The Fjord-Cooled Data Center

1sockchuck writes "A new data center project in Norway plans to use a fjord-powered cooling system, drawing cold water from an adjacent fjord to cool data halls. The fjord provides a ready supply of water at 8 degrees C (46 degrees F), eliminating the need for an energy-hungry chiller. The Green Mountain Data Center joins a small but growing number of data centers are slashing their cooling costs by using the environment as their chiller, tapping nearby lakes, wells and even the Baltic Sea."

Comments

Re:Queue the screams of hysteria

[MoellerPlesset2]

Here's how it works in reality: many fjords are home to commercial fishing and aquaculture. All those species are adapted to cold water and don't do well in warm water. What happens if a data center warms the water around the effluent by a couple of degrees? Cold-water fish, shrimp, clams move away and the people who depend on them have to move with them. It's probably fine if there's just one data center in the Fjord, and the warming is highly localized. maybe a few hundred square meter of surface area. But what if there's more? What if there are ten data centers in the Fjord? Or other industries in need of cooling? Suddenly the entire fjord warms, and it's not only the fish, shrimp and clams that are gone, but the livelihood of the people in the area.

Except that's not reality. That's your own speculative fantasy. A retarded one. If fish couldn't handle a few degrees warmer water, they'd die in the summer. Also: The water is not vented to the same thermocline it came from.

In any case, reality is what research and empirical evidence says it is, not what you can imagine and think is plausible. It so happens that there's been decades of research in Norway's neighbor, Sweden, on the environmental effects of the major-river's-worth of 10 C heated cooling water, which the three Forsmark nuclear reactors put out into an enclosed basin in the Baltic. That's far more than an entire district-cooling network would put out. In fact, one of the Forsmark reactors alone puts out more waste heat than the 30-something district-cooling grids that already exist in Sweden.

The results of the research, performed by the government agency for fisheries (not the nuclear industry) actually indicates that, on balance, fish growth is actually promoted, as are many other species of birds etc.

Yeah, life is full of grey and subtilities and hard decisions that aren't black and white. Sorry to disappoint you.

Sorry to dissappoint you: But one of those subtleties is that speculation is not a substitute for actual study, and that those "subtilities" you speak of should include the possibility that environmental impact can actually be a net positive.