It's part of the current administration's energy agenda, President Trump signed executive orders a couple of months ago, to increase nuclear energy capacity by 400% in the next 25 years, revising regulations, and expediting review and approval of reactor projects, which seems like the most effective strategy for expanding clean energy production.
A certain group of people keep saying that. But that particular idea of "clean" nuclear does not price in the 10.000 years of safe storage of nuclear waste materials (for the most dangerous HLW materials this number can go up to 100.000 years). Do you and your 3500 generations of ancestors volunteer to do this? Then it is cheap and clean. Otherwise it is yet another instance of "privatize the gains and socialize the externalities".
(And let's ignore the fact that humanity barely managed to organize anything that held even a mere 1000 years)
Nuclear waste is a complete non-issue. It's trivial to just let it sit around in a corner of the power plant's property for a century or two until somebody nuts up and dumps it down a bore shaft or into the ocean where it belongs.
There's no technical or economic problem here. The problem is completely one of PR, with ignoramuses thinking it's a big deal being the entire problem.
There's no room in my garage, but I'd have no qualms about it being put in my backyard. Of course the power plant property is better, it doesn't need to get moved far and is easier to keep track of. When enough has piled up to compel somebody to do something about it, it can be dumped into the ocean.
And just to be clear, it would be "a bore shaft", not "many bore shafts". The amount of nuclear waste generated per person per lifetime is so small you could pick it up and carry it. So a single well positioned mine with good geology could literally store all of it the US could generate for centuries.
My understanding is that every other form of energy production has similar or worse concerns, including renewables due to the materials used to build and operate and decommission solar panels and windmills.
The argument you're making about waste has even led to the decommissioning of nuclear in Germany to be replaced with coal... burning coal also produces radioactive fly ash. Everything has tradeoffs!
I guess we could just give up on electricity entirely! That might save the planet
>My understanding is that every other form of energy production has similar or worse concerns
You are suffering from a misunderstanding then. Maybe several, since Germany has cut their coal use by more than half since Fukushima. (262 TWh from coal in 2011, 108 in 2024).
Nuclear waste and the efforts it requires to manage is really orders of magnitude worse than other kinds of waste produced in energy production. Even if it can be argued that coal is second, it's a distant second, and nobody replaces nuclear with coal.
That is purely psychological perception. Noone seriously calculated that nuclear waste would be orders of magnitude worse than coal per TWh. Neither safety, expense to manage nor other externalities.
No it isn't. All current nuclear waste models purely rely on geology and perfect engineering and assume that 100 to 300 years in the future those sites need zero staff, zero maintenance and zero monitoring.
Which is of course a "cool" assumption to make if you're profiting from this being the conclusion today. Critics of these models (like me) are sceptical of that overly opportunistic conclusion, especially since the timeframes involved are so long and the storage still needs to be maintained long after the profits stopped for one reason or another. I am not saying that this can't be done, I say the current models are insufficient and rely on future generations "dealing with it" somehow.
If you can convince me my worry is unfounded, I'd be happy to hear why I am worrying too much or why we can be certain that this works out as we wish it would.
So what if it's not perfect? Worst case of nuclear waste mishandling would still have milder repercussions compared to doubled, or tripled or worse CO2 levels we are subjecting future generations to. That will persist too long after profits from fossils stop.
Hard to discuss or persuade when you are comparing everything to some ideal, and one-sidedly moreover. Can we talk about real world alternatives. Hypothetically even doubling natural radioactivity background (and that would require total recklessness) would be better option if we could have avoided large part of CO2 output. Now nuclear is becoming moot as we have cheap renewables and batteries anyway.
>Noone seriously calculated that nuclear waste would be orders of magnitude worse than coal per TWh
Not sure what you mean here but I agree that nobody was able to predict what the cost of nuclear would actually end up being when they first started with it in the 50s.
EDF was bailed out for 50 bn despite having neglected maintenance so badly that half their plants were offline in 2022, and the first thing France did when they took over was to double the purchase price. If that's enough remains to be seen.
If you mean that you disagree that nuclear is an order of magnitude worse per TWh, then perhaps you don't know how much more energy we get from coal, or how much money, time and effort is spent on nuclear?
Just as an illustration, during the 40 years it was active, Fukushima generated as much electricity in total as the world gets from coal in one week.
>I don't understand what are you trying to say, coal plants always have proper maintenance and never caused price hikes, outages and fatal accidents?
No no - I'm saying nobody pays 8 billion per year 14 years after a coal plant accident, no matter what coal plant accident it was. But Japan pays that for Fukushima.
Because nobody (at least in the US and China) takes heavy metals in groundwater as a serious problem. If they did, that would cost much more than Fukushima. It eventually will.
