Google, Amazon buy nonexistent mini nuclear reactors for AI data centers
Google, Amazon buy nonexistent mini nuclear reactors for AI data centers
Google has signed a deal with California startup Kairos Power for six or seven small modular reactors. The first is due in 2030 and the rest by 2035, for a total of 500 megawatts. [Google blog; pre…
BRING IT ON NITPICKY NUKE NERDS
Thanks for posting this good collection of links. HN has as hard-on for SMRs and as a first-order approximation that means they're wrong, but it's good to have something more than vibes backing it up.
11I got a lot of them from very pro-nuclear guys too, but ones who can count
10
I am 100% in support of deploying nukes to Google and Amazon
7You need to deploy them around the same time else contingency plans have it that everything just boots back up in another region, at least Google. us-east-1 otoh...
1
I don't claim to be an expert on nuclear power, so take what I say with a grain of salt, but from what I've seen, smaller reactors don't seem to make much sense. The trend seems to be towards bigger reactors with bigger power output. Some of it thanks to the bureaucracy of getting permits per reactor, but also the physics, engineering, real estate and economics involved. Conventional (i.e. existent) reactors are typically a fairly small part of a nuclear power plant's footprint, so no matter how much you miniaturize them you will have the overhead of security, operations, cooling and electrical infrastucture.
If someone can fill me in on the benefits of smaller, more modular nuclear reactors and how they might outweight those of large installations, I'm interested.
14The hypothetical benefit is that prefabricated parts are a lot less dependent on the site. This will make the reactor cheaper to build.
There's also a perception sleight of hand - "modular" doesn't mean the reactor is a module you ship in on a big truck, put some uranium in and away you go. You're building a power station in a fixed location.
Also you still need a shitload of water.
8square-cube law is in full force there
one argument in favour of SMRs i've seen is that while less efficient than regular sized reactors, these are cheaper per unit (but not for MW) so some of them can be built earlier than bigger reactors. which doesn't matter because these things don't exist
10
If these nuclear plants manage to come to fruition, it'll be the sole miniscule silver lining of the bubble. Considering its AI, though, I expect they'll probably suffer some kind of horrific Chernobyl-grade accident which kills nuclear power for good, because we can't have nice things when there's AI involved.
19even if you're ardently pro-nuclear, SMRs are just a failure purely on the economics and always have been. And that's before wind/solar/battery made them just obsolete. So SMRs are the perfect tech when you don't want to do anything useful.
15
BRB making a video for a cold fusion based kickstarter. I smell money
18Remember to say it's optimized for net zero datacenter operations
13
@dgerard somebody should found a startup and sell ASMRs to Google and Amazon
3how come all these botfans talking points are just repackaged cryptobros talking points
it keeps happening
20you'd almost think they were literally the same fucking guys
16coincidence?? yeah probably
12
just one more SMR bro
12
BRING IT ON NITPICKY NUKE NERDS
Well acthtually we prefer to be called fission/fusion nerds
"greenwashing is cheaper than action" indeed. (edit2) On that note, storytime about the clownshow that is Dutch politics. So our radical right wing government is pro nuclear power, of course, and they want to build more powerplants. So what are they planning on doing? They are going to start a study on which locations are best. Which is maddening, as these studies have already been done before (so it prob is just an attempt to hopefully have the study finish when it isn't them in power anymore so they are not at risk of starting an too expensive megaproject). But it gets worse, the absolute clowns of our farmers party just went 'fuck the studies' and they just pointed at a province where there are a lot of farmers and went 'we will put a powerplant there'. And this is how they discovered nuclear powerplants need running water and they picked one of the areas without a major river. ('im ignoring the clownshow re 'the immigration crisis' (not a crisis) as this post is already too long, and there is a big risk of honk overdose if I go into that).
33Our local Swedish right-wingers in gov have a chubby for nukes too[1], because their main motivation besides hating on brown people is pissing off Greens. But in the Swedish way they handed this off to a researcher ("utredning") who found out that to get the industry on board you need a) rock-solid political promises (so need to get the Social Democrats at least on board) and b) have a price guarantee for power for at least a decade, along with massive government loan guarantees.
