4 ms·
The problem so far is that the nuclear industry is really secretive. We like to think we have the best design, and all other designs are goofy. We like to paten
by stcredzero 8y ago
The problem so far is that the nuclear industry is really secretive. We like to think we have the best design, and all other designs are goofy. We like to patent things and protect secrets. The nuclear industry started in secrecy, developed in secrecy, and still has a lot of it.
This is precisely the condition much of the software industry was in, when Stallman came up with Free Software. You could s/nuclear/software/ and the above would have been mostly true. So maybe Open Source is what's needed here.
- Cyph0n 8y agoUsing open source software is nothing like building a reactor based on an open source design...
- yotamoron 8y agoThis is true by definition - no 2 things are the exact same (otherwise its the same thing), but the same priciples might apply here as well.
- XorNot 8y agoNo but the idea of scientific journals for example is that there's a wider science community which collaboratively iterates. It's the same thing which has happened for engineered artifacts such as 3d printers. A world where the nuclear industry has a common best Practice design for each reactor, overseen by a steering committee of experts ala the Linux kernel, could actually lead to some progress and allow building some coherent and verifiable narratives about safety.
- ngcc_hk 8y agoNot totally. The share / guide and even the Ibm os was open source up to a point you can still run Ibm mainframe on pc for those 1970 era. No one care about software. It is bill gate who start the commericalism and the availability of cheap pc that start it all. What stallman did was to point to the importance of licensing scheme for the cooperation to work. Linus chose the license to avoid unix and minix issue.
- endymi0n 8y ago...the following decade used to be known as the „Golden age of Open Source reactor design“ with tens of thousands of international contributors coming up with clever, proliferation resistant designs. This time lasted until Amazon Reactor Services and Google Nuclear Cloud scooped up the best ideas of those designs (as well as hiring all important contributors) into their proprietary reactor designs, enabling anyone to easily spawn a cloud nuclear reactor worldwide, leaving 90% margin to these companies and leaving early dreams and ambitions in the dust...
- MisterTea 8y ago> Amazon Reactor Services and Google Nuclear Cloud The fools. The mad fools.
- stcredzero 8y agoNear the end of the story, someone figures out a device that uses actual atmospheric clouds as material for fusion chain reactions.
- noobermin 8y agoIs this really true? I thought it had more to do with the four freedoms Stallman talks up so much.