Jan Wildeboer 😷
Next week, France is forced yet again to reduce output and in some cases completely shut down nuclear reactors as the high temperatures heats up the cooling water they take from rivers beyond acceptable limits. This is the new normal now and will only get worse over the following years as we collectively ignore #ClimateChange
d@nny disc@ mc²@jwildeboer solar panels also reduce in efficiency as temperature rises; the "temperature coefficient" is one of the many considerations in which panel to buy. panels with too-high temperature coefficients will need to be replaced with newer more efficient panels over time to cope with warming temperatures, much like nuclear power plants and indeed all energy infrastructure requires.
@jwildeboer solar panels do indeed require less up-front government investment than nuclear plants, so if you don't like governments investing in their own sovereign infrastructure, then delegating the responsibility of solar panel installation to individuals and offering handouts to corporations as subsidies is a great way to lead the country into austerity.
@jwildeboer would be curious how long it's been since those nuclear plants have been replaced or updated and what technology they're using. surely comparing 50-year old reactor technology to subsidized solar panel tech from current year isn't quite apples to apples. no way to verify this from your post though.
Lukas Grossar@hipsterelectron @jwildeboer The temperature coefficient was definitely something I looked at when selecting which solar panels to install on my roof, but the loss is usually less then 0.5%/°C and solar panels heating up is primarily driven by the radiation they are designed to receive and less by the surrounding temperature.
The cooling cutoff for atomic reactors is also more of a environmental protection topic than a technical one, since AFAIK they're primarily shut down to avoid killing all of the fish in the rivers.
@tongpu @jwildeboer so surely the environmental costs of silicon photovoltaic manufacturing and cobalt mining in the global south are incorporated into the estimated environmental impact of large-scale solar deployment, right? or does that not count because it happens to someone else? "killing all of the fish in the rivers" is a hilariously violent way to invoke the thing that does not happen because nuclear plants comply with local environmental regulations, as in OP.
@hipsterelectron @jwildeboer I was just trying to put numbers to the loss of efficiency with the increase in temperature in solar panels. And I think https://mastodon.social/@dotstdy/114766522332687748 explains the environmental impact best, "killing fish" was just the simplest way to put it. At least for me it was never about discussing solar vs. nuclear, as both of these technologies should be allowed to coexist.
Nemo_bis 🌈@hipsterelectron IEA has the answers you're looking for https://www.iea.org/reports/net-zero-by-2050
@nemobis that is a technical and scientific analysis and not a political one
@jwildeboer if we're concerned about local heat pollution i assume we would also wind down local data centers too right? yet you advocate for more local data centers to run "local" "AI" here. https://social.wildeboer.net/@jwildeboer/114279031256479061 the reason i became disgusted with my prior employer the US department of energy was their acceptance of siting "AI" data centers on top of nuclear power plants, which worsens the heat pollution and water usage of both to subsidize statistical bullshit for private industry instead of contributing to public services for all. if local heat pollution and freshwater extraction is a concern, then we should hold these data centers to the same standards, which means not building LLMs at all, regardless of who owns them.
Jan Wildeboer 😷:krulorange: (@[email protected])
It's a new version of #InnerSourcing, that is starting to grow, IMHO. We will see more investments in bare metal, a modest growth of BYODC (Build Your Own Data Center). Hybrid cloud solutions. And smaller, self-owned and trained AI models. All of this will be based more on compliance and risk avoidance and not a big patriotic/nationalistic move as some like to promote. 2/4
@jwildeboer i notice for example that your employer stands to profit from building more local data centers, but not from local nuclear power plants. i hope to see you holding their feet to the fire as well.
Josh Simmons@hipsterelectron @jwildeboer I believe the issue here is mostly unrelated to the technology per-se, it's more to do with location. The reactors at risk of needing to reduce capacity are built on relatively "small" water sources where there's risk of impacting ecology and other users of the river. Note though, we're talking about "a few tenth's of a degree" for a reactor, it's not exactly boiling the river. The issues in France in 2022 were mostly due to so many reactors already being offline.
