[HN Gopher] Google Funding Construction of Seven U.S. Nuclear Re...
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Google Funding Construction of Seven U.S. Nuclear Reactors
Author : atomic128
Score : 286 points
Date : 2024-10-14 19:06 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wsj.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wsj.com)
| atomic128 wrote:
| Reuters article, no paywall:
| https://www.reuters.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/g...
|
| CNBC article, no paywall: https://www.cnbc.com/2024/10/14/google-
| inks-deal-with-nuclea...
|
| No battery farm can protect a solar/wind grid from an arbitrarily
| extended period of bad weather. If you have battery backup
| sufficient for time T and the weather doesn't cooperate for time
| T+1, you're in trouble.
|
| Even a day or two of battery backup eliminates the cost advantage
| of solar/wind. Battery backup postpones the "range anxiety
| deadline" but cannot remove it. Fundamentally, solar and wind are
| not baseload power solutions. They are intermittent and
| unreliable.
|
| Nuclear fission is the only clean baseload power source that can
| be widely adopted (cf. hydro). After 70 years of working with
| fission reactors, we know how to build and operate them at 95%+
| efficiency (https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/what-generation-
| capacity). Vogtle 3 and 4 have been operating at 100%.
|
| Today there are 440 nuclear reactors operating in 32 countries.
|
| Nuclear fission power plants are expensive to build but once
| built the plant can last 50 years (probably 80 years, maybe
| more). The unenriched uranium fuel is very cheap
| (https://www.cameco.com/invest/markets/uranium-price), perhaps 5%
| of the cost of running the plant.
|
| This is in stark contrast to natural gas, where the plant is less
| expensive to build, but then fuel costs rapidly accumulate. The
| fossil fuel is the dominant cost of running the plant. And
| natural gas is a poor choice if greenhouse emissions matter.
|
| Google is funding construction of 7 nuclear reactors. Microsoft
| is paying $100/MWh for 20 years to restart an 819 MW reactor at
| Three Mile Island. Sam Altman owns a stake in Oklo, a small
| modular reactor company. Bill Gates owns a stake in his
| TerraPower nuclear reactor company. Amazon recently purchased a
| "nuclear adjacent" data center from Talen Energy. Oracle
| announced that it is designing data centers with small modular
| nuclear reactors. As for Meta, see Yann LeCun's unambiguous
| comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41621097
|
| In China, 5 reactors are being built every year. 11 more were
| recently announced. The United Arab Emirates (land of oil and
| sun) now gets 25% of its grid power from the Barakah nuclear
| power plant (four 1.4 GW reactors, a total of 5.6 GW).
|
| Nuclear fission will play an important role in the future of grid
| energy, along with solar and wind. Many people (e.g., Germany)
| still fear it. Often these people are afraid of nuclear waste,
| despite it being extremely tiny and safely contained
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dry_cask_storage). Education will
| fix this.
|
| Nuclear fission is safe, clean, secure, and reliable.
| dumbo-octopus wrote:
| Your link specifically states that no long term storage option
| exists, but it does so in a rather weaselly ("until {a future
| date}, there _was_ not {safe long term storage}") way that
| seems specifically crafted to confuse the reader.
| credit_guy wrote:
| In the US long term storage absolutely exists, the Waste
| Isolation Pilot Plant [1]. It only stores nuclear waste of
| military origin (i.e. from the making of the nuclear bombs).
| But there is no technical reason this storage can't also
| accommodate civilian waste. By the way, the amount of
| military waste exceeds the civilian waste by a factor of 3 or
| so.
|
| [1] https://www.wipp.energy.gov/
| RaftPeople wrote:
| > _In the US long term storage absolutely exists_
|
| In one sense it does exist (i.e. it's buried in salt beds
| 2,000 feet below surface), but is it safe?
|
| In 2014 there was an explosion of a waste container and
| radioactive particles were spread throughout the facility
| and up to the surface by the air processing equipment in
| the mine.
|
| It seems like it's not just a binary choice, but more of a
| continuum of how safe is the particular solution compared
| to others.
| jl6 wrote:
| Nuclear is absolutely necessary to complete the clean energy
| transition, but is it really an either-or with solar and wind?
| We need massive amounts of clean electricity to displace fossil
| energy sources, not just to power the grid but also to
| synthesize all the chemical feedstocks that currently come from
| oil. The skills and resources needed to build out nuclear
| capacity and solar/wind capacity are quite different and
| needn't compete with each other.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _is it really an either-or with solar and wind? We need
| massive amounts of clean electricity_
|
| No. This is a false dichtomy pushed, from what I can tell, by
| the gas lobby. It's solar and wind + nukes or gas.
|
| Batteries work in theory but not in practice: production
| doesn't scale fast enough, and that was before LLMs brought a
| new and growing source of power demand to the table. (I'm
| ignoring that grid batteries compete with transport
| electrification. A combination of economies of scale and
| common bottlenecks in construction of battery plants,
| irrespective of chemistry, links the pursuits.)
| mjamesaustin wrote:
| Batteries are radically transforming California's power
| grid.
|
| In the last few years, they have displaced a huge chunk of
| the natural gas power used in early evenings after sunset
| when solar drops off but demand is still high.
|
| https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-
| business/2024-08-25/b...
| pfdietz wrote:
| Why doesn't battery production scale fast enough? Be
| specific on what limits it.
|
| I firmly believe battery production can scale up very fast.
| Indeed, that's exactly what's been happening.
|
| Realize that to replace all the motor vehicles in the US
| with BEVs would need enough batteries to store at least 40
| hours of the average US grid output. This is almost
| certainly much more than would be needed for the grid
| itself.
| otikik wrote:
| No one has said it's either-or. In fact the thread you
| responded specifically mentions how nuclear needs to be there
| as a "bad weather backup" of other clean energy sources.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _No one has said it's either-or_
|
| _Lots_ of people say either or. When nuclear comes up,
| someone will claim we should just go all in on solar, wind
| and batteries. That 's unworkable, so we wind up burning
| gas.
| otherme123 wrote:
| I rarely, if ever, read pro-nuclear saying that they aim
| to replace oil, coal and gas. It's always "wind and solar
| is unreliable" (not intermitent).
|
| Even in this thread someone is saying that the problem
| with solar is that "if a megavolcano darkens the
| atmosphere... thus we should go all in to nuclear", as if
| it was a guaranteed event in the next 100 years.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| >I rarely, if ever, read pro-nuclear saying that they aim
| to replace oil, coal and gas.
|
| It is almost always implied. It seems so obvious that
| nuclear should be replacing fossil fuels it doesn't seem
| worth mentioning. Unless someone says they're aiming for
| an energy policy of nuclear plus fossil fuels, it's
| probably safe to say their goal is nuclear and
| solar/wind/etc.
|
| Even the volcano comment you mention ends with "For
| energy we obviously need all the options available."
| otherme123 wrote:
| I can't deduce "implied" when the comments are very, very
| explicit against solar and wind, not a single word about
| gas. But somehow I have to read between the lines that
| they actually meant to criticise fossils.
| weberer wrote:
| It sounds like they're talking about the difference
| between baseload power and intermittent power. Replacing
| fossil fuel baseload power plants can be done now.
| Replacing them with variable renewable energy sources
| would require some sort of breakthrough in energy storage
| technology.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Replacing them with variable renewable energy sources
| would require some sort of breakthrough in energy storage
| technology_
|
| No, it wouldn't. Batteries + renewables is proven and it
| works. The problem isn't a technological barrier. The
| problem is we need batteries for a lot of things and
| production can't ramp up fast enough.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _rarely, if ever, read pro-nuclear saying that they aim
| to replace oil, coal and gas. It 's always "wind and
| solar is unreliable"_
|
| People picked tribes and decided it's all or nothing. I
| agree--that's stupid. There is a historical alignment
| between renewables backers and anti-nuke activists (see:
| Germany) that caused nuclear to polarise away from
| renewables. That doesn't really exist anymore. But you
| see its artefacts in the debate.
