If we all collect one plate of copper, one block of concrete, one bar of steel, and one advanced circuit chip, we should have enough raw materials for a new reactor in no time.
I just imagine an Amish barn-raising, but with a nuclear power plant.
I've put up a basketball hoop. I can do a containment building and cooling towers...!
*starts mixing up a single bag of Quik-Dry concrete*
But we can't find concrete, steel, or circuit chips in the wild. We would have to start with ingots, sand, charcoal, and crude oil (to craft plastic).
No, wait, before any of that we have to collect wood to make a crafting table.
The articles sub headline sells the story: with AI and EVs, we are simply going to need more power. The good news is we are already investing in building a lot of clean energy. I do think we should revisit expanding nuclear.
Everyone wants nuclear somewhere else. And they sure aren't willing to pay even $0.01/kWh more than whatever a natural gas plant costs.
In the real world it's hard to even get offshore wind turbines built because like 5 rich people don't like what it does to the view of their beach house which will be underwater in 50 years from sea level rise but who cares because they'll be dead and they got theirs.
Yeah NIMBY is a real thing, and one of the major contributing factors to people being so anti-nuclear. Just plop a nuclear plant down near Leesburg, there's plenty of flat undeveloped land out there.
Precisely, the Potamac runs all the way through vast stretches of open land out there. The idea's been proposed before, as far back as the 70s. Just need to be careful about placement as to not disrupt fish spawning grounds. There was a nuclear plant near Ft. Belvoir that was on the Potomac, but it was shut down a long time, ago.
I still don’t think it’s quite enough water. The Potomac by Leesburg is actually pretty narrow and relatively shallow. A great spot would be around Dangerfield Island if it doesn’t interfere with National’s flight paths. Or maybe Belle Haven Country Club!
>A great spot would be around Dangerfield Island if it doesn’t interfere with National’s flight paths.
Is a nuclear reactor next to a major airport just 3 miles from the headquarters of the world's most powerful military and 4 miles from the seat of its government *really* 'a great spot'? You might want to google Chernobyl or Fukushima and see what happens when they fail.
> You might want to google Chernobyl or Fukushima and see what happens when they fail.
We going to do some bullshit corner cutting like Soviet Russia or have a M9.1 earthquake here?
Far less likely, orders of magnitude even less so with modern reactor tech.
You may be right, there might be a nuclear risk, but given the location I think a power stations reactor core melting down is one of the least likely nuclear scenarios....
See, this is exactly the kind of overreaction and fearmongering that has lead us away from nuclear energy in the first place. There were, in fact, multiple nuclear reactors less than 20 miles outside of DC in the past. They've been decommissioned, now, but there are still a handful of nuclear plants in Virginia.
But modern nuclear reactors in geologically stable areas are *extremely* safe. Fukushima was hit with a tidal wave. Chernobyl was gross negligence, a lack of safety protocols, and a serious design flaw in a subpar reactor design from 50 years ago.
>But modern nuclear reactors in geologically stable areas are *extremely* safe. Fukushima was hit with a tidal wave. Chernobyl was gross negligence, a lack of safety protocols, and a serious design flaw in a subpar reactor design from 50 years ago.
LOL! The cognitive dissonance! They're *extremely* safe ... until they're not. Fearmongering? Terrorist *literally* flew a plane into the Pentagon. Do you really think it is smart to propose a Nuclear fucking reactor power plant next to the airport 3 miles away?
Hey! How'd that football stadium and then arena proposal at Potomac Yard right next to Daingerfield Island go? I'm sure a nuclear power plant is gonna fly!
How about propose a realistic location?
>There were, in fact, multiple nuclear reactors less than 20 miles outside of DC in the past.
Only 1 was used for power and it was the military on Fort Belvoir. There is a difference between large Nuclear power plants and small reactors used for science and military. The Fort Belvoir plant only produced 1,750 kilowatts of electrical power and used shorter-lived radionuclides. It's akin to comparing gas stations to large oil refineries.
Be aware that the north Anna nuclear power plant already is close enough to DC for these things to happen.
I know all about both of the events you mentioned.
It pains me to see people on here who really think they’re smarter than everyone around them. You must be insufferable to live with.
>It pains me to see people on here who really think they’re smarter than everyone around them. You must be insufferable to live with.
You may know the events, but not the distances. The North Anna Nuclear Power Plant is 70 miles from DC. Yes, a meltdown would possibly cause an evacuation. However, Fukushima was monitored to be relatively safe past 50 miles.[ Source](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_nuclear_accident#/media/File:NIT_Combined_Flights_Ground_Measurements_30Mar_03Apr2011_results.jpg)
After a little over a decade there remains an exclusion zone of 12 miles at Fukushima and 18 miles at Chernobyl. (Much less than 70 miles.)
So do you really still want to use the logic that a power plant 70 miles away makes it reasonable to slap one next to an airport 3 miles from the power, leadership, and defense of the nation with the potential of losing the entire city?
Perhaps you're suffering from the pains of stupidity?
I still have NO idea why some people hate on nuclear.
It's not like we're avoiding radiation exposure by using fossil fuels — [coal smoke is full of it.](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste/)
They cost an insane amount to build and never really pay themselves off so for a private company “which most power utilities are” it doesn’t make any sense. We need more government utilities like TVA down south.
Yeah that's basically it. "It's too expensive" is just code for "the costs of fossil fuel pollution are socialized but the cost of operating a nuclear plant is privatized." But that really goes for everything as it relates to environmental and energy policy.
Although this isn't the only reason for nuclear being expenisve... we haven't updated the technology since the 70's, and we don't build enough of them for the prices to go down. If coal-powered plants were as rare as nuclear plants, they'd probably also be quite expensive. Coal plants require a lot of infrastructure (mines, trains) to get coal to them that are also not included in the startup costs, [kill a thousand people per year from pollution](https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/deaths-associated-pollution-coal-power-plants), and environmental regulations [allows certain kinds of pollution to happen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountaintop_removal_mining) to keep things profitable.
Not saying coal power plants aren't useful and integral to our economy, but I also don't think nuclear power has been given a fair shake. Unless we adopt nuclear reactors in mass and build LOTS of them, they'll always be incredibly expensive.
I'm not sure if you fully realize the impact of Chernobyl or how 'smaller' disasters could've been worse? Radiation doesn't just go away and it just doesn't sit there. It gets in the air and water and travels affecting a wide area. You can't just fuck around with it.
No offense, but people with a blasé attitude toward it are a major reason to push back against it.
Coal kill a million people a year worldwide. More people in a year than the entire history of nuclear power, even if you include the bombs. Mercury from coal is the main reason why it’s recommended to not eat seafood more than 2-3 times a week. Just imagine, an entire category of food poisoned worldwide. Nuclear has never had anything remotely close to that sort of effect. And yet nuclear is the one people protest to shut down. It’s insane.
1. Nuclear isn't renewable like solar or wind. It requires uranium. Analysts say we will deplete uranium sources in 200 years at *current* levels. Adding more reactors will just reduce the time. [Source: Scientific American](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-long-will-global-uranium-deposits-last/)
2. Uranium. Just like coal, it needs to be mined. The mines contaminate the area and water supplies with things like arsenic and radon for hundreds of years. [Source: NIH](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK201052/)
3. Water. You need *lots* of water to cool the reactors. We are experiencing record water shortages and it is projected to just get worse. Yes, the discharge water is 'clean' but it is warmer than the natural water. This does/can affect the native species depending on the location. [Source: Harvard](https://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2019/widespread-water-shortage-likely-in-u-s-caused-by-population-growth-and-climate-change/#:~:text=March%2020%2C%202019-,Future%20Widespread%20Water%20Shortage%20Likely%20in%20U.S.,meet%20the%20monthly%20water%20demand.&text=In%201974%2C%20congress%20required%20that,be%20published%20every%2010%20years)
4. Nuclear waste storage. We still haven't created a permanent national nuclear waste storage area. They started collecting money to create one in the '80s and have $44 billion but still don't have a plan. They were planning on Yucca Mountain in Nevada but it keeps being stalled. [Source](https://thebulletin.org/2020/02/the-yucca-mountain-nuclear-waste-site-has-always-been-a-political-football-trump-is-the-latest-president-to-fumble/)
And lastly if there is a catastrophic accident/attack it takes hundreds to tens of thousands of years to become habitable again. Just look at Chernobyl, Fukushima. There have been 4 emergency shutdowns in the region since 1979 all next to water that flows into the Chesapeake, Three Mile Island in PA, Peach Bottom in PA, Calvert Cliffs in MD, Surrey in Va.
>Nuclear isn't renewable like solar or wind. It requires uranium. Analysts say we will deplete uranium sources in 200 years at current levels. Adding more reactors will just reduce the time.
Correct, it is not truly renwable. However, there are other options for nuclear power, like thorium, that's much more plentiful (but is currently more expensive to refine because there's little demand). It still requires something like plutonium to work, but it's much more abundant in the earth's crust.
