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Google to back three new nuclear projects

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Re: Google to back three new nuclear projects

#211

Post by jeffbee »

freshpots wrote: post #175
jeffbee wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It is not trivial at all, it's the same energy used as about 9,000 homes and roughly 50-100 L/s of water wasted to evaporative cooling of said hardware. "The Dongfang Electric Corporation's 26 MW offshore wind turbine is the largest in the world, surpassing previous models like the Mingyang 20 MW turbine. This turbine's larger size and capacity enable it to generate about 100 GWh of electricity annually, potentially…

Your water use estimate is high by a large factor. Order of magnitude.

Your claim: 50-100 liters per second to cool a 26MW workload.

Actual water consumption, according to Google annual report: 730 liters per second, globally, for an average 3GW load.

Re: Google to back three new nuclear projects

#212

Post by ViewTrick1002 »

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…

You do know that the French grid would crash during every cold spell without 30 GW of fossil fueled power production? With the majority coming from their neighbors, reversing said flow?

What they have done is outsourced the management of their grid to their neighbors fossil fuel power plants, and then only when they truly have to they reduce the output of their nuclear power.

Stick two French next to each other and they would in short order crash.

Re: Google to back three new nuclear projects

#213

Post by cyberax »

epistasis wrote: post #98
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…

I'm not sure if nuclear has always been a field where charlatans proliferate, but it's certainly true of the past few decades. The Summer plant in South Carolina was completely fraudulent, sending the power executives to jail for their fraud. Billions spent and nothing to show except a hole in the ground. Vogtle was slightly better in that they powered through to construction completion so that nobody cared about the…

> South Koreas is the most developed nation that has had success building, and even they send people to jail for construction fraud.

That's why :)

Russia is also fairly successful at building reactors. Although, somehow their orders pipeline has been getting shorter and shorter (wonder why...).

Re: Google to back three new nuclear projects

#214

Post by ZeroGravitas »

nandomrumber wrote: post #124
energy123 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, if we went back in time and built nuclear then we'd have nuclear today, and the fixed costs would have been paid by a previous generation. Is that surprising? But that doesn't inform us on what the optimal policy decision is in the current year of 2025 given 2025 prices and time-to-build of the various options. In Australia renewables have the perfect confluence of multiple factors: - low seasonable variability…

The whole argument is like going back 40 years and claiming there’s no point thinking about deploying nor researching & developing solar / wind because we don’t have the expertise nor technology. We still don’t. Australia doesn’t manufacture solar panels, and other than building the wind turbine masts locally, we don’t manufacture wind turbines either. Refusing to commit to developing a domestic nuclear power industr…

How did nuclear slip into your list of power sources that dominate the Chinese grid? You skipped over two other sources that generate double what nuclear does and are growing faster:

Coal 58.2%

Hydro 13%

Wind 9.8%

Solar 8.3%

Nuclear 4.4%

https://ember-energy.org/countries-and-regions/china/

Re: Google to back three new nuclear projects

#215

Post by bee_rider »

dporter wrote: post #62
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.

Renewable power is cheap because it also receives massive government handouts in the form of tax credits.

Renewable suffers a little bit from having renewable infrastructure costs considered a new subsidy, while fossil fuel costs are just kind of baked in.

If we included the cost of cleaning up fossil fuel byproducts… well, we don’t even know how much it will cost to clean up all that carbon.

Then we will have to work out how we bill the international relations cost of having to deal with petrochemical producers…

Re: Google to back three new nuclear projects

#216

Post by frollogaston »

therealdrag0 wrote: post #206
brrwind wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's the reason. Overall, family homes don't make for very safe or efficient power plants.

Re: Google to back three new nuclear projects

#218

Post by lesuorac »

frollogaston wrote: post #216
therealdrag0 wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's the reason. Overall, family homes don't make for very safe or efficient power plants.

Very efficient for distribution though which is expensive (check your utility bill).

Don't need to run power lines for hundreds of miles if you have a generator on your roof.

Re: Google to back three new nuclear projects

#219

Post by lesuorac »

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…

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

That's not fair.

Chernobyl was a reactor that failed to pass safety tests being put into production. Any failure should be considered expected.

Re: Google to back three new nuclear projects

#220

Post by blibble »

crote wrote: post #142
nandomrumber wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> a proven technology with excellent safety record Excellent safety, if you ignore Chernobyl, Fukushima, Three Mile Island, the Tokaimura accidents, the Church Rock spill, the beaches near Dounreay, and dozens more. Nuclear power rarely kills anyone, but when (not if) things go wrong, it tends to create a massive mess which costs billions to clean up - if a cleanup is even possible at all. It is the only power source…

> Excellent safety, if you ignore Chernobyl, Fukushima, Three Mile Island, the Tokaimura accidents, the Church Rock spill, the beaches near Dounreay, and dozens more.

no, these are included in the calculations of "deaths per kilowatt-hour"

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-d...

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