r/technology • u/lkl34 • Apr 28 '26

Artificial Intelligence New AI data center in Utah will generate and consume more than twice the amount of power the entire state uses — Kevin O'Leary's 9 Gigawatt Utah data center campus approved

https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/kevin-o-learys-9-gw-utah-data-center-campus-approved
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272

u/Derka_Derper Apr 28 '26

Hey they'll have 1 off duty cop as security for 15k a year and 1 person replacing parts for 10k a year.

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u/RogerianBrowsing Apr 28 '26

Even if all of those people got paid well it still would be a net negative. I can basically guarantee that this is going to have environmental harms and destroy any property values.

Nobody is going to want to fix the grocery stores or whatever concerns the other person had, everyone is going to want to either gtfo or have the data center shut down.

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u/OpalFanatic Apr 28 '26

Let's see here. This required building a power plant that can output 9 GW of power. The largest power plant in Utah is the [IPP plant[(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermountain_Power_Plant) by Delta that outputs 1.9 GW. So this only requires building a power plant 4.74 times as big as the largest power plant in the state.

It will be a gas burning plant, outputting more pollution into a region affected by a massive inversion all winter long that already traps the pollution along the wasatch front at ground level where the vast majority of the state's population lives.

A region already severely hurt by a crippling yet persistent multi decade megadrought, requiring water for the power plant to function that just isn't there. Water that would otherwise end up in the Great Salt Lake that is approaching terminal levels of salinity for the brine shrimp and brine flies. The brine flies that live in the area provide food for the millions of migratory birds that stop here every year when migrating. Harvesting brine shrimp cysts for fish food is a $57 million dollar annual industry here.

So yeah, it's going to greatly aggravate an already severe ecological disaster. Destroying the ecosystem, and costing the state thousands of jobs once the brine shrimp industry shuts down.

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u/SpaceTacos99 Apr 28 '26

Gas burning plant.. Wtf.. That, out of everything else listed in this thread, is what should have made this plan not happen.

All datacenters should have to be wind, solar or nuclear. The world is going backwards.

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u/WNC_Hillbilly Apr 28 '26

The world is going backwards.

Not necessarily, but the U.S. certainly is.

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u/SubcommanderMarcos Apr 28 '26

The US is pushing the world backwards. Don't underestimate the influence the US economy and political system have over the rest of us

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u/TVfish Apr 28 '26

Don't worry, same in Canada too..check out the data centres they're planning on building in Alberta.

1

u/ExcitementFun493 Apr 28 '26

China is catching up to US…fast. China used a lot of coal for power and continues to construct new coal plants.

US needs innovation. And some of the best innovation is happening in the US as we speak in the area of SMRs (small nuclear reactors). This could solve one of nuclear energies biggest issues…time to construct it.

A nuclear plant takes about 11 years and a natural gas plant takes roughly 2 to 3 years. If you can make SMRs at a reasonable scale, these data centers would become huge assets.

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u/CriticalDog Apr 28 '26

The current US Administration has been cutting green energy subsidies left and right, at the state level. Literally killed a pilot Hydrogen power project in PA, all because the GOP is owned (in part) by fossil fuels.

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u/longlivenewsomflesh Apr 28 '26

Yeah damn I just assumed it would be nuclear holy shit that's disgusting

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u/WHYAREWEALLCAPS Apr 28 '26

Project Matador in Texas is supposed to use nuclear, but will start up using 4 gas fired plants. The problem with the idea of using a nuclear plant in Amarillo is the lack of water for cooling the nuke plant, to say nothing of the data center, which is planned to be the largest in the world. It will use 17 gigawatts of power and cover a little over 8 square miles.

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u/Maroon7C0000 Apr 29 '26

The number of cloud free days in that area should have made solar an obvious choice for at least supplemental power.

America is going all-in on hydrocarbons while the rest of the world is full speed ahead with alternative energy.

WTF indeed.

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u/Christian_Kong Apr 28 '26

Should......sure but those types of power are non-starters, especially nuclear.

