cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/21370783
On Monday, Mayor Patrick Collins of Cheyenne, Wyoming, announced plans for an AI data center that would consume more electricity than all homes in the state combined, according to The Associated Press. The facility, a joint venture between energy infrastructure company Tallgrass and AI data center developer Crusoe, would start at 1.8 gigawatts and scale up to 10 gigawatts of power use.
The project’s energy demands are difficult to overstate for Wyoming, the least populous US state. The initial 1.8-gigawatt phase, consuming 15.8 terawatt-hours (TWh) annually, is more than five times the electricity used by every household in the state combined. That figure represents 91 percent of the 17.3 TWh currently consumed by all of Wyoming’s residential, commercial, and industrial sectors combined. At its full 10-gigawatt capacity, the proposed data center would consume 87.6 TWh of electricity annually—double the 43.2 TWh the entire state currently generates.
Because drawing this much power from the public grid is untenable, the project will rely on its own dedicated gas generation and renewable energy sources, according to Collins and company officials. However, this massive local demand for electricity—even if self-generated—represents a fundamental shift for a state that currently sends nearly 60 percent of its generated power to other states.
Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon praised the project’s potential benefits for the state’s natural gas industry in a company statement. “This is exciting news for Wyoming and for Wyoming natural gas producers,” Gordon said.
The proposed site for the new data center sits several miles south of Cheyenne near the Colorado border off US Route 85. While state and local regulators still need to approve the project, Collins expressed optimism about a quick start. “I believe their plans are to go sooner rather than later,” he said.
Modern nuclear fission already solves this issue fairly adequately. We’ve already developed numerous ways to minimize and use nuclear waste, including reusing it in various other forms and even reactor designs. The actual amount of waste that doesn’t have an alternate use is pretty small. We just haven’t really attempted it. Most currently operating nuclear plants date back to designs from the 60s and 70s.
Not to mention things like modern Advanced Geothermal systems. Some of those designs even involve reusing existing old oil drill sites, and the same workers because it’s the same type of drilling. Don’t even need large amounts of retraining. A major advantage of this is it’s also effectively limitless since you’re pulling heat out of the ground that’s generated from the sheer weight of the Earth above it.
Both of these technologies also have small ground footprints compared to their power output, especially compared to solar and wind farms.
And it’s generated anyways, no matter if we pull some minuscle amount of it out or not. 47 terawatts all the time (according to wikipedia), or all the power we currently consume per year in about 150 days (assuming my quick math is even close). Of course we can’t (and probably shouldn’t) capture 100% of it, but there’s plenty of energy to at least shut down few coal ovens.
Know why we quit building plants in the 70s? I wish this was a joke.
The China Syndrome, a movie about a core meltdown at a nuclear power plant, came out about 2 weeks before the Three Mile Island incident.
There’s the red scare, and there’s the nuke scare…
The worst part of that is The Mike Island wasn’t so much a nuclear disaster, it was a PR and communications disaster.
Gods yes! A poof a radioactive steam got loose, and we quickly got a handle on it. But Americans at the time were leery of nuclear power, both through ignorance and fear of global thermonuclear war. Then that fucking movie was on our minds. What a disaster.
I was a child and remember Oklahoma shutting down the Black Fox nuclear plant, after years of planning and construction. Hippies were already protesting, The China Syndrome gave them the political power to end it.
Good job on that one environmentalists!
Don’t discount the PR from Exelon being complete dogshit. Actively lying to the public instead of actually explaining what was going on and when getting caught by the public and called out by the media trying to double down.
It screwed the entire industry. It proved to the public that they couldn’t trust a company to tell them the truth when the issue wasn’t really bad. There’s no way they’d tell the truth when things were actually bad.
It destroyed the entire industry’s credibility in just a few days.
I know nothing about Exelon. ?