2/17/2016

Operating nuclear power stations or super computers


Operating nuclear power stations or super computers plugged into the exchange trading systems incurs the same risk of self inflicted disaster when there is no where to run or hide


 


One Of The Biggest High Frequenecy Traders Warns Of Potential Market "Catastrophe"


  

 

Here is part of an article in www.zerohedge.com that told of stupid men and women in charge and courting a catastrophe that they have no control over and did not know enough of. The high risks are obvious and well documented, but they stubbornly stick to a dangerous practice like they were bought and controlled by the high frequency traders to do what they want, freely, and risking a total system collapse.

This is like men and women flirting with the sexiness of operating nuclear power stations, knowing the risks and the inability to provide a failsafe system but ‘die die’ still want to have nuclear power stations. Should a country like Singapore go the nuclear road, would it be due to stupid men, clever men or too clever men’s recklessness or desperation?

Read this article to understand and know who are responsible to expose the ignorants to such high risk with little regards to protecting them from it. Look at how irresponsible men and women can be, how reckless they can be by turning the other way, not wanting to see the elephant in the room just to achieve their private interests.

 

….Below is part of an article in Back in April 2009, we wrote what may be the first seminal article predicting the failure of capital markets as a result of widespread predatory high frequency trading and fragmented market structure when we laid out "The Incredibly Shrinking Market Liquidity, Or The Upcoming Black Swan Of Black Swans." Several years later, and countless flash crashes, we have been proven right, however one thing is missing: "the catastrophe" that finally wakes up people to the dangers of all the individual things we have warned about over the years.

Today, we are one step closer to that day, when none other than the head of one of the biggest high-frequency trading companies, Mark Gorton of Tower Research,warned that there are several faultlines in the structure of increasingly electronic, automated financial markets that could lead to a “catastrophe” in the long run,according to the FT. 

To be sure, Mark Gorton, has a clear conflict of interest: being one of the largest HFT members himself, with his company dominating program trading on the NYSE with his Latour Trading subsiiary, the founder and head of Tower Research Capital argued that exchanges have become far more efficient with the advent of more computerised markets, but "cautioned that increasing complexity brought new dangers that needed to be mitigated."

In other words, don't blame the HFTs, blame the markets, which is to be expected from a person who will be out of a job if HFT is banned.

He further adds that "The recent evolution of markets from manual to electronic trading has had huge benefits and investors save money every day due to the lower cost of trading. But electronic trading brings with it a number of new risks, and we need to continue to strengthen the resiliency of electronic markets,"Mr Gorton told the Financial Times.

What keeps Gorton up at night? The short answer: the lack of safeguards at exchanges to prevent HFT firms like his from dragging the whole thing down:

The high-frequency trader is particularly concerned over the lack of risk controls at exchanges, which he said constituted a “large hole in the middle of the system that needs to be filled”....

 

Nonetheless, exchange-level risk controls remain “limited at best” and should assume there will inevitably be glitches, bugs and errant trading algorithms that could cause problems in the wider market, according to Mr Gorton.

Glitches from algorithms, he forgot to add, such as the one Tower uses each and every day to scalp and frontrun billions of trades in order flow.

However, his warning, conflicted as it is, is spot on: the market will crash again, it is only a matter of time, simply because the HFTs have captured market regulators so well, nobody has any idea what is going on any more: “We need a regulatory framework that assumes that any single system(can alsoread nuclear energy) in the market will fail and insures that we have multiple redundant levels of checks that can catch failures in other parts of the system,”he said.

What is Gorton's suggestion?

Mr Gorton highlighted in particular the lack of a centralised position-tracking mechanism for the US stock market, the need to refine and synchronise market circuit-breakers between highly correlated markets, such as cash equities and futures, and the absence of clarity over what it takes for trades to be declared invalid.

In other words, focus on the symptoms, shutting down markets when things go haywire, not the underlying cause, which as we have said since 2009 is simple: broken markets, designed to benefit just one group of traders….

Who would it benefit if Singapore goes nuclear?

19 comments:

  1. Nuclear energy is quite safe now, no need to panic. As long as you run your plants properly and not like those idiots in Fukushima or Chenobyl, it'll be OK. Everything has risk.