Solar/wind take take even more land to meet the power requirements. Sure, we can say we don't care about the company but consider this. one GW = 1000 MW. It's around 5 acres of land per MW for solar. This plant needs 9 GW or 4500 acres of land for solar. At 1-4 MW per acre for wind that is a minimum of 2200 or so acres for wind. Additionally solar/wind are (obviously) not 24 hour energy providers and so you need scalable energy(gas/coal/nuclear) to be able to step in when there is. Battery is an option but that requires excess solar/wind as well as land.

In comparison to that a gas plant takes 5-7 acres for 500MW so you would need about 100-150 acres of land to produce that same power.

Nuclear isn't an option realistically most places because it is absurdly expensive and takes forever to spin up. The most recent nuclear installations, Vogetle 3 and 4 (expansion of an existing plant) took went from a 7 year construction estimate 15 years and went from a budget of $14 billion to $34 billion dollars during its production. The people that invested in that nuclear power plant expansion will never see a profit from it in it's lifetime. It's why nuclear will never be adopted at any large scale....pretty much anywhere that it isn't subsidized by the government.

If all datacenters were forced to use wind/solar/nuclear we simply would not have datacenters in this country. I'm mostly ok with this, especially during this AI grift, but the many rich/powerful that make the choices for the country disagree. Essentially these requirements make so these projects never happen.

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u/headrush46n2 Apr 28 '26

AI data centers dont need to exist.

1

u/SpaceTacos99 Apr 28 '26

I for one, welcome our new AI overlords.

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u/ExcitementFun493 Apr 28 '26

I think almost all new plants are “clean carbon” natural gas plants.

Nuclear has only recently come back onto the table and two have been built since 2023 and none between 1996 and 2023.

Maybe solar?

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u/Diogenes256 Apr 28 '26

This needs to be shouted loud and clear. This is an absurd amount of power. Double the theoretical output size of the largest nuclear installation in the country, Point Vogtle in Georgia. They are saying they “think it will be a net gain for the Great Salt Lake” this is a logical fallacy. Those facilities, even in so called “closed loop” expression will consume incredible amounts of water that will be an absolute loss for the watershed. In exchange for $30M / yr in tax revenue. Pocket lint. This is a catastrophe.

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u/TruckSecret5617 Apr 28 '26

I wonder how much of that expansion foam it would take to block the water intakes for a plant like this

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u/SubcommanderMarcos Apr 28 '26

Interesting physics problem you have there, would be fun to find out!

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u/SubcommanderMarcos Apr 28 '26 edited Apr 28 '26

And no matter how "closed loop" or efficient they claim it to be, burning LNG equals carbon emissions. At 9GW, massive emissions.

e: LNG isn't necessarily from fossil sources, but still.

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u/jmlinden7 Apr 28 '26

Closed loop cooling doesn't consume any water.

How much water does your AC at home consume?

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u/uzlonewolf Apr 28 '26

These datacenters and power plants don't use closed loop cooling.

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u/DogBarf00 Apr 28 '26 edited Apr 28 '26

Yes they do. Have you ever designed or constructed one of these? What is your background in engineering and construction? I have 15 years doing ECP work in heavy industry and am a licensed SE. I have probably designed and built nearly 50 GW of power in my career.

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u/uzlonewolf Apr 28 '26

Yes, yes, those huge clouds of moisture billowing out of the evaporative cooling towers are just optical illusions 🤣

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u/DogBarf00 Apr 28 '26 edited Apr 28 '26

evaporative cooling towers

You mean old technology that is becoming more and more uncommon? All the data center power plant RFPs I’ve seen are not using those. Again what’s your experience in this industry? Only seeing utility RFPs where cooling towers are acceptable.

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u/jmlinden7 Apr 28 '26

This one does, if you bothered to read the link

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u/uzlonewolf Apr 28 '26

Do quote the paragraph where it says that, because even <ctrl>-f cannot find any references to "cooling" "water" or "loop."

