South Carolina To Reboot Giant Nuclear Project to Meet AI Demand (msn.com) 36
Santee Cooper, the big power provider in South Carolina, has tapped financial advisers to look for buyers that can restart construction on a pair of nuclear reactors that were mothballed years ago. From a report: The state-owned utility is betting interest will be strong, with tech giants such as Amazon.com and Microsoft in need of clean energy to fuel data centers for artificial-intelligence capabilities. The details Santee Cooper announced Wednesday it is seeking proposals for buyers to complete the project at South Carolina's sprawling V.C. Summer Nuclear Station, confirming an earlier report from The Wall Street Journal.
The utility is working with bankers at Centerview Partners, which will accept proposals until May 5. Santee Cooper will likely look to tap a consortium that could include a construction firm, a tech company that will use the power and an additional partner for capital, according to people familiar with the matter. It is also looking for another power company partner because it doesn't plan to own or operate the units once they are up and running.
The utility is working with bankers at Centerview Partners, which will accept proposals until May 5. Santee Cooper will likely look to tap a consortium that could include a construction firm, a tech company that will use the power and an additional partner for capital, according to people familiar with the matter. It is also looking for another power company partner because it doesn't plan to own or operate the units once they are up and running.
Nuclear apocalypse, then (Score:3)
If there's one thing we've learned to trust, it's that an American company won't ignore safety concerns in the name of higher profit margins, right?
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Trump is cutting back on regulations to help that along. Let's hope that it does not go up with a bang!
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Reactors don't typically go 'boom'; there's more of a 'woosh' if radioactive material escapes.
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Weird how for decades, the Regressive-Fuck Republicans were screaming no to nuclear power, along with solar, wind, and other renewables that SHOULD have been part of a stable and diversified energy plan for the country.
But now, instead of generating energy to heat homes, charge vehicles, etc... it's going to be turned on to line the pockets of AI Snake Oil and Crypto Bros?
I guess Organized Crime really does own the Republican Party these days.
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No Kennedy signed the "Community Mental Health Act" into law that dismantled the old psychiatric hospitals which kept patients for life in favor of some grand utopia system of mental health clinics that would spring up to help them but was never funded let alone built out.
What Reagan did was to remove Kennedy's system that was a complete failure. To be fair it was the last thing Kennedy ever did as it was days before his assassination. The sad thing is since then the largest federal mental health system i
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It's pretty funny your so frothy without actually knowing anything about US politics.
For instance did you know that the Democrats has had a unified congress (holding both branches) 14 sessions to the Republicans 13 out of the last 50 years? You have to go back to 1857 to get more Republican years than Democrats and at 25 R's to 23 D's.
https://history.house.gov/Inst... [house.gov]
That's even a stretch as the 'Party of Lincoln' was the liberal party verses the Wig's until the progressives split off to create the Democra
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Weird how for decades, the Regressive-Fuck Republicans were screaming no to nuclear power
Republicans are more likely than Democrats to support nuclear: 67% to 49% in a recent Pew Research Poll [pewresearch.org].
All recent reactors were built in red states.
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That was the old idea. First Chernobyl (steam explosion), then the fine nuclear engineers in Japan (Hydrogen explosion) demonstrated that nukes can indeed go "boom". Just not as a nuclear explosion, which was clear all along.
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Better nuclear than coal. Since no one seems to be interested in turning off the data centers at sunset you need to get the power from somewhere.
Does the utility have a graph like this one? If so you can see where the power is coming from. BPA has 2800 MW of installed wind capacity and 138 MW of solar, so the green line is really mostly wind.
https://transmission.bpa.gov/b... [bpa.gov]
Re: Nuclear apocalypse, then (Score:2)
If only we could drive power from false dichotomies espoused by nuclear fanboys.
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Yep. With the amount of hot air they generate, all energy problems could be solved immediately. Unfortunately, it is hot air without any real substance.
