Dan, Packy longtime NotBoring reader. I'm joining you in fighting back against the stench of pessimism in the air by launching The Rational Optimist Society. I'd love you to join our "optimist alliance" - https://www.rationaloptimistsociety.com
Your piece is packed with fascinating and optimistic insights. It really shines in how you make complex topics like nuclear energy and medical breakthroughs accessible and engaging. I especially enjoyed how you tied together the recent advancements in nuclear technology with the broader theme of innovation driving positive change.
Thanks for the posts as always. For a future post, I would love to see a deep dive on the future of healthcare and how to repair and improve incentives when it comes to the healthcare system. It's a big, complicated idea, but I think you're capable of tackling such a complicated, important issuee, Packy.
“Stringent Regulation” is a good current events topic. Microsoft, et alia lobbied hard against stringent regulation, prior to the CRWD/Microsoft meltdown that cost multiple corporations millions of dollars. Just because people are very smart doesn’t mean any industry is “safe,” let alone an industry that kids itself it can safely store nuclear waste for millennia.
CRWD has some exceptionally intelligent employees and executives. Yet, it coded flawed software and didn’t thoroughly bench-test it. Instead of issuing the software incrementally, CRWD issued it in one big blast. Indeed the economic blast radius was big but could have been worse. Delta is first up in a long line of corporations that will sue for damages.
Now imagine very smart people working in nuclear energy. Given the half-life of nuclear materials, there is no way any scientist, no matter how smart and capable can ensure nuclear waste can be safely stored for millennia. Somebody is drinking the nuclear Kool-Aid. But nuclear energy is DOA. Solar energy alone is capable of adequate scale and at an infinitely smaller cost when compared to nuclear power costs and timelines. Solar and wind energy scale-up will make it obvious that nuclear energy would be the greatest unforced error in the New Millennium. Economics, not science, will settle this issue.
Dan, Packy longtime NotBoring reader. I'm joining you in fighting back against the stench of pessimism in the air by launching The Rational Optimist Society. I'd love you to join our "optimist alliance" - https://www.rationaloptimistsociety.com
Your piece is packed with fascinating and optimistic insights. It really shines in how you make complex topics like nuclear energy and medical breakthroughs accessible and engaging. I especially enjoyed how you tied together the recent advancements in nuclear technology with the broader theme of innovation driving positive change.
Thanks for the posts as always. For a future post, I would love to see a deep dive on the future of healthcare and how to repair and improve incentives when it comes to the healthcare system. It's a big, complicated idea, but I think you're capable of tackling such a complicated, important issuee, Packy.
Amazing the 4th!!
“Stringent Regulation” is a good current events topic. Microsoft, et alia lobbied hard against stringent regulation, prior to the CRWD/Microsoft meltdown that cost multiple corporations millions of dollars. Just because people are very smart doesn’t mean any industry is “safe,” let alone an industry that kids itself it can safely store nuclear waste for millennia.
CRWD has some exceptionally intelligent employees and executives. Yet, it coded flawed software and didn’t thoroughly bench-test it. Instead of issuing the software incrementally, CRWD issued it in one big blast. Indeed the economic blast radius was big but could have been worse. Delta is first up in a long line of corporations that will sue for damages.
Now imagine very smart people working in nuclear energy. Given the half-life of nuclear materials, there is no way any scientist, no matter how smart and capable can ensure nuclear waste can be safely stored for millennia. Somebody is drinking the nuclear Kool-Aid. But nuclear energy is DOA. Solar energy alone is capable of adequate scale and at an infinitely smaller cost when compared to nuclear power costs and timelines. Solar and wind energy scale-up will make it obvious that nuclear energy would be the greatest unforced error in the New Millennium. Economics, not science, will settle this issue.
Today, the 580-square-mile Hanford Site holds 56 million gallons of nuclear waste, much of it radioactive sludge stored in 177 sometimes-leaky tanks.
https://www.hcn.org/issues/56-8/indigenous-celebration-of-hanford-remembers-the-site-before-nuclear-contamination/?utm_source=wcn1&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2024-08-02-Newsletter