Texas Needs Equivalent of 30 Reactors to Meet Data Center Power Demand
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But what about all that holy black ooze?
But what about all that unholy black ooze?
Demon blood made of 666 particles
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Every Texan I know
So none?
I lived in TX while I was stationed there for like 3 years. Exactly 0 people I've met there had a generator.
and the average wage in Texas
The cost of living is also significantly less.
California or Washington
Where it's double my mortgage payment to have a 2 be apartment?
I lived in TX while I was stationed there for like 3 years. Exactly 0 people I’ve met there had a generator.
I think that it's a good idea to have a generator in places that get serious storms, and coastal Texas can get hurricanes. I don't think that this is something specific to Texas' power generation, which is what I think the parent commenter is complaining about. Florida, which really gets whacked with hurricanes, is somewhere I'd really want to have a generator.
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Texan here. I don't have a generator. Blackouts basically haven't been a thing in my area since like 15 years ago, so it really depends on location. Also my electric bill works the same way as it would in any other state; the problem is when people buy electricity at what you might call "market price"; most of the time it's cheaper, but you get fucked over sooner or later. It's kind of like that story about people's AC being controlled by the power company. They signed up for a program that explicitly set your AC higher during high-demand periods and then surprise Pikachu faced when the company did what they said they would do.
That said, our grid is still definitely trash (as are many other things here) and I'm desperately trying to move. Basically the only thing we've got going for us is the food is amazing.
They signed up for a program that explicitly set your AC higher during high-demand periods and then surprise Pikachu faced when the company did what they said they would do.
If the price swing between peak and off-peak is dramatic enough, I guess one could probably cool water during off-peak hours and then use a heat exchanger or something to use it to sink heat during peak hours.
https://home.howstuffworks.com/ac4.htm
Chilled water systems - In a chilled-water system, the entire air conditioner is installed on the roof or behind the building. It cools water to between 40 and 45 degrees Fahrenheit (4.4 and 7.2 degrees Celsius). The chilled water is then piped throughout the building and connected to air handlers. This can be a versatile system where the water pipes work like the evaporator coils in a standard air conditioner. If it's well-insulated, there's no practical distance limitation to the length of a chilled-water pipe.
That's not intended to store energy, just transport it, but I'd imagine that all one would really need is that plus a sufficiently-large, insulated tank of water.
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California pays 19 dollars per kilowatt hour. Texas grid is better.
California pays 19 dollars per kilowatt hour.
I think that you might be thinking cents, not dollars.
Typical residential electricity prices in the US are two digits number of cents per dollar.
Also, I'm pretty sure that California's residential average price in 2025 is above $0.19/kWh. Maybe that's the cost of generation alone or something.
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No dummy, you're missing a decimal point. California only pays 19 CENTS per kwh.
And if conservative Texas is so great how come they pay 20% more per kwh for electricity than deep blue Washington State?
Everything's bigger in Texas, especially the idiots & excuses.
Deep blue Washington state has the advantage of giant amounts of hydroelectric generation combined with a relatively small population to consume it.
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Data centers need to bring their own power.
To a significant extent, they do, contracting for construction of generation and transmission (very often renewable), at least at the largest scale.
But, it's (mostly) all on the grid.
With demand like that, it's not like there isn't significant negotiation with the local power company, especially because they're frequently built a significant distance from existing large power infrastructure.
Heck, all the big 3 cloud providers signed deals for nuclear generation in the last few months. https://spectrum.ieee.org/nuclear-powered-data-center
Here's just one more article about these sorts of investments: https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/clean-energy/google-has-a-20b-plan-to-build-data-centers-and-clean-power-together
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So, exactly one uranium patch with a mk 3 miner stuffed full of slugs? Not including waste reprocessing or alternative recipes?
Seems satisfactory to me.
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They literally outlined the whole process... What stage in
Outside of that you have your clean loop, which is bog standard “use heat to make steam, steam move turbine, moving turbine make electiricity, steam cools back to water”. Again, there’s no part of that which somehow makes the water not exist, or not be usable for other purposes.
Wastes water?
If you send the water through a bunch of pipes it needs treated before it can be put back into the environment. This is true of any industrial process. This takes it out of circulation for a while, and in an arid state like Texas that’s a waste.
And reactors need a lot of water, which is why they’re built next to the ocean or a lake or something.
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I lived in TX while I was stationed there for like 3 years. Exactly 0 people I’ve met there had a generator.
