Google signs up for nuclear power

Investment Analysis Clubs Macro Economic Trends and Risks
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Google will purchase power from “multiple small modular reactors” in a new agreement. These reactors will be developed by Kairos Power.

Since pioneering the first corporate purchase agreements for renewable electricity over a decade ago, Google has played a pivotal role in accelerating clean energy solutions, including the next generation of advanced clean technologies. Today, we’re building on these efforts by signing the world’s first corporate agreement to purchase nuclear energy from multiple small modular reactors (SMRs) to be developed by Kairos Power.

And…
The initial phase of work is intended to bring Kairos Power’s first SMR online quickly and safely by 2030, followed by additional reactor deployments through 2035. Overall, this deal will enable up to 500 MW of new 24/7 carbon-free power to U.S. electricity grids and help more communities benefit from clean and affordable nuclear power.

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Kairos is a newcomer to the nuclear power industry. They do not currently have any power reactors in service anywhere in the world. However, Kairos is in the process of building a test reactor in Tennessee to demonstrate the technology. This first reactor will not actually produce electricity, but will be important for determining the operational characteristics of the new reactor design.

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For the power plant version to be on-line by 2030 might be a little optimistic, in my opinion, but it is important to see a major tech corporation like Google committed to developing new low carbon sources of reliable electricity.

_ Pete

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This is interesting. What was the permitting process? Why were the environmentalists unable to stop the permitting process?

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First, ”the environmentalists” are a very fuzzy bunch, and the word itself is extremely ill-defined, mostly used by politicians and journalists, and so we must tred with caution.

I am qualified to write on this because I have been a Sierra Club member and so an ur-“environmentalist” since my birth in 1951, and also have been a speechifying organizing GCC activist within Democratic Party circles since 1985. I have long opposed the druggy hippies and lefties and angry self-righteous who use “environmentalism” as an idiot hatchet symbol while performing their cult war dances.

From my conversations with my brethren I know environmentalism is now experiencing

a generational transition, as those born in the 30’s and 40’s who were directly traumatized by Hiroshima, 3 Mile Island, Chernobyl, Fukushima, and etc have weakened and are dying off, and also
a generational gap as those born in the 50’s and later become far more concerned about GCC than long half life nuclear garbage.

Nuclear garbage already exists, and must be collected, stored safely, and ideally the worst of it (from the early emergency programs to get a nuclear weapon during WWII) “burned up” in further nuclear reactions (Hanford!!) and lord knows what in Russia and China.

The worst power generation stuff is from the delusional era of early “peaceful atom” slipshod reactor construction and management world wide, starring everything from the Soviet Union and much else (hello Fukushima).

Adding some more to the garbage storage we already must build, use, and manage is a relatively smaller evil than GCC, with some hopes for getting fusion on line as well.

I am convinced nuclear has a solid future, and that a political alliance will emerge to do so

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I am against nuclear for economic reasons primarily.

We have a limited capital expenditure in total. Huge limit but still a limited pool. That pool will increase but so will inflation.

Nuclear power is an expensive treadmill to get on. It does not offer us economic advantages. The sense of we will have electricity so we do not need to invest even more heavily in alternatives is problematic. A false sense of success.

I will always side with the professionalism in business of engineers over MBAs but to assume the engineers can do this successfully is wrong from the get-go. It is unaffordable.

We have problems with recycling of everything. Nuclear and fossil fuels being the worst offenders. Plastic, more oil, rounding out the top three.

We must as a global society stop offsetting industrial costs by leaving the waste to rot and be picked up by someone else.

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The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) permitting process for the Kairos test reactor in Oak Ridge, Tennessee is described in the following link.

https://www.nrc.gov/reactors/non-power/new-facility-licensing/hermes-kairos.html

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Kairos also plans to build a second demonstration plant at Oak Ridge, which will be larger and capable of generating electricity. This Hermes 2 project is nearly complete in the permitting process.

_ Pete

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Kairos

Greek in English meaning weather

Poetic justice

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Counterintuitively, this is a bet on economics. Although it is a hail Mary bet (one of several upcoming, I predict), and we probably won’t know if it worked for a decade.

