who gets the other half? i wouldnt want to share half of anything with Google
Google will buy half the electricity from one of Finland's nuclear power plants
261–270 of 309 posts
Re: Google will buy half the electricity from one of Finland's nuclear power plants
#262Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
What do you think batteries are if not baseload generation? Batteries + renewables compete with nuclear for baseload. They take up substantially more land mass for the same amount of power though.
Re: Google will buy half the electricity from one of Finland's nuclear power plants
#263Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
What do you think batteries are if not baseload generation? Batteries + renewables compete with nuclear for baseload. They take up substantially more land mass for the same amount of power though.
is is often repeated in these threads, baseload generation is an obsolete term. Base load itself is real - the minimum demand on the grid, usually in the early am. Base load generation was a term given to a class of generators (mainly coal) that were cheap but inflexible, so you built them to match the base load and had more expensive variable output generation on top. That economic setup no longer exists, variable generation exists 24x7. So base load exists, base load generators do not. And yeah, thats why nukes are no longer economical, their base load generation role is economically obsolete.
Re: Google will buy half the electricity from one of Finland's nuclear power plants
#264Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Since it appears to be impossible to build anything cheaply in the UK The solution is to build nuclear power stations on ships in China, then sail them to the UK and plug them in. If power prices elsewhere in the world become advantageous, sail them elsewhere and plug them in there. You still have the interconnection costs, but seaside places sometimes have high voltage connections for existing or historic power pl…
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.
Not really. If something bad happens you can always just drag the boat back to China and say here you deal with this lol
Re: Google will buy half the electricity from one of Finland's nuclear power plants
#265Earlier quoted context omitted.
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...
By the first quarter of 2026, Germany recorded net exports of 2.6 TWh. In the middle of winter. We are out of the lump.
In absolutely no way is that true. The EU price varies by renewables production. When it's dark and still that's when electricity costs the most, and that's when Germany imports energy. It exports when there's sun and wind, but then the energy is cheap. So Germany sells low and buys high. Doesn't matter if Germany is a net exporter because it exports at the wrong time.
Re: Google will buy half the electricity from one of Finland's nuclear power plants
#266im amazed these countries just sit and let this be done to them. makes no sense. it looks like free money but it isn't
Do you care to elaborate on what “this” is that is so bad?
And just out of curiosity, have you come to this opinion independently through your own research?
Or is this just regurgitated sentiment you’re memetically repeating to signal in-group status after consuming reactionary media/clickbait on this topic?
Re: Google will buy half the electricity from one of Finland's nuclear power plants
#267It’s crazy that Google and TikTok, which mainly produce consumer software to serve ads, have grown to the scale where they literally need to set up data centres in northern countries while getting their power from nuclear power plants.
> mainly produce consumer software to serve ads
Pretty reductionist. I don't know about tiktok, but Google does a lot more than serve ads
Re: Google will buy half the electricity from one of Finland's nuclear power plants
#268This 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…
You can't sum like that, though. Connections between regions and countries have capacity limits, so it would matter where in Finland you placed a data-center, if you wanted to take into account the electricity coming from Sweden and Norway.
Norway exports electricity primarily to England and Germany, only a little goes to Finland:
https://www.statnett.no/en/for-stakeholders-in-the-power-ind...
Sweden sent 10.6TWh in 2025:
https://www.svk.se/om-kraftsystemet/kraftsystemdata/elstatis...
This matches what Finland says about imports - imported 8.1TWh from Sweden but 0.2TWh from Norway in 2024
https://energia.fi/en/statistics/statistics-on-electricity/
Take a look at the map. Sweden has three underwater cables to the south of Finland near Helsinki (quite near Olkiluoto NPP). Norway only connects in the very far north, its nearest "connection" is via Sweden to near Oulu.
Re: Google will buy half the electricity from one of Finland's nuclear power plants
#269This 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…
A customer willing to make a multi-decade deal for half a reactor at a stable price is perfect for incentivizing new nuclear buildouts. The basic financial problem of nuclear is that it' capex heavy and opex-light, so the costs of the entire enterprise are set during the buildout stage, but the revenue is volatile.
Re: Google will buy half the electricity from one of Finland's nuclear power plants
#270When Google was going hard on deploying renewables they stressed "additionality". They didn't want to just buy clean hydro that already existed, or renewables that were going to get built anyway without their money, they wanted to be sure that their investment was growing the amount of clean energy available. I'm hoping they have some justification like this for buying existing nuclear. They appear to be claiming tha…
Finnish regulators are not better than American counterparts. This deal long time cost will be most likely paid by us common folk.
It is common trend currently here in Finland due to economic situations that data centers can basically get cheap electricity deals and common folks pay it.
I feel this will not end well… if we don’t continue building nuclear. I hope this will force us to continue building asap.