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New data center emits heat equivalent to 23 nuclear bombs - every day. How much will the electricity cost for air conditioning?

Photo above - HBO's WestWorld screen shot. Delores asks: "Oh, Teddy . . .why can't we just leave now, before they build the worlds largest data center over there?" Utah was one of the sites used for on-location filming of the show's outdoor scenes.

Say goodbye to the State of Utah. A new hyperscale data center will emit 16 gigawatts of energy (waste heat, generating emissions) daily. For comparison, the Hiroshima bomb was under 1 gigawatt, but highly concentrated at the detonation site (600 feet above sea level) for just a few seconds. (see link below). Over the course of a full day 23 bombs worth of gigawatts will leak into Utah’s Box Elder valley, which is already a stifling heat trap.

Utah’s average temperature is already 94 degrees in July. Would it be better to shut the new data center down in the summer, and hope that in February (avg temp 46) the effect will be less destructive?

There are 15 winter ski resorts within an hour's drive of Salt Lake City. These are udoubtedly at higher elevations, where temps get below 46 degrees. The operators of these ski resorts might object to having a massive snow melt. Or if all blizzards simply arrive as rainstorms. One of these ski resort owners may have paid for the “23 nukes” calculation by Dr. Robert Davies at Utah State University. Or Dr. Davies may just be a savant who is good with numbers.

The link below, like earlier ones on the Utah data center, doesn’t reveal which corporation the worlds largest data center is being built for. Amazon, Google, and Microsoft come to mind, but we shouldn’t accuse unless someone raises their hand. Since all this is happening in Utah, It certainly won’t turn out to be some European tech company.

If this turns out to be Amazon, people should take exception to their online product summaries, which usually say "this item has 17 sustainability features".

We may have reached the point where there no acceptable places for data centers, if they’re going to have a Hiroshima like impact. Not unless those centers are completely solar or wind turbine powered. The latest craze for building data centers in chilly places like Norway, Finland, and Canada might simply mean we are dumping heat directly into regions which are most vulnerable to global warming. Don’t get me started on what floating or underwater data centers might do to ocean temps and currents.

If AI is anything close to as smart as its makers claim, let’s ask Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini where we can safely build data centers without destroying the planet. If they’re honest, they’ll probably say in orbit. If Claude and ChatGPT are “hallucinating” or lying, they will simply reassure us that it probably doesn't make any difference.

I’m just sayin’ . . .

New data center equivalent to setting off 23 nuclear bombs per day, professor finds

https://www.msn.com/en-us/weather/topstories/new-data-center-equivalent-to-setting-off-23-nuclear-bombs-per-day-professor-finds/ar-AA22WffX?ocid=BingNewsSerp

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DeWayfarer · 61-69, M

Hey they actually want to build a data center in the desert here, where it gets over 120°f. 🤷🏻‍♂

124°f is not unheard of there either.

The power grid can barely handle the current need for air conditioning. Blackouts and brownouts are not unheard of there.

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DeWayfarer · 61-69, M

@SusanInFlorida I'm suggesting that it's impossible to do. Just the overflow of energy could supply ten times the energy needed for Utah. Energy would basically be free.

And if you really think that capitalism would allow free energy, then you know nothing about capitalism.

The greater the supply the lesser the demand.

That is how much energy 23 Hiroshima bombs a day is!

Now add to that all the data centers proposed in each state. In some states three are proposed. Where is the energy going to go?

Capitalism doesn't operate that way. Your figure has to be vastly wrong.

SusanInFlorida · 31-35, F

@DeWayfarer i checked the internet, because i was suspicous. scientists warn that

1 - there's no such thing as free energy

2 - no such thing as a perpetual motion machine

3 - that heat always flows from a warmer to a cooler device/location.

DeWayfarer · 61-69, M

@SusanInFlorida What you should have checked was how much energy would 23 nuclear bombs a day is for the people in Utah.

It's a ridiculous amount BTW for Utah.

Comparison

1,449 TJ/day (from nuclear bombs) versus 1.55 TJ/day (total energy consumption in Utah) presents an overwhelming disparity. The energy released from detonating 23 nuclear bombs per day would be about 933 times the daily energy consumption for all of Utah.

Even one nuclear bomb a day would be over kill at 40.57 times the daily average.

Now the overflow would happen at ⅒th of that at 4.057 times the need.

LeopoldBloom · M

Opposition to data centers is growing on both sides of the political divide. We may be approaching the limit of what people are willing to put up with. Then the law of supply and demand will serve to raise the cost of AI to the point that only people and businesses that actually need it will be able to afford it.

