Greenpeace Takes on Apple and Other Tech Companies over Coal-Powered Data Centers

[AllieNeko]

You do realise you just said 4000 people died because of chernobyl and then declared nuclear safe, right?

Also, are you aware of nuclear waste?
Are you aware of the half-life and radioactivity of nuclear waste?
Are you aware that we do not have any proper means of disposing of nuclear waste?
Are you aware of the obscene cost of nuclear material and plant maintenance?

Nuclear is a lot of hype.

You do realize you didn't read a word of what I said, especially that it wasn't perfect. The alternative to nuclear isn't some magic perfect technology. By and large, it's coal. Did you read where I wrote 20,000 people die in coal mining accidents IN CHINA ALONE every year? Also, the 4,000 is not direct Chernobyl deaths, it's the expected total deaths including radiation-induced cancers many years later. Under 50 people died directly as a result of Chernobyl. Do you want to start figuring out how many people die from additional cancers caused by pollution at a coal-fired plant?

Even "renewable" energy sources have major problems. Photovoltaic cells (solar panels) are NOT clean to produce. Not even remotely. Solar energy is actually quite dirty when looked at across the entire lifecycle:

http://grist.org/politics/2010-01-06-solars-dirty-little-secret/

Hydro is great pollution-wise, but there are so many other impacts from the dams, the flooding, the risk of failure, the changed landscapes.

Wind is great, but it takes a LOT of wind generators to produce even modest amounts of electricity.

Nuclear is the cleanest, safest technology that can meet our electrical demands. It's far, far better for the environment than coal.

I'm sorry if I implied that nuclear was somehow perfectly safe, that's not what I intended at all. Simply that it's the best choice we have, in terms of environmental impact and human safety. Not only that, if there wasn't such strong anti-nuclear campaigning, we could actually make upgrades to our plants to further improve our safety. Lessons, also, need to be learned from the incidents that have occurred. Chernobyl was entirely preventable. Fukushima, looking back, could have been designed a whole lot better - and probably shouldn't have even been sited where it was.

 

[applesith]

[/COLOR]

Yes, that's the point.

You have to promote more efficient and longer term strategies before they are profitable. You understand how profit works, right? The government supplements the economics around DEMAND until the scale is there to prove profitable. This isn't the asinine ethanol subsidies than nobody but corn farmers like. It's about forcing coal to be as economically ugly as it is environmentally ugly– pushing the economy to the threshold of profitability.

Put it this way– energy jobs can't be outsourced, regardless of technology (coal or clean.) The jobs don't disappear, but the energy produced from them does get cleaner.

That is so backwards. Destroying an industry to promote one that is so inefficient. Even with billions of dollars and paying zero taxes, solyndra couldn't get anything right.

The government can print money and spray it around to create fake demand. That's Keynes economics and it never works.

 

[AidenShaw]

Also, load on the servers drops off overnight. They don't spin down the disks or anything like that but certainly CPU load and temperature inside the server drops.

Umm, you do realize that the Icloud is a global resource accessed 24x7 by people around the world?

When the US is slowing down is exactly when Australia, Japan and East Asia are waking up.

There's no "overnight" for a billion dollar datacentre.

 

[Blu Reel]

There's no ambiguity in a 20 MW solar farm. 20 MW = nameplate capacity, which is the most it can generate in a given moment.

That 20 MW is scaled down over time by a variable called capacity factor, which accounts for the sun going down and clouds blocking the sky.

And I never said 3-4 MW peak. Peak = 20 MW. Problem is it will rarely generate peak. And a night it will generate 0. 3-4 is an average over time with a capacity factor of 15-20% (which I think is reasonable for solar).



They can definitely cover 30-40% of a 20 MW load.
--> 3-4 MW(solar) + 5 MW(fuel cell) = 8-9 MW = 40-45% of a 20 MW load

What I'm saying is they can't cover 60%, which is the number being thrown out in articles. And they definitely can't cover 100%, which is the number that was thrown out in the post on the front page.

Also a fuel cell isn't used for storage. It's used for converting chemicals into electricity.

