Kon5ole

I think the theory is that AI will remove most of the value from the custom software industry. So they don't see much value in entering that industry.

It'd be like Tesla entering the oil refinery business or Waymo starting driving schools.

>But people aren’t necessarily great at intuitively understanding risk; nuclear _feels_ much scarier.

Nuclear is much scarier. Your argument fails to account for the extreme effort spent in order to keep it safe!

In the US, high explosives kill fewer people per year than painkillers. Despite this extraordinary statistic, we're not about to let anyone buy high explosives over the counter. Because we know that high explosives are in fact, much more dangerous than painkillers.

Same goes for nuclear. We have kept it safe(ish) so far, but we know what can happen if we don't.

>i.e. 0.02677/kWh. Where would this measure as too high?

Well, there are a few plants in the US (for example Kewaunee, rancho seco) that were closed for not being profitable. In one instance the owner took an over 300M usd write-off instead of continuing operations. So it measured too high there.

The explanation is likely that the 0.02677 is not the actual total costs of operations. In fact the report states it plainly on page 2: "not the full cost of owning and operating a nuclear plant."

I fully support your idea to identify ALL the costs not just for nuclear, but let's start with nuclear, since that's clearly where the largest misconception exists today.

>Proposing e-fuels is basically saying we should use a battery with higher conversion losses.

Thats dismissive, it is also a basically limitless capacity battery. We already have periods of 0 electricity costs, more electricity than we know what we can do with. This will increase, and having it generate e-fuel would be a nice option for it.

>Whereas if you're comparing the 1970s construction costs to the modern day operating costs to imply that the operating costs are high, that's obviously not a useful comparison to begin with.

If we learn that even if we make new nuclear as cheap as old nuclear, it's is still not cheap enough, surely it is a very useful comparison?

It's not useful if the goal is to defend nuclear at all costs, I'll give you that, but that's not a worthy goal.

>And then the question is, what's the most economical way to get those things?

Absolutely, and that's why finding out the real, actual truth of the costs is very important.

If you add the true cost to society from things like Sellafield, Asse II, the interest-free loans, the army personnel and national labs handling waste, the decades of countermeasures for Chernobyl in dozens of countries and so on - if you add upp all that, perhaps generating e-fuel is actually cheaper than nuclear?

If not already, the Chinese have taught us that once you get the wheels rolling, prices decimate pretty rapidly. They made solar and batteries viable, maybe we could do e-fuels?

Synthetic fuel, batteries everywhere, pumped storage, geothermal, gravity, pressurized air, heated salt - maybe all of those are actually cheaper than nuclear, if we really add up ALL the costs of nuclear?

>That includes paying principal and interest on the construction loans, right?

One would think! But no, all US plants except Vogtle and Watts are paid off long ago.

Now, why did you just throw that out there without checking? Are you not interested in knowing the truth, you just want to argue for nuclear no matter what the facts say?

If so, let me assure you that neither one of us will enjoy a continued discourse on the topic.

Just have to say though - that the Swedish reactors were closed because electricity was cheap is the point. Sweden basically stated that even when paid off, nuclear can't survive if electricity is cheap. But surely we, the taxpayers and businesses and industries, want it to be cheap?

>The primary cost for nuclear is the initial construction.

That's a common claim but it's not really correct.

Firstly, the average plant in the US spends it's construction costs every 2-3 years, I assume the situation is similar in the EU. New power plants are much more expensive of course, because the old ones were built before Chernobyl, Fukushima, 9/11 and other incidents that revealed horrible security flaws in existing plants and procedures.

Secondly, the costs of handling Chernobyl are way, way higher than the total cost of construction for all nuclear plants in the EU combined. Similarly the cost of managing Fukushima is way higher than the cost of constructing all the nuclear plants in Japan. These costs are of course never added to the cost of nuclear power, since nobody operating nuclear plants has any chance of paying such sums. But they are in fact a larger factor than the construction costs were.

These experiences did have some effect, thankfully, in that made new power plants more expensive, because we know that we must take any conceivable measure to prevent more Chernobyls and Fukushimas from happening.

And thirdly, the reason why Sweden closed the two most recent reactors was cost, despite them being paid off a long time ago. Meaning there is significant cost even after the construction is paid.

So it seems that the claim that "construction is the main cost" comes from the operator's point of view. Basically "the construction is the largest part WE have to pay, because taxpayers cover the rest".

I provided citations for my assertions, artificial interference in capitalism (by means of communism) has caused famine.

What assertion are you lacking citation for? The hubble and webb telescopes vs the ??? communist space telescopes? Tony Hawk vs the ??? communist skater? John Carmack vs the ??? communist game developer? VW and Toyotas 20 million cars per year vs Trabant?

Maybe you could provide some examples of how communism has provided opportunities to all in a way that capitalism hasn't?

I don't think any previous disruption was as destructive as this. Firstly it happens much faster and affects many more people at once, and secondly it doesn't seem to create any new jobs for the ones it replaces.

The industrial revolution took at least a century depending on how you count, and it created more jobs than it destroyed.

The introduction of computers obliterated whole office floors of employees at banks and insurance companies but it created even more work at companies that sold computers and software and consultant hours.

Ai takes millions of jobs and replaces them with a few thousand caretakers at megawatt datacenters. The workforce at Anthropic and OpenAI is comparable to a game development studio. If all they end up doing is reducing the workforce of JP Morgan by 10%, society still has a net loss of jobs.

That said, it's at least possible Ai will eventually end up creating a bunch of new work indirectly, by enabling people to do more than they ever imagined they could. One can hope.

You may be right that white collar work can be replaced but I don't think it will be. Current society can't function with a majority of the population unemployed.

It's a catch-22 for the companies as well, since white collar work is presumably done because a company has customers, and most of their customers are white collar workers. At least in the US and Europe.

>It won't have to win by being better

I agree but it's also better. On average for most programming tasks I think humans are as "defeated" as coders as we are as chess players.

The machines will not only be as good or better than you at the DB design, the business logic, the performance critical algorithms, the UX, the performance tweaks, the accessibility standards, security holes, browser compatibilities, laws and regulations and whatever else you need to make the whole solution.

It will also write user manuals in any language, and rewrite them when needed even on a friday evening. It absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are DE...wait, I mean DONE!

So the situation for coders is even worse than it was for the weavers. The machine delivers not only cheaper and faster, but also better. :-/

>Capitalism creates increasing levels of inequality over time while nominally providing "equal opportunity" to all.

I think a better summary is that capitalism creates more opportunities for all. Not equal, just more.

It creates more food, more clothes, more libraries, symphony orchestras, skateboard parks, cars, ships, planes, particle accelerators and space telescopes than any other system we have come up with, which means more opportunities for people wanting to be pilots, captains, skateboarders, scientists or violinists.

Whenever someone has tried to remove the inequality aspect of this, it has resulted in a loss in opportunities for all. Including the opportunity to have food every day.

How did the market support all these weird inventions that required so many unique, precise components?

CD's, LP's, 8-tracks, CRT's, minidisc, microcassettes, VHS, Jaz and Zip drives, laserdiscs. Needed lasers, magnet sensors, tiny motors, gears and whatnot.

Today everything seems to be a chip in a box and still it's often more expensive.

>having enough battery to cover an extended outage is very expensive

It sure used to be, but I think battery backups that cover a whole house for 24h is cheaper than a diesel generator that can do the same now. Depending on your situation you can make it back in savings even without solar panels. (Charge when electricity is cheap, use when expensive).

Piped gas generators is a thing I had no idea existed until now! Edit: Curious to learn if they are a common thing?