Utah data center: Projected daily heat equivalent to 23 atomic bombs(www.abc4.com)

24 pointsby WarOnPrivacy8 hours ago6 comments

WarOnPrivacy7 hours ago
```
    Dr. Rob Davies, a physics professor at Utah State
    University, prepared the analysis that estimates
    the energy footprint of the proposed data center
    is comparable to 40,000 Walmart Supercenters.
```
Other stats:
Size = 62mi² https://kutv.com/news/local/proposed-box-elder-data-center-r...
Energy usage = 9 Gigawats (Utah uses 4 Gigawatts total) https://www.cachevalleydaily.com/news/hundreds-of-utahns-fil...
Water usage permitted = 13,000 acre-feet (26k-39k homes worth) https://www.fox13now.com/news/local-news/box-elder-county/mo...
phillipseamore7 hours ago
I would have gone with "Utah datacenter power use equivalent to 16 Back to the Future DeLorean's".
What is the standard "atomic bomb" unit these days?
- uncircle3 hours ago
  Americans love their measurements in football stadium lengths or bananas, but they do not apply very well to thermal units.
  Also what is a ‘standard atomic bomb’? Presumably one kept in a vault at the American National Standards Institute for reference.
- kmoser7 hours ago
  > For a pop culture comparison, the fictional DeLorean time machine in “Back to the Future” required 1.21 gigawatts to power the flux capacitor for Marty McFly to time-travel.
  This is an absolutely meaningless statistic. It's pretty hard to believe that it would be included in an otherwise informative article.
  - yellowapple5 hours ago
    A single datacenter having the requisite power to travel back to 1955 many times over seems pretty meaningful to me.
  - casey25 hours ago
    The article is the opposite of informative, it meaningless comparing an industrial growth sector to residential. 40k residents use a million times more toilet paper a year. It uses about the same amount of energy as a similarly sized steel mill. There were multiple mills that churned out ~3GW a piece 24/7 IN UTAH! The research has been done, but the article won't inform you on that because they want to pander to brainless boomer NIMBY's that would have been gunned down 200 years ago rule over the country like tyrants far outside their worth or rights.
- cratermoon7 hours ago
  Typically, a Fat Man design as tested at White Sands and used on Nagasaki, or 21 kilotons, sometimes 15 kilotons when Hiroshima is used for comparison, as in the HBO Chernobyl miniseries.
theamk7 hours ago
The number is "approximately 16 gigawatts"
23 atomic bombs per day does not really tell me much. Both boxer's punch and a 9mm bullet have about 450 J of energy, but the effects are very different.
A better comparison would be ~550000 average US houses... or a single medium-sized aluminum smelter factory.
- anvuong5 hours ago
  Tbf a normal dude receiving a full force boxer's punch without the mitts can easily die or suffer serious brain trauma.
  - vrighter2 hours ago
    but probably his hand won't penetrate into the skull. Bigger contact patch.
    sidewndr46an hour ago
    smaller handguns don't reliably penetrate bone. it's a misunderstanding. In some cases 22LR can actually bounce off the skull
- clipsy6 hours ago
  > A better comparison would be ~550000 average US houses... or a single medium-sized aluminum smelter factory.
  Want to provide a citation for either of these? This would have the average US household dissipating the equivalent of ~30kW, which does not pass the smell test for me.
feverzsj6 hours ago
Guess Skynet won't need all these ICBMs.
akomtu5 hours ago
AI datacenters are effectively boilers that burn gas, heat the atmosphere and boil rivers. Remember that GPUs turn all electricity into heat. As a side effect, they also produce slop.
- dr_ick5 hours ago
  Is this much different from non-AI datacenters?
antibull6 hours ago
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