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My guess is that repairs for piston based generators can be fabricated on site in the machine shop whereas repairs for turbine based generators probably require

• datavirtue 2y ago
  ...and there are millions of diesel engines and many parts suppliers and many affordable technicians. None of this is true of turbine engines.
  • CuriousCosmic 2y ago
    Yeah. This was part of the issue that nukey-poo had at mcmurdo back in the 70s. It's not nearly as bad now due to improvements in electronics, nuke tech, and automation, but turns out running a nuclear reactor takes a lot of highly skilled (and expensive) people. Of course nukey-poo was staffed by like 30 seabees working full time so staffing was a bit less of an issue but that's still a very expensive proposition. There's talk from the biden admin of the military adopting SMRs (small modular reactors) again now that they are so much cheaper, simpler, better contained, and less staff intensive to operate. So it'd be interesting to see if they offer support for one to the USAP to use at the pole. Of course that comes with it's own added problems (potential interference with science experiments like icecube) given that they spew neutrinos with basically no ability to shield them. So if they were to do it, they'd probably have to install it quite a ways away from the dark sector.