Nuclear power has been a stagnant U.S. energy source for decades, but it could be primed for a technology-driven renaissance amid the growing artificial intelligence boom.
These renewables, however, are intermittent sources of power, while data centers need a steady supply to run all the time. The tech companies are currently reliant on the grid whenever the wind isn’t blowing or sun isn’t shining.
Gee, if only if they could have, say, containers of substances that could hold an electrical charge: perhaps—if you will—a “battery” of such containers.
I get your point, but have you looked into the power demands of data centers? They already have room filling batteries for power outages, but those are just enough to keep the lights on while the diesel generators start.
There are immense capacity utility scale batteries available now from 100s of vendors. They would be roughly 100x easier to build than a nuclear power plant, even with a solar farm attached.
The most recent nuclear power plant built in the US was the 2 new units at the Vogtle plant in Georgia. They took 11 years and 34 billion dollars to build.
A comparable solar + battery plant that’s being built in Nevada is projected to cost 1.1 billion. No time-drained is given, but 3 years is not uncommon for these large solar projects.
So the above coats would have to balloon 30x and the project would have to take 4x the expected time to get close to costing the same as the most recent US nuclear project, for the same energy generation/storage capacity.
It’s honestly baffling why these companies are trying to spin up nuclear plants instead of pushing ahead with more grid renewables.
This is just the peak power. The average power is much less. And batteries can maybe work on a grid scale for smoothing, but not for an individual consumer like a data center.
Gee, if only if they could have, say, containers of substances that could hold an electrical charge: perhaps—if you will—a “battery” of such containers.
I get your point, but have you looked into the power demands of data centers? They already have room filling batteries for power outages, but those are just enough to keep the lights on while the diesel generators start.
There are immense capacity utility scale batteries available now from 100s of vendors. They would be roughly 100x easier to build than a nuclear power plant, even with a solar farm attached.
The most recent nuclear power plant built in the US was the 2 new units at the Vogtle plant in Georgia. They took 11 years and 34 billion dollars to build.
A comparable solar + battery plant that’s being built in Nevada is projected to cost 1.1 billion. No time-drained is given, but 3 years is not uncommon for these large solar projects.
So the above coats would have to balloon 30x and the project would have to take 4x the expected time to get close to costing the same as the most recent US nuclear project, for the same energy generation/storage capacity.
It’s honestly baffling why these companies are trying to spin up nuclear plants instead of pushing ahead with more grid renewables.
This is just the peak power. The average power is much less. And batteries can maybe work on a grid scale for smoothing, but not for an individual consumer like a data center.