Tag Archives: nuclear power

August 15, 2025 · 18:08

Walking back needs

I was in a rush to find another topic to look at and no sooner was it said when my brain told me to look behind me and no sooner was it done when I noticed a Bloomberg article

This sounds odd (and correct) as the Houston Business Journal gives us a little less than 18 hour ago ‘Texans face potential electricity price surge as power demand skyrockets’, it is odd as I noticed that term was a setting a mere 2-3 years ago. I gave the setting towards an IP idea I had. It was clear that this setting would be needed in Dubai, London and a few other places. I gave the Texan setting of Austin as a reference. As such I gave the idea that a few people should talk to Elon Musk as he is sitting on a trillion dollar idea and it would be needed all over the world. So, as some ‘now’ see that there is a larger problem, which I illustrated in ‘Is it a public service’ on November 16th 2024 (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2024/11/16/is-it-a-public-service/) where I clearly stated that the energy is mission for a lot of this. We get the setting three months later in Bloomberg and now we get the Houston Business Journal giving us “With new data center developments, population growth and the electrification of oil fields, power demand growth is tightening the electricity market. Here’s what experts predict for the coming years.” As well as “With a rise in data center developments, population growth, and the electrification of oilfields, power demand growth is tightening the electricity market.” The latter part is a little hilarious. A setting that could be construed as the headline for the new comedy capers. What makes it a lot harder is the need Bloomberg gave us (and me months before that) that as I see it, corporate America has to foot that bill as the Data Centre needs will be required to get filled from day one, and as I see it the people of Texas need to pay ZERO. I do like the idea that corporate America will decrease the cost of living for Americans, especially when they are ‘required’ to remain carbon zero and 30 nuclear reactors are not the way to go. And this is given a lot more urgency as Americans are faced with the needs to make more electricity and the timelines to not align, especially in light of the news by Houston Business Journal given less than 24 hours ago. The other setting is that nuclear reactors require time and experience to build. As I see it, the Need for at least 3 GEN3+ reactors require at least 5 years and that is setting the reactors close to Houston and Austin. The third one should be right next to the data centre that Texas is handed. Oh, and these reactors need to be started within the next 3 months. So, when were these plans approved that fast? If not, there is little reason for a data centre when the electricity is apparently missing.

The fact that the American people (the HBJ too) were apparently missing this information whilst I using a simple slide ruler (classic model shown below)

Got there in mere seconds almost a year ago, and I was courteous enough to write about it. So there is that to consider. Funny enough America has the solution employing the solutions by Elon Musk. I advice then to act, before the UAE (and Saudi Arabia) asks for all the batteries that Elon has in stock. That is one idea, there are more ideas and they are out there. Yet the settings are now given by the HBJ and will set Texas on a stampede for solutions I reckon no later than coming Monday.

So when it does come, I would advice some people to walk back the needs of energy requirements and see where that leads them. The funny part is that this was a given BEFORE the Stargate project was on everyones retinas. Even as I gave my setting BEFORE Stargate, the setting becomes on why this wasn’t clearly given as project Stargate was drawn up? As we see the answers, more questions are shown on our eyes and this is the mere start of this. At present there are two operational nuclear power plants: Comanche Peak Nuclear Power Plant and the South Texas Project. Each plant has two reactors, and together they provide about 10% of the state’s electricity. So when we see this, we might understand the crazy presentation on AI and the setting of available energy. So when I gave my feelings on the three reactors, we see a much larger need, but is that a given? I know that I can be wrong, even if I am proven right months later. Causality does not mean proven effect, that requires a whole different setting of statistics and proof leading to this.

So feel free to doubt me, but there are the stories and there are the newscasts and the data that nuclear reactors require time is pretty much a given. So feel free to doubt it all, I don’t mind. Just consider the setting that the Data centers require energy and who do you want that energy to get? Your fridge and microwave or an AI data center whilst we know that AI isn’t real. I leave it up to you.

Have a great day and feel free to look around you. The data is all around us all.

SYSMIS(plenty)

Yes, this is sort of a hidden setting, but if you know the program you will be ahead of the rest (for now). Less then an hour ago I saw a picture with Larry Ellison (must be an intelligent person as we have the same first two letters in our first name). But the story is not really that, perhaps it is, but i’ll get to that later.

