News from a possible future: ‘Rampant jellyfish cause AI outage by taking datacenter offline'
- Reference: 1754976729
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2025/08/12/france_nuclear_reactor_jellyfish_shutdown/
- Source link:
The Register offers that analysis after Électricité de France (EDF) on Monday [1]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 drums of the pumping stations” at the facility.
Each production unit at the plant can produce 900 MW of power, enough to power several significant datacenters.
[2]
EDF said the pumping station is in the “non-nuclear” part of the facility, and the jellyfish therefore had no impact on safety at the plant, and did not increase risk for the staff who work there or the nearby environment.
[3]
The closure of the production units also seems not to have endangered nearby datacenters: The Register can find no reports of outages or brownouts, even in the datacenter-dense region near the city of Lille which is around 80 kilometers from Gravelines and houses Euro-cloud OVH’s Roubaix region.
[4]NASA boss calls for nuclear reactor on the Moon
[5]Google agrees to pause AI workloads to protect the grid when power demand spikes
[6]Wasp nest at US nuclear site tests ten times over safe radiation limit
[7]Clouds and submarine cables report no impact from sixth-largest earthquake in recorded history, subsequent tsunami
Interest in nuclear energy has grown in recent years as datacenter operators look for new power sources to energise the giant facilities needed to run AI workloads at scale. We’ve reported on companies including [8]Google , [9]Microsoft , [10]Amazon , [11]Nvidia , and [12]Meta investing in nuclear energy to power their datacenters.
Some of those plans involve locating datacenters next to nuclear power plants, as doing so reduces the chance that problems elsewhere on the grid will impact operation of AI hardware.
Perhaps Big Tech’s datacenter planners will consider this incident in France 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. ®
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[1] https://www.edf.fr/la-centrale-nucleaire-de-gravelines/les-actualites-de-la-centrale-nucleaire-de-gravelines/arret-automatique-des-reacteurs-ndeg2-3-4-et-6
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_specialfeatures/cloudinfrastructuremonth&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2aJsQvDSDfC_4SyVw9YTGtQAAAEo&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_specialfeatures/cloudinfrastructuremonth&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aJsQvDSDfC_4SyVw9YTGtQAAAEo&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[4] https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/08/nasa_boss_calls_for_nuclear/
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/04/google_ai_datacenter_grid/
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/01/radioactive_wasp_nest/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/30/russia_earthquake_comms_cloud_impact/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/16/google_westinghouse_ai_nuclear/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2025/06/26/microsoft_tmi_nuclear/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2025/06/12/amazon_talen_nuclear_deal/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2025/06/18/nvidia_ai_smr_investment/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2025/06/03/meta_signs_20year_nuclear_deal/
[13] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: Farsands of em
Jellyfish blooms are a well-known risk to plants using seawater cooling.
They are squishy, which makes them extremely difficult to clear from the filters, and to make it worse they grow and reproduce extremely quickly.
Re: Farsands of em
Squishy indeed. I'm having a hard time thinking of them as 'rampant', though 'rampaging' is a possibility.
Re: Farsands of em
Came here to say the same thing.
Re: Farsands of em
After the robot uprising, the few meatsacks kept alive will be working to clear the power station filters of jellyfish, so their masters have the electricity they need. Up until robots have the dexterity to do the job themselves. Then goodbye human race.
Re: Farsands of em
Nuclear plants also discharge all the water they're taking in, at a higher temperature. 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.
Re: Farsands of em
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.
It's a communist conspiracy I reckon - make the world dependent on a legacy industrial solution (nuclear power generation) then overwhelm with creatures lacking both a brain and a free will
FTFY
"It's a communist conspiracy I reckon - make the world dependent on a legacy industrial solution (coal, oil, gas power generation) then overwhelm with Trump voters"
Re: FTFY 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.
Wonder if anything nearby was running Ubuntu 22.04
After all, it was called "Jammy Jellyfish"
Is this really surprising?
Sea creatures of all sorts tend to congregate around sources of heat.
Cooling outflow is warmer than the surrounding waters.
Hence, a bunch of wildlife heading for it.
Re: Is this really surprising?
Not surprising at all...
A classic example of anthropogenic climate change on the small scale
So, another point for Thorium Molten Salt reactors then?
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..
Re: So, another point for Thorium Molten Salt reactors then?
I don't think that the " western world " has realised what breakthrough that new type of nuclear plant by China is going to be. They have a new energy horizon, similar to what the US had after the second world war.
Release sea turtles
They are one of the few animals that prey on jellyfish
Re: Release sea turtles
And how do you keep the sea turtles under control?
This is a problem crying out for sharks with lasers, Shirley?
Farsands of em
Sea warming caused by AGW contributed to by rampant AI encourages the breeding and growth of jellyfish.
Self own.