Google adopts small nuclear power reactors at unprecedented scale — inks deal for seven reactors to feed AI data centers
Google adopts small nuclear power reactors at unprecedented scale — inks deal for seven reactors to feed AI data centers
Nuclear power startup Kairos Power is its partner.
CorpoNations.
We're living in a cyberpunk nightmare
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
I’m still waiting for the cyberpunk part to happen
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?
Give it time and the mega corps will do it for you.
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.
The cleanup for fossil fuels is an order of magnitude more expensive, and an order of magnitude more difficult. It also impacts so many things that its true cost is impossible to calculate.
I'm aware of the issues with nuclear, but for a lot of places it's the only low/zero emission tech we can do until we have a serious improvement in batteries.
Very few countries can have a large stable base load of renewable energy. Not every country has the geography for dams (which have their own massive ecological and environmental impacts) or geothermal energy.
Seriously, we need to cut emissions now. So what's the option that anti-nuclear people want? Continue to use fossil fuels and hope battery tech gets good enough, then expand renewables? That will take decades. Probably 30+ years at the minimum.
Well, once the AI hype calms down and people realize the current approach won't lead to actual intelligence or "The Singularity", there may be quite some nuclear plants left over. That or they will be used to mine shitcoins.
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Tax them enough that they don't have the cash to just up and build their own personal-use nuclear powered, nation spanning infrastructure.
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Use those taxes to build a nation spanning nuclear infrastructure that everyone can use.
I've got so many ads so far for how adding new taxes is bad even if it pays for good things, and all of the issues they are arguing about aren't even adding any taxes. Actually adding taxes seems like a great way to make political enemies, even though it's often the best tool there is for a thing.
Eh, I would say investment into R&D should be encouraged and maybe allow tax write offs. Even of the end goal is a private power source. Once that R&D turns into workable, operable, sellable products, then tax the fuck out of them. Perhaps disallow making things that can be a boon to public infrastructure from being deem proprietary, so that it can be more easily adapted to public use.
I dunno, I'm typing from my couch after a few beers.
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It's almost like the brand spanking new tech to make small nuclear reactors are extremely cost prohibitive and risky, and to lower the cost someone needs to spend money to increase supply.
If only that was the government that invested in the R&D and tech to make it happen.
Gaining funds from taxes (meaningful taxes), and investing that money in making their country better.Hopefully this decision is because carbon taxes that will make consumer products representative of the actual cost of the item (not the exploitative cost). >
No no, let the free market decide.
Fucking AI threatening to replace basic jobs (when it's more suited to replace the C-Suite) gobling up energy and money, too-big-to-fail bailouts and loophole tax rules bullshit.So yeh, someone needs to spend the money and that should be the government.
Because they should realise that carbon fuel sources are a death sentence.
To be fair here, no one's certain this will be cost-effective either. The new techs make it worth trying though.
no one’s certain this will be cost-effective either
One of the great sins of nuclear energy programs implemented during the 50s, 60s, and 70s was that it was too cost effective. Very difficult to turn a profit on electricity when you're practically giving it away. Nuclear energy functions great as a kind-of loss-leader, a spur to your economy in the form of ultra-low-cost utilities that can incentivize high-energy consumption activities (like steel manufacturing and bulk shipping and commercial grade city-wide climate control). But its miserable as a profit center, because you can't easily regulate the rate of power generation to gouge the market during periods of relatively high demand. Nuclear has enormous up-front costs and a long payoff window. It can take over a decade to break even on operation, assuming you're operating at market rates.
By contrast, natural gas generators are perfect for profit-maximzing. Turning the electric generation on or off is not much more difficult than operating a gas stove. You can form a cartel with your friends, then wait for electric price-demand to peak, and command thousands of dollars a MWh to fill the sudden acute need for electricity. Natural gas plants can pay for themselves in a matter of months, under ideal conditions.
So I wouldn't say the problem is that we don't know their cost-efficiency. I'd say the problem is that we do know. And for consumer electricity, nuclear doesn't make investment sense. But for internally consumed electricity on the scale of industrial data centers, it is exactly what a profit-motivated power consumer wants.
I still think it's too expensive, and this contract doesn't change my position. Google is committing to buying power from reactors, at certain prices, as those reactors are built.
