Russians Build Nuclear-Powered Data Center

judgecorp writes: The government-owned Russian energy company Rosenergoatom is building Russia's largest data center at its giant Kalinin nuclear power station. Most of the space will be available to customers, and the facility expects to be in demand, thanks to two factors: reliable power, and the data residency rules which require Russian citizens' data to be located within Russia. Facebook and Google don't have data centers within Russia yet — and Rosenergoatom has already invited them into the Kalinin facility.

Really?

[nospam007]

They are catching up with France, where _every_ data-center is nuclear powered.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you sure?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow_theater_hostage_crisis (170)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beslan_school_siege (385)

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Depends on your definition of "ahead".

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[U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M]

Hopefully this data center helps with destroying more islamists.

Damn right! And about time, too!

After Islam, we should go after the Jews, Christians, Buddhists, etc.

And once there's only the atheists left, we'll eliminate the idiots who believe in the FSM! LONG LIVE THE IPU!

islam

[unixisc]

Here is the difference. Islam is a centuries old geopolitical ideological cult successfully masquerading as a religion due to both its 7th century underpinnings, as well as having a following of above a billion. Islamism is a fictional concept invented in the West to pretend that Islam is none of the above things.

Re:

[unixisc]

What is FSM and IPU? So that I can get the relevance to the comment?

Re:

[U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

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[JaredOfEuropa]

I thought we would have learned by now that carpet bombing terrorists is not going to take care of them. It may be necessary (and in case of IS it'll certainly help weaken), but it's not a solution. And nationalism, or being proud of your country, is fine, however Putin is a great example of the kind of leader that sentiment tends to attract. With every thing that Putin does, from bombing ISIS to messing in the Crimea to signing a bill to protect the spotted puking buzzard, you have to look first at how

Re:

[unixisc]

While I'm no fan of Putin, Russia did do an experiment in trying to do things the rational democratic way b/w 1992 and 2000, and that went nowhere. The failure of their democrats - Geidar et al - to resurrect their economy forced Yeltsin to make Putin his Prime Minister, and ultimately his successor. And Putin did some of the things the old Soviet way. It is a pity that Russia's economy remains fuelled almost exclusively by oil, much like the OPEC nations.

Well, not the old way

[Anonymous Coward]

but... were I in charge, there is a way to seriously stop these people with bombing: fuel/air bombs. Drop these for 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and at the same time drop napalm on the perimeter of the area being fuel/air bombed. With these tools, the blast doesn't have to kill you, neither does the heat, although they help, but lack of oxygen will kill anyone, even buried in a bunker. Do this on all daesh strongholds for a week straight and we don't have to send in troops.

The question remains... does the

Re:

[CanadianMacFan]

First of all you are talking about doing this to a large part of two countries. Ignoring the morality it's not exactly feasible.

Now to bring the morality back you are a fucking psychopath. There are hundreds of thousands if not millions of innocent people in the towns and cities that have been captured by ISIS and you would be murdering them. You would go down in history as one of the great mass murderers only to be outdone by the likes of Stalin and Mao (I won't go with the other obvious one). You would

What actually happens

[prefec2]

The Russians build a data center. The center will consume 80 MW and have 10000 racks and from the price tag it might be as big as one Google data center. So what is the big thing about it?

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[Blaskowicz]

It's built by the nuclear power company, and the article says the data center may act as a power sink when there's excess electricity on the grid. So that's a bit interesting.

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[hackertourist]

Where are they going to sink that excess electricity? Spinning up servers just to let them sit idle is pointless, you might as well dump the power into a resistor bank. Low-priority grid computing, maybe?

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[OverlordQ]

Talking about bitcoins baby.

Putin cares!

[NostalgiaForInfinity]

In September, Federal Law No. 242-FZ came into force in Russia. In a nutshell, the law requires all foreign businesses that handle the personal data of Russian citizens to keep this data on servers located within the country.

This is so that Putin can protect Russian citizens from invasions of privacy by evil American corporations like Facebook! Putin cares about his subjects!

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[U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M]

Sarcastic comment or not, I'd like to see every country do the same. As a Canadian, I think too much of my personal information is on American servers.

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[NostalgiaForInfinity]

Sarcastic comment or not, I'd like to see every country do the same. As a Canadian, I think too much of my personal information is on American servers.

What's keeping you? You can do business with only Canadian companies if you want to.

