Anti-surveillance activists want to shut off the water to the NSA's Utah data center

[accadacca]

As a federal agency, the NSA can often seem above local concerns like water management

[double moo]

Good Luck!

[Byron]

.

[cchoc]

So what did people think would happen when the Patriot Act was passed? The NSA has been snooping on the US for years and the new rules coupled with new technology just made it easier for them to expand their scope.

[Sombeech]

So what did people think would happen when the Patriot Act was passed?

The Left was in an uproar at the thought of the Federal Government spying on them. Now, not so much.

[cchoc]

The Left was in an uproar at the thought of the Federal Government spying on them. Now, not so much.

The Right loved the Patriot Act, now not so much. I think both right and left have their panties in a bunch about it now - or should anyway.

[canyoncaver]

Post Deleted by the NSA. We still got water, bitches!

[Absolute Gravity]

The Right is in an uproar at the thought of the Federal Government spying on them. Then, not so much.

[Deathcricket]

Uhhhh.... While I do appreciate the activists trying something, turning off the water is not really that effective. They will just hire me or someone else from Oracle, pay me (or someone else from Oracle) a $#!tload of money, and I'll have them converted to another cooling system within a couple days. Further, while I haven't seen the one in Utah, most of these are self contained and "recycle" the water because the cooling component they add to the water (increasing efficiency) is quite expensive and hazardous to the environment. Usually a glycol (not even sure if that is spelled right) based type solution is more efficient by 120%. So not recycling that would be astronomical in cost.

Lastly, I think if anyone was shooting out 1.7 million gallons of boiling hot water into the environment, the EPA would have a field day fining their a$$ to kingdom come. I'm pretty sure it's a mandate you have to output clean fresh neutral temp water. Again though, I haven't been to the Utah center so maybe it is as crazy as this sounds.

[accadacca]

[double moo]

FACT:
Doesn't indicate that it is newly sourced water every single day... closed loop system will require make up water and chemicals only.

[cchoc]

FACT:
Doesn't indicate that it is newly sourced water every single day... closed loop system will require make up water and chemicals only.

But is says fact in big red letters, it must be true.

[Sombeech]

Quick, everybody flush their toilets!

[Deathcricket]

I bet it's just listing the total amount of water circulated. Yes a fraction of that would be lost to evaporation, but it's gotta be a closed system that recycles the water. It has to be cooled back down, and at that point there is no reason not to send it back through the system again. Think like a radiator in your car where they add anti-freeze, same kinda deal, just larger scale. Here is the wiki on thermal pollution. Like I said, if they were shooting out 1.7 million gallons of hot water they would destroy whatever environment they put it into, lake, river, or even a huge ocean like some power plants do. It would decimate all wildlife in the area.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_pollution

I could be wrong though.... But this would be unheard of in the industry. What the protestors should do is go after their power bill. I bet it's massive. Some of the data centers I've worked at have bills in the millions (each month) and they aren't even near how big this place is. Although a place like this might even generate their own power, with their own power plants, who knows.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooling_tower

Wet cooling tower material balance

Quantitatively, the material balance around a wet, evaporative cooling tower system is governed by the operational variables of make-up flow rate, evaporation and windage losses, draw-off rate, and the concentration cycles.^[12][13]
In the adjacent diagram, water pumped from the tower basin is the cooling water routed through the process coolers and condensers in an industrial facility. The cool water absorbs heat from the hot process streams which need to be cooled or condensed, and the absorbed heat warms the circulating water (C). The warm water returns to the top of the cooling tower and trickles downward over the fill material inside the tower. As it trickles down, it contacts ambient air rising up through the tower either by natural draft or by forced draft using large fans in the tower. That contact causes a small amount of the water to be lost as windage/drift (W) and some of the water (E) to evaporate. The heat required to evaporate the water is derived from the water itself, which cools the water back to the original basin water temperature and the water is then ready to recirculate. The evaporated water leaves its dissolved salts behind in the bulk of the water which has not been evaporated, thus raising the salt concentration in the circulating cooling water. To prevent the salt concentration of the water from becoming too high, a portion of the water is drawn off/blown down (D) for disposal. Fresh water make-up (M) is supplied to the tower basin to compensate for the loss of evaporated water, the windage loss water and the draw-off water.

[Absolute Gravity]

I work very close to this facility, and it is one of the main things I see when I poke my head up over the top of my computer and look out the window.

This place puts out a lot of steam from the cooling towers, all day and all night. I took a picture from my window to try and show how much, but the combination of hazy air and the snow covered Oquirrh Mountains make it difficult to see.

I've also read that 1/3 of the used water is put into a holding tank to be used as secondary water for Bluffdale City.