a) the probability energy prices will go up in the next decades is pretty high
Even taking into account the need for additional transmission and storage, the numbers I've seen suggest that electricity prices in mostly-renewable grids will likely be similar to current levels, or come down from Russian-induced peaks in places dependent on imported natural gas. Energy costs will come down because expensive oil will be replaced by cheaper electricity, used more efficiently.
those plants will likely last more than the originally planned 60 years (based on what we expect from existing reactors in operation in the world)
The present value of power generated 60 years or more from now is close to zero applying any sensible discount rate.
My understanding is that each chatGPT answer requires a few cents worth of computation to produce. For somebody who needs multiple answers per day that's going to quickly add up. If there's one thing we've learned from the history of internet businesses, it's that barely usable and cheap almost always wins out over better and expensive.
Maybe there will be a subset of people who will be happy to pay (stock traders who want digestable answers RIGHT NOW come to mind), but it's not at all clear that the mass market would.
More seriously, you're completely correct. ChatGPT gets things right a fair proportion of the time but if it doesn't know is often all too happy to generate plausible sounding BS, and there's no way to tell which is which.
Yes, there will be plenty of wrong answers in Google's search results too, but at least you have a chance of judging the credibility of the answer before you use "rm -rf
In many parts of the world, even ones with low-cost coal in places where you can build a power plant next to the mine, new-build coal can't compete with renewable energy. Heck, existing coal plants are closing because they can't compete with renewables. A fusion power plant is a coal power plant with a very complex and expensive heat source replacing the coal burner.
As such, it's extremely difficult to see how fusion could possibly be economically competitive with renewable energy in most of the world. There are exceptions. Japan and Singapore, for instance, have very poor renewable energy resources, very high energy demands, and reasons to be wary of more fission reactors. So you could imagine they might be interested. But for most of the rest of the world it's hard to see a tokamak being economically viable for terrestrial power generation.
Uranium enriched to 80% or more can be turned into a Hiroshima-style (and scale) nuclear weapon by people with fairly limited facilities and skill levels. No other material on Earth is that dangerous.
The cost of ensuring that the "wrong folks" don't get access to that HEU, to a sufficiently high confidence level, are so high that it's not worth the hassle. Just build renewables, or if you must build nuclear use any of the other viable designs that don't require HEU.
Given that, in a grid where other power is coming from sources that are cheap to build but have expensive or limited supplies of fuel (nuclear, hydro), why would you bother even trying to ramp?
Harley-Davidson bikes. Morgan cars. bicycles like these.
I'm not sure I could be bothered buying a Mega65, because if I need a programming hobby there are plenty more useful things I could do with my time. However, I'm sure it'd be fun to finally learn 6502 Assembler properly.
Worked for every other manufactured good in existence. Would work for DAC as well.
God help those who do not help themselves. -- Wilson Mizner