This is about to give "Killed by Google" a whole new meaning.
Google to back three new nuclear projects
131–140 of 365 posts
Re: Google to back three new nuclear projects
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
Google can’t have blackouts. So helps to have some nuclear in the energy mix.
France has nuclear and had a blackout.
The last time France had a blackout on the scale of Spain and Portugal was 1978. France has been and remains one of the top electricity exporters for Western Europe.
Because of nuclear.
By comparison, Germany dropped its nuclear power industry in favor of focus on renewables. Now they import electricity generated by nuclear from France and buy fossil fuels from Russia despite recent Russian aggression.
Who isn't dependent on fossil fuel imports from Russia? France. Who is looking to ban all internal combustion engines from their largest city by 2030? France.
Because of nuclear.
Re: Google to back three new nuclear projects
#133It 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.
Some challenges:
- You get free cooling, but if you use too much you melt the permafrost, which has huge environmental cost.
- Building in remote locations is enormously expensive, especially with the requirements of a nuclear generating station.
- Now you have to run a city for the operators to live in and ship in everything they need (not to mention hardware to the DC.
- Denmark (and so presumably Greenland) has a law against building nuclear generating stations.
Besides, building nuclear power stations with the concept that we accept an accident will happen is crazy. Better to invest in preventing them than mitigating them.
Re: Google to back three new nuclear projects
#134Nuclear (hopefully fusion at some point) is the only plausible way to meet energy needs in the future (that we currently know of). Fear of nuclear waste isn't irrational, but highly overblown because catastrophic events are more emotionally compelling than the slow degradation of either living standards and/or environment caused by competing technology.
What happens in such case were a reactor was to blow. What then? Or are you saying we just deal with it when it occurs? I am not fully detesting nuclear, but I do disagree it a cure to the environment crisis as Solar is plenty and free; as are Wind and Water too. The risks of what if; and that now we live in such a volatile world. How are you going to convince me it's safe? How do I know a drone won't strike it in th…
Nuclear reactors do not surprise explode. The Chinese designs are passively safe: cut off all power and they'll simply sit there. They do not require active cooling.
The Gen 4 designs, which they also have, are physics safe: literally drop bombs on them and they still won't fail (bombing a nuclear plant in general is an over stated risk for other reasons too). They're building those now too.
Re: Google to back three new nuclear projects
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
Google can’t have blackouts. So helps to have some nuclear in the energy mix.
France has nuclear and had a blackout.
Misleading I’d say
> Residents of Andorra and parts of France bordering Spain were also reporting being hit by the blackout.
https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2025/04/28/spain-portugal...
Re: Google to back three new nuclear projects
#136Personally 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…
We’re not adding solar fast enough and are still struggling with storage. This would be a great way to bridge the gap. Not if the data centers consume all this new energy of course which seems to be what’s happening. Maybe after everyone has turned their own portrait into a studio ghibli picture we can go back and use that new, clean energy to solve the climate crisis.
> We’re not adding solar fast enough and are still struggling with storage. This would be a great way to bridge the gap.
Will it be built before we have sufficient renewable capacity?
Re: Google to back three new nuclear projects
#137This is about to give "Killed by Google" a whole new meaning.
Hah!
But, in all seriousness, this could realistically be saving lives if you go with the assumption that Google was going to use this energy either way, and it otherwise would be coming from anything other than solar.
Every other source causes more deaths per energy produced. Coal is by far the worst, but natural gas, and even hydroelectric cost more lives than nuclear.
Re: Google to back three new nuclear projects
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can't speak for the prior poster, but I am highly skeptical that the current business ecosystem in the United States is capable of effectively and safely building new nuclear power infrastructure, particularly if and when the ever-popular but, to the best of my knowledge, never-completed Small Modular Reactor pitch gets involved.
Conversely China has built a lot of new nuclear capacity, and has projects for SMRs in the works too. The problem as you allude to isn't the technology.
Yeah, we have political issues around infrastructure in the US, but those probably aren’t going away. If we can do nuclear with just technology (no politics), then it might be viable. So, as I said, good luck Google!
Re: Google to back three new nuclear projects
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
What happens in such case were a reactor was to blow. What then? Or are you saying we just deal with it when it occurs? I am not fully detesting nuclear, but I do disagree it a cure to the environment crisis as Solar is plenty and free; as are Wind and Water too. The risks of what if; and that now we live in such a volatile world. How are you going to convince me it's safe? How do I know a drone won't strike it in th…
Nuclear reactors do not surprise explode. The Chinese designs are passively safe: cut off all power and they'll simply sit there. They do not require active cooling. The Gen 4 designs, which they also have, are physics safe: literally drop bombs on them and they still won't fail (bombing a nuclear plant in general is an over stated risk for other reasons too). They're building those now too.
Hacks, cyber espionage?
So it sounds like the view point of "deal with it when it happens then" and that's what puts me off nuclear.
Nuclear is too unstable when something does occur to be contained and as to when dismantled.
Re: Google to back three new nuclear projects
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
Roof top solar doesn’t work in apartments, and it also doesn’t work for renters. Roof top solar is great for people with spare cash to optimise heir future cash flow. I advocate for nuclear because it guarantees the poor won’t freeze in the dark.
Doesn't work how? If it's monetary gain then thats a political not one in residence. If not producing enough power then that's a people's problem. Being greedy taking more than what they need and for not enough resources on building efficiency. Overall solar works. It's just gate-kept tightly by evil organisations who are scared to lose their dirty cash for such technology to evolve.
Because apartments don’t have roof tops.
And why would a landlord sink $10,000+ in to a property for no return.
Roof top solar only works for the user who has the roof top solar.
For everyone else it makes electricity more expensive.
Happy to be proven wrong. Show me a majority of places with high roof top solar penetration where per kWh electricity rates have fallen.
And who cares about carbon emissions, China and India have that covered - I don’t need to worry about producing more or less CO2 emissions because it won’t make any difference whether or not I believe in catastrophic climate change.