Google has signed a deal with California startup Kairos Power for six or seven small modular reactors. The first is due in 2030 and the rest by 2035, for a total of 500 megawatts. [Google blog; pre…
even if you’re ardently pro-nuclear, SMRs are just a failure purely on the economics and always have been. And that’s before wind/solar/battery made them just obsolete. So SMRs are the perfect tech when you don’t want to do anything useful.
See, I feel like AI might have the actual solution to this problem. We can overcome the economic issues with setting up SMR infrastructure the same way AI has powered through all their economic problems: setting VC money in fire and trust that the smokescreen will hold out for another funding round.
Once the reactors exist, I’m assuming that their operation can be relatively cheap for whoever ends up owning the actual plants once the AI bubble pops and the datacenters around them are shut down or repurposed.
even if you’re ardently pro-nuclear, SMRs are just a failure purely on the economics and always have been. And that’s before wind/solar/battery made them just obsolete. So SMRs are the perfect tech when you don’t want to do anything useful.
See, I feel like AI might have the actual solution to this problem. We can overcome the economic issues with setting up SMR infrastructure the same way AI has powered through all their economic problems: setting VC money in fire and trust that the smokescreen will hold out for another funding round.
Once the reactors exist, I’m assuming that their operation can be relatively cheap for whoever ends up owning the actual plants once the AI bubble pops and the datacenters around them are shut down or repurposed.