Steam Leak Damages Supercomputing Center

A steam leak during construction of a data center to house Indiana University's supercomputers is forcing the school to replace the facility's generators and battery backup systems, reports The Herald-Times (subscription). The university will pay $4.2 million to replace the equipment, above and beyond the priginal $32 million cost of the facility. IU architect Bob Meadows told the paper the leak occured in January in a temporary heating system at the new IU Data Center in Bloomington. The leak occured over a weekend and wasn't discovered until workers returned the following Monday.

Indiana University began construction on the 82,700 square foot facility in October, 2007. The data center is engineered to withstand winds from an F5 tornado. For more information, see the Indiana web site.