    HFT is not going to go away. By now, everyone knows the potential risk of catastrophic failure. And there are going to be "glitches"---even the odd market crash---until the systems get better, more robust and more developed.

    It just takes time. Can't make an omelet without breaking eggs. ;-)

    >> Who would it benefit if Singapore goes nuclear? <<

    The vast majority of people. A few "anti-nuclear" fuckwits will bang balls...but mostly these types of people are very hard to please. They won't be "happy" until the whole fucking world changes to suit them. Good luck on that! 😂

    ReplyDelete
  2. No need nuclear catastrophe or market crash lah though crap management of the State does quicken the Demise of statehood.
    In the Case of Sin, there is never a statehood(nationhood) to talk about in the First Place. It died in the Womb.
    Anyway, all beings go through the Cycle of Birth and Death, so do regimes and sovereighties.
    With or without HFT or and Nuclear Infrastructure there is a lifespan to every beings.

    Why worry so much when one dies long before the the expected disasters take place?
    Btw, mankinds are naturally born to stay away from manmake disasters,
    why stay around to face the impending catastrophe? The World is big and there are plenty of safe or safer places.
    Why stay to br a dead hero?

    ReplyDelete
  3. ya lah, why worry. Fukushima run to OZ. So far, so safe.

    Hope Malaysia build one in Gelang Petah or Pasir Gudang.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Good idea. A leak will see Singaporeans all gone, island empty. Wait for a few years and take over.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Right now the financial industries are toxic. Banks cook derivative and special financial vehicle to mask the lost, book profit and grap bonus.

    The less toxic one like our local banks pressure PAP to cook property price to put everyone in debt.

    Meanwhile the engineers are the one who keep producing values for our society and they get despise.

    This thing wont last forever. We are at end stage cancer. Now even if financial institution want to cook books, all collaterals are gone.

    They can only rehypothecate on toxic assets.

    This system is gonna collapse soon.

    ReplyDelete
  6. The latest Nuclear energy, the Pebble Bed reactor developed in China, is safe -- physics tell me so.

    You CANNOT have melt down with that, the only risk is terrorist or war.

    ReplyDelete
  7. ".. the Pebble Bed reactor developed in China, is safe "
    @ February 17, 2016 1:03 pm

    first we worry about our road safety with PRC drivers operating our buses.
    now we have to worry about PRC nuclear engineers operating a nuclear power plant in Singapore?

    ReplyDelete
  8. You do not know the technical prowess of PRC and that make you give funny comments. Bottom line is too many USA MNC here and everyone suck USA cock like nobody thinking USA is good.

    As an engineer who look at hardcore evidence, I can tell you PRC already surpass USA in many technologies. Now we just need more PRC MNC here so that SG guys go and suck their cock.

    That will wake us up.

    ReplyDelete
  9. That will wake us up.
    February 17, 2016 1:10 pm

    How's this JOKE to serve as a wake up call:

    Hello Mr Prime Minister of Singapore.
    We are the foreign nuclear engineers operating your nuclear power plant in Singapore.
    Give us all your money or we will stop work.
    And don't tell us it will take you 65 man-years to figure out how much money you have in your reserve.
    We are not Singaporeans so we are not so patient.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Pebble-bed nuclear reactor gets pulled
    South Africa cuts funding for energy technology project.

    http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100223/full/4631008b.html
    ...........................................

    Although many scientists had hoped that the safety system of the pebble-bed design would win over opponents of nuclear power, a 2008 report from the Jülich Research Centre cast doubt on those claims, suggesting that core temperatures could rise even higher than the safe threshold.

    Tsinghua University in Beijing now hosts the only operational prototype pebble-bed reactor, although similar reactors are being developed in the United States and the Netherlands.
    But the PBMR's problems are not unique, says Thomas.

    "Every nuclear nation in the world has had a programme to commercialize this type of reactor, and they all got nowhere."

    ReplyDelete
  11. China is building commercial Pebble bed in Shidaowan.

    You do not need foreign engineers to work in our nuclear plant. Running nuclear plant is no need top scientist. PRC is front runner in ALL nuclear technology except maybe fast nuetron reactor.

    Too many idiots here.