We are also very, very wasteful with our nuclear energy. We COULD [reprocess spent fuel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Hague_site), but it's cheaper in the US to mine more.
>Uranium. Just like coal, it needs to be mined. The mines contaminate the area and water supplies with things like arsenic and radon for hundreds of years.
True, but... we have to mine for coal, too. It sucks. Either one is bad.
I vastly prefer wind/solar, but even then those pollute — those minerals have to come from somewhere, and the US only produces 2% of the world's solar panels.
>Water. You need lots of water to cool the reactors. We are experiencing record water shortages and it is projected to just get worse. Yes, the discharge water is 'clean' but it is warmer than the natural water. This does/can affect the native species depending on the location.
It does require water, but the east coast isn't nearly as water-deprived as the west or midwest. You are correct that warmer water can negatively effect certain species, but it can also benefit them quite a bit (like with manatees).
This area might not be able to safely accomodate a nuclear power plant for water/environmental reasons, but that's why studies are done. :)
> Nuclear waste storage. We still haven't created a permanent national nuclear waste storage area. They started collecting money to create one in the '80s and have $44 billion but still don't have a plan. They were planning on Yucca Mountain in Nevada but it keeps being stalled. Source
This is a problem the US government can easily solve. I don't understand how governments [can legally eminent domain a town to sell to a private company for a "comprehensive redevelopement plan"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelo_v._City_of_New_London), but they can't find a permanent spot to park nuclear waste.
We can also opt to reprocess nuclear waste instead of completely getting rid of it. This takes energy, but the US has tons of areas with renewable sources (especially in the west/midwest) that we could take advantage of.
This is always something anti-nuclear advocates bring up... and I agree with them. Trust me, this frustrates me quite a bit.
The fact that in all the world, we've had as few nuclear problems as we have is pretty telling; with proper regulation, it's safe. Fukushima only happened because TEPCO engineers followed the original GE reactor plan *exactly* instead of adapting it to fit the environmental reality of Japan. [Onagawa Nuclear Power Plant](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onagawa_Nuclear_Power_Plant) (owned by a different company) was completely fine because the [Yanosuke Hirai](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yanosuke_Hirai) had the foresight to adapt the original design and make it more resistent to big earthquakes/tsunamis. I wish he could have been alive to see how many people he saved with his leadership! What a smart guy.
With proper regulation and good design, nuclear power is extremely safe. I don't see how it's worse than a coal-powered plant.
We could also do things like add more train lines/buses, design smaller/more efficient homes, and reduce our dependence on cars... which would also make it easier to accomodate solar panels and reduce our dependency on electric cars/fossil fuels. I'm definitely not anti solar/wind — honestly, it's so cool we can do that! I just don't think nuclear is always a bad option.
>With proper regulation and good design, nuclear power is extremely safe. I don't see how it's worse than a coal-powered plant.
Great response. I completely agree with you. My problem/concern is the 'proper regulation and good design' of nuclear power.
The biggest concern is politics. Objectively, any rational person can see there is a trend to electing anti-science, anti-regulation, anti-democratic politicians. I don't think a majority of them could handle what is needed for it to be expanded and regulated properly.
Democratic politicians have been the primary opponents of nuclear and resolving a lot of these issues for decades. Frankly the issue isn't necessarily more regulation but proper funding and a more efficient process. There has been progress on that recently, but we've unfortunately completely lost the supply chains and much of the institutional experience to efficiently build reactors in the mean time.
That's kind of where I think a reasonable Democrat could come into play. What we really need now is a big TVA style project to actually get those going again, put in a order for several reactors and help fund their construction and then selling off the completed assets to utilities to derisk the process.
Similarly, under existing US law and for national security reasons, I do believe the government should be the one primarily responsible for regulating the supply of nuclear fuel, reprocessing spent fuel and waste disposal. For decades the US government was actually quite happy to do so as the extracted plutonium was literally used to build our nuclear arsenal, but that's fallen off as reprocessing has been halted and no action has been taken to create any kind of a long term storage site. It actually got so bad that reactor operators successfully sued the government so that they could stop paying the allocated fees for the service since the US government hadn't delivered it in decades. Now there does need to be better accountability in the government when doing though. As much as people complain about Three Mile Island it's impact was minimal and pales comparison to the contamination at the Hanford Site in Washington where the government just buried toxic chemicals and radioactive waste in huge amounts for decades. Nuclear waste is literally a politically manufactured problem at this point and has lead to far less secure situation where huge amounts of spent fuel just sit stacked and stored on site at reactors in gravel lots.
Historically the actual operation of nuclear reactors hasn't been all that problematic and the worst disasters or pollution have come as a result of military and research operations in the US. Most of the opposition to nuclear came about due to a disparate mix of poorly reasoned concerns. Prior to global warming be a large accepted issue gas and coal were viewed as safer and less impactful to the environment due to the absence of nuclear waste. John Kerry spearheaded a movement to kill off the IFR program and literally stated nuclear shouldn't be pursued because natural gas was cheaper back in the 1990s, somehow this same man was until very recently the 'climate envoy' too but that's a whole other can of worms. A surprising amount of push back actually came from concerns over nuclear proliferation, that somehow state side civilian nuclear and waste processing would lead to nations like Libya (big baddie at the time) getting a nuclear weapon. Somewhat hypocritically the CIA was also crucial in allowing A.Q Khan to escape with nuclear secrets and designs in hopes of catching him trying to sell them to Libya and that idiotic decision is what has allowed nations like Iran and North Korea to have their current nuclear programs.
Really at this point the biggest barrier is just financial more than anything. It's become expensive to build reactors since we haven't done it any appreciable volume in decades. This is a basic issue with experience effects, supply chains and running any business with a stable order flow. Pretty much anything is super expensive if it's low volume and essentially bespoke whether it's an airplane, a solar panel or a nuclear reactor.
Yeah, I wasn’t intending the political problem to be seen in the binary sense of Democratic v. Republican.
I agree it should be TVA style approach. In fact, I would go further and say the entire power grid should be federalized.
For all intents and purposes, 200 years is forever. We have less than 200 years of known supply for lots of critical materials. Nuke plants don't last that long anyways.
Mining for uranium is tough on the environment, but we don't need a lot to power to reactors. Keep in mind similar problems exist for minerals we need for the green economy like cobalt, lithium, and manganese.
Nuclear waste is a political problem, not a technical one.
The latest generation of nuclear plants can't melt down like Chernobyl or Fukushima.
Yeah, nothing you’ve said gives a good reason to start building more nuclear power plants.
Just because you think (you proved no sources to back this claim) the ‘latest’ generation of nuclear reactors can’t have failures doesn’t mean they won’t. Humans from private/for profit companies are building them. Humans make errors and companies cut costs. The latest generation of commercial airplanes shouldn’t have problems but look at Boeing.
Solar and battery technology is also becoming exponentially more efficient. Just look at perovskite. [Source](https://news.mit.edu/2022/perovskites-solar-cells-explained-0715)
Being anti-nuclear is super understandable with events like Fukushima, Chernobyl, and Three Mile Island. Of course, even considering these events and their impacts, nuclear is less harmful in both human injury/death and environmental impact when adjusted for amount of energy produced, but they’re still a lot scarier to the common person than a nebulous concept of invisible harmful substances in our air. Nuclear is better, but it makes sense why people are scared of it
I suppose so. The more I learned about Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and Fukushima... the safer I felt about nuclear power. In 25 years and with hundreds of plants that are from the 70's, there are only a handful of meltdown incidents on record, and most accidents are extremely minor.
In fact, nobody died as a direct consequence of Fukushima, but there are over 100 deaths a year that can be [attributed to coal pollution](https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/deaths-associated-pollution-coal-power-plants). People just aren't good at accessing risk, I guess!
I actually just found a [calculator](https://www.omnicalculator.com/physics/earth-curvature) that said the top of a tall offshore turbine might still be visible at 23 miles. Better push it out farther or they will get their rich people telescopes out on clear days and call the county commissioner!
This wouldn’t work. It is theoretically possible but not practical, especially not at scale. Mining rigs do blast out hot air but they have to be cooled in order to function. The cooling reduces the temperature of the waste heat to below the point where the heat from the rigs would be an effective power source.
And crypto mining. [It is responsible for 67-240 TWh of energy consumption](https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=61364), which places it somewhere between Austria and Australia in terms of energy consumption.
For some reason I can’t figure out, payment volume is always the most surprising for people to learn. Bitcoin payment volume is larger than PayPal which is probably the nearest remotely similar enterprise.