Renewables outside of solar farms where solar is installed at ground level, also have a significantly higher death and serious injury rate than nuclear does per GWH produced even after including the use of nuclear weapons and nuclear weapons testing in the numbers to make nuclear look worse.
I heard something similar with Jak and Daxter, where they took advantage of the embedded PS1 hardware on the PS2 to scrape together some extra performance.
Most PS2 games used the PS1 hardware for audio/sfx so you freed the main CPU for rendering/gameplay.
I believe Gran Tourismo 3 used the ps1 hardware for everything except rendering, which was the kind of nuts thing you could do if your games were single platform and with huge budget.
I really enjoyed your "Making Crash Bandicoot" blog posts and the "War Stories" video. I would love to read about your work on Jak & Daxter and working on the PS2.
Regarding iCloud, Apple has made decisions to bring Chinese iCloud in compliance with Chinese regulations. Chinese iCloud accounts, data, and encryption keys are stored with a Chinese firm overseen by the Chinese government.
Yep. Apple moved their keys to be stored locally on state-owned servers, meaning that Apple has given the Chinese government access to Chinese user data. Apple even updated their TOS for it.
>Apple says the joint venture does not mean that China has any kind of “backdoor” into user data and that Apple alone – not its Chinese partner – will control the encryption keys.
China goes so far as to require Android users to install a surveillance app in some provinces (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jingwang_Weishi) so you think the Chinese government would really allow the sale of unbreakable end to end encryption domestically just because it's Apple?
What would be the point then, as anyone wanting to avoid Chinese surveillance could just buy an iPhone. They wouldn't go through huge, immense trouble rolling out a massive surveillance apparatus on this domestic internet only to allow the world's most popular phone to be sold domestically as a simple circumvention.
No, Apple obviously made a deal as they are totally dependent on China for manufacturing their phone as well, they have no leverage. The difference is, Apple's culture of secrecy seems to prevent their employees from leaking dissent externally, so whatever they did, the details aren't public.
>so you think the Chinese government would really allow the sale of unbreakable end to end encryption domestically just because it's Apple?
Yes. Apple has even said this in court filings during the FBI legal fight [1]:
>Finally, the government attempts to disclaim the obvious international implications of its demand, asserting that any pressure to hand over the same software to foreign agents “flows from [Apple’s] decision to do business in foreign countries . . . .” Opp. 26. Contrary to the government’s misleading statistics (Opp. 26), which had to do with lawful process and did not compel the creation of software that undermines the security of its users, Apple has never built a back door of any kind into iOS, or otherwise made data stored on the iPhone or in iCloud more technically accessible to any country’s government. See Dkt. 16-28 [Apple Inc., Privacy, Gov’t Info. Requests]; Federighi Decl. ¶¶ 6–7. The government is wrong in asserting that Apple made “special accommodations” for China (Opp. 26), as Apple uses the same security protocols everywhere in the world and follows the same standards for responding to law enforcement requests. See Federighi Decl. ¶ 5.
and Craig Federighi's declaration [2]:
>5. Apple uses the same security protocols everywhere in the world.
>6. Apple has never made user data, whether stored on the iPhone or in iCloud, more technologically accessible to any country's government. We believe any such access is too dangerous to allow. Apple has also not provided any government with its proprietary iOS source code. While governmental agencies in various countries, including the United States, perform regulatory reviews of new iPhone releases, all that Apple provides in those circumstances is an unmodified iPhone device.
>7. It is my understanding that Apple has never worked with any government agency from any country to create a "backdoor" in any of our products and services.
>I declare under penalty of perjury under the laws of the United States of America that the foregoing is true and correct.
Apple has leverage in China because they indirectly employ millions of people.
>No, Apple obviously made a deal as they are totally dependent on China for manufacturing their phone as well, they have no leverage. The difference is, Apple's culture of secrecy seems to prevent their employees from leaking dissent externally, so whatever they did, the details aren't public.
Lol. I'm sure Federighi perjured himself because the Apple Cult is just that strong.
And even then, the declaration you quote (made in a US Court case referring to the FBI) was made two years before Apple gave the keys over to China.
Apple has deleted VPN apps from the Chinese store at the request of the Chinese government. They also added a clause to their TOS that allows the state-owned data company to access all user data. When they rolled this out and gave the keys to China, they only gave their users the option to delete their account, not opt out.
I'm sorry to be the one to have to break this to you but Apple is acquiescing with the Chinese government surveillance demands.
Yes, so much leverage that China regularly forces them to censor the App Store, and forced them to give up control of iCloud in China.
Quite different than say, how Apple handled the FBI demands or AT&T?
