Readit Newsrawgabbit commented on How does the US use water? construction-physics.com/... · Posted by u/juliangamble
Thermoelectric cooling's 41% includes all thermal plants (coal, gas, nuclear), and most of this water is withdrawn but returned to source, not consumed - so modernizing would reduce withdrawals but not free up that water for other consumptive uses.
Thanks.
rawgabbit commented on How does the US use water? construction-physics.com/... · Posted by u/juliangamble
Note that water use is not the same as water consumption. If 100 gallons of water passes through a heat exchanger and 99 gallons go back into the river, only then 100 gallons were used but only 1 gallon was consumed. Thermoelectric cooling makes up a lot of water use, but on 1-2% of water consumption because most of the used water is returned: https://watercalculator.org/footprint/water-use-withdrawal-c...
Furthermore, heat exchangers can use wastewater. This is done at the Palo Verde nuclear plant, for example.
Thanks. So the water of water consumed is by agriculture and “public use”.
rawgabbit commented on How does the US use water? construction-physics.com/... · Posted by u/juliangamble
I don't have numbers to quote at you, but I would assume not. Fundamentally coal, nuclear, and gas-boiler (but not gas-turbine) power plants work the same way - you heat up water until it boils, and run the steam through a turbine to turn that heat into mechanical energy. I.e. the "cooling" is also the electricity generation mechanism. As a result same amount of heat should result in the basically same amount of electricity for each process, and since the water is being used in the same way they should be pretty much equal in water (use or consumption)/electricity output efficiency assuming they were built with the same era of technology...
I was mentally referring to this article. It mentioned that natural gas plants only used one tenth that of coal. I assumed this is because natural gas plants are newer etc.
https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=50698
Natural gas-fired generation uses a more energy-efficient technology to produce electricity than coal and has a lower water withdrawal intensity than coal. Natural gas combined-cycle generation had an average water withdrawal intensity of 2,793 gal/MWh in 2020, compared with 21,406 gal/MWh for coal.rawgabbit commented on How does the US use water? construction-physics.com/... · Posted by u/juliangamble
How did you go from "thermoelectric" to "nuclear"? The US has nearly as much coal power as nuclear power, and significantly more natural gas than nuclear.
I assumed only nuclear power plants need that much water for cooling. It is only an assumption. If I am wrong I am happy to be corrected.
rawgabbit commented on How does the US use water? construction-physics.com/... · Posted by u/juliangamble
It said 41% of the water used in the US is for thermo electric cooling. Albeit, it didn't break this down into saltwater vs freshwater. It also said the vast majority of this water usage is due to older plants that did not recirculate the water. The newer plants that recirculate the water only used a tiny fraction of water in comparison.
So...if the US replaces all of its old nuclear power plants, we would free up almost 40% of water used today?
rawgabbit commented on 95% of Companies See 'Zero Return' on $30B Generative AI Spend thedailyadda.com/95-of-co... · Posted by u/speckx
Here is the report: https://mlq.ai/media/quarterly_decks/v0.1_State_of_AI_in_Bus...
The story there is very different than what's in the article.
Some infos:
- 50% of the budgets (the one that fails) went to marketing and sales
- the authors still see that AI would offer automation equaling $2.3 trillion in labor value affecting 39 million positions
- top barriers for failure is Unwillingness to adopt new tools, Lack of executive sponsorship
Lots of people here are jumping to conclusions. AI does not work. I don't think that's what the report says.
This stood out to me in the report:
A corporate lawyer at a mid-sized firm exemplified this dynamic. Her organization invested $50,000 in a specialized contract analysis tool, yet she consistently defaulted to ChatGPT for drafting work: "Our purchased AI tool provided rigid summaries with limited customization options. With ChatGPT, I can guide the conversation and iterate until I get exactly what I need. The fundamental quality difference is noticeable, ChatGPT consistently produces better outputs, even though our vendor claims to use the same underlying technology." This pattern suggests that a $20-per-month general-purpose tool often outperforms bespoke enterprise systems costing orders of magnitude more, at least in terms of immediate usability and user satisfaction. This paradox exemplifies why most organizations remain on the wrong side of the GenAI Divide.rawgabbit commented on Electromechanical reshaping, an alternative to laser eye surgery medicalxpress.com/news/20... · Posted by u/Gaishan
Just for context and as this article only mentions LASIK and not other options such as (Trans-)PRK and SMILE, the majority of negative side effects one experiences post LASIK are not linked to the ablation/"carving" of the cornea, as they call it, but rather is a result of the need to sever the subbasal nerve plexus in the anterior stroma, which tends to be regenerate in a less comprehensive manner and significantly slower around the margins of the flap compared to other methods.
Flaps aren't inherently dangerous either (flap detachments are very rare, even more so with modern systems that create essentially a cavity where the flap can rest in), but the difference in healing post OP is a lead cause of heightened dry eye after LASIK. Both PRK and SMILE, due to the way they work, are less likely to suffer from this, but every procedure has trade-offs naturally.
With PRK, the epithelium in the area is removed and has to regrow, a process that takes a few days (to get the initial part done, full regrowth takes far longer but isn't noticeable in general). This regrowth can be both rather painful and also rob you of the "instantly perfect sight"-effect many people desire from their laser eye surgery. As the epithelium does regrow naturally however, it is less likely (both in theory and in medical literature) to lead to dry eye and other side effects in the short and long term, making it the preferred choice by many ophthalmologists when choosing such surgery for themselves.
SMILE, on paper, might be able to offer the best of both worlds, but is severely more expensive than either and there is not a sufficient degree of long term research to make a definitive statement that the side effect amount and severity is comparable to PRK, simply because it is rather new. What research is out there is promising though.
Overall, each option is very well tolerated, leads to major QOL improvements and we need to keep in mind that even the more common side effects one may face with LASIK may not affect everyone and still are comparably small considering other medical fields and their elective procedures.
In this context, I'm very excited to see whether this method might have even fewer short and long term side effects than PRK, but like with SMILE, it may take decades to have a conclusive answer.
Edit: Another thing I missed and which was not covered in the article, is the potential that this new method could be applicable to people who, because of a variety of factors, are not eligible for any ablative eye surgery. I myself was at the upper limit for Trans-PRK in regard to the severity of my Myopia and the thickness (or lack there off) of my Epithelium. In that regard, I see far more potential than just reducing already low side-effect risks further.
I saw a Japanese YouTuber talk about her ICL procedure.
https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/treatments/25050-impla...
She said a Collamer lens was inserted into her eye and the procedure was reversible. I assume this is also available in the US?
I wonder why the author views CQRS negatively and then later gives this classic CQRS advice:
>What this means in practice is having one service that knows about the state - i.e. it talks to a database - and other services that do stateless things. Avoid having five different services all write to the same table. Instead, have four of them send API requests (or emit events) to the first service, and keep the writing logic in that one service.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28797485