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Comment by kerhackernews | Hacker News Reader

Really the main issue causing the data center backlash is because they aren't building new 100% green energy production capacity with it. When you drop a data center into an area, energy prices will spike. Additionally, without that green energy capacity they will cause much more air pollution.

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I suspect the authors of this paper would like to hear out your evidence for increasing energy prices https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.19777

In the United States at least there's been plenty of polling on why people oppose data centers. Consistently, it's water usage and water contamination fears, which is exactly what you see most often in social media and discussed online. I think a lot of high-minded rationalizations are just trying to dodge the embarrassing fact that people simply think data centers are draining municipal and natural water sources.

What exactly are you getting at? Datacenters do use potable water from municipal sources for evaporative cooling. Are you claiming that's not true?

Here's a recent source: https://pacinst.org/publication/how-much-water-do-data-cente...

Yeah, it’s one thing when SV runs the Uber script (ignoring the law to build big enough to buy politicians) to hurt cab drivers. It’s very different when it’s your neighborhood.

Some do, some use closed-loop systems that are essentially 'charge once'. higher energy use, but less water

Not sure why this is getting downvoted, most of the new facilities (e.g. Stargate) are running closed loop systems. PUE goes up a bit if you have to use chillers, but ultimately it's faster/easier to build a large facility in a closed loop fashion than get water (permitting, treatment, etc.). NVIDIA pushing 45C inlet temps is to allow facilities to run dry coolers instead of chillers and make this even easier! Two phase cooling (required above ~3kW TDP) would eliminate water use in the secondary loop (if not the primary, eventually).

They do use water, and the numbers look very large which makes for big scary headlines. However people who actually know how water is used in a city are used to numbers much larger than that.

it's the demand delta, not the total demand, that's concerning. Also not all use cases are created equal: using water to keep people alive is legitimate and using water to build a machine that can automatically almost count the number of vowels in a sentence is not legitimate, especially when that usage drives up demand and makes it harder to use water to keep people alive.

Why do you get to choose what is and isn’t legitimate?

Well "you" don't "get to", but this is precisely why we made the concept "states" and use "state power" to counteract other natural modalities of power.

Which is being demonstrated by the use of state power to kill data center development.

Yeah but it's all Chinese propaganda so it doesn't count this time. /s

there's a really special type of crowd to whom you can say "People staying alive is good" and their response is "SOURCE??!!!"

What are you trying to achieve by posting comments like this? You're not trying to have a discussion at all.

Because the water system is a public utility funded by the people who live within the community?

Little Red hen, why do you get to choose who get's to eat your bread?

Why and how would they contaminate the water supply though? Sounds like a municipality problem, a water consumer shouldn't be feeding back into the system, or is it being caused by poorly executed construction practices? Maybe when they first pipe in or something is being left open during construction, this seems like it shouldn't happen if things are being done properly, water supply systems are not a new technology so who is dropping the ball?

Yeah, all these stupid little municipalities have to do is shit they've literally never had to do before while getting sued out of their socks by literal trillion dollar companies.

That's all it takes for them to do their part in generating gargantuan amounts of value for people who live 1,000 miles away and their uberwealthy hardly-human CEOs and investors.

what is it that they have to do? I'm still confused as to what is causing the water to change

Have you considered Googling? Or is this the type of curiosity that one just offloads to others?

https://fieldreport.caes.uga.edu/publications/TP121/how-data...

it's social media, and a human who strongly signals they know something is usually much more reliable than a search engine for knowing the real upshot, 9 times out of 10 the person who already has a strong opinion has keyed in on the detail that even if I found a search result might not be so easy to decipher, or you could have some professional experience, anyways it was worth a shot, thanks for sharing

> Why and how would they contaminate the water supply though?

One recent-ish example: ^[1]

> ... or is it being caused by poorly executed construction practices?

I believe their contractor was responsible for this one IIRC?

[1]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/victoriaforster/2026/07/09/meta...

The construction itself absolutely alters local watersheds:

1. Replacing forests and fields with concrete buildings prevents rainwater from filtering into the soil, which stops local aquifers from recharging.

2. During storms the rain runs off impervious surfaces and can cause downstream flooding.

3. Heavy land grading washes loose sediment into nearby waterways, destroying aquatic habitats and turning private drinking wells muddy. (That especially gets local homeowners angry and gets lots of video views).