I will agree with the generic setting that most of the most valuable data will be seen in Oracle. It is the second part I have an issue with (even though it sounds correct), yes AI demands is skyrocketing. But as I personally see it AI does not exist. There is Generic AI, there are AI agents and there are a dozen settings under the sun advocating a non existing realm of existence. I am not going into this, as I have done that several times before. You see, what is called AI is as I see it mere NIP (Near Intelligent Parsing) and that does need a little explaining.

You see, like the old chess computers (90’s) they weren’t intelligent, they merely had in memory every chess game ever played above a certain level. And all these moves were in these computers. As such there was every chance that the chess computer came into a setting where that board was encountered before and as such it tried to play from that point onwards. It is a little more advanced than that, but that was the setting we faced. And would you have it, some greed driven salesperson will push the boundary towards that setting where he (or she) will claim that the data you have will result in better sales. But (a massive ‘but’ comes along) that is assuming all data is there and mostly that is never the case. So if we see the next image

You see that some cells are red, there we have no data and data that isn’t there cannot be created (sort of). In Market Research it is called System Missing data. They know what to do in those case, but the bulk of all the people trying to run and hide behind there data will be in the knowing nothing pool of people. And this data set has a few hidden issues. Response 6 and 7 are missing. So were they never there? Is there another reason? All things that these AI systems are unaware of and until they are taught what to do your data will create a mess you never saw before. Sales people (for the most) do not see it that way, because they were sold an AI system. Yet until someone teaches them what to do they aren’t anything of the sort and even after they are taught there are still gaps in their knowledge because these systems will not assume until told so. They will not even know what to do when it goes wring until someone tells them that and the salespeople using these systems will revert to ‘easy’ fixes, which are not fixes at all, they merely see the larger setting that becomes less and less accurate in record time. They will rely on predictive analytics, but that solution can only work with data that is there and when there is no data, there is merely no data to rely on. And that is the trap I foresaw in the case of [a censored software company] and the UAE and oil. There is too much unknowns and I reckon that the oil industry will have a lot more data and bigger data, but with human elements in play, we will see missing data. And the better the data is, the more accurate the results. But as I saw it, errors start creeping in and more and more inaccuracies are set to the predictive data set and that is where the problems start. It is not speculative, it is a dead certainty. This will happen. No matter how good you are, these systems are build too fast with too little training and too little error seeking. This will go wrong. Still Larry is right “Most Of The World’s Valuable Data Is in some system”

