• fullsquare@awful.systems
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    2 hours ago

    The developers claim this thing will use “net zero” water. This is while they want to take water that would normally be topping up the Great Salt Lake and use it to cool the site’s gas power plant.nbs

    gas turbines (like seen already in genai dcs) don’t need water for cooling, ccgt powerplant does, but it’s because there’s steam turbine downstream. dc itself could also use evaporative cooling. ccgt has some components with long lead time that will require more planning, footprint and construction than straight gas turbine powerplant

  • Malyca@lemmy.zip
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    2 days ago

    Rich people get what they want. I mean we all roll over for them, why would this time be any different?

    • scruiser@awful.systems
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      20 hours ago

      Not when what they want contradicts the basic limits of reality and logistics!

      Ed Zitron has done a breakdown on building normal sized data centers vs. the current target size of AI data centers, and on the bigger end normal data centers are 10s of MWs up to 100s of MWs. After 2 years Stargate Abilene has only turned on its first 200-300 MW. So I think even if regulators roll over on using twice the power of the entire state this project would take 2-3 years just to turn on the first few hundred megawatts then stall out.

    • Phil_in_here@lemmy.ca
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      20 hours ago

      What we should be asking is “how long will it last?”

      We can’t stop them from building it, but we can always unbuild it for them.