And then you have the ongoing operation of open cooling systems:

4. Evaporative cooling systems discharge concentrated mineral brine that spikes the salinity of freshwater ecosystems.

5. Cooling water is treated with toxic biocides and anti-scalants that can contaminate local water basins. It can also contain leached copper, zinc, and PFAS.

6. Discharging warm wastewater depletes oxygen in streams and alters the overall ecology.

Of course all of these issues could be mitigated to a reasonable degree with proper care and effort:

>this seems like it shouldn't happen if things are being done properly

Do you want to bet your whole town on things being done properly right now?

>The construction itself absolutely alters local watersheds:

The first 3 apply to all construction. It's just being selectively applied because people hate datacenters.

All of this applies to all construction of all types. There are already plenty of environmental regulations around buildings and their construction. Maybe these aren't being enforced, maybe the laws need to be stricter. I'm not an expert but it sounds plausible. But if that's the case, we have to fix those problems otherwise you're just playing whack-a-mole with development. When you specifically focus on datacenters and stopping datacenters it gives away that environmentalism is just a fig leaf for your actual goals.

It seems like many of these town council debates are citizens asking for the laws to be enforced.

how would this mess with a water supply though, or are we talking the private wells? with a private well though it's something you want to mitigate either way, filters, etc, granted I have only seen the handful of clips where someone is showing dirty water coming out of the tap and I am trying to trace the chain of responsibility for the water supply, thanks for the detailed response btw

My county, for example, only processes surface water. If someone altered our upstream collection or polluted the reservoir, it would be a very big deal.

For private wells: if you're a rural person who previously had perfectly fine water, and now someone comes along to mess with that, even if it "just" requires installing expensive new equipment, you're going to be pissed.

The first three apply to any construction project with a paved surface and there are ways to mitigate that, you can collect the runoff in a cistern/tank that filters back into the groundwater or collect it in a retention pond which does the same thing.

Items 4 and 5 apply to any facility with cooling towers, not limited to but including hospitals, apartment buildings, schools, prisons, cold storage warehouses, combined cycle power plants, large commercial buildings, paper plants, retirement homes, commercial bakeries, industrial facilities with heat rejection needs, etc.

The sixth one applies to virtually every power plant in existence.

Yes, and...? Data centers are the large projects being built right now. Often in communities with no prior experience with projects of such scale.

I don't doubt that politics plays a role, but we also can't deny that the current moment is a different category.

My understanding is that they don't but there's a measurable amount of the population that thinks they can.

In the case of one amazon data center the town already had nitrates in their water due to agricultural runoff, but at levels that weren't a problem. Amazon took in hundreds of millions of gallons of that water for cooling, which evaporated away some of the water, but left the nitrates. Then amazon dumped the concentrated nitrate 'waste water' at such high volumes that it was pushed so deep into ground that it reached the aquifer contaminating the source for some 45k people. Soon people's taps were delivering water contaminated at 10x the legal limit. People got sick. A bunch of parents lost their babies.

Amazon was forced to settle for 20 million which will pay for digging to find uncontaminated water sources deeper in the ground. They'll also pay for water treatments to help remove the excess nitrates.

Data centers don't have to bring in new toxins and pollutants. They can also make existing problems much much worse.

This doesn't even make any sense. "deeper in the ground" is mostly wishful thinking. Why wouldn't the contamination spread? How can anyone be sure there is even potable water deeper?

With regular rainfall/usage the nitrates don't get far enough down to reach the aquifer. The nitrates get filtered naturally and remain in upper layers of the soil. Amazon concentrated the contamination and drove it far enough down that it reached and contaminated the aquifer, but below that the father down you dig and pull up water the less contaminated it will be. Part of the settlement is a fund for digging new private wells deep enough that the water contamination is under legal limits. I guess if there's no clean water below the contamination they'll have to stop using wells entirely and depend on treated water from the contaminated source.

golf courses use much more. But you don’t see massive resistance against new golf courses being planned.

Farms use an order of magnitude more than either. You don’t see any demands whatsoever on agriculture to reduce water usage.

I would expect that a golf course construction is relatively rare event. And there is definitely no explosion of new golf courses. Total DC power consumption growth is practically exponential for the last 5 years.

>I would expect that a golf course construction is relatively rare event

That's just status quo bias, given that they're an ongoing source of water consumption. "oh it doesn't matter that [thing] is guzzling water, because it's already there!".

