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Pollution from Big Tech's data centre boom costs US public health $5.4bn

201 points by 1vuio0pswjnm7 2y ago

gnabgib 2y ago
https://archive.is/N0UGX https://archive.is/N0UGX
- fumoto 2y ago
  Thanks! the captcha is annoying tho
scarab92 2y ago
We 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 using non-nuclear power lead to ICE vehicles remaining more prevalent than they should be, and non-heat-pump heating remaining more prevalent than it should be, leading to millions more years of human lifespan lost. From a health perspective, blocking nuclear with overregulation was one of societies biggest health policy failures.
- croes 2y ago
  Who decides they are over engineered on safety? Didn’t we already learn better safe than sorry?
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - markhahn 2y ago
    "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).
    - tmpz22 2y ago
      $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.
      - Hammershaft 2y ago
        We do not thoughtfully balance regulatory costs on nuclear vs say coal... Nuclear regulatory compliance is orders of magnitude more expensive despite being orders of magnitude safer for human health (on top of the climate).
        KennyBlanken 2y ago
        90% of new electricity generation in the US is solar or wind. Coal generation has generally trended downward since the mid 2000s. We don't need nuclear to replace coal.
        Recurecur 2y ago
        We certainly do need nuclear to replace coal. Coal and nuclear are both reliable sources of energy, unlike solar or wind. I'm sure you're about to go into some battery related hand waving, but that doesn't help in two ways. First, there will be intervals where the lull in production exceeds storage capacity, which means fatalities in many cases. Second, battery is expensive, so the total system cost can exceed the cost of nuclear (especially with sane regulation and continually improving engineering). Also, as far as "coal trending downward", that isn't the case outside the US. We're going to need a vastly increased energy supply in order to meet the world's needs. Nuclear fission absolutely needs to be part of that mix, as we work to master fusion and other advanced, safe, and environmentally responsible forms of energy production. Beyond that, high density energy sources are highly desirable off-planet. :-)
  - adgjlsfhk1 2y ago
    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.
    - 7952 2y ago
      So if we just do something politically unacceptable and probably morally unacceptable then nuclear will be viable? And of course you could apply the same thing to other sources of energy and they will equally get cheaper. Wind turbines in beauty spots. Remove the air quality equipment from fossil fuel plants. Dam evey river.
      - fsflover 2y ago
        It's the other way around. We should apply equal regulations to coal making nuclear more competing.
      - kergonath 2y ago
        > So if we just do something politically unacceptable and probably morally unacceptable then nuclear will be viable? I think you missed the point. Coal-fired plants leak radiation significantly. If this is not morally unacceptable in one case, why would it be in another? They did not say that nuclear should have a free pass, just that the regulations should be consistent. > And of course you could apply the same thing to other sources of energy and they will equally get cheaper. Different technologies have different downsides and advantages. The parent was talking about 2 technologies having inconsistent expectations for the same metric. Personally, I do not want wind turbines everywhere or a nuclear plant in a city centre, but I think that both technologies (plus solar and hydro) need to be developed, because both have much smaller ecological and human costs than the alternative. > Dam evey river. That is counter-productive as there are diminishing returns, and not every river is worth daming.
  - Hammershaft 2y ago
    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.
    - margalabargala 2y ago
      Tell us more about the death count from solar. Is it all people falling off roofs?
      - dmoy 2y ago
        Pretty much yea. So not exactly a fair comparison because e.g. grid level solar doesn't necessarily involve roof climbing. But given current installation base, it's like 3x more deaths per unit energy than wind.
        hgomersall 2y ago
        I don't know how reliable it is, but the first link I clicked on contradicts your assertion: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-production-per-twh https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-p...
        margalabargala 2y ago
        Got a source for that?
    - kristiandupont 2y ago
      >nuclear disasters feels scarier I am in favor of more nuclear power and I know very little about the field, but this argument never resonated with me. If the Chernobyl series paints a reasonably realistic image of what could have happened had they not contained the melt down, we are talking "better part of a continent being uninhabitable for thousands of years". When that is the potential risk, comparing death counts from non-catastrophic scenarios isn't what we should be looking at.
- burnished 2y ago
  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.
  - tbrownaw 2y ago
    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.)
- jltsiren 2y ago
  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.
