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

[3282868]

Chernobyl is no longer valid.

 

[herr_neumann]

Presumably the power draw of the data center doesn't vary a great deal so the 20 MW draw is reasonably constant, leading to 20 MWh of energy (not "power") consumed each hour.

Good catch on the power v energy flub (pre coffee). [for those wonder, power is the rate at which energy is consumed (watt) whereas energy is the amount of power consumed (watt-hours).]

Fine, the data center is the most efficiently designed ever, so it has a constant load. Let's go with your argument on the demand side. The response on the production side still doesn't add up. A 20MW PV plant still has a capacity factor of under 50%, so the response still doesn't add up. They may have a peak generation capacity of 25MW, but that is only a small part of a constant 20MW load.

 

[AustinIllini]

Image

Good argument. next time google search medium images.

Also, how dangerous is nuclear power? 4000 people die from coal for every person who dies from nuclear power.

http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/the-staggers/2011/03/nuclear-power-coal-produced

(Source: World Health Organization)

 

[3282868]

Good argument. next time google search medium images.

Also, how dangerous is nuclear power? 4000 people die from coal for every person who dies from nuclear power.

http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/the-staggers/2011/03/nuclear-power-coal-produced

Read my posts please. For everyone's sake. #118 especially.

Last time I'm posting this:

The incubation time for cancer is five to 50 years following exposure to radiation. It is important to note that children, old people and immuno-compromised individuals are many times more sensitive to the malignant effects of radiation than other people.

I will describe four of the most dangerous elements made in nuclear power plants.

Iodine 131, which was released at the nuclear accidents at Sellafield in Britain, Chernobyl in Ukraine and Three Mile Island in the US, is radioactive for only six weeks and it bio-concentrates in leafy vegetables and milk. When it enters the human body via the gut and the lung, it migrates to the thyroid gland in the neck, where it can later induce thyroid cancer. In Belarus more than 2000 children have had their thyroids removed for thyroid cancer, a situation never before recorded in pediatric literature.

Strontium 90 lasts for 600 years. As a calcium analogue, it concentrates in cow and goat milk. It accumulates in the human breast during lactation, and in bone, where it can later induce breast cancer, bone cancer and leukemia.

Cesium 137, which also lasts for 600 years, concentrates in the food chain, particularly meat. On entering the human body, it locates in muscle, where it can induce a malignant muscle cancer called a sarcoma.

Plutonium 239, one of the most dangerous elements known to humans, is so toxic that one-millionth of a gram is carcinogenic. More than 200kg is made annually in each 1000-megawatt nuclear power plant. Plutonium is handled like iron in the body, and is therefore stored in the liver, where it causes liver cancer, and in the bone, where it can induce bone cancer and blood malignancies. On inhalation it causes lung cancer. It also crosses the placenta, where, like the drug thalidomide, it can cause severe congenital deformities. Plutonium has a predisposition for the testicle, where it can cause testicular cancer and induce genetic diseases in future generations. Plutonium lasts for 500,000 years, living on to induce cancer and genetic diseases in future generations of plants, animals and humans.

Plutonium is also the fuel for nuclear weapons -- only 5kg is necessary to make a bomb and each reactor makes more than 200kg per year. Therefore any country with a nuclear power plant can theoretically manufacture 40 bombs a year.

Because nuclear power leaves a toxic legacy to all future generations, because it produces global warming gases, because it is far more expensive than any other form of electricity generation, and because it can trigger proliferation of nuclear weapons, these topics need urgently to be introduced into the tertiary educational system of Australia, which is host to 30 per cent to 40 per cent of the world's richest uranium.

It is said that nuclear power is emission-free. The truth is very different.

In the US, where much of the world's uranium is enriched, including Australia's, the enrichment facility at Paducah, Kentucky, requires the electrical output of two 1000-megawatt coal-fired plants, which emit large quantities of carbon dioxide, the gas responsible for 50per cent of global warming.

Also, this enrichment facility and another at Portsmouth, Ohio, release from leaky pipes 93per cent of the chlorofluorocarbon gas emitted yearly in the US. The production and release of CFC gas is now banned internationally by the Montreal Protocol because it is the main culprit responsible for stratospheric ozone depletion. But CFC is also a global warmer, 10,000 to 20,000 times more potent than carbon dioxide.

In fact, the nuclear fuel cycle utilises large quantities of fossil fuel at all of its stages - the mining and milling of uranium, the construction of the nuclear reactor and cooling towers, robotic decommissioning of the intensely radioactive reactor at the end of its 20 to 40-year operating lifetime, and transportation and long-term storage of massive quantities of radioactive waste.

