this post was submitted on 25 Oct 2023
443 points (84.4% liked)

Memes

8267 readers
625 users here now

Post memes here.

A meme is an idea, behavior, or style that spreads by means of imitation from person to person within a culture and often carries symbolic meaning representing a particular phenomenon or theme.

An Internet meme or meme, is a cultural item that is spread via the Internet, often through social media platforms. The name is by the concept of memes proposed by Richard Dawkins in 1972. Internet memes can take various forms, such as images, videos, GIFs, and various other viral sensations.


Laittakaa meemejä tänne.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] -3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Some of the smartest people in the world have been working for over half a century to get better. And yet it's still getting more expensive to build them.

Maybe it's just hard and a dead end. Like the paddlewheel or dirigibles. At the time they felt like the future but there were unforeseen problems in scaling them up to meet expectations, and we found better, safer ways of doing the same thing.

Small nuclear reactors seem to work pretty well. Using them for deep space or disaster response would make sense. Just park a Seawolf off the coast and hook it up to support the grid.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It is not hard due to lack of knowledge, it is hard due to politics, and the fact that they require trained / skilled builders and operators.

So it's a cold start problem. As we aren't making many, we don't have much trained staff.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Haven't we been building reactors for decades though? Are all those guys dead along with the COBOL programmers?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

We have documentation, but you.need to have construction crews working to keep the specific routines and needs sharp.

Sure they have people "ready" to work on such projects but it takes significant time to tool and train up, even for the "ready" folks because they don't do these jobs often.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Are they significantly different from normal specialized plumbing/electrical/heavy construction work? Weird, complex things get built all the time these days and I'm curious how much different pouring concrete for a reactor is compared to, say, a bridge.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

How many dozens of years will the area around the bridge be inhospitable if the concrete is not poured, and mixed correctly? Who would take the risk doing the work except for people that are highly trained or extremely ignorant? There's a lot of specialized work involved with the whole process including creating the reactors, which until recently, have mostly been specialized designs for each plant. Lots of articles about nuclear energy and it's problems can be found online if you're interested in reading more.