I feel the pain of being a close second. In fifth grade I kept a steady pace and was 20 yards from finishing first in the field day mini marathon but KERRY BEATTIE’S MOM who WORKED at our SCHOOL ran out and cheered her along right beside her until she passed me with literally ten feet to go. Yeah I did great, but second place didn’t get your name engraved on the plaque in the office now did it?
Ahem.
I have a lot of notes. 1) I run a Segway dealership so how dare you.
2) I’ve never had the filet o fish because I’m scared and I KNOW I like the burgers so why take the risk?
3) In The Expanse the fusion problem is solved by an invention called the Epstein drive (not a spoiler, just an interesting piece of world building).
4) I really hope people get their heads out of their asses about nuclear energy. Yeah there are some notable disasters in the past. But compared to other types of energy? I mean come on. Maybe this isn’t a great comparison, but it makes me think of self-driving cars. Yeah there have been a couple accidents, but compared to human drivers? It’s not even close. So now we’re getting the tech in drips and drabs (auto parallel parking, auto emergency braking, some semi self driving features) to ease all the butt beads into the tech. Which, fine. But how do we ease into nuclear energy? Your reactor is running or it ain’t.
Edit: butt HEADS not butt beads. That’s a different kind of post.
Hello DanT. I came upon your Technopoptimism and decided to start with this six part manifesto about Climate Change. This was great writing and the optimism part works for me (based on the title of my Newsletter -- no self promotion and no links I promise). I am a retired engineer who spent his career at a scientific firm, nuclear power generation, and later in food safety and service. I look forward to reading a bit more of your stuff but just wanted to say how your optimism is an important ingredient and might keep me coming back.
I probably disagree with parts of your theses in these six parts but that is reasonable since it was pretty broad. I will say, with a fair amount of expertise and experience, the underlying challenge, and "the failure to launch" for light water reactors everywhere is that they never got on a learning curve. There has never been an innovation, continuous improvement model that made such a thing possible. Continuous improvment and trial and error is the root of innovation but in cases like fission and fusion the risk/reward makes fashioning a learning curve near impossible. An example of the difficulty is the realization that 75 years of nuclear warhead design has likely only resulted in one or two breakthroughs. This is not a learning curve, but rather a very slow waterfall development model. I fear people do not often drill into root causes of things b/c it can be boring and laborious. I have rarely, if ever, seen a cogent lessons learned from Fukushima and the reality is the fundamental design of a GE BWR presents an existential risk that happened to align for coastal Japan. On a broader level, however, I think your outlook is the only of the four possibilities you present as having a chance to succeed regarding atmospheric gases and their impact on the climate. While it is not the greatest word for explaining the climate challenge, entropy is the singular issue, if one exists. Thanks so much for writing.
Your 4th installment was a good review of what we know regarding nuclear power, DanT.
When I worked as a newspaper reporter and editor during 60s and 70s, perhaps the most important lesson I learned was that skillfully crafted propaganda will most often trump well crafted and accurate news stories.
By the way, you can be forgiven for releasing your "rough draft," but only if you will forgive those of us elderly citizens who suffer from fumble fingers.
I feel the pain of being a close second. In fifth grade I kept a steady pace and was 20 yards from finishing first in the field day mini marathon but KERRY BEATTIE’S MOM who WORKED at our SCHOOL ran out and cheered her along right beside her until she passed me with literally ten feet to go. Yeah I did great, but second place didn’t get your name engraved on the plaque in the office now did it?
Ahem.
I have a lot of notes. 1) I run a Segway dealership so how dare you.
2) I’ve never had the filet o fish because I’m scared and I KNOW I like the burgers so why take the risk?
3) In The Expanse the fusion problem is solved by an invention called the Epstein drive (not a spoiler, just an interesting piece of world building).
4) I really hope people get their heads out of their asses about nuclear energy. Yeah there are some notable disasters in the past. But compared to other types of energy? I mean come on. Maybe this isn’t a great comparison, but it makes me think of self-driving cars. Yeah there have been a couple accidents, but compared to human drivers? It’s not even close. So now we’re getting the tech in drips and drabs (auto parallel parking, auto emergency braking, some semi self driving features) to ease all the butt beads into the tech. Which, fine. But how do we ease into nuclear energy? Your reactor is running or it ain’t.
Edit: butt HEADS not butt beads. That’s a different kind of post.
Hello DanT. I came upon your Technopoptimism and decided to start with this six part manifesto about Climate Change. This was great writing and the optimism part works for me (based on the title of my Newsletter -- no self promotion and no links I promise). I am a retired engineer who spent his career at a scientific firm, nuclear power generation, and later in food safety and service. I look forward to reading a bit more of your stuff but just wanted to say how your optimism is an important ingredient and might keep me coming back.
I probably disagree with parts of your theses in these six parts but that is reasonable since it was pretty broad. I will say, with a fair amount of expertise and experience, the underlying challenge, and "the failure to launch" for light water reactors everywhere is that they never got on a learning curve. There has never been an innovation, continuous improvement model that made such a thing possible. Continuous improvment and trial and error is the root of innovation but in cases like fission and fusion the risk/reward makes fashioning a learning curve near impossible. An example of the difficulty is the realization that 75 years of nuclear warhead design has likely only resulted in one or two breakthroughs. This is not a learning curve, but rather a very slow waterfall development model. I fear people do not often drill into root causes of things b/c it can be boring and laborious. I have rarely, if ever, seen a cogent lessons learned from Fukushima and the reality is the fundamental design of a GE BWR presents an existential risk that happened to align for coastal Japan. On a broader level, however, I think your outlook is the only of the four possibilities you present as having a chance to succeed regarding atmospheric gases and their impact on the climate. While it is not the greatest word for explaining the climate challenge, entropy is the singular issue, if one exists. Thanks so much for writing.
> “build a bigger Manhattan”
If only there were a name we could give to such a project. 🤔
Your 4th installment was a good review of what we know regarding nuclear power, DanT.
When I worked as a newspaper reporter and editor during 60s and 70s, perhaps the most important lesson I learned was that skillfully crafted propaganda will most often trump well crafted and accurate news stories.
By the way, you can be forgiven for releasing your "rough draft," but only if you will forgive those of us elderly citizens who suffer from fumble fingers.
Thank you for your body of work here on Substack.