| bigfudge wrote:
| It's not ideal to have solar/wind and nuclear though.
| Nuclear doesn't throttle well (or at least,
| economically). And Even building gas peak plants to cover
| still cloudy days is an order of magnitude lower in
| capital cost and risk than nuclear. The problem is we
| don't have a coordinated enough system to properly reward
| mostly- turned off gas peak plant owners.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Whatever your plan for a nuclear grid without burning
| fossil gas is (massive overprovision, syngas production,
| batteries, demand response, just ignoring the issue)
| it'll work better and cheaper with renewables.
| petre wrote:
| > Nuclear is absolutely necessary to complete the clean
| energy transition, but is it really an either-or with solar
| and wind?
|
| For energy we obviously need all the options available.
|
| If a major volcano goes off up and darkens the sky with
| clouds and high winds make wind farms unsafe to operate, then
| nuclear is probably our only reliable power source left. It's
| not like there weren't multiple ice ages and warming events
| in the history of our planet.
|
| There is a reason sailboats were obsoleted by the steam
| engine: it could tug forward in windless waters and stll make
| it fast enough to deliver the mail. The base load power
| station is the steam engine. The sailboat is the wind turbine
| or the PV array. Most of them need a gas fired power plant to
| compensate for windless or cloudy days, like newer sailboats
| need an engine. We could use a load following SMR in place of
| the gas fired plant.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| which is why no sailboats exist today....
| petre wrote:
| They're mostly used for recreational sailing or racing
| and are also equipped with an engine (diesel or electric
| sail drive) for maneuvers and in case there's no wind.
| Sailing has also advanced a lot since the nineternth
| century, but commercial shipping is now done with bunker
| oil and diesel engines and was previously done with
| steamers.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Nuclear is absolutely not necessary to complete the clean
| energy transition. It's dubious that new construction nuclear
| power plants are even useful for it, compared to
| alternatives.
| orochimaaru wrote:
| Totally agree. The move away from research in nuclear
| technology towards unreliable "green tech" is a colossal
| mistake. I'm not sure why Germany did it. Reliable power is the
| life blood of an economy. With electric cars (and possibly
| trucks) more will depend on power capacity a country is able to
| reliably produce.
|
| Research safety and disposal. Add funds to that research so
| that we can get over our fear. We did it for airlines its time
| to do it for nuclear power.
| bbarnett wrote:
| A lot of people knock h2 as a fuel, but 1/2 the time these
| complaints seem to not be of a technical merit, but some
| blather about how it will all come from Ng.
|
| Nonsense.
|
| Such things can be regulated, but my point is that solar and
| wind are perfect for h2 generation. The sun shines? Produce.
| The wind blows? Produce.
|
| The variability is irrelevant, and the result is the creation
| of a fuel source that can be stored.
|
| Even better, we already have an immense network of Ng pipes,
| and there have been many tests and studies on injecting h2
| into Ng lines, and pulling it out at the other end with
| molecular filters. There is no molecular reaction either.
|
| The means low cost, massively deployed infra already exists.
|
| And this massive network of Ng lines, with h2 injected, can
| in effect be an immense storage tank of h2.
|
| We don't need some unified "batteries only" group think, but
| instead having multiple clean sources of energy is a boon.
| Just the cost of adding 3x the power transmission capacity,
| distribution is daunting, h2 can let a faster rollout of
| clean transport occur.
|
| We should embrace all paths which the market can endure amd
| which can be green.
|
| The Germans ended up focused on one only.
|
| My point? H2 is perfect for solar.
| fwip wrote:
| Using the existing natural gas lines for hydrogen would be
| pretty disruptive. I don't think most things that burn
| natural gas will work properly on H2. So, you're looking at
| a big-bang switchover, in which every appliance connected
| to the natural gas "grid" in the area will need replacing
| at the same time. In the Northeast at least, it's common
| for houses to use natural gas for heating, water-heating,
| and/or cooking.
| anon84873628 wrote:
| Using the excess power to synthesize hydrocarbons using
| atmospheric CO2 sure would be nice.
| bbarnett wrote:
| _Using the existing natural gas lines for hydrogen would
| be pretty disruptive_
|
| You missed the part about molecular filters. No such
| issue exists.
| jakewins wrote:
| Intermittent and unreliable are two different things.
|
| Renewables are intermittent _and_ reliable; if a wind producer
| has bid into the day-ahead auction, you can expect with very
| high reliability they will deliver as bid.
|
| Nuclear is great, so is zero-marginal-cost energy producers :)
| hypeatei wrote:
| Does nuclear fission avoid the issue of meltdowns? Genuinely
| curious. The only downside I see to nuclear power is
| geopolitics/war (like we're seeing in Ukraine) so we don't
| cause even bigger catastrophes due to instability.
| fwip wrote:
| Nuclear fission is the reaction that has had meltdowns. There
| are fission technologies/strategies that are supposed to be
| meltdown-proof, but I do not know the science well enough to
| say whether that is true.
| petre wrote:
| There are designs which avoid meltdowns, yes. Because the
| fuel is already molten. Like FliBe. It has a safety plug
| which if melts, the fuel flows in a contained reservoir and
| solidifies.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FLiBe
| ignoramous wrote:
| > _so we don 't cause even bigger catastrophes due to
| instability_
|
| That isn't the only worry. If the fuel is smuggled out...
| https://spectrum.ieee.org/high-assay-low-enriched-uranium
| bigfudge wrote:
| Did you mean to say fusion? In which case yes.
| loeg wrote:
| 3rd and 4th gen fission reactor designs have many safeguards
| against meltdown, yes.
| fwip wrote:
| > No battery farm can protect a solar/wind grid from an
| arbitrarily extended period of bad weather. If you have battery
| backup sufficient for time T and the weather doesn't cooperate
| for time T+1, you're in trouble.
|
| Yes, any finite quantity is less than infinity. The same is
| true for fuel deliveries.
| samatman wrote:
| I want to add to this that I routinely see solar plants
| compared on a cost basis with other forms of energy by using
| the nameplate capacity.
|
| Which is, hmm. Rather than impute motive, since I'm sure
| motives vary, I'm going to talk about why this doesn't work.
| Classic heat plants (coal, diesel, nuke, doesn't matter) get
| around 90% of the nameplate. Specifically they're running 90%
| of the time, and producing at the full capacity while running.
| That percentage is called the capacity factor.
|
| Because for classic generators the capacity factor is high
| (hydro can vary a lot based on water available in the
| reservoir), nameplate capacity, which is what the plant yields
| under ideal conditions, is usually what we talk about. The
| problem is that the nameplate capacity of solar is what you get
| on a perfectly sunny day, with the sun shining directly on the
| panel.
|
| What you want in order to assess cost is the nameplate capacity
| multiplied by the capacity factor, which is the averaged amount
| of power you can get out of the plant given real-world
| conditions. For solar, this can push 30% in an ideal location
| like Arizona, and be as low as 13% in a not-ideal location like
| Minnesota. Wind can push 50% capacity when well installed, but
| it is intermittent in an even less predictable way than solar.
| If the wind stops in the middle of the night, all wind and
| solar generation put together is bupkis.
|
| We need nuclear. We could do without all of the other carbon-
| free electrical generation by use of nuclear energy. I don't
| think we should, mind you, solar in particular has a big
| advantage in that it's just about the only generating source
| which comes in small modules, so we can chip away at generation
| by adding whatever's affordable and build up over time.
|
| But next time you hear that solar is cheaper, see if you can
| check the numbers and determine if the claim is being made on
| the basis of nameplate capacity. If it is, multiply that cost
| by four.
| bigfudge wrote:
| While I don't doubt that's true in some discussions, HN is
| not Reddit and I don't see this confusion so much here.
| samatman wrote:
| Are you certain of that?
