from Hacker News

Google to back three new nuclear projects

by aburan28 on 5/8/25, 1:36 PM with 356 comments

• by perihelions on 5/8/25, 2:26 PM

  Here's a better article:

  https://www.theregister.com/2025/05/07/google_signs_another_...

  > "Elementl didn't respond to questions by press time. Its public materials offer little clarity on its actual operations—aside from broad claims about providing "turn-key project development, financing and ownership solutions customized to meet our customers' needs while mitigating risks and maximizing benefit."

  > "The nuclear developer, founded in 2022, presents itself as a facilitator of advanced reactor projects. But it has not built any reactors to date and describes itself as a "technology-agnostic nuclear power developer and independent power producer," signaling it does not back any specific reactor design."

  > "This approach aligns with the background of Elementl's CEO and chairman, Christopher Colbert, who previously served as CFO, COO, and chief strategy officer at NuScale Power."

• by floxy on 5/8/25, 3:30 PM

  I suppose like anything there are multiple reasons, but what are the top 3 why California electric rates are so high (compared to the rest of the U.S.)?

  https://www.chooseenergy.com/electricity-rates-by-state/

  Why doesn't the state encourage more capacity to bring costs down? (to encourage electrification/EVs, etc.) Is it because they are phasing out natural gas? Is it to encourage roof top solar? Or trying to reduce consumption by having high prices? Or environmental permitting? "Lobbying" by entrenched incumbents? Or maybe the high price is due to taxes and not the price of generation?

• by anon6362 on 5/8/25, 5:16 PM

  While I was going to community college in the late 90's, I had an IT consulting biz where I serviced mechanical engineers and folks in the US nuclear industry who were ex-General Electric (GE NE). I learned nuclear was heavily-regulated (rightfully so) and costly but the main barriers to new sites were insurance, the huge capital investment, and the very long project cycles. As such, these are just too risky for most business people and investors. Nowadays, even with SMRs, the ROI still doesn't make sense given the massive, massive advances in renewables and regional grid storage. Very few Americans want an unproven, fly-by-night startup SMR in their neighborhood or in their county. I'd be okay with just a few mega reactors in fixed sites in very remote areas that would be heavily defended with perimeter security and anti-aircraft/-drone emplacements. I'm not okay with SMRs on flatbed trailers with minimal security in urban areas.

• by bpodgursky on 5/8/25, 2:43 PM

  Every compute company knows that power shortage is a looming crisis. They don't have nuclear expertise in-house and are desperately looking for somewhere to put their money that seems to have experience and capability

  This is a good thing, but will be fruitless unless the US NRC modernizes in parallel with the industry to actually approve a new reactor in less than geologic time.

• by muth02446 on 5/8/25, 3:34 PM

  I view nuclear as a prudent diversification of energy sources: What happens if some supervolcano erupts, and because of the ashes significantly less sunlight reaches the surface of the earth. Presumably, there will also be less wind then.

• by barbazoo on 5/8/25, 3:52 PM

  Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43927371

  > Ontario set to begin construction of Canada's first mini nuclear power plant

• by dfilppi on 5/8/25, 2:47 PM

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

• by abetaha on 5/8/25, 5:09 PM

  Ignoring what Elementl is developing as their material is confusing, what would be some of the practical energy sources for power hungry AI workloads other than nuclear?

• by bee_rider on 5/8/25, 2:41 PM

  Personally I’m skeptical of nuclear power given how much easier it is to incrementally add renewable capacity (sure, intermittence is a problem, but I think we can deal with it by being cleverer).

  But anyway, if anybody (other than the government, which gave up long ago) can pay the upfront costs of nuclear, it is the big tech companies like Google.

  > […] Google has set 2030 goals to reach net zero emissions across its operations and value chain, […]

  Man, I remember when 2030 seemed like the future. But now it seems downright aggressive. Good luck Google.

• by eqvinox on 5/9/25, 7:50 AM

  I don't get it. Training giant LLMs can easily be task managed to line up with solar and wind availability. Shut off half the DC at night, go full power when it's sunny and windy. If they integrate the powerplant, they can easily manage this.

  Is avoiding HW underutilization really worth going nuclear? The most expensive energy source of all?

• by melling on 5/8/25, 2:33 PM

  Do the “no nuclear, renewables are the future” people have any comments?

  We burned a few decades saying solar and wind are the solution. This set us back greatly in the struggle to reduce greenhouse emissions.

• by dhruv3006 on 5/8/25, 3:02 PM

  Woooah! Times are changing.

• by EasyMarion on 5/8/25, 7:08 PM

  The AI arms race really is literally heating up...I nuit.

• by hansvm on 5/8/25, 3:46 PM

  This is about to give "Killed by Google" a whole new meaning.

• by mmmBacon on 5/8/25, 4:01 PM

  It took about 1GW to train Chat-GPT4. If you look at the locations in the United States (>70% of all AI is in the US), there are only ~63 geographic regions you could put a 1GW data center. As AI models are growing at ~5x per year, it seems like the infrastructure is no in place to keep the AI models growing at that rate.

  As companies like Google, Meta, and others look to nuclear power (it has the highest up time of any power source), I'm wondering how localities are going to react. Are people who are local to nuclear plants just going to be OK with these gigantic corporations consuming all this power in their backyard with no benefit to them while they take all the risk and impact of that power generation? I'm also wondering how these companies are going to deal with the excess nuclear waste. Ultimately it won't be Google or Meta dealing with the waste. How do we ensure that all the nuclear waste from AI is dealt with responsibly?