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Power AI Google

Google To Fund Development of Three Nuclear Power Sites 114

Posted by BeauHD from the vague-on-details dept.
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)
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Google To Fund Development of Three Nuclear Power Sites More

Google To Fund Development of Three Nuclear Power Sites

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  • This will never happen.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward
      The US can't even build nuke plants anymore and now Google is going to build three. Just like that.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        We can build them just fine. The cost is what's prohibitive. But you're going to tell me about government red tape and environmentalists and this excuse and that excuse. The UAE and Koreans can't even build a plant on time and within budget. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

        • We can build them just fine.

          Prove it and build a new one.
        • "It takes around 6 to 8 years to build a nuclear reactor. That’s the average construction time globally.
          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

          • Re:Politics slows down nuclear, solar and wind too (Score:4, Informative)

            by RossCWilliams ( 5513152 ) on Thursday May 08, 2025 @12:51AM (#65360679)

            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.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by drnb ( 2434720 )

              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.

            • While what you said is true, there's actually some loopholes that would vastly speed up the paperwork.

              During the last wave of optimism about nuclear power (before the tracking breakthroughs that made natural gas dirt cheap in the US) there were dozens of reactors planned and moving through permitting. Several of those got through land acquisition, local permitting, and most importantly geological and environmental site studies. Several were on the locations of existing energy infrastructure so you didn't ha

      • 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

        • 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.

          • 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.

            • The issue isn't so much producing SMRs at scale but producing them so incredibly cheaply that given that they are less cost effective to operate the overall TCO is sufficiently low. It does potentially have the advantage of allowing more incremental deployment and generally reduced financial risk profile even at the same TCO, which would make funding easier. The world's current experience is that the current TCO requires subsidy, though.

              • The issue isn't so much producing SMRs at scale but producing them so incredibly cheaply that given that they are less cost effective to operate the overall TCO is sufficiently low.

                That's kindof baked in when I say "at scale", that means these are being produced in a standardized fashion and basically on a production line.

                Like with SpaceX what they did which none of the other space companies had before is know that a rocket is just a tube with engines, the engine is the key so instead of building these by hand every time just make a full production line. For the Merlin engines when they were at capacity I think they were producing on average one engine per day? At the time that was u

                • There are more variables at play here as they are still specialised items requiring specialised materials and skills. They are also less efficient, potentially increasing the demand for uranium and cost. It is likely that capital cost would reduce with volume production, but it might not reduce TCO. It would reduce capital risk in some purchase scenarios if a lower price as it means a smaller outlay prior to production, but it's still only viable if any costs due to lower efficiency of uranium use are offse

                  • Yeah for sure that's why in almost any case I think the French have the right idea on how to.deploy nuclear: just let the state do it they have to approve and inspect all those details anyway so just cut the middleman out.

          • 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

            • 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

            • One of the arguments is that if it requires subsidy (and it seems to), perhaps the state should own it, which could also be applied to renewables. But you can also argue that non-intermittent supply is a public good which warrants subsidy without ownership, provided the contractual basis supports the public good.
            • French State owned absolutely cut through red tape. Some people objected, the French government said "meh" and built them where it wanted anyway. Given it was sold as a national security issue, avoiding reliance on oil imports for power, objections were relatively muted, though.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward

        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.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          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.

    • Most likely modular reactors. [youtu.be]

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jrnvk ( 4197967 )

      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.

      • If we were talking about a standard operation to create electrical megawatts and sell them as electrical megawatts, you're probably right.

        That's not what Google wants. They want the megawatts, and see this as a line item to massive expansion of AI in order to protect their search business. That changes the ROI calculation significantly in the favor of nuclear, because the end goal isn't a whole lot of megawatts at $0.12/kWh or whatever, but rather trillions of calculations a second in a big building of GP

        • I think it's all that, plus Google is investing to get a guarantee on that power likely at a set price, however inflated. That has value, particularly if energy demand rises as expected and grid-electricity becomes scarce.

  • Unlike all this "green" energy windmills & solar that don't work without a TON of materials being mined.

    • 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.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dgatwood ( 11270 )

        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

        • Of course I'm including all the material that must be removed to get to the ore. Duh.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Ksevio ( 865461 )

            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

        • 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.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by dgatwood ( 11270 )

            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.