The other side of the equation that everyone hasn't talked about in detail, yet, is simply no one but Apple knows exactly how much power their data center is going to consume.

We've all "talked" about how much power is being supplied and what percentage of that is "clean" etc. Some have made generalized usage comparisons and based their numbers analysis on that.

But unless someone has hardcore data on exactly how many servers are going to be installed, and how they're going to be used which would give an indication on how much power they're going to consume, none of us can say for certain how much power Apple's data center is going to consume.

We all assume Apple is going to use this data center like any other company is going to use their data centers. We all assume that the data centers are going to be used solely for iCloud. We all assume Apple designed the data center to be used at maximum capacity because "logically" it wouldn't make sense to do otherwise.

But do we really know that?

I mean logically speaking, how can any company that makes computers and software have the cash reserves that Apple has while the entire PC industry is either stagnating, merging, or dying.

To say that Apple is no longer a computer company and is now a consumer electronics company fits with the notion that that's illogical for a PC company to do something like that.

But, back to my original point, we don't have the other side of the equation to accurately assess how much power Apple's data center is going to consume and therefore we're not able to calculate the actual percentage of "clean" vs "unclean" power that is actually going to be consumed. Power supplied doesn't equal power consumed. If it did, we all would be paying higher electricity bills, but then again if we did, we could be paying the same amount per month

 

[MagnusVonMagnum]

Fission reactors are messy stuff. People should be concerned about the waste it produces because it's going to be around for a LONG time (probably longer than the human race itself). The idea of putting the waste into a mountain in Nevada presupposes that mountain will be undisturbed for thousand and thousands of years. We already know the barrels will corrode and leak the waste into the mountain some day at which point it would be very hard to remove safely. I always liked the idea of sending it into the sun, but that then involves the very real danger of something going wrong during rocket lift-offs and we're talking about a LOT of material over the years. Too bad we don't have a better way of getting into space (space elevator concept would be great for getting waste off the planet).

In any case, there's something far better on the horizon and it's called FUSION. These reactors produce very little in the way of harmful waste. France has a test reactor called "ITER" in production (along with other country partners) in the southern part of the country and it's expected to be completed in 2019. Frankly, if a lot more money were poured into this experiment, the sooner we could be enjoying TRUE clean and nearly unlimited power. Building more fission reactors now for the next 100 years ignores the near future solutions that are only a decade or so away.

 

[Liquorpuki]

The other side of the equation that everyone hasn't talked about in detail, yet, is simply no one but Apple knows exactly how much power their data center is going to consume.

We've all "talked" about how much power is being supplied and what percentage of that is "clean" etc. Some have made generalized usage comparisons and based their numbers analysis on that.

But unless someone has hardcore data on exactly how many servers are going to be installed, and how they're going to be used which would give an indication on how much power they're going to consume, none of us can say for certain how much power Apple's data center is going to consume.

......

But, back to my original point, we don't have the other side of the equation to accurately assess how much power Apple's data center is going to consume and therefore we're not able to calculate the actual percentage of "clean" vs "unclean" power that is actually going to be consumed. Power supplied doesn't equal power consumed. If it did, we all would be paying higher electricity bills, but then again if we did, we could be paying the same amount per month

Apple said their datacenter is a 20 MW load at peak capacity. I'm pretty sure they weren't lying about that 20 MW because if they were, the equipment Duke Energy had to install for the datacenter tie-line would be rated incorrectly and then stuff might blow up. My math is based on meeting that 20 MW load, along with the assumption of a 15-20% capacity factor for solar.

And the way the grid works is you have guys at every utility who get paid a lot of money to actively monitor consumption hour by hour. If demand rises, they make phone calls to peaking plant operators to turn on their generating units to match load. When people turn off their lights, they call the same guys and tell them to shut down their units. So yes power supplied = power consumed. If it didn't, utilities would lose a lot of money by wasting electricity (power supplied > power consumed) or neighborhoods would get blackouts (power supplied < power consumed).

 

[iKitten]

...

