otter-rock

By that logic, a country can't make long-term investments, and can't provide unprofitable services that have other benefits. My two questions challenged your circular reasoning.

The framing comes from this reasoning: not enough resources yet to build 100% renewable generation + storage => still need nuclear or fossils for now

But many people think this way instead: we have the technology for all the parts => build all the good stuff right now

Ironically, nuclear is selectively framed as just one thing with every safety issue ever, while fossils are further sub-divided into different environmental impacts.

I'm saying there's no storage solution yet. Even combining all storage types, you'd still run out of materials (battery) or locations (hydro) before finishing.

It's not speed vs speed. It's speed vs forecasted capacity.

People often don't realize that intermittent renewables must be paired with backup generation or storage. But energy storage at the scale of a 100% renewable system is currently an unsolved problem. So you really only have two options:

1. Continue to back up with fossil fuels

2. Temporarily back up with nuclear

Check my comment history for a debate on nuclear safety.

Thank you for pointing this out. I think most people assume that companies are just being greedy when they solder previously socketed parts, for example. I'm not saying it's never a factor. But it also solves real engineering problems.

Modern technology often requires tighter integration. We accept integrated circuits because we're accustomed to them. But then people flip out when they see what's effectively a naked module because it looks like a greedy version of the old thing.

You cover a lot of interesting topics. Some exposition:

Reporting power is easy with the power triangle. It's a mathematically exact concept.

Measuring power is a different story. Distortions of the assumed perfect sine wave create measurement errors. Meter bandwidth matters, but most have low bandwidth.

Grid meters at least use voltage phase, if not magnitude. Residential customers are billed only for real power, so the phase information is necessary to exclude the reactive power from the measurement.

One rating is for maximum output. The other describes a short-circuit that you can create with an overly reactive load.

The degrees of freedom complicate the implementation, but the bottom-line discussion abstracts away those details.

I don't have a down button, but I can see why someone used theirs.

1. Why would you verify local need, if the need is national?

2. Why would you verify inability to pay with ability to pay?

Spain's demographic problems are exacerbated by lack of rail access to certain areas. Portugal faces similar issues. If they want a strategic rail line, why would they apply the unrelated criteria you propose?

There are actually three parts of the power triangle: real (W), reactive (VAR), and the hypotenuse apparent (VA) power. If voltage and current are exactly in-phase, VA=W and VAR=0. All of the power is doing work.

Being out-of-phase is like turning a crank with one hand while resisting with the other - wasted effort. Some of the VA becomes VAR instead of W.

The math thing is a simplification so you can take measurements with a multimeter, and do just a bit of arithmetic to get all three power values. It comes from the average power integral of trig functions with complex numbers.

Watt rating is what you'd expect. Voltage and current are working together to do work. The limit is probably thermal.

VA rating at max current is a short-circuit. If your load draws enough reactive power, the voltage and current get so far out-of-phase that a huge current sneaks through without much voltage. It could be many times as much current as the max current at max Watts.

> if the locals think it's important for them then they can pay for it

That's what I thought you were saying, but that's not what I'm saying. There might never be enough local money to support it. But the regional or higher levels of government might think it's strategically important, or even profitable over a much wider area beyond local municipalities. For example, the USPS services rural areas where they lose money because it's considered important enough.

Spreadsheet McSpreadsheetface

This is the difference between a business and a service. The unprofitable lines could have continued as a government-backed service to promote economic development, for example.

> enables the very things conservatives are worried about (CRT, Marxism, etc), so long as it isn't the only thing taught

Any subject was already allowed before. What more could be allowed?

Here's a class on CRT from a few years ago. I can't see what good the bill would do here. But I can think of a lot of ways to harass people with it, or get the class cancelled out of fear of being sued or fired.

https://www.law.virginia.edu/past-courses/view/119820244

It's the grid reliability organization for the US and Canada. There are more details in the reliability reports they publish.

https://www.nerc.com/news/Pages/California-Mobility-Center,-...

