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The report being on a site with a bias does make me want to read with a more critical eye, as everything is being spun to look as bad as possible.

The behaviour described (not wanting anything written) might very well be standard operating procedure with any company with decent legal counsel. If it is common behaviour, it is not some sort of Muskism, part of his evil scheming as is implied in the article, instead it is a reflection of the world we live in.

How different is this from any other similar sized companies behaviour?

This site doesn't seem that impartial/unbiased. From a linked article on Tesla:

> It’s also worth noting that the above email was sent after 2 a.m. Pacific, which isn’t specifically relevant to the faked video. But it does make it look like Musk is a loser with no friends or anything else to do other than work. Loser.

> it worked with most of the population still saying things like "you can even sue someone if you spill your own coffee".

I don't understand how what you wrote gels with the grandparents comment of:

> Lastly, the customer removed the lid of the coffee while between her legs, which is how the cup was crushed and coffee ran all over her.

> Well, a lot of traditional unionized blue collar union jobs went overseas. So the employers didn't have a lot of control over that.

Who exactly was sending these blue collar jobs overseas if it was not the employers?

The way LCOE is calculated, it does not provide any indication of how stable the source it. Solar doesn't work at night, it has significant seasonal swings in output. Wind has similar ups and downs.

Stability of output is a very important (and valuable) characteristic of a power source, and it is completely ignored in the LCOE calculation.

One major thing going for nuclear is that is has a stable and consistent output. It's great that solar and wind beat all options on a $$ when you ignore time effects. But if stability is important (and many argue it is), then solar and wind rely on masses of storage, overprovisioning, and extensive upgrades to the transmission network, then let's bring those into the discussion and do a fair comparison.

That's fine. 4-9's was just an number I pulled out of my ass, and it wasn't really my point. My point is that when talking about energy sources, LCOE is not a good measure as it doesn't take into account things like reliability over time (whatever your target reliability is).

Over-provisioning has a cost. If it is required to achieve characteristics required to do a like-for-like comparison, it should be accounted for.

The problem with these Nuclear conversations is that people are pushing their preferred option, always without coming to some sort of agreement on what the requirements are for the power generation option. Without agreeing on what needs to be achieved, everyone talks past each other, arguing with straw-man solutions.

There is no doubt that a mixture of over provisioning, a mix of energy sources (wind, hydro, solar), mix of storage, an extensive and resilient grid can successfully replace less-intermittent power sources. What I am interested in is what it will cost, and how that compares to nuclear.

People from both "sides" always make claims that make their preferred solution look more favorable. The non-nuclear people point at measures like LCOE which are misleading. I'm sure pro-nuclear people are doing the same thing.

Personally, I do not have a side, I just want real numbers for replacing coal/gas and getting a similar or better level of grid stability.

> But note that even with significant over provisioning solar and wind is still cheaper than the cheapest nuclear costs if you over-provision in the low cost, high generation areas (another argument for transmission)

Can you provide some sort of evidence for this claim? How much does a UHV line cost per KM? How much will it take to build out? How much storage is required? How much over-provisioning is required?

Levelized cost of energy doesn't take into account time effects, so is a poor tool to compare nuclear to intermittent energy sources like solar and wind. If you require a 99.99% guaranteed output at all times of the year, solar and wind require a prohibitive amount of storage, and significant over-provisioning. LCOE does not account for this.

This is not to say solar and wind + storage are less economical than nuclear. But LCOE is not a good measure of real costs.

Don't misunderstand: I am a huge proponent of solar/wind + storage and grid interconnectivity. But you have completely talked past my point.

> Levelized cost already takes into account the capacity factor of the sources. On a per-peak watt basis, PV is 10x cheaper than nuclear.

You sound like you know what you are talking about, so I presume that you know that one of the limitations of Levelized cost is that it doesn't control for "time effects" which was the entire thrust of my comment.

> We can look at the cost of providing steady power (synthetic baseload) from renewables + storage

Yes, that's what I suggested is a fair comparison.

> any nuclear plant started today could come online, renewables beat nuclear. It's important to use more than just batteries for storage; batteries are not well suited to long term storage.

There are a lot of unstated assumptions/conditions here. Do you have any references I can read?

This is interesting/surprising and I would like to learn more, but the linked study is truncated behind a Paywall.

Many of the newer reactor designs tout passive control mechanisms as their major selling points. We should be wary of claims of "idiot proof" designs, as we can always seem to be able to find a bigger idiot, but the risk of runaway reactions is far less with these newer designs.

I'm a big fan of wind and solar, but we should compare like for like. AFAICT the numbers quoted here are for wind and solar without storage.

We need to compare solar and wind to these SMRs with the desired output characteristics. How acceptable is dropping the output for 10 hours each night, and lose 50% of your max output during long periods? If that's ok for your application, Solar without storage is probably the perfect solution. If you 99.99 of your time to be at a certain output level, all year round, solar is going to require overbuilding, and a weeks worth of storage (which changes the costs per MWh considerably).

