New on LowEndTalk? Please Register and read our Community Rules.
Microsoft Goes Nuclear
raindog308
Administrator, Veteran
in General
Literally nuclear: they're planning to build their own reactors for their datacenters.
Job posting:
"We're looking for a Principal Program Manager, Nuclear Technology, who will be responsible for maturing and implementing a global Small Modular Reactor (SMR) and microreactor energy strategy. This senior position is tasked with leading the technical assessment for the integration of SMR and microreactors to power the datacenters that the Microsoft Cloud and AI reside on."
Comments
Let now: idling vps
Let in 10 years: idling nukes
Gaming vps emits blue light...
Yes, Nagasaki.
They were doing undersea dc as well
Dang it! Gotta up my game!!
This is pretty interesting if more private sector companies gain access to such generators.
The main question is: Who is responsible if the shit ends up blowing up due to mismanagement caused by saving on costs? Usually such plants are under government holding, if not then the government usually holds majority share and can also take responsibility when shit goes down.
And most of all, where will they dispose the used fuel rods and other stuff? Its already a huge issue now for governments. Which country would agree to store such dangerous stuff when it comes from a company that is not related to critical infra but instead the motivation is pure money generation and capitalism. There would be zero goodwill to accept used nuclear rods from a source that produced them just for greed.
Would love to see data center blown up for testing.
North Korea , Russia and other world 3 country
Regards
Dude! Your DC has a pool with blue glow sticks, cool!
If this goes well. Expect for a Bill Gates Nuclear Movie in 5-10 years ☢️ "Opengates"
What happens when a DC that employs nuclear goes belly up? Just asking
Sell to North Korea?? 
There are plenty of private companies with nuclear reactors, but they're all energy companies. I think this is the first time a private company wants to deploy a reactor and keep all the juice to itself.
Yeah, one problem is the liability. I'm sure it's insurable somehow. There may also be liability limits by law. Another issue is security: you don't want someone stealing the rods to make a dirty bomb.
These aren't massive campus-sized facilities. They're about 1/3 the size of a typical American sports area....say, large office-building-sized. By the time they actually get licensed and deploy something, they'll probably be smaller. Maybe one day they'll just be a room in a datacenter. A very well-shielded room...
I'm assuming they'd have access to the national nuclear materials management chain.
Admittedly, at present that does not include a long-term safe storage facility.
Which country? The US. I think we store all of our nuclear waste.
Not everyone has such communist views that profit is evil LOL. Microsoft would presumably pay whatever the going rate is for waste disposal, or would need to establish such a plan. If private energy companies can do it, I don't see why Microsoft cannot do whatever they do. No goodwill needed.
"Have you tried turning the reactor off and turning it back on again?"
Don't you worry, Bill G. is of course going to vaccinate the reactors (as well as everyone not running away fast enough).
The real reason to worry were if he had the controls running on Windows. Sadly not unlikely ...
Login screen to the server running the nuclear reactor
Let Nuclear Goes Microsoft.
psh.. what makes them think that the government will allow them to?
We can't even build new nuclear power plants....
Sometime in the night, the machine responsible for the coolant pumps will run a forced feature update because some untrained tech enrolled it in the insiders program.
I’m powered by McDonald’s and Pfizer
McDonald’s Sprite is sponsored by Pfizer.
Will be renamed to McTrump's soon.
How yesteryear!
Nuh, of course for that Windows embedded with a nice "welcome" screen with a cool animation will be used. And 3D sound, of course. And AI.
(Pardon me in case all of that already is today's desktop standard. I've pretty much stopped using Windows over 20 years ago, so I can't but guess).
McDonald’s Sprite is sponsored by a furry hedgehog
McDonalds Sprite contains another popular Pfizer product.
So Microsoft wishes to make a nuclear reactor which powers a datacenter used for artificial intelligence. This reminds me of a good movie I watched few months ago: Colossus: The Forbin Project.
When malware/ransomware takes over the Microsoft nuclear command servers and demands some bitcoin, do the hackers threaten to leak the sensitive data or cause a nuclear meltdown if MS refuses to pay?
Disney bought a town and, by law, allow to build a nuclear power plant. Can't remember the details but probaly something to do with the size of the town.
MS can do the same if not already done.
Disney bought a what? whata bout pullman? Disney is garbo.
Yes, the small reactors can be built en masse by standardization and modularity.
The problem is that the technology would not be able to compete with the green ones at a cost per GW as things stand right now.
That being said, the SMR could (in theory, barring maintenance, of course) be online permanently, while the wind, solar, hydro are depending on other factors which are intermittent by their own nature, so, overall, you need more installed capacity than the actual demand and a mix of solar/wind/hydro/storage to be fully renewable (nuclear is NOT renewable, unless fusion).
A cost of mixed portfolios without nuclear is still lower, i.e. including storage etc.:
As you can see, nuclear is even more expensive than gas, while fully integrated portfolios of various kinds of renewables+storage are cheaper overall.
Sure, the renewables are benefitting from mass production and economies of scale already while SMRs do not, so I would expect a halving of costs if a mass production starts of one of the models or the other. Maintenance would also drop a lot due to the same reason, so, in the future, it could, in theory, be competitive.