In summary, nuclear power produces, according to a 2004 study by Jan Willem Storm van Leeuwen and Philip Smith, only three times fewer greenhouse gases than modern natural-gas power stations.

So coal kills 4,000 people for every one for Nuclear power, and yet the facts demonstrate that Nuclear power generates more carbon dioxide and one enrichment facility in Kentucky consumes two 1000-megawatts from coal-fired plants. In essence, nuclear power not only is dangerous in itself, but burns fossil fuels in enrichment facilities, produces toxins that last for thousands of years and require storage in mountainous facilities that also consume energy, and the environmental impacts from such catastrophes as Chernobyl and (recently) Japan are felt for generations. Thus, Chernobyl IS very relevant.

Source:
http://nonuclear.net/nuclearpoweristheproblemnotasolution.htm

I can google more if you'd like.

 

[vrDrew]

I *generally* support Greenpeace and other environmental organizations.

But, IMHO, they sometimes go too far. And frequently exercise bad judgement.

It seems these days if you want headlines and public interest, find some way of getting "Apple" into your headlines. And I think by focusing on the company's Data Center, they really picked the wrong target. The extensive solar array, power cells, etc. are hardly the sign of a company that doesn't care about the environment. And by picking energy consumption figures "out of the air" - they really invalidated their entire argument.

The fact of the matter is that power consumption is a major portion of the running costs of a Data Center. For this reason companies spend an incredible amount of effort making sure their Data Centers use as little power as possible. And, it seems, is the most important factor. In the big scheme of things, where that power comes from is obviously secondary.

Apple's greatest "sin" then seems to be that it put its datacenter in North Carolina, where it will be part of a grid served by Duke Energy.

If you are truly concerned about reducing carbon emissions, or the amount of electricity from non-renewable resources, then I'd recommend starting with your own personal and household use of energy.

 

[bobob]

I can google more if you'd like.

The scariest threat on the internet!!!

 

[3282868]

The scariest threat on the internet!!!

Genius

 

[SBlue1]

Everything we do is consuming power. Should we stop using computers?

 

[Rogifan]

screw you Greenpeace. I know there are a lot of good people who care about the environment and the environmental record of companies they do business with/buy goods and services from. But when I read some of this stuff it makes me think of a bumper sticker I once saw: Save the Planet. Kill Yourself.

----------

Everything we do is consuming power. Should we stop using computers?

As human beings we exhale carbon dioxide so perhaps we should just kill ourselves. Wouldn't that be the easiest way to save the planet?

 

[MattInOz]

Several problems with nuclear energy as well...

Nuclear Energy is not renewable. It is a finite resource that can and will be exhausted.

Much of the commercial grade uranium comes from foreign sources outside of the United States.

Mining uranium involves conventional diesel-burning mining equipment.

Refining uranium involves energy intensive processing plants.

Building nuclear power plants is resource intensive.

Decommissioning and burying nuclear facilities (processing plants, power plants, etc.) is energy intensive.

Shipping uranium from source to processor to generator to permanent storage is done by conventional diesel burning equipment powering ships and trucks.

Nuclear power plants require enormous amounts of fresh water to function properly, far more than most other forms of power generation.

Nuclear power plants are susceptible to heat waves and can be forced to shut down when the weather gets too hot.

The full cost of designing, building, running, decommissioning, shipping, and storing a nuclear power plants costs more than any other form of commercial scale power generation.

Only a series of lopsided risk-reward contracts written in the 1940's and 1950's on the backs of the American taxpayer allow nuclear power operators to claim a net positive balance sheet.

In many cases today's nuclear power operators did not actually fund or build the plants. They merely purchased what was left after the original owner was unable to fully recover from the enormous cost of the original build.

And then there's always this...

The most persistent forms of nuclear waste will outlive global warming by about a million years.

Sadly all this is mostly true because we let warmongering determine energy policy. Thorium doesn't have issue of above and can be used with uranium to help it clean up it's act. Ironically it doesn't go BANG!!! so it didn't get developed.

 

[faroZ06]

So what.... were they supposed to either build their own nuclear power plants or build a state-sized solar farm to power those data centers?

Those hippies: the ones who stay healthy with organic foods and then smoke.

 

[John.B]

Why does Google get a pass on this? The data center they recently built near here is *entirely* powered by coal, which is the number one source of Mercury contamination in the environment today. WTF?

 

[BLUELION]

AND how much is the carbon footprint for "Green Peace?"

I am for helping reduce the foot print of our carbon production; however, it seems ludicrous for an organization such as Green Peace to "slam" companies such as Apple for their carbon foot print.