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41841072
| loeg wrote:
| I see it all over the place.
| janice1999 wrote:
| > Bill Gates has a huge stake in his TerraPower nuclear reactor
| company.
|
| And the deadlines keep getting pushed because the fuel supplier
| is Russia. Nuclear is not immune to geopolitics or the weather
| as this comment suggests. It's one of the many issues comments
| like this ignore - like the spiraling construction costs (even
| in China), risk trade off when it comes to the catastrophic
| nature of accidents, viability and enormous costs of clean up
| and waste storage etc.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| India currently has 9 nuclear plants slated for completion by
| 2026.
| akira2501 wrote:
| > doesn't cooperate for time T+1, you're in trouble.
|
| Unscheduled maintenance intervals exist everywhere. This is not
| a unique problem.
|
| > They are intermittent and unreliable.
|
| On a 24 hour ahead basis. On a year to year basis, they're
| always available, and are absurdly reliable.
|
| > And natural gas is a poor choice if greenhouse emissions
| matter.
|
| There is nothing that can save you from being required to hold
| a broad mix of power generation technologies. Building a
| monoculture here is completely counterproductive and probably
| hastens the destruction.
|
| > despite it being extremely tiny and safely contained
|
| That container is mechanical. It has a failure rate. Failures
| never occur when you _want_ them to. Again, a _depth_ of
| strategies is appropriate here.
|
| "Send it by train then bury it under a mountain and just forget
| about it" is not an actual strategy. It seems to work, because
| we probably just don't know any better yet, but the people who
| are uncomfortable are right to be so. Pretending that they
| simply lack "education" is a pretty rude point of view.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Assuming only batteries are used for storage is one of the
| common bullshit arguments against renewables. It's bad strawman
| engineering.
|
| What works much better is a combination of batteries and an
| e-fuel like hydrogen. Batteries handle most of the stored
| energy flow; hydrogen handles the rarer long term storage
| needs. They complement each other, in a way like cache memory
| and RAM complement each other.
| ViewTrick1002 wrote:
| And recently found the be vastly more expensive than a
| renewable grid when looking at total system cost.
|
| It needs to come down by 85% in cost to be equal to the
| renewable system.
|
| Every dollar invested in nuclear today prolongs our reliance on
| fossil fuels. We get enormously more value of the money simply
| by building renewables.
|
| > The study finds that investments in flexibility in the
| electricity supply are needed in both systems due to the
| constant production pattern of nuclear and the variability of
| renewable energy sources. However, the scenario with high
| nuclear implementation is 1.2 billion EUR more expensive
| annually compared to a scenario only based on renewables, with
| all systems completely balancing supply and demand across all
| energy sectors in every hour. For nuclear power to be cost
| competitive with renewables an investment cost of 1.55 MEUR/MW
| must be achieved, which is substantially below any cost
| projection for nuclear power.
|
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030626192...
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _Every dollar invested in nuclear today prolongs our
| reliance on fossil fuels._
|
| How does that follow?
|
| How does using nuclear for some of our energy needs bias the
| rest of our energy sources towards fossil fuels? As opposed
| to renewables or even more nuclear?
| ViewTrick1002 wrote:
| We get vastly more bang for the buck when investing in
| renewables.
|
| Fixing climate change is both having enough energy to
| displace all fossil fuel we consume _and_ being quick
| enough with the transition lessen the end state carbon
| content in the atmosphere.
| Kon5ole wrote:
| > Nuclear fission is safe, clean, secure, and reliable.
|
| Which energy source has stricter safety and security
| regulations than nuclear? Surely the strictest security
| regulations are applied to the least safe and secure
| operations?
|
| Which other source has cleanup operations going for decades,
| 1000s of miles from where a single plant operated? What other
| power source has the military guarding its waste?
|
| The reliability seems great until unexpected failures drops a
| large percentage of the national power supply in a matter of
| minutes (as seen in France, Sweden and Finland for example).
| Such events are more disruptive than cloudy days are with
| Solar.
|
| > Nuclear fission power plants are expensive to build but once
| built the plant can last 50 years
|
| But they keep costing money for longer than the US has existed
| after they close.
|
| Surely investing in hydrogen or similar is way better for the
| future than nuclear.
| encoderer wrote:
| Finally, 24 years in, it's really starting to FEEL like a new
| century.
| create-username wrote:
| Whatever. We've done too little, too late in order to tackle
| the climate threats.
|
| We've had the technology to build and deploy nuclear reactors
| for decades but we've been burning coal and fuel like there's
| no tomorrow so well...
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| We're getting there.
|
| https://insideclimatenews.org/news/10102024/inside-clean-
| ene...
|
| https://coal.sierraclub.org/coal-plant-map
|
| https://www.vox.com/climate/372852/solar-power-energy-
| growth...
|
| https://www.dnv.com/news/eto-energy-related-emissions-
| will-p...
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41602799 (citations)
| create-username wrote:
| daily temperatures consistently above +2 oC the median
| average since 1970 in my region
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| We should probably prioritize getting there faster then,
| and taking fossil fuel supply chain infrastructure and
| generation offline.
| fwip wrote:
| The famous 4chan quote springs to mind.
|
| "The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago. The
| second best is now."
| mattlondon wrote:
| 4chan? Are you serious?
|
| That proverb is ancient - it has been around for centuries
| (if not longer).
| umeshunni wrote:
| Pick your favorite wise quote source:
|
| [1] Ancient Chinese proverb [2] Abraham Lincoln [3]
| Albert Einstein [4] 4Chat/Reddit/Twitter
| quotemstr wrote:
| Epochal "century" boundaries don't always line up with year %
| 100. One could argue that the 20th century didn't properly
| begin until some idiot shot an archduke. It likewise seems like
| the 20th century likewise overshot Y2K by a decade or two. Now
| things are accelerating in a different, new, and exciting
| direction.
| crazygringo wrote:
| It's the same thing with decades. People often say the
| "sixties" didn't really start till 1963. And when you think
| of the start of 1980's culture, a lot of people are really
| only talking about 1983-1984.
|
| Like, 1960 itself clearly belonged to the 1950's, the same
| way 1980 still belonged to the 1970's -- culturally, that is.
|
| Obviously, the question of what year a decade "really"
| started in, allows for endless argument. :)
| dmd wrote:
| The 90s ended on 9/11.
| chx wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Long_nineteenth_c.
| .. (I am linking like this because this version I read
| myself.)
| rongenre wrote:
| The future is here, it's just not evenly distributed..
| Dig1t wrote:
| Sort of feels like we wasted a long time having our best and
| brightest figuring out how to optimize advertising algorithms.
| I think we're finally starting to recover from that phase.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| These nuclear reactors are literally being built to optimize
| advertising algorithms.
| Dig1t wrote:
| Sort of, they are being built to power AI models which do
| all kinds of things, but yes definitely advertising is part
| of it. Ads are mature now though, these mega corps have
| fine-tuned their products and squeezed every last
| advertising penny out of their audiences that they can,
| there isn't as much new stuff to build in that area now.
| slashdave wrote:
| Um, fission reactors are very much last century.
| preisschild wrote:
| I'd think that just pooling the money from multiple consumers
| into large AP1000 power plants buildouts would be cheaper.
|
| So far economies of vertical scaling mostly led to cheaper energy
| than more smaller units.
|
| Ideally youd have one company with a lot of skilled labor
| building NPPs all the time instead of only every few decades,
| because that means experienced workers change jobs/retire, supply
| chains cease to exist and this leads to cost and time overruns.
|
| Still great to see finally more money being invested into this
| limitless technology (nuclear fission)
| thecrumb wrote:
| I love the 'ideally' in the dry cask storage article...
|
| "Ideally, the steel cylinder provides leak-tight containment of
| the spent fuel."
