[0]https://assets.rte-france.com/prod/public/2021-12/Futurs-Ene... in french
Then you read something like this and realize Asimov had a point!
when it comes to rebuilding a thing, i think whats important to wonder is would you even build it the same way? I remember seeing an article on ars about the engines for the Saturn 5. They took over a thousand hours of weld time at a level of skill and quantity that was built up during that time period. And they got them working via experimentation. Building the now was done differently. They 3d scanned the parts and used modern additive and cnc machining and used way less welds (one can argue additive metal is just cnc welding but I digress). And then simulated it in the computer. I remember a discussion about the baffles in the nozzle to stop pulsing in the combustion, that was figured out in destructive trials of this incredibly difficult machine. You'd do that in simulation now.
I likely got details wrong.
But it's to say that part of "they don't build em like they used to" also means "they learned". Look at bridges, they don't look like Brooklyn or Eads anymore. They used to build them with waaay too much steel.
That said roman concrete is a thing they've been chasing for a while
Roman concrete isn't some magical substance that we're hoping to replicate - we already know how it works - it just would really suck for the type of building projects we have now.
http://engineeringrome.org/understanding-roman-concrete/#Anc...
> Then you read something like this and realize Asimov had a point!
And also wildly over-optimistic (as is typical for SF). In the books, I think it took something like 10,000 years to loose the technical knowledge. I bet we could do it in 100.
A complicated technology like present aircraft, nuclear energy, petrochemical refining, pharmaceuticals, etc. is resting on the shoulders of a few thousand 40-something-year-olds that have the book learning of the 25-year-olds coupled with the experience and judgement that makes the technology practical, and particularly the knowledge of how to go from zero to one multiplied across many many sub-problems.
If something puts a particular technology out of practice for 20 years, many of those now-60-somethings, while still alive, will have forgotten much of what they knew, and not be suitable to put the hard hats back on and get in the field.
And this is not accounting for the effects of whatever catastrophe put the technology out of practice to begin with.
It only took a few years for the Manhattan project to create nuclear bombs once physics advanced to the point where we realized such a bomb wouldn't need to be the size of an aircraft carrier. Only a few years after that (and a much smaller budget) to make a non-exploding power reactor. There is no reason society couldn't duplicate that if we wanted.
Now the tribal knowledge does help a lot, it you still have it you can take a lot of time off. However it isn't needed.
We probably still have all the papers and journals and schematics and whatnot. What we don't have, however, is people with the appropriate training to make sense of those things. Without those people - without actual working knowledge of the technology - all that data is useless.
You can figure out what it does rather easily. Figuring out why it was done that way requires a lesson from the school of hard knocks in a lot of cases.
In the case of the nuclear industry those knocks can be rather significant.
IMO, the reality is that these plants will never convert to anything other than natural gas and will eventually be shut down, still running on natural gas.
Hydrogen is not a fuel, it's an energy storage mechanism, and not a very good one at that. If you're going to store energy there's much more efficient and/or cheaper ways of doing it.
Natural gas is still a good fuel but I don't think anyone in the US at least is under any illusion that these will ever run on anything other than natural gas.
The big problem with the hydrogen economy is not the conversion of the gas plants, it is having enough wind to generate the hydrogen in the first place. You need excess wind capacity to make hydrogen, and no private venture will invest into wind turbines that aren’t needed. Without a strong government hand shaping this market it will not happen.
If you are looking for a skeptical take, here’s a good one: https://cleantechnica.com/2021/12/06/new-eu-hydrogen-policy-...
Edit: the problem I am remembering is that hydrogen actually degrades the metals used in pipelines (https://www.hollandsentinel.com/story/opinion/columns/2021/0...) so I don’t see how any of this infrastructure is useful at all for hydrogen.
You can walk right into one if you are not careful - which is why you might see people walking with brooms in front of them around hydrogen equipment. :)
The real problem is the fact that environmentalists tend to hate dams, especially large hydro projects, so there's a major political battle on top of finding funding for these kinds of capital-intensive projects.
...unless you go radical? https://www.anu.edu.au/news/all-news/anu-finds-530000-potent...
In other unrelated news, safely maintaining the current nuclear electric power would have required a massive buildup starting 10 years ago (to replace the reactors that are currently arriving at the end of their life).
Though that sarcasm of mine is slightly outdated, a new promise (exploiting the recent high energy prices) is indeed to build some new reactors, postponing the previous promise of reaching 50% (from the current 75%) from 2025 to 2035 :
https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Macron-says-Fran...
(Because it's not like the politicians aren't aware of these issues, it's just that it's rarely politically convenient to raise them.)
It's not only the loss of knowledge, it's also the higher security standards. The last reactor being built, Flamanville 3, was supposed to be ready by 2012, is still being built and not estimated ready before the end of 2022.
Something like software engineering is a much safer career option, because the risk that your country will categorically ban it is pretty low. And because it doesn't tie you to a small number of possible employers or force you to live in a specific location.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zwentendorf_Nuclear_Power_Plan...
That's true of any political system, the problem with democracy is more that it's invariably fickle. A dictator may also be fickle, but there's a least a chance he has a long term vision with a late payoff that he pursues for a his lifetime.
What's the percentage split for civilian vs military employment for nuclear industry jobs?
We can make binding financial promises at least. It's entirely possible to grant nuclear workers each a personal 60 year annuity managed by a consortium of foreign banks, and requiring the worker to pick between working as an engineer, returning the annuity, or sitting in prison.
And making certain professions high-paying isn't as viable a strategy as you might think. Multiple factors go into that. Nuclear engineering isn't a popular thing, just like animal testing.