 

[Blu Reel]

Apple said their datacenter is a 20 MW load at peak capacity. I'm pretty sure they weren't lying about that 20 MW because if they were, the equipment Duke Energy had to install for the datacenter tie-line would be rated incorrectly and then stuff might blow up. My math is based on meeting that 20 MW load, along with the assumption of a 15-20% capacity factor for solar.

And the way the grid works is you have guys at every utility who get paid a lot of money to actively monitor consumption hour by hour. If demand rises, they make phone calls to peaking plant operators to turn on their generating units to match load. When people turn off their lights, they call the same guys and tell them to shut down their units. So yes power supplied = power consumed. If it didn't, utilities would lose a lot of money by wasting electricity (power supplied > power consumed) or neighborhoods would get blackouts (power supplied < power consumed).

BTW I actually wasn't targeting your calculations in my post, but I chose to quote you simply because you were the most recent calculation post. I think your calculations were the most informative on this thread.

Also to add to your last comment, it should be noted that while utility companies do monitor and respond to the power consumption situation, there is a buffer margin for power supplied. I don't know what that is or how exactly that is implemented. My assumption it is based on historical usage of power. The reason is it takes time to turn on a generator.

Simplest example of this is how long it takes the backup generators to kick in for a data center in case of a power failure. The generators are not instant on. In a data center, this time is "covered" by the power supplied by UPCs which are designed to handle this scenario.

How exactly a the electrical companies handle this and where in the grid it's handled, I don't know.

I just know that when someone powers up an HVAC, there has to be enough power in the grid at that instant otherwise the power in that grid area will drop for everyone until the power company turns on more generators.

While it's a departure from the original article, I wouldn't mind hearing from anyone who knows more about this

 

[Liquorpuki]

BTW I actually wasn't targeting your calculations in my post, but I chose to quote you simply because you were the most recent calculation post. I think your calculations were the most informative on this thread.

Thanks. I'm not an expert but because of work I feel like I'm knowledgeable enough to share info.

Also to add to your last comment, it should be noted that while utility companies do monitor and respond to the power consumption situation, there is a buffer margin for power supplied. I don't know what that is or how exactly that is implemented. My assumption it is based on historical usage of power. The reason is it takes time to turn on a generator.

There is a buffer and most utilities operate in excess of power needed but close to it. They can't generate less than what's needed because that would cause blackouts and they would get sued. But if they generated way more than was consumed, they'd be wasting fuel and money and your electric bills would rise. There are guys who work at utilities called load dispatchers whose job is to monitor the load 24/7 and anticipate what's needed. They use historical data and real-time data to help them.

Simplest example of this is how long it takes the backup generators to kick in for a data center in case of a power failure. The generators are not instant on. In a data center, this time is "covered" by the power supplied by UPCs which are designed to handle this scenario.

In the grid, there are two types of generating plants. Baseload plants like coal, nuclear, geothermal are always on. They're the most cost efficient and the most crucial but they take awhile to get started. The utility will always keep these running and they provide the backbone of the power system. Then you have peaking plants and rewewables. Peaking plants are usually natural gas and can be turned on to generate within a few minutes. Natural gas is expensive though so you don't want to run these 24/7. So instead, dispatchers will turn these on to coincide when consumption is at its max. IE here in Southern California during the summer, people will turn on their AC in the afternoon and load will rise, so peaking plants get turned on to match load and then shut off a few hours later. Solar is a good way to use renewable energy to match peak load. Wind on the otherhand blows the most at night and is a pain in the ass to incorporate into the grid.

For the datacenter, what should happen is the UPS's should only get used if something catastrophic "islands" the datacenter. IE the transmission line going from Duke Energy to Apple gets destroyed or the whole grid goes down. Otherwise Duke Energy is responsible for making sure Apple has enough power to operate and in order to do that, they need to have worked out with Apple how much the load will be.

 

[MacinDoc]

You do realize you didn't read a word of what I said, especially that it wasn't perfect. The alternative to nuclear isn't some magic perfect technology. By and large, it's coal. Did you read where I wrote 20,000 people die in coal mining accidents IN CHINA ALONE every year? Also, the 4,000 is not direct Chernobyl deaths, it's the expected total deaths including radiation-induced cancers many years later. Under 50 people died directly as a result of Chernobyl. Do you want to start figuring out how many people die from additional cancers caused by pollution at a coal-fired plant?