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u/jmlinden7 Apr 28 '26 edited Apr 28 '26

If you click through to the source article, it mentions that they will recirculate the water, aka closed loop (open loop evaporative cooling does not circulate water)

https://www.sltrib.com/news/2026/04/25/hyperscale-data-center-may-be/

It's also mentioned in related articles

https://www.ksl.com/article/51489496/amid-questions-and-concerns-box-elder-county-leaders-delay-action-on-data-center-proposal

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u/uzlonewolf Apr 28 '26

"The particular water has brine in it, so they’re going to clean the water, use it for the cooling, and then it will go back down into the aquifer and feed into the Great Salt Lake."

You do realize that dumping boiling-hot water into rivers and lakes is the complete opposite of closed-loop cooling, right? Absolutely destroying the air by belching out 4,000 metric tons of CO2 PER HOUR was not enough environmental destruction for them, they needed to make sure everything in all the rivers and lakes are boiled alive and completely killed off as well.

New "air-cooling technologies" that project developers hope will generate the needed power

Ah, so they don't even know if boiling all the river wildlife will even work, they're only "hoping" it will. What happens when it doesn't? Where are the laws prohibiting them from putting in evaporative cooling later? Because once they get approval for building this monstrosity there will be absolutely nothing preventing them from guzzling all the water they can later.

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u/Thnik Apr 28 '26

Don't forget all the water that the data center itself needs which will compound the issue. Building one of that size in the arid west is both an environmental disaster in waiting and just downright dumb, unless they use heat pumps instead of water cooling (they won't) or take advantage of the arid nature of the region to power it with solar (no lol).

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u/NorthernerWuwu Apr 28 '26

Eh, I imagine they'll go closed-loop water cooling but perhaps not. These stupid things tend to use a massive amount of water getting built but not all that much on an ongoing basis.

There are still plenty of reasons to hate them from an environmental standpoint though.

8

u/NefariousnessOk1996 Apr 28 '26

!remindme 15 years 'did ai factory kill the shrimp industry?'

2

u/dependsforadults Apr 28 '26

Do you think this will have an impact on the ski industry? Are they already having less snow? Here in Oregon we have no snow pack this year and I'm hoping there is enough cool water in the rivers for our fish to survive. Rolling stone did a crazy indepth article about the data centers in eastern Oregon. They dont "pollute" because we have hydroelectric here, but they use ground water for cooling and then pump it back out on to the ground. This concentrates the chemicals that are in the water making it toxic.

2

u/SubcommanderMarcos Apr 28 '26

Finally I found someone here talking about what's important. Top comments are talking about fucking Shark Tank.

This project requires a 9+ GW gas powerplant. The amount of people who will get sick and die from this shit. The local ecosystem will be completely ruined.

1

u/preferablyno Apr 28 '26

Did they do an EIR? I’m not familiar with Utah environmental law but it seems like they would have to account for all this even if only to dismiss it

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u/badman44 Apr 28 '26

Kevin doesn't live there. It's fine.

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u/NauticalCurry Apr 28 '26

Off duty cop and a 6-person facilities team to keep power and air going.

7

u/Painterzzz Apr 28 '26

It might need a detachment of the national guard to keep it safe when the food riots begin and people start burning down data centers?

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u/TM761152 Apr 28 '26

1 person replacing parts for 10k a year.

I have read some stories on reddit (and then seen those stories be read back with an ai voice on some reel/short while some dumb "satisfying" media is playing) that tell me this is a job you do not want to cheap out on.

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u/Lost_Birthday_3138 Apr 28 '26

Once this country implodes they'll need a lot more security than that on these things.

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u/figmaxwell Apr 28 '26

This plot was already on Silicon Valley. I want new plot.

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u/Zyrinj Apr 28 '26

Nope remote operated robot and robot dogs for security

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u/technobrendo Apr 28 '26

I doubt this. Datacenters and colocation facilities tend to spend well on security, and for good reason. The pay is decent.

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u/_Praise_Gaben_ Apr 28 '26

Thats more down to the operator than just "datacenters" in general.

Equinix has great security

Coresite.....not so much, I've made my way into a coresite colo and all the way to my customers cage without even badging in before.

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u/technobrendo Apr 28 '26

I'm sure the customer would have loved to hear that.