|
| Also guessing that article is woefully out of date since it
| mentions:
|
| "The NRC estimated that many of the nuclear power plants in the
| United States will be out of room in their spent fuel pools by
| 2015, most likely requiring the use of temporary storage of some
| kind"
| mistrial9 wrote:
| "Ideally, the heavy steel mills near Lake Michigan will produce
| minimal heavy-metals-laden effluent"
| jeffbee wrote:
| Safety claims of novel, unproven fission designs always come
| with a crazy footnote. Pebble bed reactors are completely safe,
| if they are never exposed to water or oxygen, which is a pretty
| hilarious caveat for planet Earth.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| What are the disclaimers for molten salt reactors?
| jeffbee wrote:
| Considering that there are no commercial-scale operating
| MSRs, I am guessing there are some pretty significant
| difficulties. Like graphite pebble reactors, molten salts
| must be perfectly desiccated, which is impossible to
| guarantee under Earth operating conditions, and nobody
| knows what kinds of materials to use for the salt
| containment, or how it might be changed by a few decades of
| operation.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| If you can contain the highly corrosive, very hot, molten
| salts, then they are fairly safe, but you do need to
| guarantee that the path to the dump-tanks is undisturbed by
| whatever disaster is necessitating their use.
|
| A big non-safety disclaimer is that the proposed advantage
| of online refueling is still largely theoretical.
| philipkglass wrote:
| Based on the headline I thought that this was an enormous capital
| commitment for an enormous generating capacity, but the deal is
| with a company called Kairos that is developing small modular
| reactors with 75 megawatts of electrical output each [1]. 7
| reactors of this type, collectively, would supply 525 megawatts
| (less than half of a typical new commercial power reactor like
| the AP1000, HPR1000, EPR, or APR1400).
|
| Kairos is in a pretty early stage. They started building a test
| reactor this summer, scheduled for completion by 2027:
|
| https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/kairos-power-starts-const...
|
| EDIT: Statement from the official Google announcement linked by
| xnx below [2]:
|
| _Today, we're building on these efforts by signing the world's
| first corporate agreement to purchase nuclear energy from
| multiple small modular reactors (SMRs) to be developed by Kairos
| Power. The initial phase of work is intended to bring Kairos
| Power's first SMR online quickly and safely by 2030, followed by
| additional reactor deployments through 2035. Overall, this deal
| will enable up to 500 MW of new 24 /7 carbon-free power to U.S.
| electricity grids and help more communities benefit from clean
| and affordable nuclear power._
|
| [1] https://kairospower.com/technology/
|
| [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41841108
| onepointsixC wrote:
| Yeah I'm not going to lie, that's quite disappointing. Google
| funding several AP1000's would be huge.
| iknowstuff wrote:
| seeing how 2GW of nuclear cost $34B in Georgia, why would
| Google waste $120B when they can get the same output for at
| most half the price (and realistically more like 1/10th)
| using renewables and batteries? and they'd have results in 2
| years instead of 2 decades.
|
| edit: to be clear, 1GW of wind or solar is $1B. Build 3GW for
| overcapacity and you're still at just 17% of the cost of 1GW
| of nuclear, and you technically have 3x more capacity. Now
| figure out how many megapacks you can buy for the $14B/GW you
| saved https://www.tesla.com/megapack/design (answer:
| 16GW/68GWh)
| preisschild wrote:
| Because they need power 24/7 and not only when the weather
| cooperates.
|
| And new AP1000s in the US would cost significantly less,
| because there are already experienced workers & supply
| chains from Vogtle and getting a license requires less work
| too, because you can copy much of Vogtle.
|
| The median build time for nuclear reactors is 7 years. This
| is archivable if you continue building and not just build 1
| or 2 every few decades.
| p1necone wrote:
| > Because they need power 24/7 and not only when the
| weather cooperates.
|
| Hence the batteries.
| rtkwe wrote:
| The scale just isn't there. A single nuclear power plant
| near me, McGuire Nuclear Power Plant, produced 17,514
| GW*h in 2005. The entire potential output of the Tesla
| (cough Panasonic) Gigafactories in California and China
| have a combined output of ~50 GWh per year. [0] Nuclear
| power is amazing at producing a reliable base load of
| power that massively outstrips our ability to produce and
| store solar power. Say our load is well aligned with the
| cycle of solar power and we're ignoring weather so we can
| derate the amount we want to store to 30% that's 105
| years of production out of what I think is the two
| largest batter plants in existence to store the power
| produced continuously by a single large nuclear power
| plant.
|
| [0] https://www.fuld.com/tesla-energy-massive-growth-in-
| megapack...
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Global stationary storage deployed for 2024 will be
| ~150GWh, and this is accelerating. Batteries are easy,
| nuclear appears to be impossible (economically speaking).
| rtkwe wrote:
| So 35 years then to store the power generated 24/7 by
| McGuire at that rate of production which ignores that the
| huge spike of AI loads will want 24/7 power, if we're
| looking at that kind of load I'd rate it at 50% for
| starters (low to be honest because it doesn't account for
| how solar ramps up during the day) which is around 60
| years. Plus that's giving full capacity to those
| batteries when ideally we'd only use the middle 60% to
| avoid deep cycling the batteries daily unless they've
| completely solved that problem.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| The nuclear ain't getting built, these are facts. Even if
| one breaks ground _today_ , you won't push your first kwh
| to the grid for a decade, at which point another ~10TW of
| clean energy will have come online globally.
|
| If AI is using too much power in the short term, destroy
| demand with policy and economics. We are not beholden to
| the robot trainers, we just don't provide utility access
| to the load. Unlimited demand of industrial scales of
| electrical power isn't a right of some sort.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| I don't follow your sums. 50GWh of battery cycled once a
| day for a year is: 18,250 GWh
|
| So you seem out by around 100x.
| preisschild wrote:
| Having enough battery capacity to back up enough energy
| for a few minutes let alone days would require a lot of
| resources.
|
| I think scaling nuclear power would be cheaper and more
| environmentally friendly.
| slashdave wrote:
| Cheaper? No, not even close. Environmentally friendly?
| Debatable, but wait for new tech.
|
| https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/iron-air-battery-
| renew...
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _using renewables and batteries? and they'd have results
| in 2 years instead of 2 decades_
|
| We have nothing close to the battery fabrication pipeline
| to make that timeline true, certainly not at scale. If this
| move works, Google will have cemented its power needs and
| economics for decades to come.
| iknowstuff wrote:
| frequently asserted but not true.
|
| https://x.com/DavidOsmond8/status/1843840160842350779
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Nobody claims renewables + battery doesn't work long
| term. (And not only work, but do so at rock-bottom
| costs.)
|
| The problem is the timeline. Time out building that
| additional infrastructure, including expected demand
| growth, and you always need more power in the interim.
| Particularly if you're planning on taking coal offline.
|
| If there is an arugment that we can ramp up battery
| production even faster than we are, the math changes. But
| we're already in a Herculean effort to mass produce more
| batteries faster.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Battery manufacturing capacity is greatly underutilized
| in China. That was battery cell prices there fell by
| nearly 1/2 in the last year. There is tremendous room for
| expansion of production.
| iknowstuff wrote:
| nuclear literally takes 10x the time to build as
| renewables+batteries. That's like the whole reason why it
| doesn't get built.
| ckdarby wrote:
| Based upon?
|
| Looked through the thread and it looks asserted but I
| don't see the counter not true point.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2024-07-09/chi
| na-... | https://archive.is/DklaA ("Bloomberg: China's
| Batteries Are Now Cheap Enough to Power Huge Shifts")
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| Global battery manufacturing capacity was 2,600GWh in
| 2023 [1], and has probably already exceeded that this
| year. The IEA projects closer to 4TWh by 2025, and nearly
| 7TWh by 2030 [2].
|
| You need to pay attention because this is happening fast.
|
| [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2024-04-12
| /china-... [2] https://www.iea.org/data-and-
| statistics/charts/lithium-ion-b...
