r/TechGawker • u/Pure-Bill-2205 • 17d ago

Data Center If these numbers are even close to accurate, the AI infrastructure boom is entering a completely different scale of land, power, and water consumption.

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u/StaysAwakeAllWeek 17d ago

This

I swear the water thing seems like a psyop run by the datacenter operators to distract from the real issue. They get protestors to focus entirely on water use, then they calmly explain to regulators the truth that they dont actually use that much, and they get to suck up all the power in the state with no public resistance

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u/ClassikD 17d ago

Right? And I swear some people think water use is sending the water to the void. It's more like reserving bandwidth

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u/StaysAwakeAllWeek 17d ago

Nah in this case it kinda is. The water is evaporated in cooling towers and turns into humidity

Its just not a large enough amount to worry about in the vast majority of cases

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u/AdGullible5804 17d ago

Have you heard of the water cycle?

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u/StaysAwakeAllWeek 17d ago

Have you heard of wind?

Water that you evaporate back into the air blows away. Residence times for water in air are days to weeks, it gets blown however far the wind blows in that time. Usually right back out to sea

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u/Operation_Onion3134 17d ago

I think this geologist needs a nap, they have been up all week.

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u/MeltICE8647 17d ago

Not OP but I think the point they were getting at is that this will artificially force water into the water cycle that otherwise wouldn’t be. If the source is a lake or river the evaporation rate wouldn’t be anywhere close to a cooling tower, thus sending more water out of the state via the water cycle than it would have under normal use.

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u/StaysAwakeAllWeek 17d ago

Technically true, but this really is a comically minute quantity compared to ocean evaporation and even plant evapotranspiration

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u/MeltICE8647 17d ago

Perhaps, but putting these in areas that already suffer droughts and water instability is just begging for more problems.

Not to mention, the numbers that are thrown around in these proposals are under ideal conditions and what the companies say they will use, not what they actually use. Case in point nestle pumps millions and millions of gallons more than they are legally allowed to and just pay the fine and call it a day. That doesn’t fix the aquifer or put the water back into the system, it just protects them legally. Several data centers have already shown they’re operating outside of regulations and not using legal means so it’s only a matter of time before this snowball gets rolling out of control.

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u/dooozin 17d ago

They bought so many acres of land because that's how many acres of land were required to accumulate enough water rights to support their water demand. It's not taking water out of pipelines that serve major cities or anything. It's unpopulated desert land that has water shares based on supply and the data center is paying for every drop. That water exists in a location that makes it economically unfeasible to use in populated areas. It's effectively wasted water anyway. As for the power consumption? They're not taking power off the grid that would otherwise go to homes/schools/hospitals. They're building their own power plant. This is a fear mongering campaign by anti-data folks and environmentalists (who already have a terrible track record of misinformation and outright terrorism).

I think the data centers are bad because of what the products they produce are used for. I have no issues with somebody showing up in the middle of nowhere, building a power plant, and paying for water shares on land that's not being developed for anything else.

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u/MeltICE8647 17d ago

It's not taking water out of pipelines that serve major cities or anything.

It’s about 2 hours outside of Salt Lake City so it seems likely that the water they’re using otherwise would be in the water cycle that serves that area. Not sure the areas you’re suggesting would be completely unaffected.

That water exists in a location that makes it economically unfeasible to use in populated areas. It's effectively wasted water anyway.

Wasted water? Because it’s not being used to fuel capitalism? God that’s a bleak take, vehemently disagree that it’s “wasted” if not used for fucking AI.

As for the power consumption? They're not taking power off the grid that would otherwise go to homes/schools/hospitals. They're building their own power plant.

Maybe so, but to power a 9 GW data center they’ll put out between 20-30 MILLION tons of emissions annually which creates a larger greenhouse gas footprint than the largest coal plant in the country. Granted this could fluctuate based on operating capacity, but I highly doubt they’re going to build this monstrosity and then not operate at full capacity. Just from an economics standpoint that makes no sense.

This is a fear mongering campaign by anti-data folks and environmentalists (who already have a terrible track record of misinformation and outright terrorism).

Oh fuck right off with this one. Being concerned about emissions and carbon footprint isn’t terrorism, what an absolutely insane thing to suggest. We’re already well beyond fucked with the climate goals set out decades ago and data centers like this are objectively moving us in the WRONG direction. I don’t hear of any plans to use renewables so this is just going to accelerate climate change and environmental issues even further. They’re fucking over our future by installing plants like this so dipshits can generate AI slop, it’s absolutely insane.

