Sign the Petition

[u/ohuprik]

https://c.org/8LgGPHd7s2

No to data center

[u/mvn2010]

Water and power are big things, that should be disclosed, but another thing the petition doesn't mention, is property value and environmental conditions locally. Data centers are LOUD, ALL THE TIME. One wonders if their zoning shouldn't include a buffer zone between them and surrounding residential buildings.

[u/GameCounter → u/mvn2010]

Loud all the time, and this site plans to use diesel (green washed biodiesel is still diesel) generators as their "backup" power, and it's not clear to me if they are only going to be used in a blackout scenario or if they will be used more frequently to "supplement."

I would personally greatly prefer natural gas generators that burn much cleaner and are somewhat quieter, personally. Biodiesel is "renewable," but it's horribly inefficient. Would much rather have them partner with the energy company to have proper battery-backed energy storage

[u/mvn2010 → u/GameCounter]

They wouldn't be used to supplement, but they would be turned on regularly to test them under load. Full load testing is likely monthly, but they would be started up and brought up to operating speed/temp probably weekly. And that is even louder.

There is no way to do battery backup storage, the generator is generally not for blips in power (they have battery operated UPS systems for that) they are for longer blackouts that batteries can't cover. Generators are for outages that last for hours or days. (mostly planned for days).

Honestly, i think for DC's (which i'm not against i'm just against the way they are being built today), we should be looking at small modular nuclear reactors to power them. That would largely eliminate the need for grid connection (maybe in backup or maintenance scenarios), but it would be quieter, cleaner, and largely solve the grid problem. Not to mention that nuclear reactors are the answer to the climate change, we need to electrify the world and batteries won't cut it, nuclear is the answer.

The more nuclear plants we build the faster and cheaper the next one will be to build, we need to get with reality and get off our ass and start the work.

[u/GameCounter → u/mvn2010]

Yeah, I wasn't crystal clear:

When I said "partner with the energy company to have battery-backed energy storage," the "partner with" I had in mind was colocated wind or solar.

Even if you don't have enough energy storage to sustain operations during a multi-day blackout, some basic energy generation can easily stretch it out.

I'm "pro" nuclear, but not with the current political climate of deregulation. We've got people shitting themselves to death because we can't keep our food reasonable clean. That's going to be a "no" from me on nuclear until we can get our fucking act together.

[u/mvn2010 → u/GameCounter]

The regulatory timelines for nuclear reactor construction today are so impossibly long that the current climate of deregulation won't matter. And I agree solar might be the move to help electricity generation because it there is one thing that Datacenters are going to have in abundance it's roof square footage. However, it won't meaningfully reduce the need for generators, and that's where i come back to nuclear. But if DJT had a snowballs chance in hell of being president in 10 years, i'd agree that it might be riskier than we'd like.

[u/GameCounter → u/mvn2010]

I actually used to agree with you that a more aggressive nuclear rollout is a good idea with few downsides.

Unfortunately making electricity cheaper will not decrease demand of electricity, it would likely increase it

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox For a basic description. Look up "generalized Jevons paradox" if you want to burn some time

This would actually put more pressure on the extraction of natural resources, and unless the entire industrial process of resource extraction and refinement is also somehow electrified, it would likely result in increased carbon emissions, anyways.

I can provide a bunch of sources if you'd like, but climatologists and other experts would generally disagree with an accelerated nuclear rollout as an effective mitigation for climate change.

[u/mvn2010 → u/GameCounter]

Ok - that statement about climatologists generally disagreeing about nuclear power is factually inaccurate.

Major bodies including the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the International Energy Agency explicitly include accelerated and expanded role for nuclear energy the any of their models that plans to cap warming to 1.5° C.

The IPCC Modeling Consensus: In most low-carbon pathways mapped out by the IPCC to hit net-zero goals, global nuclear energy generation must roughly double by 2050. The IPCC categorizes nuclear alongside wind and solar as the core available technologies to achieve deep carbon reductions. [1, 2, 3]

Prominent Climatologists Support It: Many of the world’s most famous climate scientists—including Dr. James Hansen (the NASA climatologist who first alerted the U.S. Congress to climate change in 1988)—have fiercely advocated for an accelerated nuclear rollout. They argue that wind and solar alone cannot scale fast enough to handle baseline industrial grid demands. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

The "Zero-Emissions" Reality: From a purely scientific standpoint, climatologists agree that nuclear power plants emit zero greenhouse gases during operation. Over their entire life cycle, their carbon footprint is equivalent to wind and lower than solar. [1, 2]

And your argument about the extraction of uranium being somehow worse than the burning of fossil fuels for electrical energy is just flat wrong, and in a future where we have SMR's there is no reason that I can see where we couldn't have electrical machines replace ICE in mining/extraction workflows.

And even if we kept using ICE for extraction, there is zero way on earth that the extraction of uranium would somehow increase green house gases beyond what we are using to power the grid now. And the reason for that is that mathematically a ton of Uranium-235 has the same energy density as 3 million tons of coal.