What concessions did Apple extract from China with respect to freedom or privacy for the Chinese people that you can point to?
Have they ever gotten VPN reinstated? Can you point to a single instance of Apple even petitioning against the government in Chinese courts?
I’ll go one better: can you find an instance on record of Apple executives like Tim Cook criticizing Chinese government policies like they do the US government? Any instance of push back at all?
Apple definitely has leverage because we now know they have not made any "special accommodations" for China in their products and services. And as far as I know, iMessage remains unblocked unlike other encrypted services like WhatsApp.
That doesn't mean that Apple can do whatever they want. They've had to shut down iBooks and iTunes Movies within months of turning it on. They've had to remove VPN apps and the NYT's app from the App Store.
But they haven't had to fundamentally cripple the security of their products and services. And that's a meaningful concession they've obtained, because they're Apple.
>I’ll go one better: can you find an instance on record of Apple executives like Tim Cook criticizing Chinese government policies like they do the US government? Any instance of push back at all?
We know they pushed back on the data localization regulation because they said so in a statement to Reuters.
That was back in February. Since then there's been some shuffling of the companies who own the servers with the keys so that China now has access.
From July 2018:
>Fast forward to today: China Telecom, a government owned telco, is taking over the iCloud data from Guizhou-Cloud Big Data. This essentially means that a state-owned firm now has access to all the iCloud data China-based users store, such as photos, notes, emails, and text messages.
Nobody said that Apple no longer retains control of the keys. The point is that the Chinese government has access to Apple user data and Apple is complicit.
>Nobody said that Apple no longer retains control of the keys. The point is that the Chinese government has access to Apple user data and Apple is complicit.
The Chinese government has the exact same access to Apple user data as before, which is through Apple. Who controls the keys is what matters.
>The Chinese government has the exact same access to Apple user data as before, which is through Apple.
No, the Chinese government now owns the servers with the key storage. They now have access to all the keys and user data at rest.
If the Chinese government is accessing all the user data because they requested Apple to put the user keys on their now-state-owned servers, then why does it matter if Apple controls the keys? You're still splitting hairs.
>No, the Chinese government now owns the servers with the key storage. They now have access to all the keys and user data.
>If the Chinese government is accessing all the user data because they requested Apple to put the user keys on their now-state-owned servers, then why does it matter if Apple controls the keys? You're still splitting hairs.
Apple said literally the opposite of this to Reuters and in this statement to 9to5Mac [1]:
>Last year, we announced that Guizhou on the Cloud Big Data (GCBD) would become the operator of iCloud in China. As we said at the time, we’re committed to continuously improving the user experience, and our partnership with GCBD will allow us improve the speed and reliability of our iCloud services products while also complying with newly passed regulations that cloud services be operated by Chinese companies. Because of our commitment to transparency, there will be a series of customer communications over the course of the next seven weeks to make sure customers are well informed of the coming changes. Apple has strong data privacy and security protections in place and no backdoors will be created into any of our systems.
You seem to think there's some material difference by storing the keys or data in China. There isn't. China's power over Apple comes from the fact that they can block their access to operate in China. It's not technical or legal. Chinese iCloud data was just as vulnerable to requests from the Chinese government when it was stored in the US.
>Apple says the joint venture does not mean that China has any kind of “backdoor” into user data and that Apple alone – not its Chinese partner – will control the encryption keys.
> That report doesn't say that Apple no longer retains control of the keys.
Even if it does (which is unclear), do you think Apple will be able to refuse if the Chinese government asks for them? I wouldn't be surprised of "the laws and regulations of China" say that Apple is required to turn them over.
>Even if it does (which is unclear), do you think Apple will be able to refuse if the Chinese government asks for them? I wouldn't be surprised of "the laws and regulations of China" say that Apple is required to turn them over.
Apple says that they respond to valid legal requests, but that isn't any different than when iCloud data was stored in the US. If you thought that Apple would cave to any request for data from the Chinese before, then there's no material difference by storing Chinese iCloud data in China.
You cannot subscribe to podcasts unless you enable the recording of Web & App Activity on your Google account. Doing so will record and associate all your search and browsing activity with your Google account. Using Google Assistant also requires the same setting and more to be enabled. A deal-breaker.
But at least they let you manage your privacy settings in one place and is somewhat consistent. Cannot really say the same for Amazon for example.
Is there a reason why YouTube can’t implement something similar to Twitch subscriptions and Patreon backing to YouTube? I see that an increasing number of smaller YouTubers are relying on Patreon to supplement their income because their YouTube revenue has been cut significant.
A smaller number of dedicated fans are willing to pay more money directly to the creators that they enjoy and connect with.
How does this affect their relationship with advertisers more than YouTube Red, if at all?