The problem is that no dataset is 100% complete, it never was and that is the miscalculations to CEO’s of tomorrow are making. And the assumption mode of the sales person selling and the sales person buying are in a dwindling setting as they are all on the AI mountain whilst there is every chance that several people will use AI as a gimmick sale and they don’t have a clue what they are buying, all whilst these people sign a ‘as is’ software solution. So when this comes to blows, the impact will be massive. We recently saw Microsoft standing behind builder.ai and it went broke. It seems that no one saw the 700 engineers programming it all (in this case I am not blaming Microsoft) but it leaves me with questions. And the setting of “Stargate is a $500 billion joint venture between OpenAI, SoftBank, Oracle, and investment firm MGX to build a massive AI infrastructure in the United States. The project, announced by Donald Trump, aims to establish the US as a leader in AI by constructing large-scale data centers and advancing AI research. Initial construction is underway in Texas, with plans for 20 data centers, each 500,000 square feet, within the next five years” leaves me with more questions. I do not doubt that OpenAI, SoftBank and Oracle all have the best intentions. But I have two questions on this. The first is how to align and verify the data, because that will be an adamant and also a essential step in this. Then we get to the larger setting that the dat needs to align within itself. Are all the phrases exact? I don’t know this is why I ask and before you say that it makes sense that they do but reality gives us ‘SQUARE-WINDOWED AIRPLANES’ 1954 when two planes broke apart in mid-flight because metal fatigue was causing small cracks to form at the edges of the windows, and the pressurized cabins exploded. Then we have the ‘MARS ORBITER’ where two sets of engineers, one working in metric and the other working in the U.S. imperial system, failed to communicate at crucial moments in constructing the $125 million spacecraft. We tend to learn when we stumble that is a given, so what happens when issues are found in the 11th hour in a 500 billion dollar setting? It is not unheard of and as I saw one particular speculative setting. How is this powered? A system on 500,000 square feet needs power and 20 of them a hell of a lot more. So how many nuclear reactors are planned? I actually have an interesting idea (keeping this to me for now). But any computer that leaks power will go down immediately and all those training time is lost. How often does that need to happen for it to go wrong? You can train and test systems individually but 20 data centers need power, even one needs power and how certain is that power grid? I actually saw nothing of that in any literature (might be that only a few have seen that), but the drastic setting from sales people tends to be, lets put in more power. But where from? Power is finite until created in advance and that is something I haven’t seen. And then the time setting ‘within the next 5 years’ As I see it, this is a disaster waiting to happen. And as this starts in Texas, we have the quote “According to Texas native, Co-Founder and CFO of Atma Energy, Jaro Nummikoski, one of the main reasons Texas struggles with chronic power outages is the way our grid was originally designed—centralized power plants feeding energy over long distances through aging infrastructure.” Now I am certain that the power-grid of a data centre will be top notch, but where does that power come from? And 500,000 sqft needs a lot of power, I honestly do not know how much One source gave me “The facilities need at least 50 Megawatts (MW) of power supply, but some installations surpass this capacity. The energy requirements of the project will increase to 15 Gigawatts (GW) because of the ten data centers currently under construction, which equals the electricity usage of a small nation.” As such the call for a nuclear reactor comes to mind, yet the call for 15 GW is insane, and no reactor at present exists to handle that. 50MW per data center implies that where there is a data centre a reactor will be needed (OK, this is an exaggeration) but where there are more than one (up to 4) a reactor will be needed. So who was aware of this? I reckon that the first centre in Texas will get a reactor as Texas has plenty of power shortages and the increase in people and systems warrant such a move. But as far as I know those things will require a little more than 5 years and depending on the provider there are different timelines. As such I have reasons to doubt the 5 year setting (even more when we consider data).

As such I wonder when the media will actually look at the settings and what will be achievable as well as being implemented and that is before we get to the training of data of these capers. As I personally (and speculatively) see it, will these data centers come with a warning light telling us SYSMIS(plenty), or a ‘too many holes in data error’ just a thought to have this Tuesday.

Have a great day and when your chest glows in the dark you might be close to one of those nuclear reactors.

The NSS 2014 danger

The Nuclear Security Summit 2014 is at an end. The circus of 53 delegation members, the security forces and other parties are leaving or have left the Netherlands. This summit needs to exist; there is no doubt about it. As long as the powers that be discuss and negotiate on these matters, the better the chance that the chance of escalations and extreme consequences remain at an all-time low. This is a basic pragmatic truth.
I do however worry about one aspect. An aspect I do not completely agree with, but an aspect that has long reaching consequences and as such the next generation will get additional responsibilities in regards to cleaning, aside from the economic mess that most leaders are leaving the next generation.
The issue I have is one that will have a long term impact, much longer than the three generations who are about to inherit the current economic debt, especially in Japan, America, France, Italy, Spain and Greece.
What is the issue? The issue us that there is a strong voice and movement to steer away from highly enriched Uranium (20%-85%) and use low enriched Uranium (less than 20%). The logic given is to make sure that the chance of extreme elements getting their hands on weapons grade Uranium becomes even lower. That part makes perfect sense, yet the danger that was, is now getting a lot larger on two fronts, it is simple and basic logic.