  - scarab92 2y ago
    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.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - vasco 2y ago
      I'm pro-nuclear but the idea that insurance fixes everything is strange to me. How much insurance money fixes you getting killed, would you say?
      - boxedemp 2y ago
        I missed where they say insurance solves everything. I understood it as the government running it solves many of the issues introduced by the private sector, and the insurance was another thought.
      - tbrownaw 2y ago
        This is not a novel question. If someone gets killed at work, how much do they get from workers' comp? What is a micromort and how much does one usually sell for? What did weregeld used to be back when it was still a thing?
- notTooFarGone 2y ago
  How about we build this stuff in deserts where you can just plaster everything with solar in like 10% of time and 30% of money investment. You now have 70% of budget to build battery/wind and still got enough time. This is solved with current renewable prices without ideological preferences.
  - ikr678 2y ago
    Unfortunately, data centers also need access to considerable amounts of water.
  - ahmeneeroe-v2 2y ago
    No thank you. Build it in your backyard, not mine.
- js8 2y ago
  Nuclear is not economically viable compared to renewables (wind & solar), and it's rightfully on its way out. What is really needed is for humanity to say "enough" and stop using fossil fuels. Would it be a problem if training AI models (or running any other analytics) be lot more expensive in winter than summer? I doubt it. There is no reason not to use more renewables for this use case, then.
  - scarab92 2y ago
    Nuclear has a far lower LCOE than renewables, when you mass produce them rather than do ad-hoc bespoke builds. For example, the Gen II+ plants built in the 90's had an (inflation adjusted) price of about $500 million per GWe. Whereas, the cost of the recent Vogtl build was $15 billion per GWe! Renewables proponents point to the cost of Vogtl (or similar) when they say that Nuclear has a higher cost than renewables, which is dishonest. The incremental cost of new reactors is far lower when you build many of them. The recent projects are mostly learning curve costs because of how long it's been. The other part of this is that expensive silicon is not going to sit idle. It needs baseload power, and for solar that means adding batteries, and also downrating the nameplate capacity to it's wintertime capacity. These factors increase the real world cost of renewable power significantly. Don't get me wrong, I think we should be investing in renewable as well, but it's still a substantially more expensive way to generate power than a serious roll out of nuclear would be.
    - drysine 2y ago
      >The other part of this is that expensive silicon is not going to sit idle. It needs baseload power Why not? Just have the excess of computational capacity in many different regions and compute where the sun is shining bright now.
      - scarab92 2y ago
        Because amortised capital cost > operational (power) cost It's cheaper to build a 1 GW baseload power plant to sit beside your existing GPUs, than to buy another 1 GW of GPUs to place on the other side of the planet. Also, latency. Also, a large scale roll out of nuclear would be cheaper than solar regardless. Most of the cost of recent nuclear builds is learning cost. We build them so infrequently that people retire or move on before the next one is built, so we have to learn how to build them from scratch, and develop the supply chains from scratch each time.
1vuio0pswjnm7 2y ago
https://archive.md/20250223051355/https://www.ft.com/content/d595d5f6-79d1-47eb-b690-8597f09b39e7 https://archive.md/20250223051355/https://www.ft.com/content...
99_00 2y ago
[flagged]
- Arainach 2y ago
  What does this have to do with the article?
  - 99_00 2y ago
    Big tech is building data centres. Data centres pollute. Environmentalists are part of the left wing coalition.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
markhahn 2y ago
Ugh, 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.
- tbrownaw 2y ago
  > but this article (ironic for FT) reads like veiled de-development. Hard to tell if they're singling out AI because it's the current hot thing that everyone's talking about (and afraid of being replaced by), or if they're singling out "big tech" because they're rich and cool to hate on.
  - scarab92 2y ago
    The media A/B tests headlines to see what generates the most clicks. The journalists then learn what their audience responds to and creates narratives around that. The result is the reality and the narrative often differ dramatically. "News" is just "Reality TV" but in text format.
    - bombcar 2y ago
      As an aside I've noticed this in real time on Youtube - titles of videos just released changing before my eyes.
  - gruez 2y ago
    Probably the latter. A few years ago the same argument was being trotted out for crypto mining.
    - mschuster91 2y ago
      And with good reason - some particularly enterprising miners revived a coal power plant of all things. Other meme coins wasted insane amounts of HDDs and SSDs. I'm glad it's mostly Bitcoin and Ethereum that are left over these days. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/feb/18/bitcoin-miners-revive-fossil-fuel-plant-co2-emissions-soared https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/feb/18/bitcoin-m...
oefrha 2y ago