Even "renewable" energy sources have major problems. Photovoltaic cells (solar panels) are NOT clean to produce. Not even remotely. Solar energy is actually quite dirty when looked at across the entire lifecycle:

http://grist.org/politics/2010-01-06-solars-dirty-little-secret/

Hydro is great pollution-wise, but there are so many other impacts from the dams, the flooding, the risk of failure, the changed landscapes.

Wind is great, but it takes a LOT of wind generators to produce even modest amounts of electricity.

Nuclear is the cleanest, safest technology that can meet our electrical demands. It's far, far better for the environment than coal.

I'm sorry if I implied that nuclear was somehow perfectly safe, that's not what I intended at all. Simply that it's the best choice we have, in terms of environmental impact and human safety. Not only that, if there wasn't such strong anti-nuclear campaigning, we could actually make upgrades to our plants to further improve our safety. Lessons, also, need to be learned from the incidents that have occurred. Chernobyl was entirely preventable. Fukushima, looking back, could have been designed a whole lot better - and probably shouldn't have even been sited where it was.

Excellent points. In some cases, hydroelectric dams and their associated reservoirs produce more greenhouse gases than thermoelectric plants. In terms of environmental impact, nuclear power is by far the "cleanest" source of energy.

For more information on the harmful effects of hydroelectric dams, you can also refer to the international rivers.org's excellent website.

 

[thekev]

Excellent points. In some cases, hydroelectric dams and their associated reservoirs produce more greenhouse gases than thermoelectric plants. In terms of environmental impact, nuclear power is by far the "cleanest" source of energy.

For more information on the harmful effects of hydroelectric dams, you can also refer to the international rivers.org's excellent website.

Dams can also kill fish to a point where they impact population stability. Windmills can be detrimental to bird populations, although some are better than others. What many people don't realize is that it's important how these things are implemented.

 

[AllieNeko]

Exactly, yet Greenpeace loves to tear on nuclear - one of the greenest electricity sources there is. I don't understand it at all?

 

[MagnusVonMagnum]

Exactly, yet Greenpeace loves to tear on nuclear - one of the greenest electricity sources there is. I don't understand it at all?

Look up NUCLEAR WASTE.

There's NOTHING "green" about it. It'll be here for tens of thousands of years and it's deadly to humans and animals alike. You can't contain it safely forever (earthquake, massive flooding, whatever could set it free; 50,000+ years is a LONG time). And as you may or may not have noticed, the actual reactors can emit deadly radiation in accidents (three mile island) or during natural disasters (Japan just recently where they dumped TONS of radioactive water into the ocean which has been detected hundreds of miles away in fishing areas, which means it then gets into your FOOD). WTF is "green" about that???

 

[-aggie-]

You do realize you didn't read a word of what I said, especially that it wasn't perfect. The alternative to nuclear isn't some magic perfect technology. By and large, it's coal. Did you read where I wrote 20,000 people die in coal mining accidents IN CHINA ALONE every year? Also, the 4,000 is not direct Chernobyl deaths, it's the expected total deaths including radiation-induced cancers many years later. Under 50 people died directly as a result of Chernobyl. Do you want to start figuring out how many people die from additional cancers caused by pollution at a coal-fired plant?

Even "renewable" energy sources have major problems. Photovoltaic cells (solar panels) are NOT clean to produce. Not even remotely. Solar energy is actually quite dirty when looked at across the entire lifecycle:

http://grist.org/politics/2010-01-06-solars-dirty-little-secret/

Hydro is great pollution-wise, but there are so many other impacts from the dams, the flooding, the risk of failure, the changed landscapes.

Wind is great, but it takes a LOT of wind generators to produce even modest amounts of electricity.

Nuclear is the cleanest, safest technology that can meet our electrical demands. It's far, far better for the environment than coal.