            • 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.

      • 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?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by necro81 ( 917438 )

          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?

          There have been a number of breeder reactors - the kind that can "burn" otherwise spent fuel - built over the years. They've pretty much all been demonstration plants, and aimed mostly for making p

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by drnb ( 2434720 )

            Attempts to build commercial reactors to burn nuclear waste have mostly failed, because it's fantastically difficult technologically and really not economical. ...

            I think you have missed my main point. The economic analysis seems incomplete, only looking at commercial power generation. What about the cost savings from reducing the nuclear waste? That long term storage has a cost as well. Reducing and eventually eliminating it should be part of the benefits analysis.

            ... They're also a massive proliferation risk.

            Not really, the countries with the existing waste stockpiles are already nuclear armed nations.

    • Which materials and how much of them?

      You know what a ton of anything requires? Materials.

    • 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.

  • Just sell the right fictional fantasy-tech to them...

  • Google's Investment Partner (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    You will notice Google isn't going to own these plants. If something goes wrong its partner will have to pay the bill. Or the public, if the partner can't come up with the money. Google's risk is limited to its investment, but it will get all the benefits of the power if they ever produce any.
    • No, they might own the plants in the end, it depends on the details of the off-take agreement. And why are you discounting the risk of losing their investment? It's a very big number.

  • "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...

    • 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.

  • Google has obviously been toying with the idea of getting into the electricity business for a while. Here [youtu.be] is a video of the late Dr Bussard (of Bussard Ramjet/Collector fame) giving a talk about his proposed "Polywell" reactor to a room of Google staff. Sadly the design didn't pan out but it's still a good watch as he talks about some of the non-technical barriers to fusion power research in the US.
  • How long until they are on the Google Graveyard?

  • Danger signs (Score:5, Insightful)

    by dskoll ( 99328 ) on Wednesday May 07, 2025 @10:42PM (#65360541) Homepage

    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.

    • 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.

      • If they don't have the money, how and why are they spending it? Do you think their partner didn't make sure the money was there?

      • As of their last quarterly filing (March 31, 2005) Google has $95.33B cash on hand / short term investments.

        You should probably spend your time doubting things that aren't easily found with 5 seconds of search engine work.

    • Why? They need data centers, data centers need power. Should we only allow companies to build data centers if that's all they can afford to build? How many should they be allowed to build? If a power plant cost as much as ten data centers, would you allow them to build 11 data centers but not one data center and a power plant? Whay about companies that build power plants? Can they be allowed to own data centers? Did you think this through?

    • 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 I can't agree with that generalisation. The reality is in the world of high energy requirements building powerplants is common to keep your own core facilities online. Building a nuclear power plant isn't some weird red line. Remember nearly all of the powerplants at the moment were built by corporations many orders of magnitude smaller than Google.

      Google needs to be broken up. But this isn't the reason for it, or even a symptom of it. Many businesses require onsite generation, and the choice of g

  • 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.

  • 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.

    • I don't care who is building them and I don't understand why anyone cares. Past that I agree entirely and can't fathom the complaints I see here. They put a load on the grid, and that's bad. They take the load off the grid, and that's bad. Is there any point in dealing with people who think everything is bad?
  • Does Google understand that it is very hard to cancel a nuclear power plant?
    • Why wouldn't they? They forecasted their needs, ran the numbers, and decided this was the most cost-effective solution.

    • No it isn't. If it's not built yet, you stop building it.

      If it's already operational, you "cancel" it by selling it to someone who wants to operate it as a source of energy to sell.

      I hear there's an energy crisis brewing, so it's not surprising that there might be a buyer out there.

    • Does Google understand that it is very hard to cancel a nuclear power plant?

      Easier than cancelling gmail.

  • There are a lot of things a nuclear power plant could be used for. Extracting CO2 from the atmosphere. Cracking seawater. Mining bitcoin? um

  • Who else would you want to build up nuclear instead of Alphabet?
    Is there really a better choice? Microsoft? Meta? Tesla? Taco Bell?

    Gozer: "Choose! Choose the form of the Destructor!"

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