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _nearly 7TWh by 2030_
|
| That's a big number. Here's a bigger one: 30,000 TWh,
| about our current electricity consumption [1]. 7 TWh in
| 2030 is less than 1/4,000th total electriciy production
| today. (You obviously don't need 1:1 coverage. But 2
| hours in 2030 against a year's demand today is still a
| nudge.)
|
| Now consider EVs. Then add the tens of TWh of annual
| power demand AI is expected to add to power demand [2].
| (And I'm assuming a free market for battery cells, which
| obviously isn't where we're heading. So add local
| production bottlenecks to the mix.)
|
| Battery numbers are going up. But they aren't going up
| fast enough and never could have, not unless we ditch
| electrifying transportation. Nukes or gas. Anyone
| pretending there is a third way is defaulting to one or
| the other.
|
| [1] https://www.iea.org/reports/electricity-information-
| overview...
|
| [2] https://www.goldmansachs.com/insights/articles/AI-
| poised-to-...
| lukeschlather wrote:
| > and never could have
|
| I could just as easily assert the same of nuclear or gas.
| It doesn't make it true, although there seems to be
| evidence that nuclear cannot scale as fast as
| batteries/solar/wind.
| countvonbalzac wrote:
| That's per year right?
| Vvector wrote:
| "But 2 hours in 2030 against a year's demand today is
| still a nudge."
|
| How much battery storage do you think we need? Surely not
| a year's worth.
|
| For solar, we'd likely need 10-16 hours of storage to
| power stuff overnight. Maybe a little more to cover a few
| cloudy days. Sounds like we are about 5% of that now?
| sudosysgen wrote:
| 10-16 hours is not enough at all. On a cloudy day, solar
| output will only be 15-20%. On top of that, your panels
| really only generate for 8 hours on a very good day - the
| sun is a lot dimmer in the early morning and late
| evening. Really, you need 2x storage for a good day, if
| you want to deal with two cloudy days you'd want 50-60
| hours of storage.
| ckdarby wrote:
| Could you possibly read the article you're replying to
| again?
|
| Even skimming through it discusses the coverage of wind
| and a not 50/50 system particularly to cover winter &
| night time. There is also discussion of a ~2% from
| "other" and how much storage capacity is required.
|
| The article even goes into using wind & solar data for
| the simulation and reducing further the output to be
| conservative.
| bluGill wrote:
| Generally the worst case is two weeks. In the middle of
| winter you often get cloudy low wind days for that long.
| Of course how you handle those worse cases are days need
| not be how you handle typical. If you can handle 16 hours
| of no input this will over the typical cases this will be
| enough to max a massive dent in carbon emissions and we
| can fall back to existing gas (or even coal) plants for
| the rest. Plus a lot of power use can turn off when
| needed - give my company a discount and we can turn the
| factory off.
| ViewTrick1002 wrote:
| 5 hours of storage and a 98.6% renewables system.
|
| https://reneweconomy.com.au/a-near-100-per-cent-
| renewable-gr...
|
| Investing in nuclear power today is an insane prospect
| when the energy market is being reshaped at this speed.
|
| In Europe old paid off nuclear plants are regularly being
| forced off the markets due to supplying too expensive
| energy.
|
| This will only worsen the nuclear business case as
| renewable expansion continues, today being a bonanza
| fueled by finally finding an energy source cheaper than
| fossil fuel.
|
| Nuclear power is essentially pissing against the wind
| hoping the 1960s returns.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _nuclear power today is an insane prospect when the
| energy market is being reshaped at this speed_
|
| We're still more than a decade away from having enough
| batteries to make this shift. Again, excluding EVs and
| AI. That's why we're reanimating coal plants and building
| new gas turbines.
|
| I'd also love to see the numbers on that simulation going
| from 98.6% coverage to what we expect from a modern grid.
| (And if the balance is provided by gas or something
| else.) It should surprise nobody that going from 1 sigma
| to 2 can cost as much as 2 to 3, even if the percentage
| gap is much smaller.
|
| > _Europe old paid off nuclear plants are regularly being
| forced off the markets due to supplying too expensive
| energy_
|
| Europe has invested EUR1.5tn into new gas infrastructure.
| That doesn't go poor without a fight and collateral
| damage.
| ViewTrick1002 wrote:
| A study recently found that a nuclear powered grid to be
| vastly more expensive than a renewable grid when looking
| at total system cost.
|
| Nuclear power needs to come down by 85% in cost to be
| equal to the renewable system.
|
| Every dollar invested in nuclear today prolongs our
| reliance on fossil fuels. We get enormously more value of
| the money simply by building renewables.
| The study finds that investments in flexibility in the
| electricity supply are needed in both systems due to the
| constant production pattern of nuclear and the
| variability of renewable energy sources. However, the
| scenario with high nuclear implementation is 1.2 billion
| EUR more expensive annually compared to a scenario only
| based on renewables, with all systems completely
| balancing supply and demand across all energy sectors in
| every hour. For nuclear power to be cost competitive with
| renewables an investment cost of 1.55 MEUR/MW must be
| achieved, which is substantially below any cost
| projection for nuclear power.
|
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030626
| 192...
| ckdarby wrote:
| In this context, what is a "modern grid"?
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| We'll figure it out. There is too much at stake and there
| are already a gazillion engineers out there going to bed
| every night thinking about how to solve this problem.
|
| Innovation is the grim reaper of analyst reports. No one
| at my company notifies an investment bank when we have a
| breakthrough internally (lol).
| slashdave wrote:
| Maybe you just found a great place for a company like
| Google to invest in.
| edm0nd wrote:
| That is seemingly such an absurdly high number to get a
| nuclear planet up and running.
|
| Is the majority of that cost dealing with regulatory and
| legal nonsense that stems from the anti-nuclear hippy
| groups and laws they got passed in the 60s and 70s?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Is that majority of that cost dealing with regulatory
| and legal nonsense that stems from the anti-nuclear hippy
| groups and laws they got passed in the 60s and 70s?_
|
| One part this, two parts the economics of a novel
| technology platform being deployed in a large size, three
| parts American labor costs and inexperience with
| megaprojects.
|
| Similar to why we can't build ships [1]: high input
| costs, notably materials and labour, and a coddled
| industry that is internationally uncompetitive. With
| ships, it's the Jones Act and shipyard protectionism;
| with civilian nukes, it's misguided greenies. (Would note
| that we're perfectly capable of nuclear production if it
| happens under the military.)
|
| [1]
| https://open.substack.com/pub/constructionphysics/p/why-
| cant...
| rtkwe wrote:
| IMO they only continue to exist because of the Jones Act
| not the way I think you're implying where Jones Act
| protectionism prevents them from flourishing. High
| material and labor alone are enough to explain why people
| wouldn't build ships in the US. What special capabilities
| could Us shipbuilders bring that would make the cost of
| labor here competitive with China or South Korea? Gone
| are the days when the US dominates on skill or capacity,
| and that's not because the US has lost something the rest
| of the world just caught up with us.
|
| Whenever we're looking at the 1900s and wondering why the
| US used to be so dominant as an industrial power I think
| it's incredibly important to remember our industry got
| all the upside (an absolute torrent of money and demand)
| and none of the downside (bombing) of two world wars. IMO
| the US industrial base was riding high on that easily
| into the 80s and people mistake that dominance for skill
| and prowess rather than the waning boon of WW2's
| mobilization and destruction of every other extant
| industrial power.
| WalterBright wrote:
| The rise of the US as an industrial power started in
| 1800. The US was already dominant before WW1.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| The point is there are downstream costs to our moribund
| shipping industry. We have a internally-navigable
| waterways we barely use, offshore wind power gets stalled
| due to lack of ships, _et cetera_.
|
| Post-WWII effects are one component. But another is that
| we want a protected shipbuilding industry for its own
| purposes, which is fine, but that curtails a lot of other
| production.
|
| > _What special capabilities could Us shipbuilders bring
| that would make the cost of labor here competitive with
| China or South Korea?_
|
| Energy. Our energy costs are much lower than theirs.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| Nuclear is still much more expensive than renewables in
| China, where there aren't too many "misguided greenies"
| setting policy. Environmentalists were successful in
| opposing nuclear construction because it was expensive
| and _unprofitable_ , not the other way around.