It's gonna be hard to get voters interested in 10 new reactor sites (NIMBY gets supercharged when it comes to nukes) if it slightly pushes up lending rates and power bills.
[1] the right-wing part of the opposition social democrats like them too to be fair
8wouldn't it make more sense to put NPP on seashore and just dump waste heat to ocean like everyone else does
10Iirc at the sea in friesland was one of the options yes. But the farmer option was also landlocked, de achterhoek if you want to look it up.
8
Caroline van der Plas and that entire gaggle of talking heads that call themselves a political party are a bunch of muppets. Muppets that are being puppeteered by a very wealthy dairy and agricultural industry
12Deze post klopt! ;)
9
I swear they looked at Bill Gates failing to launch SMRs and thought: "he's a smart guy"
15I'm looking forward to seeing the tech attitude of "move fast and break things" being brought to nuclear reactors.
22What could possibly go wrong? Better ask for forgiveness then plant permissions!
6
Of all the things that will never happen, this is the one that will never happen the most.
13I give it slightly higher odds than AGI.
Edit: or cryptocurrency replacing fiat
10
Google has signed a deal with California startup Kairos Power for six or seven small modular reactors. The first is due in 2030
So, well after the bubble is going to pop.
16Oh no, they created the means to generate non-fossil-fuel energy for nothing /s
4Who knew that the only thing stopping nuclear power, the most morally and environmentally correct power source (uranium is only produced by popes shitting in the woods), was that Google and Amazon hadn’t thrown money in the direction of Chernobyl first. It was so simple this whole time. Now it’s solved and I can go back to gaming.
11
I got into the wrong business.
1At least is technically feasible (although completely impossible to do in that timeframe)
Unlike the cold fusion energy deal that Microsoft greenwashed last year that's pure science fiction (invent, create, test and build a cold fusion reactor in just 4 years: impossible unless they got a time machine or found some alien tech in a remote cave)
13Alright so you can have them funding the next generation of nuclear power, which would eventually bring this new form into the mainstream by having them deal with the costs associated with ironing out any issues they have and very likely making it economically viable…
Or…
These tech companies can use fossil fuels to power their AI. Like it or not, they arent going to stop developing AI and data centers. They need the power either way. Solar and wind won’t keep up with that level of demand and tech companies know it. So choose. Nuclear, or fossil fuels?
-4as you will discover if you read, the use case for SMRs is to keep doing coal
16Reading the linked article? But it is 1/16th a ssc post long! Nobody got time for that.
11as you will discover if you read,
Hey, man, that's a lot to ask, you know, brah
9
Like it or not, they arent going to stop developing AI and data centers.
Well they should. I'm not giving them credit for investing in vaporware nuclear plants when the ostensible plan is to waste all the power on glue pizza recipes.
I wish they at least put that money in real and known working designs available right now so at least when the fad is dead, we can maybe use that power for something else. Or they can maybe have the tiniest decency to unfuck their search engine or whatever.
14Well they should. I’m not giving them credit for investing in vaporware nuclear plants when the ostensible plan is to waste all the power on glue pizza recipes.
man, fuck this timeline... what are we even doing
5
Try option three. No one is going to pay for any of that because LLMs are useless machines.
Fun Fact: it took 42 years to start Watts Bar Unit 2.
10You're correct that I can't stop them from making pants on head stupid decisions, but I'm not going to stop making fun of them.
very likely making it economically viable…
They're going to fund currently economically nonviable nuclear plants to power their currently economically nonviable genAI schemes? Over the time horizon of
25 yearsa decade (edit: misread the article) before they scale up energy capacity at all past the rnd stage? Maybe pants on head is too generous.13I’m not crunching the numbers over here, but they must be making money off AI if they’re doing this. I’m sure they have further plans that aren’t public yet.
I’m not a fan of AI, so if Microsoft or Google ends up in a dumpster fire because of all this I will never stop laughing about it. I just don’t expect it.
-9
This is promising. The high energy demands of AI has big tech investing in the field of small modular reactors (SMR).
-11