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Google to back three new nuclear projects

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Re: Google to back three new nuclear projects

#181

Post by bee_rider »

nandomrumber wrote: post #99
hannob wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the only power generation that has a completely closed fuel life cycle What exactly are you talking about? It does not sound like it describes the way nuclear power, uranium mining, and nuclear waste storage works.

Explaine how nuclear waste is dealt with. Detail how nuclear waste is continuously pumped in to the atmosphere. Or shredded and buried like wind turbine blades which are entirely waste with no recycling value. Hint: it isn’t. There’s so little of it, it’s still all predominantly stored on site at the power plants. Highly radioactive reactive waste isn’t highly reactive for very long. And long lasting waste isn’t very…

The comment they were replying to went out of its way to say “completely closed” which is, of course, not correct.

If we want to say nuclear generates not much in terms of byproducts, that seems like a potentially viable argument. But then, renewables don’t consume any fuel (but the installations are a lot less durable). We’re rapidly approaching the point where we might have to admit that sweeping dramatic statements about either one being universally superior are hard to justify and the differences are complicated…

Re: Google to back three new nuclear projects

#182

Post by energywut »

jeffbee wrote: post #111
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…

Training GPT-4 used (claimed) 62GW-h over 100 days, for an average of 26MW. Rest of your comment follows from this error. 26MW is a fraction of the primary power consumed by a single passenger aircraft, by the way. It is an absolutely trivial energy input.

An average US home uses ~10,000 KWh over a year, resulting in about 1 kilowatt average power use.

Figures I can find suggest that a 737 uses approximately 7MW to stay aloft.

So a couple things I learned -- I think it's still a notable amount of power, enough to power ~6,000 homes for a year just to train a single model. But also, I learned that planes use a whole lot more power than I thought!

Training a single model is essentially consuming one plane-year's worth of power, or 3-4 flights continuously while it trains. I had no idea planes used so much energy.

But also, I bet most of these companies aren't training one model and calling it done. There's probably 1s or 10s of models being trained per year per company. That's a material amount of energy use. If we could power tens or hundreds of thousands of homes, that isn't 'trivial' energy input.

I think it's useful to put it into context next to other things we take for granted, but I don't think it's fair to diminish it as nothing either.

Re: Google to back three new nuclear projects

#183

Post by megaman821 »

aziaziazi wrote: post #141
sschueller wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even without I think wind will become too expensive eventually to make it worth while. Especially when solar gets more efficient and cheaper. Wind has down sides like moving parts and requiring giant concrete poors. Birds strikes, noise as well as ground vibration are also issues.

You can add (no) recycling of huge composite balades.

That just isn't a real problem. A single large American landfill could take 100 years worth of wind turbine blades and not even be 25% full. If we were so inclined, we could also shred them and add them to concrete for sidewalks or the like.

Re: Google to back three new nuclear projects

#184

Post by frollogaston »

muth02446 wrote: post #65

I view nuclear as a prudent diversification of energy sources: What happens if some supervolcano erupts, and because of the ashes significantly less sunlight reaches the surface of the earth. Presumably, there will also be less wind then.

It's not even a what-if, it's just cheaper than solar for what you get. Especially compared to residential solar, which is also quite dangerous.

Re: Google to back three new nuclear projects

#185

Post by foota »

agos wrote: post #25
perihelions wrote: post #2

Here's a better article: https://www.theregister.com/2025/05/07/google_signs_another_... > "Elementl didn't respond to questions by press time. Its public materials offer little clarity on its actual operations—aside from broad claims about providing "turn-key project development, financing and ownership solutions customized to meet our customers' needs while mitigating risks and maximizing benefit." > "The nuclear d…

this sounds like one of those Google PR moments where they desperately try to paint themselves as the good guys. Remember when they announced contact lenses to help people with diabetes? Maybe this is related to the talk about splitting Google that's going around these days?

It seems like these news articles about XYZ superscaler announce agreement to purchase power from nuclear startup come up every few months. My assumption is that there's very little needed from Google et al to sign these agreements, and the upside is very cheap power if the startup miraculously pulls it off, so they might as well.

Re: Google to back three new nuclear projects

#186

Post by chickenbig »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #178
barbazoo wrote: post #86

Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43927371 > Ontario set to begin construction of Canada's first mini nuclear power plant

$20B for 300MW, and that's before the inevitable massive cost overruns. Continuing the Ontario provincial government's history of lighting taxpayer money on fire for electricity.

> $20B for 300MW

Estimated 20B CAD for 4 x 300MW power stations.

