News from a possible future: ‘Rampant jellyfish cause AI outage by taking datacenter offline' Proponents of increased use of nuclear energy to power datacenters have a new foe: Jellyfish. The Register offers that analysis after Électricité de France (EDF) on Monday advised that four of the production units at its Gravelines nuclear plant shut down due to “massive and unpredictable presence of jellyfish in the filter …
Unless there are strong currents to circulate out that warmed discharge water it won't be global warming alone that's causing the jellyfish bloom.
Luckily there are, and it isn't. Well, it isn't Anthropomorphic Global Warming. Map here-
https://www.marineregions.org/maps.php?album=3747&pic=115812
Showing the North Sea currents and how perfidious Albion might be sabotaging the French by sending warm water from our east coast NPPs towards France. Except there's a lot of North Sea and not a lot of warm water discharged. There are very localised effects though, eg you can catch large crabs & shrimp that take advantage of Sizewell's outflow. I had an interesting chat with a marine biologist when I was diving around Dunwich* who was collecting those to study the effects of the outflow and how far down the coast that extended.
*I still remember being disappointed as a kid that it wasn't Lovecraft's Dunwich. Just beware picking up the Dark Heart if you should find that washed up on the beach.
There's a secondary effect because fish eat baby jellyfish but big jellyfish eat fish. Overfishing has lead to a situation where the old equilibrium flipped and we now have fewer fish and more jellyfish, which becomes self-perpetuating because now the fish that avoid our nets risk becoming a feast for the hungry cnidarians.
These events aren't all that uncommon.
There have been several in the past years, including ones in 20151 and 20212 in Torness, Scotland, as well as a similar one at the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant in California back in 20123 caused by a similar critter called a salp aka "sea grape"4.
Per the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists:
Humans have unwittingly nurtured the adversarial relationship between jellyfish and nuclear power plants. That is, human-induced climate change has raised ocean water temperatures, setting conditions for larger-than-usual jellyfish populations. Further, the relatively warm water near nuclear power plant discharge outlets may attract jellyfish swarms, according to one study. Also, pollution has lowered oxygen levels in sea water, which jellyfish tolerate more than other marine animals, leading to their proliferation.2
1 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: Spineless attacks on nuclear power plants could increase
2 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: Jellyfish attack nuclear power plant. Again.
"It's a communist conspiracy I reckon - make the world dependent on a legacy pre-industrial solution (wind power) then overwhelm with Green voters"
But then we live in an era where a pretty average summer is now considered a 'heat wave' and worthy of live reporting, including this strange claim-
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/clyrrx7pnedt
How strong will UV levels be today?published at 09:59
09:59
With the hot weather comes the sunshine - and with the sunshine comes increased ultraviolet (UV) levels.
But the Bbc also has this comment-
"They were able to evade the first set of filters then get caught in the secondary drum system," he told the BBC.
So probably fixable by changing the filter design. Harder to fix are the reasons why we're having a 'heat wave', namely high pressure system over UK and Europe, which means this-
https://gridwatch.co.uk/Wind
So no or light winds. Plus the nuclear shutdowns have been a fairly regular event due to European reactors cooled by river water and that water getting too warm, or water levels dropping.. Which datacentres might be contributing to by either extracting a lot of water, or discharging warmed water.
Gee, I wonder why those rivers got too warm and why sea temperatures are rising and the "average summer" is actually record breaking highs and yeah, you really are watching too much propaganda,
Not me guv. Perhaps it's you that should stop watching the Bbc and others in the badly named 'Trusted News Initiative'. Then use the time saved to read some actual science, like how exactly CO2 can warm water. Then how 'record breaking highs' are actually caused by jet engines taking off at RAF Coningsby, or research like this-
https://www.mdpi.com/2413-8851/9/4/115
“Airports exhibited a mean daytime land surface temperature (LST) that was 2.5 °C higher than surrounding areas, while industrial zones demonstrated an even greater temperature disparity, with an average increase of 2.81 °C.”
