Microsoft has cash reserves of $75 billion.
Microsoft - If you really want to convince us that nuclear power is part of the future, why can’t you use some of your own money? Why does every single nuclear suggestion always rely on bailouts from taxpayers? Here’s a thought, if you can’t pay for it yourself - just pick the cheaper option that taxpayers don’t have to pay for - you know renewables and grid storage? The stuff that everybody else, all over the world, is building near 99% of new electricity generation with.
Companies should EVER get tax payer money unless the taxpayers actually ask for something to be done by them.
If a company asks, it should be immediate denial since these companies don’t pay shit for taxes to begin with.
Proposals like this are exactly why corporations don’t pay much tax. They have tons of deals and situations like this that offset their profits/tax burden
But muh jobs! /s
Depressingly, a factory is tangible, and the economic benefits of not subsidising things randomly based on political expediency are subtle. Add in the occasional edge cases where subsidies actually make sense (idle military manufacturing capacity during peacetime, for example) and this is a law that tends not to be put in place or stay in place.
If you really want to convince us that nuclear power is part of the future
I somehow doubt that’s the main priority here.
America: privatized profits, socialized costs.
How much longer y’all just going to keep taking it in the ass?
We really don’t have much say in it. Sure we vote but there’s an entire segment of the country that’s afraid of immigrants whose influence is very disproportional to the percentage of the population.
Entire segment? Nearly half the population is complacent lol
Yes, but have you considered that their rep showed up to a thing they were at, was nice to them, and correctly displayed the tribal symbols?
I find it odd that Microsoft thinks that nuclear power is the cheapest way it can zero carbon its data centers
Wind and solar have been so much cheaper for so long now
Fast computers are very expensive to the point where it makes sense to pay more for power to keep them running 24/7 instead of shutting them off every night when the sun sets.
Wind is always blowing
That’s literally impossible by geometry if you mean everywhere.
Even in practice in one location, it varies enough to make it a problem if you need a steady supply. Sometimes is blows a little or barely at all, sometimes a lot, and occasionally so much you have to lock on the breaks and stop the thing to avoid damage.
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
Regarding the second part, there really is little difference between buying clean power here versus there. The net carbon spend goes down just exactly enough
The only place it does matter is if you live near a coal plant you can’t directly fix your locality by buying green energy certificates
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.
Only a week or two ago people were arguing on Lemmy that the fact Microsoft wants to use this facility shows nuclear is economically viable.
I was wondering how they could keep a straight face…
