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Google to back three new nuclear projects

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Re: Google to back three new nuclear projects

#201

Post by mmmBacon »

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.

I think you missed the forest for the trees. I did incorrectly cite GPT-4 as I was going from memory and that's suspect sometimes. I also didn't elaborate and maybe I should have given the snarky comments I'm seeing.

Actually the amount of power available matters because you are consuming energy in time. If I have a 1MW plant and a battery, I can generate 1GWh in about 3 weeks. This seems a little silly though. A Hyperscale DC campus is ~150MW to 200MW. If you plot the larger ones, they are almost all near power stations with >1GW capacity (not all).

The industry trend is towards building 1GW datacenters. Last I checked these would consume ~8.7TWh (assuming PUE of 1). However, the 8.7TWh while relevant is meaningless unless the power to the DC can be 1GW. Since the plant itself has to generate more than 1GW (the plant has a cap ratio so more than this, plus other demand, etc..) for such a site, then it follows that there are limited number of sites in the US (this is public info see EIA.gov or Wikipedia).

Grok3 is already at 140MW (100 days of training ==> 336GWh) at ~10^26 FLOP. Model FLOP is increasing at ~5x per year so by 2030, we are expecting to be ~10^28 and that would take ~10GW (24PWh). If I am optimistic and say that the efficiency can improve by 1.3x per year, then we still need a very large generating station to meet the demand or we need to distribute among many smaller sites.

You can push the numbers around however you like but the conclusion is the same, the timing may be different.

There's a reason why all the hyperscalers are investing in nuclear, large generating capacity and the highest cap factor of any form of energy.

My 2nd comment still stands, and you left unaddressed (remember the forest?)..

Re: Google to back three new nuclear projects

#202

Post by mmmBacon »

epistasis wrote: post #197
r0m4n0 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the alternative though? I think it’s fair to question a decision but if people put their foot down when they don’t see the answer as good or clear enough then you end up with the status quo. This is the same thing that happened with housing (and building projects in general) in many larger cities. If all the housing projects are squashed for some decent alternative reason, you end up with the alternate realit…

Clean energy is scaling far faster than gas. Coal is dead. Nuclear takes 10+ years, and the US industry is so small that it can not scale to meet future needs. Look at what was deployed last year, in GW terms: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=64586#:~:tex... but note that gas produces at a capacity factor of ~50%, and solar at 25%, so scale solar down by half to better compare gas to solar. Batteries a…

The main problem with renewables is their capacity factor (amount of time they can produce their max capacity). In the US this is ~24%, in Germany I think it's ~12% (can be wrong here). The reason for nuclear here is that it has the highest capacity factor of any form of energy (see EIA.gov).

Re: Google to back three new nuclear projects

#203

Post by ethbr1 »

ertgbnm wrote: post #20
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…

> "meet our customers' needs while mitigating risks and maximizing benefit." Holy corporate jargon batman! I love seeing example of phrases like this out in the wild. Stating this implies that minimizing risks and maximizing benefit is not a need of most customers? IMO, it's better not to say stuff like that at all. It's basically a meaningless phrase, it adds no information to the sentence. In fact, I'd go so far as…

'We at the Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy and NIKIET feel that the RBMK reactor design meets our customers' needs while mitigating risks and maximizing benefit.'

Re: Google to back three new nuclear projects

#204

Post by looofooo0 »

nandomrumber wrote: post #84
looofooo0 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lets face it deploying nuclear around the world will add other mayor headaches like nuclear profileration.

What nuclear proliferation? How many nuclear electricity states are there? 30 How many nuclear weapons states are there? 9 What headaches are those nine nuclear capable states providing, exactly? How has the world been made worse by having nine nuclear capable states? Practically, not just hypothetical anxieties about an unrealised future.

Ok, how many are democracies of those 21 without nukes or have or had a defense alliance with a country with nukes?

