It's not how much energy is used, it's how much wasted heat energy is dumped into the surrounding environment. Seems like a much more apt comparison in that light. Second paragraph of TFA:
> An analysis of the mammoth data centre proposed by celebrity investor Kevin O’Leary suggests it would release the equivalent of 23 atom bombs of heat waste into the boreal forest of northwestern Alberta every day.
Still makes no sense. People do not have an intuition about how much heat a nuclear bomb gives off, and comparing an instantaneous explosion versus a energy in a day is really dumb.
it would be apt if it was "fun fact, despite being incredibly destructive, a nuclear bomb doesnt leave much waste heat" but also a non-sequitur.
a really obvious electricity in, waste heat out is aluminum smelting in quebec. at ~12GWh a day for the biggest ones, this would come out at a similar scale, but make clear that the data center industry in alberta produces far less waste heat than the aluminum industry in quebec, and we should start looking to shutter all those smelters for wasting too much power
bringing up nuclear bombs when the heat output of a nuclear bomb isnt what people are familiar with is intentionally misleading. it also elicits a "cool, this thing can survive 20 nuclear blasts a day?" response which is pretty obviously not intended and isnt true
Not necessarily disagreeing with your main point, but "killed millions of people" is an order of magnitude wrong. More like around 200,000. My point is not that the deaths from those bombs wasn't appalling, it's that exaggerating doesn't help your cause.
It’s inciteful language that garners clicks. Immediately raises alarms for me that the article is going to be heavily biased. Why not relate it to something more benign like powering “y” amount of NYCs or something.
And there was vastly more energy potential in the Hiroshima bomb than was actually released - of the 64 kilograms of uranium in the bomb, less than one kilogram underwent fission, and the entire energy of the explosion came from just over half a gram of matter that was converted to energy.
By the above banana logic; How many Hiroshima atomic bombs worth of energy were in the Hiroshima bomb?
By the logic of banana energy potential, you have to go for all of the energy in the entire bomb, not just energy that could be easily released through fission. That's about 410^20 Joules vs the 610^13 Joules released.
which, by Cave Johnson logic, gives you about 6.5 million more bombs per bomb!
Im convinced this data center project isn't even real, and has been a long running PR stunt to drive outrageous headlines about datacenters so people don't take the real critics seriously, or smaller datacenters seem more reasonable.
That's what the article says, yes. But is it accurate? The confusion of units makes me question the numbers, especially since I can find no other reference of the power usage or generation capacity of the site.
"As recently described, the project would
draw approximately 9 gigawatts (GW) of power, [...] Power would
come from on-site, behind-the-meter natural-gas generation. At realistic generating efficiency, supplying 9 GW of electricity means burning fuel — and therefore rejecting heat — at a
continuous rate on the order of 16 to 18 GW"
Are there studies regarding the improvement of productivity with AI?
Or at least economic measurements in terms of money/profits brought by companies/entities who used it?
I mean of course it's going to depend on the field and how it's being used, but there could be a comparison between how much money was spent making AI overall, and how much actual measurable good things it brought.
And I don't mean the amount of customers paying for AI, I mean an actual demonstration that AI is worth doing.
Strange fact: in terms of heat energy, the hiroshima bomb released far less energy than the fire it ignited. Much of the total destruction seen in footage was the result of the massive instantaneous fire of a woodem city. Had it been a concrete city, things would have looked very different.
A forest fire can release many hiroshimas of energy every day, and canada has more than a few of those each year.
Gigawatts per day is nonsense in this context. It's a small but telling mistake. If they can't even get their units right, that speaks a lot about the trustworthiness (or lack thereof) of this article.
Also I can't speak for others, but to me the amount of energy a nuclear bomb releases is not very relatable. But as it turns out, it's not even that much. A typical nuclear reactor unit easily releases more than a Hiroshima bomb worth of heat a day. A bomb is devastating because all its energy gets released over a fraction of a second, not because of its amount of energy in absolute terms.
The sad part is that there there may be a real story here, but it drowns in the meaningless bomb analogy. They could've written a real informational piece about the environmental impact of data centers. Instead, they chose to craft a sensationalist story that not only fails to enhance people's understanding, but might actively mislead them into thinking data centers are nuking the neighborhood.
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[ 2.4 ms ] story [ 27.8 ms ] threadIt is like comparing a banana to a chair.
> An analysis of the mammoth data centre proposed by celebrity investor Kevin O’Leary suggests it would release the equivalent of 23 atom bombs of heat waste into the boreal forest of northwestern Alberta every day.
a really obvious electricity in, waste heat out is aluminum smelting in quebec. at ~12GWh a day for the biggest ones, this would come out at a similar scale, but make clear that the data center industry in alberta produces far less waste heat than the aluminum industry in quebec, and we should start looking to shutter all those smelters for wasting too much power
bringing up nuclear bombs when the heat output of a nuclear bomb isnt what people are familiar with is intentionally misleading. it also elicits a "cool, this thing can survive 20 nuclear blasts a day?" response which is pretty obviously not intended and isnt true
I stand corrected.
By the above banana logic; How many Hiroshima atomic bombs worth of energy were in the Hiroshima bomb?
which, by Cave Johnson logic, gives you about 6.5 million more bombs per bomb!
Dimensional error.
Do they mean 18 GWh per day = 64.8 TJ / day = 750 MW ?
Or is this thing really going to use twice as much power as the largest nuclear power plant that currently exists?
A. my math was off
1 Little Boy = 63 terajoules https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Boy
23 Little Boys / 24 hours = 16.77 Gigawatts
B. https://www.theenergymix.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Wond...
"As recently described, the project would draw approximately 9 gigawatts (GW) of power, [...] Power would come from on-site, behind-the-meter natural-gas generation. At realistic generating efficiency, supplying 9 GW of electricity means burning fuel — and therefore rejecting heat — at a continuous rate on the order of 16 to 18 GW"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibOkPx_Ej30
Or at least economic measurements in terms of money/profits brought by companies/entities who used it?
I mean of course it's going to depend on the field and how it's being used, but there could be a comparison between how much money was spent making AI overall, and how much actual measurable good things it brought.
And I don't mean the amount of customers paying for AI, I mean an actual demonstration that AI is worth doing.
A forest fire can release many hiroshimas of energy every day, and canada has more than a few of those each year.
New York City uses 1 hiroshima bomb-energy every 3 hours.
Gigawatts per day is nonsense in this context. It's a small but telling mistake. If they can't even get their units right, that speaks a lot about the trustworthiness (or lack thereof) of this article.
Also I can't speak for others, but to me the amount of energy a nuclear bomb releases is not very relatable. But as it turns out, it's not even that much. A typical nuclear reactor unit easily releases more than a Hiroshima bomb worth of heat a day. A bomb is devastating because all its energy gets released over a fraction of a second, not because of its amount of energy in absolute terms.
The sad part is that there there may be a real story here, but it drowns in the meaningless bomb analogy. They could've written a real informational piece about the environmental impact of data centers. Instead, they chose to craft a sensationalist story that not only fails to enhance people's understanding, but might actively mislead them into thinking data centers are nuking the neighborhood.