Or the way that the majority of UK Met Office weather stations are improperly sited per WMO rules, and should not be used for climatology. Which I guess is proof that Global Waming is man-made, but only due to extremely bad science.
Yeah, you *really* need to lay off the propaganda, that airstrips tend to be hotter than their surroundings is well known and documented, has been for decades and, shock, the reasons are known too.
Met office weather stations are sited with care to meet guidelines, but big shock, the Met office isn't the sole source of world climate data so, y'know, even if they were incorrectly sited (they're not) the other countries that aren't using the UK's Met office weather stations still report a warming trend and record temperatures.
Now, switch off your computer, put down the phone, put on a pair of shoes and go outside for a walk, have a little think about how ridiculous your rebuttal was.
Yeah, you *really* need to lay off the propaganda, that airstrips tend to be hotter than their surroundings is well known and documented, has been for decades and, shock, the reasons are known too.
So why is the record setting take off of 3 Typhoons at Coningsby still in the temperature record?
Met office weather stations are sited with care to meet guidelines, but big shock, the Met office isn't the sole source of world climate data
It might come as a suprise to you, but the Met Office is pretty much the sole source of UK climate data, and their weather stations are not sited in accordance with WMO guidelines. But a little warming goes a long way, and if that's from sites like this one-
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2025/08/07/met-offices-junk-weather-station-at-cavendish/
Which very briefly set a record. But-
One thing Ray highlighted that the temperature at Cavendish miraculously rose by 0.9C in the space of four minutes on one day in June last year, when (surprise, surprise!) it topped the charts again:
So not only is Cavendish badly sited and unsuitable for climatology, it also demonstrates a problem with PRTs used in weather stations that can record transient temperature effects, like jets taking off that have nothing to do with the weather or climate. But it gives the Met Office and useful idiots like the Bbc to post garbage about record temperatures, 'heat waves' and of course blame that on Global Warming.
...have a little think about how ridiculous your rebuttal was.
A little challenge for you. Find the small number of Class 1 Met Office weather stations, plot the temperatures, find the 'extreme weather'. Then add in the garbage ones and lo and behold, it appears. One of those classic GIGO problems that even IT types should be familiar with..
I think El Reg hit it on the nose: DCs will have the problem. Thorium molten salt reactors, not so much.
The Chinese deliberately planted one in the Gobi desert, a location that is not really known for having a problem with flooding, and it went just fine because no water is involved in heat transfer or even cooling, and as reactions stop by design if the plug is pulled (well, OK, 'melted') there's no need for gazillion gallons of water either.
Now, if DCs had the decency to recycle the water they take in instead of just using it they wouldn't have to plan for a flood of what are in essence gelatinous plugs..
No, the radioactive cycle is quite different and involves fewer hazardous elements. As for the corrosion, that is exactly what the Chinese solved and patented. I think the solution is some rather special coating and ceramic materials because indeed, even Hasteloy can't handle the aggression of fluoride salts without help.
> Release sea turtles
The problem is that they've all choked to death on floating plastic bags.
And their breeding beaches are covered in tourists.
Killed by humans at hatching, killed by humans as adults.
Still, give it a century, then most of the humans will have been been killed by humans.
35 years ago, well before the Øresund bridge was built with it's attendant grisly murders, I took a ferry across from Fyn to Zealand in Denmark. The sea was full of gently pulsating large jellyfish, the dinner plate sized ones with the pink bits inside. So many you could almost walk across on them.
Jellyfish explosions (blooms? infestations?) aren't new.
Update: they were moon jellyfish.
... and rethink some aspect of their designs to reduce the risk that jellyfish, or other local wildlife, could take an AI offline. Or perhaps The Register just reported news of the future. Again.
We await a future explosion of Rampant Rabbits
On which subject, I wonder what the total power consumption/draw is of the world "population" of Rampant Rabbits, going at full throttle