Here's a real and recent news article about how potential risks and opportunities are being explored regarding electric vehicles and the grid [1]. It basically says they're looking into stuff and working on it. Neither doom and gloom, nor the future is now.

Just like the grid adapted to the growing use of HVAC, it will have to adapt to the growing use of electric cars.

[1] https://californiamobilitycenter.org/latest-california-mobil...

Seems like you didn't need fixed point in the first place. It's for when you need guarantees.

Both processor hardware and the Linux operating system are powerful in large part because they're opportunistic. But that's the opposite of predictable, which is what defines hard real-time.

Many birds commonly seen in the US are non-native, and reduce native bird populations significantly.

https://abcbirds.org/blog20/invasive-birds/

We already have carrots and sticks to ensure reliability. That's what regulation is for. Changing those is a lot easier than changing companies.

I've worked for one of the big three you mentioned. Probably a different one, or at least a different group, since the culture seemed fine to me.

I can't think of single a time where old code or tools were a barrier to innovation. We updated when there was a real need, but otherwise left working code alone to focus on adding innovative engineering features. The code was so heterogenous that it was modular by default, so the pain of one library's tooling was limited to that one library.

The PDFs below are a little dry, but they have noticed and cared since at least their 2018 forecast. As for the remedy, what exactly does it mean to lose public utility status?

[1] https://www.nerc.com/pa/RAPA/ra/Reliability%20Assessments%20...

[2] https://www.nerc.com/pa/RAPA/ra/Reliability%20Assessments%20...

[3] https://cdn.misoenergy.org//Aligning%20Resource%20Availabili...

An "interconnect" here means the connections between components on a circuit board.

I used to feel this frustration until I accepted that the economics of software usually lead to different requirements. People are making rational choices, so no amount of attitude or culture change will make a significant difference. Different requirements can be found in different industries, or different fields all together.

I agree with the general sentiment, but the article explains that this "breakthrough" is a product prototype that meets a government spec. It's hyperbolic wording, but they're trying to warm people up to the idea of eventually getting a heat pump to alleviate some energy issues.

Yup. The "missions" are an excuse for funding. But the funding is insufficient and misallocated to support the stated missions in earnest.

If NASA gets to the moon again, it'll be on a cheap ride they buy from SpaceX.

This sort of already happened when some of the Apollo engineers came out of retirement for the Constellation Program. The program was cancelled and they went back into retirement. Nobody came back for the Space Launch System because it was just a jobs program with no real substance. Also, they were very old at that point.

I can agree that it ceased being the Roman Empire per se, but I don't see it as being that much different from the end of the Roman Kingdom or the Roman Republic. It's still a continuation.

Ok, so the safety argument doesn't even matter, so why debate it as a proxy for what you really mean?

> They certainly were not good enough at Fukushima

Then why would remaking the part be any better than redesigning the system?

You're still misusing the term out of spec. Everything else you said is uncontroversial.

I appreciate you engaging in a two way discussion.

As a general comment, you still jump to many exaggerated conclusions apparently without seeking to understand. For example, your conclusion about an elevated class of engineers that use magic, which you explicitly said is an assumption.

Having worked with these processes and techniques myself for many years in other industries, I know from daily firsthand experience that this is not at all a fair characterization. What they do is one piece of one layer of defense. One aspect of their job is to say no until they cannot say no anymore. The new techniques are for finding more things to say no about.

However, you erroneously concluded that they must be concocting new ways to justify increasingly risky behavior. If you still feel this to be true, the burden of proof has firmly shifted back to you, for the purpose of this discussion. To be clear, I don't expect you to trust me for the purpose of changing your own opinion.

I don't have time to address everything you've written. Maybe the next thing to reflect on is what out-of-spec truly means and implies. On one hand, you're afraid of cost pressure. But on the other hand, you want to create larger cost pressure through a rigid system of rules that you alone adhere to. Something to consider revisiting yourself.

As for general concerns about nuclear, I think the public messaging needs to improve before a real discussion can happen about accepting new developments. Old technologies and risks still dominate the psyche, and new technologies are varied with different concerns from each other.