I think that it's a good idea to have a generator in places that get serious storms, and coastal Texas can get hurricanes. I don't think that this is something specific to Texas' power generation, which is what I think the parent commenter is complaining about. Florida, which really gets whacked with hurricanes, is somewhere I'd really want to have a generator.
I don’t think that this is something specific to Texas’ power generation, which is what I think the parent commenter is complaining about.
I'd rather take their statement for what it literally was. Since that's what they went out of their way to explain. And since you're not them...
Very few Texans I knew (with the number being literally 0)... for years of living there. And myself during that time. Did not have a generator. That's it. Short of them providing any actual evidence of their claim. It's been dispelled. That's it.
Should they have one? I don't really care to comment deeply on that. I didn't see a point to having one while I lived there. So I would assume most people would also come to the same conclusion.
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First 0 nuclear reactors will be built anywhere in US before 2035.
Texas is actually a renewables leader because, believe it or not, it has the least corrupt grid/utility sector, and renewables are the best market solution.
Even with 24/7 datacenter needs, near site solar + 4 hour batteries is quicker to build than fossil fuel plants and long transmission, and it also allows an eventual small grid connection to both provide overnight resilience from low transmission utilization fossil fuel as peakers anywhere in the state as well as export clean energy on sunnier days.
Market solutions, despite hostile governments, can reduce fossil fuel electricity even with massive demand surge. One of the more important market effects is that reliance of mass fossil fuel electricity expansion and expensive long high capacity transmission, would ensure a high captive cost at high fuel costs because of mass use, in addtion to extorting all regular electricity consumers. Solar locks in costs forever, including potentially reducing normal consumer electricity costs.
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If you send the water through a bunch of pipes it needs treated before it can be put back into the environment. This is true of any industrial process. This takes it out of circulation for a while, and in an arid state like Texas that’s a waste.
And reactors need a lot of water, which is why they’re built next to the ocean or a lake or something.
Why put water back in the environment at all if it's needed to make steam again?
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Why put water back in the environment at all if it's needed to make steam again?
Because they use water for more than making steam. Much more water is used to cool the steam condensers and is often just dumped into the surrounding environment to cool off. Turkey Point in Florida has miles of canals that cool this water down.
If you don't believe me, then listen to the IAEA who created a water management program for just this reason:
Countries in water scarce regions, and considering the introduction of nuclear power, may show concern on the requirement for securing water resources to operate nuclear power plants and search for strategies for efficient water management. Experience has shown that nuclear power plants are susceptible to prolonged drought conditions, forcing them to shut down reactors or reduce the output to a minimal level.
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Because they use water for more than making steam. Much more water is used to cool the steam condensers and is often just dumped into the surrounding environment to cool off. Turkey Point in Florida has miles of canals that cool this water down.
If you don't believe me, then listen to the IAEA who created a water management program for just this reason:
Countries in water scarce regions, and considering the introduction of nuclear power, may show concern on the requirement for securing water resources to operate nuclear power plants and search for strategies for efficient water management. Experience has shown that nuclear power plants are susceptible to prolonged drought conditions, forcing them to shut down reactors or reduce the output to a minimal level.
Thanks for the information.
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First 0 nuclear reactors will be built anywhere in US before 2035.
Texas is actually a renewables leader because, believe it or not, it has the least corrupt grid/utility sector, and renewables are the best market solution.
Even with 24/7 datacenter needs, near site solar + 4 hour batteries is quicker to build than fossil fuel plants and long transmission, and it also allows an eventual small grid connection to both provide overnight resilience from low transmission utilization fossil fuel as peakers anywhere in the state as well as export clean energy on sunnier days.
Market solutions, despite hostile governments, can reduce fossil fuel electricity even with massive demand surge. One of the more important market effects is that reliance of mass fossil fuel electricity expansion and expensive long high capacity transmission, would ensure a high captive cost at high fuel costs because of mass use, in addtion to extorting all regular electricity consumers. Solar locks in costs forever, including potentially reducing normal consumer electricity costs.
near site solar + 4 hour batteries is quicker to build
But is it quicker at scale? Can solar and battery production keep up with expanding demand? Can it continue to do so over 10+ years? Can it outpace demand and start replacing fossil fuels?
Usually the proper solution is a mix of technologies. It shouldn't be solar vs nuclear vs wind, but a mixture.
Nuclear does a great job at providing a large amount of energy consistently. It's really bad at fluctuations in demand, and it's also really bad at quick rollout. I think it makes a lot of sense to build nuclear in Texas over the long term because it can start filling in demand as efficiency of older panels and batteries drop off, which extends the useful life of those installations and reduces reliance on battery backups.
