* Posts by blackcat

1139 publicly visible posts • joined 26 Mar 2010

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UK bets big (and small) on nuclear as datacenter demand expected to climb

blackcat Silver badge

Re: Rolls Royce

The energy density of nuclear fuel is utterly mind boggling. Similarly mind boggling is the quantity of coal, oil and gas we drag out of the ground every day and then oxidise.

South Korea is a good partner as they have the heavy industry to make the key components for the reactor. And blimey they have a LOT of reactors!

blackcat Silver badge

Re: Rolls Royce

At almost half a GW it isn't exactly small :)

The rooskies are using <45% enriched fuel in their subs but then the reactors are quite big, getting on for 200MW, and they don't worry too much about who they irradiate when refuelling.

blackcat Silver badge

Re: Sizewell C should be cheaper given the lessons learned etc.

The UK seems to have a knack for making things that should be identical, or at least very similar, as different as possible.

blackcat Silver badge

Re: Rolls Royce

I'd not appreciated just how enriched the UK sub fuel actually is. Very similar to the SL-1 reactor fuel. 90+% enriched.

It makes sense as you have a very small core. And to get good life you need a high reactivity, which was ultimately the downfall of the SL-1 reactor as it went prompt critical due to the main control rod being manually withdrawn too far.

£127M wasted on failed UK nuclear cleanup plan

blackcat Silver badge

That is how Californians stir their coffee!

blackcat Silver badge

Re: From experience ...

I always wondered where Douglas Adams got his inspiration for the Vogons from.

blackcat Silver badge

Re: The TOC of nuclear energy

I just cannot comprehend how these projects cost so much and take so long. The WHOLE point of the EPR is economy of scale and there is nothing of the such.

I do wonder who is getting their pockets lined with these huge projects. HS2, lower Thames crossing etc.

blackcat Silver badge

Times Beach Missouri

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Times_Beach%2C_Missouri

The guy got waste 'oil' from the local chemical plant for disposal.

blackcat Silver badge

Re: From experience ...

Isn't that true of most government departments? 5 supervisors to watch 1 person dig a hole.

blackcat Silver badge

The contamination from non radioactive materials is just horrific. And not just the US govt. What was the name of the town where they inadvertently sprayed dioxins on the dirt roads? Then there is the Love Canal, all the rivers polluted with PFOAs from Dupont, the towns covered in lead from mining... its a long list.

My father in law was in the USMC and some of the stories he tells are just incredible!

blackcat Silver badge

Re: SafeStor

I believe the fuel is still on site (or rather next to the old site) at Zion.

This was a PWR. If the reactor has run its life without ever splitting a fuel element then there should be no contamination. All you're dealing with is neutron bombarded water, steel and concrete. The water can be diluted but then the half life of irradiated water from a PWR/BWR is pretty short anyway. Steel is also not too bad when it comes to irradiation.

The British gas cooled reactors contain many thousands of tons of graphite. The irradiated graphite is a much bigger problem, which is why the safestore periods are a lot longer.

Now if there has been a fuel melt in the core.... well now you have all sorts other things to clean up. I know Chappelcross suffered a fuel melt. And there is of course the pile at Sellafield that caught fire and has a whole load of melted fuel. It really is far better to just leave them well alone.

Here is an interesting doc about how they removed the graphite from Tokai:

https://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publications/PDF/ngwm-cd/PDF-Files/paper%208%20(Fuji).pdf

A nice example of Japanese efficiency! There had been a promise made to return the site to green field within a certain number of years after the reactor shutdown. I could not see that level of efficiency and neatness being done in the UK. :(

blackcat Silver badge

They at least dug dirty great holes and stuffed it in the holes. When you think about what they did during some of the tests, such as deliberate meltdowns and reactor explosions, they actually did try to clean up after themselves.

blackcat Silver badge

Do not forget that there are vast quantities of asbestos in these early reactors.

blackcat Silver badge

This is not the legacy of nuclear energy. This is the legacy of the UK's atomic and hydrogen bomb programme. It is a very different beast. A HUGE amount of mess left at Sellafield is the result of making plutonium and other bomb material. There was zero consideration for what they were going to do with the waste long term. A lot of the waste from the two air cooled piles was dumped into silos that had no way of being emptied.

It is a complete and utter shit-show for sure. Even the US managed to things more cleanly... just.

