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Google will buy half the electricity from one of Finland's nuclear power plants
- thelastgallon 6d agoIts best for all these AI companies to invest in nuclear fission, fusion, dark energy, etc.
- api 6d agoFar north cool places seem logical for data centers. Not Texas and Arizona. Why?
- seany 6d ago* good access to power (this might not mean the cheapest always, but actually getting to it. * easy permitting * lots of space
- topato 6d agoWhich makes Arizona an interesting place to place any new builds of any sort of data center. They’ve been talking about the scarcity of resources there for years, and it’s currently in an escalating tailspin of abundance. Power is cheap as hell there, but once the water dries up… things might change quickly.
- whall6 6d agoNew Gen data centers are closed loop and don’t use water at nearly the same rate as previous generations
- hn993302 6d agoGot an example? I'm pretty sure new datacenters are still using cooling towers.
- SteveNuts 6d agoQTS is building a second campus in Chicago with closed loop https://q.com/resources/how-qts-data-centers-use-closed-loop-cooling-to-eliminate-ongoing-water-use/ https://q.com/resources/how-qts-data-centers-use-closed-loop...
- hn993302 6d agoOk, those are truly closed loop. As in, they use ambient cooling or active chillers. I've seen too many cooling tower sites described as closed-loop because the internal system is.
- nomel 6d agoThere's also a power generation water cost though! Something like 500g/MWh for gas/coal/nuclear (~70% of power in AZ), so a huge xAI datacenter (Colossus 2, ~1 GW/h) would use ~700 MW of this type, or ~350k gallons of water an hour, which would be 0.2% of the Colorado rivers flow rate last year. I don't know if that's significant.
- derektank 6d agoPulling recent data from the EIA, of the roughly 10,000 megawatts of new power capacity installed in Arizona between 2023 and 2025, 50% is batteries, 40% solar, 6.5% wind, and 3.5% gas. Now, most solar and wind plants rarely if ever hit their nameplate capacity, but it’s pretty clear the large majority of new power generation isn’t consuming water. https://www.eia.gov/electricity/data/eia860/ https://www.eia.gov/electricity/data/eia860/
- nomel 6d agoDoes that change the math above if they're tied into the grid? If they're tied directly to the renewables (Meta is doing this in some places), then true, not a technical increase. But you could still maybe claim they're instead preventing the equivalent reduction on average/grid (and, say, decommission of some of that coal). I suppose that's a separate point.
- derektank 6d agoIf it’s truly separated (no interconnect agreement) or generation capacity is below 1 MW, it won’t show up in EIA data, yes. Rooftop solar is also not included in the data for that reason.
- AnthonyMouse 6d agoIt's the type of situation where that amount of water use isn't going to move the needle very much even in the desert, but building thermal power plants there there is still kind of silly because a) deserts are generally well-suited to solar, and b) you could also build thermal power plants in places like the midwest where that amount of water use is totally irrelevant.
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- fred_is_fred 6d agoNorth Dakota and Alaska also have lots of space.
- whall6 6d agoAgree with this. Natural gas is effectively free there. Maybe it’s the fiber connectivity that prevents them from being built? I genuinely don’t know.
- nomel 6d agoAlaska has a speed of light problem.
- fwip 6d agoDoesn't seem especially relevant for LLMs. Especially not for training, but even for inference.
- nomel 6d agoSure, but it seems very reasonable to expect some co-hosting of latency sensitive tasks, especially with some low hanging thin client fruit, like cloud gaming and the like. I've been very happy not burning a thousand watts of $0.45/kWh power locally, for my AC to force out of the house, to run blender.
- derektank 6d agoAlaska’s land is pretty rugged and hard to build on. It would be interesting to hear from someone who works in the industry why the Northern Interior states like Montana, North Dakota, and Minnesota have fewer data center buildouts than Texas though.
- faitswulff 6d agoPolitics means putting job creating infrastructure projects in red states to curry favor with Republican demographics.
