Jan Wildeboer đˇ
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.
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.