The serious money is backing new-age nuclear – a truly serious power generation source, which delivers power on demand, irrespective of the weather, with no need for batteries and no need for back up.

In the US, tech giants, Microsoft, Amazon and Google are leading the charge. Backing research into small-scale nuclear plants, planning to build them, and reviving the nuclear plant at Three Mile Island. Their nuclear push is being driven by one thing: having reliable power, available on demand. Not at the vagaries of the weather or sunshine.

While Big Tech was happy to run with the myth of the grand wind and solar transition, it seems reality has finally caught up. As the articles below from The Australian and the team from Jo Nova layout in clear and simple terms.

Google backs new nuclear plants to power AI
The Australian
Jennifer Hiller
15 October 2024

Google will back the construction of seven small nuclear-power reactors in the US, a first-of-its-kind deal that aims to help feed the tech company’s growing appetite for electricity to power AI and jump-start a US nuclear revival.

Under the deal’s terms, Google committed to buying power generated by seven reactors to be built by nuclear-energy start-up Kairos Power. The agreement targets adding 500 megawatts of nuclear power starting at the end of the decade, the companies said.

The arrangement is the first that would underpin the commercial construction in the US of small modular nuclear reactors. Many say the technology is the future of the domestic nuclear-power industry, potentially enabling faster and less costly construction by building smaller reactors instead of behemoth bespoke plants.

“The end goal here is 24/7, carbon-free energy,” said Michael Terrell, senior director for energy and climate at Alphabet’s Google.

The nuclear-power industry’s fortunes are increasingly getting hitched to Big Tech. Power demand is rising in parts of the US for the first time in years, much of it driven by the need to build more data centres for AI. That has sent the tech industry on the hunt for massive amounts of energy.

Last month, Constellation Energy and Microsoft struck a deal to restart the undamaged reactor at Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island, the site of the country’s worst nuclear-power accident. Earlier this year, Amazon purchased a data centre at another Pennsylvania nuclear plant.

The 500MW of generation that would be built by Kairos for Google is about enough to power a midsize city – or one AI data-centre campus.

The agreement answers questions that have bedevilled smaller-reactor designs: What customer would pay the higher price for a first-of-a-kind project? And who would order enough to get an assembly line started? The concept, which remains to be proven, is that building the same thing over and over in a factory would drive down costs.

Kairos plans to deliver the reactors between around 2030 and 2035. Financial terms weren’t disclosed, but the companies entered into a power-purchase agreement, similar to those used between corporate buyers and wind- and solar-energy developers.

The project site – or whether there could be reactors at multiple locations – hasn’t been determined, the companies said.

Google would have data centres somewhere in the region near the Kairos reactors, but it hasn’t been determined whether they would receive power directly from the nuclear plants or from the grid. Google could count the addition of nuclear power towards meeting its carbon-reduction commitments.

Instead of water, which is used in traditional reactors, the Kairos design uses molten fluoride salt as a coolant. The units for Google will include a single 50MW reactor, with three subsequent power plants that would each have two 75MW reactors, Kairos said.

That compares with about 1000MW at reactors at conventional nuclear-power plants.

Kairos will have to navigate complex approvals through the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, but already has clearance to build a demonstration reactor in Tennessee, which could start operating in 2027.

Kairos has a manufacturing development facility in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where it is building test units. They don’t have nuclear-fuel components but are something of a practice run at building and operating full-size plants to test systems, components and the supply chain.

Mike Laufer, chief executive and co-founder at Kairos, said the demonstration project and the Albuquerque plant were helping the company avoid spiralling costs, a pitfall of the conventional nuclear industry.

Nearly 20 per cent of US power comes from nuclear plants.

The second of two new reactors at Georgia’s Vogtle nuclear plant was completed this northern spring. Before that, the most recent nuclear-power reactors in the US were completed in 2016 and 1996 by the Tennessee Valley Authority.

In the near term, analysts expect more natural-gas-fired power plants to be added to fuel the country’s appetite for data centres, new manufacturing, heavy industry and transportation.
The Australian

Google, Amazon, give up on national grid, ignore renewables, and buy their own nuclear plants
Jo Nova Blog
Jo Nova
18 October 2024

Two weeks ago it was Microsoft reviving Three Mile Island’s nuclear plant. Now Google is buying seven small modular reactors, and Amazon is  spending $500 million USD on part of a nuclear energy company.

Too bad for the deplorables who get stuck with the expensive wind-solar-battery clunker spaghetti-grid forced on them by the arts graduates in Parliament. An AI datacentre needs all the same thing a human city does — cheap gigawatts, 24 hours a day. The number-nerd men with money have all decided the cheapest reliable answer to running their AI data center cities, while pretending to fix the weather, is nuclear power. (Coal, of course, is cheaper which is why China uses so much, but it’s against the religion).

