[disposition2]

This will probably be a unpopular, wet blanket opinion...

But anytime I hear of Grok or xAI, the only thing I can think about is how it's hoovering up water from the Memphis municipal water supply and running natural gas turbines to power all for a chat bot.

Looks like they are bringing even more natural gas turbines online...great!

https://netswire.usatoday.com/story/money/business/developme...

[d0gsg0w00f]

Where does OpenAI and Anthropic get their water?

[tzs]

It's not the water that is the big problem here. It is the gas turbines and the location.

They started operating the turbines without permits and they were not equipped with the pollution controls normally required under federal rules. Worse, they are in an area that already led the state in people having to get emergency treatment for breathing problems. In their first 11 months they became one of the largest polluters in an area already noted for high pollution.

They have since got a permit, and said that pollution controls will be added, but some outside monitors have found evidence that they are running more turbines than the permit allows.

Oh, and of course 90% of the people bearing the brunt of all this local pollution are poor and Black.

[Geee]

Isn't the pollution exaggerated? Burning natural gas or methane is considered pretty clean, and produces mostly CO2 and water, which aren't toxic pollutants or a cause of breathing problems. That's why it's used inside homes in gas stoves.

[tzs]

They also produce nitrous oxides.

There are a couple of ways to limit this. One is to avoid having nitrogen in whatever gas you use to provide oxygen. E.g., use pure oxygen, or use atmospheric air with the nitrogen removed. There is research and testing on this, but I don't think there is much commercialization yet.

Another is to use turbines designed to operate at lower temperature so that they don't reach the temperature where nitrogen and oxygen start forming nitrogen oxides. These are widely available. They are more expensive upfront, can be more finicky to operate, may require higher quality fuel, and may have more partial combustion which can lead to more partial combustion products like formaldehyde. However they can be more efficient which can lower operating costs.

A lot of it then comes down to regulatory costs. It may be cheaper to use a normal turbine with some add on to deal with NOx or it may be cheaper to use a low NOx turbine. That of course assume you even have to care about NOx. If you don't then the normal turbine is probably cheaper.

Something like 80-90% of gas turbine power plants in the US do use the low NOx turbines. However, rented gas turbines are mostly the normal ones. That's because they are easier to operate, require minimal maintenance, and are often more rugged, which are all good things for a rental. The turbines at the xAi Memphis datacenter are rentals. I believe they are intended to be temporary while the grid is improved to provide more power.

[minitech]

Not sure about the answer to the original motivating point, but as a tangent, gas stoves in homes do cause breathing problems (because of non-CO2/water products). Top couple of search results:

- https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-health-risks-...

- https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/gas-stoves-air-pollution-1.6...

[onlyrealcuzzo]

Why can't it suck up water right from the Mississippi and do Once-Through cooling? Isn't it close? There's definitely more than enough water