The promise to only have nuclear weapons controlled by humans is worthless even if given in writing if those humans are going to end up being controlled by AI. We already have algorithms controlling a lot of what people see and hear online and if that trend continues AI will control a lot of \people's view of the world giving it, if not actual control, then at least incredible influence over humans....and good luck if you think we are going to be able to stop that from happening given the economic interests of huge companies like Meta, Google etc.

There's a lot of mythology around who Trump voters are. Part of it is that statistics can be confusing, especially if you're prone to jump to conclusions. Yes Trump wins the voters without a college degree, and people without college degrees tend to make less money, but we can't leap to the conculsion that Trump voters are poor. In fact, data shows Trump lost the $50k and under income group solidly in both 2016 and 2020. In 2016 he won every income group greater than $50k, although only *strongly* in the $50k -$99k group. In 2020 he solidly lost every income group betlow $100k, but but won the over $100k group by an enormous 12 point margin.

Putting it all together, Trump's core voter group are people with limited educational attainment who are economically comfortable of (good for them) well off without having a college degree. However he doesn't own any particular socioeconomic group; really elections are determined by changes in turnout in key swing states. There was strong turnout among Trump's *share* of $50-$99 ke voters in 2016; I don't think many of those voters changed their mind, but their compatriots who sat 2016 out came out to vote in 2020.

Just because the cigarette industry pictured doctors recommending smoking in its advertising didn't mean that *all* doctors, or even most thought smoking was healthy for you. This was largely in the 30s and 40s when they took advantage of a positive attitude toward science and particular medical science. They began to pull back from this after 1950 when evidence was mounting for the link between smoking and cancer, for fear of pushback from the medical community.

What does this have to do with lab grown meat?

Well I doubt whoever passed the law regard it that way so just because you might be unable to see another way to describe it does not mean that others can't. That's the great thing about talking to people you may strongly disagree with: you learn how others see things and have someone challenge your own thinking, helping to make your own opinions far more informed.

Good journalism requires that the jouirnalist report on the facts in an unbiased manner as possible. What would have been far more helpful here is a factual description of what Utah's bathroom bill actually says for all of us who do not follow the laws that Utah passes and so have never heard of it. That way I can form my own opinion instead of just hearing what the author's opinion is about something I have no knowledge of. Indeed, even if you insist on sharing your opinion you at least need to inform the reader what the opinion is about!

They'd disclosed it but the first one hadn't finished testifying under oath about it. And that matters. The latter has status as evidence in court.

Batteries are typically rated in units of energy i.e. joules or more typically MWh. While they do have a maximum power drain (and charge) raiting that's generally not a helpful number to quote since there is a huge difference in a battery that provides 500MW for 1s vs. 1 day whereas a 500MWh battery can easily be configured for multiple different power draws.

So either you mean 500MWh or else the company you quote are releasing meaningless numbers either because they do not know any better (and this is high school level physics) or are deliberately trying to mislead and neither option suggests anyone should have any confidence in the number.

More to the point, they're *guaranteed* bucks.

People don't understand the significance of risk to profitability. By underwriting 80 billion dollars of risk for banks, it's essentially guaranteeing them profits. When it's politically infeasible to spend money on something, the government guarantees loans. That's politically popular across the board because it's spending *later* money and it puts money in bankers' pockets.

To be clear, I think nuclear can and should play a key role in our response to anthropogenic global warming. I just think we shouldn't (a) talk about it like it is *the* answer in and of itself and (b) misunderstand the full breadths of risks and challenges, the most difficult of which are likely to be economic rather than political objections by environmentalists.

Ss you point out, climate change is in effect an economic externality that fossil fuels get a free ride on. This is a key reason for nuclear power's economic non-competitiveness -- in effect fossil fuel use is subsidized by future generations. If you made fossil fuel users pay the true cost of their energy use, nuclear would *instantly* become competitive. But politically that's not going to happen. The only politically possible way around that is to subsidize other energy sources as well.

If you haven't seen any nuclear advocates claim that we should stop investing in renewables, you haven't been paying attention. Usually they come out in response to some article on climate change or perhaps renewables and they will trot out the bogus argument that environmentalists killed nuclear, which is (they say) the only solution to climate change.

The argument that a particular technology is a panacaea isn't confined to nuclear advocates; I think renewable advocates oversell what's possible in the near future, just as anti-renewable people -- and yes, they exist if you're paying attention -- exaggerate renewables' limitations. Really any all-eggs-in-one-basket approach is unnecessarily risky and likely more costly than having several approachs that can work together and compete economically. Key to making that happen will be improvements in grid infrastructure, which will increase the size and therefore the efficiency of the energy market, allowing multiple sources of power to compete.

As for thorium, that's something we'll have to turn to if fission remains a long-term part of our energy supply, but it's not really a help in the time frame we have to respond to climate change. I think the most promising developments are in the development of fail safe reactor technologies and small modular reactors. There are such things as both economies of scale and *dis*-economies of scale, and SMRs are a different way of scaling production than the traditional and every expensive nuclear power plant.

It was never the case that the public being scared caused nuclear to be outlawed, or even *discouraged*. The problem is that investors are scared by the high capital costs, long construction times, and uncertainties about future electricity prices.

