Floating Infrastructure for Data Centers, Power Production and Potable Water


Data centers need a lot of power. Nuclear energy has been reinvigorated to support the growing demand for power. Both data centers and power plants need a lot of water for cooling and other purposes. Let's build them side by side and float them in the ocean past the horizon of major coastal cities. Make it a trifecta by having a desalination plant option; these are also power hungry.

I proposed some of these in 2010, as part of my platform for Mayor of Honolulu, to enhance the infrastructure resilience for one million people in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Five years later, a group from MIT and other researchers launched an initiative to add substance to this concept ... Floating on the deep sea.

Nowadays the concept is gaining production scale: "Samsung Heavy Industries is pioneering floating nuclear power plants (FNPP) by developing barges equipped with compact molten salt reactors (CMSR) or Small Modular Reactors (SMR)."

The floating infrastructure proposals have several advantages such as:

  • Potentially economical if built upon large decommissioned Navy vessels
  • Much less NIMBY opposition and compact environmental review requirements
  • Less risk from terrestrial challenges such as earthquakes, floods, fires, tornadoes
  • Less risk for terrorist attacks
  • Movable, so they are more resilient to military attacks

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