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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 11th, 2023

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  • Sir_Osis_of_Liver@kbin.socialtoMemes@lemmy.ml3 browsers
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    1 year ago

    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.





  • 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.



  • I used to restore “barn bikes”, most of them were Japanese. It took me a while to figure out the difference between Japanese Industrial Standard (JIS) and Phillips screws. Of course over the years, a lot of the fasteners had already been cammed out by previous owners using a Phillips screwdriver in a JIS screw. I had to resort to the die grinder method far more than I’d have preferred.





  • “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.




  • 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.