Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google to back three new nuclear projects

esgtoday.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 365 posts

Re: Google to back three new nuclear projects

#81

Post by belorn »

ViewTrick1002 wrote: post #44
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…

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.

It was promised that by now half the grid of EU should had been operated under green hydrogen. Instead we had yesterday in Sweden news the opening of a freshly new built natural gas power plant as the solution to that intermittence problem. Of course, those natural gas power plants are paid through subsidizes as grid stability is the government responsibility, and thus the bill for that natural gas is put on taxes and connection fees.

I have said it before, but in order for me to believe the claims that renewables and storage are delivering in places like europe, you first have to stop investing and building new natural gas power plants. Rather than classify natural gas as "green", as Germany pushed through in EU, we should have laws to prevent new natural gas power plants from being built and existing fleet should be slowly dismantled. If renewables and storage can deliver on the ”too cheap to meter” promise, they should do so in an environment without natural gas being used behind the scene.

Re: Google to back three new nuclear projects

#82

Post by jppittma »

ryan93 wrote: post #69
lern_too_spel wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

California famously deregulated its electricity market at the end of the 20th century, becoming the first state to do so. https://paylesspower.com/blog/deregulated-energy-states/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000%E2%80%932001_California_e...

Wow no regulations in California. First I’m hearing of this

Can we get an updated opinion in light of the facts being the exact reverse opposite of the initial hypothesis?

Re: Google to back three new nuclear projects

#83

Post by selfselfgo »

neural_thing wrote: post #59
floxy wrote: post #56

I suppose like anything there are multiple reasons, but what are the top 3 why California electric rates are so high (compared to the rest of the U.S.)? https://www.chooseenergy.com/electricity-rates-by-state/ Why doesn't the state encourage more capacity to bring costs down? (to encourage electrification/EVs, etc.) Is it because they are phasing out natural gas? Is it to encourage roof top solar? Or trying to reduce…

It's because the California government doesn't believe in markets, prices as incentives or anything like that. California govt believes in state mandates

And there’s no richer state in the union.

Re: Google to back three new nuclear projects

#84

Post by nandomrumber »

looofooo0 wrote: post #32
sebastialonso wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never understood the "I'm solar" or "I'm nuclear" crowd. The issue is an engineering problem, not a baseball match. As an system-oriented person, give me a healthy combination of available, battle tested, new and promising solutions, fine-tuning weaknesses with strengths. Go to the stadium to solve your local team/visiting team issues. You are all falling to Big Fossil antics.

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.

Re: Google to back three new nuclear projects

#85

Post by ziml77 »

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.

Many of us who care about the environment have hated the widely-held anti-nuclear stances. It's a very clean source of energy. Renewables ended up being the focus because they had to be. There was no chance of pushing nuclear forward when the general sentiment was that we needed to regress on nuclear.

Re: Google to back three new nuclear projects

#87

Post by spookie »

HideousKojima wrote: post #14
bryanlarsen wrote: post #4

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

>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.

Green Parties are such a farce for the most part. They serve other purposes, not aligned with what you really want or defend ;)

Re: Google to back three new nuclear projects

#88

Post by doublerabbit »

agos wrote: post #25
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…

this sounds like one of those Google PR moments where they desperately try to paint themselves as the good guys. Remember when they announced contact lenses to help people with diabetes? Maybe this is related to the talk about splitting Google that's going around these days?

You mean White Washing? How dare to think Google would think of such a thing. They're not evil after-all.

Re: Google to back three new nuclear projects

#89

Post by dkarl »

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?

Honestly, I'd rather them explicitly commit to minimizing risks than say, "We're going to address the needs of our customers, and that probably includes minimizing risks, at least in most cases, right? Product will let us know when they've done the research."

It's better that they say these things than that they don't say them. The real problem is not that they say them, but that we can't be confident they'll live up to them.

Re: Google to back three new nuclear projects

#90

Post by doublerabbit »

dfilppi wrote: post #9

Nuclear (hopefully fusion at some point) is the only plausible way to meet energy needs in the future (that we currently know of). Fear of nuclear waste isn't irrational, but highly overblown because catastrophic events are more emotionally compelling than the slow degradation of either living standards and/or environment caused by competing technology.

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 the next war? Some sponsored hack?

Stuxnet was an organised hack that was created to aid destruction to nuclear hardware.

Chernobyl is still unsafe and that's many years ago and was recently damaged again by a drone.

Post reply on HN