Earlier quoted context omitted.
> $20B for 300MW Estimated 20B CAD for 4 x 300MW power stations.
Is that competitive compared to solar/wind + battery? I doubt it.
It isn't even competitive with other nuclear reactors.
Google to back three new nuclear projects
261–270 of 365 posts
Re: Google to back three new nuclear projects
#262Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
> Don't need to run power lines for hundreds of miles if you have a generator on your roof. To remove the need for power lines, you also need batteries, and enough solar to make it through winter.
Even if the power lines are already a given and you're just looking at the operational cost, home solar still uses them a lot to send power back. Peak usage hours are in the evening when the sun is already down.
Also, home solar is still subsidized, even in Arizona where it makes the most natural sense. I doubt it'd be a thing otherwise, even if the only alternative were utility solar. But I understand the argument that pollution is an overdue emergency and any clean energy is better than nothing.
Re: Google to back three new nuclear projects
#263Re: Google to back three new nuclear projects
#264Earlier 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.
I wouldn't call it "a lot" when you put it into perspective.
China has about 60GW of nuclear generation capacity - this is after 70 years of building their first nuclear plant. It has about 1600GW of wind and solar after about 10 years.
In 2024, China added 80GW of wind capacity and 277GW of solar. In the first 3 months of 2025 alone, 60GW of new solar capacity and 15GW of new wind capacity were added. In 2024, 4.3GW of nuclear was added.
Re: Google to back three new nuclear projects
#265Re: Google to back three new nuclear projects
#266Here'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…
It's not necessarily malice, it's very easy to underestimate the difficulty building and running a real nuclear reactor. The 1953 'Paper Reactor' memo still applies fully today: https://whatisnuclear.com/rickover.html
Re: Google to back three new nuclear projects
#267Earlier 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.
> 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...
By sheer numbers, yes, but the kinds of birds killed are different. Larger, slower reproducing birds such as eagles, condors, etc. are more at risk being killed by wind turbines because deaths in those groups have a much larger effect whereas cats kill a much larger number of birds but they tend to be smaller, faster reproducing species and as such their numbers overall aren't as much at risk.
Re: Google to back three new nuclear projects
#268Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh, it's the NuScale guy again. NuScale got far enough to get approval to build a test reactor at the Idaho Reactor Testing Station, which is in Outer Nowhere for good reasons. But they never got enough funding to build it. The trouble with most of these small modular reactor schemes is that their big pitch is mostly "we don't need a big, strong, containment vessel because ... reasons." There's no inherent problem in…
Where did you see that the containment at Fukushima was too small? I thought that most of the release was done because there was not enough storage of contaminated water.
Fukishima containment.[1] The top of the containment vessel is shown in yellow, just above the red cylinder containing the reactor. The containment vessel was a heavy shell, but not much larger than the reactor. It had to contain any steam overpressure resulting from an accident, and didn't have enough volume that the steam pressure would decrease, and maybe condense. The surrounding building wasn't a pressure vessel and couldn't contain anything. Building panels blew out, leaving visible holes in the walls.
Three Mile Island containment.[2] The entire huge concrete and steel building around the reactor and support equipment is the containment vessel. When the reactor failed, radioactive steam escaped into the large containment vessel, where it was contained.
[1] https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/appendices/fuk...
[2] https://www.ans.org/news/article-3916/the-three-mile-island-...
Re: Google to back three new nuclear projects
#269I 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.
If that is your concern, then the thing to worry about is dramatic loss in food production before energy becomes an issue.
Plats survive some time (days) without light. If there is not enough backup power source (peaker gas plats, not nuclear though) the grid could quickly collapse causing a continent-wide blackout from what it would be really hard and it would take a long time to bring the grid up. Cities would be uninhabitable within a few days (no water, not sewage processing, no heating).
Re: Google to back three new nuclear projects
#270Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you have a source?
I work for a company that provides electronics that end up in nuclear reactors. We don't do batteries, the story is just an example of the kind of headache it is.
Maybe it's true for the actual reactor control system I dunno. Our industrial phones ended up at a nuclear plant once (that we know of) and we only learned about it because the engineer called us for firmware reset procedure. The product doesn't have any nuclear energy certifications (although it is tested for rail and maritime use).