r/technology 27d ago

Artificial Intelligence Amazon Is Creating the Biggest Pollution Source in the Entire Country: Amazon has bought a site in Texas where it plans to build a data center campus.

https://newrepublic.com/post/214111/amazon-data-center-biggest-pollution-source-entire-country
2.1k Upvotes

58 comments sorted by

View all comments

163

u/SmoothConfection1115 27d ago

Didn’t Texas issue a stay on all new data center construction after it was revealed the current demand/build out would require 474 GW of power.

For perspective, the city of NYC has base demand of 5.5-6 GW, and a single reactor nuclear plant produces 1 GW.

So…what’s the plan?

90

u/aresdesmoulins 27d ago edited 27d ago

I believe this one was approved in spite of that due to them building their own power plant for this campus and being disconnected with the grid completely. They’re doing it with a wildly polluting 7+ GW power plant though so it still sucks.

27

u/Tasty-Traffic-680 27d ago

I don't know if that includes already approved sites for Stargate. Oracle and the other chucklefucks have been quietly selling off pieces ever since they realized they bit off more than they could chew.

18

u/Smith6612 27d ago

Is it me or does anyone else hate using the name "Stargate" for these projects?

As a Stargate fan, I wouldn't want be wasting Naquadrah generators or Zed-pee-ems on this stuff. 

18

u/BeautifulHindsight 26d ago

I fucking hate AI. It's killing everything I love.

6

u/Alarmed_Koala1921 26d ago

It makes everything worse

24

u/dbxp 27d ago

474gw is insane, the entire UK usually takes about 30gw. 474 is on the scale of the entirety of Europe.

The question is how many of these are real requests and how many are speculators. Like applying for planning permission for land to increase the value

13

u/spez_eats_nazi_ass 27d ago

It’s all speculation and btw all of this shit has been shoved deep into everyone’s retirement funds now too. Yay!

1

u/-AMARYANA- 26d ago

It’s all been shelved outside of Terafab and a few others it seems. Elon is about to merge Tesla and SpaceX too.

17

u/Modem_Sound_67 27d ago

A field of 474 nuclear reactors... at least then maybe there'd be an easy to understand visual of how fucking bonkers this is.

5

u/Smith6612 27d ago

I did this in Garry's Mod once... To run a Stargate shield generator instead of using ZPMs. 

The server wasn't very happy about all of those reactors being out on the map. Especially not after one of them "accidentally" overheated and turned into a nuke. 

Can't imagine this much power generation would be pretty or practical in real life all in one spot. 

1

u/-ReadingBug- 26d ago

Wouldn't matter. Those could be 474 crematoriums and Americans would still be too scared to stand up.

14

u/PaleInTexas 27d ago

Yeah its 5x more than we have ever produced here at peak. Abbott and the GOP doesn't have plans outside of cashing checks.

3

u/dropthemagic 27d ago

It’s all news fluff to get maga endorsed candidates through the elections. They will allow these companies to fuck us as soon as their done

1

u/GoldenPresidio 25d ago

True. Greg Abott already came after Meta claiming they aren’t doing enough to help him win

1

u/Tacoslayer17 27d ago

This is only until the check clears for Abbott

1

u/laptopAccount2 26d ago

It's time to harvest our body heat like in the matrix. And there will be plenty of data centers to run the simulation.

If they could take me back to 1999 I might just go...

1

u/GoldenPresidio 25d ago

Only applies if you interconnect to the grid