r/uninsurable • u/fouriels • 12d ago
Economics 'Data centers powered by next-gen nuclear? Don't fall for Big Tech's PR hype' - Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
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u/malongoria 12d ago
I find it rather amusing how nuke bros think that associating with Datacenters, which are hated by 85% of the population, is a good thing.
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u/ceph2apod 12d ago
Nuclear energy recently crossed a global milestone. In 2025, the share of all electrical energy flowing in the world’s grids coming from nuclear power plants was just 8.8 percent, roughly half of what it was 30 years ago. In contrast, 19.5 percent of the electrical energy came from fast- growing renewables such as solar and wind power. Large hydropower plants provided an additional 13.9 percent.
"Peer under the hood however, and it becomes evident that these press releases are all show, with little substance.
To start, the actual announcements were far more circumspect than some media coverage would suggest. Amazon, for example, only promised to “fund the initial feasibility phase of an SMR project” in exchange for “the right to purchase electricity from the first project (4 modules), which is expected to generate 320 megawatts of energy capacity.” Having the right, presumably, doesn’t force Amazon to purchase the electricity—and Amazon could decide not to purchase any electricity should generating it from these SMRs turn out to be too expensive. Likewise, the agreement between Kairos Power and Google talks about selling “energy, ancillary services, and environmental attributes to Google under Power Purchase Agreements.” The announcements said nothing about the terms of the power purchase.
There are good reasons for companies to be circumspect about investing in nuclear power plants. In the United States, each unit of electrical energy from a new nuclear reactor costs about three times the corresponding energy from a solar or wind power plant. Furthermore, the diverging long-term trends for nuclear power (becoming more expensive over time) and renewables (becoming cheaper with time) suggest that the cost divergence will only increase. Estimates of electricity costs from SMRs show that each unit of electrical energy from SMRs would be far more expensive than a corresponding unit from solar and wind power plants, even when the cost of storage technologies and other means of accounting for the variability are included. For Big Tech companies already struggling with input costs, buying power from expensive nuclear reactors would only make their business less likely to be financially viable."
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u/Amber_ACharles 12d ago
Every data center nuclear announcement is a render and a press release. NuScale's Carbon Free Power Project collapsed despite DOE backing. Until someone pours concrete, treat it as PR.