TechTakes @awful.systems David Gerard @awful.systems 1 mo. ago

Three Mile Island nuclear plant is restarting to power AI for Microsoft

pivot-to-ai.com Three Mile Island nuclear plant is restarting to power AI for Microsoft

Good news, everyone! The Three Mile Island power plant, site of the worst nuclear disaster in US history, is restarting to power AI for Microsoft! [Press release; Washington Post, archive; Bloomber…

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Interesting as old nuclear plants are always said to be expensive to operate due to maintenance and old technology issues. Microsoft must really be in a bind to go for an expensive and uncertain supply.
- Advanced bayesian estimations show that the risks of a nuclear plant that is not yet operational are very low. And the chance that they will still be employed at microsoft (after the bubble pops) by 2028 is exceedingly low, reducing effective risk significantly !
  
  I was thinking of the economics as opposed to the safety aspects. Seems an expensive option.
- I assume this is pr to distract from their increasing use of fossil fuels
  
  Yeah but Three Mile Island? Seriously?
  
  Now it's possible that the MSFT press release gave it a more anodyne name and the press sussed out where it was, but still.
“We’re restarting the Three Mile island reactor and renaming it! [pause for effect] to Copilot!”
And instead of replacing fossil fuels, we're using it to power the AI pet projects of billionaires...
I hear they actually are planning to build a new campus there. They think they’ll create supersmart mutants to build their next gen AIs
Dogshit clickbait article. Summarizing several comments I made earlier:

Three Mile Island wasn't the unmitigated disaster that fearmongers would have you believe. It was an ultimately harmless accident that was highly publicized because of poor communication and irresponsible sensationalist journalism. TMI had zero fatalities, minimal release of radiation, and no measurable effect on health. Residents of the area were exposed to less radiation from the accident than the yearly background dose.

It was not a disaster, and most definitely not the worst on US soil.

More on the topic: https://youtu.be/cL9PsCLJpAA
- my least favorite thing about nuclear power is the reply guys
  
  i saw it in my email and thought "did he fucking read it" and looking through his history, he absolutely didn't
  
  There’s a specific kind of online commentator that’s a carrier of the meme that the public turn against nuclear power was the final nail in the coffin for Western civilization. I don’t have any proof of this, other than cultural. Nuke fondlers tend to be culturally and politically conservative, generally with engineering or science degrees, and seem to pine for the idealized 50s so present in tradwife media nowadays (although nuke love precedes that by decades).
  
  Opposition to nuclear power was sort of a death knell for the ideal of the technocrat.
  
  Now of course nuke enthusiasts tend to be libertarians too, and they run smack into the fact that nuclear is really capital-intensive and expensive to insure. Thus the pipe dream of the inherently safe “container reactor”.
  
  Sweden’s current gov is driven a lot by opposition to all things Green (both the party and the ideas) and pushed for the construction of 10 new reactors. It turns out that the industry has been burned by vacillating govs before and required hard financial guarantees, as well as a iron-clad price floor for electricity, to commit. So the pitch to the public would be: there’s no way you can lower your per-unit power cost for 30 years, and in return you get 10 items widely perceived as ugly and dangerous.
  
  Gotem coach
This feels like the start of an Outer Limits episode.
Yeah, this is gonna turn out well. What could possibly go wrong connecting an AI to a nuclear reactor in a populated area?
- do tell
  
  Terminator 2 but with Fallout 2 style super mutants.

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