    ReplyDelete
  12. The Pebble-Bed Modular Reactor (PBMR): Safety Issues

    https://www.aps.org/units/fps/newsletters/2001/october/a6oct01.html
    ...............................................

    The Pebble Bed Nuclear Waste Disposal

    PBMR proponents do not normally bring up the issue of final disposal of the reactor's spent fuel.
    There is a reason for this: the volume of the spent fuel produced by a PBMR is significantly greater than that of the spent fuel produced by a conventional LWR, per unit of electricity generated.
    This is because the uranium in the fuel spheres is diluted in a large mass of graphite.

    One can estimate the volume of spent pebbles discharged per unit of electricity generated for the Eskom PBMR as follows.
    Each pebble has a radius of 3 cm and a volume of 113 cm^3.
    Eskom calculates that operating a 110 MWe unit continuously at full power for 40 years will require 13.8 full fuel loads.
    Since each fuel load contains 330,000 pebbles (not counting the pure graphite spheres), this means that 4.55 million will be required over the plant lifetime.
    The amount of electricity generated during this period is 1.61 million MWD, so the total volume of spent fuel produced is 320 cm^3/MWD.

    A typical 1150 MWe PWR operating on an 18-month cycle will discharge about 84 fuel assemblies per outage, with each assembly having a volume of about 186,000 cm^3.
    The amount of electricity generated is 630,000 MWD. Therefore, the volume of spent fuel produced is 25 cm^3/MWD, a factor of 13 less than for the PBMR.

    ReplyDelete
  13. This is wrong.

    THe statistic does not take into account of spent LWR fuel that needs a containment pool that pollute at least 10x amount of water.

    The other alternative to reduce waste is by burrying it. THere is a lot of side effect and thats why most spent fuel are store on site at pool and several years later, transferred to cannister.

    If you bury it underground you pollute water. And spent fuel is not really "spent" per se. You can use it in fast neutron reactor.

    ReplyDelete
  14. What's Wrong With the Modular Pebble Bed Reactor?
    -----------------------------------------------------
    1. It has no containment building.

    2. It uses flammable graphite as a moderator.

    3. It produces more high level nuclear wastes than current nuclear reactor designs.

    4. It relies heavily on nearly perfect fuel pebbles.

    5. It relies heavily upon fuel handling as the pebbles are cycled through the reactor.

    6. There's already been an accident at a pebble bed reactor in Germany due to fuel handling problems.

    http://www.tmia.com/old-website/pebbles.html

    ReplyDelete
  15. The thing it dont have containment building is IT DO NOT NEED IT. It is safe unlike other reactor.

    Many graphites are not flammable and pebble is contain within helium. Meanwhile, all the rest of the reactor technology will just explode.

    Pebble bed do not have more nuclear waste. The reason detractor say so is because it take into account of graphics. Why not they take into account of the water moderator in other reactor as nuclear waste.

    Every reactor relies on precision parts. And pebble bed no need that precision than aerodynamics design.

    It is more difficult to recycle pebbles. That is true.

    Pebble beds has no chernoby 3 miles island or fukushima yet. All these minor accident are common in nuclear industry and no news.

    ReplyDelete
  16. @ Veritas @ February 17, 2016 2:29 pm
    "All these minor accident are common in nuclear industry and no news."
    ...............................
    Chernobyl, 3 Mile Island and Fukushima nuclear accidents are not minor nuclear accidents.
    See the list below.
    ...........................

    Top 10 Nuclear Disasters

    http://www.processindustryforum.com/hottopics/nucleardisasters

    ReplyDelete
  17. I mean pebble bed accident are minor. Chernoby Fukushima and 3 miles are not.

    Sorry for misunderstanding

    ReplyDelete
  18. "Pebble bed nuclear technology is safe." promises Veritas.

    Ya hor.
    Like once upon a time Singaporeans were told that we could withdraw all our CPF money at 55 years old without any condition.
    Now it seems that maybe CPF is not really our money.

    Q: Why did the chicken cross the road?

    American says: To get his money back from the bank.
    Singaporean says: Government say can take back my own money meh?

    ReplyDelete
  19. Everyday there will b a traffic accident....somewhere...

    ReplyDelete