There’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.
- CrimsonRain 2y ago
  They are the people who think only one move in chess. I hope this answers your question.
- myrmidon 2y ago
  > 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. It feels like you're arguing against a strawman. I can only speak for myself, but I would like CO2 emissions to be taxed appropriately, so that fossil fuel producers and consumers actually pay a somewhat proper price for the damage that they cause (negative externalities). Sure, that might slow growth, but I see so evidence that this difference in growth has much of a negative effect on US citizens: How much GDP growth do you think we actually need as a nation to stay satisfied? Double our GDP every 20 years? More? Less? Because I know that I would trade a good fraction of my "growth boosted" past and present wage in exchange for climate change already being solved (and be happier as a result). PS: I would also like to point out that any significant constant rate of growth is inherently unsustainable by definition; as a species, we need to arrange ourself with the fact that we'll be unable to continue growing our energy consumption exponentially-- the sooner, the better.
  - oefrha 2y ago
    Article is about health impact and explicitly not about carbon emissions. It also strongly implies “we don’t want you to pay, we simply don’t want you here”. You can’t accuse me of arguing against a strawman when I’m addressing the article while you’re bringing in something else only loosely in the same category.
boxedemp 2y ago
Sounds to me like the real criticism is dirty electricity generation.
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y ago
  Everyone needs a pollution tax, hardly anyone wants one
  - ZeroGravitas 2y ago
    Mancur Olson's work "The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups" would suggest that lots of people want one, but only a little (they'd gain billions spread over half a billion people) while a few actors who it would financially affect directly really don't want one and the latter wins.
    - michaelt 2y ago
      Depends on the type of pollution, I guess? To reduce carbon emissions, one would put a tax on gasoline, natural gas, coal, and electricity from plants powered from those sources. The thing is, that hits every single voter in the pocketbook. And what's more, a voter on $20,000 drives about the same amount as a voter on $200,000 - so if the gas tax costs both drivers $1000 a year, the former will feel it a lot harder. So our politicians are scared to do it.
      - ZeroGravitas 2y ago
        They're not scared of the reality as it is incredibly easy to directly offset that back to consumers in a variety of ways who then get to choose whether to spend it on fossil fuels or do something cheaper. They're afraid of the relentless propaganda campaign that will wash that reality away, funded by the concentrated forces that will lose business if forced to account for the damage their products cause. Also, Americans think carbon fees are impossible, yet they're implemented all across the globe, including several US states. It's a political dysfunction that is particularly evident in the US, not a fact of life.
ipython 2y ago
I’m confused by the article mentioning West Virginia as a prime location for data centers along side Ohio - I am not aware of a large concentration of data centers in WV? (Unlike VA, of course) https://westvirginiawatch.com/2025/01/16/west-virginia-isnt-ready-for-data-centers/ https://westvirginiawatch.com/2025/01/16/west-virginia-isnt-...
- solatic 2y ago
  In broad strokes, take AWS for example with us-east-1 being in Virginia and us-east-2 being in Ohio, respectively, and wondering how to fuel future East Coast expansion, West Virginia would offer similar latencies in a deep-red state (meaning, deals will happen when palms get greased) with a powerful energy lobby (that would appreciate additional energy demand). Being a poor state, the price of labor will be cheap as well, both to build the data centers and to maintain them afterwards.
- nindalf 2y ago
  Maybe the author thought West Virginia was the western part of Virginia? I know it sounds preposterous, but I think it’s commensurate with the quality of the headline and article.
  - henryc47 2y ago
    John Denver made the same mistake
  - bombcar 2y ago
    West Virginia is not West Virginia. Makes more sense if you flip it around. West Virginia is not west Virginia. Also West Virginia would more accurately be North Virginia.
    - ipython 2y ago
      (But not “northern” Virginia aka NoVA, where the data centers are … just to make it more confusing)
TheSpiceIsLife 2y ago
What about obesity?
- bombcar 2y ago
  Coca Cola and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race. (I've always wondered how measurable the effect of subtly reducing the HFCS/sugar quantity in all sodas over decades would be.)
kaonwarb 2y ago
This reads as less than useful research to me. E.g.: "The analysis does not account for the purchase of market-based instruments that are meant to represent investments in new renewable energy in the US and that tech companies buy to offset the pollution from their electricity consumption. ... 'Unlike carbon emissions, the health impacts caused by a data centre in one region cannot be offset by cleaner air elsewhere,' said Shaolei Ren, associate professor at UC Riverside." Why not? Does clean air elsewhere not matter for the individuals elsewhere? Where is that "elsewhere?" My admittedly ungenerous interpretation: factoring this context in would be really hard and would decrease the headline factor of the findings, so... publish without.
