_n_b_

> Nuclear has a useful role to play. But it is in decline.

In the US, absolute nuclear generation has been relatively stagnant over the last 10 years as plant shutdowns have been compensated by uprating other plants[1]. About 2.2 GW are coming online via the Vogtle 3 & 4 units, more updates are coming, and the Palisades unit may restart… so I think you’ll see that number creep up a bit. Existing nuclear is economical to run today and I expect basically every operating unit will try to get a further life extension to 80 years.

Worldwide, we’re in a nuclear boom as plants are being built in Europe, North Africa, S America, and Asia, and Japan is finally shifting back to a pro-nuclear stance and getting reactors back online. (I wish fewer of those new plants were VVERs, though.)

This is all before we see any major work starting on SMRs or advanced reactors—-some of those will certainly get built too.

[1] https://www.nei.org/resources/statistics/us-nuclear-generati...

> They've had to change safety tests and infrastructure tests so the order plans would pass inspection.

It's interesting to square this sentiment with the people a few comments away claiming that over-regulation is killing this industry.

(Working in nuclear, I find neither sentiment particularly true nor totally false.)

The Guardian comes with a certain bias for disaster-mongering, especially (but not exclusively) at the expense of Tories; all of those things are real problems, but take it with a grain or two of salt.

Source: I live in the UK and still eat fresh veggies.

> cursive […] isn’t taught in US schools any more.

I was dubious, so I googled.

According to this[1], 21 states require cursive as part of the curriculum, and some admittedly older data[2] suggests that 90% of students get some amount of cursive handwriting instruction.

[1] https://www.nea.org/advocating-for-change/new-from-nea/great... [2] https://drs.dadeschools.net/informationcapsules/IC0916.pdf

Plutonium is very pyrophoric, especially dust, powder, fines, shavings, etc.

Plutonium metal likes to form a hydride layer that rapidly oxidizes in the presence of any water; this oxide then vigorously reacts with water. Plutonium fires have occurred at several national labs in the US, including two incidents that contaminated the Rocky Flats site.

Forget demon cores and use as an elaborate poisoning agent, the stuff is a huge conventional safety hazard.

Edit: my vote for actual most dangerous substance known to man, though, goes to chlorine trifluoride[1]. It will vigorously react with sand, bricks, asbestos, and other stuff that is usually reliably inert.

[1] https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/sand-won-t-save-yo...

I’m a volunteer at a branch of Samaritans[1] in the UK that runs on something like £70-85k/year, running a listening service with 60-80 volunteers including infrastructure, who spend thousands of hours a year on the phone with the suicidal, the distressed, and sometimes just those who desperately need someone to talk to.

It’s a service that fulfils a critical need but is run on a shoestring budget, with very little of the money spent on anything but critical necessities. Although Amazon Smile wasn’t a huge source of income for my branch, it will leave a hole that will have to be filled.

I can’t say I disagree that there aren’t plenty of mega-charities that spent too much on admin and fundraising, but I also know firsthand there are plenty out there deserving of every penny coming their way.

[1] https://www.samaritans.org/about-samaritans/our-organisation...

Which exact federal crime do you mean by ‘negligence’ exactly?

The various fraud statutes require intent.

Yes, and as former federal prosecutor and current white-collar defense attorney Ken White explains on Twitter, moving too fast also prevents them from using their best tools: flipping witnesses for lying and the Grand Jury.

His really good thread starts here: https://twitter.com/Popehat/status/1600877380683280384

The latter. Fresh fuel moves into the reactor refueling pool (the area flooded around the reactor during refueling operations) via a transfer canal from the spent fuel pool.

Even if that’s true, Ken White’s Rule or Goats applies: “[s]lightly paraphrased — for this family newspaper — the rule states: If you kiss a goat, even if you say you’re doing it ironically, you’re still a goat-kisser.”

> Well more of Europe's Uranium comes from Russia than Germanys gas.

Nope. Pre-Ukraine conflict, 55% of Germany's gas came from Russia [1]. In 2021, 19.69% of Europe's Uranium came from Russia [2].

And fundamentally, the relative energy density of enriched uranium means that it's much easier to shift from one source to another versus gas.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jul/21/how-reliant-is...

[2] https://euratom-supply.ec.europa.eu/activities/market-observ...