Exactly right. It's a lot easier to prevent an asshat venture than it is to dismantle it. Now that the public is aware, I wouldn't be surprised if new golf courses start getting the same treatment.

They haven’t been. I’m aware of new golf courses being planned in my area and I hear nothing but enthusiasm. Literally no one brings up water consumption as a concern.

This whole thing is a sublimation of vaguer anxieties about AI (which are perfectly rational!) into areas where people feel like they can make more concrete objections that are likelier to succeed. The water thing is completely fake, whether people think so or not.

Not entirely. Lack of regulations mean recycled water facilities can end up being consumption facilities with pollution risk. Also Meta plans to restore as much water as they use by 2030. Which, seems like a while to break even. That's primarily because ai data centers require a lot more cooling water and power than traditional ones. So, you can scream fake news all you want, but it is a concern and it is a good way to oppose ai in general. And power consumption, noise pollution, and pollution are also serious issues. "Whatabout this worse thing" is a pretty terrible argument. You can whatabout anything, but it doesn't make that thing any less bad. aka two wrongs don't make a right.

It’s not just whataboutism, it’s pointing out that the people up in arms about data center water usage don’t even know about the long list of things that use way more water than data centers, and when told, they don’t care.

I think it’s pretty reasonable to conclude that their beef is not really with water usage as much as a general hatred of AI, big tech, etc, and water usage is an easy thing to focus on.

golf courses don't contaminate the water supply. Amazon was just forced to settled a lawsuit for 20 million because they took a community's water supply and made it undrinkable. Now they'll be paying to improve public water treatment infrastructure and dig deeper wells looking for cleaner water. When's the last time a golf course had to do that?

Sure. Those should be addressed, too.

The difference is they already exist while the datacenters don't. And its a lot easier, in a democracy, to stop a thing from being built in the first place than to tear it down after the fact, what with pesky laws about private property and so forth.

Or are you really saying that if we can't solve all water usage problems then we shouldn't solve or prevent any? Is that what you're suggesting?

What an aggressive way to interact with people. Do you need a nap? Do you?

Instead of replying to your rather silly question I’ll just point to this sibling which I’ll co-sign: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49568295

It is deeply funny to me that my asking a rhetorical question and using a little italics triggered you while "So, you can scream fake news all you want, but..." earned not a single complaint.

Perhaps I just struck a nerve.

Ok. For the avoidance of doubt, that is not what I was suggesting.

People should stop citing that paper. It makes the opposite point they think it makes. I think most people just read the first couple of sentences in the abstract.

"We estimate that data centers caused average retail electricity rates to fall modestly in the United States from 2015 to 2024 using an instrumental variables approach."

But the data center backlash really started 2 years ago. It's 2026 now. Getting new energy generation built and approved takes time.

"We caution that future supply constraints could reverse the effect."

There it is.

2015 to 2024...?

Monthly private spending on data center construction:

2015: $168 million

2024: $1.59 billion

10x increase over 9 years (26% annual growth rate)

2026: $4.36 billion

3x increase over 2 years (73% annual growth rate)

Let me reiterate: MONTHLY spending.

Compound this with presumably we've gotten better and not worse at building data centers (if nothing else, just building larger data centers would create economies of scale), the construction dollar to power consumption ratio has probably moved in the wrong direction for your argument.

The 2015 - 2024 growth curve would conceivably encourage more consistent usage of baseload and, where insufficient, gradual construction of additional supply. That would have the expected effect as seen in the paper.

The latter growth (which is obviously accelerating), especially after an extended period of the former growth, would not necessarily do this. We in fact know this to be true because the rate-limiting step on data center construction is lack of energy.

So obviously there is not ample excess baseload just sitting around. Obviously it's non-trivial to add additional capacity at the speed data centers need it.

You misunderstood I think. They aren't arguing water is a bigger problem than energy. They are arguing that negative perception is mostly focused around water use.

They suggested (and linked to paper arguing) that data centers are not causing energy prices to go up.

I am saying the paper's scope of analysis (up to 2024) renders it pretty much irrelevant.

And that's very suspicious given that they published the paper in 2026. Was it somehow impossible to find energy prices for 25+26?

No, it's not suspicious at all!

The paper was posted on the 18th of June. I would guess that means they started writing the first draft in the winter of 2026, if not earlier. 2026 data obviously wouldn't be available then, or even now---we're only in September!