|
| The faster people can internalize this lesson, the sooner
| we'll get to economically-viable nuclear power.
| mbivert wrote:
| > Environmentalists were successful in opposing nuclear
| construction because it was expensive and unprofitable
|
| As far as Europe is concerned, there seems to have been
| various political move and lobbying to affect energy
| independence (e.g. France): economy is transformed
| energy, so by nuking (...) energy independence, you're
| suffocating countries. The military role of nuclear is
| furthermore _crucial_ ; civil & nuclear must be
| correlated.
|
| That's to say, giving up nuclear is not something a sane,
| well-driven country should do lightly, regardless of
| ideologies.
|
| It's a tricky topic; what I regularly hear from
| economists is that wind & solar are still far from being
| able to compete with nuclear. And because of the previous
| two points, people can't but frown upon "green"
| arguments, even if the underlying intentions are honest
| and well-intended.
|
| (China may not have misguided greenies, but it has a
| strong incentive to sell whatever it's offering).
| jimjimjim wrote:
| That right, blame the hippies. Nothing at all to do with
| nuclear power plants being the one thing that you really
| do want to be engineered well. But no, regulations are of
| course to blame!
| edm0nd wrote:
| The anti-nuclear hippy movements of the 60s and 70s are
| pretty directly responsible for a lot of the slow down in
| expansion of nuclear power.
|
| >Between 1975 and 1980, a total of 63 nuclear units were
| canceled in the United States. Anti-nuclear activities
| were among the reasons, but the primary motivations were
| the overestimation of future demand for electricity and
| steadily increasing capital costs, which made the
| economics of new plants unfavorable.
|
| - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-nuclear_movement
|
| - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-
| nuclear_movement#Impact_o...
|
| There was a lot scares and FUD about it at the time. To
| note, I am pro-nuclear.
| jonas21 wrote:
| That says pretty much the opposite of what you claim.
| slashdave wrote:
| The NRC is many things, but a front for "anti-nuclear
| hippy groups" is not one of them.
| iknowstuff wrote:
| France, with all their nuclear base, just raised their
| estimate for new reactors (I'm so shocked!):
|
| > State-owned Electricite de France SA has raised its
| estimate for the future construction costs of six new
| atomic reactors in France by 30% to EUR67.4 billion ($73
| billion)
|
| 6 reactors, 1650MW each, $7B per 1GW vs Vogtle's $17B.
| Planned. In 2 decades, after it's finally built, it will
| have doubled of course lmao.
| mindslight wrote:
| So using your numbers, it is solidly a little less than
| half the cost, _not one tenth_ (26GWh seems around the
| necessarily amount for riding out ~14 hours of darkness. I
| 'm assuming your factor of 3 makes up for seasonal
| variation and cloudy days). The panels take up 9 acres of
| land area, and need to be kept clean of snow and dust. The
| battery lifetime is small compared to expected life of a
| nuclear reactor, but the battery lifecycle is more
| straightforward. This seems like the territory of having a
| _reasonable tradeoff_ between the two, not some unequivocal
| win for an Internet smackdown about how we should avoid one
| approach.
| treflop wrote:
| I'm fairly pro-nuclear but the EIA (Energy Information
| Administration) publishes a "Levelized Costs of New
| Generation" report every year that compiles the total cost of
| installing new generation, taking into account the fuel,
| build up, maintenance, interest, and inflationary costs, and
| nuclear ends up costing more $$$ than other renewable
| alternatives.
|
| It's no conspiracy why nuclear never gets traction these days
| -- maybe it was cost-effective 10-30 years ago but renewable
| technology has gotten relatively cheap. (Shutting down active
| nuclear reactors earlier than needed is a whole different
| issue though.)
|
| Here's the report for 2023: https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/
| electricity_generation/pdf/...
|
| There is no report for 2024 because they are building a new
| model to take into account even newer technologies:
| https://www.eia.gov/pressroom/releases/press537.php
| jeffbee wrote:
| Google's entire thing only consumed on average 2.6x worth of
| AP1000 energy last year. Why does anyone think that the IT
| industry needs to pull all of the weight of electrifying the
| American economy by building 7 AP1000 power stations?
| Tostino wrote:
| They have the capital, and are the ones who need the extra
| generation capacity _now_. They will share the cost along
| with the average consumer as EVs take up a larger
| proportion of total vehicles on the road.
| jeffbee wrote:
| And you are applying this equally across all American
| industry? The production of chlorine by electrolysis
| consumes twice as much electricity in America than Google
| consumes worldwide. But I don't see you up here calling
| for Olin Chlor Alkali to build nuclear power stations,
| for some reason. Are you suggesting that the American
| chemical industry lacks capital?
| pinewurst wrote:
| It's not real funding, it's a power purchase agreement from
| something that may never be built! No different from
| Microsoft's previous fusion power purchase agreement. The Goog
| may as well announce they've reserved office space in a
| building to be built on Proxima Centauri B.
|
| Just tech virtue signalling: Google/Microsoft trade the
| impression that they're relevant leaders for some legitimacy
| for a blue sky startup.
| joshmarinacci wrote:
| A power purchase agreement is critical to getting investment.
| The US aviation industry is wouldn't exist if not for the UK
| and French governments making a purchase agreement for planes
| at the start of WW2
| snapetom wrote:
| It's funny how many people think getting investments is as
| easy as just asking a bank or VC for money. If you want
| anything substantial besides scraps of angel/friends and
| family rounds, you need to prove your product first.
|
| Getting Google in line as a customer is absolutely huge for
| Kairos.
| ViewTrick1002 wrote:
| All depends on the $/MWh figure.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| And the belief that you will actually be able to deliver
| it. Try it. Go try to pitch Google a $/MWh figure that
| undercuts what they're offered here and see how far you
| get.
| WalterBright wrote:
| The B-17 was developed in 1936 and initial orders were
| placed in 1938. The government bought hundreds of Douglas
| B-18 bombers before 1940.
| PeterCorless wrote:
| The B-18 Bolo was already obsolete by 1940. Too heavy.
| Too slow. Range was too short. They were relegated to ASW
| work.
|
| The B-17, on the other hand, ably earned her nickname,
| the "Queen of the Skies."
| WalterBright wrote:
| True. But those orders supported the american aviation
| industry.
| sien wrote:
| Also the DC-3 / C-47 had its first flight in 1935. With
| over 10,000 built it showed the US aircraft industry was
| strong before WW2.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_DC-3
| psunavy03 wrote:
| Uhh . . . source on that claim?
| throwup238 wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Purchasing_Commis
| sio...
| samatman wrote:
| This is a very far cry from the claim, which is that the
| American aviation industry _would not exist_ were it not
| for some orders by Britain and France.
|
| That one is hard to support, given that the American
| aviation industry was the first such industry, anywhere,
| and was doing quite well for itself prior to the outbreak
| of the war.
|
| Did the orders help? Um. Yes? I mean they stopped
| _paying_ for the planes after Lend-Lease so, mixed bag
| there, there was a war on and all. But I don 't see how
| the gulf between "Without Britain and France paying for a
| few planes before the war started" and "$50 Billion in
| materiel provided free of charge with most of the debt
| written off and most of the production destroyed in
| combat" gets bridged. I'm calling shenanigans.
| derektank wrote:
| Which claim? Regarding investments, from the world bank,
| "The pricing mechanism [a component of a PPA] is the
| primary mechanism for allocating revenue and market risk
| in respect of the project between the public and private
| sectors and is central to the private project proponent's
| and its lenders' assessment of the commercial viability
| and bankability of the project."
|
| I believe Jigar Shah, the director of the Loan Programs
| Office at DoE, also talked about the importance of PPAs
| in attracting outside investment in his book Creating
| Climate Wealth: Unlocking the Impact Economy
|
| https://ppp.worldbank.org/public-private-
| partnership/sector/...