You are asking for something entirely different, namely that all Canadians are forced to keep their data within easy reach of Canadian police and spy agencies. That means that you yourself can't keep your data abroad anymore, anywhere, even if you choose to. You either have to

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[U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M]

You're absolutely right. This means we're fucked either way.

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[rtb61]

So explain to everyone why exactly you want to keep your medical records abroad?
Why do you want your dental records abroad?
Why do you want you local investment details abroad?
Why do you want you correspondence with local relatives, neighbours and friends abroad?
Why do you want correspondence with your local employer abroad?
Why do you want you dealing with local government abroad?
Why do you want your dealings with State government abroad?
Why do you want your dealings with federal government abroad?

Re:

[NostalgiaForInfinity]

So explain to everyone why exactly you want to keep your [...] abroad?

Under current law, I have a choice. Under European or Russian law, I don't.

I like to have the choice.

I side with those who support the idea, that any data about me created in my country, stays in my country and that it be regularly audited by the government for invasions of privacy and excessive data retention

Well, what can I say, you are an idiot.

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[Cederic]

Under current law, I have a choice. Under European or Russian law, I don't.

I like to have the choice.

Under UK (and so probably European) law you do have the choice.

The companies sucking in all your data and abusing it do not. This is a good thing.

But feel free to put your own data anywhere you like. Nobody's stopping you posting your private information onto a server in every continent.

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[NostalgiaForInfinity]

But feel free to put your own data anywhere you like. Nobody's stopping you posting your private information onto a server in every continent.

Really? How is that supposed to work? If you rent a server from a foreign company and put your personal information on there, then that foreign company holds your personal information and is therefore subject to these laws.

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[Cederic]

If it's a foreign company then how it it beholden to laws in a jurisdiction in which it doesn't operate? And why should it care?

If they provide the tin but you install the software and add the data, how is it their responsibility irrespective of jurisdiction?

Why do you think you have to rent a server anyway?

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[NostalgiaForInfinity]

If it's a foreign company then how it it beholden to laws in a jurisdiction in which it doesn't operate? And why should it care?

Because they may have both their Internet connections and their payments blocked from your country if they don't comply. Without such enforcement, mandates to retain personal data within a country would be meaningless. You don't see much of that happening with international Internet services, but there is ample precedent for such obstacles already when importing and exporting physi

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[Cederic]

Your paranoia is extreme, and I already have private data hosted on servers in foreign countries.

I haven't broken the law to do this.

If HMRC want to investigate my tax affairs, they can ask me for all relevant information. Where I personally store that information is not relevant, whether I provide it to them is.

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[NostalgiaForInfinity]

You're bumbling from one straw man to another. Great going.

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[cfalcon]

> So explain to everyone why exactly you want to keep your medical records abroad?

Because it's his data, and he can store it where he likes... unless a defacto dictator or totalitarian regime, Putin-style, overrides that.

> Don't trust my government, well, I trust corporations a whole lot less

I mean, that's a reasonable position. But under Russian style laws, you don't have the choice- you BETTER "trust" the government, because *you don't have a choice*.

Also, you mention things like the government au

Where are all the data centers?

[unixisc]

Google, Facebook, Twitter, et al - are all their servers in the US? Or is it more distributed worldwide - maybe not in every country, but certainly in major ones that can act as hubs for entire regions. Like in South Africa or Brazil or South Korea or Philippines or Norway or Canada? Cold climes sound better, so that cooling them wouldn't be a major energy budget.

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[TeknoHog]

In Soviet China, Hu cares!

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[kwoff]

I think the official spin is more like: to protect Russian citizens from sanctions imposed on them, that is make important services independent of the outside. For example, countries can suddenly, in response to let's say invading Ukraine, demand that certain banks (or credit cards) refuse to process Russian data, which could majorly impact Russians.

In Soviet Russia...

[Rinikusu]

Feds.. invite you to use their shiny new data center?

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

"There was a melt-down in the DC" has a whole new meaning.

Kalinin?

[unixisc]

I RTFA and checked Udomlya on the map. It translated to Tver, which used to be called Kalinin during the Soviet era. So what's w/ the naming of these facilities after Soviet era generals? Can't they just call it Rosenergoatom Data Center? Or even Putin Data Center, after the great man himself?

Will it have an FSB-room?

[mi]

It will not have an FSB-room [wikipedia.org] — because all premises will be used by the Service...

It's a trap

[spaceman375]

Of course they want google and facebook there. It will give the Russians easier access to their internal networks. They should call it The Admiral Ackbar Data Center.