Google will buy half the electricity from one of Finland's nuclear power plants • Hacker News Board

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

#71

Post by happosai » Fri, Sep 11, 2026, 2:23 AM UTC

vlovich123 wrote: post #24

johnnyApplePRNG wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes let's shame corporations for spending money on and supporting things that need more support. /s

It’s unclear. It helps Google with their marketing that they’re a net zero carbon company. But if what’s happening is they’re displacing previous nuclear power users onto dirtier, that’s not really reducing carbon and it’s making it seem like Google isn’t the problem when it actually is - without them that community might otherwise be 100% nuclear and it would be no different from a macro level from Google adding tha…

> But if what’s happening is they’re displacing previous nuclear power users onto dirtier, that’s not really reducing carbon

That's not the case, because in EU (and thus Finland) electric production is under cap-and-trade. There is just no way to increase dirty electricity production in EU. Apart from political pressure to change rules, which for example Italy is doing because Italy built their grid on gas...

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

#72

Post by omgwtfbyobbq » Fri, Sep 11, 2026, 2:23 AM UTC

ericmay wrote: post #48

ehhthing wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dont know why people bring this up. China has nowhere near the highest per capita pollution levels.

Per-capita can be bad and so can overall scale. It wouldn't matter if Norway was the highest per-capita because like 5 people live there.

Per capita is worse by definition, unless your arguing that people with higher per capita emissions are somehow more valuable to society than those with lower.

The other aspect is that China provides a large industrial base for the West, which is arguably the West just externalizing/offshoring their emissions anyway.

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

#73

Post by nomel » Fri, Sep 11, 2026, 2:25 AM UTC

derektank wrote: post #60

nomel wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/

Does that change the math above if they're tied into the grid?

If they're tied directly to the renewables (Meta is doing this in some places), then true, not a technical increase. But you could still maybe claim they're instead preventing the equivalent reduction on average/grid (and, say, decommission of some of that coal). I suppose that's a separate point.

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

#74

Post by anu7df » Fri, Sep 11, 2026, 2:33 AM UTC

Everyone is rushing to send signals of AI growth to the market. Their continued valuation growth depends on it. There is no real use story that cannot be met by smaller distilled models which are far more energy efficient. I am convinced the next step will be scaremongering impending extinction level event followed by need to classify AI activities as national security related. Once you become part of the military industrial complex, it's all gravy baby!

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

#75

Post by derektank » Fri, Sep 11, 2026, 2:35 AM UTC

nomel wrote: post #73

derektank wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/

Does that change the math above if they're tied into the grid? If they're tied directly to the renewables (Meta is doing this in some places), then true, not a technical increase. But you could still maybe claim they're instead preventing the equivalent reduction on average/grid (and, say, decommission of some of that coal). I suppose that's a separate point.

If it’s truly separated (no interconnect agreement) or generation capacity is below 1 MW, it won’t show up in EIA data, yes. Rooftop solar is also not included in the data for that reason.

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

#76

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Sep 11, 2026, 2:35 AM UTC

nomel wrote: post #31

lukeschlather wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google is buying the output because they are increasing demand by half a nuclear power plant's worth of power. I actually think it's pretty reasonable to pass a law demanding they build an entire nuclear power plant here.

I think government regulations to put a cap on utility profits is a better long term move. Force excess to be directed into green energy expansion.