In fact, most data products take a few months to compile and distribute. The US will release its Q2 estimate of GDP at the end of September, for example; Statistics Canada is on a pretty similar schedule. Thus, 2025 data might not have been available when they started writing either. It's certainly possible to estimate things on your own, but now you need to show that a) your method of estimating GDP (energy prices, whatever) is valid and b) any effects you see aren't simply due to using different metrics.

In short, it just takes a while to do and write up research.

>your evidence for increasing energy prices

it's my power bill, dude. and everyone else's around me. your paper stops measuring that data right at the time when everyone's bills started increasing sharply.

There's a global market for energy. What you see at the pump translates into electricity prices in a slow and grinding process. Remember that most of our electricity is not generated from renewable sources! Three years ago Russia invaded Ukraine, that pushed up fuel prices and electricity prices have followed. Now, we have the Iran war and that will push up electricity prices even more. The issue here is that you do not understand these markets.

The effects of Russian War had normalized by 2024. Or the paper would have shown an increase in Electricity tariffs.

And the effects of Iran War are not apparent.

I would recommend reading the actual paper where it acknowledges that it does not regard capacity payments.

https://www.energyknowledgebase.com/post/capacity-payment

I was asked for evidence that energy prices have increased. I provided that. Now you're shifting the goalposts to ask for evidence that the increase in energy prices is solely due to data center demand, pretending you've proven that an increase in demand somehow didn't lead to an increase in prices, then retreating to "you don't understand markets" as a vague defense of your idea that increased demand doesn't drive prices up.

There is a methodical issue with that study that the authors acknowledge.

> How can higher demand lead to lower prices? … a bump in demand can allow for higher utilization of the existing generation … Provided the bump does not violate capacity constraints

I.e. data centers reduce electricity prices, as long as you don’t build new generation to support them. Whereas data centers, nationally are projected to increase energy use between 325 to 580 TWh annually by 2028 [1]. There is no way you are going to meet that without building new generation assets to meet that demand.

[1] https://www.energy.gov/articles/doe-releases-new-report-eval...

> In the United States at least there's been plenty of polling on why people oppose data centers. Consistently, it's water usage and water contamination fears,

where I am the water is a part of it, but a big issue is electricity prices going up (which they will)

Well I don't have the data in front of me, but building power capacity leads to higher capacity payments, which are passed to all consumers. This has been an global industry standard for decades at far as I know.

The study's authors acknowledge it in the text.

> We estimate that data centers caused average retail electricity rates to fall modestly in the United States from 2015 to 2024 using an instrumental variables approach.

This is a good primer on capacity payments: https://www.energyknowledgebase.com/post/capacity-payment

Also Sam, Dario et al have constantly (like literally, every single week at least) been telling us that AI is going to make all of us unemployable and have to live on welfare.

Is it any wonder people hear that and go "hmm, no thanks" when the prospect of a massive whirring data centre next to their house is raised?

The SV LLM crowd know a lot about LLM psychology but seemingly very little about human psychology

They've fired up the same irrational hordes that brought us flat earthing, anti-vax, and 5G Covid. It's just another parade of extreme ignorance. And yes, the SF crowd is comically oblivious to what they're dealing with, ivory tower style.

They're detached from the great unwashed masses. It's not that they don't know anything about human psychology. They don't care about those people or their concerns, historically. And that's what is coming out in this interfacing with the broader public.

Opposition to AI data centers is completely rational, which is why both liberal and conservative folks are against it. These data centers are being forced on communities with soon-to-be-former leaders agreeing to nondisclosure agreements. They raise electricity prices. They are being slapped together with poor water recycling, and noisy diesel generators that pollute. The data centers for AI use a lot more resources than traditional ones. And the tech oligarchs think they can ram rush these things through, but they can't. People are sick of the lack of transparency. They're doing it all wrong to save a buck and a minute.

Ignorant? Do enlightened people want to live next door to noisy data centres?

The comparisons to anti-vax and flat earth are absurd.

And what exactly is the benefit to you to having a data centre specifically in the area you live? Seems to me that far from “irrational hordes”, the protestors are standing up for their interests above the interests of the AI companies.

But the question shouldn't be, do you want datacentres or not? Datacentres are gonna be built in China or elsewhere.

The question should be, do you prefer to have them also built in the US or do you agree to have China (or another country) controlling AI in the future?

