Comment by fc417fc802
9 hours ago
They get their own unique third category as unlike industrial sites there's no hazardous chemicals and even the noise pollution is substantially different in nature.
The old datacenters are analogous to office buildings that emit some unusual noise and consume large amounts of electricity.
The new ones (ie gigawatt class) consume enough electricity for ~1 million households and at minimum enough water for 100k households (but possibly many times that).
Where does the water go afterwards? Is it evaporated? Sewer?
I believe evaporative cooling is the norm (thus my "possibly many times that" remark doesn't apply) however theoretically they could provide hot water as a utility or (as you say) just dump it into the sewer. If located next to a river or the ocean they could conceivably dissipate it that way but I'm not aware of any examples.
It's the sort of externality that could be solved with a well placed megaproject. A related question to my mind is why we're building such expensive strategic assets in the open rather than under a mountain.
Waste heat is a problem in waterways, even assuming no other pollutants as it can cause algal blooms on its own and mess with fish biology.
> under a mountain
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Evaporated. Given how the water cycle works, it should be expected it will be precipitated back as rain.
With the catching being of course that it won't end up where it was being pulled from.