ago

Again it's a supply chain problem. Regardless of how much cash you have, you can't just order a new battery factory or nuclear power plant and have it up and producing in a couple years. We have eviscerated our supply chains for those things and no matter how much money we throw at the problem now it's going to take decades to reindustrialize. Rome wasn't built in a day.

If the concern is over externalities such as CO2 emissions and other types of pollution then sure, let's tax those directly. That will help accelerate solutions through free market mechanisms.

hvb2 3 hours ago

> Nuclear power works too, it’s clean and low carbon impact.

You want an AI company to invest in a project that takes decades to complete? What are the chances they're around when it completes and what powers their datacenters while that takes place

  • arghwhat 2 hours ago

    Just to be pedantic: The median construction time is 7 years. With very slow planning, it is a decade, not decades. It can be done faster though.

    Our power consumption won't be going down, and it generally wouldn't be the AI company itself running the project but the electricity companies that earn money supplying power that see dollar signs in all that extra electricity consumption.

    Even if the AI companies all die, our global electricity consumption will keep going up margins will be better than the retired plants, so it's a good investment regardless.

  • dangus an hour ago

    You mean like Google and Microsoft? They won’t be around when it completes?