Nuclear Controversy Over Apple's Site Selection Criterion For New Billion Dollar Irish Data Center
Apple has been working on setting up a new billion dollar data center at Derrydonnell, Ireland to serve northwestern Europe. Now there is a controversy over the proximity of the proposed data center to nuclear power reactors. Apple documents state that Apple wanted any Irish data center to be at least two hundred miles away from any nuclear facility. Opponents of the planned location on the west coast of Ireland point out that the site is less than the two hundred miles away from nuclear facilites as called for in the Apple internal documents.
The critics of the planned site say that Apple does not require a two hundred mile exclusion zone for data center in the U.S. They also point out that no other international corporations have adopted such an exclusion zone. They claim that Apple chose the two hundred mile exclusion zone in order to eliminate other suitable sites in Ireland. Both Google and Microsoft have data centers in Dublin, Ireland which is definitely inside the Apply declared two hundred mile exclusion zone.
Oscar Gonzales, in charge of Apple site selection, responded to the critics complaints. He said that older data centers sites in the U.S. were selected before the nuclear disaster at Fukushima in 2011 highlighted the need for better protection of critical infrastructure such as data centers from nuclear accidents. He also said that Apple cannot speak for the site selection criteria that other corporations might use for data centers. However, he also said that there are multiple selection criteria and that if other criteria conflict with the two hundred mile exclusion zone rule, then it might not be applied rigorously.
Gonzales said that the proposed data center site is about one hundred and ninety miles from the Wylfa nuclear facility is Wales which has been shut down. It is about two hundred and fifty miles from the operating uranium reprocessing plant at Sellafield in England. The Business Insider made its own measurement of the distances. The BI says that the Derrydonnell site is about one hundred and seventy five miles from the Wylfa site and about two hundred and thirty miles from the Sellafield plant.
Critics of the Apply site also say that that site has not been designated for use as a data center site as opposed to other sites in Ireland that Apple has rejected. Some critics are also concerned about the possible impact of the proposed data center on bats and badgers in the area. Apple would probably say that some of it opponents are looking for any excuse to prevent the construction of their new data center at Derrydonnell.
An engineer who consults for the Business Insider on energy requirements for major data centers claims that Apple is very selective in how and when it applies it supposed criterion for site selection. He claims that none of Apple's existing sites meet all of their announced criterion. Apple responded that criterion for data center site selection have changed over time and that sometimes compromises must be made with respect to site selection.