The unwashed masses won’t get that choice, of course, to sign up with whatever generator they want. Only the uber rich get that kind of luck.

Every one of these tech giants could have poured that money into wind farms and gardens of solar panels, backed up with acres of batteries and ten thousand miles of high voltage towers, pumped hydro, and synchronous condenser flywheels. But none of them want to pour in their own billions anymore, despite the social credit points bonanza and the bragging rights that would bring.

For twenty years these same people have been pushing the renewable hard sell on us, now overnight, without so much as a “sorry” they’ve all flipped, leaving us holding the can of decrepit national grids that can’t do what they were designed to do.

Google will build seven small nuclear reactors, the first by 2030…Our PM and the CSIRO must be feeling hung-out-to-dry. They declared nuclear was the most expensive option and said Australia couldn’t even build one before 2040.

Google signs deal with startup to build small nuclear reactors to power AI

Aljazeera

Google has signed a landmark deal to use electricity produced by small nuclear reactors to power its artificial intelligence (AI) efforts.

Under the agreement with startup Kairos Power announced on Monday, the California-based tech giant will back the construction of seven small nuclear reactors capable of generating 500 megawatts of power. The first reactor is scheduled to come online by 2030, with others to follow in the coming years.

“The grid needs new electricity sources to support AI technologies that are powering major scientific advances, improving services for businesses and customers, and driving national competitiveness and economic growth,” Michael Terrell, the senior director of energy and climate at Google, said in a blog post.

Two days later, Amazon too.

Amazon follows Google in taking the nuclear option to power data centres

EuroNews

Amazon is investing in US firm X-energy to utilise nuclear reactors to power its data centres.

Amazon and X-energy are aiming to have more than 5 gigawatts of SMR-generated power operational by 2039.

The reactors are currently under development, with none currently providing power to the electric grid in the US.

Big investors can help change that, and these announcements could be the “inflection point” that makes scaling up this technology truly possible, Huff said.

Feel the heat. Only weeks ago these same billionaires were raving about renewable energy, downranking and censoring the skeptics… now they are doing exactly what we said all along.
Jo Nova Blog

From CFACT

By David Wojick

All around America there is an avalanche of proposed wind and solar projects. The idea is to replace fossil fueled electric power which is the dominant source in most places. Some States even have laws to this effect.

Setting aside that this is an impossible goal it is interesting, even amusing, to see how this avalanche might play out in Washington State. The majority of their power comes from hydro but wind and solar are poised to wipe that out as well. This is an objective losing its way!

I became aware of the avalanche a few years ago when PJM, the nation’s biggest power system operator, announced that it was swamped by wind and solar connection requests. The combined MW of the application queue actually exceeded PJM’s peak demand.

This seemed unbelievable at the time but it is now clear that this fiasco is nationwide. People are applying to build more generating capacity than can possibly be used. That is certainly enough to knock off most of the existing generation.

The knock off happens because wind and solar typically come with what are called “take or pay contracts.” If the utility does not take the power they have to pay the generator anyway, so there is tremendous incentive to use this power instead of any other source.

Which brings us to Washington State where almost 70% of the power comes from hydro. Much of this is thanks to the Federal damming of the mighty Columbia River and its tributaries. The big gun here is the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) which operates 31 hydro dams ranging up to the huge 6,800 MW Grand Coulee. But a number of state and local agencies run sizable hydro as well.

I do not have data specific to Washington as a whole but there is no doubt the wind and solar avalanche is underway there. For example BPA talks about “skyrocketing requests” in their 2023 Annual Report, saying this:

“Under the umbrella of Evolving Grid, we are reforming our process for managing skyrocketing requests for generation interconnections. Our intent is to shift from a first-come/first served process that studies requests individually in the order received, to a first-ready/first-served cluster study approach for large generator interconnection requests.”

This is in fact the same change as PJM made to handle their incredible queue of requests.

Then too there is the regional planning group called NorthernGrid whose region includes a good bit of Washington. They report this in their latest study:

“– The total NorthernGrid footprint, non-coincident peak load is 61,867 MW in July

— There are 2,611 MW of planned retirements

— There are 72,099 MW of planned generation additions”

The planned new generation, almost all wind and solar, exceeds peak demand by a wide margin. Pretty clearly this is true for Washington State as a whole.

What is really funny is that BPA makes no mention of what is surely a supreme threat to their power supply business. But they are a Biden-Harris federal agency so maybe mum’s the word for now.

Of course the Washington State electricity users are in the complete dark about the oncoming avalanche of what is bound to be expensive power. I can find no mention of this obvious threat.

There are lots of reasons to constrain the galloping growth of wind and solar. Issues like unreliability, excessive cost and environmental destruction. None of them is funny. But the idea that one form of renewables (wind and solar) might knock off another (hydro) is laughably stupid.