http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/24/technology/data-centers-in-rural-washington-state-gobble-power.html?partner=rss&pagewanted=all

"Microsoft deliberately burned through “millions of watts of electricity” to avoid a penalty for lowballing its power use last year, according to the New York Times. The company planned to continue wasting power at dozens of diesel generators in Quincy, Washington until the $210,000 fine was cut. Microsoft uses the utility as a backup for a large hydroelectric data center dedicated to cloud services and billed as a green, efficient facility. The company has pledged to go carbon neutral from this summer."

"In an attempt to erase a $210,000 penalty the utility said the company owed for overestimating its power use, Microsoft proceeded to simply waste millions of watts of electricity, records show. Then it threatened to continue burning power in what it acknowledged was an “unnecessarily wasteful” way until the fine was substantially cut, according to documents obtained by The New York Times."

This whole green thing is such BS I mean Apple with the solar panels, how much resources, energy and pollution went into and was caused by them, not to mention the massive area of land that was destroyed to put them in... great for wildlife that is.

Nuclear power is by bar the best option, if has the most potential for creating energy too, I mean it's how the sun creates energy for god sake. It also requires far less space and when one goes bang, which they shouldn't do if run properly then the impact on the wildlife has only been great because humans don't enter the area. Look at chernobyl, the wildlife is loving it and the radiation hasn't harmed the wildlife in the slightest.

Originally posted by Cleffy
I don't like Nuclear right now because we cannot tap that power well without tons of fresh water.  The problem with Nuclear is its energy coeffecient is too high so we can only capture a smaller amount of it compared to coal.  Also without a complete Nuclear reaction, there is a problem of waste.

Someone didnt study in high school.

Nuclear is the most efficient energy source we have.

The energy efficientcy of Power Plants is a differnet story, the thermo electric cycle i.e the turbine used is just as, if not more important than the fuel.

Nuclear Power Plants are less effcient than some of the newer coal or natual gas ones just because they use super  and ultra super critical boilers, while most nuclear power palnts still use gas topping turbines or combined cycles, or heck even boilers.

US nuclear plants were built in the 70's with late 50's to mid 60's designs, their power cycles are old and unefficient, but still way better than coal.

Also fission is the same in nuclear reactors(fisson based ones) as in fission bobms, its just slower you get the same by products as you would if you would've burnt all the fuel in a second.

Modern nuclear reactors have multiple fuel cycles, with intermidate breeding cycles that produce new fuel for the next cycle.

Spent fuel is not nuclear waste, you remove the isotopes you need for medical research, and other nuclear siences, and repurpose the fuel to work in the next cycle, or in another type of reactor.

The reason that nuclear fell out of favor is that we discovered plenty of new oil and gas reservs, in the 70's people estimated that by 2000 we'll run out of fossil fuels for electircal production, it didnt happen. So there was no point in investing billions and billions of dollars in new power plants when you can built a coal or gas plant at a fraction of the cost.

I'd have done the same as Microsoft in this case.

So I didn't use as much as I estimated, which means I saved power ( the whole point of going "green" ), but I have to pay you because of it?

Kiss my ass.

*Flips on the turbines.*