Do the economics of nuclear make sense though? A quick search showed around $5k/kW capacity. That’s $5 billion per GW. Then there’s permit and build times on top of that.

Surely renewables + distributed storage is going to become key?

Is there already extensive precedence of undersea, long distance power distribution? I could imagine the losses would be outrageous at that distance.

Bluetooth and the 2.4 GHz ISM band is not electricity and is highly resilient to moderate noise over short distances. Problems are usually caused by hardware related issues.

True, but ensuring this is done on a shorter time scale (e.g. hourly) would take a lot of the green washing out of the certificate system IMO.

The headline makes no sense to me and the article crosses over 2 problems in the energy transition.

Microsoft is only involved in purchasing the power, not the facility itself. In my understanding, that means that Constellation is the only party here involved in the government backed loan. Noting also that the loan itself is not malicious, nor is its use to restart the facility - if nuclear facilities should not be funded or have any special tax status then that should have been considered in the government’s legislation.

The 2nd part about the power from the plant going to grid, and not to Microsoft’s data centres directly is a known issue which close to all companies exploit by buying green certificates which I understand are currently done monthly in some areas. That means we do not trace that each electron provided to a user was from renewables, instead we aggregate that a company (via purchasing “green” certificates) shows that enough “green” electricity, anywhere on a connection, was produced to cover their usage for that month. This has nothing to do with Microsoft, their data centres, or this facility in general but is currently being dealt with. It will be clear in the power purchasing agreement how much power Microsoft will purchase from the facility directly and how it is delivered.

Am I missing something?

And no, I don’t think nuclear power is overly helpful given the exorbitant cost, time and waste aspects

I’m sorry, are we really going to pretend long haul flights will become hydrogen in the near future? Has any airport begun building, or even thinking of, refueling infrastructure?

I would argue that your perspective is a narrow one and you need to change what info you are consuming. My personal take (if you have any interest):

1. Most of the people on this world are not rich enough to be part of daily traffic jams. They are just trying to survive and enjoy life with what they have.

2. Current resource competition is driven by profit seeking and not bourne out of necessity (i.e. we’re not “competing” in the traditional sense, where countries at war are doing so to feed their people etc… At least, not yet.)

3. There is definitely more space and resources available for more people, if we learn to better distribute what we have - the how of this, while keeping everyone happy, is the billion dollar question.

4. You can choose to live in the jungle by yourself if you want, no one is (hopefully) forcing you to take part in working etc.

5. If you can, you should go travel more. If you can’t, go volunteer some of your time to your community. It tends to clear my “the world is going to shit” thoughts. Sure, there’s problems everywhere, and we should fight for the ones we feel are important, but there is also a lot of great things happening.

I’m sorry, are you saying women’s rights were better in the 1700s or wars didn’t happen? Or that people had less problems? Or that the ruling class shared power?

I don’t mean to offend, but this is an insanely naive view of the world.

A lot less humans existed for a lesser period of time without electricity.

We used to burn oil and other fuels for lamps, raw wood for heat, raw sewerage was everywhere if not released untreated into waterways. All of this was hugely polluting and detrimental to health. Please don’t kid yourself that there were better times in the 1700s.

As clarification I meant: “do people in Australia care about the tiny black and white sticker on the box which says “M - rated for mature audiences” now?”

and not: “why should the global community give a damn about Australia…”.

I remember cinemas were always strict with entry into movies, but game shops never used to ask for ID. Has this changed?

No one cares about game ratings in Australia, do they?

But that is not “using hydrocarbons as a battery” as your comment mentioned.

Which circumstances?

Using electricity to create fuels purely for storage is a dead concept AFAIK. eFuels in the medium term will likely only be used where batteries cannot in their current form, e.g. aircraft or shipping. The energy and money cost needed to synthesise on-site with current tech is too high.

Everyone rigs elections

The EU runs on 70% on-understandable process and regulation, everyone knows that! Good to see renewables pick up the rest.

I’d argue you can almost always do more to change the environment you are familiar with, rather than moving to a new one.

You may quickly find people, politics and politicians are equally as closed minded, independent of which country you are in.

I’m sure we’ll find something else to purchase bombs for :)

I feel this is like the least controversial thing to happen in Austrian politics in the last 10 years… There is a long list of shit before this one that the ÖVP should be sued for…

This Reuters article provides a decent summary: https://www.reuters.com/legal/case-against-elon-musks-56-billion-pay-package-2024-01-30/

The full, current list is: Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia, and the United Arab Emirates

Adding Turkey and Hungary would lead to: SHITBRICEEU, which I find amusing :)