If AI is really gonna make everyone unemployable, then it seems to me like you would want them to be built in your country, not in another country, especially not one you disagree with.

Of course they're still the question of where exactly there are built and how to compensate for the nuisances they may bring.

> The SV LLM crowd know a lot about LLM psychology but seemingly very little about human psychology

I doubt that it's ignorance on their part. I think their target audience with those comments is the US government, basically setting up OpenAI/Anthropic as "too big to fail" in the sense that "if AI is _inevitably_ going to take away everyone's jobs, then we'd better make sure that it's US AI and not Chinese AI or some "rogue AI" that's doing it, and the government should 1) be in bed with us, 2) provide a financial backstop, and 3) not regulate us or put on the brakes so that we can stay ahead of the Chinese.

They don't care what the "normal" American thinks.

Exactly

Here in Switzerland new AI datacenters are also causing some uproar but a lot less because regulations are rigid enough in most places that you can only build them if you do so cleanly. You can't just take all the water, electricity, make noise and polute.

I live next to a waste valorisation plant and they have very over sized water cooling systems because they need to keep the noise below regulation. They also for example have under pressure in the trash receiving bunker to prevent smells from escaping. All regulations that cost money but are the benefit of all.

Even worse some data centers have been caught running on diesel generators even in places where that is illegal. People are sick of tech companies bribing their way out of any accountability.

> Even worse some data centers have been caught running on diesel generators even in places where that is illegal.

Yeah, Elon's a big fan of this tactic.

Source for the above claim, although it was actually methane gas turbines: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jan/15/elon-musk...

> A US regulator ruled on Thursday that Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company had acted illegally by using dozens of methane gas turbines to power huge datacenters in Tennessee.

> xAI has been fighting for a year and a half over truck-sized gas turbines the company had parked near its Colossus 1 and 2 facilities, arguing to local authorities that the electricity-generating turbines were exempt from requirements for air quality permits.

> When you drop a data center into an area, energy prices will spike

Why is that?

Where I live my energy bill is a fixed cost. It's a super expensive fixed cost, since I'm living in Germany, but it is fixed none the less. It increases year by year because all costs only go up, but it remains completely unaffected by unrelated infrastructure being built around where I live.

I've been to a data center before due to work and my impression of the place was really good. It's kinda invisible from the outside, everything is extremely clean. There's no noise on the outside and the excess heat is used to get people cheap warm water or something like that.

I'm quite confused why people suddenly hate on them. Feels like I'm missing a whole lot of context.

Unless the German government is subsidizing or fixing the cost, that is not possible.

Infrastructure requires new capacity to be build, which requires capacity payments.

So you can't just build things in Germany. Even if you just want to build a structure on your property. You need to get government approval first. Which can take years.

You won't get approval if whatever you want to build would impact things that way, meaning before you can build or even expand something like a data center you have to make sure the capacity is there or pay yourself to build it or pay to get a direct line from outside the city. Either way, other people won't need to pay more because of it.

And if they can't give capacity, they should maybe be required to give a kind of "call option" or hedge locals energy prices linked to regular inflation.

Companies are content to charge more in the short term to pay for the upgrades on the backs of the current subscribers as opposed to just charging the people for whom the extra load is desired.

Then these big buyers go ahead and pay 50% of what everyone else is paying.

So not the massive Chinese bot farm (200K +) launching anti-datacenter propaganda campaigns? It's just the green energy concern? ("Spiking local prices" was one of the propaganda talking points.)

These new AI data centers are now built with their own power generation capacity. They're too electricity hungry to be supplied by the local grid, requiring megawatts to gigawatts of generation. If they're grid-connected at all (for training / inference racks + cooling) it is secondary supplementation.

There is a concerted effort by foreign governments to slow down American progress in fielding AI capability. Attempts to generate civil unrest and propaganda against $new_thing are included in this.

Ah, the good old "outside agitators" canard.

> These new AI data centers are now built with their own power generation capacity

And now you've got all the noise and pollution from that to deal with.

Some of the data centers build out solar, most are natural gas turbines.

The outside agitators are in the news. The U.S. just happens to be a little more vulnerable to "straight to the people" propaganda campaigns.

Propaganda, which the largest corporations on earth, including news media behemoths, would never, ever stoop to. Right?

That's not the main issue at all. I'm baffled where you got that idea.