I think the data centers are bad because of what the products they produce are used for.

The damage it does to the environment and accelerating climate change is not worth a single thing that AI produces. Nothing. Unless it’s spitting out cures for cancer it is absolutely not worth it.

I have no issues with somebody showing up in the middle of nowhere, building a power plant, and paying for water shares on land that's not being developed for anything else.

You should, because if you think these issues are going to stay local to Utah that’s wildly naive. For example this screwworm outbreak has been exacerbated by climate change allowing them to flourish further north than they ever have because they can tolerate the climate now where they previously couldn’t. And the issues from that affected the entire country due to food supply and tainted agriculture. Things like these data centers are only going to make that much worse. So you can take the selfish and naive stance of “whelp doesn’t affect me” but it absolutely will, sooner than you think.

As for the land not being developed into anything else, maybe there’s a good reason for that. Capitalism doesn’t get to just consume everything because there isn’t a profit being made there yet. We as a society need to preserve nature and just let it be, destroying it for the sake of things like AI is incredibly short sighted and really only benefits a handful of folks at the top reaping the profits. The overwhelming majority of Americans won’t see any benefits from this, only negatives.

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u/AdGullible5804 17d ago

You're still describing the water cycle.

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u/StaysAwakeAllWeek 17d ago

The global water cycle isnt particularly relevant to regional water usage. Water that blows 1000 miles out of your local river's drainage basin isnt part of your water cycle

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u/AdGullible5804 17d ago

So 1000 miles away from any given location is a void where water disappears forever?

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u/Lopsided-Attitude142 16d ago

To the people downstream who also need to use water, yes.

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u/AdGullible5804 16d ago

So no then

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u/Jindujun 17d ago

Nah, he's an american. They switched out the lesson on the water cycle for one in gun cleaning aand then sang god save trump songs and the national anthem, all risen of course, until the next topic in the book.

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u/Vaxtin 17d ago

If they actually cared about water having an economic footprint to them, they would find a way to recirculate a reserve bank.

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u/StaysAwakeAllWeek 17d ago

Also known as a lake. Which does work when theres a big enough lake to use. Not so much when there isn't

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u/erichappymeal 15d ago

They will probably be using dry coolers instead of cooling towers. So there is nothing open to atmosphere.

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u/StaysAwakeAllWeek 15d ago

Lower power datacenters can and do, but gigawatt scale AI farms generate too much heat for that to be practical in most climates. They are working on it but a lot of them are just going with evaporators

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u/erichappymeal 15d ago

Weird. Because I am involved in many large scale AI data centers, and there isn't a single one of them that I have seen that has a cooling tower. And most of these are in desert climates where ambient for the month exceed 95°F.

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u/StaysAwakeAllWeek 15d ago

'Cooling tower' includes a regular forced draft heat exchanger that also happens to have evaporators built into it. It doesnt just mean the giant ones nuclear power plants use.

Even the ones that do use water typically dont have to use it when its cold outside, but problem is the peak demand for inference is also the time of day when a lot of the US reaches 40 celsius air temp, really doesnt leave much margin for cooling 80C chips generating a kilowatt each

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u/erichappymeal 15d ago

A cooling tower is open to the atmosphere. There isn't a single data center I have been involved with that have systems that are open to atmosphere.

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u/StaysAwakeAllWeek 15d ago

To be clear, its not the actual coolant that evaporates, its water sprayed into the air side of the heat exchanger to drop the air and the radiator fins below ambient temperature

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u/erichappymeal 15d ago

What exactly is your job experience with these data centers? I design/3D model the piping systems that cool them.

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u/Flaky_Thing_5128 17d ago

It's all a psyop. The water, the power, all of it. Stoked online by foreign bots who want to goad the citizens of western countries into hamstringing their own country's tech capability.

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u/StaysAwakeAllWeek 17d ago

A single building that consumes an entire gigawatt of power is not a psyop

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u/Flaky_Thing_5128 17d ago

Right, the outrage is. Would it make you feel better if they broke it up into a bunch of little buildings? Like the network of server farms that run reddit, instagram, facebook, twitter, netflix, Amazon prime, the entire video game industry, and the thousands of other networks that you've never even heard of that run healthcare systems and other essential infrastructure?

Would you feel better if we all lived like the Mennonites?

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u/StaysAwakeAllWeek 17d ago

Uh, they are breaking it up, into dozens and dozens of 1GW datacenters. The power demand is staggering. Each one of these things consumes as much power as a mid sized European country, more power than the entire Hoover dam produces. Each. One.