Likewise, if you need a lot of heat for your application, solar is not going to be as good as an SMR.

The best technology is most likely going to be different depending on the use case. SMR would operate in a decently sized niche in our current world. What is not clear to me is how big this niche is, and how quickly it will shrink as gridescale storage tech becomes more economical.

They are the size of a shipping container, not prohibitively expensive to move. The customers buying these things have no ability to recycle/refuel or dispose of the spent fuel. I presume any purchase agreement comes with a commitment to deal with it at end of life.

I guess if the supplier goes out of business, you might have trouble, but I'd expect these companies are putting things in place for that eventuality e.g. insurance.

The bans should (and could) extend to classes of compounds, instead of just some exact compound. They manage to do it with psychedelics, that they haven't with these problematic compounds is probably because industry has a larger sway on legislators than drug enthusiasts.

> But that stifles industry and innovation

Subsidies are what stifles innovation.

I _think_ you are not being sarcastic, but apologies if I am misunderstanding. Allowing industry to externalize costs does not promote innovation. It does the opposite, as offloading those costs to others is effectively subsidizing the behaviour.

> Though I don't really understand why governments need a single currency.

"need" is probably too strong a word. A single currency just makes things easier.

Having a single currency, or using many different currencies is sort of like the difference between a barter system vs a money system (multiple currencies is equivalent to bartering). If the buyer is trying to buy in a currency that is not desired by the seller (i.e. there is nothing that they want being sold in that currency), the seller has to offload it somehow to someone that does want it. There is a cost to that, in additional risk and effort.

Bartering works ok, up until a point. But a shared currency just removes friction, so is preferable.

I sympathize, but is this not just something you as a parent/consumer can control? i.e. why don't YOU stick to lego classic, and let lego do what they want.

I guess received gifts would be a problem, but it seems presumptuous that your way of doing lego is the right way.

They didn't want it to happen, but they definitely knew it was a strong possibility.

Hehehe, thanks both ;-p

Noted, thanks!

Queue the anecdotes of people feeling unsafe, and others who feel completely safe. Queue the speculation about whether this had underlying reasons, other than what is claimed. Queue statements of crime stats being down, and counter claims of people not reporting anything because nothing is ever done.

As an outsider, it's really interesting how varied everyone's perceptions on this is. How everyone has a different truth. It makes you wonder how accurate history books are, if people cannot agree what is happening right in front of them.

It's even more interesting when you consider how much bigger China and the US are compared to Australia.

Edit: although I do wonder if all the "planned" projects will become reality

I would be interested in seeing some of these sorts of posts if you could provide links.

Sure, it's not ideal, and it would be great if economical recycling techniques are developed, but over their lifetime they produce a whole lot less emissions than most of the alternatives.

If we're going to start counting CO2 emissions in the production of these things, surely every single energy generation technique looks pretty crummy as well.

Btw: I really want SMR to succeed. A mix of solar, wind, SMRs, and a smart grid seems like a great way to go.

Eventually this pressure will go away though, as panels can only get so efficient. Future generations of panels are unlikely to make such big improvements.

And because thus is an economic pressure/incentive, its really the opposite of what the original quote was suggesting. In 20 years we throw it all away because there has been amazing improvements doesn't gel well with their "this will last 60 years" statement.

The links you shared about solar panels don't paint a hugely worrying picture. The vast majority of materials in panels are inert, and newer panels are using less and less toxic materials like lead.

And all the talk about panels and wind turbine blades ending up in landfills sounds alarming, but these "big" numbers they spout need to be put in context. I'm betting it is just a tiny percentage on the total landfill generated by society, and the costs mentioned in those linked articles don't seem "unaccounted for", they seem pretty reasonable at a few dollars per panel.

"A small modular reactor should last a minimum of 60 years. Probably more, up to 100, frankly, if maintained properly. Wind and solar, after about 20 years you have to replace everything.”

I'm a big fan of the SMR concept, but this line about having to throw everything away for solar after 20 years is just wrong.

Starship is a massive two stage rocket/ship. Most powerful rocket in history. This is the first attempt at launching the full stack. To reach orbit, a rocket needs to be highly optimised, with little room for error. If errors occur, it could explode. Errors are most likely to happen the first time you try something.

I am aware it's not strictly aiming to reach orbit

>> My company immediately sues anyone who leave to join a competitor

> So do Elon's companies

Sorry to be pedantic, but there is a big difference between "sues anyone", and Tesla suing what must be a small percentage of leavers.

And your links describe lawsuits not for "leaving and joining a competitor", but for sabotage and trying to walk out with trade secrets, schematics and code.

I'm not sure the definition of lockdown, but it appeared effective in Australia, New Zealand, and Taiwan.