this post was submitted on 12 Mar 2026
552 points (95.8% liked)

Comic Strips

23047 readers
4470 users here now

Comic Strips is a community for those who love comic stories.

The rules are simple:

Web of links

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
552
The King's Art (infosec.pub)
submitted 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) by Beep@lemmus.org to c/comicstrips@lemmy.world
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] FauxLiving@lemmy.world 1 points 2 weeks ago

They could absolutely use seawater or brown water to cool a primary coolant loop of fresh water/coolant.

The reason that they don't is because it would be expensive, salt water creates a lot of corrosion issues and because there are no laws or regulations requiring them to do so.

If a law was passed that said datacenters couldn't be a net user of potable water, then they would use more expensive cooling immediately and ClaudeAI would cost an extra $0.38/mo. The solution is to pass meaningful regulations to protect fresh water.

This is a very solvable issue... even in deserts (which can use vapor compression cooling, like your home AC/refridgerator). It's just more expensive and nobody is forcing them to pay that expense.