- jrflowers 2y ago
  > Why not? If your house had a carbon monoxide leak but your neighbor’s house did not, would you consider your carbon monoxide leak to be “offset” by that fact?
  - kaonwarb 2y ago
    If a mitigating action had decreased CO in my neighbor's house by at least as much as it increased in mine, then potentially yes, a neutral researcher should consider that as an offset at the population health level. Not sure why we need an analogy, though. How about sticking to standard air pollution, which has direct impact of its own? CO poisoning seems a bit extreme as a comparison.
    - darkwater 2y ago
      No, it's not that extreme. If the offset comes from a zone where air quality is already "good enough", no extra lives are saved, so it's still net negative.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - freejazz 2y ago
      One person remains fine, the other is dead. That's a net loss...
blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
Since every activity has some externalities and also unexpected positive effects, isn’t focusing on just the negative effects of this one thing very lopsided?
- kergonath 2y ago
  That’s fine, you can have one article on negative implications and another one on opportunities. It’s two different subjects, with different data and different approaches, and possibly different specialised authors. You don’t have to both-sides everything all the time.
  - gruez 2y ago
    That's true, but the articles on negative implications are being selectively written. For instance, there's a deluge of articles about pollution from AI datacenters (and before that, crypto mining), but hardly a peep about pollution from the US healthcare system, or education, even though those are arguably far higher. As a result, such articles comes across as selectively written hit-pieces rather than objective reporting.
PeterStuer 2y ago
Now imagine how much pollution from the airline industry costs public health ...
- xyst 2y ago
  Or superfluous private jet usage by executives “super commuting” between states …
  - gruez 2y ago
    For all the flak that CEOs and taylor swift gets, their contribution to global warming is a drop in a bucket (percentage of aviation emissions that can be attributed to private jets), of a bucket that's being dumped in the ocean (percentage of global warming that can be attributed to aviation). They produce outsized emissions on a personal basis, but there's also so few jets relative to commercial airlines that banning them isn't going to make a dent.
    - callc 2y ago
      Every bit counts. And to make a dent, start with the things with outsized effects with simple alternatives. It’s easy to make laws about it: - private jets/charters: only allowed if have enough passengers (calculate the CO2/person) - old cars - illegal if don’t pass emissions check
      - gruez 2y ago
        >Every bit counts. "every bit" also costs political capital. Making any sort of change is going to cause a stir, and if you're going to cause a political shitshow, you might as well get good returns for it. Causing a political shitshow, but only making a modest impact is the worst outcome. Just look at the pasty tax in the UK[1]. The government proposed a change to the VAT rules that would have made a minimal fiscal impact, but generated so much flak that they were forced to back down. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pasty_tax#Aftermath https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pasty_tax#Aftermath >start with the things with outsized effects with simple alternatives. The examples you gave all cause disproportionate harm to a small group, which will raise a stink to their local representative, especially if they're being singled out. An across the board carbon tax avoids both these problems.
casey2 2y ago
In the future blinking with cost trillions of dollars.
exabrial 2y ago
Just wait until you see how much C02 is being emitted sucking down energy from green sources that could have heated homes or supplied other essential services.
bparsons 2y ago
Increased levels of NO2, SO2 and PM2.5 are going to have a direct impact on the health of people living close to these facilities. The unlicensed gas turbines in Memphis are probably the worst offender.
mithr 2y ago
Is it just me that finds the angle here odd? "The cost of treating illnesses has gone up due to X" rather than "more people are getting sicker due to X". Makes it more of a detached conversation about pricing than about how something is hurting actual people, who perhaps have value beyond a purely economical one.
sachinaag 2y ago
[dead]
TriangleEdge 2y ago
"Air pollution derived from the huge amounts of energy needed to run data centres has been linked to treating cancers, asthma and other related issues, according to research from UC Riverside and Caltech." "The academics estimated that the cost of treating illnesses connected to this pollution was valued at $1.5bn in 2023, up 20 per cent from a year earlier. They found that the overall cost was $5.4bn since 2019." Note that pollution is not defined in the article.
faraixyz 2y ago
The paper in question: https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.06288 https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.06288
allergyX 2y ago
Thats so unfortunate, it can cause breathing and asthma issues

