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Pollution from Big Tech's data centre boom costs US public health $5.4bn
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Re: Pollution from Big Tech's data centre boom costs US public health $5.4bn
#12Ugh, this is horrible writing.
For instance, "Data centres cause pollution through high eletricity use" - high relative to what, residential housing? Aluminum smelting?
It's fine to be skeptical of the AI bubble, but this article (ironic for FT) reads like veiled de-development.
We also don't need any fizzy-drinks - shall we calculate the deaths due to pollution caused by that, let alone the primary effect on health of drink-victims? If you don't like what electricity is being used for, argue for specific regulation to make it more expensive.
Re: Pollution from Big Tech's data centre boom costs US public health $5.4bn
#13We should be building far more nuclear. We wildly overengineered on safety regulations making them far more costly and risky to build than they actually need to be. Even our older Gen II nuclear reactors from the 1990's are orders of magnitude safer than current fossil fuel power stations, in terms of both released radiation and lost human lifespan years. Moreover, the higher electricity prices that resulted from usi…
What do you mean over engineered? Genuinely very curious, I thought the problem boiled down essentially to 'lack of will' and that there exist very safe reactor designs.
That's certainly a funny phrase, since it ought to mean that too much engineering effort was put in to getting something right but what it's actually used to mean is that someone got the trade-offs wrong.
In this case it's being used to mean that the regulations are overly restrictive or complicated, and impose higher costs than are reasonable for the benefits they provide. (Or potentially that being overcomplicated actually makes them less effective than if they were done properly.)
Re: Pollution from Big Tech's data centre boom costs US public health $5.4bn
#14We should be building far more nuclear. We wildly overengineered on safety regulations making them far more costly and risky to build than they actually need to be. Even our older Gen II nuclear reactors from the 1990's are orders of magnitude safer than current fossil fuel power stations, in terms of both released radiation and lost human lifespan years. Moreover, the higher electricity prices that resulted from usi…
When a major nuclear disaster happens, it can cause hundreds of billions of damage. To make it worse from a liability perspective, that damage can be attributed to a specific power plant.
We know from natural disasters that insurance is usually insufficient to cover the true damage. Either governments have to step in, or the victims have to bear the costs. If the government has to pay for damages but someone else pays for safety features, there are clear incentives for overregulation.
The company operating the reactor obviously cannot pay. As long as shareholders are shielded from liability, it's easy enough to structure the company to ensure that it has no major assets beyond the power plant.
Re: Pollution from Big Tech's data centre boom costs US public health $5.4bn
#15We should be building far more nuclear. We wildly overengineered on safety regulations making them far more costly and risky to build than they actually need to be. Even our older Gen II nuclear reactors from the 1990's are orders of magnitude safer than current fossil fuel power stations, in terms of both released radiation and lost human lifespan years. Moreover, the higher electricity prices that resulted from usi…
Who decides they are over engineered on safety? Didn’t we already learn better safe than sorry?
Specifically, the current regulatory framework requires not just minimization of accident, but also minimization of radiation (to levels well below that of other powerplant types like coal). There probably could be a pretty notable cost savings in nuclear plant construction if they were allowed to regularly leak as much radiation into the environment to that which we already consider acceptable from other power sources.
Re: Pollution from Big Tech's data centre boom costs US public health $5.4bn
#16https://archive.is/N0UGX
Thanks! the captcha is annoying tho
Re: Pollution from Big Tech's data centre boom costs US public health $5.4bn
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
Who decides they are over engineered on safety? Didn’t we already learn better safe than sorry?
"better safe than sorry" is the definition of a slippery slope. but I'm curious: what event do you think taught us that? IMO, there's far mode damage being done to the world by, say, mercury in batteries than by nuclear accidents (of which chernobyl is the only serious one).
$PROBLEM_2 being worse than $PROBLEM_1 does not mean $PROBLEM_1 is over regulated.
Nuclear Waste handling and disposal is a significant regulatory issue and includes many REACTIVE measures that have been hard-learned over the past century at sites like Pennsylvania, Fukushima, and Chernobyl.
This blind lashing out at any and all forms of regulation is ignorant. Each of these situations needs to be considered thoughtfully and contextually to find a balance between short term and long term objectives.
Re: Pollution from Big Tech's data centre boom costs US public health $5.4bn
#18We should be building far more nuclear. We wildly overengineered on safety regulations making them far more costly and risky to build than they actually need to be. Even our older Gen II nuclear reactors from the 1990's are orders of magnitude safer than current fossil fuel power stations, in terms of both released radiation and lost human lifespan years. Moreover, the higher electricity prices that resulted from usi…
Who decides they are over engineered on safety? Didn’t we already learn better safe than sorry?
Even if you account for chernobyl and fukushima the death count from nuclear is orders of magnitudes less than the death count from coal, oil, solar, etc. We overregulated nuclear because the risk of nuclear disasters feels scarier than the real risk of deaths downstream of airborne particulates. There are tradeoffs to every safety regulation on nuclear and those tradeoffs include more climate induced disasters, a sicker population, long term higher energy costs, etc.
Re: Pollution from Big Tech's data centre boom costs US public health $5.4bn
#19There’s nothing specific to data centers here, just electricity use. The electricity use generates a shit load of GDP and soft power for the U.S., way more than $5.4B over 5 years.
So what do these degrowth people want exactly? Cant have resource extraction. Can’t have manufacturing, pollution. Can’t have tech, pollution. Just twiddling thumbs and money will come? Or keep all the benefits while offloading all the downsides to Mexico? And a few years later they will complain about dependence on foreign countries.
Re: Pollution from Big Tech's data centre boom costs US public health $5.4bn
#20We should be building far more nuclear. We wildly overengineered on safety regulations making them far more costly and risky to build than they actually need to be. Even our older Gen II nuclear reactors from the 1990's are orders of magnitude safer than current fossil fuel power stations, in terms of both released radiation and lost human lifespan years. Moreover, the higher electricity prices that resulted from usi…
When a major nuclear disaster happens, it can cause hundreds of billions of damage. To make it worse from a liability perspective, that damage can be attributed to a specific power plant. We know from natural disasters that insurance is usually insufficient to cover the true damage. Either governments have to step in, or the victims have to bear the costs. If the government has to pay for damages but someone else pay…
It's overall beneficial for society to switch to nuclear.
The problem you posed is just a market structure implementation detail. Government could operate the plants, or they could offer insurance to private sector operators.