Russians are building a nuclear powered data center
State-owned nuclear power company Rosenergoatom has started the construction of Russia’s largest data center, with a capacity of 10,000 racks that will be powered with nuclear energy.
The facility will operate next to the Kanilin nuclear plant in Udomlya, a town located in the north of the country. It will need 80 MW to work, a minimal fraction of the station’s potential calculated in 4000 MW for four blocks.
10% of the data center capacity is reserved for Rosenergoatom and the rest is going to be available for commercial companies. The state-own enterprise has already offered space on the campus to Facebook and Google, with a view to help these American businesses fulfill with Russia’s data residency law that obliges all foreign corporations to store Russian citizens data in Russian territory.
Russia Started To Build The Largest Nuclear-Powered Data Center https://t.co/2MZ4WpdxFF pic.twitter.com/DzW7zQLYnr
— Money Times (@moneytimescom) diciembre 2, 2015
The project has been estimated to cost 975$ million, without including IT components. The initial plan expects the first phase of the data center to be open in March 27, while the second part is anticipated to start operating in the summer of 2018.
Nuclear energy is an environment-friendly alternative compared with other traditional energy sources and the latitude of the building makes it possible to cool the server with natural air. So, it seems Russia is building a really innovative data center.
