this post was submitted on 31 Mar 2026
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You're in luck. Supercritical CO2 turbines are a thing now, and they're way more efficient because they don't involve a phase change.
It’s funny (in a sad and sardonic sense) - I pay attention to the energy industry and the outcry over data centers has got me watching these generators closely. If they deliver on their promises, they could represent a great way to deliver on mirror-based solar reactors in areas with limited water resources. (And to recapture and use waste heat from the servers of data centers.)
Society is on the precipice of investing a lot into increasing energy generation for data centers that have to be near the same sorts of resources that people need - fresh water, environs conductive to generating power, stable (enough) climates. But this technology is arriving/set to reach adoption just in time for this boom-bust cycle. All those data centers in populated areas already have a timer ticking for when the shell corps have their rugs pulled.
Unfortunately, there's no way to get energy out of waste heat that won't be spent pushing that heat a little harder. Already a significant amount of energy is spent cooling data centers, any attempts at energy recapture will just make that cooling harder.
The best we can do is something like district heating, because heat pumps can get over 100% effective efficiency.
Got any sources on that? I would love to learn about some new tech in electricity generation.
One facility opened in China a couple weeks ago. I can't find the article that I read from the other day but this should give you some info
A good video on it dropped recently: https://youtube.com/watch?v=M55XzxjmON0