Updates on #DeepGreen’s #UnderwaterDatacenter project
by Ben Boettger | Sep 17, 2026
Excerpt: "An underwater data center’s chief selling point is the ability to passively dispel its waste heat into a cold sea. DeepGreen’s description of its 'compute hives' includes a passive cooling system that rejects heat via copper-nickel alloy cooling fins on the outside of the cylindrical hulls containing the computing equipment. Computation converts roughly 100 percent of its energy input into waste heat. DeepGreen is planning a 100 megawatt data center, which would release about 876 gigawatt-hours of #ThermalEnergy per year if it runs constantly.
"A big ocean can, of course, absorb far more heat than that. But the #Forelands is a narrow bottleneck of #CookInlet, through which salmon runs going into the #Susitna and other rivers of the northern watershed will need to pass. Whether the data center has the potential to create a #WarmWaterPlume in this relatively confined and important area, and whether this would affect the health or behavior of #salmon, #plankton, or other marine life is an unknown that should merit serious analysis.
"In addition to waste heat, the fact that the cooling system would include copper-nickel cooling fins directly exposed to seawater, strong currents, and silt might be an area of concern itself. Even small amounts of copper can be toxic to salmon.
"Though DeepGreen proposes to use a type of copper-nickel alloy common in plumbing for seawater cooling, #FERC should require them to study the concentration of copper particles it could release under conditions in the Forelands, where it would be exposed to high currents carrying a heavy load of fine silt, while subject to the thermal stress of releasing the data center’s waste heat. Chemical oceanographers and marine toxicologists should assess how serious the data center’s copper pollution could be.
"The communities of Cook Inlet | #Tikahtnu deserve thoughtful, sustainable solutions that truly serve local needs. Rather than prioritizing massive, energy-intensive data centers, we should focus on projects that deliver reliable, renewable energy and protect the region’s salmon and ecosystems for future generations."
Read more:
https://inletkeeper.org/updates-on-deepgreens-underwater-data-center-project-2/
#Greenwashing #UnderwaterDatacenters #NoAI #NoAIDatacenters #WaterIsLife
#OceansAreLife #BigTech #EndangeredSalmon #EndangeredSpecies #MarineLife