Google specifically mentioned the words “order bank” in the blog. Department of Energy, who is providing lots of funding for this, really wants to create a pipeline of nuclear reactors all of the same design. That way the lessons from the first one get transferred to the second and so on. DOE estimates that it take about 10-20 reactors to drive the costs low enough to be practical. So they are trying to fund several in a row, not one off’s.

Google gets some sweeteners. There is a 30% investment tax credit, plus an addition 10% for being in an “energy community” (which all current nuclear sites are), plus another 10% for using domestic materials. Plus the DOE loan office will provide loans for up to 80% of the value. Part of the plan is that in addition to having a single customer like Google or utilities in a single region, DOE would engage several different utilities in different regions of the country to all order the same reactor in sequence. Obviously, a lot of moving parts there, but things like that are what have to be done to create the pipeline.

A DOE loan officer said that they are getting multiple serious inquiries for AP1000 projects which I had assumed was dead in the water. Apparently the sweeteners are good enough to get people to pick up the phone.

A lot of this depends on how the election goes. Depends on who wins the election a lot of this could go away.

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Excellent summation.

Leaves out recycling of fuel or depositing of waste. Leaves out decades from now scrapping the plants.

The subsidies as usual are not bemoaned since it is not liberal fuel. It is conservative fuel.

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Golly golly, here’s a surprise:

Global Electricity Demand Is Rising Faster Than Expected, I.E.A. Says

A surge in power use worldwide could make it harder for nations to slash emissions and keep global warming in check.

https://tinyurl.com/48etayer

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/16/climate/global-demand-electricity-rising.html#:~:text=Demand%20for%20electricity%20around%20the,Energy%20Agency%20said%20on%20Wednesday.

OK, I have long argued that mankind’s appetite for energy is essentially infinite, or at least as close to infinite as is practicable, And here’s another data point. So the use keeps going up, sometimes for important things, sometimes trivial. To wit:

I have read that each “AI” inquiry uses as much energy as that to form a plastic water bottle. I don’t know if that’s true, but if it’s even remotely close, every Google search that’s now starting with an AI Summary is going to drown the world in an ever increasing miasma of energy waste products, and I don’t care if it’s hydrocarbon emissions, production (and eventual disposal) of solar panels or windmills, or nuclear fuel and waste.

It’s got to stop - and yet it never will. Yes, we are doomed, and the tragedy of the commons is real.

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I do not think you deserve the credit for that. But if your electric bill is higher than expected I could be wrong.

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In related news, Amazon announces a similar deal. Key takeaways: they are intending on building four units, instead of one. And a consortium of utilities may add up to eight more, so maybe as may as 12.

The important thing is that multiple stakeholders are involved and talking with each other.

Side note: Energy Northwest already has a nuclear plant in Handford, Washington. So I imagine that’s where the SMR project will be located.

WASHINGTON, Oct 16 (Reuters) - Amazon.com (AMZN.O), opens new tab said on Wednesday it has signed three agreements on developing the nuclear power technology called small modular reactors, becoming the latest big tech company to push for new sources to meet surging electricity demand from data centers.

Amazon said it will fund a feasibility study for an SMR project near a Northwest Energy site in Washington state. The SMR is planned to be developed by X-Energy. Financial details were not disclosed.

Under the agreement, Amazon will have the right to purchase electricity from four modules. Energy Northwest, a consortium of state public utilities, will have the option to add up to eight 80 MW modules, resulting in a total capacity up to 960 MWs, or enough to power the equivalent of more than 770,000 U.S. homes. The additional power would be available to Amazon and utilities to power homes and businesses.

https://www.reuters.com/technology/amazoncom-joins-push-nuclear-power-meet-data-center-demand-2024-10-16/

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As a reminder, Amazon, through its AWS web services company, recently purchased a data center located adjacent to the existing Susquehanna nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania.

