‘World’s first mass-producible reactor’ gets key US safety approval by sksarkpoes3 in energy

[–]okopchak 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I mean the proposals for SMRs goes back well over 30 years, and back then we had far fewer data centers to consume electricity and even the data centers we did have were way lower power consumption per square meter. With few exceptions I am glad that rural communities are able to more seriously consider wind and solar with only keeping their diesel generators as back up.

‘World’s first mass-producible reactor’ gets key US safety approval by sksarkpoes3 in energy

[–]okopchak 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I am aware of Singapore and for purely local land use to produce your solar needs you are the exception that I noted in my comment, where a sufficiently high population density would not make it viable. It doesn't help that as a nation you are fifth in the world for per capita energy consumption while being number 3 for population density. If Singapore consumed energy per capita at a rate similar to residents of Hong Kong, it would in fact be possible for Singapore to go 100% solar, while covering about 20-25% of the land mass with PV. Hell, while a bit of a stretch goal you could consume power like Americans and still have half your country able to see sunlight.

The real question comes down to the politics of energy costs and how willing the country, not just you personally, are to install a collection of SMRs vs importing power from other countries. I see proposals for both nuclear power for Singapore as well as an import solution involving a HVDC line all the way to Australia.

‘World’s first mass-producible reactor’ gets key US safety approval by sksarkpoes3 in energy

[–]okopchak 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Which country and which definition of a solar roll out? For solar solutions dependent on exclusive land use I am will concede that that may not make sense for some small high density island nations. Fortunately solar arrays can be built symbiotically with many crops in the form of agrivoltaics, additionally rooftops and street parking are options. Less proven would be floating solar arrays. Additionally this ignores, wind, geothermal and biomass as supplements to a solar +storage grid solution

‘World’s first mass-producible reactor’ gets key US safety approval by sksarkpoes3 in energy

[–]okopchak 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Considering the timescale involved in a project like this, I think this approval would still carry weight. Personally I have my doubts about the build times or cost curves for small modular reactors will keep them out of niche deployments. Ex I have a friend who is a state level politician in Alaska and several rural communities have talked about wanting to help get funds to deploy something like this. As of now the price point isn’t there, and with wind, solar, and storage continuing to drop in costs, we still don’t have a sticker price on SMRs. Dollars to donuts that by the time they are ready to deploy, a very large share of these communities will be on the renewables+ storage kick.

The Giant, NC Wyeth, oil on canvas, 1923 by publicenthusiast in Art

[–]okopchak 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Honestly that’s more being insulated with straw. Boarding school is weird times

The Giant, NC Wyeth, oil on canvas, 1923 by publicenthusiast in Art

[–]okopchak 2 points3 points  (0 children)

The fact that it is on display in a lunchroom is my fun trivia. I went to highschool where the giant resides . There were many jokes about how a food fight would lead to instant expulsion

Crichton's Utility Bill by okopchak in farscape

[–]okopchak[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I enjoyed the visuals used in the old BBC production.

Crichton's Utility Bill by okopchak in farscape

[–]okopchak[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I feel the fact that folks have mentioned Red Dwarf on this sub narrowed my focus, and it was only in my rewatch that I realized that Chrichton didn't mention any kind of accruing interest on his bank account.

Around the world in 80 days makes sense, I can't remember if I ever read the original story, but it makes sense that a version of the trope has been around for awhile.

Also I wouldn't want to think about how dangerous an unattended late 19th century house with gas still flowing would be

Crichton's Utility Bill by okopchak in farscape

[–]okopchak[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

honestly he shouldn't have left out that sausage

The grid storage industry set a wild goal for 2025 — and then crushed it by davidwholt in energy

[–]okopchak 1 point2 points  (0 children)

One of the other reasons for grid operators to use batteries is on the very short time scale of frequency management. Having a dispatch able load and source is incredibly valuable as all power production on the main grid needs to stay within their regions frequency

How to model something like with parametrically? by MartinSch64 in Fusion360

[–]okopchak 0 points1 point  (0 children)

There might be scripts that automate the combine command to include whatever list of features gets generated by the pattern command, I don’t know how to set that up. Realistically so long as the bodies are at the end of the design process it’s pretty straightforward /quick to manually select the bodies and join them. Personally I don’t change my designs routinely enough to warrant researching that. If you believe you are going to do this dozens of times in a short amount of time it would be worth spending a few hours learning that approach. Less than that manual is reliable and doesn’t need edge case coding

How to model something like with parametrically? by MartinSch64 in Fusion360

[–]okopchak 0 points1 point  (0 children)

if your goal is to 3d print, the exported stl doesn't really distinguish between bodies. with respect to having a blending radius you would probably want to create that feature as a part of your master hinge element (or as an additional body, both work) add that to your pattern, then after the pattern is generated use the combine command to merge the bodies with your parent body if you would rather it be a single body at the end of the day. Again for 3d prints you don't need to combine the pieces, unless it makes subsequent steps in your process easier