I also think hydrogen is an interesting option as well, since it's sort of an alternative to batteries, which can be hard to get at scale. Use excess generation for electrolysis and use those for mobile energy use (e.g. trucks, forklifts, etc) or electricity generation. It's also not ideal, but it could make sense as part of a broader grid setup.
Solar is awesome and we need more of it. I just want to encourage consideration of other options so we can attack energy production from multiple angles.
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Uber-like surge pricing on electricity
We don't really: that story you heard from a few years ago was the only company that billed like that. The customers made a bet that the pricing averages through the day (lower at night, higher cost during the day) would average out in their favor over fixed-cost billing, and frankly, it did right up until it didn't.
They took a risk and got bit by, frankly, not understanding how the system works and basically ate the spikes.
Everyone else paid $0.09/kwh or so during that whole period, and the electric providers ate the cost because when you're averaging out spikes across millions of kwh, it won't lead to bankruptcy.
They took a risk and got bit by, frankly, not understanding how the system works and basically ate the spikes.
It's the exact same idea as insurance. You don't buy insurance because you think you'll take the insurance company for a ride, you buy insurance to even out your costs. If someone hits you, you don't need to fork out tens of thousands of dollars for medical bills and repairs, but you will fork that out over time instead with more manageable payments.
If you don't want to see scary bills, then pay a little higher average prices so you end up with a consistent bill.
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I lived in TX while I was stationed there for like 3 years. Exactly 0 people I’ve met there had a generator.
I think that it's a good idea to have a generator in places that get serious storms, and coastal Texas can get hurricanes. I don't think that this is something specific to Texas' power generation, which is what I think the parent commenter is complaining about. Florida, which really gets whacked with hurricanes, is somewhere I'd really want to have a generator.
Texas is big. You have tornados in the north, hurricanes in the south, and a lot of nothin' in the west. Some areas it makes sense to have a generator, but in many parts, it really doesn't.
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No dummy, you're missing a decimal point. California only pays 19 CENTS per kwh.
And if conservative Texas is so great how come they pay 20% more per kwh for electricity than deep blue Washington State?
Everything's bigger in Texas, especially the idiots & excuses.
Washington State?
Washing State has a ton of hydro, because they get a ton of rain in the mountains, thus near-constant hydro power supply. That really won't work in Texas.
I live in Utah and we have pretty average prices (about $0.12-0.13/kWh), which is pretty decent considering we have a competitive amount of renewables and a similar lack of hydro options.
I grew up in WA and we had a lot of cool classes about the geography of the region, especially things like the Grand Coulee Dam. I even took my kids there to show how hydro works. We have dams here in UT, but they're mostly to preserve water for the summer when we get almost no precipitation.
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California pays 19 dollars per kilowatt hour.
I think that you might be thinking cents, not dollars.
Typical residential electricity prices in the US are two digits number of cents per dollar.
Also, I'm pretty sure that California's residential average price in 2025 is above $0.19/kWh. Maybe that's the cost of generation alone or something.
Exactly. I have family in CA, WA, and I live in Utah, which is quite the gamut when it comes to electrical generation. CA is by far the most expensive, followed by UT (we're pretty average), followed by WA (cheap due to tons of hydro). CA is expensive because their electricity policies are stupid IMO, UT is cheap because we're somewhat reasonable (too much fossil fuels, but competitive renewables), and WA is cheap because they have more water than they know what to do with (ironically though, their water prices are higher than ours).
I don't know much about Texas, but I imagine it's similar to how things are here in UT, it just scales better since they have ~10x the population.
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They literally outlined the whole process... What stage in
Outside of that you have your clean loop, which is bog standard “use heat to make steam, steam move turbine, moving turbine make electiricity, steam cools back to water”. Again, there’s no part of that which somehow makes the water not exist, or not be usable for other purposes.
Wastes water?
steam cools back to water
That one. The most common methods of condensing that steam rely on large bodies of water acting as heat sinks. Water in those large reservoirs is lost to evaporation, which is exacerbated by the additional heat.
The water in that reservoir must be reserved for the nuclear plant; a drought that drains the reservoir will knock the plant offline.
Air-cooled condensers are possible, but at significantly reduced efficiency, especially in already hot environments.
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How many do they need in the winter, tho?
Yeah, build that many minus 10-20%, and fill in the rest with solar, wind, etc. That way you get a good mix of base level production and burst demand.