Re: Google to back three new nuclear projects

#205

Post by wewxjfq »

ttfkam wrote: post #132
croes wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 depe…

Germany does not receive Russian pipeline gas and has banned Russian LNG from its ports. It receives a tiny share of Russian gas from Dutch and Belgian ports, but to my knowledge Germany has no control over this. France on the other hand is the top destination for Russian LNG in the EU, sharing the lead only with countries that refuse to support Ukraine.

Germany became a net importer of electricity in 2023, but it took the vast majority of its nuclear power plants offline long before that, when Germany still was a net exporter of electricity. Even in 2022, during the gas crisis with barely any nuclear power left, Germany net exported records amounts of electricity to other European countries, with France at the top of the receiving end because half of their nuclear reactor fleet was offline.

Lastly, Germany has one of the most stable grids in the world, while France does issue blackout warnings when demand peaks.

Re: Google to back three new nuclear projects

#206

Post by therealdrag0 »

brrwind wrote: post #200
frollogaston wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How is residential solar dangerous?

Mostly people falling of roofs I think. When you have lowest bid contractors going up and down millions roofs each for a measly 10kw of power. The aggregate deaths per kw are worse for residential than other power sources.

Re: Google to back three new nuclear projects

#207

Post by bhelkey »

sschueller wrote: post #73
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.

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.

> Wind has down sides like ...Birds strikes

Many birds die as a result of human activity. In the US, the leading cause of these deaths is cats [1]. Cats cause four times more bird deaths than the next anthropogenic cause of death, flying into windows.

Cats cause ~1000x more bird deaths than collisions with wind turbines.

[1] https://www.statista.com/chart/15195/wind-turbines-are-not-k...

Re: Google to back three new nuclear projects

#208

Post by ryathal »

worldsayshi wrote: post #13
rcpt wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Renewables are only easy if you ignore regulations. For whatever stupid reason local busybodies lose their shit about windmills regularly and they are frustratingly hard to ignore.

Doesn't revenue sharing often turn those frowns upside down? More inclusive business models might help?

For the farmer that owns the land the windmill got built on it's great. The handful of houses in the area get fuck all though and actually have to deal with the externalities.

Re: Google to back three new nuclear projects

#209

Post by crote »

robotnikman wrote: post #188
doublerabbit wrote: post #90

Earlier 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…

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…

On the other hand, assuming the industry doesn't completely stagnate, "X was an older and unsafe reactor design in comparison to the newer ones we have today" will always be true.

I'm not worried about another Chernobyl. We've had one already, all reactor designs have been tested over and over again to avoid a repeat. The real risk is in all the small and seemingly insignificant things working together in unexpected ways. There will always be a nonzero chance of an incident, and due to the nature of nuclear reactors the impact of an incident is essentially unlimited.

Think of it like commercial airliners. Are they safe? Yes, absolutely. They are the safest method of travel available. I have zero worry about my safety when stepping on an airplane. But despite the tiny odds airplanes do crash from time to time, simply because there are so many of them.

An airplane crash has a smouldering crater and a few hundred dead as its result. Not great, but not terrible either: as a society we build a monument and move on. Would we still be flying airplanes if - no matter how unlikely - a crash meant that an entire city would become uninhabitable?

Re: Google to back three new nuclear projects

#210

Post by JumpCrisscross »

ertgbnm wrote: post #20
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…

> "meet our customers' needs while mitigating risks and maximizing benefit." Holy corporate jargon batman! I love seeing example of phrases like this out in the wild. Stating this implies that minimizing risks and maximizing benefit is not a need of most customers? IMO, it's better not to say stuff like that at all. It's basically a meaningless phrase, it adds no information to the sentence. In fact, I'd go so far as…

> Stating this implies that minimizing risks and maximizing benefit is not a need of most customers?

It’s not, at least for nuclear power. In Europe, for example, the debate is entirely emotional. So saying they’re working for a rational customer is sort of meaningful, even if corporate speakified.

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