Sir_Osis_of_Liver

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I graduated high school in 1985. This movie spoke to me at the time.

PORKCHOP SANDWICHES!

There were a number of sites that FF choked on, so I just ended up using Edge. uBlock works with it, and that’s about all I need for extensions.

Not sure how people decided that Google is more altruistic with data handling than Microsoft, but here we are, I guess.

Weird flex, but okay

There is the UnPinterested! extension for Chrome. I think it still works.

That was just a few years ago, right?

At one point we had a remote office in a bank. One of my coworkers, W, had a pretty severe intestinal condition.

Anyway, I’m using the facilities, and one of the bankers comes in and heads to a stall. His phone rings while he’s in there, which he answers. It’s obviously a work call.

By this time, I’m heading over to wash my hands, just as W slams open the door with an panicked look. He violently shoulders open a stall, drops trousers, and unleashes just an absolutely unholy flume of waste, accompanied by a couple of mercy flushes.

“Uh, I’ll call you back”.

I’m assuming lessons were learned that day.

Yeah, the “difficult” part, I don’t understand. I’m 56 and figured out /kbin and Mastodon and how federation works within a few hours. So far, so good.

I was around for the early days of Fark, Digg, Twitter and Reddit. New sites are rough around the edges. That’s just the way it is. Things will get sorted in due time.

“Regulatory sabotage” is the latest talking point put out by the nuclear lobby. It’s a fabrication. Regulations were built based on incidents and accidents in the past. Building nukes on the cheap would be like building deep-sea submersibles without certifications. It’ll work fine, until it doesn’t.

Certification and licensing only make-up a tiny percentage of a plant’s upfront costs. Typically it’ll be dumped in with engineering/design costs and those would be down around 15% of capital costs, depending a lot on the project.

The French government has traditionally been very pro-nuclear, and the industry has broad support from the population aside from the Green movement. They have had extensive incentive programs for the industry, both domestic and for export. And yet, they have had no better luck in building plants on time and budgets. Flamanville-3 is the poster child for overbudget nuclear projects. Construction started in 2007, was supposed to be on-line in 2012, but is currently projected to be completed in 2024. The budget went from €3.3B to an estimated €20B as of a 2019 French court audit.

The “oil industry” doesn’t care about nuclear at all. Oil fired generators haven’t been a thing since the oil shocks of the 1970s. The few that are still around are typically used as backup or peakers, as they’re ridiculously expensive to run.

The coal industry would be so inclined, but in the US, coal plants have dropped from ~65% of generation to less than 20% of generation over the last 30 years. New plants are almost as expensive to build as nuclear, and as the plants get to end of life, they’re being decommissioned rather than refurbished. The writing is on the wall.

Of the fossil fuel industries, only natural gas is competitive, and the plants are far, far cheaper to build than about anything else. They are the preferred type of new generation for utilities that have access to gas. Only regulation or government mandates really slow down new gas plants.

Losses are a lot lower with DC transmission, but it has been traditionally more expensive. Costs are coming down now as more research and better power electronics are becoming available.

Edit. Here’s a pretty well know one in the US, the Pacific Intertie

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

Right now Sweden has adequate baseload, they are well positioned to go with more renewable.

UHVDC and HVDC links can be used to transmit power over thousands of kms. I think the longest line currently is in China a 1100kVDC line that stretches over 3300kms.

Even with conventional AC transmission, power generated in Churchill Falls and James Bay eventually ends up in population centres in Southern Canada and New England.

Or, now hear me out, people actually know the history of the most recent projects and are reacting based on information.

Olkiluoto-3 was supposed to cost €3B, and ended up being approximately €11B.
Flamanville-3 was supposed to cost €3.3B and will likely end up costing in excess of €20B.
Hinkley Point C was supposed to cost £16B, but will likely end up about £27B.

It’s the same in the US:
V.C. Summer 2&3 was supposed to be $9B, but was cancelled while under construction, once total costs were projected to hit $23B.
Vogtle 3&4 was supposed to be $12B, but is currently in the $30B range.

These projects ended up being up to 12 years behind schedule. And that was in a low interest rate era. With higher interest rates, these kinds of schedule overruns will be devastating.

As it was, Framatom (Areva) and Électricité de France needed government bailouts and EdF is being re-nationalized by the French government due to the sad shape of its finances. Westinghouse ended up in creditor protection due to the fallout from the V.C. Summer project, and was sold off by parent company Toshiba.

The “move fast and break stuff” techbro ethic might not work so well with pressure vessels.