| pinewurst wrote:
| Again we're not talking about an agreement to built a
| wind farm or solar or a big LNG turbine. A bank sees a
| PPA for any of those and knows if it cuts a check, it'll
| happen with high probability. These tech PPAs are not
| much more than mutual handwaving by comparison.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _it's a power purchase agreement from something that may
| never be built! No different from Microsoft's previous fusion
| power purchase agreement_
|
| A frequent complaint from utilities has been AI companies
| refusing to sign PPAs. They want the option of picking up and
| leaving if someone else offers a better deal down the road,
| leaving the utility stuck with overbuilt infrastructure
| costs.
|
| > _virtue signalling_
|
| This term has lost whatever meaning it ever had if we're
| using it to refer to binding contracts.
| pinewurst wrote:
| This isn't a binding contract like Elon Musk agreeing to
| buy Twitter. Google may be bound in some way to buy power
| from a future unbuilt powerplant that doesn't yet exist in
| prototype form. If Kairos fizzles, more likely than not,
| can Google seek damages? Will Microsoft seek damages from
| their binding contract when Helios isn't grinding out
| fusion gigawatts in 2028 as promised?
| Tostino wrote:
| This is de-risking the other way. It allows the energy
| companies to build their infrastructure without worries
| that they will get undercut by a competitor and be stuck
| with overbuilt infrastructure and no one to sell to.
|
| Without that commitment, the investment doesn't get made
| into the new power generation. Margins in that industry
| are much lower than in tech.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Why would they fissile? Nuclear is solved.
| ViewTrick1002 wrote:
| Look to NuScales near collapse last autumn for a recent
| nuclear power example: NuScale has a more
| credible contract with the Carbon Free Power Project
| ("CFPP") for the Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems
| ("UAMPS"). CFPP participants have been supportive of the
| project despite contracted energy prices that never seem
| to stop rising, from $55/MWh in 2016, to $89/MWh at the
| start of this year. What many have missed is that NuScale
| has been given till around January 2024 to raise project
| commitments to 80% or 370 MWe, from the existing 26% or
| 120 MWe, or risk termination. Crucially, when the
| participants agreed to this timeline, they were assured
| refunds for project costs if it were terminated, which
| creates an incentive for them to drop out. We are three
| months to the deadline and subscriptions have not moved
| an inch.
|
| https://iceberg-research.com/2023/10/19/nuscale-power-
| smr-a-...
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _isn't a binding contract_
|
| It absolutely is. Don't know the details. But there is
| usually a minimum purchase guarantee by the buyer.
|
| > _If Kairos fizzles, more likely than not, can Google
| seek damages_
|
| Probably. Though collecting might be difficult.
|
| > _Will Microsoft seek damages from their binding
| contract when Helios isn't grinding out fusion gigawatts
| in 2028 as promised?_
|
| Damages, no. Concessions? Probably.
| jakjak123 wrote:
| Yeah, its not much I agree. But it is an agreement the
| company can wave that they at least have future buyers for
| their non-existing power generators if they were to build
| them!
| ViewTrick1002 wrote:
| Would be extremely interesting to the the $/MWh for the deal to
| understand the viability.
|
| Otherwise similar to the NuScale deal which fell through last
| autumn.
|
| A PPA like agreement which then only kept rising until all
| potential utilities had quit the deal.
|
| All honor to Kairos if they can deliver, but history is against
| them. Let's hope they succeed.
|
| > NuScale has a more credible contract with the Carbon Free
| Power Project ("CFPP") for the Utah Associated Municipal Power
| Systems ("UAMPS"). CFPP participants have been supportive of
| the project despite contracted energy prices that never seem to
| stop rising, from $55/MWh in 2016, to $89/MWh at the start of
| this year. What many have missed is that NuScale has been given
| till around January 2024 to raise project commitments to 80% or
| 370 MWe, from the existing 26% or 120 MWe, or risk termination.
| Crucially, when the participants agreed to this timeline, they
| were assured refunds for project costs if it were terminated,
| which creates an incentive for them to drop out. We are three
| months to the deadline and subscriptions have not moved an
| inch.
|
| https://iceberg-research.com/2023/10/19/nuscale-power-smr-a-...
| credit_guy wrote:
| > All honor to Kairos if they can deliver, but history is
| against them.
|
| History is not really against them. Our current reactors
| (mainly pressurized water reactors) are the way they are
| because Admiral Rickover determined that PWRs are the best
| option for submarines. He was not wrong, but civilian power
| reactors are not the same as the reactors powering
| submarines.
|
| PWRs are expensive mainly because of the huge pressure inside
| the reactor core, about 150 times higher than the atmospheric
| pressure. For comparison, a pressure cooker has an internal
| pressure about 5 times higher than the atmospheric pressure,
| and such a cooker can explode with a pretty loud bang.
|
| The Kairos Hermes reactor design is based on a design that
| was tested in the '60s, the Molten-Salt Reactor Experiment
| [1]. While such a reactor can be used to burn thorium, Kairos
| decided to go with the far more conventional approach of
| burning U-235. The reactor operates at approximately regular
| atmospheric pressure. This should reduce considerably the
| construction costs.
|
| Of course, there are unknowns. While the world has built
| thousands of pressurized water reactors, it has built maybe
| 10 molten salt reactors. For example one quite unexpected
| effect in the MSRE was the enbrittlement of the reactor
| vessel caused by tellurium, which shows up as a fission
| product when U-235 burns.
|
| The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is a very conservative
| organization, and they don't have much experience with molten
| salt reactors because nobody has. It took them 6 years to
| give NuScale an approval for a pressurized water reactor,
| design that they knew in and out. My guess is that they will
| not give Kairos an approval without at least 15 years of
| testing. But Google's agreement with Kairos is quite crucial
| to keep this testing going.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten-
| Salt_Reactor_Experiment
| lysace wrote:
| > 525 megawatts
|
| :(
|
| That's.. not very much.
|
| So typical of Google. Dip their toes in a new field. Get lots
| of press. Move on to the next thing.
| dev1ycan wrote:
| Genuine question: How will the US put the cat back in the bag?
|
| AI even if stuck to GPT 4~ levels has the potential to be usable
| in industries and outcompeted non AI users, as such, how can the
| US tell people that they shouldn't get nuclear power plants?
|
| We'll sell you products and services that utilize AI and you are
| not allowed to get it yourself, is that the new model? It's no
| secret (I think?) that the US was behind many of the nuclear
| scare movements such as the green party in Germany as to avoid
| nuclear proliferation, for its own interests.
|
| But if nuclear becomes required, and we are decades away from
| nuclear fusion...? what is the solution here? I'm genuinely
| curious.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _how can the US tell people that they shouldn 't get nuclear
| power plants?_
|
| Who is doing this? Last I checked, America has been trying to
| _sell_ its AP1000 reactor.
|
| > _sell you products and services that utilize AI and you are
| not allowed to get it yourself_
|
| Every economy that can is developing AI.
|
| > _the US was behind many of the nuclear scare movements such
| as the green party in Germany_
|
| Source? German greens have a veritable track record of being
| idiots all on their own.
| preisschild wrote:
| Whut? Do you have any source to back this up?
|
| The US was exporting reactors all around the world. Most of
| those reactors are light water reactors using low enriched
| uranium fuel, its not that big of a nuclear weapons
| proliferation concern.
| xnx wrote:
| Official post: https://blog.google/outreach-
| initiatives/sustainability/goog...
| perihelions wrote:
| https://archive.is/fdSXf
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| The typical reaction is I think supported by an efficient markets
| pov - in other words this is dumb, we know it's dumb, but market
| failures make it look to the owners of capital that it's a good
| investment
|
| 1. There is too much money in the world for the investments
| (Massive QE post 2008 and post covid). Hence people with money
| want returns on tokens that say 10 dollars in the front instead
| of say 5 dollars
|
| 2. The externalities of nuclear power are not properly priced in
| (see Chernobyl)
|
| 3. The price of tax compared to services received for wealthy is
| again out of whack and so any investment looks good because the
| whole chain is not paying enough tax
|
| All in all, I believe in efficient markets and price mechanisms -
| I just also believe people with power and influence bend the
| markets to their own needs and guess what they stop being
| efficient - hence the need for strong governments (not strongman
| governments)
| anon84873628 wrote:
| Based on other threads here, it doesn't seem like there is
| universal consensus that this is dumb.