I propose that Green Peace provide documentation immediately for their carbon foot print. Green Peace, please include the source of energy for the consumables used by your members (clothing, food, etc.), as well as the energy used to power your computers, cars, coffee makers, lights in your homes, for all the vehicles used to travel to and fro, as well as the source of all energy for the servers used to power your website.

I think if you can do that, then we can reasonably ask that of others.

 

[Furrybeagle]

The incubation time for cancer is five to 50 years following exposure to radiation. It is important to note that children, old people and immuno-compromised individuals are many times more sensitive to the malignant effects of radiation than other people.

I think others in the thread have pointed out that fossil fuel plants emit radioactive substances into the atmosphere.

Iodine 131, which was released at the nuclear accidents at Sellafield in Britain, Chernobyl in Ukraine and Three Mile Island in the US, is radioactive for only six weeks and it bio-concentrates in leafy vegetables and milk. When it enters the human body via the gut and the lung, it migrates to the thyroid gland in the neck, where it can later induce thyroid cancer. In Belarus more than 2000 children have had their thyroids removed for thyroid cancer, a situation never before recorded in pediatric literature.

Strontium 90 lasts for 600 years. As a calcium analogue, it concentrates in cow and goat milk. It accumulates in the human breast during lactation, and in bone, where it can later induce breast cancer, bone cancer and leukemia.

Cesium 137, which also lasts for 600 years, concentrates in the food chain, particularly meat. On entering the human body, it locates in muscle, where it can induce a malignant muscle cancer called a sarcoma.

Plutonium 239, one of the most dangerous elements known to humans, is so toxic that one-millionth of a gram is carcinogenic. More than 200kg is made annually in each 1000-megawatt nuclear power plant. Plutonium is handled like iron in the body, and is therefore stored in the liver, where it causes liver cancer, and in the bone, where it can induce bone cancer and blood malignancies. On inhalation it causes lung cancer. It also crosses the placenta, where, like the drug thalidomide, it can cause severe congenital deformities. Plutonium has a predisposition for the testicle, where it can cause testicular cancer and induce genetic diseases in future generations. Plutonium lasts for 500,000 years, living on to induce cancer and genetic diseases in future generations of plants, animals and humans.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t these substances only released in the event of a reactor meltdown? The smokestacks in nuclear reactors release steam, not these substances. You make it sound like reactors spew these substances out into the atmosphere.

Also, for reference, 200 kg is about 2.6 gallons, or 10 L. It’s still extremely hazardous, but it’s not like each plant results in barrels and barrels of it being carted into mountains. [Source: Wolfram Alpha]

Plutonium is also the fuel for nuclear weapons -- only 5kg is necessary to make a bomb and each reactor makes more than 200kg per year. Therefore any country with a nuclear power plant can theoretically manufacture 40 bombs a year.

Spent reactor fuel tends to be contaminated with Pu-240 and Pu-242, which makes it unsuitable for use in nuclear weapons. It also seems to be infeasible to separate these isotopes. [Source, apologies for Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutonium#Mixed_oxide_fuel, last paragraph]

In the US, where much of the world's uranium is enriched, including Australia's, the enrichment facility at Paducah, Kentucky, requires the electrical output of two 1000-megawatt coal-fired plants, which emit large quantities of carbon dioxide, the gas responsible for 50per cent of global warming.

There’s no reason why these enrichment plants have to be powered by coal burning plants. There is a necessary energy cost to using nuclear power, just like there is a necessary energy cost to using any kind of power. This is kind of like criticizing wind power because the construction equipment used to build turbines pollutes the atmosphere.

I realize that in an ideal world we’d be using renewable energy like wind, solar, and hydroelectric power, but we do not live in a perfect world.

I’m not trying to be argumentative, just trying to come to a better understanding.


EDIT: In post #118, you point out all the emissions (in addition to Iodine, Strontium, Cesium, and Plutonium) that are released by nuclear power plants. While it’s disingenuous to call nuclear power “clean,” compare the pollution from a nuclear plant to a coal plant:

A 1,000 MW coal-burning power plant could have an uncontrolled release of as much as 5.2 metric tons per year of uranium (containing 74 pounds (34 kg) of uranium-235) and 12.8 metric tons per year of thorium.[20] In comparison, a 1,000 MW nuclear plant will generate about 30 short tons of high-level radioactive solid packed waste per year.[21] It is estimated that during 1982, US coal burning released 155 times as much uncontrolled radioactivity into the atmosphere as the Three Mile Island incident.[22] The collective radioactivity resulting from all coal burning worldwide between 1937 and 2040 is estimated to be 2,700,000 curies or 0.101 EBq.[20] It should also be noted that during normal operation, the effective dose equivalent from coal plants is 100 times that from nuclear plants.[20]

[Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil-fuel_power_station#Radioactive_trace_elements. Again, apologies for Wikipedia, but the article has ample citations.]

