Crazy how quickly we’ve gone from “Nuclear is a dead technology, it can’t work and its simply too expensive to build more of. Y’all have to use fossil fuels instead” to “We’re building nuclear plants as quickly as our contractors can draft them, but only for doing experiments in high end algorithmic brute-forcing”.
Would be nice if some of that dirt-cheap, low-emission, industrial capacity electricity was available for the rest of us.
Fun Times! Because everyone pays for the waste and when something goes wrong. Privatizing Profits while Socializing Losses. The core motor of capitalism.
Everyone pays for not using nuclear too, a thousand fold more so.
Cyberpunk dystopias weren’t supposed to be guidelines dammit
I’ll be amazed if this ever comes to fruition.
Generally speaking renewables + storage are the cheapest way of generating non-polluting power. After that there’s nuclear power and it’s much, much more expensive:
After that, and even more expensive are SMRs. Also, they don’t actually exist yet as a means of generating power.
From the article, “For example, it has already received the green light from the U.S. Nuclear Registry Commission (the first one to do so) to build its Hermes non-powered demonstrator reactor in Tennessee. Although it still doesn’t have nuclear fuel on-site, this is a major step in its design process, allowing the company to see its system in real life and learn more about its deployment and operation.”
Generally speaking renewables + storage are the cheapest way of generating non-polluting power.
At variable scale, based on time of year and weather. Nuclear is much better for base-load, particularly at the scale of GWs. You know exactly how much electricity you’re going to get 24/7, and the fuel costs aren’t exposed to a market that can vary by 150-300% annually.
See my comment here:
The high price of nuclear power comes from it being a stagnant and obsolete technology for 30 years.
As well as being choked to death in red tape.
As well as being choked to death in red tape.
I hear this a lot. Can you give an example of a regulation that could safely be removed that would lead to a significant reduction on the cost of new nuclear?
Well one easy one, in my country it is that nuclear plants need to emit zero radiation from their core, like nothing. This is incredibly expensive to achieve, a more sensible value would have been similar or less than normal background radiation.
Nuclear has a lot of advantages that are really low hanging fruit of producing safe clean energy that is perfect for a grids baseload.
Interesting, can you provide more info? Which country? Link?
Wouldn’t emitting radiation, even at background levels, lead to an increase in radiation as it’s in addition to background stuff?
Also, there are strong arguments that we no longer need baseload generation and in fact it’s detrimental:
"No new nuclear or coal plants may ever be needed in the United States….
Wellinghoff said renewables like wind, solar and biomass will provide enough energy to meet baseload capacity and future energy demands. Nuclear and coal plants are too expensive, he added.
“I think baseload capacity is going to become an anachronism,” he said. “Baseload capacity really used to only mean in an economic dispatch, which you dispatch first, what would be the cheapest thing to do. Well, ultimately wind’s going to be the cheapest thing to do, so you’ll dispatch that first.”…
“What you have to do, is you have to be able to shape it,” he added. “And if you can shape wind and you can effectively get capacity available for you for all your loads.
“So if you can shape your renewables, you don’t need fossil fuel or nuclear plants to run all the time. And, in fact, most plants running all the time in your system are an impediment because they’re very inflexible. You can’t ramp up and ramp down a nuclear plant. And if you have instead the ability to ramp up and ramp down loads in ways that can shape the entire system, then the old concept of baseload becomes an anachronism.”"
https://energycentral.com/c/ec/there-really-any-need-baseload-power
Will energy prices become negative when the AI bubble bursts?
No, EVs alone require 10 times the current installed energy production. We’re not even close. Expect energy rates to quadruple. The price will increase until people can’t afford the commute with their entire day’s paycheck.
So not replacing current energy, but adding onto it. Just like how we didn’t replace fossil fuels with the solar and wind unprecedented advancements the last 30 years but only added more energy consumption on top of that…cool
The other side of the coin is that AI currently uses more power than is produced by all renewables across the globe annually. So at least they’ll be offsetting that, which would be a net positive.
And it seems like Google’s funding will help advance safer and more modern nuclear plant designs, which is another win that could lead to replacing coal plants in many countries with small scale reactors that don’t run on uranium.
And it seems like Google’s funding will help advance safer and more modern nuclear plant designs
Hopefully.
But the cynic in me is always concerned when shareholder owned companies are operating something that has the potential to go very wrong very quickly if/when they cut too many corners in the pursuit of that extra 0.5% of profit.
For what it’s worth, many, maybe most (sorry, can’t be bothered to look up the stats right now) nuclear plants in the US are already owned by some publicly traded company beholden to its shareholders who expect it to turn an ever increasing profit for them.
Not that it gives me the warm-fuzzies that that’s the case, but it’s not quite as big of a departure from the current situation as you’re making it out to be.
CorpoNations.
We’re living in a cyberpunk nightmare
But without the cool neon aesthetic. ☹️
Not yet we’re not!
Still plenty of nature to kill before humanity cannot survive in any capacity without corpo supply chains.
If you’re breathing free air, drinking real water, and actual food can grow out of the ground we’re comparably in cyber paradise given how much worse AI spycraft and corporate ownership will worsen everything exponentially for the non-connected over the next decades
Still plenty of nature to kill before humanity cannot survive
I think there may be debate on this point. Climate change may be self perpetuating soon (if it isn’t already) due to thawing meant reserves, etc.
