Latest news with #CommonwealthFusionSystems
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Why NuScale Power Stock Sank 8.7% Today
Google announced a multibillion-dollar deal with nuclear fusion start-up Commonwealth Fusion Systems to secure 200 megawatts of power by the 2030s. Fusion is an experimental form of nuclear energy that promises to deliver clean, safe, bountiful power. 10 stocks we like better than NuScale Power › Shares of NuScale Power (NYSE: SMR) sank on Tuesday, finishing the day down 8.7%. The drop comes as the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite lost 0.2% and 0.9%, respectively. The Wall Street Journal reported that Alphabet's Google has signed a major deal with a nuclear fusion company. Google has signed a multibillion-dollar deal with Commonwealth Fusion System (CFS), a nuclear fusion start-up backed by Bill Gates. The deal will see Google secure 200 megawatts from CFS's first plant in Virginia by the 2030s. Nuclear fusion, in contrast to today's fission-based systems like those of NuScale, produces significantly more power and is safe and clean -- no spent nuclear material to dispose of and no risk of a meltdown. It has long been the holy grail of energy production but has so far eluded scientists. However, recent developments indicate it could be a reality in the next decade or so. Scientists have thought fusion technology was a decade or so away for decades. The investment from Google makes sense because of the upside, but you can bet that Google is hedging its bet with more realistic plans to meet its energy needs today and in the near future. NuScale Power's small model reactors (SMRs) make a lot of sense to fill that need in the near term. That being said, the company is still developing the technology. If you have significant risk tolerance, NuScale could be a good addition, but know that the stock will likely see a lot of volatility and is currently extremely pricey. Before you buy stock in NuScale Power, consider this: The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the for investors to buy now… and NuScale Power wasn't one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years. Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $722,181!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $968,402!* Now, it's worth noting Stock Advisor's total average return is 1,069% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 177% for the S&P 500. Don't miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join . See the 10 stocks » *Stock Advisor returns as of June 30, 2025 Suzanne Frey, an executive at Alphabet, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. Johnny Rice has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet. The Motley Fool recommends NuScale Power. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. Why NuScale Power Stock Sank 8.7% Today was originally published by The Motley Fool Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Google's data center energy use doubled in 4 years
No wonder Google is desperate for more power: the company's data centers more than doubled their electricity use in just four years. The eye-popping stat comes from Google's most recent sustainability report, which it released late last week. In 2024, Google data centers used 30.8 million megawatt-hours of electricity. That's up from 14.4 million megawatt-hours in 2020, the earliest year Google broke out data center consumption. Google has pledged to use only carbon-free sources of electricity to power its operations, a task made more challenging by its breakneck pace of data center growth. And the company's electricity woes are almost entirely a data center problem. In 2024, data centers accounted for 95.8% of the entire company's electron budget. The company's ratio of data-center-to-everything-else has been remarkably consistent over the last four years. Though 2020 is the earliest year Google has made data center electricity consumption figures available, it's possible to use that ratio to extrapolate back in time. Some quick math reveals that Google's data centers likely used just over 4 million megawatt-hours of electricity in 2014. That's growth of seven-fold in just a decade. The tech company has already picked most of the low-hanging fruit by improving the efficiency of its data centers. Those efforts have paid off, and the company is frequently lauded for being at the leading edge. But as the company's power usage effectiveness (PUE) has approached the theoretical ideal of 1.0, progress has slowed. Last year, Google's company-wide PUE dropped to 1.09, a 0.01 improvement over 2023 but only 0.02 better than a decade ago. It's clear that Google needs more electricity, and to keep to its carbon-free pledge, the company has been investing heavily in a range of energy sources, including geothermal, both flavors of nuclear power, and renewables. Geothermal shows promise for data center operations. By tapping into