- mcmcmc 6d agoCalling data centers “job creating infrastructure” seems like a bit of an oxymoron tbh
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- zdragnar 6d agoThe company my brother works for (fairly small) is involved in the construction and maintenance of the electrical side of the data grid. Apparently they need to hire at least 20 people a month for the foreseeable future to keep up with demand, as they're already booked out with projects into 2030 or something like that. Overall, it's not exactly a ton of jobs for how much money is going into them, but it isn't nothing.
- mcmcmc 6d ago> Overall, it's not exactly a ton of jobs for how much money is going into them, but it isn't nothing. I’m not disputing that data center buildouts will have some localized job creation, but the net effect of all those data centers will be overwhelmingly negative on employment if everything the AI companies are saying is true
- Lerc 6d agoIf everything the AI companies are saying is true, we'll all be living in a utopia while simultaneously annihilated by a rogue AI. It will be pretty, but rather quiet.
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- whall6 6d ago1. Cheap natural resource 2. Fiber connectivity 3. Low population density 4. Favorable regulatory environment Depending on how far north you mean, you lose all or all but one of the above.
- augment_me 6d agoSouthern states have more republicans so it's easier to sell public land or draw this kind of contracts without a massive community backlash
- gpt5 6d agoNot everything is partisan, and land is only a small factor in where to decide to place a data centers. The top 4 out of 5 states with the most data centers are blue states. The reason Texas is experiencing a boom in data centers is friendlier power grid policies to data centers (similar to why Google is building in Finland), in combination with (relatively small) tax incentives.
- bsder 6d agoUnions. Northeastern states expect that you will use union labor to build your projects or they will shut you down. Pennsylvania, for example, was one of the few places to take Walmart to task for employing illegal labor. Texas and Arizona are notoriously anti-union and anti-resident/pro-corporation.
- yellowapple 6d agoThe requirement to use union labor for construction hasn't stopped datacenter buildouts here in Nevada.
- andsoitis 6d ago> Texas … notoriously … anti-resident What do you mean Texas is anti-resident?
- hn993302 6d agoGoogle claims that 10% of its power goes to non-computing overhead. Even if that were 0 somewhere else, ok how much more expensive is the power in that area, probably more than 11%. And I don't know how much they spend on power to begin with, relative to the other costs that probably go up.
- AngryData 6d agoPerhaps the extra cost in freeze proofing certain systems and the inability to rely on evaporative cooling techniques? The availability of power in the winter might be a problem too when northern home's power and energy usage all ramp up. In the summer you need nearly the same amount of capacity for cooling as the south so there isn't much savings there.
- yellowapple 6d agoArizona is conducive to abundant solar power, so that'd be a good reason to build there. Similar deal here in Nevada (with the added bonus of Nevada being a giant blob of geothermal heat, further driving renewable energy supply and therefore datacenter attractiveness).
- epistasis 6d agoNuclear is the most expensive form of clean energy. It is likely to bankrupt at least one company. When Finland contracted with France to build their latest reactor, they wisely had a fixed price contract where the French company would pay for const overruns. At groundbreaking in 2005, they planned for a 2009 completion. In 2016 it bankrupted Areva, with the French government owned EDG saving parts of the company crucial to the nation. It wasn't completed u tip 2023: https://www.helsinkitimes.fi/finland/finland-news/domestic/25890-hs-olkiluoto-3-has-been-a-financial-catastrophe-for-areva-siemens.html https://www.helsinkitimes.fi/finland/finland-news/domestic/2... When the US last decided to build nuclear, Westinghouse AP1000s, two in South Carolina and two in Georgia, it resulted in the bankruptcy on Westinghouse, putting all of Toshiba, its owner, at risk: https://www.csis.org/analysis/westinghouses-bankruptcy-and-its-implications https://www.csis.org/analysis/westinghouses-bankruptcy-and-i... The two South Carolina reactors were abandoned at the cost of a substantial fraction of the build cost, in the billions, and utility executives went to jail for deception about it. Georgia finished its two reactors, but only by creating some of the most expensive electricity out there today. Storage and renewables are cheaper, faster to deploy, and work really really really well in Texas and Arizona. Despite nearly free natural gas in Texas due its state as a by-product of oil extraction, most of the new electricity grid assets in Texas are wind, storage, and solar, and that's independent third party investors making those choice in the grid to make money, as Texas has perhaps the "freest" electricity market in the United States when it comes to who is allowed to build grid assets and make money off them. If the far north places have hydro that's already built and not being used, that makes sense for data centers. But new nuclear is not a serious technology, it exists mostly based on vibes.
