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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

#241

Post by dalyons »

sfn42 wrote: post #179
epistasis wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear is the most expensive form of clean energy. It is likely to bankrupt at least one company. When Finland contracted with France to build their latest reactor, they wisely had a fixed price contract where the French company would pay for const overruns. At groundbreaking in 2005, they planned for a 2009 completion. In 2016 it bankrupted Areva, with the French government owned EDG saving parts of the company cru…

> new nuclear is not a serious technology It seems to me the main problem is we build so little of it that we don't have the people, skills, supply chains etc to do it well. China generally builds it's reactors on schedule and within budget.

A one party state where the plants are owned, insured, backstopped and cleaned up for free by the government doesn’t have the same economics as free market builds.

And even with all that their total share of nuclear is declining y/&y and projected to continue to decline. Because it’s still too expensive even for a autocracy

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

#242

Post by mcmcmc »

jryle70 wrote: post #156
mcmcmc wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Overall, it's not exactly a ton of jobs for how much money is going into them, but it isn't nothing. I’m not disputing that data center buildouts will have some localized job creation, but the net effect of all those data centers will be overwhelmingly negative on employment if everything the AI companies are saying is true

> Calling data centers “job creating infrastructure” seems like a bit of an oxymoron That's your original point, which is wrong since, as you admitted, data center boom is clearly creating jobs. If you meant those jobs are offset by the negative effect of AI in general if we believe AI companies, a study by Anthropic was actively discussed here a few days ago. TLDR: they don't believe there will be mass unemployment…

“Job-creating infrastructure” would be infrastructure that creates jobs. A chamber of commerce, small business lenders, startup accelerators etc. Building infrastructure of any kind has a temporary positive effect on employment. The builder jobs have nothing to do with the purpose of the infrastructure.

I’m sure Anthropic is saying that now, but there’s no escaping the fact that they and OpenAI repeatedly harped on how it would eliminate mass amounts of jobs for years. Or the mass layoffs blamed on AI that we have already seen.

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

#243

Post by karussell »

Somehow Hetzner saw at least part of it coming in 2018

https://www.hetzner.com/pressroom/five-years-helsinki/

These low prices are cost savings that we pass directly onto our customers; they come from the reduced energy prices that we pay in Finland compared to Germany, and also come from the colder climate and lower cooling requirements

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

#244

Post by dalyons »

red75prime wrote: post #140
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Continuous manufacturing processes have big problems with intermittent energy sources. Intermittent energy sources are predictable in aggregate. A fairly modest amount of storage to smooth things out and you can pretty reasonably get above 50% solar and wind. Make up a large chunk of the balance with nuclear and hydro and you're pretty close to 100%. The last 10% is obviously the hardest, but what's the excuse for…

Predictability will not get a plant through the night by itself. 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." > Trouble being they're still operating ~1200 coal power plants. Yeah, it's because of…

Nah, it’s coz they were almost all built in an era before renewables became cheaper than coal in the last few years.

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

#245

Post by dalyons »

vlovich123 wrote: post #97
parineum wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a good thing that green energy isn't a fixed quantity and more can be built if there's demand, which is exactly what Google is doing. It's great for marketing and, you're right, that's why they are doing it but the reason it's good for marketing is that their customers care about the environment. This is the exact invisible hand mechanism in action. It's their preferences changing the behavior of one of the bigg…

Nuclear power plants have a huge lead time and require government approval, something the Finnish government declined to approve (Fortum had requested to build a third reactor). Solar and wind are fine but they’re not usable as a replacement for nuclear without huge battery installations which make the cost worse than nuclear. Also large installations still take time - from regulatory approvals to actually building t…

Then why is California down to 25% fossil generation from 60% a few years ago? And still dropping fast as more and more batteries and renewables come on line. Tell me again how baseload generation is still a relevant concept

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

#246

Post by throwaway2037 »

Illotus wrote: post #118

This is basically due to Google probably rightly believing that electricity price in Finland is going up due to all these datacenters and also a pr stunt that the current government loves because they can claim that they aren't allowing these datacenters to raise electricity price. This isn't investing in power infrastructure in any way, there is no reality where that nuclear plant wasn't staying in operation as long…

It is worth noting that Finland is a member of Nord Pool (for electricity) which includes all Nordic nations. You cannot consider Finland alone in your supply and consumption expectations -- you need to include Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Finland. Both Norway and Sweden have massive annual electricity exports exceeding 30 TWh for each country. 60 TWh is the equivalent of four EPR nuclear power units that can produce about 14 THw per year! That is crazy over capacity in my view. The block has plenty of supply.