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| That's ok. They can be wrong :-)
|
| Nuclear power has almost unlimited downsides and fairly
| limited upsides.
|
| It's at least as expensive (and mostly more) to maintain a
| nuclear power station As any other form of (non-carbon) power
| generation - and the costs of catastrophic failure and orders
| of magnitude higher.
|
| This is just back of the envelope maths. Cost to maintain a
| power station of X GW for 100 years is X, cost to maintain
| solar panels of X GW for 100 years is Y. Cost of total
| catastrophic failure in fifty years of solar panels because
| the country fell apart is small y. Cost of total catastrophic
| failure of fission reactor is huge great X.
|
| The simplest analysis just comes up with huge downsides.
|
| Look I take the train past Battersea powerstation most days.
| It was built 100 years ago at the height (?) of the British
| Empire. It became disused as Britain fell into bankruptcy in
| the 70s and was left to fester for decades before people
| realised a vast shopping centre in the middle of London was
| quite nice.
|
| If it was nuclear it would still be sealed off, any slacking
| of maintenance, any cost saving too far, would fuck up the
| world's greatest city .
|
| And if you think the worlds most powerful and richest country
| could always afford the very best maintenance - let me
| introduce you to political decision making in the 1960s,
| industrial policy in the 1970s and human beings who tend to
| hope as a strategy.
|
| It's not hard to pretend the obvious won't happen, and if you
| take the risk sometimes you will be right. And the cautious
| man will look silly.
|
| But in the end Warren Buffet looks more sensible than Dick
| Fuld.
|
| And even Warren is aware he pays far less tax relative to his
| maid. But it's upto us to fix that just as it's upto us to
| not make bad investment choices as a society that we will pay
| costly annual fees for centuries to come.
| aoeusnth1 wrote:
| What about the positive externalities of nuclear power? It's
| unfair to only complain about negative externalities - any
| action whatsoever always has a negative side-effect which can
| be used as a cynical excuse to block it.
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| Downthread I go on (much) longer, but honestly I see the
| maths as simple
|
| 1. We want to generate electricity with minimal carbon
| output. 2. Nuclear is part of this equation (along with
| solar, wind and tidal. Maybe one day fusion) 3. Nuclear has
| large capital upfront, a maintenance cost that requires us to
| always be on the A game, and the cost of catastrophic failure
| is fucking huge. 4. The other options have downsides of
| course, but their ongoing maintenance is basically lower
| because the catastrophe cost is much much much lower. 5. It's
| really hard to quantify things like "major urban area made
| uninhabitable", because it has almost never happened. But it
| can and it will if we keep chucking risk around like this.
|
| 6. The way to stop this, no the way to align investment, is
| to correct price externalities - positive and negative.
|
| If we want to re- start places like Indian Point (a relative
| well Managed successful nuclear plant whose history reads
| like a series of disasters) then we ask what if Indian point
| failed like Fukushima.
|
| That's Westchester, and most of Manhattan that suddenly looks
| like a disaster movie. No Fukushima was not actually as
| deadly as feared (1 person kinda), but the evacuation and
| knock on effects. Try that on the Hudson and see what the
| cost of evacuating New York is - I mean, shipping, finance
| everything.
|
| Honestly I struggle to see what's crazy anymore.
|
| How about every bond raised to fund a nuclear plant has a 100
| year lien attached that no payments can be made till a
| century of safe operation and closure has occurred.
|
| If the financials make sense after that I will take another
| look.
| twilo wrote:
| Good.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Related:
|
| _Three Mile Island nuclear plant restart in Microsoft AI power
| deal_
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41601443
| golergka wrote:
| Can someone more informed than me comment -- is it me, or does it
| seem that Situational Awareness essay rings more and more true?
| qwertox wrote:
| We should have learned by now that as soon as things go south, be
| it a radioactive leak or worse, it won't be any company which
| will cover the costs related to solving the caused problem. It
| will be the taxpayer.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| No, it will most likely be an insurance company.
| jhp123 wrote:
| I believe that the Price Anderson act sets aside $10 billion
| from the nuclear operators as a kind of insurance fund. After
| that the government would foot the bill. Fukushima's cleanup
| costs are over $100 billion.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Kairos is using FLiBe coolant with TRISO solid fuel.
|
| While this has some advantages (low pressure, no fission products
| in the FLiBe), it also some issues.
|
| First, the fuel cycle costs are higher than a LWR. The fuel is
| dispersed as small encapsulated grains in graphite spheres.
| Manufacturing the fuel is more expensive, I believe the
| enrichment needed is higher, and the volume of the spent fuel is
| considerably larger. All that graphite needs to be disposed of
| along with the spent fuel.
|
| Second, FLiBe require isotopically separated lithium. Li-6 has a
| ruinously high thermal neutron absorption cross section so it
| must be rigorously excluded. It also produces tritium when it
| absorbs neutrons, which would permeate through the reactor and
| beyond. But there are no large scale lithium isotope separation
| plants in operation, and the technology that was used for this in
| the Cold War (to make Li-6 for H-bombs) has been shut down and
| cannot be restarted because of mercury pollution (liquid mercury
| is an inherent part of the process and much escaped down drains
| at Oak Ridge.)
|
| Kairos has announced operation of a FLiBe purification plant,
| which sounds promisingly like an isotope separation plant, but it
| appears it's only a plant for removing other impurities (oxygen,
| sulfur, iron, etc.) from FLiBe. Isotopically pure Li-7 fluoride
| would be an input to this plant.
|
| Third, FLiBe is about 11% beryllium. Annual world production of
| beryllium is just a few hundred tons. There's a limit to how much
| FLiBe could be made for these reactors (or for fusion reactors,
| for that matter.)
| ThinkBeat wrote:
| Small nuclear plants have been tried and failed multiple times.
| jmyeet wrote:
| SMRs ain't it [1]. The LCOE of nuclear is the worst of any power
| geneartion method. The failure modes are catastrophic. Chernobyl
| has an absolute exclusion deal ~40 years later of 1000 square
| miles (literally). Fukushima's clean up costs will approach $1
| trillion [2] and take likely over a century. These get hand-waved
| away as irrelevant outliers.
|
| The idea that SMRs are safer is yet to be proven. SMRs have a
| scaling issue in that a larger reactor is simply more efficient.
|
| Solar currently can produce about 1000 Watts per square meter
| (likely 200-400 in practice) so 500MW of power is going to be
| 1-1.5 square kilometers of solar panels. You can say it's varies
| in effectiveness geographically. That's true. But you can build
| your data centers pretty much anywhere. The Sun Belt, California
| or Colorado spring to mind [3].
|
| Data centers just don't need a base load. You can simply not run
| them when there isn't sufficient power. Google already does. Its
| data center in Finland basically shuts down when it gets too hot.
| It's otherwise cooled by the sea. This was deemed to be more
| efficient than having active cooling infrastructure.
|
| So 500MW of power is what? 4B kWh/year? In California, one
| benchmark I found was about 10kWh/year per square foot. That's ~4
| square kilometers as a very conservative estimate.
|
| [1]: https://blog.ucsusa.org/edwin-lyman/five-things-the-
| nuclear-...
|
| [2]: https://cleantechnica.com/2019/04/16/fukushimas-final-
| costs-...
|
| [3]:
| https://neo.ne.gov/programs/stats/pdf/201_solar_leadership.p...
| sylware wrote:
| Typical.
|
| Should not even be allowed to finance nuclear reactors before the
| long term storage facilities and recycling facilities
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