SECProto

I was responding to the thread, which is comparing nuclear to natural gas.

Comparing to renewables is a different story - it can be done but it's much more complex (not dispatchable, seasonally variable) but certainly renewables makes sense in some or many places, (and in all places for a portion of the supply). I'm all in favour as long as it is actually done with the intent of getting to zero CO2, and doesn't just stall when it gets to the more difficult part of the transition. So many places get to 50% annual generation as renewable and throw up their hands about the remainder and leave it on coal/oil/natural gas

The one thing that low carbon grids around the world share is high portion of nuclear (or hydro, which you can't build unless it naturally exists). Therefore, the only thing a SMR cost should be compared to is other nuclear reactors. Natural Gas may be cheaper (startup cost), may be more expensive (ongoing fuel), or will definitely be more expensive (carbon in the atmosphere doesn't go away), but regardless there is no reason to compare nuclear to natgas.

Certainly you can use those, but they're not mandatory (here in Canada at least). Can easily get a card and use physical bank and ATM to do everything, and website logins use email as 2fa.

Or 3928 stone stones

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_(unit)

I'd note that south or southeast would work, even southwest might. But East would clearly lead to the Netherlands. (they may also eat better bread there too, I wouldn't know)

I would note that the population increase 2008-present in the EU (340M to 350M) is much lower than the US (305M to 345M), which could account for a rather significant difference too. I don't think either of these is a "smoking gun" but they both seem pretty significant confounding factors.

> Here's a graph of total freight volume (a proxy for the real physical economy)

In 2008, people and businesses were still buying new computers every year or two, printing everything on paper, buying physical media. I don't know anyone that does this anymore. I don't think that is a good proxy.

> And most of them are under 1GW

No, almost every one is above 1GW - divide the net capacity by the number under construction to see the power [1]. They appear to be almost all CAP1400 (1.4GW), Hualong One (1.0GW), or CAP1000 (1.0GW). I see a single Linglong 1 (100MW) under construction. Proposed are all above 1GW.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_China#Future_...

> Can anyone defend this? Why would anyone purchase anything from this company ever again?

I mean, if you want my personal reason - I assume any company warranty is barely worth the paper it's printed on - I'm very hesitant to do a bios update ever, only to address specific issues. So yea, I'd buy another framework (currently have a 12, and I love it despite the many flaws)

> US median household wealth is ~$193k

Emphasis mine. US median household is 2.53 persons [1]. 193/2.53 = 76k, which is within spitting distance of the 69k per person listed. The wikipedia is median wealth per capita

[1] https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/HCN010222*

> Planes still need like half throttle to maintain altitude,

Yes, bit less than half, but anyway that is exactly why I said takeoff would be the peak power output.

> that’s why airplane engines are rebuilt every few thousand hours vs lasting hundreds of thousands of miles (tens of thousands of hours) for a car engine that only uses a small fraction of its power to keep a car moving.

Ratio of max power to average power is very low on the list of reasons why a gas turbine engined plane needs maintenance more frequently than a piston engined car.

> Those are still mostly dependent on fossil fuels, although they use less.

I don't think the word "mostly" belongs in that sentence - "partially" might work.

It depends significantly on how far you drive - I know 4 people with Plug-in hybrids. They all use ~0 fossil fuels most of the time, and only have to fill their gas tank when they go on a longer driving trip (roughly every 4-6 weeks or whatever). Considering how fuel inefficient city driving is, it's enough to eliminate at least half, maybe 2/3 of their fuel consumption.

> I'd guess the actual flight time was only 10 of the 27 minutes, 30 kWh used over 10 minutes is 300kW of peak power

I would note this line from the press release:

> its all-electric propulsion system delivered more than one megawatt of power.

I assume this was peak during takeoff.

Yup, exactly - which is what makes the regulated descriptors (eg "juice") so important!

> it is impossible in canada to sell swedish meatballs - cant have the onion or breadcrumbs

I don't know if that's just an attempt at humour, but it doesn't feel like it, so I'll correct you: that's factually incorrect, you can buy them commonly.

https://www.realcanadiansuperstore.ca/en/swedish-beef-meatba...

https://www.compliments.ca/en/products/meatballs-swedish-680...

