NEI Nuclear Notes

Courtesy of the Globe and Mail Over the holidays, the Globe and Mail , Canada's major national newspaper, took note of a positive business trend for our neighbors to the North -- namely, how more and more companies were locating computer data centers in the country . The trend is becoming so pronounced, that some are openly speculating that the greater Toronto metropolitan area could become a global hub for data center operations. Among the reasons why: Canada's cool climate means that data centers operating there don't have to spend nearly as much money on energy in order to keep cool. And it doesn't hurt that the nation has access to plenty of affordable and reliable electricity: Information technology services company Fujitsu Canada is planning to open a facility to take advantage of what Canada has to offer. Free cooling, however, is only part of the picture. Access to cheap, clean, reliable energy is also a magnet for investors looking to build these power-...

No Commodore 64s at the data center. The New York Times takes a look at large data centers, the warehouses of computers that power large web sites like Amazon and Facebook and Google (and plenty of others). We’ve noted these in the past because many of them have set up in places like Illinois, Virginia and North Carolina – that is, states well covered by nuclear energy – but many with a strong desire to use renewable energy – to the extent that some of them want to install their own wind farms or solar arrays. We called this silly then but now, the Times' year-long investigation has revealed a rather more alarming angle, because the data centers are environmental sump holes : At least a dozen major data centers have been cited for violations of air quality regulations in Virginia and Illinois alone, according to state records. Amazon was cited with more than 24 violations over a three-year period in Northern Virginia, including running some of its generators without a basi...

Hmm. What is a data center, and why should we be concerned? A data center is a facility that provides a safe, secure, powered home for computer servers. Generally companies rent space in a data center to house the servers that make their companies run. Data centers house everything from this blog, for example, to the massive Google search index (which is comprised of an estimated 450,000 servers). Data centers are big dollar, and the level of security is intense. Data centers are a study in how to secure an industrial facility. For the interested, take a tour of The Bunker , an example of how far companies will go to ensure the confidentiality, availability, and integrity of their data. Powering these facilities is no small matter. Many large-scale facilities are connected to 2 or more separate power grids to ensure a constant supply of power. Most have additional, redundant power generating capacity. In a study released in February, Jonathan Koomey, a researcher at Lawrence Berkeley N...