Nick Peterson
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thetecheng.bsky.social
Nick Peterson
@thetecheng.bsky.social
680 followers 1.3K following 3.4K posts
Camus' greatest rock pusher. Currently doing design work on high tech labs & manufacturing facilities. Interested in anything and everything. He/Him/They
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To quote a great military theorist
Yeah, AI is quickly going to run into the issue of it doesnt matter how much money you throw at the problem, the necessary hard infrastructure is going to take a decade plus to deliver. No one was really ready for this boom.
This is because even gas turbines like some data centers are using now need connections to the NG pipeline system, and there isnt the capacity there either
Data centers are the rare case of that mythical baseload power requirement that renewables arent the best fit for, and need big power. A co-located SMR at a mega data center may be the one area where it actually makes economic sense
One thing that might make things different this time, I attended an energy conference last week that had some utilities and even a grid operator speak, and no one (in the US at least) has anything close to the excess generating or transmission capacity available that AI is looking to need
Even France and South Korea at the peak of their nuclear build outs averaged something like 70%-80% cost over runs. In the US it has historically been over 100% over budget
That said, on a $/MWh I have yet to see any SMR that is even close to competitive. No matter what, nuclear will always be expensive to build and operate so really need that gigawatt scale of big plants to soak up the cost over shear volume of power
Workforce is a huge issue, which SMRs potentially have in their favor because you dont need to recruit local welders with nuclear certs every time you build in a new location
There is some news right now in the US about building some more AP1000s which even if its not the most efficient reactor has an actual supply chain set up (though might lose that soon if these orders fall through) and that is a huge selling point in their favor
At least as far as role-playing games go, I would actually lay a decent amount of the blame on the Conan the Barbarian which debuted 5 years prior to The Hobbit and created (or at least popularized) the sword and sorcery pulp fiction genre, which in turn inspired many rpgs particularly D&D
Also, I've seen it asserted that Tolkein is responsible for creating the popularity of racial essentialism in English-language fantasy literature and role-playing games.
Apparently Hanwha just bought up the yard a year ago. They only really build commercial tankers there.
They only build components for submarines, in the US the only two yards that can do assembly and launch nuclear subs are Newport News and Groton.
Hanwha Philly Shipyard

The Navy still operates a small inactive ship reserve station there.
Hanwha Philly Shipyard - Wikipedia
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Lmao even

Im sure Electric Boat is scratching their heads right now trying to figure out WTAF this is about
It was, dont think so anymore.
Piketty relates this to velocity of money, inflation, gdp grow, national income, and a huge host of other factors (like i said hundreds of pages of work) to reinforce why inequality is ultimately bad for a national economy.
Hard to summarize a 700 page book (and 1,000 page follow on book) into a single skeet so I recommend reading his work yourself for the full picture, but my rough summary is inequality & concentration of wealth historically stagnates an economy, and inequality accelerates through inherited fortunes
Lorenz systems are counter-revolutionary and will be sent to the gulag!
Also a Kennedy is a cabinet secretary right now
Even the current new money billionaires are over represented by elite Ivy leagues. Musk, Zuckerberg, Bezos, Buffet, all Ivy league, Koch brothers went to MIT. Even Trump who is the son of a slumlord was afforded access to many elite private institutions.
Going off of Picketty again, considering the US maintained a top decile tax rate of over 70% between 1935 to 1985, I dont think evidence points to economic consequences, and the whole thesis of the Capital in the 21C is that these large fortunes lock up capital versus putting it to productive use.
You dont think America's old money elite dont or didnt attend prestigious institutions? Harvard doesnt have a massive endowment just from training future bureaucrats. Similarly, old money and politics have long gone hand in glove in the US. e.g. The Roosevelts, Kennedys, Bushs, Nelson Rockefeller
I want broad based progressive taxes to pay for progressive social wellfare programs, but also, what Piketty would lable as; confiscatory taxation of excessive incomes b/c the last decade has shown how corrosive massive wealth accumulation is to public order.