black0ut
@black0ut@pawb.social
- Comment on Trump Administration Providing Weapons Grade Plutonium to Sam Altman 2 weeks ago:
SMRs are snake oil. No SMR has really been built, and they share the exact same problems as “normal” nuclear. They’re expensive, still super slow to deploy, expensive to maintain and still produce waste. And all without the econony of scale which is what helps big nuclear reactors be “affordable”. You can read multiple articles on them, but here’s an example.
https://www.theenergymix.com/the-nuclear-mirage-why-small-modular-reactors-wont-save-nuclear-power/
Archived version:
- Comment on Trump Administration Providing Weapons Grade Plutonium to Sam Altman 2 weeks ago:
Nuclear is not feasible and will never be.
For starters, it’s expensive. Really expensive. Insanely expensive. It also takes years to go online, and decades to decomission (which should be paid by the owner, but sometimes ends up being paid by the government because the owner went bankrupt or exploited a loophole). It’s also not quickly variable, so it needs a very constant demand.
Instead of investing in nuclear, one could invest in solar and wind. The latter can produce energy all day long, and if you have enough locations with wind farms, it starts averaging out and becoming constant. Both wind and solar are also quickly variable, so they can easily adapt to demand. They’re incredibly inexpensive and pay for themselves in a few years.
Batteries in the distribution network aren’t a good idea, and they’re also probably not gonna work. Even though they’re still cheaper than a nuclear plant, they’re pretty expensive and they have a lot of wear. Technologies have been advancing really fast, and we already have prototypes that look promising. However, they don’t make that much sense when you look at alternatives like pumped hydro. Pumped hydro is cheap, has a lot of capacity, can also quickly adapt to demand, and requires less maintenance than nuclear or batteries.
Another solution for energy storage is personal battery storage, which people install in their homes. Almost everyone who has solar already has a battery in their house, and even people without solar buy batteries to charge during the night and use up during the day. These batteries can be made with recycled electric car batteries, so they’re also carbon neutral and cheap.
And this is all without touching on the real issue of nuclear waste, which nuclear promoters always sweep under the rug. Yes, the amount of nuclear waste produced is minuscule. Yes, it’s not dangerous at all as long as it’s properly dealt with. Yes, it’s still better than the massive amounts of pollution that fossil fuels create. But it’s still a form of pollution, it’s dangerous when mishandled, and most importantly, it has to be kept in storage facilities for thousands of years. Those storage facilities are paid for by governments, which in turn are financed by our taxes. And we can only keep building them, because no waste goes out and new waste keeps going in. So even if the number in our electricity bill is small, we still pay more costs related to nuclear with our taxes.
TL:DR: Nuclear is expensive and slow to build and doesn’t adapt well to the variability of demand. Renewables, especially solar and wind, are cheap and effective, and there are many ways (not just batteries) to efficiently store excess energy to use during periods of low production. Nuclear also generates waste, which even though it may not be dangerous, is still expensive to store for thousands of years.
Disclaimer: I’m not endorsing fossil or non-renewable energy in any way, I’m all for net zero energy production. But nuclear is not net zero and not a good solution. We can completely ditch fossil fuels without relying on nuclear, and it can work. I live in a country where we’re decomissioning nuclear plants and we generate more than 50% of our electricity from renewables. On average, we generate close to the same amount of energy from wind than from nuclear (~20%).
- Comment on Trump memorandum brands anti-fascism and opposition to capitalism as “domestic terrorism” 1 month ago:
Minority Report is the name of the movie, for anyone curious.
- Comment on Apple steps up war of words with European regulators 1 month ago:
It doesn’t. It designs part of the chips that go into their phones.
Google also designs chips that go into its phones, and Microsoft has also designed chips and security co processors that have gone into PCs.
(Of course, I’d never consider a Microsoft “security co processor” secure, nor an apple or google one).
- Comment on Apple steps up war of words with European regulators 1 month ago:
Apple gets money from both their monopoly on user data and their high prices. That’s why it’s above Microsoft and Google in market cap, even though it doesn’t have nearly as much infrastructure and reach.