Re: Google to back three new nuclear projects

#187

Post by bryanlarsen »

nandomrumber wrote: post #91
ViewTrick1002 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still built at absolutely massive scale around the world without subsidies. With many countries phasing out their renewable subsidies because they aren’t needed anymore. Unsubsidized solar and storage is today in much of the world cheaper than coal and fossil gas. The renewable subsidies stil existing simply add fuel to the already raging fire that is renewable buildout.

What storage? Where? At what price? Where are all these 14 day full load capable storage plants being built? I’m not saying they aren’t, I am saying I don’t see the data.

Never, because we don't need 14 days of full load capable storage. Most models say we need about 3 days to get 99.99% coverage with a reasonable amount of overbuild & interconnect.

Re: Google to back three new nuclear projects

#188

Post by robotnikman »

doublerabbit wrote: post #90
dfilppi wrote: post #9

Nuclear (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…

To be fair, Chernobyl was an older and unsafe reactor design in comparison to the newer ones we have today.

Anecdotally, I live near the Palo Verde nuclear powerplant in Arizona, we receive all of our electricity through a combination of solar (clouds are very rare here) and nuclear. These 2 factors mean energy is abundant in the state, and necessary in the summer for survival; air conditioning is a necessity due to the extreme temperatures in the summer.

The Palo Verde plant was commissioned in the 1980, and provides more power than any other reactor in the US. Since its not located near a body of water, it uses treated wastewater for cooling. It is a Pressurized water reactor design similar to the ones used on Naval vessels, a much safer design than the one used in Chernobyl, and none of which have ever experienced a meltdown or critical failure. Overall, I've never experienced any anxiety regarding the reactor not too far from where I live, it is the least of my concerns.

I believe the future will need to be a combination of renewables, to put all our eggs in one basket in foolish. Smaller and safer self contained nuclear reactors (like the ones used on Submarines) seem very promising for data centers. AI is on the rise, for better or worse, and it's power demands are constantly growing.

Re: Google to back three new nuclear projects

#189

Post by philipkglass »

pitaj wrote: post #158
philipkglass wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The NRC isn't the bottleneck. For the recently completed Vogtle Unit 3 reactor, construction work and permitting work ran in tandem. Early construction work started in 2009 and all NRC approvals were completed by 2012. Neither NRC regulations nor lawsuits ever halted construction. Vogtle 3 was originally supposed to be ready in 2016. It suffered enormous cost overruns and delays due to the companies actually building…

NRC is holding back new designs, not existing ones.

The AP1000 was a new design when Vogtle 3 and 4 were planned. It was certified by the NRC in 2005. NuScale had its small modular reactor design certified by the NRC just a couple of years ago:

https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/nrc-certifies-first-us-sm...

If you mean that the NRC holds back designs that are more exotic than plain old light water reactors, maybe so, but that isn't relevant to the "looming power crisis" mentioned by bpodgursky up-thread. Light water reactors are the most affordable and fastest to build everywhere in the world. Pressurized heavy water reactors (like CANDU) are also mature designs. Everything else is slower and more expensive to build, with very limited operational history compared to the dominant water based reactor designs.

Re: Google to back three new nuclear projects

#190

Post by ViewTrick1002 »

chermi wrote: post #165
ViewTrick1002 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do know that nuclear power has experienced negative learning by doing throughout its entire life? https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03014... You don’t get ”free electricity” with absolutely massive handouts to the nuclear industry. Instead renewables and storage are delivering on the ”too cheap to meter” promise.

Are you really denying the learning curve based on one paper about France? You don't think maybe there's other confounding factors*? A single survey of a single country isn't counterfactual. Are you really certain that with a relatively fixed design the learning curve wouldn't apply at sufficient scale, all else being equal. The learning curve is one of the most time-tested laws in construction. *Yes, I understand it…

It also includes the US seeing the same negative learning by doing.

We have research on when we have achieved learning effects.

> If you look at the data specifically you're going to find learning but for that there's a several requirements:

> - It has to be the same site

> - It has to be the same constructor

> - It has to be at least two years of of gap between one construction to the next

> - It has to be constant labor laws

> - It has to be a constant regulatory regime

> When you add these five you only get like four or five examples in the world.

From a nuclear energy professor at MIT in a nuclear power industry podcast, giving an overly positive but still sober image regarding the nuclear industry as it exists today.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDzaSucDg7k

In the meantime renewables and storage have gone from nascent industries to today be the vast majority of all new energy production in TWh and while costing a fraction of new built nuclear power.

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