Nuclear power is not clean, but it seems cleaner than fossil fuels (unless, of course, there is a meltdown).

 

[lecturenotes]

I had a very clever engineer tell me that solar power is basically all political because the energy required to manufacture these solar panels (when you look at all the stages) is more than they can give back in their general lifetime.

I'm not sure if this is true, does anyone know and have anything to back it up?

If it's true, it seems to me that basically it's a bit of a waste of time.

However, don't get me wrong, I love the idea of clean energy and would pay more for it.

 

[Justinf79]

Hmm, the article states that Apple's data center in oregon is coal intensive, but depending on the power company that's powering it, it could be either 66% coal powered, or only 5%. (There's 2 power companies in the Prineville, OR area).

 

[MattInOz]

I had a very clever engineer tell me that solar power is basically all political because the energy required to manufacture these solar panels (when you look at all the stages) is more than they can give back in their general lifetime.

I'm not sure if this is true, does anyone know and have anything to back it up?

If it's true, it seems to me that basically it's a bit of a waste of time.

However, don't get me wrong, I love the idea of clean energy and would pay more for it.

a quick google this. While it maybe true for older cells which were mostly used to reduce reliance of carting in power (fuel or cable) to remote locations. Modern Cells have in a good location are around 2 years energy payback with 20+ year life span.

 

[Mechanic]

Read the OP, Greenpeace acknowledged it but is obvioulsy downplaying it since they say it only covers 10% of the energy needs.

10% according to greenpeaces study. According to apple the data center will consume 20 million watts at full capacity. According to apple there solar array and the fuel cell array will produce 25 million watts thus covering there carbon footprint 100% with clean energy. Greenpeace is just blowing smoke by saying apples numbers do not add up, with no data to back it up there lying. Apple knows what the energy usage will be they built the data center lol.

 

[AidenShaw]

I had a very clever engineer tell me that solar power is basically all political because the energy required to manufacture these solar panels (when you look at all the stages) is more than they can give back in their general lifetime.

If that's true, then how can my 8.5 kW solar array pay for itself in about 6-7 years?

 

[superrcat]

Greenpeace’s Hosting: Not ‘Truly Green’

Greenpeace’s Hosting: Not ‘Truly Green’

Although Greenpeace has taken steps to account for the carbon impact of much of its IT infrastructure, some of its servers are housed in data centers powered primarily by coal and nuclear power.

 

[VenusianSky]

I think we should go no energy. Shut it all done and let man use the power of their own energy to get by. Doing it up cro-magnon style. Hoo! Hoo!

 

[AidenShaw]

10% according to greenpeaces study. According to apple the data center will consume 20 million watts at full capacity. According to apple there solar array and the fuel cell array will produce 25 million watts thus covering there carbon footprint 100% with clean energy. Greenpeace is just blowing smoke by saying apples numbers do not add up, with no data to back it up there lying. Apple knows what the energy usage will be they built the data center lol.

Umm, what about nighttime?

The Icloudcenter will still be using 20 mW, and the solar will be producing 0 W.

And where do you get the 20 mW figure, 100 mW is the number usually quoted.

 

[econgeek]

Greenpeace. The "Green" is the money they're trying to shake companies down for, and the "peace" is what they offer them if, and only if, they pay.

Reality is greenpeace is an organization that has engaged in acts of violence against innocent people and property.

They lie constantly to try and raise money, with a simple form of extortion: We'll badmouth you until you pay us.

Ever given them a $25 donation? Watch them spend $250 over the next 2 years begging you for more money-- on a weekly basis. Naturally they use bleached paper, et al, for these solicitations.

Apple is a company of integrity, which is why it has never given into these scum.

 

[MattInOz]

Umm, what about nighttime?

The Icloudcenter will still be using 20 mW, and the solar will be producing 0 W.

And where do you get the 20 mW figure, 100 mW is the number usually quoted.

Doesn't that depend how much of the 20mW is to run air handling?
Much of that would drop off over night. Cooling load and Solar power generation should track fairly nicely against each other.

 

[MagnusVonMagnum]

The funny thing is that burning high-sulfur coal actually COMBATS "Global Warming" effects. Ironically, it may have been the effort to 'clean' sulfur out of coal emissions that contributed the large spike in the mid 70s in warming temperature trends (prior to that we were on a COOLING trend and many people thought we were heading for an ice age). China's large use of high sulfur coal is actually slowing the so-called "global warming" as sulfur in the atmosphere has been shown to lead to cooling, not warming even with the carbon dioxide output. Yeah, there's that pesky potential for acid rain, but even that could be useful in some locations (e.g. blueberries LOVE acid rain).