Guys, guys, guys... so hear me out - remember last month when we were all giddy about datacenters in space? Well, apparently investors weren't too keen on that idea so we've come up with something much better: Nuclear datacenters at sea!
Now this is truly a visionary proposition that will certainly become another unicorn and have no issues whatsoever.
The current major roadblocks for any datacenter are, planning permissions, power connections, and cooling. The on a barge approach solves all of the above, unlike space which makes all of these problems worse.
Up next: a fleet of nuclear data center Zeppelins!
Innovative new air cooling: instead of moving the air through the servers, we simply move the servers through the air!
And while we're at it, we'll completely disrupt the existing Zeppelin market that depends on expensive helium for some reason. We use innovative hydrogen for a massive cost reduction!
Forget security (which worries me less), the legalities of this are notoriously tricky (especially if the ship might ever leave the waters of one nation), and the economics are even worse.
I wouldn’t touch civil maritime nuclear with a barge pole, and if I did, the clear win is decarbonizing big cargo ships.
Agreed, the largest container ships put out some serious pollution, going nuclear (a decades old proven technology for shipping) would be a massive improvement
But the people championing nuclear data centers are not trying to solve climate change
I doubt Russian nuclear ice breakers have naval escort. Until recently they operated within the coverage of on-shore long range SAM systems (but most of these SAM systems were moved elsewhere recently e.g. to protect oil refineries so Northern Sea Route is no longer protected).
I don’t think that anyone would want to steal an icebreaker, but a datacenter full of valuable equipment and interesting information is a more likely target.
It's a drop in a bucket. Global warming is due to ~5e18 Wh of excess heating. A nuke dumping 5e12 Wh of additional heat into water makes no difference at all.
How do they deal with saltwater corrosion, do the barges go in drydocks after a couple of years? What about weather do they have their own propulsion do they need to be towed to avoid bad weather? Can't you put the same gear in containers next to the shore and avoid the whole weather issue?
I ran the numbers for this about six months ago and it works out a lot better than all the other alternatives.
The fact you're surrounded by coolant, can use intrinsically safe versions of high pressure reactors and have low latency between multiple markets with one datacenter is a big plus.
That you're not competing with humans for electricity or water is another.
That said you'd want to build a semi submersible platform with the nuclear reactors in the pontoons and the superstructure able to house container based datacenter units. The only place with enough experience to build these is South Korea which isn't a deal breaker per se, but Samsung can pretty much eat your lunch if these get successful.
There are some very stupid VC folks around. I have spoken to some, and watched them shart millions away on the back of a powerpoint and some stage presence
Stupid is uncharitable. They lock into the small picture, like some details about it, and get carried away. Then again, it's their job to get carried away.
TL;DR: Pangeos was a concept for a floating free city that trended a few years back, but was never built for obvious reasons, just like how these floating data centres will never be built. Presumably some people were bilked into paying money to the Pangeos scammers, just like there will be those who "invest" in this.
The problem is that it costs a lot more to put a nuclear reactor into a permanently sea-worthy form-factor than it does to build on land and put up with some pesky taxes. There are plenty of places with lax regulations (environmental and otherwise) that will be happy to let you build whatever size data centre you want if you're willing to build the power generation too.
So Much land. Even non civilized lands, Even near sea for piping water.
What does this idea solve? Or just adds problems like, Non secure assets/nucclear on the sea.
Write up an ai generated biz plan, shop it around quick. make the necessary human pyramid, get it on the stock market. it'll be as irresistible as peanut butter & chocolate.
Translation: they won't let us build datcenters on land because we screw things up too much there. And we can't afford space. So we'll do it at sea where we can run all the gas turbines we want and wreck the Earth from there.
Would be a great element in a story, a pirate model trained on 10 million GPU hours by pirates who commandeered the data center for the necessary time then cast it adrift.
Guys, guys, guys... so hear me out - remember last month when we were all giddy about datacenters in space? Well, apparently investors weren't too keen on that idea so we've come up with something much better: Nuclear datacenters at sea!
Now this is truly a visionary proposition that will certainly become another unicorn and have no issues whatsoever.
Innovative new air cooling: instead of moving the air through the servers, we simply move the servers through the air!
And while we're at it, we'll completely disrupt the existing Zeppelin market that depends on expensive helium for some reason. We use innovative hydrogen for a massive cost reduction!
Have these guys factored in the cost of a task force of protective missile frigates, subs, and destroyers at each site?
I wouldn’t touch civil maritime nuclear with a barge pole, and if I did, the clear win is decarbonizing big cargo ships.
But the people championing nuclear data centers are not trying to solve climate change
The sensible way would be to use the waste heat for district heating, but let's heat the fish instead
The fact you're surrounded by coolant, can use intrinsically safe versions of high pressure reactors and have low latency between multiple markets with one datacenter is a big plus.
That you're not competing with humans for electricity or water is another.
That said you'd want to build a semi submersible platform with the nuclear reactors in the pontoons and the superstructure able to house container based datacenter units. The only place with enough experience to build these is South Korea which isn't a deal breaker per se, but Samsung can pretty much eat your lunch if these get successful.
Bring on the exploding drone boats.
I’d be stunned if anyone takes this seriously
https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/pangeos-terayacht-turtle/
TL;DR: Pangeos was a concept for a floating free city that trended a few years back, but was never built for obvious reasons, just like how these floating data centres will never be built. Presumably some people were bilked into paying money to the Pangeos scammers, just like there will be those who "invest" in this.
The problem is that it costs a lot more to put a nuclear reactor into a permanently sea-worthy form-factor than it does to build on land and put up with some pesky taxes. There are plenty of places with lax regulations (environmental and otherwise) that will be happy to let you build whatever size data centre you want if you're willing to build the power generation too.
[1] https://sealandgov.org/
The obvious answer is NIMBYs.