Google to back three new nuclear projects • Hacker News Board

Re: Google to back three new nuclear projects

#101

Post by chermi » Thu, May 08, 2025, 4:03 PM UTC

ruined wrote: post #80

floxy wrote: post #56

I suppose like anything there are multiple reasons, but what are the top 3 why California electric rates are so high (compared to the rest of the U.S.)? https://www.chooseenergy.com/electricity-rates-by-state/ Why doesn't the state encourage more capacity to bring costs down? (to encourage electrification/EVs, etc.) Is it because they are phasing out natural gas? Is it to encourage roof top solar? Or trying to reduce…

california electric rates are so high because the state board keeps raising them https://www.ewg.org/news-insights/statement/2025/02/pge-reco... PR staff will talk about the insurance liability and mandated action to improve infrastructure (wildfires keep starting on power lines and then burning down cities) but it's hard to look away from the record profits

PG&E is guaranteed a rate of return, meaning its profit margin is basically state-guaranteed. A large share of blame falls on CPUC and the structuring of the utilities. CPUC must decide whether they approve of rate before pge implements them, and I think it almost always does.

I'm by no means excusing pge, they were pretty clearly negligent and failed to meet their obligations. But it's a state-backed operation, which pretty much always means less punishment for failure to operate effectively.

Re: Google to back three new nuclear projects

#102

Post by steren » Thu, May 08, 2025, 4:03 PM UTC

mmmBacon wrote: post #96

It took about 1GW to train Chat-GPT4. If you look at the locations in the United States (>70% of all AI is in the US), there are only ~63 geographic regions you could put a 1GW data center. As AI models are growing at ~5x per year, it seems like the infrastructure is no in place to keep the AI models growing at that rate. As companies like Google, Meta, and others look to nuclear power (it has the highest up time of…

GW is power. Gwh is energy.

Energy is what matters when training a model.

Please get your units right. In the meantime, down voted.

Re: Google to back three new nuclear projects

#103

Post by klabb3 » Thu, May 08, 2025, 4:03 PM UTC

matthewdgreen wrote: post #30

melling wrote: post #3

Do the “no nuclear, renewables are the future” people have any comments? We burned a few decades saying solar and wind are the solution. This set us back greatly in the struggle to reduce greenhouse emissions.

Solar and wind are being deployed in enormous quantities. The technology is mature and marching up the exponential portion of the adoption S-curve. Nuclear isn’t. This isn’t even a value judgement: it’s just a statement on the incredible advantages of a technology that can be produced in factories, vs one that currently can’t.

> Solar and wind are being deployed in enormous quantities.

Yes, but that's not what's concerning the skeptics anymore, especially for solar (thankfully - the cost reductions and efficiency gains have been great). Aside from the well known geographical variance, I think the biggest legitimate concern is intermittence.

Let me try to turn that into a decent question: What variable other than energy output is most useful in order to compare energy sources? For context, all I've seen when it comes to intermittence is flame war with weak arguments thrown from both sides of the debate, i.e. "intermittence is not a problem at all, we just need batteries" to "intermittent sources are worth a fraction of an equivalent baseload source".

Honestly, I've not been convinced of either side, and (if I'm not alone in that sentiment), it may be a problem of education and communication.

Re: Google to back three new nuclear projects

#104

Post by Aloisius » Thu, May 08, 2025, 4:04 PM UTC

ruined wrote: post #80

floxy wrote: post #56

I suppose like anything there are multiple reasons, but what are the top 3 why California electric rates are so high (compared to the rest of the U.S.)? https://www.chooseenergy.com/electricity-rates-by-state/ Why doesn't the state encourage more capacity to bring costs down? (to encourage electrification/EVs, etc.) Is it because they are phasing out natural gas? Is it to encourage roof top solar? Or trying to reduce…

california electric rates are so high because the state board keeps raising them https://www.ewg.org/news-insights/statement/2025/02/pge-reco... PR staff will talk about the insurance liability and mandated action to improve infrastructure (wildfires keep starting on power lines and then burning down cities) but it's hard to look away from the record profits

Spending more money on infrastructure means profits will increase.

There's not really any way around that. Capital expenditures are profit.