Meta just saved an Illinois nuclear plant that was set to be mothballed

blackcat Silver badge

Re: @GoneFission

In the UK there is no public generation. Even 'Great British Energy', or whatever the govt calls it, is just an investment fund to give money to private companies.

blackcat Silver badge

"US public energy producers"

Are there any publicly owned energy producers left in the US? I know most are funded by the public purse but all the power stations and infrastructure is owned by private companies.

VodafoneThree's a crowd – now comes the hard bit

blackcat Silver badge

I've just moved from Three to Voda. Been with Three for ages and had the free Europe and North America roaming grandfathered in. I don't know what Three did but the data throughput around where I live dropped to near zero about 3 months ago and after many claims that it was 'fixed' got no better. So that finally motivated the move. Plus my OH gets a staff discount on Voda sims :)

German court parks four Volkswagen execs in jail over Dieselgate scandal

blackcat Silver badge

Not defending Thames water, as the management has been utterly appalling, but it does seem that some of the waste water issues in the UK are self induced.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn055462jy1o

UK 'extremely dependent' on US for space security

blackcat Silver badge

"also decided against pursuing a complete nuclear weapons capability, unlike the French and other Western European states."

So there is an issue with his claim because we continued with our nuclear weapons programme after the US started sharing their designs with us. Our first 'American' H-bombs were made in the UK with locally produced fissile material. We were not buying fully built bombs from the USA. The UK Trident missiles have UK designed(?) and built warheads.

One of the BIG reasons for moving over to using US equipment in the 60s was the cost. The AIM9 missile was 1/4 the cost of the UK designed and build red top missile. Technically red top was superior at the time.

To progress as an engineer career-wise, become a great communicator

blackcat Silver badge

Re: Not the case elsewhere? US?

You certainly don't need English lit. I never even took the exam! I did pass English language which was a requirement for my post GCSE education.

As you say, it is not a high bar to reach but I have worked with people who have somehow managed to miss even that. I am probably slightly biased as I am quite severely dyslexic and went to school in an era before widespread home computer ownership and long before spell checkers and autocorrect.

blackcat Silver badge

Re: Not the case elsewhere? US?

Yes and no. If you work in a huge company and are happy to be a cog in the machine then it is acceptable to behave in that way. One of the quickest ways to get yourself a black mark is to utter the phrase 'that is not my job'. I witnessed a (now ex) colleague utter these words in a meeting with management and it went down VERY badly.

There are times when you are going to have to face management or a customer as you rise through the ranks.

blackcat Silver badge

Re: Not the case elsewhere? US?

"and often outperform their formally educated peers"

Up to a point. If you just want to be a code monkey grinding away in the dark, then this is fine.

But at some point you are going to have to interact with higher-ups and even customers directly. Being able to communicate with people who are not as tech savvy in a way that they can understand and being able to interact with customers in a way that makes them feel special and doesn't open up your company to liability are skills you will need.

"practical problem-solvers"

These people are often the most broadly educated. If you are hyper focused it can be all to easy to miss something.

Torvalds' typing taste test touches tactile tragedy

blackcat Silver badge

Re: "For most, not so bad"... bloody excellent actually.

True. Worse you are using a US keyboard (if you're a Brit) or an AZERTY.

blackcat Silver badge

Re: "For most, not so bad"... bloody excellent actually.

Oh good, someone who shares my utter dislike of light up keyboards!

Currently using an early 2000's actual Cherry brand beige PS/2 keyboard with blue switches.

Liz Warren, Trump admin agree on something: Army should have right to repair

blackcat Silver badge

You do have to ask the question that if this part is critical to operation AND relatively easy to break why are there no spares on a shelf somewhere?

Working in a high reliability commercial industry, there is an expectation from the end customer that spares for wear items and items that might break are all kept in stock. I suppose in the world of governmental agencies months of downtime for a basic part are not an issue as you get paid no matter what.

