Notice they said absolutely nothing about using it to target keyword ads at you, build profiles about you to target you with ads
Of course they didn't say that. They've always been open about doing that for unpaid consumer accounts, it's how they can provide the service for free. If you don't want your the ads, or for your data to be used, you can get that, starting at at $7 per month.
As well as the reactors, they've also got to get the heat-exchangers, turbines and generators down there too
Do they, or could that stuff be on the surface? Pump cold water down, get hot steam back up, run it through a heat exchanger/condenser, cycle it back down again. Or maybe something other than water. You'd lose some heat to the shaft walls, but that could be acceptable.
Well false, and covered.
Firstly no, nuclear plants do not require daily maintenance. In fact the core / steam loops are largely maintenance free outside of planned shutdowns years in advance. Maintenance is usually only carried out every 24 months.
As to how, it's not exactly rocket surgery. This proposal just lowers two components to the bottom of a hole in a water column, just shut it down, cool it off (like you would do with a normal one), and then all you've got is the extra hour or so it takes to winch the thing up to the surface. It's not in any way buried or sealed down there.
I'm not talking maintenance of the actual reactor. I'm talking dials, valves, switches, even light bulbs, sensors, data collectors, etc. etc. And yes, that kind of stuff is on the daily "to fix" list. These are big complicated machines. You don't drop it in the ground and forget about it. They said they were going to run them remotely, which is really what I call shenanigans. Sure, you can put a couple of PCs anywhere in the world and "remotely control" any reactor, but you need access to all the piping, wiring, etc. and that means a big crew down under the ground.with the reactor.
I think all the maintenance-required parts you're talking about are where the heat is transformed into electricity, plus the safety-related monitoring of the core. With this design, it seems like all of the turbines, etc. will be at the surface, where they can be easily maintained, while the safety-related stuff just isn't an issue. Rather than designing a core that can be controlled and ramped up and down, with this system you'd designed the core to just operate at a continuous steady state for its operational lifetime until the fuel is used up, at which point you just fill in the hole.
You might make the core self-moderating so that if it gets too hot it will ramp down the fission so you don't have to worry about stoppage in the flow of water resulting in a meltdown or similar, but that would only be to reduced the likelihood of the core damaging itself before the end of its useful lifetime, not because there is any safety concern with a meltdown that occurs kilometers underground.
All of the stuff other than the weights is basically just scaffolding, though. Necessary, but the stuff that makes it "intelligent" is all in the weights.
The days of when a programmer could instantly get respect by saying "I work for Microsoft" are long gone. That's not to say everyone there is dumb, obviously not, but there's a lot of chaff around the wheat if you know what I mean. And structurally the company has not been set up for delivering quality products since they got rid of their testers 25 years ago. The feeling was, well it's all distributed by the internet so we can just patch it if the original engineer doesn't catch all of his own bugs. On top of the fact that AI-generated code has been pushed hard in recent years, the trend is not going in the direction you want.
At a really, really fundamental level the comp/promotion system at Microsoft is broken for quality software. You get promoted for "impact." Fixing bugs is not considered impact.
What is interesting to me is that my people in emergency comms are going to fail at some point. And they wouldn't fail if they were using either Linux or MacOS.
But there is another comm mode in use that is made only for Windows. I'm going to suggest that it be abandoned. Another Cassandra moment for me - the agencys heads will asplode when I do that.
Ok well I would never wish a "terribly uninteresting job" on my kids. That's no way to live.
Of course not. but it is the reality. Even for highly placed people. My SO, who was the VP and highest paid person in her company, noted how she was bored at times, and didn't get to do the "exciting" things I did.
