Comment on Britain ‘Does Not Have Enough Water’ for Planned AI Data Centre Boom

Malyca@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

• AnyOldName3@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  Big data centres can’t dissipate the amount of heat they generate without evaporating water, so a ban like that would effectively be a ban on that kind of data centre. Obviously, the companies lobbying for data centres to get built wouldn’t be happy about that.

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  • HerbGrower@slrpnk.net ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    Surely they could, just need a bigger heat exchanger. Or even place them near the sea and use that as a heat exchanger. Evaporative cooling also isn’t going to work as well in the UK where humidity is high.

    But IIRC a lot of this water use stuff is kinda sketchy calculations. Building them takes a lot of water due to all the concrete but it is a one off cost and just as bad as building any other large building.

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    • AnyOldName3@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      You can theoretically just use a bigger heat exchanger, but it goes from being about the size of the roof the data centre’s going to have anyway to way bigger than the data centre, so with UK land prices, it’s not remotely financially viable. It’s a similar story with dumping heat into the sea. Anywhere close enough to the sea to feasibly dump heat that’s also flat enough to build a data centre and has a significant electricity supply is already going to be full of valuable housing or existing industry, so it’s not going to be cheap. We’re not like America where there’s loads of unused land just outside of towns.

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  • NickwithaC@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    I see no problem here.

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