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Google will buy half the electricity from one of Finland's nuclear power plants

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Re: Google will buy half the electricity from one of Finland's nuclear power plants

#51

Post by nomel »

whall6 wrote: post #20
topato wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which makes Arizona an interesting place to place any new builds of any sort of data center. They’ve been talking about the scarcity of resources there for years, and it’s currently in an escalating tailspin of abundance. Power is cheap as hell there, but once the water dries up… things might change quickly.

New Gen data centers are closed loop and don’t use water at nearly the same rate as previous generations

There's also a power generation water cost though!

Something like 500g/MWh for gas/coal/nuclear (~70% of power in AZ), so a huge xAI datacenter (Colossus 2, ~1 GW/h) would use ~700 MW of this type, or ~350k gallons of water an hour, which would be 0.2% of the Colorado rivers flow rate last year.

I don't know if that's significant.

Re: Google will buy half the electricity from one of Finland's nuclear power plants

#52

Post by kccqzy »

vlovich123 wrote: post #16
echelon wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a market. Why can't someone buy it? Why does it matter that homes "aren't clean" while Google is? That's silly. There's going to be the same level of demand no matter what - the same mix of coal and nuclear inputs will happen regardless of where the outflows are. It's fungible. More demand will in time result in an increase in supply. That's a good thing. We'll be building a lot more, and it's long overdue.

You’re assuming a large enough supply that can absorb demand. This is true in China but not generally in the West. If supply was just in time constructed so you maybe have only like 10-30% extra vs peak, the 50% of a nuclear power plant shifts the preexisting non-Google demand onto the non-nuclear sources as the plant can no longer meet its non-Google demand. It’s generally no different than if Google acquired that e…

This is a case where the supply was about to be gone and Google provided funds to keep it operating (the original nuclear reactor began operation in 1977 and it now needed EUR 700M to extend the service life). And one can probably guess that this supply just wasn’t cost competitive in the first place, but Google increased the demand so much that it now becomes cost competitive.

Re: Google will buy half the electricity from one of Finland's nuclear power plants

#53

Post by fwip »

nomel wrote: post #38
fred_is_fred wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

North Dakota and Alaska also have lots of space.

Alaska has a speed of light problem.

Doesn't seem especially relevant for LLMs. Especially not for training, but even for inference.

Re: Google will buy half the electricity from one of Finland's nuclear power plants

#54

Post by SteveNuts »

hn993302 wrote: post #49
whall6 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

New Gen data centers are closed loop and don’t use water at nearly the same rate as previous generations

Got an example? I'm pretty sure new datacenters are still using cooling towers.

QTS is building a second campus in Chicago with closed loop

https://q.com/resources/how-qts-data-centers-use-closed-loop...

Re: Google will buy half the electricity from one of Finland's nuclear power plants

#55

Post by pembrook »

Before the American tinfoil-hat data center nuts comes out in force:

- This is a plant that was going to be decommissioned without investment

- Finland is a rational country due to their small size and unfortunate proximity to Russia. They tend to do rational things like invest in good energy infrastructure. Nobody will be losing power due to this deal

- Finland is one of the cleanest/greenest energy markets on earth, and the country is largely a giant unpopulated forest

- Finland currently has the highest unemployment in Europe, this is a great win for them, and they correctly view this as such since they are not stupid

- While the media may try to make it happen, very few Finnish people will be wearing tinfoil hats while screaming about conspiracies that data centers destroy H20 molecules, since they have one of the best education systems in the world

Re: Google will buy half the electricity from one of Finland's nuclear power plants

#56

Post by morkalork »

echelon wrote: post #25
morkalork wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this point with all the free-market-hand waving going around, it feels like someone telling me that it's not urin raining down on me, just sparkling trickle down economics.

You now have a PhD in your pocket. Is that not the miracle of the free market? King Richard II would have killed for an iPhone, PS5, air conditioning, and Uber Eats. He'd swap places with you, and he was king. You don't realize how awesome you have it. Just a hundred years ago your ancestors were (probably) eating rotten meat and drinking unclean water.

[flagged]

Re: Google will buy half the electricity from one of Finland's nuclear power plants

#58

Post by happosai »

faitswulff wrote: post #3
api wrote: post #2

Far north cool places seem logical for data centers. Not Texas and Arizona. Why?

Politics means putting job creating infrastructure projects in red states to curry favor with Republican demographics.

Republican south states have also decided to reject science and embrace fossil fuels - global warming shall be the problem of our grandchildren, feel free to build as many gas turbines as you wish!

Re: Google will buy half the electricity from one of Finland's nuclear power plants

#59

Post by AngryData »

api wrote: post #2

Far north cool places seem logical for data centers. Not Texas and Arizona. Why?

Perhaps the extra cost in freeze proofing certain systems and the inability to rely on evaporative cooling techniques? The availability of power in the winter might be a problem too when northern home's power and energy usage all ramp up. In the summer you need nearly the same amount of capacity for cooling as the south so there isn't much savings there.

Re: Google will buy half the electricity from one of Finland's nuclear power plants

#60

Post by derektank »

nomel wrote: post #51
whall6 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

New Gen data centers are closed loop and don’t use water at nearly the same rate as previous generations

There's also a power generation water cost though! Something like 500g/MWh for gas/coal/nuclear (~70% of power in AZ), so a huge xAI datacenter (Colossus 2, ~1 GW/h) would use ~700 MW of this type, or ~350k gallons of water an hour, which would be 0.2% of the Colorado rivers flow rate last year. I don't know if that's significant.

Pulling recent data from the EIA, of the roughly 10,000 megawatts of new power capacity installed in Arizona between 2023 and 2025, 50% is batteries, 40% solar, 6.5% wind, and 3.5% gas. Now, most solar and wind plants rarely if ever hit their nameplate capacity, but it’s pretty clear the large majority of new power generation isn’t consuming water. https://www.eia.gov/electricity/data/eia860/
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