Skeptics of the proposed hyperscale data center in Box Elder County are sweating about a lot more than its energy demands and potential toll on water supplies.
Too bad a gigawatt isn’t a unit of energy, it’s a unit of power. The media gets this wrong almost every single time.
Edit: The atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima had a yield of 13-18 kilotons of TNT, or 54-75 terajoules of energy. Since the chain reaction of a nuclear fission weapon takes about 1 μs, and 1 watt is 1 joule/s, 54 terajoules released in 1 μs is 5.4 * 10^19 watts of power, or 54 billion gigawatts.
There’s also a description in real units:
Too bad a gigawatt isn’t a unit of energy, it’s a unit of power. The media gets this wrong almost every single time.
Edit: The atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima had a yield of 13-18 kilotons of TNT, or 54-75 terajoules of energy. Since the chain reaction of a nuclear fission weapon takes about 1 μs, and 1 watt is 1 joule/s, 54 terajoules released in 1 μs is 5.4 * 10^19 watts of power, or 54 billion gigawatts.
We should be demanding high efficiency data centers that use the waste heat for other purposes or energy generation.