Geothermal beats the nuclear hype on speed
The world's first enhanced geothermal power plant was completed in 23 months. Commenters said it puts the final nail in the cancelled NuScale SMR project centered on Utah and Idaho, because geothermal makes more sense there. A Global Solar Atlas thread, with commenters listing Australia, Chile, and much of Central America as best-placed, ran alongside it. Even the Beam thread drifted to energy, with a joke about inheriting a data center with free electricity.
The pattern: the argument for energy projects is shifting from 'what's the best technology' to 'what can be built in two years'. AI demand makes build time the real constraint, and the projects that finish fast win the narrative.
The nuance is that one plant is one data point. Commenters took a single completion as proof about a whole category.
So what?
If you build around energy-hungry workloads, siting and time-to-power are strategic choices, not procurement details. Watch geothermal and solar mapping tools as real inputs to where your compute lives, and treat long-lead energy plans with suspicion.