201 points by 1vuio0pswjnm7 2y ago

gnabgib 2y ago

https://archive.is/N0UGX https://archive.is/N0UGX

fumoto 2y ago
Thanks! the captcha is annoying tho

scarab92 2y ago

We 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 using non-nuclear power lead to ICE vehicles remaining more prevalent than they should be, and non-heat-pump heating remaining more prevalent than it should be, leading to millions more years of human lifespan lost. From a health perspective, blocking nuclear with overregulation was one of societies biggest health policy failures.

croes 2y ago
Who decides they are over engineered on safety? Didn’t we already learn better safe than sorry?
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- markhahn 2y ago
  "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).
  - tmpz22 2y ago
    $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.
    - Hammershaft 2y ago
      We do not thoughtfully balance regulatory costs on nuclear vs say coal... Nuclear regulatory compliance is orders of magnitude more expensive despite being orders of magnitude safer for human health (on top of the climate).
      - KennyBlanken 2y ago
        90% of new electricity generation in the US is solar or wind. Coal generation has generally trended downward since the mid 2000s. We don't need nuclear to replace coal.
        Recurecur 2y ago
        We certainly do need nuclear to replace coal. Coal and nuclear are both reliable sources of energy, unlike solar or wind. I'm sure you're about to go into some battery related hand waving, but that doesn't help in two ways. First, there will be intervals where the lull in production exceeds storage capacity, which means fatalities in many cases. Second, battery is expensive, so the total system cost can exceed the cost of nuclear (especially with sane regulation and continually improving engineering). Also, as far as "coal trending downward", that isn't the case outside the US. We're going to need a vastly increased energy supply in order to meet the world's needs. Nuclear fission absolutely needs to be part of that mix, as we work to master fusion and other advanced, safe, and environmentally responsible forms of energy production. Beyond that, high density energy sources are highly desirable off-planet. :-)
- adgjlsfhk1 2y ago
  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.
  - 7952 2y ago
    So if we just do something politically unacceptable and probably morally unacceptable then nuclear will be viable? And of course you could apply the same thing to other sources of energy and they will equally get cheaper. Wind turbines in beauty spots. Remove the air quality equipment from fossil fuel plants. Dam evey river.
    - fsflover 2y ago
      It's the other way around. We should apply equal regulations to coal making nuclear more competing.
    - kergonath 2y ago
      > So if we just do something politically unacceptable and probably morally unacceptable then nuclear will be viable? I think you missed the point. Coal-fired plants leak radiation significantly. If this is not morally unacceptable in one case, why would it be in another? They did not say that nuclear should have a free pass, just that the regulations should be consistent. > And of course you could apply the same thing to other sources of energy and they will equally get cheaper. Different technologies have different downsides and advantages. The parent was talking about 2 technologies having inconsistent expectations for the same metric. Personally, I do not want wind turbines everywhere or a nuclear plant in a city centre, but I think that both technologies (plus solar and hydro) need to be developed, because both have much smaller ecological and human costs than the alternative. > Dam evey river. That is counter-productive as there are diminishing returns, and not every river is worth daming.
- Hammershaft 2y ago
  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.
  - margalabargala 2y ago
    Tell us more about the death count from solar. Is it all people falling off roofs?
    - dmoy 2y ago
      Pretty much yea. So not exactly a fair comparison because e.g. grid level solar doesn't necessarily involve roof climbing. But given current installation base, it's like 3x more deaths per unit energy than wind.
      - hgomersall 2y ago
        I don't know how reliable it is, but the first link I clicked on contradicts your assertion: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-production-per-twh https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-p...
      - margalabargala 2y ago
        Got a source for that?
  - kristiandupont 2y ago
    >nuclear disasters feels scarier I am in favor of more nuclear power and I know very little about the field, but this argument never resonated with me. If the Chernobyl series paints a reasonably realistic image of what could have happened had they not contained the melt down, we are talking "better part of a continent being uninhabitable for thousands of years". When that is the potential risk, comparing death counts from non-catastrophic scenarios isn't what we should be looking at.
burnished 2y ago
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.
- tbrownaw 2y ago
  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.)
jltsiren 2y ago
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.
- scarab92 2y ago
  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.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - vasco 2y ago
    I'm pro-nuclear but the idea that insurance fixes everything is strange to me. How much insurance money fixes you getting killed, would you say?
    - boxedemp 2y ago
      I missed where they say insurance solves everything. I understood it as the government running it solves many of the issues introduced by the private sector, and the insurance was another thought.
    - tbrownaw 2y ago
      This is not a novel question. If someone gets killed at work, how much do they get from workers' comp? What is a micromort and how much does one usually sell for? What did weregeld used to be back when it was still a thing?
notTooFarGone 2y ago
How about we build this stuff in deserts where you can just plaster everything with solar in like 10% of time and 30% of money investment. You now have 70% of budget to build battery/wind and still got enough time. This is solved with current renewable prices without ideological preferences.
- ikr678 2y ago
  Unfortunately, data centers also need access to considerable amounts of water.
- ahmeneeroe-v2 2y ago
  No thank you. Build it in your backyard, not mine.
js8 2y ago
Nuclear is not economically viable compared to renewables (wind & solar), and it's rightfully on its way out. What is really needed is for humanity to say "enough" and stop using fossil fuels. Would it be a problem if training AI models (or running any other analytics) be lot more expensive in winter than summer? I doubt it. There is no reason not to use more renewables for this use case, then.
- scarab92 2y ago
  Nuclear has a far lower LCOE than renewables, when you mass produce them rather than do ad-hoc bespoke builds. For example, the Gen II+ plants built in the 90's had an (inflation adjusted) price of about $500 million per GWe. Whereas, the cost of the recent Vogtl build was $15 billion per GWe! Renewables proponents point to the cost of Vogtl (or similar) when they say that Nuclear has a higher cost than renewables, which is dishonest. The incremental cost of new reactors is far lower when you build many of them. The recent projects are mostly learning curve costs because of how long it's been. The other part of this is that expensive silicon is not going to sit idle. It needs baseload power, and for solar that means adding batteries, and also downrating the nameplate capacity to it's wintertime capacity. These factors increase the real world cost of renewable power significantly. Don't get me wrong, I think we should be investing in renewable as well, but it's still a substantially more expensive way to generate power than a serious roll out of nuclear would be.
  - drysine 2y ago
    >The other part of this is that expensive silicon is not going to sit idle. It needs baseload power Why not? Just have the excess of computational capacity in many different regions and compute where the sun is shining bright now.
    - scarab92 2y ago
      Because amortised capital cost > operational (power) cost It's cheaper to build a 1 GW baseload power plant to sit beside your existing GPUs, than to buy another 1 GW of GPUs to place on the other side of the planet. Also, latency. Also, a large scale roll out of nuclear would be cheaper than solar regardless. Most of the cost of recent nuclear builds is learning cost. We build them so infrequently that people retire or move on before the next one is built, so we have to learn how to build them from scratch, and develop the supply chains from scratch each time.