- SoftTalker 6d agoThis is Finland. A third of the country is above the Arctic circle. In the winter the sun barely gets above the horizon. Nuclear makes a lot of sense there.
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- epistasis 6d ago
- bawolff 6d agoTraditionally you cared alot about internet connectivity and latency to your customer base. I imagine Texas comes out a lot better on that front. That probably matters a lot less for AI.
- dyauspitr 6d agoIf done correctly there’s a lot of free solar energy in sunny states.
- sien 6d agoGood on Google. Finland has low emissions from electricity : https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/all/yearly https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/all/yearly 71 gC02eq/kwH France, Sweden and Norway look like good places for data centres in Europe too on the basis of low electricity emissions.
- marginalia_nu 6d agoAt least Sweden is struggling a lot with scaling its power production, to the point where it's a problem for existing and new industries and causing some rather extreme price volatility. A lot of the green energy is from hydro dams and you can't really add new rivers to the geography to support additional industry.
- trhway 6d ago>you can't really add new rivers to the geography to support additional industry. yes, you can - with all those fiords surrounded by mountains you can use excess wind/solar (your own as well as German, etc.) and pump water up a dammed fiord to generate the electricity later when no cheap excess available.
- Oh-Kay_Labs 6d agoWell, we don't have fjords or mountains in Sweden, otherwise a great plan.
- jplrssn 6d agoThere are both mountains [0] and fjords [1] in Sweden, but not of the Norwegian kind they were probably picturing. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scandinavian_Mountains https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scandinavian_Mountains [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gullmarn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gullmarn
- warpech 5d ago
- diggernet 6d agoOh good. Then Google will be "clean", while countless homes will be getting their power from coal or whatever instead of this nuclear plant.
- echelon 6d agoIt's a market. Why can't someone buy it? Why does it matter that homes "aren't clean" while Google is? That's silly. There's going to be the same level of demand no matter what - the same mix of coal and nuclear inputs will happen regardless of where the outflows are. It's fungible. More demand will in time result in an increase in supply. That's a good thing. We'll be building a lot more, and it's long overdue.
- vlovich123 6d agoYou’re assuming a large enough supply that can absorb demand. This is true in China but not generally in the West. If supply was just in time constructed so you maybe have only like 10-30% extra vs peak, the 50% of a nuclear power plant shifts the preexisting non-Google demand onto the non-nuclear sources as the plant can no longer meet its non-Google demand. It’s generally no different than if Google acquired that electricity from the available mix rather than the plant directly. The thing it gives them is the ability to meet their individual net-0 targets (and thus government incentives) - a local optimization at the cost of a global net negative (at least as far as carbon electricity sources goes)
- kccqzy 6d agoThis is a case where the supply was about to be gone and Google provided funds to keep it operating (the original nuclear reactor began operation in 1977 and it now needed EUR 700M to extend the service life). And one can probably guess that this supply just wasn’t cost competitive in the first place, but Google increased the demand so much that it now becomes cost competitive.
- vlovich123 6d ago
- morninglight 6d agoDoes this mean that no U.S. privacy oriented data will be stored in Finland. No traceable HIPAA data or financial data and no national security data. ... or is it stored in Finland but encoded.
- anthonybourdain 6d ago[flagged]
- openamer 6d ago[flagged]
- wxw 6d ago> As part of the deal, Google signed a 22-year contract with Finnish utility Fortum to buy up to 50% of the output from the Loviisa nuclear power plant. > Finland has emerged as an attractive location for data centres because of its cool climate, plentiful low-carbon electricity and relatively uncongested power grid.
