Nuclear Weapons and Nuclear Politics

...Well holy shit, I already heard about how energy-intensive it is but I didn't know it was to THAT degree.

Do you have sources for that? Because I'm going to start citing that figure in any conversation about bitcoin.

Isn't that kind of the government's job? Why would Microsoft need to do this themselves? Or be allowed to, for that matter?

Wait, is it legal for companies to set up their own power generators?

Yes, it's perfectly legal with due diligence. Quite a few companies already generate their own power off the grid.

In some cases, they generate more than enough for their own use and thus sell the surplus to the power company.

Huh, interesting. Not sure if private companies building their own nuclear power plants is such a great idea, though.

A lot of nuclear power plants around the world are already built and/or run by private corporations — Westinghouse, TEPCO and (formerly) Siemens come to mind. The Netherlands' sole commercial nuclear power plant at Borssele, Zeeland, is run by RWE AG, a Germany-based company.

Electricity in the US is typically handled by private entities, and it seems nuclear is no exception. For example, Constellation Energy owns the Braidwood Nuclear plant.

I don't think it's an intrinsically bad idea, so long as there's safety standards and inspections and such.

Edited by Protagonist506 on Sep 28th 2023 at 2:05:20 AM

Heck, one of the more iconic fictional nuclear power plants, the one from The Simpsons, is a privately owned business.

Edited by M84 on Sep 28th 2023 at 5:10:49 PM

As long as they don't use an AI to look after the plant.

According to this, training ChatGPT-3 takes up to 10 GWh of power. The 200 TWh figure is from here.

There's reports that the next water discharge from Fukushima is on October 5.

Brace for more protests from China/Korea/"concerned" activist groups/Japanese fishermen.

I guess you're right, I just never thought of power plants as privately owned.

@M84: That's not an argument for it being a good thing, of course.

Never said it was. The point is that privately owned nuclear plants have been a known thing for a long time.

Okay wow.

LONDON, Oct 2 (Reuters) - Rolls-Royce (RR.L) and five other firms have passed the first stage of Britain's competition to select developers of small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs), the government said on Monday.

So when will the nuclear-powered RR Phantom be out?

Rolls-Royce builds reactors for British (and at some point down the line, Australian) nuclear submarines.

https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20231004/p2g/00m/0na/069000c

Malaysia already had seafood inspections way before the first water discharge from Fukushima before Ichiro Miyashita, the minister of agriculture, forestry and fisheries, served scallops during an event in Kuala Lumpur.

Putin said today that Burevestnik has been succesfully tested.

What's a Burevestnik?

Basically a nuclear powered cruise missile.

If true, it will make it the first nuclear-powered “aircraft”.

https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2023/10/22e8535716af-iaea-team-joined-by-china-takes-samples-after-fukushima-water-release.html

An IAEA team is due to head to Fukushima to get water samples.

It'll include researchers from Canada, China and South Korea.

Beijing is still (not surprised) butthurt about this and called Japan to stom dumping the wastewater.

https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2023/10/7af3b1dc45f0-1-mil-nuisance-calls-made-to-japan-embassy-in-china-over-fukushima.html

1 million calls were made to the Japanese Embassy in Beijing over the Fukushima wastewaster issue.

American Embassy reports that they're officially buying the (Fukushima) seafood for American military facilities and American/expat personnel stationed within those places.

Honestly, there are already so many other things polluting the ocean that radiation isn't even in the top ten. If you're really worried about eating contaminated seafood, you should have stopped eating seafood a long time ago.

That or stick with farm-raised seafood.

I don't know about anyone else, but I am utterly sick of this bullshit nationalist posturing that's hiding behind radiophobia as an excuse to vent long pent up hostility against Japan.

Edited by M84 on Oct 30th 2023 at 11:43:41 PM

I'm sure everyone else is, but considering them people in China (and Korea) aren't... although I'm seeing a slight rise of this "concern" in some Southeast Asia and Pacific Island countries.

Edited by Ominae on Oct 30th 2023 at 9:52:02 AM