Gerry McGovernMay 13

This AI data center will be bigger than 2,000 Walmarts and dump '23 atom bombs worth of energy' into the environment every day — and locals are terrified

The scale sounds almost unreal. The proposed campus reportedly spans around 40,000 acres in Box Elder County, Utah, an area larger than many major cities.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/ai-data-center-bigger-2-124356503.html

This AI data center will be bigger than 2,000 Walmarts and dump '23 atom bombs worth of energy' into the environment every day — and locals are terrified

This project could physically alter the landscape for humans and wildlife

Yahoo News
Show threadCy
As atom bombs vary in explodieness, I assume that means the smallest, weakest atom bomb ever exploded. Which is still terrible. The 50-something terajoule "Little Boy" was what devastated Hiroshima. So 23 Hiroshimas, is what they're talking about. At a "16 gigawatt thermal load" that means 57.6 terajoules per hour. Multiply that by 24, divide by 23, comes pretty close to 23 60-terajoule bombs every day.

For scale, it would take that data center 3,600 hours to give off as much heat as the largest nuclear bomb ever exploded, Tsar Bomba. Which is about 5 months. TSAR BOMBA EVERY 5 MONTHS IS STILL PRETTY BAD
May 13 at 2:32pmWeb
Show threadAssimilateborgMay 13
@cy how many hurricanes?
1 hurricane = 600TW. So it's 0.00003 hurricanes.
Show threadCyMay 13
Hurricanes don't produce heat. They just move it around. Also I've never seen any statistics on the terawatts of power in hurricane level winds, um, ever. But even if I did, there are 5 categories of hurricane, so I assume you mean a category 5.

So yes, if your numbers aren't completely bogus, then it's one category 5 hurricane every 4 years or so.

I should add that hurricanes can be hundreds of km in diameter. (Katrina was 620km, Irma was 645km) over an area of pi * (d / 2) ^2 (Katrina was 302,000 km^2, Irma was 327,000 km^2). At 40,000 acres (162 km^2) this proposed data center is big, but not that big. So it's a much more concentrated release of energy.
Show threadAssimilateborgMay 13
@cy hurricanes use the heat from the ocean to dissipate it. And they do that with 600000GW of power. I simply googled that number and ran with the first one I found. 😂
https://energi.media/news/noaa-how-much-energy-does-a-hurricane-release/
Imagine the datacenter would be the size of a hurricane, it would produce 0.05 (a.k.a. 0.0005%) of the power a hurricane needs. So not enough to power such a storm.
What about tornadoes.
Can the datacenter create own weather patterns generating tornadoes and so solve the whole problem?
NOAA: How much energy does a hurricane release?

Hurricane Florence made landfall on Friday and has since battered the Carolinas, dumping record breaking amounts of rain.  The death toll has risen to 23, including 17 in North Carolina. AFP photo.

Thoughtful Journalism About Energy's Future
Show threadCyMay 13
Haha wouldn't that be a sight.

"OH NOOO WE CALCULATED TOO MUCH DATAS" (tornados everywhere)
Show threadAssimilateborgMay 13
@cy a tornado is 1.5GWh (5.53 TJ)?
I'm not good in knowing the difference in Wh and W. But that's a number.
That's the kinetic energy the tornado puts onto the ground. Not what's needed to create one. So we can't generate 10 Tornadoes permanently with the datacenter. That's sad.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4489157/
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Show threadCyMay 13
Watts are joules per second, so to convert joules to watts you have to know how many seconds it took to release those joules. They pick an hour's worth of seconds, and call it a watt-hour.

So like 5.4 terajoules = 5.4 terawatt-seconds.
5.4 terawatt-seconds / 3600 (seconds in an hour), is 0.0015 terawatt-hours, or 1.5 gigawatt-hours.
Show threadmother not wifeMay 13

@cy @assimilateborg none of this is how weather works

irl you can input X energy and get no results or a hurricane. its all about the energy already in the system and more importantly the types of energy

parking lots at that size are going to effect local weather. frankly given the energy and heat we should be able to view it similar to the weather in a heavily bombed modern war zone.