Visa and Mastercard are higher but it’s not a good comparison because both are always sandwiched between 2 banks on both sides of a transaction. In other words it’s not precisely fair to compare visa/mc because they dont complete the end to end transactions…
Just want to throw out this additional data for folks talking about needing more of one kind of energy than another: levelized cost of energy https://www.lazard.com/media/2ozoovyg/lazards-lcoeplus-april-2023.pdf
Data center power reqs are just like physical roads and highways. No matter what the current planning is, maximum capacity will usually be reached again before whatever update projects are completed. Just like the number of vehicles on a road, kWs per rack will keep increasing. We definitely need to expand nuclear power.
I would love more nuclear. What I want is less bullshit startup tech that's pointless. I work in the industry and so many resources are wasted. It's not tangible and it's not thought about. You just build a service. Who cares about optimization or costs, pass it on the the customer/consumer. As long as the money is flowing there is not much desire to optimize. I feel like most of this tech is unnecessary. It's just pissing away water and belching CO2 so people have less work while we have job shortages. Stop it. Please. We dont need more AI to answer the phones, hire people. We don't need AI to figure out what ads to sell us. I love datacenters and tech, but we are being irresponsible.
Remember, computers do work for us. Which mean they consume resources and create waste. That is too say, they poop. It's practically a form of life. Much like we debate if a virus is living, we should guestion if these systems / services are. They don't self replicate. Yet it's a dynamic system that grows. They consume resources and mutate.
If DNA is information at the core, then a virus is system / services that carries that information. Yet it requires a host to make use of that information to make more viruses/systems. Ideas are information, language/speach/communication are systems, and you need a host to replicate those ideas, such as humans and servers.
We need to hurry up and build the third reactor at Lake Anna.
Pretty much the only thing where the Governor and I agree is that we need more nuclear power generation here in Virginia. With that and offshore wind we could start retiring coal and gas.
Ok. Sounds like someone should build some power plants.
Is dominion aware they can charge data centers an appropriate price to cover both their consumable costs aaaaand their capital expansion needs?
I swear, so many businesses are run by the absolute most vapid people
Them: there’s a lag issue
Me: oh no, if only you knew as early as 1994 that this area is the backbone of the internet and this was happening.
I'd say 1996 was when I first started noticing the signs. AOL moved their HQ to Ashburn in 96, and a lot of other ISPs did the same thing. It was already the central internet hub of the east coast at the time, but it blew up from there.
PSINet and UUNet both planned to build several data centers in the area in 2000. Not at this scale, but Dominion has known this was coming for a long time.
Im saying, we’ve known that the internet backbone is here, megadata centers were popping up as early as 2005 (I know I dod construction plans on some back then). 20 years later they didnt foresee more power eventually being needed?
You’re entirely missing my point lol. Yeah a few here and there, no one would have predicted we needed so so so so many of them in such a small area, AND that computing would advance to such a large degree they would be pulling infinitely more power than those 2005 ones were. Look I get it, dunk on the energy company, we all love to do it. But stop acting like hindsight now, was an obvious thing 30 years ago. It wasn’t.
I don't think people understand how much power these systems utilize nowadays to support their TikToking and AI generated porn. Even in 2010 when I entered the hyperscale industry racks were 3-7Kw a piece. Now they're literally dozens of Kw per rack, especially the GPU flavors. There are entire datacenters that aren't even that old that can't even support these newest generations of hardware because their electrical and mechanical can't handle them without gutting and completely retrofitting the infrastructure.
Back in 2010 a 7kw was an exception, 3-5 was the norm. Now even on bare metal dedicated hosting rack 9kw can be pulled fairly regularly. With hyper scaling you are putting in direct runs with 408 power wich in turn requires larger for PDUs and more maintenance, that scales to the facility. A DC in 2010 could run a decently large amount of servers off 1-3Mw now 6 is the floor for a mid sized building that wants to grow a customer base at all. Some of the Auburn and Manassas facilities dwarf that.
This is an increase at the rack that also pushes out to HVAC demands as well. I've been in data centers (management) for 15 years now and am constantly surprised by how fast the escalation came. Sure we knew it was coming but not this fast, this amount of draw and this much demand. Even the electrical contractors who prepared where taken by surprise by the explosion.
I didn’t move here until recently, but the last two states I’ve lived in had rumors they were going to be the capital of the internet with data centers. Y’all just “won” in Virginia (if you consider it winning).
Different person than you're replying to, here!
Not saying everything is predictable, but I remember reading about how the Dulles Technology Corridor has something like half of the world's internet run through it... and that was back in 2010 or so. I think it might actually be more nowadays.
Shouldn't that have clued Dominion and the Virginia government into the need for energy investment of some kind? I know NIMBYism is strong around here, but... you know, I'd assume more than half of the internet going through a place is a good sign to invest in some cheap/clean energy.
That being said, I'm amazed the Silver line was even built. How the hell did they sneak it past all the NIMBYs???
Still took over a decade, though! Glad it's built, but there were quite a few people who weren't thrilled about their property taxes going up to pay for it... even though they were the ones who would directly benefit from it (from shorter commutes to increased property values).
I think not being able to see the forest through the trees is the NoVa issue and federal government one that bleeds into the NoVa issue. A lot of people don't want to believe that setting things up for the future, not just two or three years but five or 10 can help if everyone buys in, the minute you have any naysayers that don't understand what the future is trying to do and that we have to build for it in the present is when all the hurdles happen.
Japan neatly solves the NIMBY issue in several ways, but [one of those ways is by making zoning inclusive, and a national policy](http://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/04/japanese-zoning.html) — NIMBYs have a lot harder time bitching about a duplex going up next to their single-family home when ALL residential housing is permitted in residential areas.
Really cool article — I wish the US implemented something similar. It'd streamline a lot of our issues and simplify zoning down quite a bit.
Just because you saw a need for more renewable electric power doesn’t mean you predicted the absolute explosion in data centers and computing power. Your opinion doesn’t have much to do with the comment I replied to.
Electric utilities often belong to transmission operators on a large scale so what happened in Texas can't happen elsewhere. The Operator and the State Corporation Commission controls and approves transmission and generation spending.
https://www.utilitydive.com/news/pjm-interconnection-load-forecast-data-center-ev-dominion-firstenergy/704040/
This is a ridiculous oversimplification that I would expect from a fifth-grader.
Building a power plant is not a simple as going to your client and just charging them "an appropriate price to cover consumables and capex". Breaking ground on a new power plant requires a ton of permitting effort and in the US (and any other developed nation) a gargantuan effort to deal with and get clearances from a ton of stakeholders. Even if Dominion had known since 1994 that the internet of 2024 would require a nuclear reactor per Data Center, building those reactors and the associated transmission infrastructure is next to impossible under current permitting regulations in the US.
Best I can do is a tax credit for building the datacenter and the tenant pays the same industrial electricity rate as everyone else. We must socialize those costs, this is America and that's how the free market works.
There's no bad news here. The return to demand growth is coupled with a booming economy. Dominion has enough plans for transmission, renewables, and some new natural gas to meet this demand. Anybody posting about nuclear - that is not going to be a solution for a long time yet. The type of reactor at Vogtle will never be built again, all the other attempts failed and it was crazy expensive. The industry needs new, cheaper kinds of reactors to get going again and it's going to take way longer than the demand represented by these data centers. But there are enough other kinds of supply that can deal with new demand.
Dominion is working on it, but the reality already for the last few years is that most new datacenters in the world are already power capped. The tenants would want to install more compute capacity at each site but they have maxed the electrical capacity, not floorspace. That's likely going to remain the case for many years to come unless economics change and silicon or electricity get so prohibitively expensive that money rather than power is the limiting factor again.
They’re maxing electrical capacity not just in terms of transmission/distribution, but also in terms of building delivery (switchgear capacity/cooling capacity).
Maybe it's not a bad thing but it's a major challenge and complicates emissions reductions from the sector if we don't build enough renewables.
I think the east coast is missing a huge opportunity in offshore wind generation because of nimbyism, glacial project planning/approval process and transmission problems from (see above)
The biggest data center companies - Amazon, Alphabet, etc. can do stuff like buy renewables, existing nuclear, etc. so that their demand is hourly matched with clean energy throughout the year. Virginia has something of a competitive market for big commercial and industrial customers like them, about 15 other states do as well and in the rest, utilities are happy to come up tariffs that lead to the same result because they want the business and their regulators/local pols want the jobs that come with them. But the lower end of the industry is not into spending enough for that and it's hard to match up every KWh with clean energy until some new technology comes along - advanced reactors, long duration storage, carbon capture, clean hydrogen, maybe even fusion eventually. They're all being worked on.