Nationwide power outages knock Spain, Portugal offline

blackcat Silver badge

Re: To channel a certain class of reader ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivanpah_Solar_Power_Facility

The plants use BrightSource Energy's "Luz Power Tower 550" (LPT 550) technology[25] which heats the steam to 550 °C directly in the receivers.[26] The plants have no storage.[27]

The upside is that the system is simple, water in, steam out. The downside is that if the sun intensity changes the steam out changes quite rapidly. Zero thermal inertia.

https://iowaclimate.org/2025/02/01/ivanpah-solar-plant-the-flaming-failure-thats-finally-being-put-out-of-our-misery/

Its never really made it past 50% capacity. It was a nice idea but turned into a proper boondoggle! If you've watched 'Planet of the humans' it was claimed that the mirrors were not being maintained and this claim was disputed. Go on google maps and you can see many smashed mirrors just left on the ground. It is a tiny fraction of the total but you get the feeling that the owners sorta gave up on the plant pretty soon after opening. They could see the writing on the wall.

Spain has a number of CSP plants that seem to work ok but most have an intermediate working fluid. I believe Crescent dunes was based on a Spanish design.

blackcat Silver badge

Re: I have it on good authority

"Also, the notion of trees contacting 400kv lines is frankly laughable"

It is not unknown. It does not take much elongation of the conductor wires to cause a very large sag. It also requires good upkeep of the vegetation around lines.

The 2003 US 'Northeast blackout' was in part caused by line overload and sag resulting in contact with trees.

blackcat Silver badge

Re: To channel a certain class of reader ...

The molten salt one is crescent dunes in the Nevada desert. Ivanpah is the one in CA just north of the I15 just before Primm and is a pure solar to steam with no intermediate stage.

Crescent dunes was a good idea but oh so complex.

Both insta-fry birds.

blackcat Silver badge

Re: To channel a certain class of reader ...

The theory of grid systems is that the loss of one major interconnect should be mitigated by other connections but as you say they are all running near, or at, capacity so there is no head room.

Large scale PV will always be subject to large variations. A single cloud going over can drop the output by 90+%.

One of the issues with the Ivanpah solar thermal plant was the tendency of the area to get scattered cloud cover and they had to keep the steam temperature up using natural gas.

blackcat Silver badge

ERCOT has interconnects. It is worth remembering that the US has never had a single frequency sync'd grid nor has it desired one. HVDC is adding more interconnections between the various US power systems, slowly.

blackcat Silver badge

Re: Simulated Inertia

Yes and no. Part of the grid frequency regulation is a electro-mechanical property of the many multi-hundreds of ton spinning turbines and alternators out there. These huge generators are actually magnetically phase locked together simply by being linked to the grid. If you reduce the steam flow to a turbine it initially won't slow down, it will maintain speed as the grid will keep it turning in sync, to a point.

This is a property that electronic systems do not inherently have and the vast majority of inverters currently installed are just grid following.

Look up synchro systems, its really very cool how you can lock magnetic devices together with electricity!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchro

blackcat Silver badge

Re: I have it on good authority

This is a major problem. The whole point of the interconnects is to allow sharing between areas when there is an abundance of elec in place A and a shortage in place B. But what has happened is that market forces have taken over. If you can sell your elec for 10p/kWh in place A or 20p/kWh in place B you will do your level best to sell it for the most money.

Now if you can only generate elec for 30p/kWh in place B you will like buying it from elsewhere at 20p as its cheaper. The interconnects have resulted in a reliance on energy coming from elsewhere.

Germany saw the light a bit after the project to put vast solar farms in North Africa fell through. Someone finally had the brainwave that putting the majority of your power generation a thousand miles away on the far side of the Med reliant on long cables through international waters isn't as secure as advertised.

Hydrotreated vegetable oil is not an emission-free swap for diesel in datacenters

blackcat Silver badge

Re: No shit

HVO is a bit of a con. There is a major issue in Indonesia where farmers used to supplement the feed for livestock with waste/used palm oil but now the market for the used oil is HUGE as its used for HVO so the farmers now use virgin palm oil. It is also suspected that virgin palm oil is added to the 'waste' oil to make more money.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cm24n8nej94o

BOFH: There's a fatal error in the blinkenlights

blackcat Silver badge

Re: It's Been Done

Jean-Pierre Van Rossem ran a company called Moneytron (old F1 fans will know this name well!) and claimed to have a computer that could predict the stock market. It was obviously all bollox.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Pierre_Van_Rossem

OK great, UK is building loads of AI datacenters. How are we going to power that?

blackcat Silver badge

If only they can be cooled with untreated sewage! We have lots of that!

blackcat Silver badge

Re: Hmm

This is also how we end up with Drax burning north american wood pellets.

blackcat Silver badge

Re: Hmm

"The UK can produce our own coke, but the government won't let it"

Here we get into the problem of exporting our carbon. UK made steel would probably be less carbon intensive than say Polish or Chinese steel. BUT as part of the carbon reduction we can't allow that to be released within our territorial air volume.

blackcat Silver badge

Re: Hmm

Sadly I think we will end up with more CCGT and an overstretched grid.

