cstross

cstross, 8 hours ago

@kottke It also reduces the probability of them clashing with ANOTHER prime-number cicada brood, which would result in a risk of them desynchronizing by mating out-brood, surely?

cstross, 13 hours ago

@ngons My eyesight isn't sharp enough to see most emojis as anything other than an indistinct yellow blur. QED, they don't have any sight-impaired staff there in senior/early positions. Figures.

cstross, 14 hours ago

@Cadbury_Moose I'm lucky: I can vote SNP with a clear conscience. (Maybe even vote Scottish Greens as a safe protest vote—would need to check the up-to-the-minute polling in my constituency first, though, if Tories are in second place then forget it.)

cstross, 17 hours ago

@http_error_418 Not really true: the UK has a 50-100 tonne plutonium stockpile, held at Sellafield and/or AWRE, and enough highly enriched uranium to fuel the RN's 10-12 submarine reactors (ie. multiple naval reactor loads). Meanwhile the civil nuclear fuel cycle is monitored by international non-proliferation agencies to prevent low-enriched uranium being diverted for enrichment to weapons grade.

cstross, 17 hours ago

@HighlandLawyer I have nothing against new-build nuclear on safety grounds: my objection is that it doesn't make any kind of economic sense (except insofar as it lines the pockets of certain big construction and engineering companies).

There might be a role for SMRs in powering very large container ships … in a couple of decades. So this might be a hidden cross-subsidy to RR to fund developing a civil nautical prime mover. But I don't think today's Tories are that far-sighted.

cstross, 17 hours ago

@SpikyCaterpillar Nothing wrong with having more power, but when it's cheaper to roll out new PV panels in India than keep existing coal plants burning coal they just dug up, I don't think new-build nuclear is exactly the most cost-effective option …

cstross, 17 hours ago

@InsertUser What we are sorely lacking (and by "we" I mean "our species") is grid-scale storage batteries. (Pumped hydro is limited by geology.) If we had bigger batteries we'd be fine with renewables except for air/sea transport. The electrochemistry is well understood and we don't need lithium for it: iron isn't exactly in short supply. So it's to some extent a political problem (which the politicians blame on economics).

cstross, 16 hours ago

@rogerlipscombe @http_error_418 Don't forget the history of the Sellafield reprocessing plant (closed, now in decommissioning). It was designed in the 70s/80s to reprocess spent fuel rods and also extract Pu for manufacturing MOX fuel rods that could be used in existing PWRs as part of a mixed fuel cycle, but demand for fuel crashed in the 80s as reactor construction stalled, and then the plant was late into service (and leaked).

cstross, 15 hours ago

@Ardubal @Bern The ROI on renewables/gridscale storage looks a whole lot better, though, if you first cancel all the subsidies (visible and hidden) for fossil fuels. And better still if you bear in mind that PV prices per kWh are still dropping and battery prices are also falling.

Whereas nuclear reactor prices only ever seem to increase (unless like France in the 1970s you build them on a conveyor belt—politically non-feasible today).

cstross, 15 hours ago

@Ardubal @Bern Build-out of nuclear will take much too long to do any good at this point. Even when France went nuclear, it took a couple of decades to hit 90% (and that didn't include most of the 40-50% of power consumed by transport, i.e. cars/trucks/planes/boats). Whereas we have a renewables industry that's mostly up to speed already.

One problem for nuclear is most of the construction and operator cadre have aged out and retired. What's the lead time on a new nuclear engineer again?

cstross, 15 hours ago

@Guinnessy Yep. It's a market regulation problem—because late-stage actually-existing capitalism rewards predatory corporate incumbents who learn how to suborn or co-opt regulators to maximize profits, rather than adapting to changing conditions. Like, oh, climate change.

Our problems are mostly political, not technological. And the fix is to end the Friendmanite deregulation fetish that has set the agenda for politicians over the past half-century (since Chile in 1972).

cstross, 15 hours ago

@Ardubal @Bern Germany does power All Wrong (as witness the huge brown coal sector). Meanwhile, look to China and India for the future.

cstross, 6 hours ago

@Ardubal @bjn @Bern Still arguing? Muted again. Bye.

cstross, 17 hours ago

@zip They'll want a scapegoat. Or scapebus. So, laying on of hands on the bus, then drive it over a cliff like the finale of "The Young Ones"?

https://youtu.be/hVHESsaIr40?feature=shared&t=95

cstross, 1 day ago

@goatsarah I can't help reading this as "Republic of Gilead realises their economy is in the tank, tries to market itself as a free and frolicsome tourist destination for young women".

cstross, 1 day ago

@zedlopez What do they think firefighters are going to do when they have to go into burning smoke-filled buildings (or worse, hazchem incidents)?

cstross, 1 day ago

@bsdphk Yeah, but that's not the only way to hit zero population growth: it's just the prescriptivist engineering route. There are other (less oppressive) ways to do it.

Also, I'm not sure China is really a government of engineers any more: the generation of engineers wo came of age in time to be hardened by the Cultural Revolution and then took control are ageing out now. (Xi Jinping is 70 and will be around for a while yet, but his successor will most likely be post-cultural revolution.)

cstross, 1 day ago

@graydon @delong Nit-pick: the pneumatic tyre PM2.5 problem is massively aggravated by vehicle weight and power. e-bikes? Almost certainly safe. Cars that weigh 20-40x as much and put down up to 0.5MW of power through those tyres (rather than 0.00025MW) are another matter.