Earlier quoted context omitted.
> As well as the closely related 'that can't possibly have ever worked' and sure enough it never did. I had one of those, customer is adamant latest version broke some function, I check related code and it hasn't been touched for 7 years, and as written couldn't possibly work. I try and indeed, doesn't work. Yet customer persisted. Long story short, an unrelated bug in a different module caused the old, non-functioni…
By the way, a corollary I encountered, I think with one of the recent AWS meltdowns, is that a paradoxical consequence of designing for "reliability" is that it guarantees that when something does happen, it's going to be bad , because the reliability engineering has done a good job of masking all the smaller faults. Which means 1. anything that gets through, almost by definition, is going to be bad enough to escape…
Entso-E final report on Iberian 2025 blackout
101–110 of 119 posts
Re: Entso-E final report on Iberian 2025 blackout
#102The fact that there is not a single root cause but several ones makes me instinctively think this is a good report, because it's not what the "bosses" (and even less politicians) like to hear.
Yes, a lot of modern engineering is good enough that single-cause failures are very rare indeed. That means that failures themselves are rare, but when they do happen, they're most likely to have multiple causes. How to explain that to non-engineers is another problem.
Re: Entso-E final report on Iberian 2025 blackout
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Did you read the report I put? No, I'm just trusting that you'll be honest about what it is saying. I don't need to read a report to persuade myself that a 40 year old plant was designed based on the best available knowledge of 40 years ago. That seems like something of a given. I'm just not sure where you are going with that, it doesn't obviously suggest negligence to me. You're not saying what tolerances you want…
> I'm just not sure where you are going with that, it doesn't obviously suggest negligence to me. You didn't read the report or search for information about the matter, but I have not problem to repeat it for you, The General Electric's design was originally designed to be placed 30-35 meters above the ocean, instead of this TEPCO modified such design and constructed at sea level (almost) recurring to studies conveni…
I wasn't going to reply but that seems like it moves the conversation forward; so why not?
It seems to me your design goal is fundamentally incompatible with a lot of the specific complaints of negligence. If you want a design that doesn't melt down when there is an earthquake and a tsunami, then moving the reactor to higher ground isn't helpful because it won't achieve the design goal. The design is still fundamentally vulnerable. Moving the reactor up 35m still leaves it vulnerable to a large enough tsunami and a big enough earthquake.
If your solution is moving the site uphill, then your design goal should be talking in terms of a 1 in X year event. If you want the risk completely mitigated then in this case it isn't relevant where the site is since the obvious way to achieve that design goal is just build something that doesn't fail when flooded. Coincidentally that seems to be the approach that the newer generation designs use - change how the cooling works so that it can't melt down in any reasonable circumstances, tsunami or otherwise.
I will note that there is a reading of your comment where you want the design to be able to tolerate this specific event. I'm ignoring that reading as unreasonable since it requires hindsight, but in the unlikely event that is what you meant then just pretend I didn't reply.
> Keep the sarcasm for other places, if you don't mind. It is not a mere gentlest engineering disaster as it reached the whole planet, with ate TEPCO's cesium-137, specially the Japanese. And it is not a mere gentlest engineering disaster when you have to force vulnerable people to go to ground zero to move contaminated land and water.
Which one do you think was gentler and a story of similar popularity as Fukushima? It is pretty usual to have multiple people actually die and it be the engineer's responsibility once something becomes international news. Even something as basic as a port explosion usually has a number of missing people in addition to a chunk of city being taken out. To anchor this in reality, Fukushima at a class 7 meltdown might have done less damage than a coal plant in normal operation. Coal plants aren't pretty places and air pollution is nasty, nasty stuff.
Re: Entso-E final report on Iberian 2025 blackout
#104I think people underestimate how valuable these reports are, so I’m very glad that detailed investigation is done here. Every major grid operator around the world is going to study this and make improvements to make sure this doesn’t happen on their grid. In a lot of ways it’s like investigations into airplane crashes.