My replies have always been "All jobs have good and bad in them - you are doing better than 90 percent of everyone working"
The part I didn't say was "You would freak at some of the things I've had to do. I was on extra hazardous insurance most of the time. Worked with hazardous materials, and in extremely dangerous places. Imagine being on a tiny ship in sea state 7, or crawling out on a board over a 100 foot drop to get a documentation photo where you had to put your head and face through an opening. That one was kind of funny. Because when you can't see where your body is you need something to ground you. I told my assistant to grab my ankles and squeeze any time I shifted to remind me I was on the board. "And please don't goose me." She really enjoyed sneaking up on me and grabbing my backside. I've had to deal with chemical fires. I've had to travel on short notice with an unknown return date. That part could be stressful, the wife got kind of anxious and a bit testy with me.
Then, back in a suit and tie, and presenting the results. Even that is stressful for many folk. On new engineer once hyperventilated and fainted. I managed to catch him and spent a couple minutes calming him.
Point is my work was intensely interesting. Not too many dull moments. Even my present work, which isn't dangerous, but most find it stressful, is seriously interesting. I'm too dumb to get stressed, I suppose.
The other point is that if you are going to do really interesting work, it might just not be what you actually wanted after getting it.
In the Jetsons, George just had to press a button and he could support a family, have a flying car and a house cleaning robot. The problem is that it was a cartoon.
We should add an obligatory Jetson's comparison in addition to the automotive comparisons! 8^)
No one does a job here in the real world unless they can't be replaced by someone who would accept less pay.
It is much more complex than that. Temperament and drive are important, and the ability to interact with others is as well. In my present work, I'm there because I not only have the technical chops, but I am really good at interacting with people, including stressed and difficult people. I have the ability to tell people to go to hell in a way they look forward to the trip. Previous people have either had the technical chops and lacked people skills, or were very sociable and hopeless technically.
And a little while back, I received an unasked for 50 percent raise.
In real life, George would be replaced by someone tired of working in a seven eleven for $15 an hour and would be ecstatic about $19 an hour. It is questionable whether the engineer will even be able to continue making a living for himself, never mind supporting a family.
You have to be flexible, and never stop learning. Also helps to assess the climate in your field. The opposite end of the spectrum from my gestalt is the guy I graduated with who had a really good career going in television repair. in 72, TV sets were still almost all tube, and needed repair pretty often. Then his work just disappeared. He had no plan, and by the time his market went away, his abilities were stuck in the vacuum tube era. Never did find out what happened to him. A decent guy, but he liked his stasis.
But the cost of building this installation sounds like it would be prohibitive unless you're using slave labor and letting a lot of those slaves die.
How would you even use slaves in drilling a kilometers-deep borehole?
I just tried my standard "draw me an ASCII middle finger" and it flat-out refused to generate it for me!
Yep, the guardrails are also improving.
So how long before it can start to rewrite its own code to "improve" itself?
I'm only half joking.
Well, the LLMs don't really consist of "code" per se, but I think the AI labs are already using them to work on improving their own design. How far are they from being able to do this without human oversight and supervision? I have no idea.
Exactly. And hot water is an excellent solvent. When it flashes to steam, where does the solute go?
In this case, it stays deep in the ground, where it came from.
high temperature steam containing minerals and salts is highly corrosive to plumbing, valves and turbines
The dry rock method described in the article significantly reduces this problem, because it doesn't rely on groundwater steam that has had millennia to dissolve high mineral loads. Instead, it injects low-mineral surface water into pressure-created cracks. That water does pick up some minerals from the rocks, of course, but the result is far less corrosive than natural groundwater. In addition, super-hot rocks flash all of the water to steam, and H20 in gaseous form cannot carry any dissolved minerals (this is how distillation works), so as long as they can find ways to keep the steam from pushing liquid water up into the generation equipment, there are no salts or minerals to cause problems. This is actually easier with higher temperatures, because no pockets are cool enough to avoid flashing to steam.
I'm not saying that the problem you cite isn't relevant to hot rock geothermal, but the difficulties are hugely reduced.
according to credible sources, LLMs have practically reached their limits
What sources? And when? I think the conclusions your citing predate the reasoning overlay models... and reasoning seems like exactly the right solution to both of the problems you cite.
What is mind? No matter. What is matter? Never mind. -- Thomas Hewitt Key, 1799-1875