- epistasis 6d agoI hope the data center's waste heat can be used for some form of district heating! Finland has pretty great municipal infrastructure, but I don't know enough about its heating systems.
- trhway 6d ago>the data center's waste heat One can imagine the saunas the guys will have there :) On the main point - there are persistent leaks/rumors that one of the main points of the Trump's envoys (Kushner and Witkoff) to Putin is building data centers in Karelia ( the Russian side of Finland border) - the same reasons of cheap electricity and plentiful of cool water.
- luqtas 6d agothere are some papers about communal gardens heated by data centers... since they don't produce as much there, hope it also paves the way for developing indoor agriculture
- trhway 6d agoFor those regions green house and barn heating is a major cost (to the point that Norway for example subsidizes barn heating for dairy farmers), while pretty much all the energy consumed by a datacenter goes straight to heat without any meaningful work (in thermodynamic sense) done, so it sounds like a good match.
- motionlessveloc 6d agoGoogle already does this at their existing Hamina data center. The building is also a repurposed paper mill. https://blog.google/company-news/inside-google/around-the-globe/google-europe/our-first-offsite-heat-recovery-project-lands-in-finland/ https://blog.google/company-news/inside-google/around-the-gl...
- pembrook 6d agoBefore the American tinfoil-hat data center nuts comes out in force: - This is a plant that was going to be decommissioned without investment - Finland is a rational country due to their small size and unfortunate proximity to Russia. They tend to do rational things like invest in good energy infrastructure. Nobody will be losing power due to this deal - Finland is one of the cleanest/greenest energy markets on earth, and the country is largely a giant unpopulated forest - Finland currently has the highest unemployment in Europe, this is a great win for them, and they correctly view this as such since they are not stupid - While the media may try to make it happen, very few Finnish people will be wearing tinfoil hats while screaming about conspiracies that data centers destroy H20 molecules, since they have one of the best education systems in the world
- rileymat2 6d ago> while screaming about conspiracies that data centers destroy H20 molecules This is a gross misrepresentation of the concern. Clean fresh water is locally very important and a finite resource. The vast majority of people know it does not destroy H2O molecules, but moves them to a less useful space.
- Illotus 6d agoIts pretty delusional to suggest that working nuclear plant was going to be decommissioned without this considering that electricity consumption is projected to rise rapidly. There currently is shortage of steady power in Finland so no nuclear plants are gonna be closed barring catastrophes.
- cloudie78 6d agoYou’d be surprised. Case in point Germany.
- throwaway473825 6d agoDid Germany plan to increase electricity consumption? Gas heating is still king there, and Germany famously promotes hydrogen (mostly from gas) over battery vehicles.
- hadlock 6d agoOnly because the power company won't let them buy all of it, because their finance team wants a diversified customer base
- xvilka 6d agoHopefully, such deals will also convince countries to build more nuclear power plants or expand existing ones. Europe urgently needs more electricity.
- pestatije 6d agoin ur backyard not mine thx
- rob74 6d agoThe plant mentioned in the article is by no means new, its two reactors began operation in 1977 and 1981, respectively (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loviisa_Nuclear_Power_Plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loviisa_Nuclear_Power_Plant). Nuclear power plants are notorious for their long planning, approval and build times (and cost overruns). Then again, I wouldn't want to live near a nuclear power plant built as fast as a data center either...
- jillesvangurp 6d agoFinland they made a few mistakes by becoming overly dependent on Russian reactor designs Russian sourced fuel for those reactors. Relations with Russia are a bit strained (especially recently, but they were always complex). Luckily, the wind sector is booming in Finland in recent years. They have a lot of on-shore capacity. A lot of reactors in the US are similarly dependent on Russia for uranium enrichment and supplies. Some of that dependency relates to post cold war era treaties (now cancelled because of the strained relationship with Russia) for Russia to decommission its nuclear weaponry and to help Russia economically. The Loviisa plant actually predates the end of the cold war but Finland at the time was not part of NATO and the relationship with the Soviet Union was very complicated given that they had fought an ugly war in WW II that ended up with the Soviet Union taking a large chunk of Finnish territory. The Loviisa plant ended up built during what is now seen as the definitely very chilly phase of the cold war (under Brezhnev). And then Finland repeated the mistake with their more recent nuclear additions.
