Google commits to buying power generated by nuclear-energy startup Kairos Power

> it’s a power purchase agreement from something that may never be built! No different from Microsoft’s previous fusion power purchase agreement

A frequent complaint from utilities has been AI companies refusing to sign PPAs. They want the option of picking up and leaving if someone else offers a better deal down the road, leaving the utility stuck with overbuilt infrastructure costs.

> virtue signalling

This term has lost whatever meaning it ever had if we're using it to refer to binding contracts.

This isn’t a binding contract like Elon Musk agreeing to buy Twitter. Google may be bound in some way to buy power from a future unbuilt powerplant that doesn’t yet exist in prototype form. If Kairos fizzles, more likely than not, can Google seek damages? Will Microsoft seek damages from their binding contract when Helios isn’t grinding out fusion gigawatts in 2028 as promised?

This is de-risking the other way. It allows the energy companies to build their infrastructure without worries that they will get undercut by a competitor and be stuck with overbuilt infrastructure and no one to sell to.

Without that commitment, the investment doesn't get made into the new power generation. Margins in that industry are much lower than in tech.

Why would they fissile? Nuclear is solved.

Look to NuScales near collapse last autumn for a recent nuclear power example:

  NuScale has a more credible contract with the Carbon Free Power Project (“CFPP”) for the Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems (“UAMPS”). CFPP participants have been supportive of the project despite contracted energy prices that never seem to stop rising, from $55/MWh in 2016, to $89/MWh at the start of this year. What many have missed is that NuScale has been given till around January 2024 to raise project commitments to 80% or 370 MWe, from the existing 26% or 120 MWe, or risk termination. Crucially, when the participants agreed to this timeline, they were assured refunds for project costs if it were terminated, which creates an incentive for them to drop out. We are three months to the deadline and subscriptions have not moved an inch.

https://iceberg-research.com/2023/10/19/nuscale-power-smr-a-...

> isn’t a binding contract

It absolutely is. Don’t know the details. But there is usually a minimum purchase guarantee by the buyer.

> If Kairos fizzles, more likely than not, can Google seek damages

Probably. Though collecting might be difficult.

> Will Microsoft seek damages from their binding contract when Helios isn’t grinding out fusion gigawatts in 2028 as promised?

Damages, no. Concessions? Probably.

> This term has lost whatever meaning it ever had if we're using it to refer to binding contracts.

If a technological solution is optimistic and remains vaporware possibly forever, then it maybe "virtue signaling" is if there more nonfunctional desire for it that outstrips practical or economic utility. A better term would be "vaporware" when there is less social puritanism involved, and I don't think coal or nuclear signal anything of redeemable greenwashing value compared to cheaper renewables combined with PES and distributed grid storage.

Money talks. Signing the PPA is a legally binding contract to buy the power, so the power companies will them be willing to build the plant, knowing that there's guaranteed demand. Without the PPA, there's no guaranteed demand, and the powerplant won't get built.

Legally binding is a nebulous concept when you're some of the world's richest companies with legal departments multiple times larger than the entire staff of the companies you're 'legally bound' with.

An agreement to buy enough power for a lightbulb from a plant generating from unicorn farts is meaningless.

If they happen to pull through, it’s a drop in the bucket of Google’s overall consumption. If they don’t, then there is no downside for Google. This is not an investment.

> Legally binding is a nebulous concept when you're some of the world's richest companies

The flip side of being rich enough to hire good counsel is being rich enough to be worth going after. Were Google to renege on an agreement such as this, there would be a line of litigation financiers standing to buy the claim.

It was never a meaningful term. Almost everything anyone ever says is virtue signalling; the only difference is which virtues are being flaunted.

Originally it was a worthwhile term to examine distinctions between virtue communications that might be more matters of social negotiation and virtue communications that might be reflections of personal value investment.

Then in certain political usage it became a nihilistic drive-by dismissal for nullifying any kind of virtue accountability, whether sincerely invested or not, a challenge to the idea that there was any such thing as sincere virtue discourse.

CFPP was subsequently terminated.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38198136

In case it wasn't clear, my nihilism is that that political nihilism is itself a form of virtue signaling.

It's a first customer, and guaranteed revenue if the generation is able to be built and operated. It's huge for the nuclear startup company, and can be used to get the financing lined up.

Agreed that Google is taking on very little risk here, but it's still a good action and moves the space forward.

Yes, it gives them some firm future revenue numbers to work with. They can take this agreement and get financing to pay for the actual construction needed.

That extremely large and competent legal departments is going to tell you this:

"Taking this to court will cost you a bajillion dollars. And you'll lose. Cut the antics and pay them off."

Unless it's not actually Google but some shell company Google is technically a customer of. But either way, I don't imagine the intent is to bail on the agreement.

Important to the customer, yes. Meaningless as an indication of Google’s commitment to clean energy.