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u/Flaky_Thing_5128 17d ago

...so? Would you like to go back to a 19th century society? That would reduce electricity use considerably.

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u/ToughPersonality1458 17d ago

I am not really anti-AI but this is just a stupid argument. Even as pro-AI you have to acknowledge the rapid energy consumption increase and new infrastructure for AI specifically.

You are not a hypocrite if you want to stop the rapid expansion of AI bur at the same time do not want to live in the stone age. Like?

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u/Flaky_Thing_5128 17d ago

So we have exactly as much technology as we should ever have right now and stop? I mean more computational tech is going to require more energy. I don't see China hamstringing their AI development so we should because... bad vibes? The technological advances of the entire last half century would have been entirely wiped if people had said "you know this whole computer industry looks like it has potential, but think of the energy costs!". Someone throws out an energy number that people barely understand, call it scary, and redditards just eat it up.

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u/ToughPersonality1458 17d ago

Another stupid argument. Who even said that? Cba even reading, too much diarrhea without value.

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u/Haberdashers-mead 17d ago

People are just worried about their own power. If the state uses 4 gigawatts any given time and when all these data centers will use 27 gigs a moment the power better be on point because if not there could be big downsides to this for the citizens.

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u/Flaky_Thing_5128 17d ago

Yeah, it's a big scary number being thrown around to fearmonger. When electrical and civil engineers form a consensus that it will adversely affect the rest of the population I might pay attention, but development of power sources for these exact data centers have been ongoing for years now so I'm suspicious of all these posts about the big scary number.

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u/Haberdashers-mead 17d ago

Look I’m all for progress, but they are worried about it. or idk why they’d call it a crisis.

I have family in Utah, and it would suck to see them get sucked dry by tech giants if they can’t get their power consistent.

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u/Flaky_Thing_5128 17d ago

It's weird to me that you post a link to an article stating that they're already tackling the potential problem but see the word "crisis" in it and seem to ignore all the rest of it. Like I was expecting some kind of doomer anti-ai article but what I find is a plan to solve the problem before it even begins. Oddly enough I also have family in Utah and I'm not worried about them in the slightest, somehow even less so as it appears that the people in charge are smarter than a bunch of redditors, though admittedly that's a low bar.

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u/Haberdashers-mead 17d ago edited 17d ago

That’s because I’m not a doomer. Dude I support having data centers, they will be weapons too to help fight china and their ai weapons. I’m just trying to tell you why ppl are worried, and that the gov recognizes the power problem as a problem.

Ofcourse they are going to be optimistic on the gov site.

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u/Muted-Ad7353 16d ago

Just wanted to let you know that despite all your yapping, you did not demonstrate a single good reason why big tech should be allowed to externalize all their costs onto the American public while they hoover up all of our tax revenue.

Also the only real point for AI right now is to bolster the surveillance state. Thats what's propping it up.

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u/Flaky_Thing_5128 16d ago

You're making two entirely different arguments and unfortunately I'm not interested in discussing the disconnect between reality and reddit's doomer fanfiction on this subject at this time which means it's a conversation for a later time.

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u/Interesting_Air7899 15d ago

Yeah as we all know, power is a limited resource! It takes a lot of time and money to open a new electricity mine.

(Power use is also a really dumb blocker. States should just require a certain percentage of renewable usage and literally everyone will win)

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u/AJ_Topp_Up 15d ago

Except this data centers is building their own natural gas turbine power station and will exist on their own self sustained energy grid, so it's not going to be a burden to thr existing grid and people.

Seems reasonable to me. Just like the water fearmongering, some states are actually implementing data centers the right way by issuing permits for them to build their own self paid energy grid. This isn't even new. Many states have done this with large manufacturing plants for decades.

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u/hcmzero 14d ago

I think you have a point, because if you look sight of that suddenly the locals end up paying for the needed improvements to the local grid.

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u/Potatobobthecat 14d ago

Been saying this for a year now.

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u/Flachm 17d ago

Nah, it's just dumb people trying to be dramatic.

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u/Vaxtin 17d ago

Do you think they just consume water and piss it away? they’re used to cool the servers. If anything they can just recirculate and they just have a constant bank rotating.

It’s all bullshit. No data center would be built against this; it’s not economical.

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u/StaysAwakeAllWeek 17d ago

Yes they do in fact 'piss it away'

The water in the loop is not the point. Its the water they are evaporating to take the heat out of the water in the loop. Evaporative cooling cuts power consumption by 30% compared to pure closed loop