- rob74 6d ago
- anu7df 6d agoEveryone is rushing to send signals of AI growth to the market. Their continued valuation growth depends on it. There is no real use story that cannot be met by smaller distilled models which are far more energy efficient. I am convinced the next step will be scaremongering impending extinction level event followed by need to classify AI activities as national security related. Once you become part of the military industrial complex, it's all gravy baby!
- ChrisArchitect 6d agoTitle from the source: Google to fund Finnish AI with €13bn investment and nuclear power pact
- ChrisArchitect 6d agohttps://archive.ph/T0CVD https://archive.ph/T0CVD
- nomilk 6d ago1. Humans use AI 2. AI requires power^ 3. AI companies purchase/produce power 4. Humans complain that AI uses power (but continue to use AI) ^Same for water This is a silly 'news cycle' witch hunt that no economist takes even mildly seriously.
- vermarish 6d agoFor over a decade, Google's been wearing the environmentally-friendly / carbon-neutral label as part of their public-facing brand values. It's definitely been eating into their CapEx then, and this isn't much different.
- Dylan16807 6d agoI don't choose to use all the AIs sites keep shoving at me.
- rob74 6d ago3a. AI companies make hyperbolic projections on the future use of AI and plan building and powering data centers according to that. 5. when the AI bubble bursts, we'll be left with huge amounts of unused/half-built data center capacity and unused power (with complications such as the data centers belonging to creditors and not being worth nearly as much as the inflated prices paid for building them).
- dieselgate 6d ago> but continue to use AI Not all humans
- kalleboo 6d agoIf the consumers of AI aren't paying the marginal costs for the energy they're using, it's a market distortion and we won't have working market discovery of the actual cost performance of the AI. "Wow tokens are so cheap let's use AI for everything" meanwhile the costs are actually being hidden elsewhere.
- gblargg 6d agoThe power plant is about 1000 MW BTW. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loviisa_Nuclear_Power_Plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loviisa_Nuclear_Power_Plant
- mgiampapa 6d agoMissed opportunity for it to be 1.21 GW. I'm sure they can add another reactor.
- bigstrat2003 6d agoGreat Scott!
- typ 6d agoI am not against AI data centers. But it's a good thing that the electricity infrastructure expenditures for AI data centers' consumption are paid by the companies making money from AI training and inference, rather than being paid by all taxpayers collectively. Not sure if this particular project is also sponsored by taxpayers' money or not, though.
- ETH_start 6d agoShould this apply only to AI compute facilities or all industries? I have no real evidence for this but I think a general principle of good governance is that the policy is agnostic to the industries which it affects and robust under any set of conditions, so for instance, the price that electric utilities charge should be enough to pay for expansions, either prospectively or retroactively (via loans secured before the construction, taken out against projected future revenue), rather than subsidizing the expansion with taxes collected by industries that won't be using the electricity, or exercising discretionary control over which types of industrial expansion are accommodated through investments in expanding the energy infrastructure. Huge expansions of energy production have occurred in the past to meet growing demand for energy from then-emerging industries. And I'm not aware of any past campaigns to stop the various industries that needed energy on account of the allegation that their increase in energy usage would burden other sectors of society. I have concern that the treatment of AI compute facilities is based on public opinion rather than rule of law and consistent protection of private property rights.