> it’s unreasonable to spend tax dollars on saving people from that ambiguity

I quite appreciate the taxpayer funded regulation of technical terms - I like being able to buy ice cream at the store and know if it's "ice cream" or "frozen dessert". Or "cream cheese" vs "cream cheese product". Or many other similar things.

The Jamaican patty and fish sauce ones are problematic, but also happened 25-40 years ago.

> The truth is that Canadians simply don't seem all that interested in purchasing American dairy products

Yup, taking this a bit off topic: I've always bought dairy products with the blue cow on it (signifies Canadian dairy). The US dairy industry only wants to export into Canada when they have excess, and leave us dry when they don't, so i strongly support Canadian dairy production.

> Call it 5kw/h in 1/60 hours, thats 3000kw, at 700v thats still roughly 4000 amps. (Please correct my head math.)

5 kWh * 60 = 300 kW

at 800V (typical charging voltage) that is 375A

(still huge, but an order of magnitude less)

I'm saying that data (not anecdotes) on those would've been better justification for your ranking.

That said, for most people, going abroad for surgery or to buy a home is not an option.

Also Canada, and I disagree pretty strongly with your post. Those two statistics have little bearing on happiness. Housing costs and healthcare access are much bigger concerns.

If it brings you moral discomfort, why do you shop at whole foods? Shopping at Walmart (or whole foods!) would also bring me moral discomfort, so I just ...don't do it.

> NASA's 25 billion dollar budget for 2025 was a paltry ~.04% of the total government budget.

I'm sorry, I think you have a math or data error here. The US government budget for 2025 was not $62.5 trillion dollars.

That's because Nova launcher sold to new owners (whose presumed only goal is to serve ads)

> Yeah in his case it's his editor he really misses which is probably why he hasn't released anything since she died.

You're referring to Sally Menke? Tarantino has released 3 movies since then.

> Something like 50% of marine fuel usage is shipping fossil fuels around the world

Note that marine shipping is extraordinarily fuel efficient (from a gCO2/(t*km) basis), so I doubt that it adds a lot on a per ton of fuel basis. We just ship a lot of fossil fuels.

This [1] graph looks to be in the right ballpark from what i remember in school 15 years ago, i didn't verify it in depth but +- an order of magnitude better than the next best method is roughly right

https://image2.slideserve.com/4166134/gco-2-t-km-of-freight-...

Yes, doubling then subtracting 10% of the resultant works because that is the same as multiplying by 1.8 :)

When going the other way and dividing, I similarly find it mentally easier to multiply by 10/18 (rather than just divide by 1.8)

No need to simplify this.

(F - 32) / 1.8 = C

C * 1.8 + 32 = F

I personally find the math just as easy to do accurately. For example, 87F -32/1.8 = 55/1.8 =~30.5C. Compare that to your approximate method, which would give 28.5C, which is just wrong

(Maybe I just got really good at this when working a public facing job with a lot of American tourists - they would ask what our celsius temperatures were "in real units", so I got quite comfortable converting the air and water temps. Fahrenheit never once became intuitive to me, though.)

> I can run faster than the TTC streetcar

Yeah, so can I - doesn't mean much. The streetcar is not where TTC excels in ridership, the subway and buses are.

> It's for just 50k vehicles, which means that the first 50k that get sent will be all Luxury high margin electric vehicles. [...] Why would anyone use there quota for cheap stuff?

If you find a better primary source, you'll see that the lower price vehicles are the only thing allowed at the low tariff rate:

The deal covers vehicles priced at $33,000 or less, and other cars sold at that price are already manufactured offshore

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/livestory/canada-china-elec...

> Massive trucks are useful for construction.

No, trucks are useful, but a massive modern pickup truck is much less useful in the urban context than a standard pickup truck from 30 years ago. The bed size has remained the same, the outside envelope of the vehicle has ballooned massively.

> You should get better transit so less people have cars.

Toronto has a very high (for north america) transit mode share