Re: Google to back three new nuclear projects

#105

Post by kridsdale1 » Thu, May 08, 2025, 4:04 PM UTC

mmmBacon wrote: post #96

It took about 1GW to train Chat-GPT4. If you look at the locations in the United States (>70% of all AI is in the US), there are only ~63 geographic regions you could put a 1GW data center. As AI models are growing at ~5x per year, it seems like the infrastructure is no in place to keep the AI models growing at that rate. As companies like Google, Meta, and others look to nuclear power (it has the highest up time of…

Put all of it in the Greenland tundra. Free cooling. No humans to irradiate.

Re: Google to back three new nuclear projects

#106

Post by kridsdale1 » Thu, May 08, 2025, 4:04 PM UTC

steren wrote: post #102

mmmBacon wrote: post #96

It took about 1GW to train Chat-GPT4. If you look at the locations in the United States (>70% of all AI is in the US), there are only ~63 geographic regions you could put a 1GW data center. As AI models are growing at ~5x per year, it seems like the infrastructure is no in place to keep the AI models growing at that rate. As companies like Google, Meta, and others look to nuclear power (it has the highest up time of…

GW is power. Gwh is energy. Energy is what matters when training a model. Please get your units right. In the meantime, down voted.

Upvoted for dimensional analysis pedantry.

Re: Google to back three new nuclear projects

#107

Post by XorNot » Thu, May 08, 2025, 4:05 PM UTC

mmmBacon wrote: post #96

It took about 1GW to train Chat-GPT4. If you look at the locations in the United States (>70% of all AI is in the US), there are only ~63 geographic regions you could put a 1GW data center. As AI models are growing at ~5x per year, it seems like the infrastructure is no in place to keep the AI models growing at that rate. As companies like Google, Meta, and others look to nuclear power (it has the highest up time of…

GW is a unit of power, not a unit of energy.

The best estimate I can find is 7.2GWh.

Which would be...7 hours of output from a 1GW powerplant.

Re: Google to back three new nuclear projects

#108

Post by pfdietz » Thu, May 08, 2025, 4:05 PM UTC

nandomrumber wrote: post #39

bee_rider wrote: post #5

Personally I’m skeptical of nuclear power given how much easier it is to incrementally add renewable capacity (sure, intermittence is a problem, but I think we can deal with it by being cleverer). But anyway, if anybody (other than the government, which gave up long ago) can pay the upfront costs of nuclear, it is the big tech companies like Google. > […] Google has set 2030 goals to reach net zero emissions across i…

You’re skeptical of nuclear, a proven technology with excellent safety record, the only power generation that has a completely closed fuel life cycle, and believe in a technology we don’t have. If we (the West) had built out nuclear to satisfy our electricity needs, implementing new nuclear power tech as it improved, we could have electricity subscriptions like we have mobile / home internet planes. You’d just pay fo…

It's proven to not be competitive.

All these nuclear announcements are smoke screens to cover construction of large amounts of gas fired capacity. Anyone expecting dramatic near term increases in electricity demand will need to go with gas (or renewables, but tariffs make that less competitive); nuclear, especially new designs, cannot be rolled out quickly.

Re: Google to back three new nuclear projects

#109

Post by delusional » Thu, May 08, 2025, 4:05 PM UTC

bpodgursky wrote: post #6

Every compute company knows that power shortage is a looming crisis. They don't have nuclear expertise in-house and are desperately looking for somewhere to put their money that seems to have experience and capability This is a good thing, but will be fruitless unless the US NRC modernizes in parallel with the industry to actually approve a new reactor in less than geologic time.

Ignoring AI (don't @ me) what are we doing with all that compute? Google (the search engine) hasn't meaningfully changed. Shopping is still largely the same as when Amazon first started out. Websites are pretty much the same. I don't understand what we're doing with all those operations.

I guess VOD is new, but does that really demand that amount of compute?

Re: Google to back three new nuclear projects

#110

Post by bongodongobob » Thu, May 08, 2025, 4:05 PM UTC

mmmBacon wrote: post #96

It took about 1GW to train Chat-GPT4. If you look at the locations in the United States (>70% of all AI is in the US), there are only ~63 geographic regions you could put a 1GW data center. As AI models are growing at ~5x per year, it seems like the infrastructure is no in place to keep the AI models growing at that rate. As companies like Google, Meta, and others look to nuclear power (it has the highest up time of…

Bzzt, wrong units, this isn't Facebook. Go find some data to back up your obviously incorrect claim and fix your post.