- joshspankit 6d agoAI compute is a unique facility: can be placed anywhere, takes in mainly energy, does not produce the same volume or composition of waste, has noise pollution, and needs minimal access. I am not a regulator but that feels like something that needs new rules
- ETH_start 6d agoAI compute facilities can inspire new regulations, yes, but what I'm advocating is that those regulations should not concern whether the facility is generating AI inference or aluminum or chemicals. All it should care about is the metrics that are relevant to the community like positive externalities, and negative ones like noise pollution, industrial pollution, etc. And all uses of private property should be judged on the basis of those criteria, not what industrial category the use falls under and the generalizations that are made about that category. My own cursory take on AI compute facilities is that they're mostly much better for the community than previous industries. They emit zero industrial pollution, and only require water for cooling and energy from any source. The water used can also be recycled. And even in the early designs that don't use recycled water, the water consumed is orders of magnitude less than agriculture. On the downside, they produce fewer jobs, but they encourage and fund infrastructure upgrades in telecom links and power transmission, which has second-order benefits for the local economy. And they consume very little government services, so the taxes they pay produce a much larger fiscal surplus for local governments. They also allow for energy that would otherwise be uneconomical to harvest, to be economically harvested. Let's just take an example of a desert which has very little wildlife, and no major nearby populations. AI compute facilities can make it economical to harvest the sunlight in those regions and make economic use of it.
- joshdavham 6d agoIt’s crazy that Google and TikTok, which mainly produce consumer software to serve ads, have grown to the scale where they literally need to set up data centres in northern countries while getting their power from nuclear power plants.
- aaron695 6d ago[dead]
- petcat 5d ago> mainly produce consumer software to serve ads Pretty reductionist. I don't know about tiktok, but Google does a lot more than serve ads
- joshdavham 4d agoOh no I’m aware that that’s a bit of a reduction of Google. I’m a GCP user and am even wearing a fit bit while writing this comment :)
- childintime 6d agoShouldn't we stop pushing the cost of things onto the public, in both CO2 and nuclear contamination? Surely a nuclear reactor is only economical if you don't have to pay for the cost of a Chernobyl type event. Did they assess the costs? Surely they played the costs down as the public is going to pay for the consequences. Shrug. It's so easy to do business this way. The fins also expose themselves to blackmail by an adversarial neighbor. But if this is all well reasoned we can now start building data centers on the south pole and dump the nuclear waste where no one notices it. Because that's the fumbling policy relied on. The people are being played for fools.
- edukite 6d ago1. Chernobyl disaster was not related in any way with nuclear plant normal functioning. It was "experiment of how low output reactor can go" proposed and exercised by people without knowledge or experience. It's monument of why government officials should not touch anything related to science 2. Chernobyl nuclear plant was very poor copy of safe by design nuclear plant. It had critical flaw in carbon based proton catching mechanism 3. Closed zone is currently habitable (except Sarcophagus area). You'll receive much higher radiation dose simply by flying to Norway. Nature is returning there, there're plans to repopulate it 4. This was in Soviet Union and power plant was "public". Most of the power plant in EU is public if not every single one. I don't have exact information on this topic Please do not treat entire technology, which is safe, as a threat simply because some greedy, uneducated people from the past wanted better position and paid ultimate price for it
- nl 6d ago> some greedy, uneducated people from the past wanted better position We don't have greedy, uneducated people who want better positions now?
- edukite 6d agoAnd died horrendous dead? Because guy who did this was in nuclear plant and was buried in lead coffin in closed zone. His skin was falling from body while he was still breathing
- Illotus 6d agoThis is basically due to Google probably rightly believing that electricity price in Finland is going up due to all these datacenters and also a pr stunt that the current government loves because they can claim that they aren't allowing these datacenters to raise electricity price. This isn't investing in power infrastructure in any way, there is no reality where that nuclear plant wasn't staying in operation as long as they can possibly keep it running in the foreseeable future. Basically only way Google and Fortum will be building new nuclear capacity is by Finland promising to cover any electricity price below 15 cents per kWh in the market.
