Europe needs hyperscalers (lots of them)

Posted Feb 12, 2026 9:56 UTC (Thu) by kleptog (subscriber, #1183)
In reply to: Europe needs hyperscalers (lots of them) by khim
Parent article: FOSS in times of war, scarcity, and AI

Europe's Achilles heel is that it imports ~50% of its energy needs. While we've made great strides in energy efficiency, that's not enough by itself.

> 1. Ensu[r]e that European companies have something worth selling for other countries in exchange for raw resources (e.g. uran[ium] that's needed to drive electricity generation in France).

That's not a problem. We spend ~375 billion on energy imports, while exporting ~4 trillion in goods & services, so a bit less than 10%. The problem is not being able to import energy at any price.

We don't need to open our data-centres to people from other countries.

> 2. Accept return to technologies of XIX or maybe even XVIII century that can be supported using resources that Europe have indigenously.

Or go straight to XXI century technology. Anything non-renewable is dead-end anyway, it's just a matter of time. Nuclear would be great, but right now we're installing renewables at a rate of about 1 nuclear reactor every 5 days. It's going to be some time before nuclear installations ramp up to meet that, if ever.

And of course, fusion power is only 20 years away /s

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Europe needs hyperscalers (lots of them)

Posted Feb 12, 2026 10:13 UTC (Thu) by taladar (subscriber, #68407) [Link] (8 responses)

Nuclear power isn't actually great at all, it needs fuel that needs to be imported from a small number of countries again.

Europe needs hyperscalers (lots of them)

Posted Feb 12, 2026 12:16 UTC (Thu) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link] (7 responses)

Current nuclear reactors are very inefficient in the way they use their (imported) fuel. In principle, we know how to build nuclear reactors that would make more efficient use of their fuel, and/or would be able to use existing “nuclear waste” as fuel and, as a side benefit, make it less nasty in the process. The remaining challenge is to make these technologies competitive with renewables on a euros-per-megawatt-hour basis.

Europe needs hyperscalers (lots of them)

Posted Feb 12, 2026 13:37 UTC (Thu) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (3 responses)

> and/or would be able to use existing “nuclear waste” as fuel and, as a side benefit, make it less nasty in the process.

Aka "fast breeders". I've also heard something about thorium burners that apparently burn up pretty much everything.

> The remaining challenge is to make these technologies competitive with renewables on a euros-per-megawatt-hour basis.

So using a fast breeder to turn U-238 into Pu-239 would be one obvious way. Processing (separating) waste into short- and long-lived radio-nuclides, and using the nasty stuff to bulk up new rods from old also seems an obvious way to me to reduce costs - store the nasty stuff inside the reactor, and break it up at the same time!

Of course, there's the political problems, and geo-stability ... the German nuclear industry as an example of the former, the tsunami and Japanese example of the latter. Then of course, we've got Dungeness (now shut down?), but the site is built on an area that was 5 miles out to sea in Roman times, and if we have global warming could very easily become 5 miles out to sea again in a pretty short time ...

Cheers,
Wol

Europe needs hyperscalers (lots of them)

Posted Feb 12, 2026 14:59 UTC (Thu) by malmedal (subscriber, #56172) [Link] (2 responses)

> seems an obvious way to me to reduce costs

These things have been tried, they are not cheap. The reason they(I think France got the furthest) tried was to have the technology ready for when the uranium mines ran dry, not because it would immediately save money.

To run a reactor efficiently and safely you need to know exactly what the fuel is made of down to at least cubic decimeter resolution.

For instance Xenon-135 is a neutron absorber produced by nuclear reactions, when this builds up you need to increase neutron flux to compensate, however being a gas it can escape quickly if it gets the chance, so if the operators make a mistake the reactor can overheat and melt down.
(This is likely a major reason for Chernobyl)

Europe needs hyperscalers (lots of them)

Posted Feb 12, 2026 15:38 UTC (Thu) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (1 responses)

Don't remember the technology - was it AGR? I remember our AGR reactor technology got overwhelmed by the American PWR reactors, despite being much safer.

