An article by Marcois on American Greatness today says data centers can be powered by Small Modular Reactors (SMR) and they really ARE small and compact, and don’t need huge pools for cooling.
So what are we waiting for?
I was disappointed when I heard JD Vance say he thought the opposition to data centers was, er, powered mainly by people’s concern that they would drive up energy costs. Oh JD, turn in your hillbilly overalls! Higher energy costs is just what desperate opponents mention to enlist people who don’t live too near a proposed data center site. In a rural (or formerly rural) area such as mine, people’s main concern is the destruction of the natural environment, the clear-cutting of hundreds of acres of forest. It’s the ugliness and the noise. Devastation of the huntin’ and the fishin’,Thats not what we moved here, or stayed here, for.
So dear Polymaths, COULD data centers be powered by a unit no bigger than a railroad car? And if so, would that mean they can just be put in areas presently zoned Industrial, instead of in areas zoned Conservation or Open Space? Or why not in skyscrapers in cities?
The article makes it sound like we already have SMRs, but if that’s the case , why are whatever companies build data centers challenging zoning ordinances and taking over forests, despite the frantic pleas of nearby residents?
There is an argument that the Small Modular Reactor is really driven by the search to somehow cut through the Gordian knot of bureaucratic over-lawyered constipation which renders the building of a more efficient normal-sized nuclear reactor in the US either uneconomic or impossible – the kind of normal-sized nuclear reactors being built in places as diverse as China and Saudi Arabia. If we had a representative Congress, the people’s representatives might ask why the Land of the Free is so much more bureaucratic than a Communist one-party state or a traditional Arab monarchy?
A large nuclear power plant would need a lot less land than an equivalent field of windmills or solar panels. But the same people who gave us the ClimateScam and the CovidScam cut their teeth on “Nuclear is Too Dangerous”. They have pushed that line, even though most of us – if we were sentenced to spend the rest of our lives in either Democrat-run Detroit or nuclear-bombed Nagasaki – would chose Nagasaki.
My dear Hypatia, you might have something really powerful here! Requiring all data centers beyond some size to also provide self-sustaining net positive energy output for the grid would solve three things at once: resiliency, de-regulation (de-strangulation?), and cost of power.
Didn’t Trump sign an EO that they all have to produce their own power?
Which sounds like a great idea, AND the solution to the entire problem— (well, it isnt really a "problem"because local opposition isn’t going to win out.) I think the next step will be to designate them public utilities, they they’ll have the power of eminent domain, won’t have to swat at these pesky zoning ordinances.
BUT— if every data center needs it own nuclear reactor the size of Three Mile Island, as @CTLaw 's response indicates, then obvs it’s only gonna make things worse.
OTOH @Gerard 'a response indicates the reactors needed actually are very small, which seems to be the opinion of the author of the AmGreatness article.
This one would require about ten full size nuclear reactors (1.1 GWe apiece allowing for one to be prolongedly shut down such as for refueling or a major servicing and another to be taken fully (or two partially) offline for a more temporary servicing.
“Honor the deed”? They don’t say what the language of the deed is, but I think the neighbors should take the position that the parcel is deed-restricted for park use, nd sue to enforce the restrictive covenant.
This just shows you though: local officials are …starstruck, mesmerized by the prospect of data centers. I got a call from our township engineer and the chairman of the board asking me to consult about this issue. I naively assumed they wanted protection from these behemoths, but nuh-uh: they wanted to revise the ordinance to facilitate them. The people cannot win.
How is it that private data centers can design, build and activate twice the electricity used by an entire state without the years (and years and years) of delay in the “regulatory” process?? Could it be the continual stifling of the needs of the general public by the same “public servants” (LOL) so lavishly paid (salary and benefits) by us, the tax payers? Consider, as another example, the very limited degree of hardening of the grid to protect civilization from catastrophic collapse from an EMP event - of solar or intentional high-altitude nuclear nature. The first of these is a question of when, not of if. Cost: a rounding error in one year’s federal budget. Known for 40 years, still undone.
the great environmental movement which began in the 1970s and to which, for all of our adult lives, EVERY politician and every person had to do homage—
is dead.
