Google commits to buying power generated by nuclear-energy startup Kairos Power

Finally, 24 years in, it’s really starting to FEEL like a new century.

Whatever. We’ve done too little, too late in order to tackle the climate threats.

We’ve had the technology to build and deploy nuclear reactors for decades but we’ve been burning coal and fuel like there’s no tomorrow so well…

Epochal "century" boundaries don't always line up with year % 100. One could argue that the 20th century didn't properly begin until some idiot shot an archduke. It likewise seems like the 20th century likewise overshot Y2K by a decade or two. Now things are accelerating in a different, new, and exciting direction.

We're getting there.

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/10102024/inside-clean-ene...

https://coal.sierraclub.org/coal-plant-map

https://www.vox.com/climate/372852/solar-power-energy-growth...

https://www.dnv.com/news/eto-energy-related-emissions-will-p...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41602799 (citations)

It's the same thing with decades. People often say the "sixties" didn't really start till 1963. And when you think of the start of 1980's culture, a lot of people are really only talking about 1983-1984.

Like, 1960 itself clearly belonged to the 1950's, the same way 1980 still belonged to the 1970's -- culturally, that is.

Obviously, the question of what year a decade "really" started in, allows for endless argument. :)

The future is here, it's just not evenly distributed..

The famous 4chan quote springs to mind.

"The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago. The second best is now."

4chan? Are you serious?

That proverb is ancient - it has been around for centuries (if not longer).

The 90s ended on 9/11.

Pick your favorite wise quote source:

[1] Ancient Chinese proverb [2] Abraham Lincoln [3] Albert Einstein [4] 4Chat/Reddit/Twitter

Sort of feels like we wasted a long time having our best and brightest figuring out how to optimize advertising algorithms. I think we're finally starting to recover from that phase.

daily temperatures consistently above +2 ºC the median average since 1970 in my region

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Long_nineteenth_c... (I am linking like this because this version I read myself.)

These nuclear reactors are literally being built to optimize advertising algorithms.

Sort of, they are being built to power AI models which do all kinds of things, but yes definitely advertising is part of it. Ads are mature now though, these mega corps have fine-tuned their products and squeezed every last advertising penny out of their audiences that they can, there isn't as much new stuff to build in that area now.

We should probably prioritize getting there faster then, and taking fossil fuel supply chain infrastructure and generation offline.

Um, fission reactors are very much last century.

Nah, those are the giant overly complex fission reactors. Now we're talking about sleek, much safer, miniature designs that are mass produced. Well, technically they're actually mass fueled. ;)

you don't think smartphones and total mobile phone adoption were a massive change to life before?

It’s still possible to mitigate without upending society (provided the Hansen paper is wrong), but just barely and not for long. It is absolutely dire and urgent but we’re not beyond hope for the future generations yet.

When I was a kid and imagined the future I didn’t spend too much time thinking about the communicator. Kind of boring in the bigger picture.

ap1000 and new smr designs - not quite

I did. There was no talking to friends after turning off the computer and then it was also too late to make phone calls. I remember pretend-playing (if that's the English word for it) having conversations in them while already in bed. Nowadays that's not uncommon to do at all

Not that I had a grand vision as, what was I, perhaps 7 years old? But communication and the transfer of information are two of the main things to live for. Neither seems boring or small beans to me at all

Absolutely nothing boring about communicating, but the communicator itself is near/low tech. That’s why we have billions of them already in people’s hands.

Glad you have one!!

Citation needed for the claim that any particular non-trivial fraction of engineering talent has been wasted on ad algorithms, or that those are the "best and brightest", or that those people would have been doing other useful work if the ads didn't exist.

Without evidence this is just a repetition of an old, unproven meme for internet points.

Isn't this what they say every time there's a new reactor design? Then somehow there's still an accident like in Fukushima.

You can look at what percentage of each big tech company's revenue is ads or how much they've spent on their advertising platforms.

I'm also glad to see that the hot startups aren't social media anymore.

That not related to the claim about engineering talent.

The talent follows the money. Consider what was hottest during the 2000s-2010s tech boom, startups offering free services with the value proposition of eventual data collection for ads.

Maybe also look at value instead of revenue, in terms of public market caps or private acquisitions. At least Facebook's $1.48T market cap is derived from ads.

That doesn't answer the question. I asked for, and I quote, "any particular non-trivial fraction of engineering talent has been wasted on ad algorithms, or that those are the "best and brightest", or that those people would have been doing other useful work if the ads didn't exist".

Your inability to provide evidence is suggestive that the evidence does not exist.

I'm still curious what all these companies exactly want genAI for, but I doubt it's about ads. And the other kinds of AI aren't driving the new power usage.

I'm not sure what else you want beyond my answer, maybe proof that these big tech companies have indeed been hiring bright engineers, but maybe you or someone else can find it on the Internet. I'm gonna go ahead and agree with Dig1t on this.

> I'm not sure what else you want beyond my answer

It's not hard to see that your response does literally nothing to answer my question.

> I'm gonna go ahead and agree with Dig1t on this.

It's crystal clear that you don't have any evidence for the claim, so your opinion is meaningless.

No, not really? Fukushima first became operational in 1971. That's 40 years before that incident or 50 years ago.

Development of generation III+ "fail-safe" reactors began to be developed around 1990's. To my knowledge none of them have had accidents like Fukushima.

Also Fukushima didn't result in any, or nearly no, deaths. However, I do hear of major oil catastrophes every decade or less. Deep Horizon accident in 2010 in comparison had 11 fatalities, 17 injuries, and spilled 134 million gallons of oil polluting almost the entire Gulf of Mexico.

According to Google the history of "fail safe" reactors is:

> Development of Generation III+ reactors began in the 1990s. The Westinghouse AP1000 was the first Generation III+ reactor to receive final design certification from the NRC in 2005.

Exactly. I see a lot of people attributing it to a Ancient Chinese Saying, but no verification. At least I know for sure it was said on 4chan.

It was said here too, but that doesn't make HN the source.

4chan gets a lot of credit as the origin for various things which I don't think it deserves most of the time.