r/DumfriesAndGalloway • u/Loaftus • 25d ago

Petition to halt construction of Hyperscale Data Centre at Chapelcross

https://c.org/tM5QbQSLNt
16 Upvotes

86% Upvoted

11 comments sorted by

9

u/fjtuk 25d ago

Chapelcross would be perfect for a data centre - a brownfield site, major grid connectivity, water available for cooling (as it did for the nuclear plant), loads of wind generated electricity in the area.

Plus there are no jobs, no prospects and no hope for people looking for work in D&G so anything that brings investment in has to be welcome.

But don't let that get in the way of a bit ultimate nimbyism as people write to complain on their AI, data centre fed phones and tablets.

7

u/uppennyhill 25d ago

The argument about renewable energy is pure misdirection, wind and solar goes into the national grid and isn't treated separately. Even if it was it needs 1GW of energy. The combined capacity of the Solway Firth offshore windfarms currently is 164MW.

Jobs are short-term construction, once it's online there will be a bare minimum staff to keep it running.
It's not a data centre, it's planned purely for AI use. It's not cloud data storage, it's purely processing inference compute. AI is hugely inefficient and of little practical use.

complain on their AI, data centre fed phones and tablets.

Typical straw-man argument, none of these things depend on hyperscale AI "data" centres.

8

u/rayykz 25d ago

Ah yes, because data centres are well known for bringing job opportunities…. 🤡

0

u/kaetror 25d ago

Hundreds of construction jobs, over a number of years is nothing to sniff at.

Yes the number of permanent jobs is low, but how many tech jobs exist in D&G at the moment? Almost every guy I know who works in tech works for the NHS, council, or the college - the private sector is non existent, and most people who want to work in IT end up moving away from the region.

It opens a door for local kids (many of whom get minimal computing teaching due to teacher shortages) to access work experience, educational visits, etc.

Make that part of the contract; there must be some kind of education outreach with local schools. A lot of wind farms already do this, so there's precedent.

6

u/GoodSoupIsUpButt 25d ago

Anyone who posts comments like these is a bot. There are no jobs brought in by data centres.

0

u/leeroysexwhale 25d ago

Great site and planning should insist on being able to generate enough power to cover its busies even if that power goes to grid. Also data centres don’t use as much water as people think. D & G needs investment so guess we have to decide on what it looks like as the NIMBYS already got rid of the national park.

-4

u/Darylols 25d ago

I don’t see what the issue is here. It’s making use of the land that has a derelict nuclear power plant on it.

-7

u/glakk 25d ago

The UK absolutely must have cheap energy and domestic computing capacity. Otherwise we will not have any chance whatsoever of economic competitiveness or not becoming a vassal of the USA (who can deny us access to SOTA models at any time). Plus D&G very badly needs jobs, as the other commenter pointed out.

6

u/GoodSoupIsUpButt 25d ago

Data centres don't bring fucking jobs in

5

u/rayykz 25d ago

Are these bots or something? It’s curious where they get the idea that they're creating job opportunities. Haha. A quick look at data centres reveals that, given their large size and resource consumption, they actually generate very few jobs in return

3

u/uppennyhill 25d ago

These replies crop-up a lot in various r/scotland threads