1vuio0pswjnm7 2y ago

https://archive.md/20250223051355/https://www.ft.com/content/d595d5f6-79d1-47eb-b690-8597f09b39e7 https://archive.md/20250223051355/https://www.ft.com/content...

99_00 2y ago

[flagged]

Arainach 2y ago
What does this have to do with the article?
- 99_00 2y ago
  Big tech is building data centres. Data centres pollute. Environmentalists are part of the left wing coalition.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

markhahn 2y ago

Ugh, 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.

tbrownaw 2y ago
> but this article (ironic for FT) reads like veiled de-development. Hard to tell if they're singling out AI because it's the current hot thing that everyone's talking about (and afraid of being replaced by), or if they're singling out "big tech" because they're rich and cool to hate on.
- scarab92 2y ago
  The media A/B tests headlines to see what generates the most clicks. The journalists then learn what their audience responds to and creates narratives around that. The result is the reality and the narrative often differ dramatically. "News" is just "Reality TV" but in text format.
  - bombcar 2y ago
    As an aside I've noticed this in real time on Youtube - titles of videos just released changing before my eyes.
- gruez 2y ago
  Probably the latter. A few years ago the same argument was being trotted out for crypto mining.
  - mschuster91 2y ago
    And with good reason - some particularly enterprising miners revived a coal power plant of all things. Other meme coins wasted insane amounts of HDDs and SSDs. I'm glad it's mostly Bitcoin and Ethereum that are left over these days. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/feb/18/bitcoin-miners-revive-fossil-fuel-plant-co2-emissions-soared https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/feb/18/bitcoin-m...

oefrha 2y ago

There’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.