@hipsterelectron @jwildeboer also France has pretty modern reactors, and a very low carbon footprint for electricity due to that huge nuclear generation. (2/3's of electricity generation in france comes from nuclear power, 1KWh in France "costs" ~44g CO2, compared to say, the US where 1KWh costs ~384g CO2, or Australia, where 1KWh costs ~552g CO2)
@hipsterelectron @jwildeboer of course there's one huge issue which isn't related to energy generation at all, which just that rising temps and lower water levels in these rivers impact irrigation and thus food supply. that's a *much* bigger issue in the short term than say, nuclear v.s. solar, both of which are huge positives in terms of global warming impact.
@dotstdy @jwildeboer the environmental costs of solar installation are largely externalized to the global south, which is an undercurrent that should be made explicit in these discussions https://circumstances.run/@hipsterelectron/114766596111499322 the reason OP has emotional weight is because it refers to heat pollution near the homes it powers, which is why it's regulated much more stringently than outsourced photovoltaic and battery manufacturing. we're not going to get through this if we just push our waste elsewhere and play accounting tricks.
d@nny disc@ mc² (@[email protected])
@[email protected] @[email protected] so surely the environmental costs of [silicon photovoltaic manufacturing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystalline_silicon#Energy_costs_of_manufacture) and [cobalt mining](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobalt#Extraction) in the global south are incorporated into the estimated environmental impact of large-scale solar deployment, right? or does that not count because it happens to someone else? "killing all of the fish in the rivers" is a hilariously violent way to invoke the thing that does not happen because nuclear plants comply with local environmental regulations, as in OP.
@dotstdy reducing local power usage would seem to be a critical necessity but OP is actually interested in building more local data centers https://circumstances.run/@hipsterelectron/114766496838386949
d@nny disc@ mc² (@[email protected])
@[email protected] i notice for example that your employer stands to profit from building more local data centers, but not from local nuclear power plants. i hope to see you holding their feet to the fire as well.
@dotstdy @jwildeboer thank you, that is super helpful to know. so it would seem that france is the "best case" in this regard, and i retract that comparison. sorry about that.
Magnus Ahltorp@hipsterelectron @jwildeboer The big difference is that solar is presented as an unpredictable and erratic source, while nuclear is presented as stable.
In reality nuclear is a much more fickle source that needs gigantic backup power resources to prevent grid collapse when a reactor needs to shut down quickly. Not because of the power source in it self, but because each reactor is such a large part of a grid’s production. Nuclear reactors are so big they have names.
@ahltorp @jwildeboer no, the big difference is that the environmental costs of solar deployment are externalized to the global south by outsourcing to countries with less stringent environment regulations. in reality photovoltaics and batteries require immense energy to produce and rely upon an immense amount of mining which is disastrous for the local environment. https://circumstances.run/@hipsterelectron/114766596111499322
@ahltorp i actually want to have names for the source of my energy so the government is accountable if it goes out instead of a recursive web of private subcontractors
@hipsterelectron @jwildeboer Uranium is by far (75%) mostly mined in the global south, with disastrous effects on the local environment.
@ahltorp it is also mined on indigenous land in the US, directly contravening their Native sovereignty and continuing the Native american genocide the US government began centuries ago. you won't catch me defending that. if we want to compare the two technologies, let's compare them apples to apples instead of playing accounting games. OP mentions complying with environmental regulations, because nuclear plants are built in the EU (or US, UK, etc). if we want to get through this as a species, we need to adhere to environmental regulations everywhere.
fcalva@ahltorp @hipsterelectron @jwildeboer But the volumes are laughable compared to the cobalt and rare earths needed for solar panels, or batteries. You only need hundreds of tonnes vs. tens of thousands (and that's with very low adoption rates)
@fcalva @hipsterelectron @jwildeboer In Sweden it’s in the news quite frequently. The national grid authority has to have reserves according to N+1.
@ahltorp @hipsterelectron @jwildeboer Those plants are very old ones that were already extended past their designed lifespan - since private utilities are reluctant to invest in new ones.
@ahltorp @hipsterelectron @jwildeboer Frequent outages at these specific plants isn't a (direct) problem of nuclear ? Newer and better maintained plants don't have those problems. Not mentioning it's likely advantageous for that private utility's margins to keep prices high.