- Comment on The 2025 Ig Nobel Prize Winners 1 month ago:
There are many free and libre OCR programs, that have way more accuracy than an “AI”
- Comment on The McDonald's employee who called on Luigi has never received their "reward", folks chasing the 100k for Kirk may not either... 2 months ago:
It can’t be luigi because he was at my house at that time.
- Comment on How OnlyFans Piracy Is Ruining the Internet for Everyone | Innocent sites are being delisted from Google because of copyright takedown requests against rampant OnlyFans piracy. 2 months ago:
I mean like 89% of the shit on Reddit is some OF model advertising.
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- Comment on Begun the kernel wars have 2 months ago:
Client side anti-cheat (the one installed on your PC) will never work, it’s just fundamentally impossible. They can restrict user freedom as much as they want, but the hardware still isn’t under their control.
The only reason they push for those kinds of anti-cheats is because they don’t have to pay for the extra processing of server side anti-cheat, and they also get the benefit of a backdoor into your computer that you may never fully uninstall without buying a new computer.
- Comment on The elders crave the slop 3 months ago:
Promotes crypto, it’s based on chromium and the CEO is an asshat.
- Comment on Statement on Stop Killing Games - VIDEOGAMES EUROPE 4 months ago:
Minecraft, the game that sold the most copies in history, has a huge infrastructure of community-hosted servers, some with tens of thousands of players playing at the same time. The community has created different flavors of the server software, optimized it, added mod support and even reprogrammed parts of it.
At this point, it’s hard for me to believe how someone could say a community can’t run game servers with a straight face.
- Comment on VPN Registrations Increase by 1,000%, less than Hour After PornHub Blocked France From Accessing its Website. 5 months ago:
It really isn’t that slow, last time I tried to homebrew a working DNS tunnel it maxed my 100mbps card. I never needed the extra speed so I didn’t try to see how fast it could be on a 1gbps card
- Comment on Google confirms more ads on your paid YouTube Premium Lite soon 5 months ago:
I’ve started to go 15-20 minutes late. I’ve never missed a minute of movie, but I’ve skipped so many ads.
- Comment on Amazon is reportedly training humanoid robots to deliver packages 5 months ago:
If I get one of those, I’m definitely killing it and stealing its copper. Amazon can pay for the repairs.
- Comment on TIL my decision to drive a 22' full cab pickup truck and vehemently oppose urban zoning reform makes me a defender of social justice, a warrior for the downtrodden, and more progressive than 99% [cont 5 months ago:
I think it is, yeah. It has a metro station relatively close by, which food delivery people often use to get around the city center. The streets around it are also very walkable, and you can go by bike. I don’t think it is a problem for food delivery at all.
- Comment on At least there's no ads... 6 months ago:
You just proved my point. I said none of that.
- Comment on At least there's no ads... 6 months ago:
Tell me you don’t know what you’re talking about without telling me you don’t know what you’re talking about.
- Comment on Virginia passes law to enforce maximum vehicle speeds for repeat speeders 6 months ago:
The reality is that if you want to have access to that privilege, you should not abuse it. The fact that communities were built in a car centric manner does not imply you can do whatever you want because nobody can take your car away. Either you drive responsibly, or you don’t drive.
- Comment on Virginia passes law to enforce maximum vehicle speeds for repeat speeders 6 months ago:
I’m not saying you should be taken to prison. All I’m saying is if you don’t know how to drive safely, you shouldn’t drive. If people are unable to drive at safe speeds, they should not drive at all, and it’s up to them to figure out an alternative (public transport, bike) or find a job that they can walk to.
I’m not leaving anyone without the option to go to work or drive anywhere, if they want that they can just drive responsibly.
- Comment on Virginia passes law to enforce maximum vehicle speeds for repeat speeders 6 months ago:
That’s a slippery slope. The limits are there for a reason, and it’s considered unsafe to go faster. Everyone should be doing the speed limit, and if people consistently drive over the limit, they should absolutely have their licenses removed.
- Comment on Virginia passes law to enforce maximum vehicle speeds for repeat speeders 6 months ago:
If driving is essential for you, then you shouldn’t drive like an asshole, go over the speed limit multiple times or drive recklessly, endangering others.
If you’re putting people in danger because you can’t understand the implications of driving a multi-ton metal box at insane speeds, you shouldn’t be allowed to do it.