Further, the article specifically says:

    > Google signed a 22-year contract with Finnish utility Fortum to buy up to 50% of the output from the Loviisa nuclear power plant.
That nuclear power plant has two reactors that each produce about 8 TWh in total per year. So Google bought 4 TWh per year. Meh, no biggie. The Nordic Pool has plenty of capacity.

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

#247

Post by throwaway2037 »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #8
sien wrote: post #5

Good on Google. Finland has low emissions from electricity : https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/all/yearly 71 gC02eq/kwH France, Sweden and Norway look like good places for data centres in Europe too on the basis of low electricity emissions.

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.

    > Sweden is struggling a lot with scaling its power production, to the point where it's a problem for existing and new industries
Some light research shows that Sweden has annual electricity exports of about 30 TWh (equiv to 2x EPR nuclear reactors). Sweden has plenty of excess power. Also, Sweden is part of Nord Pool. Its neighbor, Norway, also has massive annual electricity exports of about 30 TWh. Again: Plenty of excess capacity to supply Sweden. Do you have any evidence to support your claim?

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

#248

Post by throwaway2037 »

rob74 wrote: post #187
jillesvangurp wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Finland they made a few mistakes by becoming overly dependent on Russian reactor designs Russian sourced fuel for those reactors. Relations with Russia are a bit strained (especially recently, but they were always complex). Luckily, the wind sector is booming in Finland in recent years. They have a lot of on-shore capacity. A lot of reactors in the US are similarly dependent on Russia for uranium enrichment and suppl…

You'd be surprised how many European power plants (not only with Russian/Soviet designs) relied and still rely on fuel from Russia ( https://www.voiceofemirates.com/en/politics/reports-and-inve... ).

A quick search shows that there are plenty of alternatives. First, all nuclear power plants keep a excess supply of fuel on site, about 2-3 years. If Russia says tomorrow: "No more nuclear fuel exports to any 'unfriendly' European nations.", there are plenty of alternatives. US-based Westinghouse already produces nuclear fuel that is compatible with many Soviet-designed reactors. Plus France (Framatome and Orano), Netherlands (Urenco), Canada and Kazakstan can easily backfill any European needs, be it raw material or final fuel.

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

#249

Post by marginalia_nu »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #247
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.

> Sweden is struggling a lot with scaling its power production, to the point where it's a problem for existing and new industries Some light research shows that Sweden has annual electricity exports of about 30 TWh (equiv to 2x EPR nuclear reactors). Sweden has plenty of excess power. Also, Sweden is part of Nord Pool. Its neighbor, Norway, also has massive annual electricity exports of about 30 TWh. Again: Plenty of…

Excess power is unevenly distributed both geographically and temporally.

In the SE1 region, which is the least populated and probably best candidate for a data center, there was a 400% price drop between February and March this year, then up 100% in May, then down 50% in July. Between summer 2025 and winter 2026, the same region saw a price hike of nearly 1000%.

https://data.nordpoolgroup.com/auction/day-ahead/prices?deli... 12&currency=EUR&aggregation=MonthlyAggregate&deliveryAreas=SE1,SE2

https://data.nordpoolgroup.com/auction/day-ahead/prices?deli...

I guess if you want a data center that only operates some months of the year that's fine.

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

#250

Post by tovej »

epistasis wrote: post #69
wxw wrote: post #43

> As part of the deal, Google signed a 22-year contract with Finnish utility Fortum to buy up to 50% of the output from the Loviisa nuclear power plant. > Finland has emerged as an attractive location for data centres because of its cool climate, plentiful low-carbon electricity and relatively uncongested power grid.

I hope the data center's waste heat can be used for some form of district heating! Finland has pretty great municipal infrastructure, but I don't know enough about its heating systems.

The city of Kajaani's district heating (northern Finland) is already completely covered by datacenter waste heat from CSC datacenters (and maybe some other ones).
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