Virginia industrial park wants to power DCs with mini nuclear reactors, clean hydrogen Green Energy Partners (GEP) has tapped IP3 International to help realize its dream of a massive datacenter campus in Virginia powered entirely by small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs) and hydrogen gas generators. The joint venture between the two companies will see the formation of a 641-acre industrial park located in Surry …
I hate clean hydrogen, as such thing doesn't exist.
Also, how do they pretend to store hydrogen long term? That is, in practice, impossible without loss.
Under pressure it will go through the pressure vessel and potentially embrittle it, and liquid it needs to be extremely cold, and that requires energy input to keep it cool.
Where they want to source this hydrogen from is also of interes.
They would be better served by batteries.
If you already have a massive bank of lifepo batteries.. more options open.
The proposal seems fairly modest and sensible. It's not going to be a large scale generation project, just a waste heat recovery scheme. Storing the hydrogen in this scenario isn't a huge issue if land is cheap, you just build gasometers (the big low pressure tanks we used when everyone ran on coal gas); the problems of storing hydrogen at high density only come into play if you're trying to transport it or use it to run vehicles.
Compared to a battery farm, once the manufacturing plant is online, scaling is cheap (as far as quantities stored). I'd also add that low pressure hydrogen, if the tanks are above ground, is reasonably safe compared to battery farms or hydrocarbon tanks, any leaks just fly up into the atmosphere before an explosive mixture can form (there's a great USAF safety video where they investigate the dangers of liquid hydrogen spills, which I believe translates quite well into gaseous storage leaks).
Pretty obvious they're using impractical "green" technology promised down the road, to sell a heavy electric utilization on a dirty grid right now. They'll slow-walk and spend barely any money on the reactors and hydrogen for a few years, then quietly announce they had to give up.
It's strange because solar and wind power are immensely practical and economical right now.
And a much more efficient alternative to generators than hydrogen are redox-flow batteries, where the charged electrolyte can similarly be generated from electricity, stored in tanks much easier than hydrogen, and trunked in from far away if a refill is needed during an extended power outage.
" they're using impractical "green" technology promised down the road, to sell a heavy electric utilization on a dirty grid right now"
erm... as I understood the article, they're setting up the datacentre close to an existing nuclear plant, so during the 'setting up SMR' phase they would still be using nuclear power from the grid. (Yes, once it's from the grid you can't guarantee it's actually coming from nuclear rather than oil/coil or whatever else is on the grid).
The hydrogen part is pie in the sky, also as many commentators above pointed out, quite impractical. Ideally we could have an industrial process that uses energy to create hydrocarbons from water and CO2 but we are very far away from having an efficient such process. Electrolysing water to get hydrogen is a known process. And while there are problems with storing and transporting hydrogen (particularly it would need long-term storage for backup operations), if there are no residential buildings close by that can use the heat, the alternative is just wasting it. So however inefficient and expensive the hydrogen process is, anything above break-even is a plus
It makes sense to locate a datacentre at a power plant --- if the power plant is somewhere where you want a data center.
I've nothing against Surry County -- It's on the densely populated east coast -- but it's not somewhere like Loudoun County, next to DC, which already has data centers because that's where they were needed.
The whole point of a datacentre is that it doesn't really matter where it is.
All a datacentre needs is power, connectivity and cooling.
For the vast majority of uses, it doesn't matter if your ping time increases by 30-40 microseconds by travelling the entire width of the USA.
Your data will spend longer being switched inside the datacentre.
I wholeheartedly support BIG PWR nuclear power plants, producing 1000+ MW each. Except these guys don't like to slowdown or speedup and love working at 100% all the time, just changing fuel rods every 18 months. Sell the rest of the energy to the grid or make hydrogen.
Don´t forget the Lawrence Livermore research to break down the HLW (high level waste) into something less risky for the environment, and that research should be included in the package.
This hydrogen part needs a lot of research however.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
