71–80 of 141 posts
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In the case of the US, the latest president is a failed businessman who is more concerned about trans people, abortion, and immigrants than progress. According to media I’m supposed to hate China but I don’t hear Xi Jinping spouting nonsense like that.
The entire democratic party is more concerned about trans people, abortion, and immigrants than progress.
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That seems more like a case of "authoritarianism is bad" than "finance people are good".
It can happen in democracies too. I can think of a few specific ones off the top of my head.
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The entire democratic party is more concerned about trans people, abortion, and immigrants than progress.
Women’s rights, gay and trans rights and human rights were hard fought for. Defending them is progress.
Woah, looks like this article has a major error in it right up front: "The project follows a 2-MW experimental version completed in 2021 and operated since then. " They completed the TMSR-LF1 back then, and got authorization to turn it on, but have never announced startup or operation, as far as I'm aware. I've actually been bracing for the headline since 2021 because it would be the first time we operated a molten s…
What makes uranium more economical, fuel production or some aspect of operation? And if it's the first one, is that just lack of scale for thorium or something else?
Thorium isn't ready to be fuel and must be enriched (granted, you need to do this for uranium too but some is naturally in a fissile state). So there's things like breeder reactors that enrich during the cycle but this is challenging and presents other issues such as turning it into weapons manufacturing (increase proliferation concerns).
There's a lot of small details that matter a lot. Fwiw, the parent has written a fair amount on this and runs a website with a lot of useful information for anyone curious. You can check their comments too as they usually participate anytime nuclear comes up
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Their ball is already rolling. They put a pair of high temperature gas cooled pebble bed reactors into operation a little more than a year ago. They're actively exploring every avenue of nuclear power without restraint, including thorium and fast breeders. It hasn't yet occurred to the Chinese that the prosperity afforded by abundant energy is a problem they're supposed to be solving.
Well, good. It's a shame nobody else has stepped up to do this first. Maybe China doing it first will help get the ball rolling. /s In all seriousness, I think they were referring to getting everyone else's proverbial balls rolling.
Well, good. It's a shame nobody else has stepped up to do this first. Maybe China doing it first will help get the ball rolling.
I’m pretty sure I first heard about China doing this 15 years ago or so. I guess it just takes a long time to go from project planning to reactor?
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The US could probably use a few engineers, but on the other hand I think the CCP could use a few finance people.
Based on what, China is too successful as it stands? Maybe they need to handicap themselves to appear less threatening? The contribution that the finance people in the US made was to - accurately - identify that if they moved all the investment overseas then the US wouldn't need to work as hard. They were correct. The result has been massive leaps and bounds in Asian prosperity and living standards. Which is good for…
only after having enjoyed the lowered cost goods and such. But there's a price to everything, always. And if you're not paying that price up front, it's gonna come to roost at some point.
> There is a pretty good chance that China implodes because of the authoritarian and bureaucratic streak their government has.
i dont think so. China's gov't has been stable enough for long enough, that the people it is governing over don't feel the need to overthrow them. And i don't see any trigger for this either - the average wealth and wellbeing of the chinese citizen has only grown better over the decades. Even now, where there's an economic slowdown, you don't have people starving in the streets.
It is merely wishful thinking that the west's media want to push, that there's a governance problem in china.
I don't understand why the West hesitates with nuclear power.
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Based on what, China is too successful as it stands? Maybe they need to handicap themselves to appear less threatening? The contribution that the finance people in the US made was to - accurately - identify that if they moved all the investment overseas then the US wouldn't need to work as hard. They were correct. The result has been massive leaps and bounds in Asian prosperity and living standards. Which is good for…
Based on China constantly handicapping their capital markets with boneheaded decisions. Their stock market is a wreck sending a lot of their best companies abroad in search of capital.
which is fine, because china's method is one where they (the CCP) retains ultimate control despite foreign financing - https://www.investopedia.com/terms/v/variable-interest-entit...
basically, this legal entity has not been 100% "legal" and undisputed in the chinese legal system - it's vague, and deliberately left so. It allows the CCP any reason to crackdown on any company's foreign ownership (by simply declaring this VIE structure illegal and void).
The CCP has two goals with this method (queue conspiracy music here). The first is to ensure state control all the time, even if the CCP isn't financially invested in said company. The second, and imho, a bit more insidious, is to prevent the local capital markets from developing too maturely.
The reason the CCP don't want the citizenry to have easy and low cost access to capital markets, is to prevent wealth from being built up by ordinary citizens in large numbers (like how it is in the west). Wealth is power, and the CCP don't want power to spread out to ordinary citizens, except as rising economic prosperity (ala, good jobs, cheap access to goods/services etc). It's the reason why they crushed the real estate property sector when they did. It is why stock markets are very difficult to invest in for ordinary citizens.
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You can hate the Chinese system for how it limits human rights, cracks down harshly on dissent, and stifles many creative outlets. Hating China or the Chinese people, which are like anywhere, generally lovely people, is silly. There's plenty of nonsense coming from the mouth of the Party, but it doesn't make the US news, because it's not aimed at the US. There's also a lot less news overall which discusses and critiq…
lol, abortion is perfectly legal in China, the government doesn't control women's bodies. Certain policies are more set and less up to discussion after a period of experimentation. Political system in China is more geared towards not letting human or interest groups desires reflected in national policies. Instead, national policies reflect the common good and common sense. And political system helps to unify common s…
the six-year-old Panchen Lama was kidnapped and forcibly disappeared by the Chinese government,
after the State Council of the People's Republic of China failed in its efforts to install a substitute.
Since his kidnapping, the whereabouts of Gedhun Choekyi Nyima have been unknown. Chinese officials state that his whereabouts are kept undisclosed to protect him. Human rights organizations termed him the "youngest political prisoner in the world". No foreign party has been allowed to visit him.
As of 2024, Gedhun Choekyi Nyima has not been seen by any independent observer since his disappearance in 1995.