Google To Fund Development of Three Nuclear Power Sites 71
Google has partnered with Elementl Power to develop at least 600 MW of nuclear capacity at each of three planned sites. It's unknown where the three proposed sites will be located or how much Google is investing. World Nuclear News reports: The two companies will work "with utility and regulated power partners to identify and advance new projects" and Elementl "will continue the evaluation of potential technology, engineering, procurement and construction, and other project partners, while prioritising specific sites for accelerated development."
Elementl Power, founded in 2022, describes itself as a technology-agnostic advanced nuclear project developer which aims to provide "turn-key development, financing and ownership solutions for customers that want access to clean baseload power but may not want to own or operate nuclear power assets." It says its mission is to "to deploy over 10 gigawatts of next-generation nuclear power in the US by 2035."
It is not Google's first nuclear power deal -- in October 2024 the company signed an agreement with Kairos Power to purchase power from its fluoride salt-cooled high-temperature small modular reactors, with a fleet of up to 500 MW of capacity by 2035. The aim of the power purchase agreement was to facilitate Kairos Power to develop, construct, and operate plants and sell energy, ancillary services, and environmental attributes to Google. At the time of that announcement Google said that it would help it achieve net-zero emissions across all of its operations and value chain by 2030. Further reading: Google tries to greenwash massive AI energy consumption with another vague nuclear deal (The Register)
Elementl Power, founded in 2022, describes itself as a technology-agnostic advanced nuclear project developer which aims to provide "turn-key development, financing and ownership solutions for customers that want access to clean baseload power but may not want to own or operate nuclear power assets." It says its mission is to "to deploy over 10 gigawatts of next-generation nuclear power in the US by 2035."
It is not Google's first nuclear power deal -- in October 2024 the company signed an agreement with Kairos Power to purchase power from its fluoride salt-cooled high-temperature small modular reactors, with a fleet of up to 500 MW of capacity by 2035. The aim of the power purchase agreement was to facilitate Kairos Power to develop, construct, and operate plants and sell energy, ancillary services, and environmental attributes to Google. At the time of that announcement Google said that it would help it achieve net-zero emissions across all of its operations and value chain by 2030. Further reading: Google tries to greenwash massive AI energy consumption with another vague nuclear deal (The Register)
Yeah, right. (Score:2)
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"Its easy to build anything when you have no regulations and can do anything you want, "
AC talking about its ass again. If you think there are 'no regulations' and 'you can do anything you want' in China irt energy development, then you're unqualified to comment on the matter.
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Indeed, they jail people who don't follow environmental regulations, or who are responsible for environmental disasters.
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Prove it and build a new one.
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Main problem with nuclear power - independent of country - it is fricking expensive to build and not easy to operate. France is often cited as the example how you power a country with nuclear. But France's nuclear power plants, despite in operation since 60 years, never turned a profit. The taxpayer in France pays for the cheap electricity prices. (And compared to Austrian prices, where I live, France's electrici
Politics slows down nuclear, solar and wind too (Score:2)
Reactors can be built very quickly: some have been built in just 3 to 5 years."
https://www.sustainabilitybynu... [sustainabi...umbers.com]
The US is basically slowed down by politics, including political lawsuits. And it's not just nuclear, solar and wind projects have been held up too due to politics. Sometimes by elites who don't want their views "spoiled", sometimes by "environmentalists" concerned over the habitat o
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The US is basically slowed down by politics
The link [sustainabi...umbers.com] says it takes 6 to 8 years to construct a plant once plant construction actually begins. That is in addition to all the other steps required, like finding a site and having someone plan the construction. And hiring contractors with appropriate experience to do the work...
Its going to be a long while at best before this idea produces any power.
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says it takes 6 to 8 years to construct a plant once plant construction actually begins. That is in addition to all the other steps required, like finding a site and having someone plan the construction.
Planning, acquiring land, dealing with lawsuits, etc is also a problem with wind and solar. So I don't think nuclear should be discounted for such reasons.
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To be fair, the only two things that keep new nuclear projects from starting in the US is the massive expense, and NIMBY political opposition.
It turns out both of those things are ultimately solved with a shitton of money. It also turns out Google has several shittons of money to spare, in order to secure the eye-popping amount of megawatts they already know they're going to need. They've got enough political clout and political donations to grease the regulatory wheels. There undoubtedly will be lawsuit
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That's why I'm pretty convinced the only way a nuclear abundant America happens is with a French style, state owned enterprise which can solve both problems which you correctly identify and most of the others.
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Oh or if and or when one or more of the SMR folks actually builds a design that can be actually produced at scale. Like if TerraPower comes through with the promise of TWR which is cool. Even then still, I think it makes sense for the nation to own and control a backbone of nuclear energy for both economic and national security reasons.