Iirc it used deuterium (heavy water) as the moderator, so if it got hot, the moderator boiled away and the fast neutrons escaped without being captured and driving fission.

(I thought the main reason for Chernobyl was the operators disabling the safety features "to see what will happen"!)

Cheers,
Wol

Europe needs hyperscalers (lots of them)

Posted Feb 12, 2026 17:38 UTC (Thu) by malmedal (subscriber, #56172) [Link]

> I remember our AGR reactor technology got overwhelmed by the American PWR reactors, despite being much safer.

Don't know if they were safer, but it's clear they were more expensive.

> Iirc it used deuterium (heavy water) as the moderator

No, graphite for moderator, CO2 as coolant. They used control rods to control the reactivity.

> "to see what will happen"

There are very conflicting stories about the details, but it is clear that it was a pre-planned test, deemed necessary to verify correct operation. It was supposed to be done by the day-shift, but it was delayed, so the unprepared night-shift got the job.

Europe needs hyperscalers (lots of them)

Posted Feb 12, 2026 17:46 UTC (Thu) by rgmoore (✭ supporter ✭, #75) [Link] (2 responses)

The biggest problem with nuclear is that it's still a heat engine, and just building the heat engine parts of the power plant (i.e. the external steam loop, turbines, and cooling system) is more expensive than equivalent renewable energy. Even if the actual reactor were free- and they're obviously far from it- and it still wouldn't be able to compete on cost with renewable energy. That's today. Renewable energy (including battery storage) is still getting cheaper, so its competitive advantage over nuclear is only going to grow.

Of course renewable energy isn't perfect. It still has problems, and there are probably specific applications where other technologies have non-cost advantages that outweigh renewables' cost advantage. There's also no good reason to stop using nuclear plants that are already paid for and are running well. But we're now at the point that plans for new and replacement, non-renewable power plants need to include a justification for not using renewables instead.

Europe needs hyperscalers (lots of them)

Posted Feb 12, 2026 18:04 UTC (Thu) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (1 responses)

> But we're now at the point that plans for new and replacement, non-renewable power plants need to include a justification for not using renewables instead.

The justification for nuclear is "it's not carbon". So much of this carbon-neutral is exactly that - crap. When you burn anything the question should be "how long ago was the sunlight I'm releasing locked up?". Anything more that 100 years or so should be a red flag (nuclear doesn't count here - that's releasing ancient starlight :-)

Renewables, it's possibly measured in hours, which is great. Wood, of course, while not a particularly good fuel in many ways, is measured mostly in a century or two (or less). Coal and oil are adding to the CO2 burden, and from my knowledge of what's going on, I think we passed the point of no return quite a while back. I suspect Khim may be right in saying Europe will be going back to the 17th century, but on current performance I suspect the rest of the world will be joining us!

Cheers,
Wol

Maybe that's enough

Posted Feb 12, 2026 19:41 UTC (Thu) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link]

Can we agree that this has wandered pretty far off-topic, even for an article like this one? Energy issues are certainly of great interest, but we'll not solve them on LWN.

Europe needs hyperscalers (lots of them)

Posted Feb 12, 2026 15:39 UTC (Thu) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

It's really funny how you may say two sentences that directly contradict each other in one, single, paragraph.

> That's not a problem.

Interesting… and why is that?

> We spend ~375 billion on energy imports, while exporting ~4 trillion in goods & services, so a bit less than 10%.

So that's not a problem because currently Europe does have things to sell… okay.

> The problem is not being able to import energy at any price.

IOW: it's is a problem. And a pretty big one.

We are entering times where money are almost entirely detached from the actual things that are needed: there are mountains of money that are exchanged in the virtual world of “services” and there are real things that one couldn't buy at any price except if you have the right connections.

Things like “rare earth”. There was lot of hoopla about these in the press, lately… what is the total market of these? Go google that and compare to market capitalization of AI companies (which are using these same rare earths)… you would be surprised.

And, again, Europe either have to ensure that Europe does have “good and services” to sell — or it would find a way to live without things Europe needs.

Chances are extremely high that “XXI century technologies”, in Europe, would be identical to XVIII century technology and not anything new and exciting.