I’m not sure if anyone in the scientific mainstream thinks that’ll push the climate to a point where we can’t survive, but that probably depends on our behaviour over the next few decades.
I think by the end of this century we might hit a point of no return because the oil and gas have enough money to keep themselves from going under due to climate change.
I’m still waiting for the cyberpunk part to happen
Could NOT get the nuclear power plant in Georgia off the ground for how long?
Did it ever get finished?
But when corporate wants it just fucking happens 🤡
Let me preface this that I’m not a huge fan of nuclear, but I do like factual information.
Could NOT get the nuclear power plant in Georgia off the ground for how long?
If you’re talking about Vogtle, it took about 13 years and 14 years. (two reactors)
Did it ever get finished?
Yes. If you want to be specific the original two reactors were finished in 2008. The new work was for the other two reactors. That’s what took 14 years. Of the two new reactors, one started providing commercial power for the first time in June of 2023. The second new reactor only started providing commercial power in Feb of 2024.
But when corporate wants it just fucking happens 🤡
Different type of power plants between what is being discussed for Google and what was put in at Vogtle in Georgia.
Vogtle was completing construction of an existing older design. Think of this like a bespoke tailored suit. It is crazy expensive, and only fits you.
What most of these tech companies are going for is called Small Modular Reactors (SMR). Think of this as like buying a ready-to-wear suit off the rack. Its not nearly as fancy or as impressive (usually much smaller power generation), but its not custom made so its much cheaper.
Corporations > people
Legal people are just better!
Shiti Organics are easily replaceable ;)
Businesses generating their own power is not anything new. The big auto manufacturers used to do it back in the day, and if you scale down the concept, every windmill (the grain grinding kind) and waterwheel built and operated for profit is the same thing. I’m just happy that Google is seemingly having their own built, instead of getting taxpayers to build it for them.
Yeah, if this is what it takes to get new design nuclear facilities in the US, then I’m counting it a win, but I won’t count it either way until the watts come out. Who knows: if they run ok, an actual power company might even try one.
We have a city to burn?
The article mentions Kairos Power but doesn’t mention that their reactors in development are molten-salt cooled. While they’ll still use Uranium, its a great step in the right direction for safer nuclear power.
If development continues on this path with thorium molten-salt fueled and cooled reactors, we could see safe and commercially viable nuclear (thorium) energy within our lifetimes.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-09-06/china-building-thorium-nuclear-power-station-gobi/104304468
To my layman’s knowledge, using thorium molten-salt instead of uranium means the reactor can be designed in a way where it can’t melt down like Chernobyl or Fukushima.
Edit: The other implication of not using uranium is that the leftover material is harder to make in to bombs, so the technology around molten-salt thorium reactors could be spread to current non-nuclear states to meet their energy needs and reduce reliance on coal plants around the planet.
If development continues on this path
If we continue down the path of wasting energy and polluting to produce useless shit humanity is screwed.
We fixed the glitch.
Growing from a broad research effort at U.S. universities and national laboratories, Kairos Power was founded to accelerate the development of an innovative nuclear technology …
Kairos Power is focused on reducing technical risk through a novel approach to test iteration often lacking in the nuclear space. Our schedule is driven by the goal of a U.S. demonstration plant before 2030 and a rapid deployment thereafter. The challenge is great, but so too is the opportunity.
So basically academics finding people to fund a large scale lab experiment, they want to get working by 2030. It sounds like they sold Google on an idea (for funding) and now have to move their idea from the lab to the real world. It does sound safer than water cooled plants of old at least.
These are the small, buried reactors right? The ones that we tested on paper but haven’t gotten NRC/DOE to sign off on?
I know they are MSRs but still…
Glad they’re choosing nano-nukes and supplying their own juice.
Had me excited there for the first half, ngl…
This is good news, relatively speaking.
SMR technology is one of the most promising pieces of technological development in the nuclear power space.
Standardized factory production and completely sealed, so refueling is only at the factory, never on-site. Their also, small, but scalable depending on the needs of each site.
I’m not sure of the design this company is using, but I’m assuming they’re leveraging a fail safe reactor, as in, it requires properly running systems to generate fission, but if those systems fail, the fission process stops. There are no secondary systems that have to kick in, it’s a simple as either it’s running properly, or it can’t run it all.
As opposed to systems like Chernobyl, or 3 Mile Island, that required separate active safety systems to guard against catastrophic failures. But if those failed, they’re backups failed, etc., well, meltdown.
This makes it sounds like Google is building their own nuclear plants
Nope, they have a partner that’s doing that and the partner is going to be providing small modular reactors. Although we are not sure according to the article whether Google is going to be running them directly to their data centers or whether they are going to be providing energy to homes and buying renewable energy credits or something. Either way, small modular reactors should bring down the price of nuclear.
yeah, like cars are cheaper than buses
What could go wrong?
They will suddenly stop supporting them after a few years
Emergency shutdown link hidden behind UI menu after UI menu and constantly changing locations weekly.
So um. What happens when the white supremacists attacking FEMA and electrical grids starts attacking these nuclear reactors?
There are already existing nuclear reactors. Why would these new ones be any different in regards to their ability to be attacked?
Privately owned, smaller, more locations, more news coverage
I guess I expect the national energy commission to still regulate the plant to ensure safety standards are the same between public and private.
Thank goodness we can now get a little nuclear waste with our cat pics.
