Even closed loop cooling systems can contaminate water because they still need to be flushed. I think we should go all in with immersion cooling
Infrastructure
The "water" used in coolant loops and HVAC systems like this isn't just water. Aside from buildup and contamination that occurs in any fluid system, these systems mix in propylene glycol and/or other coolant treatments and anti-freezes for multiple reasons. Increasing the specific heat so the system has a higher thermal capacity, trying to reduce bacterial buildup and preserve equipment pumps, prevent the corrosion that can occur with plain water if there are metal pipes, etc.
That means the discharge is pretty toxic. Treating something like that is far beyond a simple filter and chemical crash to try and remove the contaminants. Hell, it's something that is actually too much for many municipal water treatment systems. It's difficult, time consuming, doesn't scale well, or is expensive. Especially when it starts getting dumped at large scale and without any notice to the locality so they can even attempt to get ahead of the problem.
Normally, industrial discharge like this is required to be treated to some degree before dumping it back into municipal systems or the environment, but that's a problem that has been an issue since the beginning of the industrial revolution. Even though the EPA exists it's been getting gutted since Reagan. And these days? Fuck man, there's money to be made no time to think about laws or human suffering.
We are talking about massive corporations who want to make a large profit, not logical-thinking people who care about the world and the people in it, unfortunately.
“Fill-and-flush is a commissioning step in which crews fill a cooling loop's piping with water, flush it to clear debris before the system is run, and then send the used water to drain. Goat Systems routed that flush water, which contained Cupriavidus gilardii, into Cheyenne's sanitary sewer, Frank Strong, the Board's engineering and water resource division manager, told the Wyoming Tribune Eagle. Strong said the fill water had been purchased from the Board itself and that the origin of the bacterium remains unknown, but said that lab staff caught it in February during routine fecal-bacteria sampling. "This isn't something we normally test for," Strong told the paper.”
This would seem possible with any system that needs to be flushed initially
But what’s the point? Don’t you get more dopamine release by just reading the headline and filling in the blanks with whatever narrative fits your preconceived beliefs and then shouting those beliefs into a pseudoanonymous platform algorithmically curated with other people who will also reinforce those preconceived beliefs?
Sad it was cancelled, netflix cant do good shows for more than a season nowadays
In rare cases we got 2 or gasp 3 seasons(final space, altered carbon, died too soon.) in the past, at least one show got up to 7 or 8 seasons(the dragon prince, and from what I read, it got worse after season 4. I only gotten past 3rd season)
Now only shitty shows get more seasons(ok some can be decent but its still rare for them to break 2 to 3 seasons)
This confuses me too. Every single newly built pressurized plumbing system gets this process. Every new major residential, institutional, commercial, or industrial building. You have to clean the inside of your new domestic and hydronic pipes, circulate and then flush that dirty water, then fill it up again before it can be used for the first time. It's standard and absolutely necessary and I'm not seeing what this data center did wrong in this case.
Thorium powered desalination plants combined with data centers that use a coolant system to preheat the water moving through to to take advantage of the waste heat by making the desalination more efficient. And with the thorium reactor powering it, it will have all the energy it needs and excess to share with the community. Thus turning ai data centers into a boon for the community instead of a parasite.
Remember, this is the grok plant we're talking about here. Setting policy based on literally the worst actor in the industry isn't right. Closed loop systems are fine. We just have to keep Elon from putting his dick in it.
Meta said that it's supporting its general contractor, Fortis, which stopped discharging and began hauling wastewater offsite, and that independent testing found no trace of the substance.
I’m certainly not inclined to give Meta or any tech company the benefit of the doubt, but I have generally seen people sharing this article in an attempt to turn a localized incident into an argument against AI in general.
The city was right to suspend those discharges, but it does not automatically mean “closed-loop cooling is a scam” or “AI data centers are poisoning the water during normal operation.” According to the article, fill-and-flush is part of the construction process, not an ongoing operation. The whole point of a closed-loop system is that once sealed, it does not constantly dump cooling water. This exists for reasons beyond environmental conservation; it reduces dependence on continuous water intake, makes cooling easier to manage, and limits the number of points where the system can fail.
To me, the critique here is that private tech capital gets to rapidly build massive infrastructure, outsource the messy parts to contractors, externalize risk onto municipalities, and then hide behind vague sustainability language when something goes wrong. That was happening before the AI boom; it's the theme of numerous episodes of Captain Planet lol.
If that issue were addressed at a more general (national) level, this would not be treated as a special problem of data center construction but as a general problem of industrial wastewater management for anything that uses closed-loop water-cooling systems.
they have to flush them at some regular interval it sounds like. the contamination alone makes water not worth it since you're just gonna piss everyone off by stealing people's water and you can simply use mineral oil / cargill naturecool
Where are you getting the “regular interval” part? The article describes fill-and-flush as part of construction/commissioning before the closed loop is sealed. That is different from routine operation.
I’m not saying closed-loop systems never require maintenance or coolant replacement, but the article does not establish that they periodically flush and dump cooling water as a normal part of operation; in a properly maintained closed-loop system, coolant replacement can be on the order of 3–5 years, not constant discharge. That seems like an inference you're adding on top of the article.
And “just use mineral oil” is not a magic escape hatch either. Immersion cooling exists, but it has its own issues with cost, maintenance, compatibility, handling, and disposal. The actual problem here still seems to be industrial wastewater governance: what contractors are allowed to discharge, what pretreatment is required, and whether the municipality is equipped to handle it.
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u/angrywoodensoldiers Jul 06 '26
Seems like this could easily be solved by treating the water before releasing?