this post was submitted on 16 May 2024
780 points (98.4% liked)

Technology

59422 readers
2957 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots


founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] barsoap@lemm.ee 4 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

small module nuclear reactors.

Hmm let's see what changed since I last looked. This study seems recent, just looking at the publicly available sections:

SMRs do not represent dramatic improvements in economics compared to large reactors.

Translation: They're way more expensive than renewables. SMRs have some advantage which are mentioned (less land usage, non-intermittency), then we have

The advanced SMRs are compared to conventional large reactors and natural gas plants,

...but not renewables+storage, which would be a good comparison point. If it looked any good they definitely would've included it.


Now that doesn't mean that these things don't make sense for Microsoft. It might e.g. simplify power distribution within datacentres to a degree that other sources just can't, also reduce or eliminate the need for backup power, etc. But generally speaking I'm still smelling techbro BS.

[–] b3an@lemmy.world 0 points 6 months ago

I don’t think Microsoft has a money problem.