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From: The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid>
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.misc
Subject: Re: Remember "Bit-Slice" Chips ?
Date: Thu, 12 Dec 2024 10:33:06 +0000
Organization: A little, after lunch
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On 11/12/2024 20:56, D wrote:
> 
> 
> On Wed, 11 Dec 2024, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>
>> There is an international group of shipping people looking into what 
>> stands in the way. Regulations mostly...
>>
>> The economics are somewhat unclear.  The rising cost of bunker oil has 
>> made cruising at lower speeds the optimal balance. With nuclear, 
>> uranium costs are negligible so full speed at whatever the weather 
>> will allow may be optimal leading to less ships being needed overall.
>>
>> Probably a large container or cruise ship could top out at 50mph 
>> (80kph) or so. So something like a 3 day  transatlantic crossing time.
>>
>> I think that is very acceptable as part of a holiday package.
> 
> It is fascinating how ancient these ideas really are. By pure chance, I 
> once found an old family history in my fathers apartment typed up by my 
> grandmother.
> 
> Apparently, together with those papers, where some old notes from her 
> job. She used to be the secretary to some scientist at swedens first 
> nuclear research program around 1954.
> 
> In those notes, I read speculations about nuclear powered ships and I 
> think they mentioned aircraft, but ships for sure.
> 
Yes. Back in the day scientists had some sway and engineers post WWII 
were gods.

But then Nuclear power wasn't needed, and fossil fuel companies had huge 
  and deep pockets.

And Russia was attempting with remarkable success to finance any and 
every organisation that made nuclear power (as well as nuclear war) more 
scary than it was.

Nuclear ships were in fact tried, but the economics and regulations made 
them not cost effective. At the time. The rather larger number of 
expensive 'nuclear engineers'  required was a dominant factor.

But by the mid 1970s they had become competitive with the rise in fuel 
prices, and today's level of computer systems and long range networking 
would probably result in just a couple of people to manage any routine 
issues on the power plant and satellite comms back to the nuclear power 
plant builder to tell them what to do if anything went outside 
operational norms


-- 
Labour - a bunch of rich people convincing poor people to vote for rich 
people by telling poor people that "other" rich people are the reason 
they are poor.

Peter Thompson