- sfn42 6d ago> they aren't allowing these datacenters to raise electricity price If you reduce supply,price generally goes up. Buying a power plants output reduces supply
- brigandish 6d agoOnly if demand increases to the point where supply cannot meet demand in a short enough time frame. Capacity is a factor here. You buying a doughnut - even half the doughnuts - from a doughnut shop does not increase the price of the remaining doughnuts unless they can't make enough to satisfy remaining demand and people are willing to outbid you rather than wait. Does that power station have enough capacity to satisfy the remaining demand?
- Illotus 6d agoYes, it is just pr that now that Google invests with Fortum the price wont rise. Its basically just smokescreen.
- hdgvhicv 6d agoWhat it does allow is for Google and the governemt to say these data centres aren’t generating any co2 Of course everyone’s else’s co2 emissions then increase instead. The only solution is more zero co2 emissions. Google could have funded large wind farms, or a new nuclear plant, or grid connections to other locations. But that would cost more.
- linuxhansl 6d agoWill all these data centers really be needed in 5 or 10 years from now? The technology, compression, etc, for models are getting better and better requiring less and less H/W and power to run the same inference power. Perhaps our hunger for ever more powerful models will be enough to offset this, but I am not sure.
- tommica 6d agoProbably yes, and if not, it can most likely be repurposed
- pizzaiolo 5d agoEnough to pay back the investments on a sensible timescale? Press X to doubt.
- deleted 6d ago[deleted]
- ra 6d agoWe will all be happy with our local inference, but how will our overloards be able to surveil and control us en-masse without them?
- iTokio 6d agoThe trillon dollars question is more, will the current GPUs still be relevant in 3 years? 5? 10? Will incredibly efficient new GPUs appear? will custom ASIC, models burned in silicons, take off? Will unified memory systems become usable? The datacenter bets are that things will mostly continue like now, and that these GPUs won’t depreciate too much. For now theses bets are self-fulfilling, causing hardware to even appreciate.
- flippingheck 6d agoIt's a big bet to not have a plan for needing power. I expect as LLMs penetrate further, we'll see much more of it, continually running, and doing more 3D work.
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- polskibus 6d agoThe his will likely put a strain on neighbouring countries energy supply who used to buy that surplus before. Prices will go up even more.
- jryle70 6d agoDo you know the specific of which countries buying how much electricity from this plant, or just your wildly guess?
- agilob 6d agoQuick Duck search away: this power plant exports energy to Estonia where energy production is 4x less CO2 efficient. Literally exporting energy right now https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/live/fifteen_minutes https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/live/fifteen_minutes
- jryle70 6d agoThe question is how much they buy. It may not be enough to keep the plant running. Google will only buy up to 50% of what the plant can produce, but the deal allows the plant to operate beyond 2030 according to the operator. Side note: Really nice dashboard.
- jurgenburgen 5d ago> the deal allows the plant to operate beyond 2030 according to the operator. That’s just PR spin. There is no way it would have shut down in 4 years, there has literally been no talk about doing so and all the political parties are okay with nuclear power as a means to combat co2.
- cloudie78 6d agoI think that’s a good thing, they could also build a nuclear reactor or two or three. Wouldn’t hurt.
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- gib444 6d agoOh god, they're actually going to directly hoover up electricity supply and cause it to get massively more expensive for us mere mortal domestic users trying to stay alive
- amelius 6d agoI guess Finland has strong geopolitical security motives here, to create more dependence of the US on them, like in Taiwan.
- motionlessveloc 6d agoNATO membership notwithstanding, I don't think anybody in Finland expects the US to ride to rescue if Russia invades.
- amelius 6d agoWhy not? It would be easier to justify than the current war in Iran.
- machomaster 6d agoIt would be incredibly easy to justify helping Ukraine against Putin's terrorism, yet here we are.
- an77i 5d agoFinland has no natural resources Russia needs. What they would like is little bit of buffer land for Saint Petersburg, that’s all.
- jl6 6d agoGuess it’s a good time to be in the power plant business.
- fifilura 6d agoI don't know, I always feel these companies (including governments) are selling this kind of contracts too cheap. They are not used to the aggressiveness of FAANG negotiators, they treat them as friends.
- lifestyleguru 6d agoIt implies we'll get cheap VPS and cloud services, right?
