281–290 of 309 posts
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You’d be surprised. Case in point Germany.
Not really. Situation now is totally different to what it was when Germany made those decisions. In Finland shutting down nuclear hasn't really been something that has been discussed seriously in very long time.
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First of all, are you willing to wait to find out? Second of all, if it is not Google, it'd be either other businesses, or from tax money. Why should tax money be used to bail out a failed business?
No public money needed, it is easily profitable to do without. And to answer your question: yes I and everyone else in Finland were willkng to wait and find out, it was and is not feasible option to shut it down in few years. If it actually was a realistic option this would have been big news for years now with the highly variable electricity prices we've had after the Russia attack on Ukraine.
According to whom? Show the number, don't just be hand wavy. If it is struggling now to extend beyond 2030 then how can it easily be profitable? Think about your logic.
> Yes I and everyone else in Finland were willkng to wait and find out
Not the plant operator apparently, who has the stakes in it. Do you pay them enough to run the plant?
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I think that’s a good thing, they could also build a nuclear reactor or two or three. Wouldn’t hurt.
A nuclear reactor is takes years and years to build, this is again Europe selling it's sovereignty to big tech for some short term cash.
Let’s not fix that problem, get better at doing the thing that Europe was quite capable of doing (see France, Germany before they decided to let the green ideological extremists less the energy strategy) standardise a design and begin solving the energy problem.
Funny you should mention sovereignty, something a country enjoys when it has a source of energy of its own, especially when we can mine our own uranium right on the continent. Alas, we chose not to.
Instead we listen to the green imbeciles and now we’re buying our uranium and hydrocarbons from abroad.
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Did any one factory in those industries (paper and high end manufacturing) use 50% of the output of a nuclear power plant?
Did you read the article? Google has mentioned four distinct locations. That means at least four separate data centers, possibly more.
This is basically due to Google probably rightly believing that electricity price in Finland is going up due to all these datacenters and also a pr stunt that the current government loves because they can claim that they aren't allowing these datacenters to raise electricity price. This isn't investing in power infrastructure in any way, there is no reality where that nuclear plant wasn't staying in operation as long…
Not only disappointing such comments exist on HN, but to be at top is depressing.
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Did any one factory in those industries (paper and high end manufacturing) use 50% of the output of a nuclear power plant?
No, but one company (UPM -- paper mills) consumes 8-9% of all electricity produced in Finland.
The four planned data centers involved in this deal, after construction, will likely employ less than 1000 people.
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> Calling data centers “job creating infrastructure” seems like a bit of an oxymoron That's your original point, which is wrong since, as you admitted, data center boom is clearly creating jobs. If you meant those jobs are offset by the negative effect of AI in general if we believe AI companies, a study by Anthropic was actively discussed here a few days ago. TLDR: they don't believe there will be mass unemployment…
“Job-creating infrastructure” would be infrastructure that creates jobs. A chamber of commerce, small business lenders, startup accelerators etc. Building infrastructure of any kind has a temporary positive effect on employment. The builder jobs have nothing to do with the purpose of the infrastructure. I’m sure Anthropic is saying that now, but there’s no escaping the fact that they and OpenAI repeatedly harped on h…
Such a bizarre logic. Since when a chamber of commerce or startup accelerators are infrastructure?
Railways or roads are job creating infrastructure, did you see road building or maintenance jobs disappear? Same with data centers, themselves and the infrastructure to support them such as energy.
> I’m sure Anthropic is saying that now, but there’s no escaping the fact that they and OpenAI repeatedly harped on how it would eliminate mass amounts of jobs for years
This is what you said earlier: "but the net effect of all those data centers will be overwhelmingly negative on employment if everything the AI companies are saying is true"
Anthropic is evidently not saying that. Now you're saying maybe they are not but they imply to, or hope for that. Weasel words, don't you think?
I too believe that AI will cause massive uncertainty in society. However anyone who pretends to know with any certainty how our AI shaped future will be is just that, pretentious.
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“Job-creating infrastructure” would be infrastructure that creates jobs. A chamber of commerce, small business lenders, startup accelerators etc. Building infrastructure of any kind has a temporary positive effect on employment. The builder jobs have nothing to do with the purpose of the infrastructure. I’m sure Anthropic is saying that now, but there’s no escaping the fact that they and OpenAI repeatedly harped on h…
> “Job-creating infrastructure” would be infrastructure that creates jobs. A chamber of commerce, small business lenders, startup accelerators etc. Such a bizarre logic. Since when a chamber of commerce or startup accelerators are infrastructure? Railways or roads are job creating infrastructure, did you see road building or maintenance jobs disappear? Same with data centers, themselves and the infrastructure to supp…
Per Wikipedia:
> Infrastructure is the set of facilities and systems that serve a country, city, or other area, and encompasses the services and facilities necessary for its economy, households and firms to function.
Let me separate “job creating infrastructure” and “infrastructure that creates jobs” as distinct ideas. Infrastructure is not just physical. Railroads and highways are transportation infrastructure. Data centers are infrastructure, but their primary purpose is not job creation. Any jobs created are tangential to the purpose of supplying networked computer resources. Labor is a cost center for a data center, and their owners aren’t aiming to kill their profit margins.
I wasn’t aware of Anthropic’s recent statements on the matter. And frankly I don’t know why I’d believe that they are being honest when it seems pretty obvious that it’s a play to rehab their reputation. For years they said it would make a majority of jobs obsolete with the heavy implication that their B2B value prop is reducing labor costs.
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https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49652346
> Those decisions would otherwise have been made year by year, but the long-term deal with Google ensures Loviisa will keep running through the end of its operating license It's important to be able to read through PR in planted pieces. There's no indication that Loviisa was actually going to struggle. It's a guaranteed revenue stream which removes some risk for them, but Finland has seen a boom in data centers and s…
Planted pieces? how about directly from the operator:
Without the lifetime extension investment program, the plant – which currently employs approximately 580 people and provides 10% of Finland’s electricity – could not continue operations beyond 2030. - [0]
That is not just year over year discussion. Of course it's PR, but do you happen to have insider information that contradict that?
More details:
Fortum has an ongoing, approximately EUR 1 billion investment programme in Loviisa with the aim of extending the lifetime of the power plant until 2050. To date, approximately 80% of the projects and EUR 700 million of the capital expenditure required to keep the power plant operational through 2050 are still pending investment decisions.
The PPA with Google will provide the revenue certainty to continue the investments associated with 100% of the lifetime extension of Loviisa. Furthermore, the agreement is expected to enable a new 10 MW power increase of the plant, in addition to the already planned 38 MW uprate which is expected to be live in 2028.
> That doesn't speak to them wondering if there's enough demand to keep the plant alive. It's highly unlikely Loviisa was going to close down even without the Google deal.
You know that because?
[0] - https://www.fortum.com/media/2026/09/inside-information-fort...
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With hindsight, it wasn't a very good idea to shut down 6 of 12 nuclear reactors. Still much better than the situation in Germany, but that's a very low bar. It will be interesting to see how the Rolls-Royce SMR project works out. Since it appears to be impossible to build anything cheaply in the UK, this will be the real test.
Sweden main issue is that there is no transmission capacity between North and South, like now prices are 2x at south.