This is why nuclear requires government subsidies, either in straight grants, loan guarantees or price guarantees. It's no coincidence that the only country in the world that did a serious nuclear crash program was France, where the electric system was *nationalized*. They didn't go in big for nuclear to make a profit, for them it was a national security issue in result of the OPEC oil embargos. As soon as France privatized its electric system, nuclear construction stalled, just like it did in every other privatized system.

In any case, even if we *were* to underwrite a crash nuclear program, it's neither necessary nor desirable to put *all* our eggs in the nuclear basket. One place we can put investment in is a modernized grid. This will not only help renewable sources like wind and solar, it will be a huge boon to nuclear plants, eliminating questionable siting choices that were driven by the need to locate the plant within 50 miles of customers.

The norm thirty years ago for a hardware store battery was zinc-carbon, with premium batteries being alkaline. The norm today is alkaline, with fancy batteries having a lithium chemistry. So it's absolutely true that the "regular AA" battery you put in your flashlight back then had something like an 800 mah capacity; there is nothing on the market today that is that weak.

In any case that's primary cells, which have zero relevance to this topic. We're mainly interested in secondary cells, and there the improvements in the common rechargeable battery has been dramatic and continual. Thirty years ago the standard hardware store rechargeable was Ni-Cad; a AA probably had about 700 mah capacity. A modern alkaline AA has a capacity of 2000 mah or so roughly 3x as much. This understates the case because modern rechargeable alkalines can typically be recharged easily twice as much as a 1990s NiCad. And *rechargeable* alkalines are getting significantly better almost year to year.

Of course the hardware store battery only has minimal relevance to what we're talking about. What we really care about is Li-ion, and capacity, lifespan and cost for *those* are improving faster than any other battery technology ever has.

You're not going to Gish Gallop your way out of this one. You're the one who brought up your personal experience with the price of batteries at the *hardware store* as proof that batteries have not gotten cheaper. I'm actually being charitable in assuming you're talking about shopping for primary cells; if we're talking *rechargeable* cells the argument is even stronger because they are recharged over and over again which means the steady increase of capacity and lifespan in secondary cells over the decades dramatically lowers your lifetime costs.

As documented in my links above, the cost per energy stored of secondary storage has gone done dramatically in the past twenty years, over 90% since 2000. As for why the Tesla Powerwall isn't dirt cheap yet, customers report waiting months from order to delivery; Tesla already has more customers for this product than it can handle at the current price, why would they drop it? This is Tesla milking the early adopter market segment for a product that they can't produce in high enough volume to sell to the pragmatist market segment.

In any case we're not talking about home storage, we're talking *utility* scale grid storatge with is three orders of magnitude larger. There have been economically successful grid storage projects for years now. Hornsdale in Australia earned back its construction costs in just two years [source]. That's probably close to an ideal econmic situation for grid storage, but as costs continue to drop more and more projects that wouldn't quite clear the normal profit bar will become economically feasible.

Because if they're explaining to non-scientists, they might as well be explaining to babies. The foundational knowledge taught in schools simply isn't up to the standard needed.

If you can't make useful predictions within the parameters of your model, you can't test the ideas. Ergo, the shut up and calculate side does have a good argument.

Previously, in physics, there has been a three-way dance between theorists who develop the mathematical description, theorists who develop the mechanical description, and practical physicists who carry out observations both to test the theories and to apply them in practical terms. This dance kept everything moving.

This may or may not be the correct way to approach quantum mechanics. The rules are very different in that domain.

On the other hand, it's easy to spot the hostility between the groups and it's obvious that the anticipated new physics isn't getting found. New models are rare and are struggling. The dance hasn't completely stopped, but it is definitely in trouble.

But, of course, that might equally be down to the increased competition, the need to publish trivial results quickly rather than do anything profound, and the greatly reduced investment in blue sky science.

I'm going to suggest it's a mix of stuff. We need a lot more funding, a lot less aggro, and we either need to get the mechanical description partner back on their feet or we need to find an alternative to them if that sort of description just doesn't work in this arena.

But I think the science dance needs three sides. I think we're going to find that the calculate lobby can't advance a whole lot further on their own, and that they cannot produce a theory of everything without some idea of what an everything is.

It's true you're paying about the same for a AA battery in the hardware store than you were 30 years ago, if you account for inflation. However a 1990s AA battery would have a capacity of around 800 mAH whereas a modern AA battery offers 2000 mAH or more for the same (adjusted for inflastion) price. So while it *looks* like you're paying more for batteries, you're not if you account for inflation. If you actually look at the number of batteries you to buy over the course of time to power some device, you're actually paying less than 1/3 the price *for the stored energy you get*.

In any case we're not talking about the primary (non-rechargeable batteries) you are buying in the hardware store. We're talking secondary (rechargeable) batteries. In secondary cells the price/per capacity deflation is dramatic. The cost of kWH of lithium ion battery went down by 92% since 2000 [source]. Projections are grid storage costs will continue to drop at dramatic, albeit at somewhat lower rates, so we'll see a cost reduction of about one half in the next seven years [source].

Note this is a conservative projection of of lithium ion technology's evolution. There are multiple promising technologies in the pipeline that could significantly beat this projection. Some of these technologies (e.g. molten metal batteries) promise to be an order of magnitude cheaper if the bugs can get ironed out.