AI datacenters want to go nuclear. Too bad they needed it yesterday

blackcat Silver badge

Re: Thorium?

"in a few thousand years' time"

This is the beauty of radioactive waste, it cleans itself given enough time. There won't be anything dangerous left.

blackcat Silver badge

Re: Water

Another issue with the very dry areas is that the cooling effectiveness of the air passing through the racks is reduced. Many data centres actively humidify the air within the building as it has a higher heat capacity.

The sheer amount of $$ being thrown around is enough to make some people turn a blind eye to these problems. There are areas of the US where datacentres are using ground water and the locals in the area have found their wells are running dry and can't afford the 10's of k to have a deeper one drilled.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGjj7wDYaiI

Isar’s first orbital rocket crashes into sea – CEO calls it a 'great success'

blackcat Silver badge

Re: Have you watched "The Right Stuff" recently?

I think they were just having fun watching things go bang! It has been claimed that they were making the atlas rockets so fast that when one went kaboom there would be a backlog of already built rockets likely with the very same issue waiting to launch and they just kept sending them up.

'Yes, it failed in the same way as the last 2, well now we have definitive proof of the fault'.

Those were very different times. And I'm very glad that we didn't have to rely on the Thor missiles for defence.

Cashless society could be why fewer kids are eating coins and sticking things up their noses

blackcat Silver badge

Re: Cadbury's Chocolate Buttons

Maybe I'm just a bit too old with a bad memory but did anyone actually think the toys in the kinder eggs were actually any good? I got a little plastic plane in one that looked like a vickers viscount.

Rather spend the money on a choc bar and a copy of The Beano.

blackcat Silver badge

Re: Furry Friends

@tiggity

Used. He's the sort of cat that will jump on you and start giving you a bath.

blackcat Silver badge

Re: Furry Friends

I have a cat with a thing for foam earplugs. He's a lovely cat but as dumb as a box of rocks.

Amazon, Meta, Google sign pledge to triple nuclear power capacity by 2050

blackcat Silver badge

Building a bitbarn requires permits. Building ANYTHING requires permits. Given half a chance some US cities would make you get a permit to cut your own grass and fine you if you left it to grow.

blackcat Silver badge

"Since when is this sort of decision up to corporations?"

The electricity supply in the US and the UK as well as many other countries is largely private owned by corporations. (well, shareholders of said corporations)

Scotland now home to Europe's biggest battery as windy storage site fires up

blackcat Silver badge

Re: This is great news but...

The kW figures for heat pumps is generally the output, not the input.

blackcat Silver badge

Re: This is great news but...

My point is that generation needs to be scaled to instantaneous demand, not an average.

For the last 24 hours my average is 542W and a peak of 4002W. 8:1 peak to mean. And my usage is quite predictable. A peak in the morning for the kettle, if someone is home during the day a peak at lunch for lunch and a rising usage in the evening with a potential longer period of high demand for cooking supper. Now its unlikely that us and next door have the kettle on at exactly the same time every morning but there will be overlap for supper and both houses will turn on lights as it gets dark.

One of the reasons they built pump storage such as Dinorwig is to serve as a peak generator and one of the example cases was people putting the kettle on after the football or after watching Corrie.

They even have some graphs showing the demand spikes during the footie.

https://web.archive.org/web/20091229024828/http://www.nationalgrid.com/NR/rdonlyres/1C4B1304-ED58-4631-8A84-3859FB8B4B38/17136/demand.pdf

You see jumps in the order of a couple of GW, not MW.

blackcat Silver badge

Re: This is great news but...

kWh and kW are vastly different things.

The wires, transformers, fuses, connectors and generators care about kW. A power station or wind turbine is not rated in kWh.

blackcat Silver badge

Re: This is great news but...

The delivery of a constant 400W is very different to 800W on a 50% duty cycle or 4kw on a 10% duty cycle.

Now if you could align everyone such that the 10% on time from each of 10 properties never overlap then you are good. But that is not realistic.

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