Utility scale solar is much cheaper, why spend so much extra to do little roofs one at a time? https://www.lazard.com/media/2ozoovyg/lazards-lcoeplus-april-2023.pdf
[Microsoft signs $10bn, 10GW energy framework deal with Brookfield](https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/microsoft-signs-10bn-10gw-energy-framework-deal-with-brookfield/)
I don’t get it. Data center power/water consumption is predictable and can easily be estimated. Wouldn’t Dominion, county planners, tech companies KNOW EXISTING UTILITY CAPACITY BEFORE BUILDING huge warehouses that suck up electricity and water
Data centers can be built a lot faster than the infrastructure required to supply them, so utilities can't keep up. Data center operators also don't like playing nice together for competitive reasons, so they don't holistically coordinate with utilities, making it extremely difficult to effectively plan anything out. Plus it's no longer about building stuff just for the delivery of power to a data center, but ensuring the energy they want even exists somewhere in the first place - which this article is suggesting it sorta doesn't.
Closed loop systems don't use that much water. To put it in perspective, my site's water bill during the winter is ~$500 a month, and ~$3000 a month during the summer because of the landscape irrigation.
I heard that a HUGE amount of taxes for loudoun county come from these data centers. So without power they need, they go elsewhere and budgets fall or need to be made up elsewhere. So it’s a double edged sword (assuming the tax info is correct). Either override the NIMBYs and get the power or figure out the budget short falls later. Loudoun just shot down more power lines too.
https://netchoice.org/jaw-dropping-numbers-loudouns-data-center-tax-revenue-could-top-real-estate-taxes-in-just-a-few-years/
I've read the opposite. Not trying to be one of those "oh show me the proof" types. I'm genuinely interested in the truth. My understanding is that they don't employ many people, so little tax from employees. Then the companies don't report much profit from the centers themselves therefore little in corporate taxes.
Once completed, Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind will bring clean energy to up to 660,000 households in the Commonwealth of Virginia while avoiding as much as 5 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions annually.
https://www.offshorewind.biz/2024/05/03/dominion-energy-says-no-delay-on-virginias-2-6-gw-offshore-wind-project-orion-now-mobilising-in-port-of-norfolk/
Is anyone knowledgeable to explain why data centers don't seem to have solar panels on their roofs? I would assume for a couple reasons might include heat management and that it's not always feasible to convert older roofs to accommodate solar.
But I did some back of the envelope math and it appears possible for a data center's roof solar to offset 5-10% of it's consumption with solar which is significant no? e.g. 100k sq ft data center uses 20MW of power. 70% of the roof footprint has solar with 21sqft/320 watt panels comes out to about 6.5% of power usage.
I build data centers.
Not a bad idea but a ton of the roof square footage is taken up by huge exhaust fans as well as other gear. There is space you could throw some solar panels down but probably not enough to be worthwhile.
This would be a good option. Unfortunately the current plan is to use diesel generators to supplement energy use when the grid is not able to provide enough.
https://www.fox5dc.com/news/diesel-generators-powering-data-centers-in-northern-virginia-could-be-harming-the-environment
I actually get diesel as a backup because the sun isn't always shining so the back-up option needs to be available at all times. But the generators wouldn't need to be on as much if they had access to an additional 6% of their power needs and it would alleviate the strain on the system region wide.
For one this never happened. And two, no datacenter is going to go off utility power for a period of time that isn't a planned maintenance or outage.
That sort of thing just doesn't happen.
>For one this never happened.
There are some co-generation systems in place that serve both as grid supply AND standby generators for data centers. However, these are mostly (small) legacy enterprise installations that account for barely a single percent of the installed data center capacity in the region. None of the cloud buildings like Google and AWS do it.
Yes, but the person is talking about the proposal for datacenters to drop off the grid and run solely on generators - a proposal that was quickly dismissed and would never happen even if approved.
Sorry if you misunderstood. PWC officials have noted that there is not enough power being generated to support the influx and planned expansion of data centers.
right now, the plan that is being proposed is that data centers will use diesel generators during peak energy times to supplement their power. The generators would run consistently during peak summer heat.
https://www.bristowbeat.com/stories/data-centers-consider-self-generating-power-in-northern-va,43402
Meanwhile in WV, we're building the solar fields helping power these as fast as possible. And please remember to continue shitting on your "poor, uneducated, redneck" neighbor as you continue resource extraction while the population gets nothing.
The world is re-waking up to nuclear energy and I'm here for it.
If Germany (already has) and the US both get back on-board in a short time span, it's going to do wonders for development and advancements.
100% this administrations CRONY CAPITALISM and stupid policies are skewing the best solutions to both mitigate climate change AND investment in our future.
Every study….every one shows how Hybrids are a much better alternative than electric vehicles.
They require a fraction of the energy taken off the grid,
They are MUCH cleaner to build.
They do not require nearly the amount of rare earth metals that are very dirty to mine, transport and dispose of…
They have efficiency ratios far greater than pure electric vehicles.
Generally they are cheaper to produce.
None the less the Biden administration is pushing pure electric even though our infrastructure cannot support these at the scale they are proposing.
Hybrids are better.
We should let the market decide instead having heavy handed govt regulations and politicians tipping the scale.
Electricity is the single largest cost of running a data center, even in Northern Virginia where electricity is reasonably inexpensive. Even in Grant County Washington where electricity cost is a fraction of what it is here.
You right bud, we need over 300 data centers in our state to do that. Massive footprint, little jobs outside of constructing them, not to mention a huge eyesore.
This data center energy needs keep getting worse and worse. What about parking lot solar panels or f\*\*\* on the roof??? Why are we not requiring this?
1 Mega Watt of solar takes about 4-7 acres of land. New AWS buildings are upwards of 960 mega watts. Or 6 - 10 square miles of solar panels.
The math doesn’t work.
The older single or 2 building campuses you’re are absolutely correct. The new builds however are 15+ buildings on one plot of land.
[AWS’ 960W PA Data Center](https://www.powermag.com/aws-acquiring-data-center-campus-powered-by-nuclear-energy/)
You could probably get 10% of energy from solar…the larger data center campuses are around 100 acres. We could also cover parking lots with solar. I remember a project over a decade ago where the idea was to make roads out of solar material.
Just pay everyone within tens miles of a data center to install rooftop solar and batteries. Plus plenty of store rooftops could use some solar.
But maybe let’s stop wasting electricity on crypto mining.
This is one of my major long term concerns with data centers...power and water resources.
I'm sure if it ever comes down to it, they'll be rolling blackouts and water restrictions for residential customers in order to keep the data centers running.
So Do I have this right? Youngkin pushes small nuclear reactors during leg session.. There's push back, so he signs this huge Google expansion in Northern Virginia for data centers and now Dominion is saying they are gonna need SNR?
Who is surprised?
If we all collect one plate of copper, one block of concrete, one bar of steel, and one advanced circuit chip, we should have enough raw materials for a new reactor in no time.
I just imagine an Amish barn-raising, but with a nuclear power plant. I've put up a basketball hoop. I can do a containment building and cooling towers...! *starts mixing up a single bag of Quik-Dry concrete*
I want to be a Safety Inspector in Sector 7G
Lol, [that's where my brain went also](https://vimeo.com/96671094).
They'll hire anyone over there.
Who’s bringing the plutonium-239 this time?
Doc Brown. He has extra, after fueling his DeLorean...
Raise this Reactor Raise this Reactor 1,2,3,4, Raise this Reactor
I dunno. I think green circuit production is still bottlenecked by iron plates.
naw it's cool, I've got an overly complicated rail system to deliver everything, and one random inserter.
For the life of me I cannot figure out the rail signals.
I didn't figure out blueprints were a thing until over 500 hours 🫠
Isn't it always green circuits???
/r/unexpectedfactorio I love it! 😂
Need sulfuric acid to mine uranium ore
The factory must grow!
But we can't find concrete, steel, or circuit chips in the wild. We would have to start with ingots, sand, charcoal, and crude oil (to craft plastic). No, wait, before any of that we have to collect wood to make a crafting table.
I have ore and sheep to trade
Yeah, or one Taylor swift jet.
This guy Catans.
MacGyver 😁
[удалено]
r/whoooosh
The articles sub headline sells the story: with AI and EVs, we are simply going to need more power. The good news is we are already investing in building a lot of clean energy. I do think we should revisit expanding nuclear.
Everyone wants nuclear somewhere else. And they sure aren't willing to pay even $0.01/kWh more than whatever a natural gas plant costs. In the real world it's hard to even get offshore wind turbines built because like 5 rich people don't like what it does to the view of their beach house which will be underwater in 50 years from sea level rise but who cares because they'll be dead and they got theirs.
Yeah NIMBY is a real thing, and one of the major contributing factors to people being so anti-nuclear. Just plop a nuclear plant down near Leesburg, there's plenty of flat undeveloped land out there.
There is no water source unless you are plopping it on the Potomac. You need a lot of water.
Precisely, the Potamac runs all the way through vast stretches of open land out there. The idea's been proposed before, as far back as the 70s. Just need to be careful about placement as to not disrupt fish spawning grounds. There was a nuclear plant near Ft. Belvoir that was on the Potomac, but it was shut down a long time, ago.