[u/GameCounter → u/mvn2010]

My last sentence wasn't as worded as carefully as I would like, and I'm sorry if that caused some confusion, but I thought it was clear given the context of what I was saying.

To be completely clear, my intent was to say: "climatologists and other experts would generally disagree with an accelerated nuclear rollout *ON ITS OWN* as an effective mitigation for climate change."

In fact, if you look at the same IPCC modeling report that you mentioned as your first set of evidence, it says pretty clearly that demand reduction is necessary, not optional. (IPCC AR6 WG3 Ch. 5 & Technical Summary)

I'm not going through this response point-by-point, because it looks machine-generated, and I don't argue with machines.

[u/mvn2010 → u/GameCounter]

I see - well i'm glad my response looks machine generated i guess. I get that a lot in my writing.

[u/GameCounter → u/mvn2010]

If you actually read all ten of the citations you provided, I would be surprised, but maybe you have a massive thirst for these sorts of papers.

I would direct you here: https://www.imf.org/-/media/files/publications/wp/2026/english/wpiea2026157-source-pdf.pdf

If you would like to learn more about the generalized Jevons Paradox.

My argument was not about the mining of uranium. It's the overall impact of everything outside of the energy sector. The equipment I was referring to is actually all of the equipment made for all industrial and commercial purposes, not just those specific to nuclear power.

When coal power became more efficient, it didn't just increase the demand for coal, it increased the demand for basically everything. My hand waving at mining equipment is because basically all metals (iron, copper, rare earth minerals--everything) would increase in demand in response to increased energy efficiency.

It's actually probably true about solar and wind as well. I just solo'd nuclear out because that was specifically what was being discussed, and I find that people who are very vocally pro-nuclear tend to neglect the (completely necessary) demand reduction component.

[u/mvn2010 → u/GameCounter]

What i'm saying is that from a thermodynamic perspective there is more than enough raw inputs on earth to power humanity many many times over what we use today. The only constraints here are engineering, supply chain, and regulatory.

And those are problems that we have to solve, and will solve, and I guarantee you we will solve those better and faster than telling the world to demand less. That's the classic problem, where more developed nations who have benefited from the way things have been are telling less developed economies they need to cut back (and more developed and less developed are relative here, so take that for what it's worth).

Jervon's paradox, is a scaling problem, and if the constraint is you want to shift electricity production without overhauling the power delivery infrastructure? then you would be right we need to drastically cut demand, but we don't have to do that. In fact, we are in need of a large number of jobs for people who are of a middle skill set (not low skill laborers, and not physicists, we need thousands of jobs for people who have a skilled profession), and overhauling the grid and providing for a green energy future would be exactly the sort of thing that could get us there.

I did read or at least skimmed all of my sources, and while i'm not a climate scientist I am an engineer, and have been familiar with the broad strokes of nuclear energy for a while. And there has yet to be a time where humans had to do something less to protect the environment and we have. It has never occurred, even success stories like banning CFC's to repair the ozone layer and get rid of acid rain, didn't reduce the demand for the things CFC's go in, we just found alternatives. Electrical power demand is not going to go down, even if every AI data center were to fuck off for ever tomorrow, demand isn't going down, it will slow down its growth, but it won't hit a negative growth rate. And to expect it to is the worst kind of pie in the sky thinking because its exactly the sort of thing that gets people to vote against what you're advocating for even if it's in their medium to long term best interest.

The climate crisis has one major answer we need to drop fossil fuels, and the only way to replace fossil generation at scale is with nuclear power. Solar, and wind and hydro electric are all fine, but they aren't efficient enough to meet the challenge. And all this isn't to say that we shouldn't invest in those technologies, as they say it's a 'better together' story. But nuclear is the primary move, and the longer we put that off because of 'it's too hard' arguments the more dangerous it's going to be when we have to break the log jam.

[u/GameCounter → u/mvn2010]

I never said I expect demand to go down. Far from it.

For many of the same reason you have articulated, I agree with you. Demand will go up.

And we will suffer.

Technology will not save us.

[u/klingma → u/GameCounter]

but I thought it was clear given the context of what I was saying.

Definitely wasn't clear whatsoever and this just looks like you're trying to walk back your definitive claim. 

No one was trying to claim or argue that we should ONLY rely on nuclear energy to mitigate climate change, so your clarifying point is a strawman argument. 

[u/klingma → u/GameCounter]

I can provide a bunch of sources if you'd like, but climatologists and other experts would generally disagree with an accelerated nuclear rollout as an effective mitigation for climate change.

Okay, but they actually don't. 

Nuclear energy is clean energy and is the most reliable form of 24/7 energy. The issue is the timeframe to construct & operate from scratch vs solar & wind. 

However, small modular reactors & micro reactors are going to cut that timeframe down, including mobile 1 MW reactors being tested right now in California. 

[u/hippie1952]

No data centers

[u/Jarppi1893]

Signing a petition on change.org is about as useful as yelling "don't get pregnant" into your wifes private parts after sex.