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Google to back three new nuclear projects

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Re: Google to back three new nuclear projects

#41

Post by ViewTrick1002 »

melling wrote: post #3

Do the “no nuclear, renewables are the future” people have any comments? We burned a few decades saying solar and wind are the solution. This set us back greatly in the struggle to reduce greenhouse emissions.

This seems to be revisionist history trying to position nuclear power as some underdog?!?!?

We threw absolutely massive handouts at the nuclear industry 20 years ago.

Only look to Vogtle, Virgin C. Summer, Olkiluoto 3, Flamanville 3 and all other projects. Moorside, Oldbury, Wylfa and countless in the US.

Had new built nuclear power delivered on budget and on time nuclear power would definitely have been part of the solution.

Instead Vogtle provides electricity costing 19 cents/kWh. Virgil C. Summer is a $10B hole in the ground and Flamanville 3, which is not finished yet, is 7x over budget and 13 years late on a 5 year construction schedule.

The true underdog from that time, renewables (and storage) deliver energy cheaper than even fossil fuels.

Re: Google to back three new nuclear projects

#42

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #17
adventured wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Replacement isn't remotely close to good enough. We need a massive increase in the supply of energy. Nuclear is the only viable path for that. We can do more than one thing at a time, we have the resources.

Yes, we need a massive increase in the supply of energy. Solar is the only way we're going to get it. We're adding solar at a 1TW / year rate. We're adding nuclear at a rate of ~30 GW / year.

I'm honestly baffled by the persistent irrationality of nuclear supporters.

This is a solved problem. The investment required to build grid storage for renewables, the TCO, the scalability, the capacity, and the build time, are all objectively better than nuclear.

So what's the real story? What is this obsession with an outdated last-century technology really about?

Re: Google to back three new nuclear projects

#43

Post by croes »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #4
melling wrote: post #3

Do the “no nuclear, renewables are the future” people have any comments? We burned a few decades saying solar and wind are the solution. This set us back greatly in the struggle to reduce greenhouse emissions.

20 years ago nuclear was the fastest, cheapest and best method for carbon free electricity, so the fossil industry pushed solar & wind as a distraction. Today solar & wind are the fastest, cheapest and best method for carbon free electricity, so the fossil industry pushes nuclear as a distraction.

Nuclear energy was never cheap, it was always heavily subsidized. Just ask Joe Kaeser the former CEO of Siemens.

He said no nuclear power plant was ever profitable

Re: Google to back three new nuclear projects

#44

Post by ViewTrick1002 »

nandomrumber wrote: post #39
bee_rider wrote: post #5

Personally I’m skeptical of nuclear power given how much easier it is to incrementally add renewable capacity (sure, intermittence is a problem, but I think we can deal with it by being cleverer). But anyway, if anybody (other than the government, which gave up long ago) can pay the upfront costs of nuclear, it is the big tech companies like Google. > […] Google has set 2030 goals to reach net zero emissions across i…

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…

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.

Re: Google to back three new nuclear projects

#45

Post by HideousKojima »

pjc50 wrote: post #29
HideousKojima wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>20 years ago nuclear was the fastest, cheapest and best method for carbon free electricity, so the fossil industry pushed solar & wind as a distraction. The histories of pretty much every green party in the western world and their anti-nuclear activism suggests otherwise.

Reminder that anti-nuclear activism started against nuclear weapons and nuclear dumping, and then after Chernobyl the realization that it was possible to mess up agriculture across a continent from the failure of a single plant. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-36112372 Greenpeace spent years campaigning against dumping waste at sea. In a reasonably free market, which doesn't exist for electricity, solar would win…

Anti-nuclear power activism started before Chernobyl, see New Zealand banning nuclear powered ships at their ports in 1984 for one of many examples.

Re: Google to back three new nuclear projects

#46

Post by CurtHagenlocher »

pjc50 wrote: post #29
HideousKojima wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>20 years ago nuclear was the fastest, cheapest and best method for carbon free electricity, so the fossil industry pushed solar & wind as a distraction. The histories of pretty much every green party in the western world and their anti-nuclear activism suggests otherwise.

Reminder that anti-nuclear activism started against nuclear weapons and nuclear dumping, and then after Chernobyl the realization that it was possible to mess up agriculture across a continent from the failure of a single plant. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-36112372 Greenpeace spent years campaigning against dumping waste at sea. In a reasonably free market, which doesn't exist for electricity, solar would win…

In the United States, anti-nuclear activism predates both Chernobyl and Three Mile Island. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clamshell_Alliance and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abalone_Alliance for two examples.

Re: Google to back three new nuclear projects

#47

Post by melling »

ViewTrick1002 wrote: post #41
melling wrote: post #3

Do the “no nuclear, renewables are the future” people have any comments? We burned a few decades saying solar and wind are the solution. This set us back greatly in the struggle to reduce greenhouse emissions.

This seems to be revisionist history trying to position nuclear power as some underdog?!?!? We threw absolutely massive handouts at the nuclear industry 20 years ago. Only look to Vogtle, Virgin C. Summer, Olkiluoto 3, Flamanville 3 and all other projects. Moorside, Oldbury, Wylfa and countless in the US. Had new built nuclear power delivered on budget and on time nuclear power would definitely have been part of the…

Remember that time France went from 7% to 70% nuclear energy?

https://youtu.be/1WNjyxeBsWc?si=kVa2qf0uBeFrAyYB

Re: Google to back three new nuclear projects

#48

Post by kayodelycaon »

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?

I believe this should have meaning. It would mean risk mitigation is a primary objective of the company. And not every company decides to consider risk mitigation as a primary objective.

The problem is that risk mitigation is a long term objective. Who has time for that?

Re: Google to back three new nuclear projects

#49

Post by ViewTrick1002 »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #42
bryanlarsen wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, we need a massive increase in the supply of energy. Solar is the only way we're going to get it. We're adding solar at a 1TW / year rate. We're adding nuclear at a rate of ~30 GW / year.

I'm honestly baffled by the persistent irrationality of nuclear supporters. This is a solved problem. The investment required to build grid storage for renewables, the TCO, the scalability, the capacity, and the build time, are all objectively better than nuclear. So what's the real story? What is this obsession with an outdated last-century technology really about?

People think it is cool. Spicy rocks make heat.

Which was followed by climate change denying conservatives who found their position untenable embracing nuclear power being able to create a culture war issue in debates about climate change.

All in the name of preventing the disruption of their fossil assets by stymying renewables.

Peter Dutton in Australia which now lost is the perfect example of this with his ”coal to nuclear” plan leading to massively increased emissions for decades to come.

Re: Google to back three new nuclear projects

#50

Post by tough »

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?

Usually what happens is they buy out one local government, pay them, and usually fuck up the neighbors as the local government being paid not only has the incentive of money but can say put that hazardous facility just at the circumvention to their neighboring places, which get 0.
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