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Since no one seems to be interested in turning off the data centers at sunset
Hey look - another inbred republican that hasn't ever heard of batteries before.
Re:Nuclear apocalypse, then (Score:4, Interesting)
However the AP-1000 is engineering for extreme safety compared to other reactors. It can have all of it's generators wiped out for it's cooling systems, and it still passively cools the reactor for at least 3 days, when most Gen 1 and Gen 2 reactors can only cool for about 8 hours before losing control of a meltdown. There are currently 8 active reactors in China with 4 more under construction and 70 planned for the long term for China, mostly of a scaled up size called the CAP-1400.
I've worked for Westinghouse before. The problem with the company is that it has very good designs but doesn't know how to build them without cost overruns, which shut down this reactor in the first place. But for managing baseload, AP1000s are some incredibly safe systems and are proving their utility in many countries.
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The problem with the company is that it has very good designs but doesn't know how to build them without cost overruns...
The American system of "lowest bidder" encourages companies to under-bid and under-estimate costs. Every public construction project in existence [practical.engineering] has "gone over budget" for this reason.
Re: Nuclear apocalypse, then (Score:2)
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Here is the problem: _Nobody_ knows how to build nukes without massive cost overruns. Why? Because that is not actually possible. (Some hide the real cost better than others though...) This tech never would have a chance if it had to compete fairly. The only reason it got big was the possibility of the Bomb. Which is not possible without a rather large nuclear industry. Which, incidentally, is why the UK is willing to pay a totally insane price for Hinkley point.
Oh, and because the nuclear fanbois like to l
Summer was mothballed for good reasons (Score:2)
The Summer reactors in South Carolina are AP1000s, the same designed used at Vogtle in Georgia.
The Vogtle plant had massive cost overruns, decades of delay, and eventually cost over $30B, three times the original budget.
After spending $3B on Summer and experiencing many of the same patterns of dysfunction that led to the Vogtle debacle, SC decided it was better to pull the plug and eat the sunk costs.
So what has changed? Nothing that I can see, except all the engineers are now employed elsewhere or retired.
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CANDU MONARCH FTW.
Of course, now it'll you cost 25% more.
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I am so close to smashing this stupid phone and it's on screen 'predictive text is better than a physical keyboard anyway' keyboard.
I'll gladly give up a third of my screen to get a proper QWERTY and an optical pointer. BlackBerry did a few things right.
Re: Summer was mothballed for good reasons (Score:2)
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From what I understand one reactor is likely relatively low-risk completion; major long-lead items are placed. Still likely a $15B effort though for the one unit.
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So what has changed? Nothing that I can see, except all the engineers are now employed elsewhere or retired.
Which just will make things even more expensive and the delays even longer. Oh, and safety will be worse, but who cares.
Hmm. Maybe we could have an AI-based nuclear safety system on top? That will fixt things! Right? Right?
[L]oquaciously [L]ying [M]achinery (Score:2)
Has no one ever considered (Score:2)
Adding more generating capacity so the cost is lower for consumers?
Re: Has no one ever considered (Score:2)
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Don't worry, they have that covered [scdailygazette.com]. No way they'll let that happen.
So who is taking the risk? (Score:2)
Microsoft&Amazon&co could do Mankala financing ... ie. shoulder all cost overrun risk and the risk of other round the clock electricity sources becoming cheaper. Will they? Or will taxpayer take all the risk and a private company all the profit? (A private company which is friendly with the board of Santee Cooper.)
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when reliable power is needed (Score:2)
Too bad it will cost a lot. Maybe study just how China manages to build the same thing for $9billion: https://www.neimagazine.com/ne... [neimagazine.com] And no, they did not cut corners, this design was approved by the European Utility Requirements (EUR) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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clean energy, eye roll (Score:2)
"...with tech giants such as Amazon.com and Microsoft in need of clean energy to fuel data centers..."
Low carbon, but its not clean.
Scrub those lies with a Silkwood shower from the vernuclear vernacular.