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Comment by selivanovp | Hacker News Reader

It looks like wishful thinking. There were reasons why USA for decades was buying Russian nuclear fuel and not building new nuclear power plants. Meanwhile, Russia and China were building them all over the world. Restoring competences and building lots of new stations in just 10 years seems not realistic.

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I doubt it will happen in 10 years, but I think there’s a good chance it will happen.

The economics of new nuclear improve significantly if you’re willing to build many at once, and repeal a few key low benefit but high cost regulations.

The power requirements of AI can only really be met with new baseload power. You don’t want to leave your expensive silicon idle when the sun isn’t shining, and while batteries might help with say to day fluctuations, they don’t solve the problems of seasonal cycles.

The French did not achieve exonomies of scale when they built out nuclear. And that was in a much friendlier regulatory environment than today.

Power is a massive component of the cost of AI. They might pay extra for 99.9% reliability, but are not going to pay significantly more for more 9's IMO.

Why do they improve, ie. what are the relevant significant cost factors, and why were those low benefit regulations written in the first place?

The U.S. was buying Russian nuclear fuel because it comes from weapons grade uranium blended down to low enriched. The U.S. made a deal with Russia to reduce their stockpile of HEU and provide them with some cash. This distorted the market for uranium mining and enrichment in the U.S.

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