Every major grid operator around the world is going to study this and make improvements to make sure this doesn’t happen on their grid. You mistyped "Every major grid operator is going to get their lawyers to reword their contracts to make sure they can't get sued when this happens".
Re: Entso-E final report on Iberian 2025 blackout
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I'm just not sure where you are going with that, it doesn't obviously suggest negligence to me. You didn't read the report or search for information about the matter, but I have not problem to repeat it for you, The General Electric's design was originally designed to be placed 30-35 meters above the ocean, instead of this TEPCO modified such design and constructed at sea level (almost) recurring to studies conveni…
> What about tolerance to avoid a meltdown of the core, specially under two events, an earthquake and a tsunami, exactly what happened after ignoring the warnings and requests to reinforce the safety. I wasn't going to reply but that seems like it moves the conversation forward; so why not? It seems to me your design goal is fundamentally incompatible with a lot of the specific complaints of negligence. If you want a…
My goal? My solution? My design!? you must be now kidding,
- GE original design 30-35 meters above the sea.
- Warnings about reinforce safety along one decade.
- Tsunami at Fukushima's nuclear plant, 15 meters above the sea.
> I wasn't going to reply but that seems like it moves the conversation forward; so why not?
Foward to... nothing it seems. You just replied with hypotheticals like if the event didn't happened, and as if such event would have been impossible to avoid, with some kind of dissociative reflexions that surpass the cynicism. I'm the one that is not going to reply.
Re: Entso-E final report on Iberian 2025 blackout
#106The fact that there is not a single root cause but several ones makes me instinctively think this is a good report, because it's not what the "bosses" (and even less politicians) like to hear.
They need more battery storage for grid health, both colocated at solar PV generators (to buffer voltage and frequency anomalies) and spread throughout the grid. This replaces inertia and other grid services provided by spinning thermal generators. There was no market mechanism to encourage the deployment of this technology in concert with Spain’s rapid deployment of solar and wind.
Re: Entso-E final report on Iberian 2025 blackout
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
They need more battery storage for grid health, both colocated at solar PV generators (to buffer voltage and frequency anomalies) and spread throughout the grid. This replaces inertia and other grid services provided by spinning thermal generators. There was no market mechanism to encourage the deployment of this technology in concert with Spain’s rapid deployment of solar and wind.
Nope, they need more inertial storage to smooth things out and buy time / absorb inevitable failure bursts/cascades from inverted production means or safety disconnection events.
Re: Entso-E final report on Iberian 2025 blackout
#108Everyone was outside with pocket radio receivers listening to instructions and having a good time around bars as if it were a European soccer final cup with the local team being playing...
On telecomms, I barely got 2G speeds and no Spanish newspaper (nor media) dared to set a https://lite.cnn.com or https://text.npr.org like page to read the news. I had to literaly use a Gemini (the protocol) client, Lagrange, tunneling the webs thru gemini://gemi.dev with their 'News Waffle' service. And for international news I just resorted to Gopher and magical.fish. The mainstream web barely loaded some of the text (if any), while several IM options ran at crawling network speeds. The lines were clogged and I coudn't even call my relatives.
Re: Entso-E final report on Iberian 2025 blackout
#109The fact that there is not a single root cause but several ones makes me instinctively think this is a good report, because it's not what the "bosses" (and even less politicians) like to hear.
It is very carefully worded, but variable renewables are holding the smoking gun here. This is why spain now requests a better connection to french nuclear now. This reckless overbuild of variable generation is a valuable negative example, wind and solar without adequate hydro or nuclear is dead
Re: Entso-E final report on Iberian 2025 blackout
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
Might have been less fun if it had been in the depths of winter. The fact that it was a balmy sunny day in springtime made it a pleasantly novel experience, I agree. Of course, the "sunny day" seems to have been correlated.
We're talking about Spain. How bad could a winter really be?
Can be hard, and NOT just because of Filomena. Not all Spain it's a Mediterranean beach, trust me. Some winters in Leon can be harder than the average Winter in Poland.
How hard a Winter can be? Pick a height map of Spain... and you will deduce something by yourself.