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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 1st, 2023

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  • In theory, yes, you could make a mess, and any firmware is supposed to be certified to allow the device to be used.

    In practice, this has been a convenient excuse to keep a whole chip with a separate OS in every smartphone, and it is very difficult to isolate from the rest of the system (see Graphene OS efforts).

    I say all firmware should be opensource. Whether you’re allowed to change them or not is a separate question… for now.




  • Nuclear plants consist mainly of a shitton of concrete (and only the best sort is good enough). The production of that concrete causes a terrible amount of carbon emissions upfront.

    Actually, if you compare them to solar or wind at equivalent service, it’s not that straightforward:

    Renewables installed capacity is nowhere close to their actual production, nuclear can produce its nominal capacity in a very steady way.

    Wind turbines also need a lot of concrete, and much more metal for equivalent output. Solar panels need a lot of metals.

    Renewables need a backup source to manage their intermittency. It’s most often batteries and fossil plants these days. I don’t think I need to comment on fossil plants, but batteries production also has a very significant carbon emission budget, and is most often not included in comparisons. Besides, you need to charge the batteries, that’s even more capacity required to get on par with the nuclear plant.

    With all of these in consideration, IPCC includes nuclear power along with solar and wind as a way to reduce energy emissions.





  • I think it’s worse than that. We humans are inherently selfish and self-preserving.

    People who live far away from any coal mines do not feel threatened by coal, because it will not impact them directly (besides fu**ing up the planet, of course, but that’s another issue humans have with big pictures and long term effect correlation to present small scale actions).

    But most people can’t tell where a nuclear plant can be built, so it could be close enough to expose them to a risk of disaster?

    Therefore: “Nuclear is more dangerous than coal (for my personal case)”


  • 10 years from now, you might be in a situation where the grid is unstable and capacity is insufficient in front of demand. You will also be facing potential renewal of existing solar panels, wind farms, batteries storage, etc.

    If you lack capacity, any attempt at industry relocation locally will be a pipe-dream.

    And at that time, you’ll say either “it’s too late to rely on nuclear now” or “fortunately we’re about to get these new power plants running”. You’re not building any nuclear power plan for immediate needs, you’re building for the next decades.

    Meanwhile, one country will be ready to take on “clean production” and be very attractive to industrial projects because it already planned all of that years ago and companies will be able to claim “green manufacturing”. That country is… China!