alt Hacker NewsIf solar+battery were cheaper wouldn't the new AI data centers be opting to pay to build that rather than nuclear or LPG options?
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Nuclear, FBOW, has one big advantage.
Namely, It's very easy to 'design to load' where you don't need to worry about the next shipment of Coal, or an extended weather event causing excessive cloud cover and depleting your reserves.
Heck, even as far as compared to LPG, you don't have to worry as much about disruptions or possible cost shifts around LPG supply.
Yes, I'm possibly tongue-in-cheek handwaving specific types of 'weather events' here and potential impacts, i.e. Tsunamis... OTOH it's a lot easier in current gen designs to make something that would have minimal risk for something, say, in the middle of nowhere Texas.
Some of the data centers in Texas are at least partly being built to turn surplus natural gas into cash.[1][2]
1. https://energynow.com/2026/03/us-natgas-prices-at-waha-hub-i...
2. https://www.rbccm.com/en/insights/2026/05/natural-gas-powers...
It works better on a geographically spread-out grid, and the data centers are running into the same limit that renewable plants are, which is that the grid is struggling to keep up (in large part, in many places, due to a history of underinvestment).
They are cheaper, that’s why in most of the world, datacentres are being built where there’s copious solar or wind power.
The problem is that they need full power 24/365.
https://www.fastcompany.com/91500104/google-minnesota-data-c...
> Google’s new Minnesota data center comes with the world’s largest battery—and won’t raise electric bills
> The tech giant says it will fund enough new wind, solar, and long-duration storage to cover the project’s power demand and avoid shifting costs to ratepayers.