I'm sorry if I implied that nuclear was somehow perfectly safe, that's not what I intended at all. Simply that it's the best choice we have, in terms of environmental impact and human safety. Not only that, if there wasn't such strong anti-nuclear campaigning, we could actually make upgrades to our plants to further improve our safety. Lessons, also, need to be learned from the incidents that have occurred. Chernobyl was entirely preventable. Fukushima, looking back, could have been designed a whole lot better - and probably shouldn't have even been sited where it was.

One of the few posters in this thread that actually sounds reasonable. Too bad it's so easy to scare people when anything nuclear gets mentioned that they can't see past the FUD spread by the few clueless ones in this country. Because of that fact, trying to argue with anyone who has already made up their mind about nuclear is pointless (you've already seen how they ignore what you post). Facts don't matter in an emotional issue, when you've got people who think reactors are potential bombs (due to Chernobyl). Fukushima only adds to their FUD, even though the conditions in Japan aren't credible here. And all the FUD started from TMI. It's so easy to to convert rems to millirems and make the dose number sound huge to the average joe, who has no clue what a rem even is. I remember just shaking my head at some of the stuff reported back then. Disgusting.

Fission reactors are messy stuff. People should be concerned about the waste it produces because it's going to be around for a LONG time (probably longer than the human race itself). The idea of putting the waste into a mountain in Nevada presupposes that mountain will be undisturbed for thousand and thousands of years. We already know the barrels will corrode and leak the waste into the mountain some day at which point it would be very hard to remove safely. I always liked the idea of sending it into the sun, but that then involves the very real danger of something going wrong during rocket lift-offs and we're talking about a LOT of material over the years. Too bad we don't have a better way of getting into space (space elevator concept would be great for getting waste off the planet).

In any case, there's something far better on the horizon and it's called FUSION. These reactors produce very little in the way of harmful waste. France has a test reactor called "ITER" in production (along with other country partners) in the southern part of the country and it's expected to be completed in 2019. Frankly, if a lot more money were poured into this experiment, the sooner we could be enjoying TRUE clean and nearly unlimited power. Building more fission reactors now for the next 100 years ignores the near future solutions that are only a decade or so away.

Look up NUCLEAR WASTE.

There's NOTHING "green" about it. It'll be here for tens of thousands of years and it's deadly to humans and animals alike. You can't contain it safely forever (earthquake, massive flooding, whatever could set it free; 50,000+ years is a LONG time). And as you may or may not have noticed, the actual reactors can emit deadly radiation in accidents (three mile island) or during natural disasters (Japan just recently where they dumped TONS of radioactive water into the ocean which has been detected hundreds of miles away in fishing areas, which means it then gets into your FOOD). WTF is "green" about that???

It's sad that you don't even know that you don't know what you're talking about. Perhaps, you should actually work in the nuclear industry before spouting off stuff you read somewhere on the internet. I'll just leave it at that, because based on how I see you are on other threads, you're not going to read what I write anyway.

 

[John.B]

One of the few posters in this thread that actually sounds reasonable. Too bad it's so easy to scare people when anything nuclear gets mentioned that they can't see past the FUD spread by the few clueless ones in this country. Because of that fact, trying to argue with anyone who has already made up their mind about nuclear is pointless (you've already seen how they ignore what you post). Facts don't matter in an emotional issue, when you've got people who think reactors are potential bombs (due to Chernobyl). Fukushima only adds to their FUD, even though the conditions in Japan aren't credible here. And all the FUD started from TMI. It's so easy to to convert rems to millirems and make the dose number sound huge to the average joe, who has no clue what a rem even is. I remember just shaking my head at some of the stuff reported back then. Disgusting.

Just last summer, the nuclear facilities at Los Alamos were seriously threatened by wildfires, and a nuke plant in Nebraska was very nearly flooded.

You'd have to be living with your head in the sand to think the Fukushima scenarios aren't credible in the US of A. Would you be OK with College Station taking the same amount of radiation that Japan experienced with the three Daiichi reactor meltdowns?

 

[-aggie-]

Just last summer, the nuclear facilities at Los Alamos were seriously threatened by wildfires, and a nuke plant in Nebraska was very nearly flooded.

You'd have to be living with your head in the sand to think the Fukushima scenarios aren't credible in the US of A. Would you be OK with College Station taking the same amount of radiation that Japan experienced with the three Daiichi reactor meltdowns?