> What I’d like to know is the overall cost

We can estimate this for nuclear pretty easily. From the UxC cost calculator[1], we can see the various components that go into getting mined ore, converting it, and enriching it. At today's prices, let's call it $2000/kgU. We need to add fabrication, transportation, and carrying costs to that. Let's call fabrication $250/kgU[2] and throw on another $50 for transport and misc costs, giving us $2500/kgU for finished fuel. Assuming we burn our fuel to a an average discharge burn of 50 GWd/MTU and the plant is operating at about 34% electrical efficiency, that works out to 0.6 cents/kWh for nuclear fuel.

On to disposal, in the US utilities were previously charged 0.1 cents/kWh for disposal; utilities haven't been charged this fee since 2014 due to a disposal route not being available[3], although DOE retains responsibility for disposing of civilian nuclear waste.

On top of that you have the plant's O&M costs, which are probably another 0.8-1.0 cents or so/kWh.

[1] https://www.uxc.com/p/tools/FuelCalculator.aspx [2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S173857331... [3] https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-21-603.pdf

> I was thinking SMRs size that could easily fit within a 40ft container.

Those would be 'micro-reactors' and as noted tend to be optimised for off-grid applications.

>> Tellingly, some utilities have already backed out of NuScale’s first project over cost concerns. > Anyone could chime in here? Was it because NuScale is too expensive?

The NuScale VOYAGR, in particular, is a really big SMR in terms of [plant size]/[megawatt]. The economies of SMR come when you can reduce that footprint by making smaller safety systems or eliminating active safety features (because the plant is small enough not to need them) AND factory-build them with on-site assembly. Other SMR designs seem to have more promising ideas for doing both, but NuScale's is just too big. (There are also micro-reactors that optimize for replacing diesel engines and gas turbines with a very small footprint at the tradeoff of cost.)

>I was expecting SMRs, once approved could be built much more quickly. I was thinking in terms of 3 years with perfect project planning. But right now even the earliest ( and likely optimistic ) first SMRs site is 2030. Why does it take so long?

There's a lot going between "approved today" and "SMR online": particularly that factory infrastructure needs to come on line and site licensing need to happen, and then the plant needs to get commissioned after it is built (which takes longer for the first). It's very conceivable to me that the Nth SMR could be a ~3ish year project, but longer for the FOAK unit is almost inevitable.

While it appears they do not, there are definitely some other TRIGA reactors that seem to have very permissive tour policies, e.g., Penn State's (https://www.rsec.psu.edu/tour-request-form.aspx)

It's definitely with a visit if you can, a TRIGA pulse (where they pneumatically eject a control rod and then the reactor temporarily increases very dramatically in power causing a lot of Cherenkov radiation) is very cool to see. Usually they turn the lights off, so you stand in semi-darkness waiting until you hear a loud "BANG!" and then the room is illuminated by the brilliant blue glow. Great fun and perfectly safe!

If this genre appeals to you, the Bits About Money newsletter (https://bam.kalzumeus.com/archive/) has a lot more content along these general "how finance really works" themes. The article about mortgages, in particular, is great.

In their actual paper[1] they identify it as Webex.

[1] https://wiscprivacy.com/papers/vca_mute.pdf

Most reactor downtime is actually for maintenance during refueling windows. As I mentioned in another comment, there is experience doing refuelling-only outages in <10 days. If everything goes well, you can startup a PWR from cold shutdown to hot full power in 3 12 hour shifts

That is exactly how nuclear outages work. Everything is planned in a resource-loaded schedule and many of those resources are just there for the outage.

Finland is actually somewhat known for running short (1 year) cycles with very very short (<10 days for refuelling is not unheard of) refuelling outages every other cycle alternating with slightly longer maintenance outages. A more typical scenario in the US would be 18 month cycles with a 30ish day outage. Some plants are moving to 24 month cycles with slightly longer outages.

Capacity factor for nuclear plants in the US is consistently around 93% (similar figures in many other countries as well), which is significantly higher than other generation sources.

It’s hard. At least for me, this is the hardest classes of employees to manager—-it’s much easier to get rid of somebody who is clearly failing or reward and further develop a high performer.

When I say uneven, I’m thinking of somebody who either: (a) is excellent at certain key aspects of their jobs but clearly below expectations in others to the point that it’s an issue, or (b) somebody who performs well but doesn’t always put in enough effort. In both cases, it’s subjective and difficult to determine that it’s to the point where intervention is required, because that’s usually an uncomfortable conversation. Often, you’re the first manager ever telling the person that they need to improve—-even if you’re not the first person to think there’s an issue. Typically, the other person will think you’re an asshole. As another commenter said, they may recognize later on that you were right but normally in the near term, you’ll have strained the relationship. (That’s why managers avoid those conversations. Sometimes it’s cowardice, sometimes it’s deciding that the juice isn’t worth the squeeze today.)