Also, I live in Northern Virginia where we have tons of data centers, and energy prices have not spiked.

Northern Virginia has tons of data centers because it had massive amounts of excess energy capacity.

That is now being consumed and now Loudon County will also start engaging in electricity price wars with data centers. New regulations to segregate markets is supposed to kick in on Jan 1 2027, in fact.

Wow, you have insanely, enviably cheap power.

But also, it seems to have increased in price quite a bit lately.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/APUS35A72610

Or the fact everyone's utility bills are going up.

In part due to rising global prices of energy resources, which affect local markets and non-oil markets due to the (partial) fungibility of energy and the global nature of marketplaces.

No a big part is that the buildings are ugly and transform the character of a place that folks grew up in. Maybe focus should be put on beautifying these buildings in some way

Even if invisible they would not be a popular neighbour because they are a very overt reminder to the poor people around them how uneven the wealth and political power distribution is between them and the tech exec owners?

They should be popular - they pay property taxes to the local schools without taking much from the community at all. (note that I'm coming out against the all too common tax breaks that they get to build in your city)

They should be underground (that’s not shockingly expensive at the scale we talk about) and a net green-energy-driven power producer which they give away for free and pay property taxes. The list of things they could do that would be a cheap 1-2% of the total build and running costs to soften it are long.

> They should be underground (that’s not shockingly expensive at the scale we talk about)

... I'm not sure you realize the size of a modern hyperscale datacenter? They're pretty dang big.

The amount of earthmoving to bury one would also be awful for the environment. There's really no need to complicate it that much, they're big warehouses full of computers, just shove them on some unused industrial land somewhere as is already being done.

They should be required to pay for new renewable generation, I agree. That much is common sense.

Yes i didn’t mean deep. Berms and roof gardens can completely hide them.

Sure, that's much more feasible, but there's no real point. We don't do this for any other kind of industrial infrastructure (except the kind that HAS to go in residential areas, like utility substations). It's like the ultimate first world problem, spending money and gas on earthmoving so that the few dozen people who might occasionally drive past this thing can glance at a grassy berm instead of a concrete wall.

I don’t see how they are any uglier than any other industrial facility. That’s really what these are and it’s how they should be viewed. Typically most people don’t want to live next door to a factory, but there are some places where it’s appropriate to build them, often remote land or former industrial sites (brownfields) where you don’t want housing due to previous contamination.

Sure any massive structure going to formally farm country will elicit a negative reaction

People in my area are complaining about data centers being built in rural fields and on former aluminum plant and power plant sites. The debate has become pretty detached from reality. What remains rooted in reality mostly comes down to electric bills / power consumption and the fact that, as everyone is saying, it's the only way for people to push back against big tech billionaires.

> Really the main issue [is] ... energy production

I know that's what the rhetoric focuses on, but is it the real issue? The people I know personally who are against "data centers" are really just against AI, period. "It takes jobs from artists, it's going to take my job, it's going to enrich a handful of oligarchs," etc.

I suspect that even if some magical breakthrough meant that AI usage could grow and grow without building a single new data center, these guys would still oppose AI.

And understandably so! "I'm worried that AI will take my job" is a reasonable worry, for many jobs! But I feel like "data centers" is, for many people, a pretext.

That includes nuclear power, correct?

Can they build it safely as fast as the data center it's meant to power? Full steam ahead then.

It can be a little later. Your requirements is like demanding nobody can buy a house unless they have pay they entire amount upfront.

People do not believe big companies when they say "I'll deal with the externalities a little later."

So then does the data center compensate local residents for their higher power bills today? Until the new capacity comes online?

> Your requirements is like demanding nobody can buy a house unless they have pay they entire amount upfront.

No it's like demanding your new neighbors aren't forced to lend you money for your purchase - which is entirely reasonable. If you need money, get it from the bank.

The top-level comment explains it already:

"When you drop a data center into an area, energy prices will spike. Additionally, without that green energy capacity they will cause much more air pollution."

It typically takes 11-12 years for a nuclear plant to get built including planning and construction [1].

Is the idea that we'd build the data centers now, and finish the nuclear plants to power them 11-12 years from now?

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Typical-timeline-of-a-nu...

For wind turbine project from design and planning to operational use-takes approximately 4-7 years. An offshore wind turbine project requires about 7-10 years.

https://jmhpower.com/how-long-does-it-take-to-build-a-wind-t...

