this post was submitted on 10 May 2026
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9GW is first. That's metric. The other number is to give an estimate that is more relatable.
Yeah, who doesn't know the heat of an atom bomb? (which famously can vary by 4 orders of magnitude)
Well, everyone knows it's at least a lot. That's the point. Most people don't know what 9GW means, in terms of heat. Even a small nuclear bomb it's enough to vaporized a large area. This tells even the least informed person that it's an amount of energy that should be concerning.
That's why "Hiroshima" is now a unit. We're lucky "Tsar Bomba" isn't.
but first is peak power, not waste energy, we're still missing the SI estimated number of Wh wasted per day
True, yeah. It should be Wh, not just Watts. I think most data centers are designed to run 24/7 though, so the Wh might be close to the same as peak.
If they can tell us how many "atom bombs" per day it takes to power it, at least we could figure it out!