As for how to work on improvement, that always has to be case-by-case considering the issue and the personality. Sometimes the “stop doing that” conversation is enough. Sometimes coaching or mentoring or development experiences can help. If those don’t work, can you shift responsibilities around or find a different role that is a better fit?

Normally you try to gently do those things anyway before you have the direct conversation, and then hope the direct conversation provides some motivation/insight to take it more seriously.

If you’re on the receiving end of that conversation, I guess my advice would be to try to critically self-reflect and see if you can understand where your manager is coming from. If you can, then you’ve both got a common place to start from towards improvement. If you can’t, or you think they’re just being unreasonable about expectations, then it is probably time to move on or hope they move on quickly.

As a manager, your main job is to make your ICs effective at doing their work.

That means you need to be dealing with poor performers, rewarding with outstanding performers, trying to improve uneven performers, managing expectations from your management and shielding your team from the vicissitudes of your bosses as much as possible, fighting for things your team needs while shielding them from the demoralizing realities of working for a big company where HR and IT etc. don’t give two shits about the actual mission (if applicable), keeping an accurate budget, making sure your team is individually recognized for their success but that you take the blame for their failures, responding to changes in direction and getting your team on board, being the face of management even when that’s unpopular, and doing all the other little things required to keep the team going as effectively as possible.

There’s a lot of work to do there, and it can be incredibly rewarding when it’s going well and incredibly frustrating when it’s not.

It can also mean you have days when your team is working all out to deliver and the only thing you can do is order pizza and keep distractions away. Those are boring, often frustrating days.

It’s not for everybody, but that’s what I think a good manager does. I think it’s often easier when you manage a team and aren’t an expert at what they do (although you still need to understand at a relatively deep level), since that minimizes the chances of you trying to dive in and solve the problem.

> Also, the DoD in particular has sovereign immunity,

The federal government has waived its sovereign immunity via statute for specific kinds of lawsuits, including for copyright infringement via 28 U.S.C. 1498(b).

There is also a school of thought that says that copyright infringement violates the Fifth Amendment's takings clause, but that has yet to be endorsed (or rejected) convincingly at a federal level.

> The best you could do in that case is something like a WTO lawsuit

There are WTO disputes, but these can only be brought by one WTO member (e.g., a sovereign government) against another and generally the outcome of WTO disputes does not involve compensation.

So much this.

Just recently Google took me downhill via a ~14% grade windy road with blind curves in Yorkshire instead of an extra 3 minutes on the A road. Immensely disliked.

Compté basically is Gruyère: same recipe, same process, same taste profile, just slightly different terroir.

(https://www.thephcheese.com/gruyere-and-comte-two-of-a-kind)

I suspect GP was referring to a situation where you’re stepping though some problem code and see that you end up in the wrong clause or an IF statement?

Agree that’s not the first use case I’d think of, but I do think debuggers can quickly pinpoint that kind of thing as you step through code… if you know roughly where the problem is.

I think this is great and thanks for doing this! I have three small suggestion:

1. For masks that fail on marking issues but not filtering efficiency, could they get a third category that’s not pass or fail (something like ‘non-compliant’)?

2. I wish you could filter on pass/fail

3. I wish you included/could filter on price per box and price per mask.

> The type of articles I like the most are those when someone takes a ridiculous amount of time to explain something mundane.

May I humbly suggest this long-but-interesting 2008 New Yorker article about elevators, if you haven’t already read this seminal work in the genre?

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/04/21/up-and-then-do...

Relatedly, but I've always wished there were a series of books like, "I'm Already a Programmer but I'd Like to Learn ____"

Trying to pick up a book about a new programming language that is trying to explain the concept of an 'array' or whatever is annoying--I wish there was something to just lay out (still in a thoughtful and guided way) the concepts I needed to understand for that language based on already knowing several others.

> How are you going to cool the room off in the summer

In my (albeit outdated now) experience, cooling in the winter can often be even more of a problem in cold climates, if you have a condenser unit outside in freezing weather.

Interchange. While this article is more US specific and Monzo is obviously a UK bank, take a look at https://bam.kalzumeus.com/archive/debit-cards-are-hidden-fin...