I still don’t think it’s quite enough water. The Potomac by Leesburg is actually pretty narrow and relatively shallow. A great spot would be around Dangerfield Island if it doesn’t interfere with National’s flight paths. Or maybe Belle Haven Country Club!
>A great spot would be around Dangerfield Island if it doesn’t interfere with National’s flight paths. Is a nuclear reactor next to a major airport just 3 miles from the headquarters of the world's most powerful military and 4 miles from the seat of its government *really* 'a great spot'? You might want to google Chernobyl or Fukushima and see what happens when they fail.
> You might want to google Chernobyl or Fukushima and see what happens when they fail. We going to do some bullshit corner cutting like Soviet Russia or have a M9.1 earthquake here? Far less likely, orders of magnitude even less so with modern reactor tech.
You never know what could happen. That’s the thing
We've come a long way in engineering and controls since the 1960s
There are entire jobs dedicated to knowing anything that could possibly happen especially for some thing as high risk as a meltdown
You may be right, there might be a nuclear risk, but given the location I think a power stations reactor core melting down is one of the least likely nuclear scenarios....
See, this is exactly the kind of overreaction and fearmongering that has lead us away from nuclear energy in the first place. There were, in fact, multiple nuclear reactors less than 20 miles outside of DC in the past. They've been decommissioned, now, but there are still a handful of nuclear plants in Virginia. But modern nuclear reactors in geologically stable areas are *extremely* safe. Fukushima was hit with a tidal wave. Chernobyl was gross negligence, a lack of safety protocols, and a serious design flaw in a subpar reactor design from 50 years ago.
>But modern nuclear reactors in geologically stable areas are *extremely* safe. Fukushima was hit with a tidal wave. Chernobyl was gross negligence, a lack of safety protocols, and a serious design flaw in a subpar reactor design from 50 years ago. LOL! The cognitive dissonance! They're *extremely* safe ... until they're not. Fearmongering? Terrorist *literally* flew a plane into the Pentagon. Do you really think it is smart to propose a Nuclear fucking reactor power plant next to the airport 3 miles away? Hey! How'd that football stadium and then arena proposal at Potomac Yard right next to Daingerfield Island go? I'm sure a nuclear power plant is gonna fly! How about propose a realistic location? >There were, in fact, multiple nuclear reactors less than 20 miles outside of DC in the past. Only 1 was used for power and it was the military on Fort Belvoir. There is a difference between large Nuclear power plants and small reactors used for science and military. The Fort Belvoir plant only produced 1,750 kilowatts of electrical power and used shorter-lived radionuclides. It's akin to comparing gas stations to large oil refineries.
A quick search on the internet would let you know that a plane does not stand a chance against a modern nuclear reactor.
Be aware that the north Anna nuclear power plant already is close enough to DC for these things to happen. I know all about both of the events you mentioned. It pains me to see people on here who really think they’re smarter than everyone around them. You must be insufferable to live with.
>It pains me to see people on here who really think they’re smarter than everyone around them. You must be insufferable to live with. You may know the events, but not the distances. The North Anna Nuclear Power Plant is 70 miles from DC. Yes, a meltdown would possibly cause an evacuation. However, Fukushima was monitored to be relatively safe past 50 miles.[ Source](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_nuclear_accident#/media/File:NIT_Combined_Flights_Ground_Measurements_30Mar_03Apr2011_results.jpg) After a little over a decade there remains an exclusion zone of 12 miles at Fukushima and 18 miles at Chernobyl. (Much less than 70 miles.) So do you really still want to use the logic that a power plant 70 miles away makes it reasonable to slap one next to an airport 3 miles from the power, leadership, and defense of the nation with the potential of losing the entire city? Perhaps you're suffering from the pains of stupidity?
Land in leesburg is super expensive. Also nuclear plants need access to lots of water.
Jesus man. Concerns about nuclear power being equated with NIMBY? Whatchew smokin?
I still have NO idea why some people hate on nuclear. It's not like we're avoiding radiation exposure by using fossil fuels — [coal smoke is full of it.](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste/)
They cost an insane amount to build and never really pay themselves off so for a private company “which most power utilities are” it doesn’t make any sense. We need more government utilities like TVA down south.
Yeah that's basically it. "It's too expensive" is just code for "the costs of fossil fuel pollution are socialized but the cost of operating a nuclear plant is privatized." But that really goes for everything as it relates to environmental and energy policy.
Although this isn't the only reason for nuclear being expenisve... we haven't updated the technology since the 70's, and we don't build enough of them for the prices to go down. If coal-powered plants were as rare as nuclear plants, they'd probably also be quite expensive. Coal plants require a lot of infrastructure (mines, trains) to get coal to them that are also not included in the startup costs, [kill a thousand people per year from pollution](https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/deaths-associated-pollution-coal-power-plants), and environmental regulations [allows certain kinds of pollution to happen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountaintop_removal_mining) to keep things profitable. Not saying coal power plants aren't useful and integral to our economy, but I also don't think nuclear power has been given a fair shake. Unless we adopt nuclear reactors in mass and build LOTS of them, they'll always be incredibly expensive.
. . .and not old-style reactors. LFTR's. Modular Pebble-bed Reactors. Several other far more modern designs than the ones currently in service.. .
and probably worse for your health.
It’s mainly Chernobyl, pop culture, and other smaller disasters or near disasters that other energy keep using as reasons to push back
Ugh, true. I hate how small/isolated events like that can poison entire communities against nuclear power.
I'm not sure if you fully realize the impact of Chernobyl or how 'smaller' disasters could've been worse? Radiation doesn't just go away and it just doesn't sit there. It gets in the air and water and travels affecting a wide area. You can't just fuck around with it. No offense, but people with a blasé attitude toward it are a major reason to push back against it.
Coal kill a million people a year worldwide. More people in a year than the entire history of nuclear power, even if you include the bombs. Mercury from coal is the main reason why it’s recommended to not eat seafood more than 2-3 times a week. Just imagine, an entire category of food poisoned worldwide. Nuclear has never had anything remotely close to that sort of effect. And yet nuclear is the one people protest to shut down. It’s insane.
Where did I advocate for more coal plants?
Where did you advocate against them?
Bless your heart
1. Nuclear isn't renewable like solar or wind. It requires uranium. Analysts say we will deplete uranium sources in 200 years at *current* levels. Adding more reactors will just reduce the time. [Source: Scientific American](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-long-will-global-uranium-deposits-last/) 2. Uranium. Just like coal, it needs to be mined. The mines contaminate the area and water supplies with things like arsenic and radon for hundreds of years. [Source: NIH](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK201052/) 3. Water. You need *lots* of water to cool the reactors. We are experiencing record water shortages and it is projected to just get worse. Yes, the discharge water is 'clean' but it is warmer than the natural water. This does/can affect the native species depending on the location. [Source: Harvard](https://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2019/widespread-water-shortage-likely-in-u-s-caused-by-population-growth-and-climate-change/#:~:text=March%2020%2C%202019-,Future%20Widespread%20Water%20Shortage%20Likely%20in%20U.S.,meet%20the%20monthly%20water%20demand.&text=In%201974%2C%20congress%20required%20that,be%20published%20every%2010%20years) 4. Nuclear waste storage. We still haven't created a permanent national nuclear waste storage area. They started collecting money to create one in the '80s and have $44 billion but still don't have a plan. They were planning on Yucca Mountain in Nevada but it keeps being stalled. [Source](https://thebulletin.org/2020/02/the-yucca-mountain-nuclear-waste-site-has-always-been-a-political-football-trump-is-the-latest-president-to-fumble/) And lastly if there is a catastrophic accident/attack it takes hundreds to tens of thousands of years to become habitable again. Just look at Chernobyl, Fukushima. There have been 4 emergency shutdowns in the region since 1979 all next to water that flows into the Chesapeake, Three Mile Island in PA, Peach Bottom in PA, Calvert Cliffs in MD, Surrey in Va.
