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- Hacker News
- > DOE Awards $2.7 Billion for Uranium Enrichment
Why are they getting so much money for this? Isn't there private capital with Meta involved?
> The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced $2.7 billion to strengthen domestic enrichment services over the next ten years. The historic investment expands U.S. capacity for low-enriched uranium (LEU) and jumpstarts new supply chains and innovations for high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) to create American jobs and usher in the nation’s nuclear renaissance.
hmm, seems like a pretty steep investment. Hopefully it returns some tax money
by dmix - News from January OP;
Discussion on this and related Meta nuclear moves at the time:
Meta announces nuclear energy projects
- Meta have recently appointed a new president, ex Wall Street with connections to sovereign wealth and also she is married to a republican politician
Financial press saying they are exploring all means of raising large sums of money for AI investment
Also rumours Meta is going to start a Cloud business.
by fsuts - > The eight 345 MW advanced sodium cooled reactors would provide Meta with up to 2.8 GW of carbon-free, baseload energy. Each reactor comes with the Natrium technology’s innovative built-in energy storage system providing the capacity to boost total output to 4 GW of power.
For energy storage, is it storing the hot water, or using batteries to store generated electricity?
by nelsondev - Sodium cooled. They will store heat in a big thermos of molten salt.by sandworm101
- I think it is a bad idea to allow Meta to participate in nuclear reactor operations. Nuclear reactors and other power infrastructure should be utility-owned and managed under clear regulations designed to eliminate the possibility of control by outside interests who might, or would, be tempted to unload byproducts suitable for production of weapons to anyone who had the money to buy them. They should be prohibited from spinning off any part of their operations into weapons development and prohibited from investing in any entity that is involved in weapons production.
I like the idea of a network of thorium reactors. I don't want to see any part of that network owned or controlled by people that we already know place their own selfish interests above everything else.
Therefore I guess I am suggesting that high net worth individuals should be prohibited from all investments in or operations involving weapons production.
Maybe I just don't trust that guy and think that he would gladly offload the responsibility of waste disposal or processing on anyone in a backroom deal that we don't learn about until he has been providing materials to refine and construct weapons to individuals who will gladly employ them in attacks.
I'm not paranoid, I just hate assholes.
- I mean, didn't we give the government and the public long enough to prove they could provide abundant, cheap nuclear? They were so closed in the 60/70s and have since failed miserably and everyone has suffered for it. Cheap, abundant energy is good for humanity. If a private company accelerates it, I'm here for it.
Yes, I'm also for solar, and wind, and geothermal, and nat gas, and way out there fusion. It's hard to exaggerate how much cheap, abundant, reliable energy helps civilization.
by chermi - ?
just because Meta is funding or purchasing power from a nuclear plant doesn't put those plants outside regulatory jurisdiction
by missedthecue - But everything about this is already privatized, from the uranium mining to the nuclear power plant operators to the nuclear waste disposal, to each piece in the nuclear triard manufacturered by military industry, from the private contractors guarding our bombs down to the luxury fallout shelter industry. It's big business. You aren't paranoid, just naive to think Mark Zuckerberg is in any way the problem in particular, think of all the billionaire assholes you have never heard about.by lyu07282
- Most nuclear power plants worldwide are owned and operated by private companies rather than governments?
If anything, nuclear tends to be much more strictly regulated than the 73 GW (wtf) of off-grid mostly gas plants to power datacenters for example.
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/fast-tracked-power-p...
by dopa42365 - > A dual Natrium reactor site can provide 690 MW of reliable 24/7 365 power
Given that they haven’t actually built one, asserting the performance seems inappropriate, _especially_ the uptime which IIRC is far, far higher than is typical for proven designs, let alone a new one.
by Octoth0rpe - Well operated, mature nuclear power plants can easily achieve 90%+ uptime. I don’t think this is a huge issue.by christina97
- The name makes me think it is a molten salt reactor, but it uses liquid sodium. Still aptly named.
I was hoping the Thorium molten salt ones with atmospheric pressure vessels would pick up pace thanks to this boom in power demand or Helion would arrive on the scene right on time for this.
by gopalv - It is a molten salt reactor, just not a molten salt thorium reactor.by eigenspace
- Even if this flops, it's still better to lose money on this than the Metaverse.by pornel
- > Under this commercial agreement, Meta will provide funding to support the deployment of the Natrium plants, with delivery of initial units as early as 2032
The wording there implies some upfront money from Meta, and that this isn’t just a PPA like we normally see.
But with no numbers attached it’s hard to know if it’s a serious investment or just PR fluff.
by MichaelNolan - Does anyone understand how Meta is able to spend so much money on AI with basically no AI product to speak of? Especially after sinking billions of dollars into a failed VR product? I just don't really understand why they are investing in data centers, I don't know of any actual product they offer that anyone is seriously considering using in the space.by kamranjon
- Internal use to watch everything and control everythingby btbuildem
- They are using the same infinite money glitch as Google - ads revenue.by SoKamil
- They will sell the capacity to others. And building data centers let's them leverage local tax advantages/incentives.by sandworm101
- They're not using their money, they're borrowing it and using Special Purpose Vehicles to book the debt so it doesn't hit their own balance sheet.by rchaud
- Because Zuckerberg is the king and has complete control, but Meta is so far behind in this so-called AI model race it will be canceled quietly. It will just be but a footnote in about 2 to 3 years.by Danox
- The market forgives misadventures cause Meta is still solvent and they make money YoY. Additionally, they are developing heavily in the AI space with making Llama available to the public and all the AI integrations into their products.by magicmicah85
- > with basically no AI product to speak of?
I don't use Meta products regularly, but they've crowbarred the "Meta AI" feature into everything - FB Messenger, Whatsapp, Instagram... There's even a standalone website to chat with the Meta AI model similar to chatgpt:
I'm certainly prepared to agree that they don't have a huge amount of traction or marketshare, but they absolutely have already built AI products and they exist.
Outside of their own consumer products, there's the family of llama models too etc.
by giobox - There are many uses for AI other than selling API/chat access. For Meta it can be for example use internally as a software tool, in the same way that they have their own datacenters instead of running on AWS. They can also use them to power recommendation algorithms to increase time on platform. Or they can use them to better target adverts and thus increase the revenue from ads. They can also use them to help people make ads on their platforms etc....by zipy124
- Their first demonstration reactor is scheduled to go online in 2031. But they’re going to build 8 production reactors, with all the regulatory hurdles, in any reasonable length of time? Right.
The headline should probably be, “Meta invests in nuclear startup” and leave it there. My guess is this deal is quietly swept under the rug when the first reactor fails to go fully online by 2032.
by pico303 - People on HN really love small-scale fission nuclear when the sun is (gestures) right there.by salynchnew
- Didn't the Trump admin put in the same lawyer who helped Uber to "reform" the NRC? I can't find the Bloomberg article but they made it sound like they were going to gut the NRC. To be clear I am not endorsing this, but I read that was happening or they were at least trying.by srmatto
- This is the correct responseby Unicironic
- Can you really call a 20 year old company a startup?by tzs