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When the Unthinkable Happens: Real-World Lessons in Data Center Resilience

Kevin Bradshaw
Senior Vice President, Data Center Strategy, FM

Building on Principal Research Scientist Charles Forsberg’s research in advanced reactors and high-temperature energy systems, this talk highlights base-load nuclear reactors replacing the gas turbine to provide dispatchable electricity and heat to industry. There are two strategies. The first strategy stores heat from the reactor when low demand for dispatchable heat to industry or dispatchable electricity. Heat storage may exceed 200 hours. The second strategy converts low-price electricity into high-temperature (1700 °C) heat stored in firebrick. Air flows through the firebrick to provide hot air to industry or thermodynamic topping cycles for nuclear reactors, so that peak power is more than twice the base-load electricity output. Both options are enabled by recent inventions and developments.

Panel Discussion: Trust but Verify

Moderator: Margaret Childs
Panels: Sinan Aral, Frank Schweitzer, Shermin Voshmgir
We’re in a continuous struggle to combat falsity. It’s a Wild, Wild West with verification a moving target. New digital media platforms based on block chain can run applications exactly as programmed without the possibility of downtime, censorship, fraud, or third-party interference. Still, we do not know enough about the phenomenon of falsity and why it spreads so readily on digital media. But, we may be closer to answers—and interventions—since we now have data at scale and are on the brink of a revolution understanding how humans behave. The panel will discuss possible interventions to mitigate and hopefully prevent the spread of falsity including how new digital media platforms will algorithmically redefine confirmation, validation, and value. How could blockchain and tokenization of social media based on examples like provide a solution to these problem? What can we learn from early blockchain use cases like Steemit, Basic Attention Token (BAT), and Token Curated Registries (TCRs).

2019 MIT Europe Conference in Vienna