Great, having a customer lined up makes it a lot easier to secure financing for a project. This is basically where NuScale failed last year in Idaho, being unable to line up customers who could agree to pay a sufficiently high price to be worth the development risk (even with government subsidies from the Department of Energy).
But now Google has committed and said "if you get it working, we'll buy power from you." That isn't itself a strong endorsement that the project itself will be successful, or come in under budget. The risk/uncertainty is still there.
One of the things with AI is that it's a largely constant load factor. Nuclear is really good for that.
However, I highly doubt any of these new nuclear plants are finished before the AI bubble bursts. SMRs haven't even been proven in practice yet, and this is the first good news they've had in a while. Restarting Three Mile Island isn't expected to work before 2028. The hype bubble could easily burst in the next year, and even if it doesn't, keeping it going to 2028 is highly unlikely.
So we'll probably have some new nuclear around that isn't going into AI, because those datacenters will be dead when the hype passes. Might as well use them, I guess.
However, I highly doubt any of these new nuclear plants are finished before the AI bubble bursts.
Given the military applications of the technology, I don't think it is ever really going away. Consumer AI (those user facing image generators and chatbots, for instance) might lose funding. But Israel's Lavender AI is going to become a permanent fixture in our lives, as it's rolled out for the policing of more and more territory.
Plus time. My perspective was that building a new nuclear power industry and any significant number of reactors would take too long: we need to have fixed climate change in less time.
So seven “small” reactors over the next eleven years ….. faster than I expected but still takes decades to make a noticeable difference.
So seven “small” reactors over the next eleven years ……
Is more than we've built in the last 40. And, assuming energy demands continue to accelerate, I doubt they'll be the last seven reactors these companies construct.
I don’t think they’re even building many. The article uses the word “adopt” because they’re kinda reviving old power plants. Three Mile Island being one of them.
I don’t think they’re even building many.
You might want to read the article.
At last, we'll be seeing nuclear reactors being created using Agile! Fail early, fail often, hopefully don't kill everyone!
Amazon has a space program with rockets, Google is acquiring the nuclear facilities, will Microsoft develop a weapons manufacturing facility?
Ah I see don't know about Microsoft's 22 billion dollar HaloLens contract with the Department of Defence.
https://www.techspot.com/news/94353-dod-oversight-agency-warns-22-billion-microsoft-hololens.html
Microsoft already acquired a nuclear plant.
They don't need weapons to support genocide.
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.
The meltdown that happened in Chernobyl happened because of mismanagement. Yes, there were design flaws in the system, but lots of rules had to be broken before the design flaws were triggered.
A safer design is insurance against bad management long after all of us are dead.
Nah, mismagement happened yes, but any other nuclear plant wouldn't have exploded, they used a old technology even for that age, for cust cutting or faster to build idk that's why it exploded
We fixed the glitch.
If development continues on this path
If we continue down the path of wasting energy and polluting to produce useless shit humanity is screwed.
There is a whole universe of resources and our needs for them will never be fully satisfied. Every step towards cleaner, more sustainable energy is a good one.
For some reason this doesn't feel like good news.
Any nuclear adoption is good news. This WILL help destigmatize them and help reduce cost by production at scale. Overall, while it's extremely questionable, depending on how many companies get on board it could be net positive
This WILL help destigmatize them and help reduce cost by production at scale.
I'm not saying this won't have any benefits. I'm saying that I don't trust Google or the AI craze much, let alone huge corporations in general.
So I'm worried that there might be unforeseen fuckups or "savings procedures" or other ways of squeezing out profit until something breaks.
And those fuckups can easily outweigh the benefits.
If we had good governments and reliable regulation, this would be absolutely thrilling. But we don't, do we?
Except nuclear does not scale, especially not downward. Because any safety measures that have become standard, are required also on the smaller reactors. Except there, they cost relatively more per kWh output when compared to large plants.
I don’t really see this going to work, renewables are continuing to become cheaper and cheaper, and do scale.
But, I’d like to be pleasantly surprised.
One step closer to the Fallout games becoming reality, which is at least potentially cool in some ways.
Cyberpunk dystopias weren't supposed to be guidelines dammit
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.
