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Comment by badloginagain | Hacker News Reader

Living in a world where technology seems outdated after 3-4 years, having reactors reliably serving up power for several decades is kind of amazing.

On the other hand, this does keep the number of people in the industry small. Sure, demonization of the power source, and regulatory standards that inhibit the development of new technologies also help, but it seems like this would be a problem regardless.

I've always wondered what the demand/pay is for engineers looking to enter the nuclear industry is like.

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Personally, I feel as though modern acceptable standards of near-immediate obsolescence as normal are kind of depressing and abnormal.

Seeing technology become outdated after 3-4 years is kind of amazing in all the wrong ways.

Don't get me wrong, I understand that what we're really seeing is explosive advances, and to think about being stuck where we were 3-4 years ago, frozen in time, without permission to advance is a horrible thought.

But at the same time, I hate not being about to used something I paid thousands of dollars for, less than five years later, because I scratched a CD-ROM, and downloads for compatible upgraded drivers are not supported.

If drivers were open sourced so much of our tech would still be useful 10 or 20 years on. Manufactured obsolescence is really hurting society.

True. My scanner is second hand. It was given to me because its drivers were not compatible with windows 7 onward. Thanks to linux and open drivers, this scanner got a life extension of 6 years so far and it's still doin' great.

The ones I know, ex-Navy, are living pretty high on the hog.

There most be an increasing amount of hardware/software with egregious business value (hundred million+) with a decreasing number of surviving/available designers etc. Rationally if these people were required to fix or maintain such systems their yearly value would be in the millions wouldn't it?

For some reason I get the feeling that such people are not paid in the millions. Maybe double or triple a traditional salary but not in the executive-bonus tier. Do they deserve to be?

> There most be an increasing amount of hardware/software with egregious business value (hundred million+) with a decreasing number of surviving/available designers etc.

See COBOL.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COBOL

Yeah. I see a lot of COBOL guys that are extremely critical resources for big enterprises. As GP said, they are not paid like C-suite executives, but not very far from it, and no one asks them how they spend their time. Needless to say they are a very relaxed bunch.

Sounds like an opportunity for some enterprising Valley folk to disrupt nuclear!

I can't wait for Nucly, the only reactor control panel for iOS and Android.

In all seriousness, there have been attempts at startups looking to disrupt the nuclear industry. It's hit several problems, in the form of bad science and harsh regulation.

Apparently hacking plutonium is not easily accomplished.

Sounds like they need to adopt the Uber model. Regulations causing you trouble? Just ignore them!

move fast and irradiate things

Needs to be IoT as well. For added security.

You know what they say, "the 'S' in IoT stands for security."

This gave me a good chuckle, thanks.

AirIMBY lets you rent out your back yard as a nuclear waste disposal site.

Just choose your preferred radioactive half-life range and we'll match you with compatible nuclear waste producers.

of course, Berkeley will need to abandon its "nuclear free zone" policy. but i see that as a solvable problem, once they recognize the potential for revenue enhancement.

Or do what SMUD near Sacramento, CA did...

it's a public park!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rancho_Seco_Nuclear_Generating...

(it's actually a nice area and the lake is decent.)

You jest, but my first job[1] was back in 2005-ish for a small company[2] in Slovenia building web dashboards for Slovenia's nuclear power plant[3]. PHP and good old forms. My job was parsing the XML data and feeding it into some sort of graph component. Can't remember if they gave me a built graph component or I had to build one from scratch.

Not the kind of startup you'd hear about on HN of course.

And no, I don't know what the motivation was for the nuclear power plant to issue a RFP that involved web dashboards. Maybe upgrading their interfaces from the analog ones built in the 80's?

[1] more of an internship

[2] not quite a startup, more of a spinoff iirc

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kr%C5%A1ko_Nuclear_Power_Plant

read "On Programming Languages; Why My Dad Went From Programming to Driving a Bus"

https://ntguardian.wordpress.com/2017/03/13/on-programming-l...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13860887

> egregious business value (hundred million+)

the cost of shutting down San Onofre is $4B+

A colleague of mine was involved in verifying the software that controlls the shut-down procedures of the Darlington [0] plant. Now he's working on proofs of block-chain ciphers of some sort or another. I don't believe he's quite rich but he can certainly be rather selective of job opportunities.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darlington_Nuclear_Generating_...

update: added link

> For some reason I get the feeling that such people are not paid in the millions. Maybe double or triple a traditional salary but not in the executive-bonus tier

From stories I've heard, in these situations people like to come in not as employees but as consultants, at which point there are many hundreds of dollars per hour spent.

That actually relieves some concerns I had, given the root comment (which I have to admit, caused some distress). I imagine there are more people currently in the Navy that might leave if the demand and pay were high enough. Hopefully that covers enough of the important skill-sets needed.

Only tech that's advancing gets the 3-4 year cycle.

Your water boiler hasn't changed in the past 70 years.

Sure it has. Now it has a WiFi antenna and an embedded webserver so that you can see the temperature of the water on your smartphone(app installation required)

The boiler will get software updates until the next 3-4 year cycle, then you will need to buy a new boiler to get the latest BoilerOS(tm) that adds the ability to remotely set the temperature. No need for that to be secure...What's the worst that could happen??? It's just a boiler...

You just added another line to my face. So thanks for that. Just don't leave out the small openboileros crew serving up lawsuit magnet heat due to insurance issues of modifying your water boiling code.

Only officially sanctioned iBoiler parts may be used. Use of an unauthorized part will cause the boiler to enter DRM guard mode and cease operation for violation of the OpenBoilerOS software license.

You can expect a nastygram from the BSA(Boiler Software Alliance) for your attempt to circumvent their DRM.

Mine sure has. It now reuses the waste heat going out the flue. It's smaller and vastly more efficient. Not to mention near silent.

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