This might be a pretty dumb question but I don’t see why the Permian couldn’t be a good place to build reactors if their sole purpose is to power data centres anyways. I can’t imagine the permitting environment would be that difficult (I’m uninformed), the water for cooling is still there, no local population to complain, and it’s even probably a decent place to sequester nuclear waste.
The same thought occurred to me while researching this article. In many ways it makes sense to use nuclear in the Permian but in other ways it doesn't. For one, you have oil & gas that you want to extract for both energy and non-energy uses. I believe that at least a third of the oil produced goes to non-energy end uses, so to the extent that nuclear would interfere with or possibly put that production at risk operators may not want it on top of the oil field. Second, I wonder how the regulatory system in Texas would deal with the possibility of injecting contaminated water underground. Typically, reactors are built near large bodies of surface water into which potentially contaminated water can be slowly released after the filtration process is completed. Lot's of unanswered questions but it will be interesting to watch it unfold.
Good conclusion - more data centers on the horizon, and more gas power plants to power them in the near future. However, I'd like to point out a couple things. "an infrastructure build which challenges the capacity of the US power grid" - this is why data centers are often choosing to generate their own power on site.
You are aware that the advanced nuclear reactor designs will cool down in the event of a failure, without the need of electricity, right? Advanced reactors, if they can get approval, will be able to re-use nuclear waste for fuel, greatly lessening the need for mining more uranium. What do you think of x-energy and their contract with Amazon to provide SMRs? They're saying they can build one in 2 years - that's probably quite optimistic, but still - it sounds good and I'm hopeful .
You raise a good point. I agree that new and better technology is on the way but I also think that implementation timelines tend to be overly optimistic and that gas will be a big part of the interim solution.
The preference for natural gas in powering data centers reflects its current reliability and cost-effectiveness, but nuclear energy offers a compelling alternative due to its unmatched energy density and potential for consistent, carbon-free operation. I believe we will hear a lot about energy density in the coming years.
Nice work
Thanks JP!
This might be a pretty dumb question but I don’t see why the Permian couldn’t be a good place to build reactors if their sole purpose is to power data centres anyways. I can’t imagine the permitting environment would be that difficult (I’m uninformed), the water for cooling is still there, no local population to complain, and it’s even probably a decent place to sequester nuclear waste.
The same thought occurred to me while researching this article. In many ways it makes sense to use nuclear in the Permian but in other ways it doesn't. For one, you have oil & gas that you want to extract for both energy and non-energy uses. I believe that at least a third of the oil produced goes to non-energy end uses, so to the extent that nuclear would interfere with or possibly put that production at risk operators may not want it on top of the oil field. Second, I wonder how the regulatory system in Texas would deal with the possibility of injecting contaminated water underground. Typically, reactors are built near large bodies of surface water into which potentially contaminated water can be slowly released after the filtration process is completed. Lot's of unanswered questions but it will be interesting to watch it unfold.
Good conclusion - more data centers on the horizon, and more gas power plants to power them in the near future. However, I'd like to point out a couple things. "an infrastructure build which challenges the capacity of the US power grid" - this is why data centers are often choosing to generate their own power on site.
You are aware that the advanced nuclear reactor designs will cool down in the event of a failure, without the need of electricity, right? Advanced reactors, if they can get approval, will be able to re-use nuclear waste for fuel, greatly lessening the need for mining more uranium. What do you think of x-energy and their contract with Amazon to provide SMRs? They're saying they can build one in 2 years - that's probably quite optimistic, but still - it sounds good and I'm hopeful .
You raise a good point. I agree that new and better technology is on the way but I also think that implementation timelines tend to be overly optimistic and that gas will be a big part of the interim solution.
I don't disagree.
Another good episode.
Thanks, Devin.
This reveals an interesting way to play the nuclear revival / AI data center power demand dynamic: https://rockandturner.substack.com/p/good-time-for-a-slice-of-yellow-cake
The preference for natural gas in powering data centers reflects its current reliability and cost-effectiveness, but nuclear energy offers a compelling alternative due to its unmatched energy density and potential for consistent, carbon-free operation. I believe we will hear a lot about energy density in the coming years.
Agreed. I think we will hear more about energy density starting next year.