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Utah data center: Projected daily heat equivalent to 23 atomic bombs

21 pointsby WarOnPrivacytoday at 3:37 AM12 commentsview on HN

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WarOnPrivacytoday at 3:50 AM

    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...

theamktoday at 3:55 AM

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.

phillipseamoretoday at 3:47 AM

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?

show 2 replies
feverzsjtoday at 5:35 AM

Guess Skynet won't need all these ICBMs.

akomtutoday at 6:05 AM

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.

show 1 reply
antibulltoday at 5:06 AM

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