“Utah Datacenter Could Dump 23 Atomic Bombs Worth of Energy Per Day” [???]
May 20th, 2026Via: The Register:
A proposed mega-scale datacenter in the US state of Utah has caused controversy after a physics professor estimated that the facility and its associated power generation could dump 23 atomic bombs’ worth of energy per day. But the real question is whether it will actually ever get built.
The datacenter is part of the Stratos Project Area in Box Elder County, Utah, overseen by the Military Installation Development Authority (MIDA), a state agency straddling the military, local government, and private developers.
Creation of the Stratos Project Area, covering about 40,000 acres of land, was given the go-ahead in a May 4 announcement from the Box Elder County Commission, after delaying a vote amid residents’ concerns.
At full buildout, the proposed Stratos campus could require up to 9 GW of power, making it one of the largest datacenter developments in the world. Meta’s planned Hyperion cluster is aiming for 5 GW, for example, while the first facilities hitting 1 GW are only expected to come online this year.
For comparison, 9 GW is roughly comparable to New York City’s average electricity demand.
Utah State University physics professor Dr Rob Davies estimated that the proposed Stratos campus and its associated natural gas power plant could dump energy equivalent to 23 atomic bombs per day into the surrounding Hansel Valley. Davies’ preliminary analysis said this could raise daytime temperatures by 2°F to 5°F (1°C to 3°C) and nighttime temperatures by 8°F to 12°F (4°C to 6°C), potentially causing serious ecological impacts in the high-desert valley.
Not surprisingly, many have questioned Davies’ figures, especially as he doesn’t publish his math, with the topic debated on forums such as Reddit.
However, even skeptics such as Andy Masley, a writer and researcher who claims to have taught high school physics, find that the math broadly checks out, so long as the bomb you measure it by is the one dropped on Hiroshima, which at about 15 kilotons, was much smaller than modern weapons.
The key thing to bear in mind, however, is that an atomic bomb releases its energy all at once in the blink of an eye, whereas in the datacenter’s case, the release of the heat will be spread across 24 hours.
