I don't think that's true. It's actually my layperson pet peeve that none of hype humanoids have the right anatomy to be a humanoid, most of them are bipedal dogs.
> Luddites were actually pretty reasonable when you dig into it.
No, they were not. The problems they faced were absolutely real, but the solutions they chose to attempt were stupid and counterproductive. Which is why they lost so hard, and it was not even a contest.
Socialism movement that refused to use machines and factories would inevitably lose to capitalists that embraced them.
Socialism movement that refuses to use AI will inevitably lose to capitalists that embrace it.
Is that because of a deeper issue in one of the two philosophies or because we've chosen to define winning with things that exclusively benefit one of the two sides
Energy costs, of course, vary by location - so that linked report is the Australian national science (both theory and very much applied) body determining that conditions in Australia are such that the economics of nuclear power here have costs greater than that of grid scale solar + batteries + other storage technologies on horizon and being firmed up.
> So any nation state needs to be energy independent?
It is obviously a good thing if a democratic nation state is independent from a totalitarian dictatorship.
> Not like life expectancy in Germany is low, for example.
It's not about life expectancy. They now have to make a choice between supporting an aggressive totalitarian state vs. suffering damage to their economy due to higher energy prices. That is obviously a bad position to be in.
> But regarding gas, one has to understand that a tiny fraction (15%) of gas is used for electricity and most for heating. So nuclear power is completely irrelevant here.
You know that homes can be heated with electricity from nuclear power? The reason why Germany uses gas for heating is because it was historically very cheap compared to electricity, because it came from Russia. Good, while the attached strings could be ignored..
Sure, but we are talking about what was the reality in Germany. And gas was and is needed mainly for heating (and also industry), so shutting down the nuclear plants did not increase dependency on Russian gas despite what people repeatedly claim. Also gas usage for power production did not increase afterwards, while Russian gas imports were stopped. Both simple facts contradicting this myth.
Even if Fukushima killed tens of thousands of people, nuclear would still kill order of magnitute less people per kWh of energy produced than fossil fuels.
Soviet Union (and later Russia) enacted the propaganda effort against nuclear mainly to prevent the west from ditching their fossil energy. Less western nuclear warheads was secondary goal at best.
You think.. I heard some antinuclear guys opposing fusion because the vessel for fusion reactor would get radioactive, and that is "nuclear waste" (of course, it's not the dangerous, long-term kind).
The neutron radiation around a fusion reactor is far more intense than in any fission reactor, because in fusion reactors most of the produced energy is carried by neutrons.
Any material exposed to neutron radiation will become radioactive. Of course the designers of fusion reactors will attempt to choose only materials that are converted into radioactive isotopes with a short halflife, but until someone demonstrates a working fusion reactor we will not know whether this is possible or the production of some amount of long-life radioactive waste must be accepted.
In my opinion, during the next few decades there are far less chances for fusion reactors to be used as a significant energy source on Earth than for some improved kinds of fission reactors.
In any case neither fission reactors nor fusion reactors are strictly necessary on Earth, but nuclear reactors are the only way to achieve interplanetary travel through the Solar System in decent times, so I believe that the future of nuclear reactors is for spaceships, not for terrestrial use.
reply