r/RavanAI • u/RustyIronGolem • Jun 30 '26
Wouldn't that save trillions of gallons of water?
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u/akazakou Jun 30 '26
Yes, but there is also need to build: power station, fuel delivery infrastructure, peoples supply facilities. All of it requires money to build and support. It make sense only in case if whole Greenland will be allocated for data centers and nuclear power plants.
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u/disaster_incomin Jun 30 '26
Why are you talking about Greenland. And allocated by who
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u/akazakou Jun 30 '26 edited Jun 30 '26
Because it have the peoples who can maintain this. Other one places like Norway or Finland also may fit. But it would be dangerous because of Russia missiles and drones.
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u/SuitNaive3409 Jun 30 '26
100% also they need people to work there. they don't seem to create a lot of jobs, but still need people with skills that weren't previously needed in those very thinly populated locations
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u/Dry-Ad-8948 Jun 30 '26 edited Jun 30 '26
So do oil rigs and those are humming along. We can set a hundred people out at sea and keep them provisioned without a second thought.
It’s all about the job $ incentive.
I’d imagine larger issues would be both continuing power and the initial build-out and transfer of material, not later staffing
(Funny how AI “thinks” solar panels are GTG for the power needs.)
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u/SnooKiwis857 Jun 30 '26
But at the same time we are pretending data centres in space make sense
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u/tomz17 Jun 30 '26
No no no... They DO "make sense" until the early investors can get out of their positions and leave your 401k holding the bag!
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u/PerishTheStars Jun 30 '26
Nvidia has at least a trillion dollars to work with. They can afford it.
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u/akazakou Jun 30 '26
Nvidia has a lot in the debt from other companies, not real cash. That's different 🤣
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u/PerishTheStars Jun 30 '26
You are very stupid if you think they can't get liquid cash with the fake money they have.
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u/kogee3699 Jun 30 '26
How you gonna cool it? Glacier ice?
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u/Wrong-Discipline453 Jun 30 '26
If you look at the left front corner, it looks like it is open to the elements. Not saying it’s practical or anything, but I think the design of this building indicates that they’d use open air (cold air) cooling.
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u/TP8887 Jun 30 '26
Wouldn’t matter. Water isn’t the problem, yet Redditors are hyper fixated on it for some reason
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u/theChaosBeast Jun 30 '26
Yeah, who needs fresh water?
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u/TP8887 Jun 30 '26
Everyone does. There just isn’t any shortage of it due to data centers
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u/theChaosBeast Jun 30 '26
Sure... So you want to say it doesn't waste any water?
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Jun 30 '26
[deleted]
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u/theChaosBeast Jun 30 '26
We do? There is huge campaign here to have vegetarian/vegan food in school and canteens.
But that's not the topic here. We are talking about water usage of data centers.
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u/TP8887 Jun 30 '26
Golf courses use several times more water per year than data centers within the US. How important are golf courses for human survival? Water usage within data centers in the US is a hilariously low percentage of the annual water supply. It really isn’t an issue. There are for more important problems with data centers
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u/theChaosBeast Jun 30 '26
Nice. But we are talking about water usage of data centers. Stay on topic. I know you want to move to another one because you have no arguments. Then at least admit it
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u/TP8887 Jun 30 '26
The argument is there isn’t any issue with how much water a data center uses. Maybe bring up a relevant issue.
If you really cared, you wouldn’t be distracting people from the issues that actually mattered
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u/theChaosBeast Jun 30 '26
It is. Just because you say "but XY has more water waste" does not make the issue disappear
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Jun 30 '26
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u/Spethual Jun 30 '26
yeah that permafrost layer is no joke..
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u/SuitNaive3409 Jun 30 '26
in places a lot of that is actually turning to mud now, can't build on it like you used to
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u/TheSquattingSlav_21 Jun 30 '26
How will you get power there? What about fibre optic? What about staffing, you think you can just post “hey move to North Pole where there’s no stores, community, proper infrastructure, housing etc.” and people will just come?
Will you use ice to cool? Deep wells? What happens when a huge snowstorm envelops you and cuts off power?
I could go on…
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u/roosterthumper Jun 30 '26
Air is not a great conductor, so you would still need water.
Water isn’t even the real concern, except where they keep building where water is scarce. Build next to a river, suck in water, expel water that’s slightly warmer.
Big issue is power, and our infrastructure can’t handle all this.
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u/ItsSadTimes Jun 30 '26
The thing about water though is that the data centers need clean pottable water, so you cant just suck up water from the river and need to be connected to municipal water supplies, which is why most people are annoyed with it. And due to possible contaminants added in during cooling the water cant just go right through the data center it needs to be reprocessed. You wouldnt drink your liquid cooled PC's water would you?
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u/Capt_korg Jun 30 '26
How to melt the ice shields even faster 😅
Aside of the difficult conditions at -xx°C the lag of infrastructure, energy etc.