> For wind turbine project from design and planning to operational use-takes approximately 4-7 years.

That's still better than 11-12 years. How long does a solar farm take?

If residents' opposition is rooted in higher power prices, data centers could just pay extra instead until the new capacity comes online. Seems like a cheap way to pay off opposition.

> An offshore wind turbine project requires about 7-10 years.

Given this article is about Pennsylvania, it'll probably take millions of years.

> How long does a solar farm take?

24–48 months, but for a data center that has to run 24/7 you need to also build a gas power plant.

https://www.pvfarm.io/blog/utility-scale-solar-project-devel...

https://globalenergymonitor.org/research/betting-big-data-ce...

Or use batteries.

Also residential and industrial use will be lower at night. So the existing grid supply may also be enough.

In many places the contraty is true, peak electricity prices are after sunset, during night.

> peak electricity prices are after sunset

The famous evening duck curve, when people go home and cook and turn on heating/cooling appliances. California is able to flatten that out with batteries alone.

https://eticaag.com/battery-storage-and-the-duck-curve-march...

> during night

When everyone's asleep? Serious doubt, please show your sources.

The 2024 NYT infographic also has a nice visualization of how batteries flattened the evening curve as of then: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/05/07/climate/batte...

> When everyone's asleep? Serious doubt, please show your sources.

Lot of industry, especialy heavy industry, chemical plants are running 24/7.

For expensive night prices see electricity prices in Europe, expensive natural gas, coal power production with carbom tax.

https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/DE/live/fifteen_min...

> Lot of industry, especialy heavy industry, chemical plants are running 24/7.

Right...so they also run during the day (that's what 24/7 means), when everyone else is using electricity. At night they're the only users. Which means less demand at night compared to the day.

> see electricity prices in Europe

This article is about Pennsylvania. That isn't in Europe.

> This article is about Pennsylvania

You are right, PJM grid is coal, nuclear and gas dominated.

https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/US-MIDA-PJM/live/fi...

I don't see any nighttime prices there. Where do you see that nighttime rates are higher than daytime rates in Pennsylvania?

PA electricity pricing per hour:

* Highest is 14:00 until 18:00 or 21:00

* Lowest is 23:00 or 24:00 until 6:00

https://electricrates.org/pennsylvania/time-of-use/

So nighttime is cheaper than daytime. As logic would dictate.

Adding to the sibling comment, from your link:

* The longest piece for wind is "Approvals and permits" which takes up to 5 years of the 4-7y.

* The building part "takes approximately 3-6 months" for building wind.

So wind can be built far faster if we're willing to speed up approvals and permitting. And even if corners are cut for approvals/permitting, the worst case for a wind turbine failure is a lot better than a nuclear failure.

> It can be a little later. Your requirements is like demanding nobody can buy a house unless they have pay they entire amount upfront.

Have data center companies mortgaged their property to the public and paying interest on "power loans" monthly ? Please correct me if I am ignorant.

Some older nuclear power plants are been commissioned back into production:

Three Mile Island

"2027 – Nuclear Regulatory Commission to decide whether to issue operating license to Constellation Energy, with the decision expected in May. If granted, Constellation expects to bring the reactor back online later in the year."

https://www.witf.org/2026/07/28/three-mile-island-reactor-re...

Michigan’s Palisades nuclear power plant

https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/nuclear/americas-first-...

Duane Arnold Energy Center in Iowa

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/nextera-energy-partn...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duane_Arnold_Energy_Center#Res...

If electricity bills are steady or falling they should have no trouble convincing voters. Nothing to worry about.

You don't need to build them. You can just not retire, or unretire one.

Though we really should get better at building nuclear power plants. I'm think more of small ones to power ships though, not land based ones. Ships are one of the few places where oil/coal are used that there are not realistic renewable alternatives.

Nuclear power takes 10-20 years to build from scratch.