CrimsonRain 2y ago
They are the people who think only one move in chess. I hope this answers your question.
myrmidon 2y ago
> 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. It feels like you're arguing against a strawman. I can only speak for myself, but I would like CO2 emissions to be taxed appropriately, so that fossil fuel producers and consumers actually pay a somewhat proper price for the damage that they cause (negative externalities). Sure, that might slow growth, but I see so evidence that this difference in growth has much of a negative effect on US citizens: How much GDP growth do you think we actually need as a nation to stay satisfied? Double our GDP every 20 years? More? Less? Because I know that I would trade a good fraction of my "growth boosted" past and present wage in exchange for climate change already being solved (and be happier as a result). PS: I would also like to point out that any significant constant rate of growth is inherently unsustainable by definition; as a species, we need to arrange ourself with the fact that we'll be unable to continue growing our energy consumption exponentially-- the sooner, the better.
- oefrha 2y ago
  Article is about health impact and explicitly not about carbon emissions. It also strongly implies “we don’t want you to pay, we simply don’t want you here”. You can’t accuse me of arguing against a strawman when I’m addressing the article while you’re bringing in something else only loosely in the same category.

boxedemp 2y ago

Sounds to me like the real criticism is dirty electricity generation.

01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y ago
Everyone needs a pollution tax, hardly anyone wants one
- ZeroGravitas 2y ago
  Mancur Olson's work "The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups" would suggest that lots of people want one, but only a little (they'd gain billions spread over half a billion people) while a few actors who it would financially affect directly really don't want one and the latter wins.
  - michaelt 2y ago
    Depends on the type of pollution, I guess? To reduce carbon emissions, one would put a tax on gasoline, natural gas, coal, and electricity from plants powered from those sources. The thing is, that hits every single voter in the pocketbook. And what's more, a voter on $20,000 drives about the same amount as a voter on $200,000 - so if the gas tax costs both drivers $1000 a year, the former will feel it a lot harder. So our politicians are scared to do it.
    - ZeroGravitas 2y ago
      They're not scared of the reality as it is incredibly easy to directly offset that back to consumers in a variety of ways who then get to choose whether to spend it on fossil fuels or do something cheaper. They're afraid of the relentless propaganda campaign that will wash that reality away, funded by the concentrated forces that will lose business if forced to account for the damage their products cause. Also, Americans think carbon fees are impossible, yet they're implemented all across the globe, including several US states. It's a political dysfunction that is particularly evident in the US, not a fact of life.

ipython 2y ago

I’m confused by the article mentioning West Virginia as a prime location for data centers along side Ohio - I am not aware of a large concentration of data centers in WV? (Unlike VA, of course) https://westvirginiawatch.com/2025/01/16/west-virginia-isnt-ready-for-data-centers/ https://westvirginiawatch.com/2025/01/16/west-virginia-isnt-...

solatic 2y ago
In broad strokes, take AWS for example with us-east-1 being in Virginia and us-east-2 being in Ohio, respectively, and wondering how to fuel future East Coast expansion, West Virginia would offer similar latencies in a deep-red state (meaning, deals will happen when palms get greased) with a powerful energy lobby (that would appreciate additional energy demand). Being a poor state, the price of labor will be cheap as well, both to build the data centers and to maintain them afterwards.
nindalf 2y ago
Maybe the author thought West Virginia was the western part of Virginia? I know it sounds preposterous, but I think it’s commensurate with the quality of the headline and article.
- henryc47 2y ago
  John Denver made the same mistake
- bombcar 2y ago
  West Virginia is not West Virginia. Makes more sense if you flip it around. West Virginia is not west Virginia. Also West Virginia would more accurately be North Virginia.
  - ipython 2y ago
    (But not “northern” Virginia aka NoVA, where the data centers are … just to make it more confusing)

TheSpiceIsLife 2y ago

What about obesity?

bombcar 2y ago
Coca Cola and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race. (I've always wondered how measurable the effect of subtly reducing the HFCS/sugar quantity in all sodas over decades would be.)

kaonwarb 2y ago

This reads as less than useful research to me. E.g.: "The analysis does not account for the purchase of market-based instruments that are meant to represent investments in new renewable energy in the US and that tech companies buy to offset the pollution from their electricity consumption. ... 'Unlike carbon emissions, the health impacts caused by a data centre in one region cannot be offset by cleaner air elsewhere,' said Shaolei Ren, associate professor at UC Riverside." Why not? Does clean air elsewhere not matter for the individuals elsewhere? Where is that "elsewhere?" My admittedly ungenerous interpretation: factoring this context in would be really hard and would decrease the headline factor of the findings, so... publish without.