So, what's your point? You linked to two scenarios that aren't an issue. Next.

 

[MagnusVonMagnum]

One of the few posters in this thread that actually sounds reasonable. Too bad it's so easy to scare people when anything nuclear gets mentioned that they can't see past the FUD spread by the few clueless ones in this country. Because of that fact, trying to argue with anyone who has already made up their mind about nuclear is pointless (you've already seen how they ignore what you post). Facts don't matter in an emotional issue, when you've got people who think reactors are potential bombs (due to Chernobyl). Fukushima only adds to their FUD, even though the conditions in Japan aren't credible here. And all the FUD started from TMI. It's so easy to to convert rems to millirems and make the dose number sound huge to the average joe, who has no clue what a rem even is. I remember just shaking my head at some of the stuff reported back then. Disgusting.

You're an apologist, likely working in the industry. Some of us know exactly what we're talking about. It's those in the nuclear industry that try to candy coat the radioactive crap they're pushing. Nuclear power can be operated safely, assuming a lot of variables never come into play (e.g. like terrorism, war, faulty engineering like 3 Mile Island, unforeseen massive geological events like a super volcano or 9+ Richter scale earthquake in the vicinity, massive plague that takes down the majority of the operators watching over this stuff in a short time, etc. etc.). It's really easy to put SPIN on things and call other people ignorant, but at the end of the day some of us know you're selling a nice wet dream, not the cold hard reality that accidents can and do happen and the results are going to be a lot more devastating and be around for a much longer time than a disaster at a coal plant.

It's sad that you don't even know that you don't know what you're talking about. Perhaps, you should actually work in the nuclear industry before spouting off stuff you read somewhere on the internet. I'll just leave it at that, because based on how I see you are on other threads, you're not going to read what I write anyway.

It's sad that you're a liar. There is NOTHING that will make that crap safe short of getting it off the planet. The vast majority of it is man-made, unnatural highly radioactive and poisonous elements that will not dissipate for tens of thousands of years due to their ridiculously long half-lives. Even a small of amount of plutonium is amazingly potent and not something you want even traces of in your water supply. The idea that something can be stored safely for a few hundred years does not negate the long term danger of storage over thousands of years, especially given the tendency for widespread geological changes to occur over long periods of time. The desert in the Southwest used to be underwater at one point. But now it's perfectly 'safe' to store millions of tons of nuclear waste there essentially for the rest of man's possible existence. Yeah, right. I've got some swamp land to sell you.

Making things worse yet, our reactors are stone-age compared to the ones in France. We do not reprocess our waste like they do (which helps greatly) and we transport nuclear waste in unmarked vehicles all the time across this country and that's asking for a disaster at some point.

But no, I don't know anything about it. It's safe to drink in your tea.

 

[AllieNeko]

NOBODY has claimed nuclear is PERFECT, or "perfectly green" - my only claim is that it's MUCH safer and greener than the alternatives - even so-called "green" alternatives. It's hundreds of times safer than coal. I could go through any technology for power generation and start listing off hazards.

BTW, you're right, our reactors are old technology. Because people like you block new ones being built!

Fukushima, the nuclear disaster, had *zero* fatalities, with under 50 long-term expected due to the radiation release. The tsunami - tens of thousands. Nothing's safe. But a nuclear plant, in the middle of a natural disaster that killed so many from the tsunami, released a small enough amount of radiation that no-one died of acute effects, and under 50 fatalities are expected.

Dang, to me that proves nuclear is pretty darn safe...

 

[CFreymarc]

Just look at all the damage Greenpeace has done to Apple as evidence, right?

Look at Apple's stock price dip right after these protests. Those that shorted Apple did good as long as they sold before the earnings report. Flip the short into a stock buy, massive profits. Love to see the SEC logs of the APPL stock transactions over the past week.

 

[MagnusVonMagnum]

NOBODY has claimed nuclear is PERFECT, or "perfectly green" - my only claim is that it's MUCH safer and greener than the alternatives - even so-called "green" alternatives. It's hundreds of times safer than coal.