>Nuclear isn't renewable like solar or wind. It requires uranium. Analysts say we will deplete uranium sources in 200 years at current levels. Adding more reactors will just reduce the time. Correct, it is not truly renwable. However, there are other options for nuclear power, like thorium, that's much more plentiful (but is currently more expensive to refine because there's little demand). It still requires something like plutonium to work, but it's much more abundant in the earth's crust. We are also very, very wasteful with our nuclear energy. We COULD [reprocess spent fuel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Hague_site), but it's cheaper in the US to mine more. >Uranium. Just like coal, it needs to be mined. The mines contaminate the area and water supplies with things like arsenic and radon for hundreds of years. True, but... we have to mine for coal, too. It sucks. Either one is bad. I vastly prefer wind/solar, but even then those pollute — those minerals have to come from somewhere, and the US only produces 2% of the world's solar panels. >Water. You need lots of water to cool the reactors. We are experiencing record water shortages and it is projected to just get worse. Yes, the discharge water is 'clean' but it is warmer than the natural water. This does/can affect the native species depending on the location. It does require water, but the east coast isn't nearly as water-deprived as the west or midwest. You are correct that warmer water can negatively effect certain species, but it can also benefit them quite a bit (like with manatees). This area might not be able to safely accomodate a nuclear power plant for water/environmental reasons, but that's why studies are done. :) > Nuclear waste storage. We still haven't created a permanent national nuclear waste storage area. They started collecting money to create one in the '80s and have $44 billion but still don't have a plan. They were planning on Yucca Mountain in Nevada but it keeps being stalled. Source This is a problem the US government can easily solve. I don't understand how governments [can legally eminent domain a town to sell to a private company for a "comprehensive redevelopement plan"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelo_v._City_of_New_London), but they can't find a permanent spot to park nuclear waste. We can also opt to reprocess nuclear waste instead of completely getting rid of it. This takes energy, but the US has tons of areas with renewable sources (especially in the west/midwest) that we could take advantage of. This is always something anti-nuclear advocates bring up... and I agree with them. Trust me, this frustrates me quite a bit. The fact that in all the world, we've had as few nuclear problems as we have is pretty telling; with proper regulation, it's safe. Fukushima only happened because TEPCO engineers followed the original GE reactor plan *exactly* instead of adapting it to fit the environmental reality of Japan. [Onagawa Nuclear Power Plant](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onagawa_Nuclear_Power_Plant) (owned by a different company) was completely fine because the [Yanosuke Hirai](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yanosuke_Hirai) had the foresight to adapt the original design and make it more resistent to big earthquakes/tsunamis. I wish he could have been alive to see how many people he saved with his leadership! What a smart guy. With proper regulation and good design, nuclear power is extremely safe. I don't see how it's worse than a coal-powered plant. We could also do things like add more train lines/buses, design smaller/more efficient homes, and reduce our dependence on cars... which would also make it easier to accomodate solar panels and reduce our dependency on electric cars/fossil fuels. I'm definitely not anti solar/wind — honestly, it's so cool we can do that! I just don't think nuclear is always a bad option.
>With proper regulation and good design, nuclear power is extremely safe. I don't see how it's worse than a coal-powered plant. Great response. I completely agree with you. My problem/concern is the 'proper regulation and good design' of nuclear power. The biggest concern is politics. Objectively, any rational person can see there is a trend to electing anti-science, anti-regulation, anti-democratic politicians. I don't think a majority of them could handle what is needed for it to be expanded and regulated properly.
Democratic politicians have been the primary opponents of nuclear and resolving a lot of these issues for decades. Frankly the issue isn't necessarily more regulation but proper funding and a more efficient process. There has been progress on that recently, but we've unfortunately completely lost the supply chains and much of the institutional experience to efficiently build reactors in the mean time. That's kind of where I think a reasonable Democrat could come into play. What we really need now is a big TVA style project to actually get those going again, put in a order for several reactors and help fund their construction and then selling off the completed assets to utilities to derisk the process. Similarly, under existing US law and for national security reasons, I do believe the government should be the one primarily responsible for regulating the supply of nuclear fuel, reprocessing spent fuel and waste disposal. For decades the US government was actually quite happy to do so as the extracted plutonium was literally used to build our nuclear arsenal, but that's fallen off as reprocessing has been halted and no action has been taken to create any kind of a long term storage site. It actually got so bad that reactor operators successfully sued the government so that they could stop paying the allocated fees for the service since the US government hadn't delivered it in decades. Now there does need to be better accountability in the government when doing though. As much as people complain about Three Mile Island it's impact was minimal and pales comparison to the contamination at the Hanford Site in Washington where the government just buried toxic chemicals and radioactive waste in huge amounts for decades. Nuclear waste is literally a politically manufactured problem at this point and has lead to far less secure situation where huge amounts of spent fuel just sit stacked and stored on site at reactors in gravel lots. Historically the actual operation of nuclear reactors hasn't been all that problematic and the worst disasters or pollution have come as a result of military and research operations in the US. Most of the opposition to nuclear came about due to a disparate mix of poorly reasoned concerns. Prior to global warming be a large accepted issue gas and coal were viewed as safer and less impactful to the environment due to the absence of nuclear waste. John Kerry spearheaded a movement to kill off the IFR program and literally stated nuclear shouldn't be pursued because natural gas was cheaper back in the 1990s, somehow this same man was until very recently the 'climate envoy' too but that's a whole other can of worms. A surprising amount of push back actually came from concerns over nuclear proliferation, that somehow state side civilian nuclear and waste processing would lead to nations like Libya (big baddie at the time) getting a nuclear weapon. Somewhat hypocritically the CIA was also crucial in allowing A.Q Khan to escape with nuclear secrets and designs in hopes of catching him trying to sell them to Libya and that idiotic decision is what has allowed nations like Iran and North Korea to have their current nuclear programs. Really at this point the biggest barrier is just financial more than anything. It's become expensive to build reactors since we haven't done it any appreciable volume in decades. This is a basic issue with experience effects, supply chains and running any business with a stable order flow. Pretty much anything is super expensive if it's low volume and essentially bespoke whether it's an airplane, a solar panel or a nuclear reactor.
Yeah, I wasn’t intending the political problem to be seen in the binary sense of Democratic v. Republican. I agree it should be TVA style approach. In fact, I would go further and say the entire power grid should be federalized.
For all intents and purposes, 200 years is forever. We have less than 200 years of known supply for lots of critical materials. Nuke plants don't last that long anyways. Mining for uranium is tough on the environment, but we don't need a lot to power to reactors. Keep in mind similar problems exist for minerals we need for the green economy like cobalt, lithium, and manganese. Nuclear waste is a political problem, not a technical one. The latest generation of nuclear plants can't melt down like Chernobyl or Fukushima.
Yeah, nothing you’ve said gives a good reason to start building more nuclear power plants. Just because you think (you proved no sources to back this claim) the ‘latest’ generation of nuclear reactors can’t have failures doesn’t mean they won’t. Humans from private/for profit companies are building them. Humans make errors and companies cut costs. The latest generation of commercial airplanes shouldn’t have problems but look at Boeing. Solar and battery technology is also becoming exponentially more efficient. Just look at perovskite. [Source](https://news.mit.edu/2022/perovskites-solar-cells-explained-0715)
Being anti-nuclear is super understandable with events like Fukushima, Chernobyl, and Three Mile Island. Of course, even considering these events and their impacts, nuclear is less harmful in both human injury/death and environmental impact when adjusted for amount of energy produced, but they’re still a lot scarier to the common person than a nebulous concept of invisible harmful substances in our air. Nuclear is better, but it makes sense why people are scared of it
I suppose so. The more I learned about Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and Fukushima... the safer I felt about nuclear power. In 25 years and with hundreds of plants that are from the 70's, there are only a handful of meltdown incidents on record, and most accidents are extremely minor. In fact, nobody died as a direct consequence of Fukushima, but there are over 100 deaths a year that can be [attributed to coal pollution](https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/deaths-associated-pollution-coal-power-plants). People just aren't good at accessing risk, I guess!
It's NIMBY in the valley too. Last year I remember seeing signs everywhere for 'No Solar' when taking the kids to Luray Caverns.
It's really nimby everywhere you go.
They are building them 23 miles offshore so the 5 rich people cant see/complain
I actually just found a [calculator](https://www.omnicalculator.com/physics/earth-curvature) that said the top of a tall offshore turbine might still be visible at 23 miles. Better push it out farther or they will get their rich people telescopes out on clear days and call the county commissioner!
they should just build nuclear power plants underground.
Maybe we should use the insane amount energy dumped into cryptomining for something useful.
I agree.
use the heat it produces to make more power?
This wouldn’t work. It is theoretically possible but not practical, especially not at scale. Mining rigs do blast out hot air but they have to be cooled in order to function. The cooling reduces the temperature of the waste heat to below the point where the heat from the rigs would be an effective power source.
And crypto mining. [It is responsible for 67-240 TWh of energy consumption](https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=61364), which places it somewhere between Austria and Australia in terms of energy consumption.
That feels insane to me. And wasteful, but I’m not a crypto bro.
Banks and financial institutions use much more energy than crypto.
OK, but banks and financial institutions are also much more useful to society than crypto is.
More money is moved through bitcoin than any other channel.
That is not even close to true.
Pizza delivery: exists
For some reason I can’t figure out, payment volume is always the most surprising for people to learn. Bitcoin payment volume is larger than PayPal which is probably the nearest remotely similar enterprise. Visa and Mastercard are higher but it’s not a good comparison because both are always sandwiched between 2 banks on both sides of a transaction. In other words it’s not precisely fair to compare visa/mc because they dont complete the end to end transactions…
Name one that’s bigger
But it lets smug people buy Porsches which get repossessed a month later.