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What's the advantage? State owned doesn't get to cut through red tape, isn't immune to NIMBY, isn't immune to Greenpeace's bullshit, and doesn't get any reduced permitting or certification expenses. A distinct disadvantage I could see is possibly having a virtually bottomless budget even when it doesn't make any sense, with very little concern for shit like cost plus contracts, which are probably the biggest source of taxpayer waste.
Meanwhile, here you've got Google going all in on this AI crap, which may e
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Sure it does.
-Red tape? Who owns the tape? Standardize a design and self certify it. French model.
-NIMBY? This is the Federal Govt. If you get the cooperation of the state and a couple locales you can ignore that. Or just build on Federal land where you can. There is no higher authority, if the government clears the courts it's simply a matter of political will.
-Greenpeace? Again, same as NIMBY, if the political will is there it will happen. Can Greenpeace protest enough to stop a military base from bei
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The US can't even build nuke plants anymore and now Google is going to build three. Just like that.
No. Google **CLAIMS** it is going to invest some unknown amount of money in a company that has only existed for 3 years and who doesn't actually do anything. As noted at the bottom of the article, this is nothing more than Google trying to Greenwash its massive electricity consumption with vague nuclear deals.
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What do you do with a nuclear reactor when it gets sent to the Google Graveyard?
It will probably be like their other AI investments. Big announcement, then they figure out how to make it more efficient and pull back. Or they just realize that it's cheaper to use some other technology to generate power. Or this startup fails to deliver.
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Most likely modular reactors. [youtu.be]
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This will never happen.
Yep, between the NIMBYs, regulations, and the bean counters who will eventually realize they can't financially recover from this type of investment - this is all just DOA.
Re: Clean, reliable power (Score:2)
Um, you are being sarcastic, right? Literally megatons of mining has to occur to obtain radioactives, unless they plan on using plutonium from decommissioned weapons.
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Um, you are being sarcastic, right? Literally megatons of mining has to occur to obtain radioactives, unless they plan on using plutonium from decommissioned weapons.
I'm pretty sure you're off by orders of magnitude there. It takes only about 27 metric tons of uranium for a gigawatt of continuous power production for a year. If you don't include any material that you have to remove to dig a tunnel down to reach the veins of uranium, that's likely to involve moving only single-digit thousand tons of ore per gigawatt-year, not megatons. At just 600 megawatts each, even if you had *fifteen* plants of that size, you'd still likely *barely* hit *one* megaton of total ore
Re: Clean, reliable power (Score:2)
Of course I'm including all the material that must be removed to get to the ore. Duh.
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Looks like you need to mine around 500 tons of ore to get 1 ton of uranium so 13,500 tons for a year. I guess there would also be some dirt, but that wouldn't be removed entirely. We're certainly no where near coal which needs something like 3m tons of coal per year
Re: Clean, reliable power (Score:2)
1 ton enriched to what amount?
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The mass of displaced material per mass of uranium is somewhere between 1000:1 and 20000:1 depending on the deposit. It's not great.
So for your 27t, you're looking at between 27kt and 540kt of material.
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I think they're referring to how inefficient uranium mining is. The mass of displaced material per mass of uranium is somewhere between 1000:1 and 20000:1 depending on the deposit. It's not great. So for your 27t, you're looking at between 27kt and 540kt of material.
At least as of 2011, Uranium ore below 0.075% concentration (1,333:1) was not considered economically feasible to mine [wikipedia.org], so the 20,000:1 ore might technically exist, but nobody is digging it up.
Some mines in Canada have average grades as high as 18% [wikipedia.org].
In other words, 27 tons is going to be anywhere from 150 tons to 36 kilotons. Not megatons. Not even close.
So again, you're off by orders of magnitude.
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At least as of 2011, Uranium ore below 0.075% concentration (1,333:1) was not considered economically feasible to mine [wikipedia.org], so the 20,000:1 ore might technically exist, but nobody is digging it up.
That's simply not true.
I'm sure it is for places like Canada and Australia.
Niger and Namibia? Not even a little bit.
Last time I read, the big one in Namibia was like 3000:1 for ore concentration, and 5000:1 if you include all the non-ore you get in the mix.
They still mine the fuck out of low-grade ores in Africa.
Some mines in Canada have average grades as high as 18% [wikipedia.org].
I knew it was high- didn't know it was that high. That's wild.
In other words, 27 tons is going to be anywhere from 150 tons to 36 kilotons. Not megatons. Not even close.
135kt for that one Namibian mine. There are much lower grade mines than that operating there, too.
So at best, 1 order of magnitude.