Yes it's obviously better than using fossil fuels, nobody's arguing that. What I'm talking about is the direction the global economy and the people making the decisions are taking.
No matter how much nuclear energy you use, you are still putting a lot of additional strain on the environment. It's not just the CO2 emissions that matter, that's just one of the problems. It's the increase in extracted materials for data centers, reactors and nuclear fuel, which causes the destruction of multiple ecosystems and the contamination of waters and soil from the pollutants produced(even radioactive waste in the uranium case).
It's also that Google could have been taxed more(I'm sure they can take it) and the money the government gained could be directed to investments on nuclear plants that would actually replace fossil fuels instead of adding energy demands on top of them. Because the fact of the matter is that in 2024 we categorically cannot be talking about not increasing fossil fuel consumption, we have to be talking about how to reduce emissions drastically every single year and why we are already tragically behind on that regard.
It's almost like our population has continued to increase for the last 30 years
It's almost like you have no clue what you are talking about lol. The global population growth for the last 30 years is 50%, while the global GDP growth is 500%. Not only that but the wealth inequality in the world has been steadily rising for the last 60 years. In the US alone (that we have data on) the wealth of the bottom 80% has been roughly stagnant since the 1990s while that of the top 1% has skyrocketed - it's basically them that have absorbed this economic growth profit.
So yeah, you got a lot of confidence in things you clearly don't know about.
I am suprised to see all the negativity. I for one think this is awesome and would love to see SMRs become more mainstream.
I think the negativity is more about it being used for AI than to solve any important problems with the world.
I agree, and it is possibly the only good thing to come out of AI.
Like people asking "why do we need to go to the moon?!".Fly-by-wire (ie pilot controls decoupled from physical actuators), so modern air travel.
Integrated circuits (IE multiple transistors - and other components - in the same silicon package). Basically miniaturisation and reduction in power consumption of computers.
GPS. The Apollo missions lead to the rocket tech/science for geosynchronous orbits require for GPS.
This time it is commercial.
I'd rather the power requirements were covered by non-carbon sources. However it proves the tech for future use.For a similar example, I have a strong dislike of Elon Musk. He has ruined the potential of Twitter and Tesla, but SpaceX has had some impressive accomplishments.
Google are a shitty company. I wish the nuclear power went towards shutting down carbon power.
But SOMEONE has to take the risk. I wish that someone was a government. But it's Google. So.... Kind of a win?
Boy are they gonna look stupid when they realize that no one outside their little bubble has a use for AI.
It’s not even close to ready for launch and why are we wasting energy on it?
because idiots like me who have no marketable skills can use it to fool ourselves into thinking we can do code/art/literature/etc.
actually this (yes, I'm replying to myself). I'm an idiot with no marketable skills. I put boxes on shelves for a living. I want to be an artist, a musician, a programmer, an author. I am so bad at all of these, and between having a full time job, a significant other, and several neglected hobbies, I don't have time to learn to get better at something I suck at. So I cheat. If I want art done, I could commission a real artist, or for the cost of one image I could pay for dalle and have as many images as I want (sure, none of them will be quite what I want but they'll all be at least good). I could hire a programmer, or I could have chatgpt whip up a script for me since I'm already paying for it anyway since I want access to dalle for my art stuff. Since I have chatgpt anyway, I might as well use it to help flesh out my lore for the book I'll never write. I haven't found a good solution for music.
I have in my brain a vision for a thing that is so fucking cool (to me), and nobody else can see it. I need to get it out of my brain, and the only way to do that is to actualize it into reality. I don't have the skills necessary to do it myself, and I don't have the money to convince anyone else to help me do it. generative AI is the only way I'm going to be able to make this work. Sure, I wish that the creators of the content that were stolen from to train the ai's were fairly compensated. I'd be ok with my chatgpt subscription cost going up a few dollars if that meant real living artists got paid, I'm poor but I'm not broke.
These are the opinions of an idiot with no marketable skills.
checks notes Shareholders?!
!remind me in 1 year
Because they have successfully lied and manipulated their current marketing material to make a sizeable portion of the population believe some kind of technological rapture is imminent, and that all we need is to invest, invest invest in AI tech. It's a full-on cult now. The people they have roped in are fanatical, unpaid marketing mobs who don't sleep, don't waver, and can't be reasoned with. They are the engine that is driving the hype train.