- harrouet 6d agoNote that no such deal is based on solar or wind power alone.
- ZeroGravitas 6d agoWhen Google was going hard on deploying renewables they stressed "additionality". They didn't want to just buy clean hydro that already existed, or renewables that were going to get built anyway without their money, they wanted to be sure that their investment was growing the amount of clean energy available. I'm hoping they have some justification like this for buying existing nuclear. They appear to be claiming that it would shut if they didn't pay in advance. A similar deal by Amazon got shot down in America because the regulators realised it was shifting costs onto other grid users. You'd assume that Finnish regulators are better than American regulators, but I’d like to see some evidence of that.
- an77i 5d agoFinnish regulators are not better than American counterparts. This deal long time cost will be most likely paid by us common folk. It is common trend currently here in Finland due to economic situations that data centers can basically get cheap electricity deals and common folks pay it. I feel this will not end well… if we don’t continue building nuclear. I hope this will force us to continue building asap.
- throwaway2037 6d ago> Google will build new data centres in Kajaani, Muhos and Vaala Wow, these are really far north. I checked on Google Maps: They are all about as far north as Oulu. It must get incredibly cold during the winter. Wiki tells me the region is at or below freezing for about six to seven months per year! I am curious how much cheaper is cooling in these locations compared to more temperate climates in continental Europe.
- amelius 6d agoYou can now melt polar ice directly with your AI prompts.
- kakoni 6d agoGoogle (or Tuike Finland as its known) - paid 0e company tax in 2023/2024 (2025 hasn't been published yet) - Doesn't generate any value added taxes as it only has one customer, Google Emea in Ireland - Employs directly 120 persons
- karussell 6d agoSomehow Hetzner saw at least part of it coming in 2018 https://www.hetzner.com/pressroom/five-years-helsinki/ https://www.hetzner.com/pressroom/five-years-helsinki/ These low prices are cost savings that we pass directly onto our customers; they come from the reduced energy prices that we pay in Finland compared to Germany, and also come from the colder climate and lower cooling requirements
- akowalski 6d agoim amazed these countries just sit and let this be done to them. makes no sense. it looks like free money but it isn't
- pembrook 5d agoDo you care to elaborate on what “this” is that is so bad? And just out of curiosity, have you come to this opinion independently through your own research? Or is this just regurgitated sentiment you’re memetically repeating to signal in-group status after consuming reactionary media/clickbait on this topic?
- akowalski 4d agowould one move willingly to a neighborhood close to a nuclear reactor or waste disposal? probably no. question answered without research.
- dmvjs 6d agowho gets the other half? i wouldnt want to share half of anything with Google
- Kon5ole 5d agoRemarkably they are planning even higher electricity use from centers in Sweden, up to 3.5GW. They also have significant centers in Norway. They are going to consume a significant fraction of Scandinavia's total electricity production if these plans are completed.
- Uptrenda 5d agoRemember: don't be evil kids. Support AI data centres that need to produce nuclear waste so people can make AI cat vids.
- ulfw 5d agoWhat a huge waste for humanity
- bluepuma77 5d ago[dead]
- fithisux 5d agoThis is a way of transferring money to Finland for whatever the DoD wants to do!!!!
- LightBug1 5d agoIs this like Coca Cola buying up natural springs in Spain? So that local consumers start having to depend on bottled water? What a shit show ...
- shevy-java 5d agoWhy does Finland want to make US companies stronger? This is the biggest problem with the EU: the EU as well as the member states, are not really thinking strategically here. Not just with regards to nuclear power plants but in general.
- mikaeluman 5d agoFinland did the right thing with nuclear. We have an election in Sweden tomorrow. The current government have started securing investments in clean energy (i.e nuclear energy). Some opposition parties, including the "greens" (MP) are vehemently opposed to it.
- Hikikomori 4d agoBit late to build it now, we needed it 30 years ago. Now it's gonna take 10+ years and be 3x the budget. Even running the old plants we had couldn't turn a profit.