So, the idea with SMR is to make many small reactors. The problem with current big ones is that they are too expensive, and making something smaller is not the way you usually go to reduce prices; but the argument is that building many identical SMRs will eventually bring the unit price down, with the point of contention being whether this can offset the loss of economies of scale.

However there is not just the reactor that is being scaled down: there are a lot of other things that benefitted from large scale.

• Turbines: a usual large plant is in the GW scale and certainly don't have 1000/20=50 single turbines. Turbines need to be scaled down, which will reduce efficiency, and have pretty much the same requirements in term of maintenance (i.e. people working on site).
• Personnel: do we even have the people to run hundreds of small nuclear power stations? I don't think you can just take any unemployed minimum-wage prospective burger-flipper and put them in charge of a nuclear plant. You need to have engineers with the right education: where are you going to find these? And even if they are there, there will be a lot more per MW than in a normal plant.
• What about waste? The "solution" in traditional plants is "just leave it there until it's our grandchildren's problem", as all , but these small units do not have their own storage pools. Who and how is going to take care of the waste?
• Containment building: have they decided these are optional now? Shit happens and without a containment building there is a much higher chance it will turn out serious. 50 Small containment buildings will cost more than a single big one.

I find it a dubious proposition that SMRs can be per-MW cheaper than traditional reactors, and I still have not seen a credible source (i.e. not a company brochure) claiming SMRs are any game changer.

Browsing in Google Scholar, I found papers are quite tepid, from "[modularized] SMRs [...] could possibly compete with large reactor baseline total construction costs" (Lloyd et al.) and "cost effectiveness of SMR [...] is in line and of the same order with LR’s" Boarin & Ricotti. This is not sufficient: nuclear power must come down with a factor of at least 4 before it's even competitive with renewables.

I appreciate any link to more recent or comprehensive TCO analyses of SMRs.

Germany was pressuring Russia contractually to deliver gas (in Nordstream1). Each day the gas wasn't delivered, Russia had to pay a fine

How much was that fine that it trumped having a major bargaining chip to get Germany to back off from the war? Was the fine applied even if Russia claimed they were having "technical problems"?

And why in the world would they then destroy the pipeline at the border of Denmark and Sweden, instead of staging a false-flag "Ukrainian terror attack" at the terminal in Russia, which would have been a lot cheaper, safer, and allowed them to say they had finished repairs at the most convenient moment?

He's a billionaire, and you're not.

He inherited his wealth, I could be a billionaire too if I did not have to work for it. That, and he underperformed index funds (though figures are disputed since it's difficult to quantify his actual wealth).

Your argument is a bit like "Charles III is a king and you're not". Well duh.

Siemens has recently unveiled their Mireo Plus H, which also reaches 160 km/h. Still, very interesting the Chinese added self-driving on top of it, drivers are usually the most expensive item in any vehicle.

The US are not out of the race: Stadler (well, as Swiss company) is going to deploy a H2-powered FLIRT in CA next year.

The non-competes will be replaced with far more consequential NDAs.

This is the situation we have in Europe and it's perfectly reasonable. Workers can pursue their careers, whereas companies are covered in case of industrial espionage.

Of course you are not supposed to talk about confidential information you learned through your previous job. If a company would not hire you unless you spy on your previous employer, you should not consider that company to begin with.

And let's not fool ourselves here, non-competitive clauses are there to keep wages low, not for information security.

Offshore wind turbines near Japan would need to be built to withstand earthquake and tsunami events

No they wouldn't. First, tsunamis far out at sea are long fast waves, and boats often pass them without even noticing them. The worst that can reasonably happen is some anchors coming loose. Second, even if the tsunami were enough to somehow topple the turbines, they are just pieces of metal like any other wreck in the sea - no possibility of further pollution beyond lubrication oil in the gears, and no crew that would need rescue.

Yes, it's a petrostate. Far leftoids on wikipedia certainly will twist themselves into pretzels to deny this.

Happy to oblige. You are looking only at the exports, but if you had looked at the makeup of the GDP you would have seen that more than half of the GDP is in the service sector, and only one third in industry (of which oil & gas is a large part). See also CIA's take on Norway's economical makeup.

All other bullshit aside...

[...] due to the harsh climate and geography pushing away many of the MENA immigrants [...]

You do realise that the highest democratically elected office in the country is currently held by a guy born in Tehran, right? We have plenty of Pakistani and Vietnamese immigrants, including high-ranking figures of the liberal and green parties.

FFS even the local alt-right party had an Iranian "token muslim" in charge of immigration affairs. Can you imagine a Mexican-born Republican in charge of the GOP's immigration policy?

And how exactly would geography repel immigrants? We have roads and ports just like anyone else, you know. For the cold we have jackets too.

How is that any different from the revolving doors we have in the West?

You have heard of PRISM, right?

(Mainland) China is already the world's largest chip manufacturer, with Taiwan second. Even if there were such standing orders, and even if they were going to be carried out flawlessly, the only effect would be to suddenly make mainland China a near-monopolist in chip production. Waging war against China in retaliation for an attack on Taiwan would then cut off the world from almost all supply of chips - especially since in that case mainland China could have North Korea attack South Korea, the current third place for chip manufacturing. North Korea does not have much against the South, but they certainly have a lot more heavy artillery and could level Seoul in hours.

Why does the summary lead with the MAX crashes, when the entire article is about a non-MAX crash, completely unrelated to MCAS and other Boeing shenanigans?

It almost appears as if someone tried to juxtapose the MAX crashes (very much the fault of Boeing) to another crash caused by pilot error, thereby giving the impression that eventually Indonesian authorities found out that it was really the pilots' fault for the MAX crashes all along. At least I got this impression in my first cursory reading.

From TFA, the research group will look into "anion batteries". The lightest anions I can see on the periodic table is O2- and F-, which are a lot heavier than Li, and neither has higher electrode potential.

This means that these batteries will never be relevant for mobility applications, since Li is already plenty heavy per energy unit. That's not to say they would be irrelevant: if they can come up with a dirt-cheap stationary battery (say in the range of 10 $/kWh), with decent efficiency, lifetime, safety and so on, it might be a good match for solar and wind plants.

Also, please note that the foreseen shortage of Li is not due to the world running out of it - Li is pretty common. Rather, it is the combination of soaring demand due to EVs and offer not being able to catch up, as no new mines have been opened anytime recently.

As a researcher, this appears to be a run-of-the-mill basic research project, with a typical budget. There is a small chance they will come up with something revolutionary, but don't hold your breath. More likely it will be a stepwise innovation.

Could be due to different frequencies in use. I also have a European 5G phone, but last year I did not see 5G in several major US cities I passed through that certainly had coverage. I had a local plan covering 5G, but my EU model did not work with the US 5G frequencies of the specific operator.

There really should be a handbook on "How to Overthrow a Government."

Not exactly the same thing, but The Dictator's Handbook explains very well what holds a dictatorship together - and therefore what can force a transition to democracy (in addition to putting some definitions on what a dictatorship and a democracy should be). It reminded me a lot of the "oblique interpretation" of Machiavelli, i.e. the idea he wrote The Prince as an exposé rather than a manual.

Spoiler: the moment a dictatorship is weakest is when the dictator is about to go and there is no clear successor. Khamenei is old enough that other clerics are already gunning for his place (in particular, current president Raisi). There is no heir apparent and the regime has zero legitimacy among the population. This is actually a very good time to overthrow the government, but what is unclear is what is coming after it.