jrflowers 2y ago
> Why not? If your house had a carbon monoxide leak but your neighbor’s house did not, would you consider your carbon monoxide leak to be “offset” by that fact?
- kaonwarb 2y ago
  If a mitigating action had decreased CO in my neighbor's house by at least as much as it increased in mine, then potentially yes, a neutral researcher should consider that as an offset at the population health level. Not sure why we need an analogy, though. How about sticking to standard air pollution, which has direct impact of its own? CO poisoning seems a bit extreme as a comparison.
  - darkwater 2y ago
    No, it's not that extreme. If the offset comes from a zone where air quality is already "good enough", no extra lives are saved, so it's still net negative.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - freejazz 2y ago
    One person remains fine, the other is dead. That's a net loss...

blackeyeblitzar 2y ago

Since every activity has some externalities and also unexpected positive effects, isn’t focusing on just the negative effects of this one thing very lopsided?

kergonath 2y ago
That’s fine, you can have one article on negative implications and another one on opportunities. It’s two different subjects, with different data and different approaches, and possibly different specialised authors. You don’t have to both-sides everything all the time.
- gruez 2y ago
  That's true, but the articles on negative implications are being selectively written. For instance, there's a deluge of articles about pollution from AI datacenters (and before that, crypto mining), but hardly a peep about pollution from the US healthcare system, or education, even though those are arguably far higher. As a result, such articles comes across as selectively written hit-pieces rather than objective reporting.

PeterStuer 2y ago

Now imagine how much pollution from the airline industry costs public health ...

xyst 2y ago
Or superfluous private jet usage by executives “super commuting” between states …
- gruez 2y ago
  For all the flak that CEOs and taylor swift gets, their contribution to global warming is a drop in a bucket (percentage of aviation emissions that can be attributed to private jets), of a bucket that's being dumped in the ocean (percentage of global warming that can be attributed to aviation). They produce outsized emissions on a personal basis, but there's also so few jets relative to commercial airlines that banning them isn't going to make a dent.
  - callc 2y ago
    Every bit counts. And to make a dent, start with the things with outsized effects with simple alternatives. It’s easy to make laws about it: - private jets/charters: only allowed if have enough passengers (calculate the CO2/person) - old cars - illegal if don’t pass emissions check
    - gruez 2y ago
      >Every bit counts. "every bit" also costs political capital. Making any sort of change is going to cause a stir, and if you're going to cause a political shitshow, you might as well get good returns for it. Causing a political shitshow, but only making a modest impact is the worst outcome. Just look at the pasty tax in the UK[1]. The government proposed a change to the VAT rules that would have made a minimal fiscal impact, but generated so much flak that they were forced to back down. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pasty_tax#Aftermath https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pasty_tax#Aftermath >start with the things with outsized effects with simple alternatives. The examples you gave all cause disproportionate harm to a small group, which will raise a stink to their local representative, especially if they're being singled out. An across the board carbon tax avoids both these problems.

casey2 2y ago

In the future blinking with cost trillions of dollars.

exabrial 2y ago

Just wait until you see how much C02 is being emitted sucking down energy from green sources that could have heated homes or supplied other essential services.

bparsons 2y ago

Increased levels of NO2, SO2 and PM2.5 are going to have a direct impact on the health of people living close to these facilities. The unlicensed gas turbines in Memphis are probably the worst offender.

mithr 2y ago

Is it just me that finds the angle here odd? "The cost of treating illnesses has gone up due to X" rather than "more people are getting sicker due to X". Makes it more of a detached conversation about pricing than about how something is hurting actual people, who perhaps have value beyond a purely economical one.

sachinaag 2y ago

[dead]

TriangleEdge 2y ago

"Air pollution derived from the huge amounts of energy needed to run data centres has been linked to treating cancers, asthma and other related issues, according to research from UC Riverside and Caltech." "The academics estimated that the cost of treating illnesses connected to this pollution was valued at $1.5bn in 2023, up 20 per cent from a year earlier. They found that the overall cost was $5.4bn since 2019." Note that pollution is not defined in the article.

faraixyz 2y ago

The paper in question: https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.06288 https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.06288

allergyX 2y ago

Thats so unfortunate, it can cause breathing and asthma issues