The time of operation of an adiabatic quantum computer must be less than the decoherence time, otherwise the computer would be nonoperative. So far, the nonadiabatic corrections to an adiabatic quantum computer are merely theoretical considerations. By the above reason, we consider the particular case of a quantum-dot-confined electron spin qubit working adiabatically in the nanoscale regime (e.g., in the MeV range of energies) and include nonadiabatic corrections in it. If the decoherence times of a quantum dot computer are ∼100 ns [J M Kikkawa and D D Awschalom, Phys. Rev. Lett. 80, 4313 (1998)] then the predicted number of one qubit gate (primitive) operations of the Loss–DiVincenzo quantum computer in such an interval of time must be > 10¹⁰. However, if the quantum-dot-confined electron spin qubit is very excited (i.e., the semiclassical limit) the number of operations of such a computer would be approximately the same as that of a classical computer. Our results suggest that for an adiabatic quantum computer to operate successfully within the decoherence times, it is necessary to take into account nonadiabatic corrections.