By what measure? Coal mining deaths? The so-called "global warming" concept that got changed to "climate change" because the data doesn't support just warming trends? It only takes ONE nuclear related incident to have a very long impact on the environment. One one has directly died from Fukushima YET. The long term impact is going to be harder to measure. I could show you some statistics for a study I did in college on nuclear fallout as a result of above-ground nuclear testing in Nevada that might just shock you. That debris doesn't disappear, you know. It just dissipates. There were towns blanketed by it during testing (spotted cows, radioactive milk, etc.) down-wind of the test sites, largely in Southern Idaho that to this day, despite entire families being lost to cancer at relatively young ages, haven't seen a DIME in compensation because the government doesn't admit fault and claims you can't tie the two together which is BS. But you would point out the "fact" that no one was successfully sued over it, so that fallout MUST be safe. Yeah, and all those so-called "Men In Black" are working for aliens, not testing the radiation levels in cattle in the region....

I could go through any technology for power generation and start listing off hazards.

I could go through naming special education schools and pointing out how many of their students worked on shrimp boats and own stock in Apple, but the statistic would be meaningless, just like your example.

BTW, you're right, our reactors are old technology. Because people like you block new ones being built!

This is what I mean. I haven't blocked ANY reactors from being built. I'd rather build newer reactors and reprocess like France than a lot of other options out there that leave us dependent on potential terrorist countries that could start a war that could wipe us ALL out, making the dangers of nuclear power moot. On the other hand, I still maintain that fusion will likely be a viable power source within the next 20-30 years and it's night and day cleaner than fission.

Meanwhile, high sulfur coal actually counteracts "global warming" gasses in the atmosphere and so China is actually HELPING in that regard, contrary to popular misconceptions. In fact, we were experiencing what appeared to be global COOLING until we cleaned up the sulfur emissions from many of our coal plants. It doesn't take much to upset a balance and it's ironic that cleaning one aspect up made another aspect worse.

We have the capability to produce a lot of truly CLEAN power today. It's called wind & solar. It's not as cheap to produce so it's a chicken/egg situation. If we took what we used to bail out those stinking banks that screwed our country and had invested it in solar and wind instead, we'd be a lot further along that road than you might think.

Dang, to me that proves nuclear is pretty darn safe...

It doesn't take much, apparently. What if no one was there to dump water on it (i.e. Pandemic scenario)? A coal plant isn't going to melt down if you just walk away from it. And like I said, storing nuclear waste for 50-100 years is a LONG way away from storing for 50,000 years without it being disturbed or eventually (maybe a thousand years later) finding its way to a water source and spreading contamination exponentially. They knew Plutonium didn't mix with water so they didn't worry about injecting waste underground in Nevada. Sadly, some MORON didn't think about the MINERALS in water and Plutonium will more than happily cling to those and end up leeching after all. All it takes is ONE variable to cause a disaster with something that volatile.

But go ahead and keep making excuses for how SAFE nuclear waste is. We can start by storing it in your neighborhood and see how safe you feel then.

 

[daxomni]

Look at Apple's stock price dip right after these protests. Those that shorted Apple did good as long as they sold before the earnings report. Flip the short into a stock buy, massive profits. Love to see the SEC logs of the APPL stock transactions over the past week.

So in your view the approaching earnings guidance was largely irrelevant while a handful of dwindling environmental activists were able swing the stock wildly all by themselves? That's quite a case of correlation does not imply causation you seem to have going on there.

 

[Liquorpuki]

NOBODY has claimed nuclear is PERFECT, or "perfectly green" - my only claim is that it's MUCH safer and greener than the alternatives - even so-called "green" alternatives. It's hundreds of times safer than coal. I could go through any technology for power generation and start listing off hazards.

I'm pro-nuclear too but I don't bother debating the merits of nuclear energy anymore. It's just too politicized. The tech is safer than the media makes it out to be but concerns about long-term storage are legitimate. In the end everything comes down to how good the engineers were. The engineers cut corners at Fukushima and made some really stupid decisions regarding the backup generators and it turned into a mess.