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The Amazon project in Washington will use the X-Energy pebble-bed reactors. X-Energy is another one of these new companies without any existing operating reactors anywhere. However, Dow Chemical previously announced plans to install at least one X-Energy nuclear reactor at the Dow Seadrift chemical plant in Texas.

https://x-energy.com/seadrift

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It is interesting that NuScale seems to be left out on all of these developments. NuScale is the one SMR company that actually has an approved design certification from the NRC for a commercial sized plant. NuScale’s project in Idaho with UAMPS fell through last year, and they have yet to find another customer.

_ Pete

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Yes! What is up with that? Anybody. Anybody?

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Just speculating, I’d say NuScale got their turn up to bat, and now it is someone else’s turn. NuScale a bunch of funding, loan guarantees and such and their project didn’t pan out.

Now Nuscale has to come up with a new project with new customers, and go back to the DOE loan office and get it all approved (if it gets approved) and that will take time. I don’t know if DOE gives you another bite of the apple or not.

Beyond that, it appears it just boiled down to economics. The power was always going to be expensive. After a number of project delays and the recent bout of inflation it just got more expensive. The subscribers started getting cold feet and began to drop out one by one until there weren’t enough subscribers to make it viable.

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I tend to agree with that, but perhaps not in the way you intended. NuScale was quite a way along with their design for the UAMPS project in Idaho. The further along they got, the more expensive it was looking to be. Eventually, the price got too high for the municipal utilities in UAMPS, and they bailed.

Kairos Power (Google) and X-Energy (Amazon) are not so far along with doing the cost planning, so they can afford to be more optimistic in promising a lower price. Whether or not that turns out to be true is another question, but right now they can promise the moon, and at the best price. NuScale could be disadvantaged from their recent real-world experience in planning the construction of an actual power plant.

Just speculating, but there also might be a tendency on the part of Google and Amazon to choose a completely different kind of design for a nuclear power plant. Nearly all existing nuclear reactors use uranium oxide in ceramic pellet form, and use water for cooling and moderation. Both Kairos and X-Energy will use TRISO pebble fuel, which has the advantage of having a higher melting point, and so the plants are inherently much safer. (Although, I think the NuScale design is plenty safe. The reactors and containment vessels are submerged in a huge tank of water, which will provide plenty of passive cooling in the event of a problem.) There could be a tendency to be attracted to something new, shiny and different, especially if the price looks good right now.

_ Pete

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Yes, I saw an aerial view of an Amazon data center in Northern Virginia with a subdivision of large McMansions across the fence line.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=https://arc-anglerfish-washpost-prod-washpost.s3.amazonaws.com/public/CHYP5RIVAOXZOS22IITIGGB6YQ.jpg&w=916

I wonder how many of the neighbors will welcome a nuclear power plant next door?

intercst

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Señor Google tells me that ceramic pellet uranium melts at 2860° while TRISO pebble fuel melts at “well above” 2865° with one source even saying as high as 3800°. And in a burst of enthusiasm I thought to ask the Señor what the core temperature was at Three Mile Island during the emergency, and he told me 4300°.

Not sure if there’s a big difference of driving into a concrete abutment at 100mph or 125mph, tho.

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It is not just the melt temperature that is important, although, for brevity, that was the only thing I mentioned. The power density of the reactor core is also important, as well as the ability to absorb heat without a big change in temperature.

Gas cooled pebble beds have a low heat density, which means they can be cooled more easily through passive means.

A gas cooled pebble bed plant is currently in service in China. As a test, they intentionally turned off the reactor coolant flow and other systems. The reactor did not melt down. It just sat there and maintained itself in a safe configuration.

_ Pete

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Thanks all, I ask for info and on this board I usually get it!

Might be time for me to read a long article on Nuclear design, as my last deep dive has clearly gone obsolete.

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I don’t know the answer but there are differences in the technology used.

NuScale is a low temp, water-cooled reactor.
The X-energy Xe-100 is a high-temp gas-cooled reactor.
The Kairos FHR is high-temp salt-cooled reactor.

It is possible that NuScale reactors require more water, which may limit where it can be sited. The heat from high-temp reactors can also potentially be used for other purposes, such as producing hydrogen.

But I’m no engineer.

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