the Earth's heat, enhanced geothermal power plants can consistently generate electricity regardless of the weather. And many startups, including Google-backed Fervo Energy, are making it possible to drill profitable wells in more places. On the nuclear fusion side, Google last week announced it would invest in Commonwealth Fusion Systems and buy 200 megawatts of electricity from its forthcoming Arc power plant, scheduled to come online in the early 2030s. In the nuclear fission world, Google has pledged to buy 500 megawatts of electricity from Kairos Power, a small modular reactor startup. The nuclear deals have yet to deliver power — and they won't for five years or more. In the meantime, the company has been on a renewable energy buying spree. In May, the company bought 600 megawatts of solar capacity in South Carolina, and in January, it announced a deal for 700 megawatts of solar in Oklahoma. Google said in 2024 it was working with Intersect Power and TPG Rise Climate to build several gigawatts worth of carbon-free power plants, a $20 billion investment. The outlay isn't surprising given that solar and (to a lesser extent) wind are the only two sources of power that are readily available before the end of the decade. New nuclear power plants take years to permit and build, and even the most optimistic timelines don't see them connecting to the grid or a data center before the end of the decade. Natural gas, which the U.S. has plenty of, is hamstrung by five-plus-year waitlists for new turbines. That leaves renewables paired with battery storage. Google has contracted with enough renewables to match its total consumption, though those sources don't always deliver electrons when and where the company needs them. 'When we announced to the world that we were achieve that 100% annual matching goal, we were very clear that wasn't the end state,' Michael Terrell, Google's head of advanced energy, told reporters last week. 'The end game was 24/7 carbon free energy around the clock everywhere we operate at all times.' Google has some work to do. Worldwide, the company has about 66% of its data center consumption, matched to the hour, powered by carbon-free electricity. But that average papers over some regional challenges. While its Latin American data centers hit 92% last year, its Middle East and Africa facilities are only at 5%. Those hurdles are part of why Google is investing in stable, carbon-free sources like fission and fusion, Terrell said. 'In order for us to eventually reach this goal, we are going to have to have these technologies,' he said. Sign in to access your portfolio
Yahoo
17 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Google加碼投資核融合電廠！攜手Commonwealth推動未來無碳核能轉型
Google (GOOGL-US) 正對全球尚未商轉成功的尖端能源技術「核融合」押下重注。該公司於週一（30 日）宣布，將購買由新創公司 Commonwealth Fusion Systems，在美國維吉尼亞州興建的核融合電廠購買 200 兆瓦電力，並將進一步擴大對該公司的股權投資。 根據《巴隆周刊》（Barron's）報導，這座核融合電廠基於麻省理工學院（MIT）研究成果，預計將於 2030 年代初開始供電，是全球第一個計畫性商業核融合發電案之一。 Google 清潔能源與碳排減量高級總監 Michael Terrell 表示：「在我們看來，這是一項改變世界的技術。」 先前，Google 就已參與 Commonwealth 先前的融資輪，並投資另一家核融合公司 TAE Technologies，後者也獲得石油巨頭雪佛龍（Chevron）支持。 核融合原理近似太陽發電 每公斤燃料能量遠超核分裂 與現今核能電廠採用的「核分裂」不同，核融合透過結合兩個原子核產生能量，模仿太陽發電原理。根據國際原子能總署（IAEA），每公斤核融合燃料所產生的能量是核分裂的 4 倍，甚至比燃燒石油或煤炭高出近 400 萬倍。 在 AI 資料中心與電動車電力需求激增之際，核融合電力被視為實現能源穩定與碳中和的關鍵。Google 母公司 Alphabet 承諾於 2030 年實現全球 24 小時使用無碳能源的目標。 除了 Google，微軟 (MSFT-US) 也在 2023 年與核融合公司 Helion 簽署協議，承諾 2028 年前購買 50 兆瓦核融合電力。Helion 的主要投資者之一為 OpenAI 執行長 Sam Altman，顯示矽谷科技圈對核融合的重視程度日益上升。 核融合距離商轉不再遙遠 2027 年有望實現「點火」突破 儘管核融合技術長期被認為「永遠還要再過 20 年」，但進展顯著加快。加州一處政府實驗室於 2022 年成功實現「點火」實驗，即輸出能量大於啟動能量。Commonwealth 執行長 Bob Mumgaard 表示，公司目標在 2027 年複製此突破。 彭博新能源財經分析師 Gadomski 指出，隨著超級運算、3D 列印、先進材料與磁體技術的進步，核融合工程已具備實現條件。他表示：「我對核融合的前景感到樂觀。」 儘管技術樂觀聲音不斷，市場上仍有保守聲音。資本創新公司（Capital Innovations）投資長 Michael Underhill 就認為，核融合距離商業化仍需 15 至 30 年。 Google 的 Terrell 最後表示：「核融合雖是長期布局，但現在這個長期看起來不再那麼遙遠。我們希望確保自己也投資在這個未來能源上。」 更多鉅亨報導•快抄筆記！美國女股神木頭姐最新布局：AI、防務、核能•川普簽行政令促核能發展 核能股全面強彈
Forbes
a day ago
- Politics
- Forbes
Science Savants Mourn DOE Funding Cuts As Google's Fusion News Provides A Quiet Rebuke
Inside Commonwealth Fusion Systems' Devens, Massachusetts facility. Two of America's most senior scientists are enraged at the Trunp administration's slashing of research funding for energy, as well as draconian cuts at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF). The protesting scientific savants are John P. Holdren, President Barack Obama's science adviser and director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) and Neal Lane, a former NSF director and President Bill Clinton's science adviser and OSTP director. In an impassioned essay, published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, they say, 'What is happening now far exceeds our worst fears.' They state: 'Brutal cuts in staff and budgets have devastated not only science and science-centered work conducted inside the government, but also science at colleges, universities and nongovernmental research centers across the country that depend on federal funding. Profusion Of Companies Benefit 'The businesses that support the decimated offices and programs are likewise being impacted. The immense profusion of U.S. companies that work to convert the advances flowing from government-supported sciences into societal benefit, will suffer, too.' The co-authors see organic damage at the Department of Energy (DOE). They say that of its $50 billion budget in fiscal year 2024, about $15 billion went to non-defense research and development, and $7 billion of that went to energy supply options – nuclear, fossil and renewables — and to energy efficiency. Some $8 billion, according to Holdren and Lane, went to basic research, supported by the DOE's Office of Science. 