Some reactors can consume nuclear waste (Score:2)
Um, you are being sarcastic, right? Literally megatons of mining has to occur to obtain radioactives, unless they plan on using plutonium from decommissioned weapons.
If you choose the correct nuclear technology, there is a massive positive environmental benefit. The reactor can consume existing nuclear waste as fuel. Converting a 10,000 year high level radioactivity problem into a 300 year low level radioactivity problem. Maybe build enough of such reactors for the cleanup?
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Which materials and how much of them?
You know what a ton of anything requires? Materials.
Export pollution greenwash your own stats (Score:3)
Unlike all this "green" energy windmills & solar that don't work without a TON of materials being mined.
And don't forget buying the lowest priced solar and wind components from a supply chain and factories that achieve that low cost through massive pollution and labor abuse. Never mind Mongolia being turned into a toxic wasteland, outsourcing the pollution of manufacturing greenwashes the US and EU stats.
Looks like scamming Google ie easy... (Score:2)
Just sell the right fictional fantasy-tech to them...
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Nah, the media & other parties just showed voters the cost. Election over.
But continue to believe what you choose to.
Re:You should be in Australia... (Score:4, Funny)
There was a whole series of feature-length documentaries about what happened when Australia went nuclear. Didn't you see any of them? "Mad Max", "Beyond Thunderdome", "Fury Road", "Furiosa"....
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That'll keep them from being the 52 American state.
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I saw the most recent one: The 2025 election. Team "we will build 8 nuclear plants" just got defeated in a colossal landslide and the potato championing the nuclear proposals not only didn't win the election for his team, he lost his own parliament seat which he's had for over 20 years.
Australia is trying to keep Australia away from Mad Max.
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What happened at Chernobyl was unique to the reactors there, where a failure in the control system accelerated the reaction inside the core. It literally can't happen with the design used everywhere else, where the failure of the control system shuts down the reaction in the core. Three Mile Island was about as bad as it gets for most reactor designs, and there were . . . zero deaths that can be attributed to it. Even if you add in earthquakes and tsunamis, literally the worst nuclear power plant incident o
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The argument that modern reactors are safe because they are designed differently from previous reactor designs is not convincing. By that logic, any design is safe until a new flaw is encountered.
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You're wrong about your claims. Chernobyl has had strong environmental effects for decades, you should maybe do your own research.
Maybe you should read what you're replying to. As I said, and you didn't read or are lying about, Chernobyl was a unique design, and that caused a catastrophic failure that can't happen anywhere else. The reactors as Chernobyl were the only ones of that design.
We've seen the results of the worst case scenario at the design used for any other commercial reactor, at Three Mile Island (which had melted puddles of uranium in the core) and Fukushima (which suffered a tsunami and earthquake), and between the two,
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The main effect of nuclear in Australia, aside from the corruption, is to extend the life of fossil fuel plants. They keep going, waiting to be replaced by nuclear, instead of transitioning the grid to renewables and storage.
Google's Investment Partner (Score:2, Insightful)
each of three planned sites. (Score:2)
"It's unknown where the three proposed sites will be located"
Well if the sites are planned then someone must know where they will be...
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SAM batteries can be set up fairly quickly these days.
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Sure, and until they secure the sites, they're not going to say shit. That's quite simply to protect the price, as they are likely buying with a freshly incorporated LLC with no easy connection to Google unless you go looking. If they go and announce it by putting pins in Google Maps for people, their price goes sky high.
A shame it's not a fusion plant. (Score:2)
The next three entries (Score:2)
Danger signs (Score:4, Insightful)
When a corporation is powerful enough to even contemplate building its own nuclear plants to power its data centers... it's time to break up that corporation.
Sorry, but feeding the maw of a monopolist is not a good use of energy.
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I was thinking the same thing. Google is in lega trouble on multiple fronts with the advertising and Chrome. I doubt they have the money.
Killed by Google (Score:2)
That website is going to take on a whole different meaning when the lights go out and the power plant is shutdown.
That said it won't ever get that far. Killed by Google is a testament to the fact that the company is so short sighted in its projects that it struggles to do anything beyond 10 years. I anticipate this will be killed in a few years right after permitting is done. Google does not have the 20 year patience to wait for a nuclear power plant to be built.
SMR for the win (Score:2)
I don't like that Google is pushing this, but... it's time and past time to get SMRs built by the dozens, hundreds, even thousands. Energy is civilization.
The amount of energy available from nuclear is insanely huge compared to fossil fuels, solar, wind, or any other technology we have.
For those worried about safety, please remember that more people have died falling off of roofs while doing solar installations than have ever died from any sort of nuclear accident.
Caveat (Score:2)