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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

#201

Post by AnthonyMouse »

red75prime wrote: post #190
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> BTW, it's about 7 units of wind energy to 1 unit of solar energy plus significant overcapacity plus increase of the grid transmission capacity plus additional measures for grid stabilization (like synchronous condensers) to get to a "fairly modest amount of storage." No it doesn't. You install 12 hours worth of batteries at the factory and "there is no solar at night" is solved, and doing that is already cost compe…

> You install 12 hours worth of batteries at the factory I literally laughed out loud, sorry. Providing baseload with BESS alone? That's rich. Literally. Extremely expensive. In addition to impractical amount of batteries it requires impractical overcapacity to compensate for seasonal variation. > Then why is no other country burning that amount of coal? China does about 30% of the world's industrial production and 4…

> Extremely expensive.

Battery storage has a levelized cost of ~$0.20/kWh. Solar is ~$0.04/kWh. If you're using the batteries for 50% of kWh you end up at an average of ~$0.14/kWh, which is in the same range as coal.

> it requires impractical overcapacity to compensate for seasonal variation.

Only if you're trying to do 100% of generation from one source. Solar generates more power in the summer, wind generates more power in the winter. Meanwhile you don't have to use overcapacity at all when your target isn't fully 100%. You have enough solar to not need fossil fuels in the warmer months at all, enough wind to only need them 20% of the time in cooler months, and then only 10% of your kWh come from fossil fuels.

> China does about 30% of the world's industrial production and 40% of metal production, while having around 50% of world's coal power plants.

Those are unwelcome numbers even proportional to the amount of manufacturing.

> Many of their new coal plants are peaker plants.

"New coal plants" is rather the problem in itself. The number we need to be going down is instead going up.

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

#202

Post by throwaway473825 »

happosai wrote: post #152
vlovich123 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I consume all the clean energy your country can produce with my data center, explain how cap and trade blocks a country from using other sources - I don’t think anyone will like news stories of people freezing to death in the winter.

That's the CAP part. The annual co2 emissions of electricity production and industries is capped to X gigatons per year. If a datacenter buys all clean electric production of the country, electric companies will have to either have to make up the gap by building more new clean energy or tell other customers "sorry all sold out". Of course, would the latter happen, political actions would be done before people freeze.…

The EU has a large problem with carbon leakage from electricity generation to oil and gas use.

For example, gas heating is exempt from the EU carbon trade, so people are encouraged to use that rather than electric heating. In countries like Germany, gas heating is popular largely for tax reasons.

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

#203

Post by nl »

edukite wrote: post #130
nl wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> some greedy, uneducated people from the past wanted better position We don't have greedy, uneducated people who want better positions now?

And died horrendous dead? Because guy who did this was in nuclear plant and was buried in lead coffin in closed zone. His skin was falling from body while he was still breathing

The Chernobyl disaster wasn't caused by a single person, as you note in your comment "proposed and exercised by people without knowledge or experience."

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

#204

Post by antupis »

throwaway473825 wrote: post #117
marginalia_nu wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least Sweden is struggling a lot with scaling its power production, to the point where it's a problem for existing and new industries and causing some rather extreme price volatility. A lot of the green energy is from hydro dams and you can't really add new rivers to the geography to support additional industry.

With hindsight, it wasn't a very good idea to shut down 6 of 12 nuclear reactors. Still much better than the situation in Germany, but that's a very low bar. It will be interesting to see how the Rolls-Royce SMR project works out. Since it appears to be impossible to build anything cheaply in the UK, this will be the real test.

Sweden main issue is that there is no transmission capacity between North and South, like now prices are 2x at south.

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

#205

Post by JumpCrisscross »

defrost wrote: post #155
exe34 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A Chinese nuke on the coast of Britain might be hard politically. Even if it's benign, you can bet the US will run an expensive campaign to discredit it in public opinion.

There's a special line crossed by a 100% Chinese owned floating nuclear power plant, as opposed to a 24% Chinese owned fixed in place nuclear power plant like the Hinkley Point C nuclear power station?

You wouldn't even need it to be Chinese owned. Just Chinese built and indemnified. Hell, I'd take a guarantee from a consortium of Chinese SoE banks over the U.S. government today. (I'm American.)

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

#206

Post by andsoitis »

bsder wrote: post #44
api wrote: post #2

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

Unions. Northeastern states expect that you will use union labor to build your projects or they will shut you down. Pennsylvania, for example, was one of the few places to take Walmart to task for employing illegal labor. Texas and Arizona are notoriously anti-union and anti-resident/pro-corporation.

> Texas … notoriously … anti-resident

What do you mean Texas is anti-resident?

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

#207

Post by throwaway473825 »

notTooFarGone wrote: post #185
throwaway473825 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With hindsight, it wasn't a very good idea to shut down 6 of 12 nuclear reactors. Still much better than the situation in Germany, but that's a very low bar. It will be interesting to see how the Rolls-Royce SMR project works out. Since it appears to be impossible to build anything cheaply in the UK, this will be the real test.

Yeah please send some electricity to Germany it's so horrible here :'(

You certainly could use an alternative to gas heating during the upcoming winter. It doesn't look like Qatar will be able to deliver.

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

#208

Post by throwaway473825 »

notTooFarGone wrote: post #188
mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here in Norway we already have issues with volatile and high electricity prices, because: 1) We're not expanding hydropower generation very much. We can upgrade existing dams for improved efficiency, but no new dams are being planned, because it's politically and environmentally arduous to do so. There's some wind buildout, but that's also a political quagmire due to nimbyism. Nuclear isn't even close to having a pol…

So Germany is a net exporter of energy and is somehow causing checks notes ALL of Europe's high energy prices? Weird

Germany became a net electricity importer after shutting down its final nuclear power plants in 2023.

On top of that, heating still runs mostly on gas, which won't be fun this winter. Due to the inefficiency of gas heating, there will be less gas available for Germany's gas power plants.

Now imagine if Germany's dream of hydrogen vehicles, where most hydrogen comes from gas, also became a reality...

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

#209

Post by bsoqk »

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.

Are you sure King Richard would do that? I don’t think he would do that at all. Being king is good because you’re above everybody else.

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

#210

Post by pembrook »

Illotus wrote: post #129
pembrook wrote: post #55

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…

Its pretty delusional to suggest that working nuclear plant was going to be decommissioned without this considering that electricity consumption is projected to rise rapidly. There currently is shortage of steady power in Finland so no nuclear plants are gonna be closed barring catastrophes.

Finland’s electricity consumption is not projected to rise rapidly.

Finlands energy use in general is in decline, their economy isn’t growing and neither is their population: https://www.treasuryfinland.fi/annualreview2022/energy-consu...

Absent AI, this plant is absolutely the type of thing that a left/Green Party would vote to shut down under the premise that the cost is too great to retool/maintain it and “nuclear bad.” This is a Cold War era Russian plant that needs retooling.

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