A group of Japanese companies led by major real estate developer Mitsui Fudosan Co. on Tuesday announced that they have launched a project to establish an underground data center in an abandoned tunnel located in Kobe.

Mitsui Fudosan believes the facility, which is scheduled to begin operations in late 2027, will be Japan's first commercial data center to be built in an existing tunnel.

The project will be jointly carried out by Mitsui Fudosan, construction company Kumagai Gumi Co. and data center operator Getworks Co. The tunnel that will serve as a building site is one that was used until September 2005 for purposes such as land reclamation work for Kobe Airport.

Mitsui Fudosan said they aim for the facility's power receiving capacity -- the primary indicator of the scale of a data center's operations -- to reach as high as 20 megawatts in the future.

Establishing data centers in tunnels has some advantages over building them above ground, as tunnels tend to have little temperature variation and are highly earthquake resistant.

The group is considering carrying out similar projects in other areas in Japan, using not only tunnels but other idle properties such as abandoned mines.

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This article is from The Yomiuri Shimbun. Neither Dow Jones Newswires, MarketWatch, Barron's nor The Wall Street Journal were involved in the creation of this content.

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