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Comment by masklinn | Hacker News Reader

> I know, the oceans are big, but so is our data.

Meh. The biggest data center (ChinaTel's Inner Mongolia Information Park) consumes about 150MWe, assuming all of it becomes waste heat it's basically nothing: a nuclear reactor (each plant has 2~8) releases 2Wt for each We it produces, and they're usually sized between 800 and 1300MWe.

Hell, earth averages 160W/m^2 from the sun, oceans cover 360m km^2, so oceans get 10^16 watts from the sun.

Not to say that it can't have a significant local effect, nuclear plants are strongly regulated to avoid heating their rivers too much (especially in warm summers), and again we're dealing with orders of magnitude more heat dumping heat waste in a very finite (though moving) amount of water.

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Even Greenpeace at least doesn't think that it's a bad idea:

"Experimental underwater data centres could be more sustainable if connected to offshore wind power, but Microsoft must focus more on investing in new renewable energy now. [...]"

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-35472189

My understanding is that MS took that to heart on this second round. The article claimed they choose Orkney as the site of the new datacenter precisely because they have an excess of renewable energy.

That's kind of a clever idea to promote renewable energy.

Coupling an undersea datacenter with an offshore windfarm just sounds all-around clever.

Until a hurricane destroys it.

Build all above-surface structures out of inflatables. During heavy weather deflate and retract (5-10m). Use simple solid-state generators, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaneless_ion_wind_generator

Are other structures safer against hurricanes?

An underground data center would work if hurricane safety is your top concern. In any case a location on land is probably cheaper to rebuild.

I think an eventual hurricane would not destroy the data center, only just the wind turbines.

What about earthquakes then?

>Meh. The biggest data center (ChinaTel's Inner Mongolia Information Park) consumes about 150MWe, assuming all of it becomes waste heat it's basically nothing: a nuclear reactor (each plant has 2~8) releases 2Wt for each We it produces, and they're usually sized between 800 and 1300MWe.

Seems a shame to let all that heat go to waste. Surely we put that waste heat to use and a distillery or desalinization plant or something.

Desalination isn't a bad idea, but it does produce large quantities of waste brine, among other things: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desalination#Environmental

>but it does produce large quantities of waste brine, among other things

So combination data center, desalinization plant, and pickle factory then?

To let all that radioactive heat go to waste? Although maybe that's just the primary coolant circuit - is the water they use from rivers/the ocean made radioactive, or just heated?

I was thinking more from data centers. You could probably do it with nuclear too.

This gif: https://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/images/2015/08/np... shows how typical nuclear reactors work. They're functionally just steam turbines, the nuclear power is just capable of heating a whole lot of water.

The waste heat, though, doesn't come in contact with the radioactive parts. That's what's happened on the bottom with the condenser.

You say "assuming all of it becomes waste heat", but doesn't all of the energy consumed necessarily become waste heat no matter what?

In addition, the heat represents extra energy. Warmth and water (and carbon) are the very fabric of life. Nature will adapt to utilize this free energy source before you could say "thank you".

My prediction is we'll be amazed at the life forms that develop and explode around such submerged cooling structures.

> Warmth and water (and carbon) are the very fabric of life. Nature will adapt to utilize this free energy source before you could say "thank you"

Ocean warming is extremely detrimental to ecosystems across the globe. You can't just simplify it to more heat == more energy == better

>In other non-tropical regions of the world, marine heat waves have been responsible for widespread loss of habitat-forming species, their distribution and the structure of their communities. This has a tremendous economic impact on seafood industries that have to deal with the decline of essential fishery species.

>It is likely that over the past century, the impacts on ecological chains have been more frequent as ocean temperatures have escalated decade after decade. This is the case in Nova Scotia, where kelp forests are literally being wiped-out by water which is much warmer than usual. In this corner of Canada, the ocean is not just a form of recreation, it also means a way of life for many that rely on fisheries and aquaculture as an important part of their economy.[1]

[1]https://www.theweathernetwork.com/news/articles/ocean-heat-w...

> In addition, the heat represents extra energy. Warmth and water (and carbon) are the very fabric of life.

That's cute, but 1. nature will adapt just fine to both heat and cold so that's not exactly compelling; 2. the issue is we may not, human civilisations have arisen in fairly specific conditions, and tend not to be very resilient to significant environmental changes

> My prediction is we'll be amazed at the life forms that develop and explode around such submerged cooling structures.

My prediction is we won't live long enough to see that happen, it takes kilo- to mega-years for anything more complex than bacterial mats to evolve to use new sources of anything.

> nature will adapt just fine to both heat and cold

Not with the same ease! That's the point — it is a one-way street. "Having easy access to energy" or "not having easy access to energy" are NOT equivalent states for flourishment. They're not equally "just fine".