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SusanInFlorida · 31-35, F

@LeopoldBloom since most data centers apparently operate at a loss already, i am mystified why we need to keep building more of them and larger ones

NerdyPotato ·

@SusanInFlorida the inventors of AI invested so much in it they can't afford for it to fail. So even though it's not trustworthy, efficient or cost saving yet, they hope it will improve to become all of that. On the other hand, they ran out of pure human training data a long time ago and see a worrisome feedback loop with severely flawed output from other bots flooding into new internet content used as input now. I thought they were intelligent enough to understand digging themselves in deeper will only make the outcome worse, but I guess failing right now is unbearable and they're hoping to postpone an even bigger downfall until after their death. At this rate they won't have long to finish up their life if they don't want to experience the consequences of their choices though.

SusanInFlorida · 31-35, F

@NerdyPotato the amount of money invested has zero impact or prediction on what succeeds or fails.

if you need examples, look at abandoned automobile factories and the stock market crashes of 1929, 2001, and 2008.

ArishMell · 70-79, M

While I agree entirely with the point that these gigantic servers are appallingly wasteful - and their social rather than mere shareholders' need highly questionable - I wonder if they really would have much effect on local weather, wherever they may be.

An ordinary weather system is far more powerful than these computer-sets.

SusanInFlorida · 31-35, F

@ArishMell i cannot begin to imagine what detonating 23 nuclear bombs a day at one site does to the weather

ElwoodBlues · M

On the other hand, if the data center ran off solar + wind + batteries, it would be energy neutral! The problem isn't the data center itself, the problem is the intended power source. And that is a big problem.

One small physics error. The data center load is 16GW. That's a rate or power (energy per unit time); we need to be comparing total energy.

The daily energy emission is 16GW * 24 hours = 400GWh.
Hiroshima bomb emitted 63 Tera joules.
400GWh = 1440 TJ; thus 400/63 =22.86 bombs per day.
So the comparison is good; the units of watts are wrong.

Hiroshima bomb was under 1 gigawatt

Not important, but wrong. The bomb emitted 63TJ in a very short time. One joule is one watt second, so 63 Tera watts for one second is one way to arrive at the 63TJ output. We don't care about the "wattage" of the bomb, only it's total energy output.

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ElwoodBlues · M

@SusanInFlorida You confused watts with watt hours. I corrected that.

@ArishMell Asks

(16GW/day we are told), but how does that compare with the energy as electricity the plant uses overall - by the cooling machinery as well as the electronics.

My understanding is 16GW is the power, 400GW/day is the grand total of energy. From an energy perspective, the electronics are a big resistor that converts about 8GW to heat, and the cooling system is another big resistor that emits 16GW of heat moving the first 8GW from indoors to outdoors. Then we multiply those numbers by 24 hours to get GWh/day.

A useful point of comparison would be the watts per day of solar heating. From the NREL map below, Utah gets ~5kWh/m²/day or 5GWh/(km)²/day. So the 400GWh/day emitted by the data center would be equiv to the day's Sun energy on 80 square km or 31 sq miles; an area 9km or 5.56 miles on a side. That doesn't tell us the effects on local weather, but it does provide a point of comparison with the Sun, the other main source of heat, that drives the local weather.

It's also the area that would be required for solar panels if they were 100% efficient. Multiply by 5 for 20% efficiency.

SusanInFlorida · 31-35, F

@ElwoodBlues i'm automatically suspicious of any chart which shows that south texas and northern maine get similar amounts of solar radiation each year.

ArishMell · 70-79, M

@ElwoodBlues Thankyou for those details.

It's a not a huge amount of energy then, really.

I wonder if the data-centre was powered entirely by solar panels local to it, whether the nett effect would be 0 by the law of conservation of energy, then realised of course that the panels are converting light, not infra-red, radiation to electricity.

sstronaut

And some try to say humans have no effects on temptures...

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sstronaut

@SusanInFlorida

the kind of car we drive, or light bulb we use, is not going to prevent the end of this ice age.

Never said it would, in fact, that's a completely different discussion than was being discussed...

@ArishMell

It does, but the present effects on the climate are from human activity altering the natura of the atmosphere, not by using heaters.

And how has anyone proved what activities are or aren't doing it?

Also, do things that heat, not change the environment? Heck we supposedly can see lights in outer space that's a lot of heat coming form a lot of places...

To my limited knowledge, we haven't been able to determine what percentage of effect everything has the change, especially when some are arguing it's 0%

sstronaut

@SusanInFlorida

i've recently been fascinated by photos/narratives of abandoned places that returned to nature.

The first European group that went through South America, or at least I believe the entire Brazilian rainforest wrote about it, was talking about how their are mega cities everywhere...

The second group came through 50 years later, and thought that guy and his book was an absolute lier, because they found nothing but jungle...

But supposedly using lidar they have found a lot more ancient mega city foundations and realized that first guy might of been more correct than people think. As they believe they first group might of bro new diseases with them, that took out the locals and the amazon completely took over the cities in 50 years.

SusanInFlorida · 31-35, F

@sstronaut i'm guessing the aboriginal people in the rainforest had little resistance to european diseases like small pox, accounting for the population apocalypse in only a few decades

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