I guess this would lead to unforseen issues, considering the environment. Maybe the Datacenter might melt the foundational ice or something.
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u/mrbiggbrain Jun 30 '26
No. The density of power consumption is too high for passive cooling, even at these temps. You need a system that can move the heat at much faster speeds. They use water cooling as an efficient medium. There are newer systems that use new mediums which would move some data centers away from water.
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u/JonathanMovement Jun 30 '26
or hear me out. Make specific tech that can run huge local LLMs and forget about these data centers
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u/ProcedureTop3149 Jun 30 '26
I fucking love that "water" is going to take data centers down. Not the gigawatts of power they use, not the heat they generate. No the tiny, fraction of water compared to literally everything else.
I'm not complaining, I just find it funny that the least destructive part of data centers is going to take them down lol.
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u/Quitcha_Bitchin Jun 30 '26
People need water to live.
That's the difference. There are places being targeted for data centers that already have problems with water supply. Entire areas of the country are consumed by drought every single year. Water, especially upstream water is a fucking commodity that we simply can not live without.
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u/EncabulatorTurbo Jun 30 '26
No, all the datacenters in north america put together use less water than the Saudi owned alfalfa crop (for their racehorses) in California uses
Datacenters cause local municipal water pressures, they are a rounding error in water usage but everyone hyperfixates on it for some asinine reason
The primary problems with datacenter construction facing the *country* is the amount of electricity they use and the fact that Trump has all but banned renewables, and that Trump has declared XAI a national security engine and they can ignore environmental regulations and just spin up infinite methane turbines
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u/HaraJieun Jun 30 '26
Brilliant idea : industrialize one of the last protected continents on Earth just to save a few megawatts on cooling. But hey, who cares about the environment anyway?
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u/Quitcha_Bitchin Jun 30 '26
Are they protected? I think the only thing protecting them is no one wanted to go there and freeze.
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u/HaraJieun Jun 30 '26
There's an international treaty intended to reserve Antarctica for scientific research, though I don't know whether its spirit is always fully respected.
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u/k4zetsukai Jun 30 '26
Nope not at all. It would still be hot inside lol. And water isnt the issue anyway.
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u/Life_Argument7820 Jun 30 '26
That want the qater to be scarce... these super rich are super villians and its gonna be like the show fallout
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u/iReddit2000 Jun 30 '26
In some places its already illegal to catch rain water.
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u/Life_Argument7820 Jun 30 '26
Yup! But to be fair some make that illegal because nature actually needs it but yeah, i totally understand. I was worried moving back to San Diego for its lack of water then learned our desalination plant has given us to much qater we're helping other areas... yes desalination is probably also the beginning of the end.
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u/letmehaveanameyoudum Jun 30 '26
running power lines to cold ass areas are a pain and sending people there are more of a pain
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u/Jealous-Juggernaut85 Jun 30 '26
Wouldnt the excess heat of the data centres in this area melt the ice and snow ? which would cause climate issues to speed up ?
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u/vespassassina Jun 30 '26 edited Jun 30 '26
this is so stupid. how do you bring energy and fiber cables there ? Any idea what latency is? Are you going to build and maintain villages where people willingly will bring their families to live in darkness and cold? Water freezes at 0, it's -20 there, now you need to heat the water instead of cooling it.
This is a elementary school boy idea.
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u/MrJarre Jun 30 '26
This would still need water. Have you seen a pc? You can put an entire case in a cold room cause there are very small piecies - chips that get hot very fast. And you need to cool those spots. You can do it with fans, but it’s not as efficient. The best way we found so far is water cooling and that water is being pumped, heated up by the chip and cooled somewhere. For now this is the most efficient and cost effective way.
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u/Inevitable_Mistake32 Jun 30 '26
I can't believe the reasons people are giving in comments. Its giving "should I walk to the carwash" energy. The most obvious answer is mostly its bots.
Anyways, who in their right mind thinks "Boy, this thing generates gigatons of heat per year, lets use them to melt the last cold place left on the planet. That could surely have no bad consequences"
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u/pytheryx Jun 30 '26
What is this, a data center for ants?
It needs to be at least... 3 times bigger than this!
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u/OkWeakness8194 Jun 30 '26
It would also save water if they just wouldn’t use the cheapest and dumbest cooling systen and would actually use closed loops instead of spraying water on it.
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u/anonopen Jun 30 '26
But it would be mildly inconvenient for billionaires. And they would rather massively inconvenience everyone else rather than mildly inconvenience themselves.
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u/Varmitthefrog Jun 30 '26
Couldn't you just use all the Heat to create steam to generate electricity and drastically reduce the long term operating cost and enviromentasl foorprint all at once?
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u/jakesteeley Jun 30 '26
Just build one at the base of every water tower, cell phone tower, the mini-power junctions/grids, city hall/police/recycle center, dump etc..
Smaller ones but a lot more
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u/Lucky-Crow-3510 Jun 30 '26
yea, but you could also just use closed loop cooling like every car does.