And it was data centers that killed it.
Earth Day, Bette Middler as Mother Earth with flowers in her hair, Environmental Impact Statements, “ecology”, the EPA, forest preservation— all down the tubes in the wake of the worship of this new Moloch, to whose cult ALL governmental officials, at every level, have slavishly prostrated themselves.
It’s a paradigm shift, a sea change.
Like the people in this video, citizens impacted by these projects work very hard, and spend their own money, to demonstrate their opposition to local officials whom they elected to do their bidding. This could be ANY “public hearing” in any Township in my state. Let’em rant, an opportunity to be heard. But the fix is in.
I really want to know what is being held out to these township officials, many of whom are lifelong denizens of the municipalities which elected them.
What they are getting is the same thing that teenage girls with nose rings are getting – the warm fuzzy feeling that they are joining the Kool Girls … even though the real Kool Girls are laughing at them behind their backs.
Most of the people who want to get “elected” are thoroughly unrepresentative. They just want to be part of the In Crowd. If the In Crowd is bloviating about nuclear winter, or global warming, or peak oil, or covid, or AI – then that is what the majority of the “elected” (un)representatives will also pursue.
What percentage of the citizen body actually cast an affirmative vote for these township officials? “Democracy” is dead.
Pittsburgh and Allegheny County which contains it voted overwhelmingly AGAINST public funding of sports stadiums to replace the perfectly good Three Rivers Stadium. Somehow, we got two of them - one for football and one for baseball (not sure about the Civic Arena for Ice Hockey). Yeah, voting and public opinion/desires solve everything. Again: failure of governance top to bottom. Corruption.
While I understand the sentiment I don’t understand the focus on data centers. Economic development is what you’re talking about, or rather should I say urban sprawl.
Data centers are not really comparable to what we used to call “creeping commercialization”. The sites are HUGE, hundreds of acres of forest which will be clear-cut. Look at the picture posted above, showing the suze of the data center relative to the size of the town where it’s located. (See @CTLaw ’s post) And the tremendous demand for them, with government at all levels enthusiastically concurring, seems to have arisen overnight. All of a sudden we can’t have too many of them! *. And because they need a large site, they usually select an area presently designated for conservation or zoned Open Space. Then they threaten the municipality with a suit to invalidate their zoning ordinance on the grounds that it excludes a legitimate business (exclusionary zoning). So, zoning ordinances which have been in place for even a decade are defenseless.
Another factor is that the companies which would be operating a particular LULU (locally unpopular land use) used to be sensitive to public protest. They didn’t want to make a huge investment in a hostile community. The developers didn’t care of course, and with data centers that’s all that matters. The data center won’t be dependent in any way on the good will of their neighbors. The neighboring community are not its customers. The community can organize, circulate petitions, make T shirts, mob the public meetings—in vain.
No, this is a different phenomenon than “urban sprawl”.
*….and BTW if you or any other polymaths can tell me why building data centers is suddenly such a dire emergency, I’d be grateful. The internet is nothing new.Why do we need so many so fast right now?
Hypatia – an analogous situation in history might relate to the discovery of North Sea oil, all those decades ago. There were what turned out to be gross over-estimates of the number of offshore platforms that would be required, and governments at all levels around the North Sea and beyond began to push plans for building construction yards – visually intrusive things which could blight prime waterfront acreage.
In the event, the number of construction yards was overbuilt, with most not being used to capacity and some never being used at all. Governments and private investors lost money.
But the temptation of a big new source of revenue was irresistible to the greedy unrepresentative individuals who get “elected” to government … and to their under-performing bureaucrats.
Perhaps there are other examples of the “Madness of Government Crowds” which could help alert today’s Political Class to the dangers of over-building. The railways in the later 1800s and optical fiber in the 1990s come to mind.
…in fact, what this feels like is an alien invasion where huge ugly installations appear in the woods and fields seemingly overnight, and when you try to talk to your local officials about it, they’ve been body-snatched.
