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Google in The Dalles, OR site also uses much less water than the Aluminum smelter that used to be at their current location.
by briffle 3y ago
Google in The Dalles, OR site also uses much less water than the Aluminum smelter that used to be at their current location.
- feoren 3y agoThat's like saying they're lighter than the moon. Your fact is more about how unbelievably resource-intensive aluminum smelters are.
- fallingknife 3y agoThe point is that water supply is a non issue because it needs 20x less than before.
- MattGaiser 3y agoBut it also a reduction from peak water use in that location. That location is used to that level of resource consumption. You could of course argue it is still too high, but it is also within the current status quo.
- brookst 3y agoAnd what does “too high” mean, anyway? Using water in The Dallas is a totally different story than using it in Death Valley. Part of the reason the data center is there is the abundance of water.
- slibhb 3y agoThe fact also makes you notice that no one is writing articles about how much water smelters use...
- kibwen 3y agoBecause we have recycling centers, which reclaim aluminum using 95% less energy than smelting the raw material.
- slibhb 3y agoNo, because journalists love writing articles critical of tech companies, some fair some not.
- specialist 3y agoPublishers publish clickbait. Editors and journalists do as they're told.
- vasco 3y agoJournalists love writing articles people want to read. People like crapping on tech companies because they look at them everyday in their phones so it rings a bell. The average person rarely thinks of smelters or is confronted with one.
- pests 3y agoYou can't reclaim aluminum without first smelting it from raw.
- swarnie 3y agoI'm just shocked your even smelting in the US still, surely that's done in the near east where power + labour is far, far cheaper.
- dilyevsky 3y agoCheap power requires good infrastructure which countries with cheap labor generally dont have. There are locales in US with pretty good electricity rates
- hinkley 3y agoDoes anyone know if that steel recycling plant is still operating below the west Seattle bridge?
- mattnewton 3y agoI feel like _some_ domestic aluminum refining capability has to be a national security requirement, though no idea if we do treat it that way.
- swarnie 3y agoYep that's true, fully accept that.
- celestialcheese 3y agoAlcoa had a pretty large aluminum smelter on the west coast in Ferndale WA, but it shut down near the beginning of covid. The bonneville power contracts with Alcoa were pretty generous, somewhere around $0.035/kWh for ~300MW, and even then, they couldn't make it work. A PE firm is trying to buy it up, but the bonneville administration isn't playing ball and giving them the same rates, so it'll likely sit empty.
- lostlogin 3y agoWe do it in New Zealand. The power source is renewable and dirt cheap thanks to the games Rio Tinto play, which have resulted in the population subsidising them. Rio Tinto have a poor record and leave toxic waste in various places. It seems possible that the taxpayer will be tidying up their mess.