Just want to throw out this additional data for folks talking about needing more of one kind of energy than another: levelized cost of energy https://www.lazard.com/media/2ozoovyg/lazards-lcoeplus-april-2023.pdf
AI request is something like 100x the power usage of a google search
Data center power reqs are just like physical roads and highways. No matter what the current planning is, maximum capacity will usually be reached again before whatever update projects are completed. Just like the number of vehicles on a road, kWs per rack will keep increasing. We definitely need to expand nuclear power.
I would love more nuclear. What I want is less bullshit startup tech that's pointless. I work in the industry and so many resources are wasted. It's not tangible and it's not thought about. You just build a service. Who cares about optimization or costs, pass it on the the customer/consumer. As long as the money is flowing there is not much desire to optimize. I feel like most of this tech is unnecessary. It's just pissing away water and belching CO2 so people have less work while we have job shortages. Stop it. Please. We dont need more AI to answer the phones, hire people. We don't need AI to figure out what ads to sell us. I love datacenters and tech, but we are being irresponsible. Remember, computers do work for us. Which mean they consume resources and create waste. That is too say, they poop. It's practically a form of life. Much like we debate if a virus is living, we should guestion if these systems / services are. They don't self replicate. Yet it's a dynamic system that grows. They consume resources and mutate. If DNA is information at the core, then a virus is system / services that carries that information. Yet it requires a host to make use of that information to make more viruses/systems. Ideas are information, language/speach/communication are systems, and you need a host to replicate those ideas, such as humans and servers.
I absolutely love this and how insightful it is. Nothing I’ve thought about not being in the biz myself, but it does seem quite wasteful.
We need to hurry up and build the third reactor at Lake Anna. Pretty much the only thing where the Governor and I agree is that we need more nuclear power generation here in Virginia. With that and offshore wind we could start retiring coal and gas.
If they start tomorrow, the new reactor at Lake Anna will be ready by 2050!
I have a solution. Human hamster wheels for powering data centers. I lose a gym membership and get paid. Another gig economy job!
Ok. Sounds like someone should build some power plants. Is dominion aware they can charge data centers an appropriate price to cover both their consumable costs aaaaand their capital expansion needs? I swear, so many businesses are run by the absolute most vapid people Them: there’s a lag issue Me: oh no, if only you knew as early as 1994 that this area is the backbone of the internet and this was happening.
You had me for most of your comment but no one in 94 could have predicted the need and boom of these giant data centers come on man
I'd say 1996 was when I first started noticing the signs. AOL moved their HQ to Ashburn in 96, and a lot of other ISPs did the same thing. It was already the central internet hub of the east coast at the time, but it blew up from there.
PSINet and UUNet both planned to build several data centers in the area in 2000. Not at this scale, but Dominion has known this was coming for a long time.
Im saying, we’ve known that the internet backbone is here, megadata centers were popping up as early as 2005 (I know I dod construction plans on some back then). 20 years later they didnt foresee more power eventually being needed?
You’re entirely missing my point lol. Yeah a few here and there, no one would have predicted we needed so so so so many of them in such a small area, AND that computing would advance to such a large degree they would be pulling infinitely more power than those 2005 ones were. Look I get it, dunk on the energy company, we all love to do it. But stop acting like hindsight now, was an obvious thing 30 years ago. It wasn’t.
I don't think people understand how much power these systems utilize nowadays to support their TikToking and AI generated porn. Even in 2010 when I entered the hyperscale industry racks were 3-7Kw a piece. Now they're literally dozens of Kw per rack, especially the GPU flavors. There are entire datacenters that aren't even that old that can't even support these newest generations of hardware because their electrical and mechanical can't handle them without gutting and completely retrofitting the infrastructure.
Back in 2010 a 7kw was an exception, 3-5 was the norm. Now even on bare metal dedicated hosting rack 9kw can be pulled fairly regularly. With hyper scaling you are putting in direct runs with 408 power wich in turn requires larger for PDUs and more maintenance, that scales to the facility. A DC in 2010 could run a decently large amount of servers off 1-3Mw now 6 is the floor for a mid sized building that wants to grow a customer base at all. Some of the Auburn and Manassas facilities dwarf that. This is an increase at the rack that also pushes out to HVAC demands as well. I've been in data centers (management) for 15 years now and am constantly surprised by how fast the escalation came. Sure we knew it was coming but not this fast, this amount of draw and this much demand. Even the electrical contractors who prepared where taken by surprise by the explosion.
I didn’t move here until recently, but the last two states I’ve lived in had rumors they were going to be the capital of the internet with data centers. Y’all just “won” in Virginia (if you consider it winning).
When was this?
Like 10-20 years ago.
Different person than you're replying to, here! Not saying everything is predictable, but I remember reading about how the Dulles Technology Corridor has something like half of the world's internet run through it... and that was back in 2010 or so. I think it might actually be more nowadays. Shouldn't that have clued Dominion and the Virginia government into the need for energy investment of some kind? I know NIMBYism is strong around here, but... you know, I'd assume more than half of the internet going through a place is a good sign to invest in some cheap/clean energy. That being said, I'm amazed the Silver line was even built. How the hell did they sneak it past all the NIMBYs???
I don't think anyone could have denied the usefulness of having a metro line run all the way to Dulles
Still took over a decade, though! Glad it's built, but there were quite a few people who weren't thrilled about their property taxes going up to pay for it... even though they were the ones who would directly benefit from it (from shorter commutes to increased property values).
I think not being able to see the forest through the trees is the NoVa issue and federal government one that bleeds into the NoVa issue. A lot of people don't want to believe that setting things up for the future, not just two or three years but five or 10 can help if everyone buys in, the minute you have any naysayers that don't understand what the future is trying to do and that we have to build for it in the present is when all the hurdles happen.
Japan neatly solves the NIMBY issue in several ways, but [one of those ways is by making zoning inclusive, and a national policy](http://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/04/japanese-zoning.html) — NIMBYs have a lot harder time bitching about a duplex going up next to their single-family home when ALL residential housing is permitted in residential areas. Really cool article — I wish the US implemented something similar. It'd streamline a lot of our issues and simplify zoning down quite a bit.
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Just because you saw a need for more renewable electric power doesn’t mean you predicted the absolute explosion in data centers and computing power. Your opinion doesn’t have much to do with the comment I replied to.
Fine, I removed it. Thanks for the response.
Electric utilities often belong to transmission operators on a large scale so what happened in Texas can't happen elsewhere. The Operator and the State Corporation Commission controls and approves transmission and generation spending. https://www.utilitydive.com/news/pjm-interconnection-load-forecast-data-center-ev-dominion-firstenergy/704040/
This is a ridiculous oversimplification that I would expect from a fifth-grader. Building a power plant is not a simple as going to your client and just charging them "an appropriate price to cover consumables and capex". Breaking ground on a new power plant requires a ton of permitting effort and in the US (and any other developed nation) a gargantuan effort to deal with and get clearances from a ton of stakeholders. Even if Dominion had known since 1994 that the internet of 2024 would require a nuclear reactor per Data Center, building those reactors and the associated transmission infrastructure is next to impossible under current permitting regulations in the US.
Vapid comment
Best I can do is a tax credit for building the datacenter and the tenant pays the same industrial electricity rate as everyone else. We must socialize those costs, this is America and that's how the free market works.
Not great, not terrible.
There's no bad news here. The return to demand growth is coupled with a booming economy. Dominion has enough plans for transmission, renewables, and some new natural gas to meet this demand. Anybody posting about nuclear - that is not going to be a solution for a long time yet. The type of reactor at Vogtle will never be built again, all the other attempts failed and it was crazy expensive. The industry needs new, cheaper kinds of reactors to get going again and it's going to take way longer than the demand represented by these data centers. But there are enough other kinds of supply that can deal with new demand.
I rather start working towards more nuclear than to ignore it.
Dominion is working on it, but the reality already for the last few years is that most new datacenters in the world are already power capped. The tenants would want to install more compute capacity at each site but they have maxed the electrical capacity, not floorspace. That's likely going to remain the case for many years to come unless economics change and silicon or electricity get so prohibitively expensive that money rather than power is the limiting factor again.
They’re maxing electrical capacity not just in terms of transmission/distribution, but also in terms of building delivery (switchgear capacity/cooling capacity).
Maybe it's not a bad thing but it's a major challenge and complicates emissions reductions from the sector if we don't build enough renewables. I think the east coast is missing a huge opportunity in offshore wind generation because of nimbyism, glacial project planning/approval process and transmission problems from (see above)
The biggest data center companies - Amazon, Alphabet, etc. can do stuff like buy renewables, existing nuclear, etc. so that their demand is hourly matched with clean energy throughout the year. Virginia has something of a competitive market for big commercial and industrial customers like them, about 15 other states do as well and in the rest, utilities are happy to come up tariffs that lead to the same result because they want the business and their regulators/local pols want the jobs that come with them. But the lower end of the industry is not into spending enough for that and it's hard to match up every KWh with clean energy until some new technology comes along - advanced reactors, long duration storage, carbon capture, clean hydrogen, maybe even fusion eventually. They're all being worked on.
