> signed a non-binding letter of intent
Does this mean anything at all? Sounds like the equivalent of "cool story, bro" from the signing party.
Without committed financial skin in the game, isn't this just a dog and pony show?
Does this mean anything at all? Sounds like the equivalent of "cool story, bro" from the signing party.
Without committed financial skin in the game, isn't this just a dog and pony show?
Kind of: IMHO it's to 'simplify' negotiations to certain extent.
Given that Oklo is a publicly traded company, and major financial deals may have material effects on stock, there are procedures for handling those deals as if some folks know about a (potential) deal but others do not, you can get into trouble with insider information.
By public announcing the negotiations and intent then the handling of information—especially with-in Oklo—can perhaps be more flexible and less siloed, which allows more folks to talk about what's going (both internally and externally). This way the negotiating team can (e.g.) pull in any random employee into a meeting to talk about (say) technical details about connections, power factors, support, without having to worry about 'internal embargoes'.
The price of electricity has a high volatility, and having a guaranteed buyer at a given price can stabilize their business. Even if not guaranteed, it can make their business look more attractive to lenders/investors.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_ion_fusion
which is like laser fusion but 10-100x more efficient in terms of wall plug to energy delivered to the pellet and also capable of multiple shots per second compare to laser systems that are doing good if they fire a few times a day.
Nobody is interested in developing it because the high energy requirement for the ion beams to transfer energy effectively into the pellet means you need multiple big accelerators so you can’t demonstrate it at less than a full scale power plant. Such a thing would cost about 1/10 of what a certain billionaire spent to buy a washed up social network.
Advanced particle accelerators are an area that could be proliferation sensitive and I think you might get some trouble if you tried to advance the technology. For instance a particle accelerator that drives a spallation neutron source could be used to make Plutonium with a smaller thermal footprint than a nuclear reactor. For that matter, a D+T fusion reactor produces copious very high energy neutrons which would be great for making Pu239 or U233.
No need to wait for some future power source.
The revenue potential for any nuclear reactor in the age of renewables is going to be incredibly slim.
During all other time renewables will be the marginal producer which means renewable costs for the electricity.
This derisks both sides letting both of them build without worrying about the market moving against them and rendering their capital investments worthless.
Not to take this discussion in a different tangent, but I seriously doubt it. In CA, PG&E’s share of renewable keeps increasing, as do our rate. There’re a myriad of operating expenses as well as monopolistic rent seeking, and in this case IP development cost recovery that cost reduction may remain a pipe dream..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experimental_Breeder_Reactor_I...
The only way I can see something like fusion become cheap quickly, is if all labor becomes cheap because of AI.
But that MAY be after we spent all the easily extractable uranium and (unfortunately) fossil fuels.
When looking at costs for almost anything, there tends to be 3 main components:
1) Raw materials for construction. (Edit: + energy consumed)
2) Raw materials for fuel/operations. (Edit: + energy consumed)
3) Labor
Fusion may require very significant amount of raw materials for construction, and also (with today's technology) a lot of labor. But it is nearly free in terms of fuel costs.
Now, let's assume (as a thought experiment) that AI will make labor virtually free within 100 years, we're down to fuel costs vs the materials needed for construction.
As long as we live in a world where we expect capital to yield some kind of significant/exponential "return on investment", we can calculate a "present day value" based on what we expect that return on investment to be.
But it's not a given that the assumption of exponential growth will hold true in the future Or rather, it's almost certain that SOME DAY it will cease to hold true. In particular, when we run out of other fuels (and we've covered Earth in solar panels), stagnation is inevitable. That means the natural interest is basically 0.
In such a world, and with the assumption that labor is free, fusion would give "free" energy, since capital costs no longer matter compared to the present day value of a permanent revenue stream.
So, given enough time, it seems clear that fusion will almost certainly take over as the dominant energy source. The question is when.
If our energy needs remain moderate for quite a long time or if we get a 300 year AI winter, it could take 100s of years for fusion to become dominant.
On the other hand, if AI makes labor virtually free 50 years from now (or makes labor only slightly more expensive than the energy used), and we continue to need more and more power to drive our data centers, manufacturing and every other need we may have, we may need it sooner.
Also, if we're not able to progress beyond barely breaking even in terms of energy produced vs energy consumed in the process, that will make progress slow.
But if we continue to make progress in terms of energy efficiency, and especially if we're able to scale fusion power to generate very large outputs (10's, 100s or 100s of GW), it may take over relatively quickly.
If I were to bet, I would guess it will take somewhere between 50-300 years for it to generate more than 50% of our power requirements.
Anybody who says this about any technology isn't thinking about infrastructure costs.