this post was submitted on 01 Oct 2023
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The thought of a nuclear reactor running on Windows is terrifying.
They’re going to build it in 2026 but it’ll still somehow be running on XP.
“What operating system is that running?”
“Uh… vista.”
“We’re all going to die!”
If they make it Windows ME then we ARE ALL DEAD!
Have you tried turning it off and back on again?
Even Microsoft does not trust Windows on Azure 🤣
They'll probably not use Windows, instead opting for an OS that is proven to work with already running reactors, like QNX
They should run Arch, btw
More stable than Windows I guess
Modern nuclear reactors are designed to fail safely, so Windows couldn’t actually create a Chernobyl. Everything wrong with nuclear in our world is with old-gen plants. It’s a technology that got ahead of itself by 50 years.
Yeah, there's very little information in the article on what type of reactor they plan to use, but I hope they're able to go with something like a molten salt reactor with a thorium fuel cycle.
Getting half a dozen of those built and in use would be exactly the kind of thing that tech billionaires are actually good for.
Fuck that. Take all the government grants and subsidies that would surely exist, and then use it for their own good/profit/power hoarding? No thanks.
Putting billionaires in control of our nuclear power infrastructure after "building" them with mostly taxpayer money, when it's all said and done, is an absolutely bone chilling thought. Terrifying.
I don’t know why you think government subsidies exist - so impoverished single moms can build power plants? No. They’re pork for billionaires by design, to get them off their asses and steer them into directions we want to go. Like venture capital, they are also high risk. Our federal budget can support some level of this and it’s frankly needed to drive change in new or stalled industries where the motive for immediate profit isn’t strong enough to overcome the cold start problem. If your hatred of billionaires keeps you from making smart energy choices to address climate change, then your priorities are wrong.
The picture they show is from terrapower, the company Bill Gates funded, which is a thorium reactor. Thorium liquid salt reactors are still difficult because of the metallurgy. I believe they were supposed to fit the small modular concept though.
Hm… risk of nuclear disaster? Or more expense? Hm… I’ll have to think about this one.
Your logic is fallacious: the solution is not to build a nuclear reactor but seek an alternative.
Yes I understand. It was a cheeky reply. But alternatives are actually limited if you consider all the benefits of nuclear: high energy output, limited land use, no dependence on weather or time of day, no massive subsidy to Chinese manufacturing, no carbon, all resources mineable in the US, waste all physically contained…
Got alternatives to that?
The best alternative is probably a diversified system of sustainable energy sources, along with batteries.
Hm.. invest into your companies cybersecurity before or after you get hacked?
Companies don't care enough about risks if they are not forced to account for them.
Like Microsoft uses Windows for anything that matters since they got rid of Balmer.
But... Developers!... /s
A lot of them do IIRC, windows 98 is popping into my mind as an instance I've read of
Windows NT or 2000. Not 98.
Ah yes you're correct, Windows 98 is (was?) the British nuclear submarines
Now THAT is wild as hell.
Could be worse, could be running MacOS. Surely nothing bad can happen while the entire system freezes for no reason for 15 minutes or more without any possible input from the user. It will always fix it self... (hopefully before the reactor achieves a run away meltdown chain.)
What are you running? I’ve never had an issue like that at all
Reminds me of that time the technodork ran his minecraft reactor with opencomputers and lost his base because the computer blue screened. Almost as funny as that time the entire city lit up because they were using raw radio signals to control their reactor and a nearby thunderstrike instructed the reactor to drop all the fuel and go supercritical. This is why you add realism to video games, it leads to hilarious stuff like this.
EDIT: That was actually the same server where they sabotaged the entire electrical grid to blow up everyone's base as a send-off and mine was the only one standing at the end because I was the only one who bothered to set up a surge protector under OHSA (Omega Haxors? Safety!? AHAHAHAH!) it just so happened that the system designed to save the grid from my many exploits just so happened to work in reverse.