They had a legit, non-satirical post on reddit the other day making their plans for what they're going to do when Artificial Superintelligence comes and changes the world and makes every human rich and immortal without the need to work. I am not even exaggerating, this is what they believe and there are probably millions of them.
Currently over 80% of AI startups fail, and the remaining ones are often bought up by larger companies trying to control intellectual property and future patents. And we have ZERO useful models in our hands. I still don't use my copilot app for anything other than setting a 30-minute timer for my lunch break. I tried to activate an AI helper on Adobe to see if it could help my productivity. The thing can't read graphs and charts and has zero contextual awareness and can't do math. WTF GOOD IS IT?
After they decide to abandon their AI project can we use them for something meaningful?
Probably not... It's a pretty outdated energy source already.
Not at all! Nuclear is an excellent compliment to renewables and as a companion source to support the grid they are actually really effective. They're also really useful in situations where renewables just aren't an option such as large scale shipping. Obviously we haven't seen any nuclear container ships yet but that's mostly around startup and infrastructure costs as well as outdated regulations.
With small nuclear reactors becoming commonplace I wouldn't be supprised if we start to see nuclear shipping becoming a thing in industry in the next 20-50 years.
Its already been proven as a reliable, safe, and effective power source in a naval context. The main hangup people seem to have is with accidents at sea, however again, the militaries of the world have already proven nuclear reactors safe in a number of accidents where a nuclear vessel has been lost and the reactors shut down safely and did not cause release of nuclear material.
AI seems perfect for renewables load balancing. Got extra power to burn because it is windy at night? Train your models
AI power cost has quickly outscaled increases in power production. AI Datacenters alone are projected to consume more power than Japan sooner than 2030.
I have no issue with the safety of nuclear power plants, however: fissile material is no more renewable than fossil fuels even if it's much greener. Also, in terms of more localized ecological damage, uranium mining is a disaster.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_mining_and_the_Navajo_people
Maybe Google should focus on building its plants near geothermal hotspots instead if it's forced to suck up vast amounts of power for AI no one wants.
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.
Great, so when they abandon the nuclear project in 18mths who will maintain them?
They are planning to buy or maybe just electricity from a new reactor type, which has never been built, starting 2030, when conventional nuclear power plants, with known technology take twice as long to built.
So if they stop the project in 18months, it has just been a waste of money.
although you gotta admit it's gonna be funny seeing "Google Reactor" on killedbygoogle.com
They are planning to buy
So far so good
or maybe just electricity
Uh oh
And what happens when you kill a sack of puppies you monster?
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.
Nuclear has never been profitable without massive government subsidies and guarantees, and
GoogleKairos too will either manage to collect those or lose money.It’s unclear how Google and Kairos set up the deal — whether the former is providing direct funding or if it just promised to buy the power that the latter generates when its reactors are up and running. Nevertheless, Kairos has already passed several milestones, making it one of the more promising startups in the field of nuclear energy.
I guarantee you, they are shouldering on none of the risk (like the Chinese and French at Hinkley Point), and this startup will be going down.
Yay, more ads to pay for Google’s reactors.
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...
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.
EVs alone require 10 times the current installed energy production.
No they don't.
The UK national grid estimates there needs to be a 4-5% increase each year, for roughly 15 years. That's achievable.
The US won't be too different.
Expect energy rates to quadruple
Why quadruple. Where are you getting this from?
The price will increase until people can't afford the commute with their entire day's paycheck.
They obviously won't.
The power required for this level of AI won't be used for faster delivery of pizzas. It will be used for surveillance and control. For world domination shit.
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.
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.
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.
Who had Atompunk on their 2024 Bingo card?
Those are the people that would sell your soul to the devil.
Lol, now just let AI manage the reactors, then give it access to manufacturing tech and we have every machine takeover scenario ever.
Glad they're choosing nano-nukes and supplying their own juice.
Had me excited there for the first half, ngl...
Thank goodness we can now get a little nuclear waste with our cat pics.
So um. What happens when the white supremacists attacking FEMA and electrical grids starts attacking these nuclear reactors?