'That office, the nation's largest funder of basic research in the physical sciences, supported 25,000 researchers (including students) at 300 institutions around the country, including 17 Department of Energy national laboratories; that work included advanced scientific computing, basic energy sciences, biological and environmental research, fusion energy sciences, high energy physics, and nuclear physics.' When I asked John Savage, the retired co-founder of the computer science department at Brown University, what the key ingredient is in research, he responded, 'Passion.' He explained that scientists need constant passion to barrel through the disappointments and constant roadblocks that stand between concept and realization, the time spent working at the bench on a microscope or a computer. An example of the rewards of that tireless seeking of a way forward in science came with the announcement that Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS), headquartered in Devens, Massachusetts, has signed a deal with Google to provide 200 megawatts of power from a site in Chesterfield County, in southwestern Virginia. This could be the beginning of the greatest revolution yet in energy and electricity production. Breakthrough Lit Industrial Revolution It could be as big a breakthrough in science and engineering as when James Watt added a condenser to an embryonic steam engine — and lit the fuse to the Industrial Revolution. It will have come after decades of frustration and passion — and untold billions of dollars of funding from world governments and private companies and research universities, often deploying government funding This money has been spread across two principal competing fusion technologies: magnetic confinement fusion (tokamak) and inertial confinement fusion, in which a target is compressed with a beams of energy or light. Both have been stubbornly difficult, head-breakingly hard. Lately there have been major advances in inertial fusion at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, but magnetic confinement promises, through CFS leadership, to be the first commercial plant. Tellingly, during the past 70 or so years, there have been many efforts to cut funding for fusion. Success isn't guaranteed, but CFS has reached the threshold and is confident that it will succeed. The lessons learned in many experiments have paved the way for a moment of high excitement: the opening of what might be the beginning of a new chapter in the energy and the human prospect.
Axios
a day ago
- Business
- Axios
Google to buy power from Chesterfield's planned nuclear fusion plant
Google just inked a power purchase deal with Commonwealth Fusion Systems, a company planning to build in Chesterfield County what it hopes is the world's first commercial nuclear fusion power plant. Why it matters: The planned reactor is still years away, but the agreement shows how Google is trying to harness technology to help meet AI's voracious power needs — including in our backyard. Driving the news: Under the agreement, announced Monday, Google would buy 200 megawatts of power from CFS' planned reactor. It also boosts its investment in the Massachusetts-based fusion company. Catch up quick: CFS announced late last year that, in partnership with Dominion Energy, it would build the world's first commercial nuclear fusion power plant in the James River Industrial Center in Chesterfield. The plant, named ARC, won't be operational until the early 2030s, but it's ultimately expected to generate enough electricity to power about 150,000 homes, per a news release. In May, CFS started the zoning and permit process for the Chesterfield site, BizSense reported. Groundbreaking isn't expected to happen until the "late 2020s." Zoom in: Generating electricity from fusion is also still years away, Axios' Alan Neuhauser reports, but because of its promise of near-limitless zero-emissions electricity and AI'sextensive power needs, fusion energy is considered the ultimate climate moonshot. Between the lines: Google has long invested in early-stage clean energy technologies to act as a catalyst for the industry, and this week's deal is its first energy procurement deal with a fusion company.