Median build time for 1 GW nuclear power plant in Japan was 1721 days (4.7 years), first concrete to grid connection.

https://x.com/GrantChalmers/status/1422472474487263233

1. The 2 reactors under construction [1 > CONSTRUCTION] are expected to take 20 years and >20 years respectively [2][3].

2. Nuclear Safety Commission Chairman Haruki Madarame told a parliamentary inquiry that "Japan's atomic safety rules are inferior to global standards and left the country unprepared for the Fukushima nuclear disaster". There were flaws in, and lax enforcement of, the safety rules governing Japanese nuclear power companies. [4 (Bloomberg: "Nuclear Safety Chief Says Lax Rules Led to Fukushima Crisis")]

3. Additionally, your source is from more than 5 years ago; in those additional >5 years, neither of the 2 under-construction Japan plants (started in 2006 and 2010) have finished, and 1 is not expected until 2030 (I couldn't find an expected date for the other).

4. The phase you mentioned is a relatively small amount (~1/3) of a nuclear reactor's total startup timeline. [6]

5. Japan was the fastest country from your 2021 source (before taking into account that current JP builds are taking 20+ years).

6. The last Japan reactor to go online was in the 2000s [1 > OPERATION].

[1] https://cnpp.iaea.org/public/countries/JP/profile/preview

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%8Cma_Nuclear_Power_Plant

[3] https://pris-stats.iaea.org/reactor/862

[4] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012-02-16/nuclear-s...

[5] https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Typical-timeline-of-a-nu...

Japan learned from Fukishima nuclear accident, and many outside Japan forget that earthquake and tsunami had bigger impact in terms of material damage and cost of life then the nuclear accident.

Currently, economy of Japan (world biggest LNG importer) is hit hard by the events in Middle East. Because of this goverment starts maximum use of nuclear power policy.

https://www.nucnet.org/news/japan-council-adopts-policy-pack...

https://www.powermag.com/reactor-restart-rekindling-japans-n...

https://ieefa.org/resources/japans-diversified-lng-procureme...

That may be true, but does not change that the only 2 JP reactors built since the 2000s are each taking 2+ decades each to complete (started in 2006 and 2010, and estimated to launch in ___ and 2030).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%8Cma_Nuclear_Power_Plant

https://pris-stats.iaea.org/reactor/862

They still have 10 already build but not running reactors, bringing those online is the less costly way to increase nuclear power production.

https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profil...

I'm fine with any power source, but all sources should include all lifetime externality costs (including for fossil/nuclear/renewable):

* Externality costs for items like pollution

* Any required insurance cost during their lifetime (not subsidized)

* An up-front bond or similar to cover final decommissioning and any required long-term storage costs (again, for fossil/renewable/nuclear)

By the time nuclear power were to come online in the US, most of these datacenters would be idled and possibly even demolished.

Just a man on the street here—I sense it's more a backlash against tech-bros in general. People are seeing the world getting worse from tech and they're taking their pitchforks to the data centers and Flock cameras.

(Of course I might simply be projecting.)

> I sense it's more a backlash against tech-bros in general.

I can almost guarantee there's a good bit of that also involved in addition to all the other concerns and issues folks also rightly have.

Not to disagree, but I suspect there wouldn't be such a backlash if the same people were building parks/forests/playgrounds etc. There are valid issues around datacentres although they might be getting bad press because of their association with tech-bros.

It won’t necessarily impact local energy prices significantly. Some facilities build gas turbine generators, but these cause the noise that neighbors complain about. Gas isn’t as bad about pollution (except CO2) but you don’t want to live next door to a plant either.

Also, adding a few data centers to a large grid shouldn’t bump up the energy prices, it’s only when you add many across the area. This is difficult to pin down because if one side of a region builds many data centers without their own power generation, the whole region could see eventual price increases. Fortunately most (all?) states regulate utility price increases, but still you don’t want to max out the price bump year after year.

It’s hard to discuss because different facilities have different configurations, and the local impact depends on that plus local characteristics.

Given the externalities of large facilities like this, impacted neighbors should definitely get a vote. Maybe we need a standard to define the impact radius based on the facility characteristics. This would add transparency and make it easier for people to decide without FUD and distortion. Unfortunately I don’t have much confidence in anyone coming up with such a standard without altering it to benefit their side, now that it’s become a political football.

There's also the water usage, which time and time again they lie blatantly about, and they choose to want to often build these things in heavily populated drought-stressed areas for some foolish reason. And then you got clowns like Musk wantin' to build 'em entirely powered by dirty generators instead of any form of clean energy (which, I mean, if you're buildin' in drought-stressed sunny areas, why not some variant of solar, right?).

S'okay. Facts and reality don't matter. Everything's peachy-keen, folks. Just wander on by and downvote reality and it'll magically go away... :sigh:

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