1. To get the same amount of energy, a nuclear reactor will have to use between 150% and 325% nuclear fuel to get the same amount of energy. You can find some basic knowledge at http://world-nuclear.org/Nuclear-Basics/How-does-a-nuclear-reactor-make-electricity-/. If for example one rod of highly enriched Uranium gives us one week of power, then we need a lot more rods of low enriched Uranium, but we still will not get the same amount of energy over that time, so the rods would need replacement sooner. No matter how the reactor is replaced or upgraded, the reactor ends up with less steam for electricity.
This part can be shown using a simple electric stove. Have two identical pots of water, set one stove to high and one to medium. You will see that it simply takes longer to get the medium plate with water boiling. Now that part is not the issue, waiting a little longer is not the big thing, when the water starts to boil, switch both off and now see how quickly the water of the medium plate goes off the boil and the water will soon thereafter no longer boils, which means no more steam for electricity.
The test is simple and basic and several factors are cast aside, but the foundation should come across, reactors will need more rods, which mean that the stockpiles of depleted Uranium would grow in excess of 250%, which is part of the first big issue, because as we can read at http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/nuclear-fuel-cycle/uranium-resources/uranium-and-depleted-uranium/ that the half-life of Depleted Uranium (DU) goes into the centuries, which gives us the nasty side effect that we are growing the stockpile faster and faster and the required space will increase, using spaces that allows for nothing near it for hundreds of generations.
2. The extreme element. Yes, we all agree that the idea of any extremist getting its hands on highly enriched Uranium is truly the stuff of nightmares. Yet, this is not the biggest danger. By many parties in several fields (law enforcement and intelligence) there is a clear and present fear that extremists will get their hands on depleted Uranium and as such will create a dirty bomb with conventional means and mix in depleted Uranium for good measure. That scary effect will not just strike fear in the people. It creates a simple way to make people vacate complete zip codes in the blink of an eye. Now consider that the changes will create up to three times as much DU. This gives us more need of storage, and like with every shipping, the more you ship, the larger the danger becomes that one package ‘falls’ of a truck and into the wrong hands.
So these are the two issues I have. I am not against the banning of Highly Enriched Uranium, but do the people outside the NSS circle realise the consequences of such a decision? Of course all this will come with a massive amount of additional costs, which will again drive power prices up as it is a related cost.
The big danger related to all this is that there is no real solution. Those naive enough to state ban all nuclear power should realise that the pollution and the price of creating energy will spike on both counts. I am not against those big propellers in the sea or on land, because it is clean energy and anyone complaining about the view better take a nice look at the alternative. Those people will not volunteer to live next to a nuclear plant either. The propeller might not offer the greatest view, but in many area’s it does work getting them clean energy. However, I am digressing from the topic.
The change does introduce another danger. The short term security we might get through this is replaced with the long term dangers that we and several next generations will deal with. the danger is that too many people will ignore the issues, just like the national debts many faced and now all are complaining about the cut backs we are all dealing with, the Nuclear stockpile will grow slowly and we will not see or worry about the space needed, but when space is gone, it will be gone forever for many generations.
Nuclear power places us between a rock and an irradiated hard place. We are still no closer to truly have an alternative that really works at present and most nations no longer have the budgets to make any solid change in this regard for the near future. I like the wind alternative, yet I have never been against Nuclear power. Living in Sweden, seeing the benefit of the Swedish power supplier Vattenfal (in my wallet) is reason for this. The quote “Sweden’s primary energy mix is now 65 percent zero-carbon and composed of a blend of hydropower, nuclear power, and biomass, with almost no coal” found at ‘the breakthrough’, shows that nuclear power is an essential part for many nations if they want to decrease their carbon footprint. Sweden might have had the benefit of biomass and hydropower, but many nations do not, which makes them stronger dependent on other solutions. Wind and solar offer a little relief, but without nuclear power they will not get there, that is the part many activists forget about.
So the NSS had made a call, it is a hard one, but is it the right one? There are a few unknown elements, so I cannot tell. Yet, I do believe that short term solution is too dangerous against long term grief, but there I must also caution myself, how much long term grief will we face?
Consider that the US alone has stored 700,000 metric tons of DU (at http://web.ead.anl.gov/uranium/faq/storage/faq16.cfm), in addition (at http://web.ead.anl.gov/uranium/faq/mgmt/faq27.cfm) we see what is required and some insight of the costs involved, when some nations switch (some had already switched) and the amount triples, how will the costs add up then, more important, where will we find the space?

So here we see the danger of the NSS decision, but is it really a dangerous one?

Tag Archives: nuclear power

Walking back needs

SYSMIS(plenty)

The NSS 2014 danger

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