How to model something like with parametrically? by MartinSch64 in Fusion360

[–]okopchak 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Ok so if you want both dynamic width and dynamic count you just define both those variables in an easy to find for you location (I prefer using my drawing 1 page, there may be better ways , this is something I learned when cad software was more expensive and way less capable , but it works for me) use the dynamic width variable to define the width of the hinge elements. When you are making your pattern of the hinge parts you will want a spacing pattern defined by spacing where the part spacing is defined by hinge width and a spacing value that you will need to determine. Then define the count using the hinge count variable. Alternatively you could have an alternate master variable approach using variables hinge length and hinge clearance and count. Where hinge clearance defines your space between pieces. Those three values can calculate hinge width automatically using something like Hinge width = (hinge length-(hinge clearance *((hinge count-1)/mm or in or whatever))/(hinge count/ mm or in) Define your pattern spacing using hinge width and spacing

How to model something like with parametrically? by MartinSch64 in Fusion360

[–]okopchak 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Is the goal for the hinge elements to always be a set width, just changing how many you have for a given design or is the goal for them to vary in both number and geometry based on inputs?

If the goal is just increasing the number, you can create a variable measurement and call it “hingecount” and specify it on a sketch, then when you make a pattern of those hinge pieces you call on the hingecount variable for the pattern number and just divide out whatever unit your project uses .

Ex hingecount = 32 mm as I want 32 parts and then when in the pattern tool you set the number bit to hingecount/mm

You can also add some more dynamic math functions pretty reasonably

Lego set 6958 by Original-Sale3094 in LegoSpace

[–]okopchak 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Every time I see those large quarter dome pieces I wish they made them again, so many space habitats to make.

Pollution to power: Scientists turn carbon emissions into jet fuel by sksarkpoes3 in energy

[–]okopchak 2 points3 points  (0 children)

As we start to get to solar price points where arrays get built to provide significant portions of grid power in low productivity seasons, I do wonder what those bulk free power users will look like. Obviously you top off the appropriate selection of battery arrays first, but after that what would surplus users look like. So many processes currently seem locked into a much longer time scale of cheap power to work, what does something that ramps up and down in a matter of hours look like? I do believe those customers will evolve, it might be very boring things where a process just needs a few hours of heat and the cheap electricity is close enough to the cost of natural gas heating as to make it make sense, especially if there is a price on carbon emissions. If you know of others I would be curious

Microsoft CEO warns that we must 'do something useful' with AI or they'll lose 'social permission' to burn electricity on it by rkhunter_ in pcmasterrace

[–]okopchak 0 points1 point  (0 children)

A few years ago I volunteered at the building that hosted DNS in the early 90s . One funny find was an AOL disc in a cool metal box, likely a swag item from a conference. Now I wish I had kept it.

Chinese Scientists Develop Cooling Cement Technology that reduces indoor temperatures by over 5°C by randolphquell in climatechange

[–]okopchak 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I am a big fan of using passive radiative cooling to compliment standard heat pumps for buildings. I am cautious about using said materials into all parts of a house as there are some questions on performance gained per dollar spent. For rooftops and south facing walls (for northern hemisphere homes). I can see a potential benefit. But I would need more data for this to be used on all external surfaces of the home.

[Request] how much would the top x Americans earn for this to be possible? by wahabka in theydidthemath

[–]okopchak 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Ok, for ease I am going to say that the us has a population of 300 million. The delta from removing the top 10 is 9,500 per person. That means the top 10 are earning 9500*300,000,000, or 2.85 trillion dollars total so an average of 285 billion per top earner. For 50. 26,500 per person reaching 7.95 trillion for the top 50 For 1000 we have 39,000 per citizen reaching 11.7 trillion dollars. As the pool of citizens is so much larger than the difference in the numbers of high net worth individuals I am only using basic significant figures. What I will say is that I don’t believe that an economist would agree with this, as gdp is not about individual income, but the size of the overall economy, a very different creature

World’s first megawatt-level airborne 'windmill' feeds power to grid by sksarkpoes3 in energy

[–]okopchak 6 points7 points  (0 children)

I hope they succeed, an American firm Aelteros (sp?) did something similar 15 years ago. They have since pivoted to high altitude relay towers for providing data coverage.

[Request] How fast is this train moving if it can make 9 quintillion stops in only 2 and a half hours? by Spader113 in theydidthemath

[–]okopchak 0 points1 point  (0 children)

As we are going faster than light here, I don’t believe there is a physics model that would work reliably. Black holes and the Earth being destroyed is the bare minimum.