The rest seems like you're grinding some anthropomorphic axe unrelated to my post, so I'll abstain.

> "Having easy access to energy"

Life needs an energy gradient. In this case, direct access to colder water. No organism (or machine) can use the heat energy of its environment if it has no access to a colder medium.

Edit: I just saw that Retric explained it better (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17245948).

Where is this confusion coming from? Are you suggesting there won't be colder water around the data centre? Or just nitpicking for the sake of it?

It looks like my original comment hit some HN ideological hot spot (unintentionally), but it's entirely uncontroversial scientifically.

> Where is this confusion coming from? Are you suggesting there won't be colder water around the data centre?

If a fish is swimming in 24°C water, it can't simultaneously be swimming in 19°C water. Maybe its friend 10 meters away is swimming in 19°C water, but that doesn't help the first fish.

Maybe that fish feels more comfortable in 24°C water, because it needs a certain body temperature to keep its internal processes running (i.e., to not freeze to death), but it cannot harvest energy from the 24°C water, which is what you claimed above. I'm not nitpicking, this is one of the most fundamental and important laws of physics.

I don't know whether this is feasible at the temperature gradients created by data centers, but it's not prohibited by physics. If there are chemical species in the water that are stable at 24 C and not 19 C, the fish can harvest these for chemical energy after they have traveled the ten meters.

This is probably more relevant at temperature gradients greater than 5C, but it's thermodynamically possible.

Nature, defined as the absence of human meddling, will be fine. Especially after humanity went extinct.

In this context, we're not worried about the literal definition of natural but about keeping an environment in a state in which humanity can survive.

Heat is not really useful energy the way your taking about.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_law_of_thermodynamics

Life wants entropy like sunlight or glucose becase it can do something with it. Heat can speed up chemical reactions which makes a minimal amount useful indirectly but not as an energy source.

PS: Heat gradients are a form of entropy and for example create thermals which are then useful.

You're correct of course, but same difference here. The extra energy will kickstart processes that nurture life.

I was actually pondering whether to expand on "energy", "water", "carbon" and "life" in the original post (none of them trivial concepts) but decided against it. It'd only muddy the waters, so to speak, missing the point:

A submerged data centre will be a net boon to the biological life around it.

> The extra energy will kickstart processes that nurture life.

Why would that be the case? If this were the case, the biological density of the highest-temperature locations in the ocean should be significantly higher than average. This has not been observed. Quite the opposite, actually.

Secondly, in thermodynamic terms, heat is the least useful form of energy. Heat is often the waste product of a chemical/mechanical process and cannot be easily be converted into other forms of energy without significant loss.

And no offense, but water and carbon are both trivial well defined concepts. Energy is also fairly well defined.

Local pockets of increased heat have not been observed to nurture life? Thermals mentioned by OP are just one obvious example.

I agree making use of subtle energy gradients is not trivial, but life is pretty good at it nevertheless. Even in conditions you wouldn't expect it. And no surprise — it had billions of years to evolve that way.

If you wanted to be daring, you could even say that's what life is for.

> Local pockets of increased heat have not been observed to nurture life?

That's absolutely not what the comment you're replying to says. What it says is:

> If this were the case, the biological density of the highest-temperature locations in the ocean should be significantly higher than average.

> Thermals mentioned by OP are just one obvious example.

Thermals are not just heat, and by and large the heat is not a source of energy (sulphur chemistry is the basal energy source of thermals). And shallow waters have much higher biological densities.

Ambient heat is only useful so far as helping the organism improve the efficiency of its chemical and biological reactions, it's extremely rare for it to be an actual energy source (because as you've been told multiple times it's extremely hard to use/harvest). And organisms are generally adapted to a certain level of ambient heat with compensatory mechanisms matching, most don't do very well if you drastically change their ambient heat levels, again aside from micro-organisms with short lifecycle which can adapt extremely quickly.

Listen, my claim is simple: submerged data centres will give rise to richer, more complex ecosystems around them (due to the extra energy, heat convection, increased entropy etc), in a surprisingly short timeframe. Because that's what life's good at.

You disagree, giving reasons I find irrelevant here (a data centre won't make a dent in the average ocean temperature, and certainly won't make it "the highest-temperature location in the ocean"), but I respect that. The good news is that the impact will be easy to evaluate once deployed.

In fact, testing the data centre's impact on the surrounding ecosystem will surely be a mandatory component of any such project, so we'll get to see the hard data. Let evidence be the judge of the "absolutely nots".

Ask yourself why you're on this site.

Is it to steadfastly argue positions far outside your domain expertise or engage in discourse and learn?

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