11–20 of 64 posts
Looks like a good case for decentralization of the power grid; a good application for a small modular LFTR[1] (or similar) power units. As a bonus, you won't need to spoil the scenery with HV transmission lines anymore. [1] Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor
Heck just a temporary prolonged outage of Google alone would have huge negative consequences for the US (not to mention the world). Amazon AWS US west is in Northeren California. I wonder how big the negative effect will be on just how many companies?
Damn. The powers that be better do something about this fast. SF is about one of the last places in the US to develop new things. Heck just a temporary prolonged outage of Google alone would have huge negative consequences for the US (not to mention the world). Amazon AWS US west is in Northeren California. I wonder how big the negative effect will be on just how many companies?
Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, Y-Combinator, Stanford, Yahoo, etc are all located in the South Bay and (may or may not be, the article doesn't specify) affected by the fires.
Looks like a good case for decentralization of the power grid; a good application for a small modular LFTR[1] (or similar) power units. As a bonus, you won't need to spoil the scenery with HV transmission lines anymore. [1] Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor
Interesting concept. Of course, the first thing that comes to mind is how to protect these units from the bad guys.
Looks like a good case for decentralization of the power grid; a good application for a small modular LFTR[1] (or similar) power units. As a bonus, you won't need to spoil the scenery with HV transmission lines anymore. [1] Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor
Interesting concept. Of course, the first thing that comes to mind is how to protect these units from the bad guys.
If you have a lot of units, the loss of one or a few has limited effects, vs. taking out a few big baseline power plants and/or major transmission nodes.
What's the local/regional cost if someone takes out a node with a sufficiently big shaped charge?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Interesting concept. Of course, the first thing that comes to mind is how to protect these units from the bad guys.
I'd hope the first thing to come to mind is how to build the technology. Once it's built, we can start worrying about how to protect it .. why protect something that doesn't exist?
Damn. The powers that be better do something about this fast. SF is about one of the last places in the US to develop new things. Heck just a temporary prolonged outage of Google alone would have huge negative consequences for the US (not to mention the world). Amazon AWS US west is in Northeren California. I wonder how big the negative effect will be on just how many companies?
Looks like a good case for decentralization of the power grid; a good application for a small modular LFTR[1] (or similar) power units. As a bonus, you won't need to spoil the scenery with HV transmission lines anymore. [1] Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor
Interesting concept. Of course, the first thing that comes to mind is how to protect these units from the bad guys.
If you mean "protect these units from bad guys so they don't steal the thorium and weaponize it," that's one of the great things about thorium reactors: thorium and its byproducts are very hard to weaponize. [1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_fluoride_thorium_reacto...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Interesting concept. Of course, the first thing that comes to mind is how to protect these units from the bad guys.
If you mean "protect these units from bad guys so they don't threaten our electrical system," that's kind of the point of having a decentralized system of smaller reactors: if one or two get sabotaged, others in the system can easily pick up the slack. If you mean "protect these units from bad guys so they don't steal the thorium and weaponize it," that's one of the great things about thorium reactors: thorium and it…
Sure, the U-232 contaminated U-233 is nasty, but as long as it doesn't make it impractical to make a nuclear warhead it's quantitatively different from the uranium cycle, where after a few months at most plutonium is impossibly contaminated with two even more undesirable isotopes (one is very hot, I've seen estimates of 100kW for a bomb sized quantity (it's used for RTGs in deep space probes), the other precludes much of a bang and required the Manhattan Project to go with an implosion design).
Despite the gamma ray emission drawbacks, it could still be the easiest way to get lots of weapons grade fissionables from civilian power plants.
Damn. The powers that be better do something about this fast. SF is about one of the last places in the US to develop new things. Heck just a temporary prolonged outage of Google alone would have huge negative consequences for the US (not to mention the world). Amazon AWS US west is in Northeren California. I wonder how big the negative effect will be on just how many companies?
Is there a sim where I can go an blow these places up in a simulator, eg anti terrorist training ?