Far as plagues killing operators, that's a bizarre example, and the building should be designed to contain itself in the event something like that happens anyway. If not, plant shutdown can be triggered remotely. With 9+ earthquakes and floods, civil engineers study seismic and structural engineering to deal with those. Terrorist attacks are legitimate though. Some plants can withstand a plane crashing into them, others can't. There needs to be more regulation on structural design for newer plants and retrofitting for existing plants.

The only other thing is if you're anti-nuclear, you're either pro coal or pro natural gas by default. If you're pro coal, you know what that means. If you're pro natural gas, you're advocating paying 4-6x your current rate for electricity, and turning natural gas into a commodity that nations might fight over.

 

[CFreymarc]

So in your view the approaching earnings guidance was largely irrelevant while a handful of dwindling environmental activists were able swing the stock wildly all by themselves? That's quite a case of correlation does not imply causation you seem to have going on there.

When a long overdue Discovery Process enacts over securities fraud charges against Greenpeace commences and there are rewards for expert witnesses, then the causative data may come out for cross examination. Not in this forum

 

[SactoGuy18]

Piece of advice to Greenpeace: US-based coal-fired plants is NOT part of the problem.

Thanks to very strict EPA regulations, coal-fired powerplants must have extensive emission controls to drastically reduce the smoke and particulate output and also filter out the sulfur that becomes poisonous and highly acidic sulfur dioxide gas. They're certainly WAY cleaner than any coal-fired power plant in China, that's to be sure.

Indeed, that's why there's a booming business shipping low-sulfur coal from the Powder River Basin in Wyoming, because these clean-burning coal is so heavily used in power plants all over the Midwest.

Also, there is a very clean form of nuclear energy that has been tested on a pilot-plant scale: the liquid fluoride thorium reactor (LFTR). Essentially, the fuel is thorium-232 (which is several times more abundant than uranium) dissolved in a solution of molten sodium fluoride salt, which is cheaper to make than uranium-235 pellets assembled into fuel rods. An extremely safe design, current LFTR power plant designs don't need expensive pressurized reactor vessels, don't need expensive cooling towers or locating the reactor near a big body of water, easy to shut down (just drain the liquid fuel from the reactor vessel), can even use spent uranium fuel rods and plutonium from dismantled nuclear weapons dissolved in sodium fluoride salt as fuel, and best of all, the amount of radioactive waste generated is very small and the waste has a radioactive half-life of under 300 years, which means cheap waste disposal in any disused salt mine or salt dome.

So what are we waiting for?

 

[MagnusVonMagnum]

Piece of advice to Greenpeace: US-based coal-fired plants is NOT part of the problem.

Thanks to very strict EPA regulations, coal-fired powerplants must have extensive emission controls to drastically reduce the smoke and particulate output and also filter out the sulfur that becomes poisonous and highly acidic sulfur dioxide gas. They're certainly WAY cleaner than any coal-fired power plant in China, that's to be sure.

What? Don't you know that they produce carbon dioxide, the poison to end all poisons??? Hey, so do humans and animals! I think we better ban exhaling! (Plants LOVE C02, BTW; it's like Miracle Grow to them and the give off oxygen in the process. Don't plant more, though. Wipe out the source of energy and let everyone freeze to death because you know burning wood is so much cleaner.... )

Also, there is a very clean form of nuclear energy that has been tested on a pilot-plant scale: the liquid fluoride thorium reactor (LFTR). Essentially, the fuel is thorium-232 (which is several times more abundant than uranium) dissolved in a solution of molten sodium fluoride salt, which is cheaper to make than uranium-235 pellets assembled into fuel rods. An extremely safe design, current LFTR power plant designs don't need expensive pressurized reactor vessels, don't need expensive cooling towers or locating the reactor near a big body of water, easy to shut down (just drain the liquid fuel from the reactor vessel), can even use spent uranium fuel rods and plutonium from dismantled nuclear weapons dissolved in sodium fluoride salt as fuel, and best of all, the amount of radioactive waste generated is very small and the waste has a radioactive half-life of under 300 years, which means cheap waste disposal in any disused salt mine or salt dome.

So what are we waiting for?

I like it. Let's do it!