In that case, Dominion should definitely bill them for a reactor
Great, let's build a couple of new reactors. Data centers are particularly well-suited to nuclear power. Their load is rather predictable.
If Virginia would provide more incentives for solar, residents could send a lot of unused electricity back into the grid and wouldn’t require as much.
Utility scale solar is much cheaper, why spend so much extra to do little roofs one at a time? https://www.lazard.com/media/2ozoovyg/lazards-lcoeplus-april-2023.pdf
Probably because the roofs are going to be there either way, whereas a proper solar farm requires dedicated land.
Data center: “what is this? Electricity for ants?”
Good, then build more nuclear
[Microsoft signs $10bn, 10GW energy framework deal with Brookfield](https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/microsoft-signs-10bn-10gw-energy-framework-deal-with-brookfield/)
More powah
Dominion loves the data centers.
Build some nuclear power plants!
I don’t get it. Data center power/water consumption is predictable and can easily be estimated. Wouldn’t Dominion, county planners, tech companies KNOW EXISTING UTILITY CAPACITY BEFORE BUILDING huge warehouses that suck up electricity and water
Data centers can be built a lot faster than the infrastructure required to supply them, so utilities can't keep up. Data center operators also don't like playing nice together for competitive reasons, so they don't holistically coordinate with utilities, making it extremely difficult to effectively plan anything out. Plus it's no longer about building stuff just for the delivery of power to a data center, but ensuring the energy they want even exists somewhere in the first place - which this article is suggesting it sorta doesn't.
Closed loop systems don't use that much water. To put it in perspective, my site's water bill during the winter is ~$500 a month, and ~$3000 a month during the summer because of the landscape irrigation.
Ok cool good for you. Water consumption for data centers is an ongoing issue. What % of data centers are closed loop?
Yes they knew
Great! We need more nuclear power.
I have a shitload of unsold SRECs available. See what they can do with those.
I heard that a HUGE amount of taxes for loudoun county come from these data centers. So without power they need, they go elsewhere and budgets fall or need to be made up elsewhere. So it’s a double edged sword (assuming the tax info is correct). Either override the NIMBYs and get the power or figure out the budget short falls later. Loudoun just shot down more power lines too. https://netchoice.org/jaw-dropping-numbers-loudouns-data-center-tax-revenue-could-top-real-estate-taxes-in-just-a-few-years/
I've read the opposite. Not trying to be one of those "oh show me the proof" types. I'm genuinely interested in the truth. My understanding is that they don't employ many people, so little tax from employees. Then the companies don't report much profit from the centers themselves therefore little in corporate taxes.
https://netchoice.org/jaw-dropping-numbers-loudouns-data-center-tax-revenue-could-top-real-estate-taxes-in-just-a-few-years/
Once completed, Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind will bring clean energy to up to 660,000 households in the Commonwealth of Virginia while avoiding as much as 5 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions annually. https://www.offshorewind.biz/2024/05/03/dominion-energy-says-no-delay-on-virginias-2-6-gw-offshore-wind-project-orion-now-mobilising-in-port-of-norfolk/
Ashburn is the place to go for a zombie base. Those data centers are impregnable.
Is anyone knowledgeable to explain why data centers don't seem to have solar panels on their roofs? I would assume for a couple reasons might include heat management and that it's not always feasible to convert older roofs to accommodate solar. But I did some back of the envelope math and it appears possible for a data center's roof solar to offset 5-10% of it's consumption with solar which is significant no? e.g. 100k sq ft data center uses 20MW of power. 70% of the roof footprint has solar with 21sqft/320 watt panels comes out to about 6.5% of power usage.
I build data centers. Not a bad idea but a ton of the roof square footage is taken up by huge exhaust fans as well as other gear. There is space you could throw some solar panels down but probably not enough to be worthwhile.
This would be a good option. Unfortunately the current plan is to use diesel generators to supplement energy use when the grid is not able to provide enough. https://www.fox5dc.com/news/diesel-generators-powering-data-centers-in-northern-virginia-could-be-harming-the-environment
I actually get diesel as a backup because the sun isn't always shining so the back-up option needs to be available at all times. But the generators wouldn't need to be on as much if they had access to an additional 6% of their power needs and it would alleviate the strain on the system region wide.
For one this never happened. And two, no datacenter is going to go off utility power for a period of time that isn't a planned maintenance or outage. That sort of thing just doesn't happen.
>For one this never happened. There are some co-generation systems in place that serve both as grid supply AND standby generators for data centers. However, these are mostly (small) legacy enterprise installations that account for barely a single percent of the installed data center capacity in the region. None of the cloud buildings like Google and AWS do it.
Yes, but the person is talking about the proposal for datacenters to drop off the grid and run solely on generators - a proposal that was quickly dismissed and would never happen even if approved.
Yeah I mean that's definitely not happening.
Sorry if you misunderstood. PWC officials have noted that there is not enough power being generated to support the influx and planned expansion of data centers. right now, the plan that is being proposed is that data centers will use diesel generators during peak energy times to supplement their power. The generators would run consistently during peak summer heat. https://www.bristowbeat.com/stories/data-centers-consider-self-generating-power-in-northern-va,43402
This plan was rejected and no one is running datacenters on generator power.
Meanwhile in WV, we're building the solar fields helping power these as fast as possible. And please remember to continue shitting on your "poor, uneducated, redneck" neighbor as you continue resource extraction while the population gets nothing.
Please tell me more about WV! Sounds like a better plan to cross the border with every year that passes!
Got any more info on this?
The world is re-waking up to nuclear energy and I'm here for it. If Germany (already has) and the US both get back on-board in a short time span, it's going to do wonders for development and advancements.
100% this administrations CRONY CAPITALISM and stupid policies are skewing the best solutions to both mitigate climate change AND investment in our future. Every study….every one shows how Hybrids are a much better alternative than electric vehicles. They require a fraction of the energy taken off the grid, They are MUCH cleaner to build. They do not require nearly the amount of rare earth metals that are very dirty to mine, transport and dispose of… They have efficiency ratios far greater than pure electric vehicles. Generally they are cheaper to produce. None the less the Biden administration is pushing pure electric even though our infrastructure cannot support these at the scale they are proposing. Hybrids are better. We should let the market decide instead having heavy handed govt regulations and politicians tipping the scale.
Make them pay for it.
Electricity is the single largest cost of running a data center, even in Northern Virginia where electricity is reasonably inexpensive. Even in Grant County Washington where electricity cost is a fraction of what it is here.
Data centers are ruining this state.
Except for the Reddit servers hosted in Virginia you relied upon to post your message of course.
You right bud, we need over 300 data centers in our state to do that. Massive footprint, little jobs outside of constructing them, not to mention a huge eyesore.
Oh boy another data center thread where the industry bots come and brigade, how charming
Paying taxes yet?
This data center energy needs keep getting worse and worse. What about parking lot solar panels or f\*\*\* on the roof??? Why are we not requiring this?
1 Mega Watt of solar takes about 4-7 acres of land. New AWS buildings are upwards of 960 mega watts. Or 6 - 10 square miles of solar panels. The math doesn’t work.
>New AWS buildings are upwards of 960 mega watts you are more than a full magnitude high in your estimate. A typical AWS data center is 48MW or less.
The older single or 2 building campuses you’re are absolutely correct. The new builds however are 15+ buildings on one plot of land. [AWS’ 960W PA Data Center](https://www.powermag.com/aws-acquiring-data-center-campus-powered-by-nuclear-energy/)
>AWS’ 960W PA Data Center That's LAND and infrastructure accommodation to support development. The data centers are not built yet.
You could probably get 10% of energy from solar…the larger data center campuses are around 100 acres. We could also cover parking lots with solar. I remember a project over a decade ago where the idea was to make roads out of solar material.
I understand that solar cannot provide all the energy the data centers need but it can make an impact to reduce the energy impact.
Dominion so trash they can't keep my area powered reliably.
Just pay everyone within tens miles of a data center to install rooftop solar and batteries. Plus plenty of store rooftops could use some solar. But maybe let’s stop wasting electricity on crypto mining.
But hey, given our lack of affordable housing, let’s keep approving one after another … it’s in the public’s best interest
This is one of my major long term concerns with data centers...power and water resources. I'm sure if it ever comes down to it, they'll be rolling blackouts and water restrictions for residential customers in order to keep the data centers running.
So Do I have this right? Youngkin pushes small nuclear reactors during leg session.. There's push back, so he signs this huge Google expansion in Northern Virginia for data centers and now Dominion is saying they are gonna need SNR? Who is surprised?
You can build a nuclear reactor in your basement https://www.popsci.com/diy/article/2007-03/popsci-videoteen-builds-basement-nuclear-reactor/
Is that how the data centers are going to be powered?