In the news

Must have been around that time that Companies started renting boxes in Lloyd's.

Then shirtsleeves became acceptable.

And now people don't even care about the apostrophe.

/jk

Actually, shirtsleeve’s are not acceptable :)

I entirely agree, but what I mean is that you no don't have to wear a coat on the box.

Personally I think shirtsleeves are fine, I was referring to the underwriting room rules. It was jacket and tie until they closed for the pandemic. When they reopened the rule changed to dress suitably, but I’ve yet to see anyone working without a jacket, and no tie is still a rarity.

No, it would take an industrial strategy maintained through numerous governments- and the UKs standard level of political instability means that’s impossible.

Do the voters get a say in your twenty year plan? Or would they destabilise things too much by voting the wrong way.

The UK sets out strategy and spending plans for defence - over 5-years but with longer term “vision”.

Can’t imagine that it’s totally impossible to do the same with an industrial strategy

I think you're just as sceptical as I am about the vision bit.

Not really sure what you mean here- we just had a vote in 2016 to destroy what remains of our industrial capacity and the current government followed through on it.

That’s one of the primary reasons identified by companies for not being able to make long term investments in the UK- because the government give the public stupid choices and make stupid promises.

World Cup Corruption continues
https://www.politico.eu/article/eva-kaili-doha-panzeri-qatargate-what-just-happened-at-the-european-parliament/amp/

US government scientists have made a breakthrough in the pursuit of limitless, zero-carbon power by achieving a net energy gain in a fusion reaction for the first time, according to three people with knowledge of preliminary results from a recent experiment.

https://www.ft.com/content/4b6f0fab-66ef-4e33-adec-cfc345589dc7

So only 3o years away....

My step father worked at UKAEA and fusion was the next big thing then. He's been dead 20 years and retired 15 years before that.

This isn't a world cup issue.. to quote the FT..

Campaigners have lambasted the parliament’s “culture of impunity”.

And already the story goes missing :)
#bigoilconspiracy

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I grew up in Abingdon, and my parents delighted in telling me stories of how sirens would often go off in Culham, shortly followed by announcements that parents should get their children inside and wash them down in the bath because there'd been a minor nuclear incident

That was about 30 years ago, so we're about halfway there then

It’s still there

https://archive.vn/aDBz1

Updated the link, hopefully stays up before big oil take it down again

Impressive. It'll be interesting to get all of the detail.

Fusion reactions ... produce no long-lived radioactive waste

Well, apart from the reactor, sure.

Crumbs. The image of what they’re doing is striking - it’s essentially the second (fusion) stage of a nuclear weapon, except they’re using lasers to create the x-ray flux that compresses the deuterium-tritium fuel, instead of a traditional primary (plutonium implosion). Never mind clean energy, this might have the potential to create a nuclear weapon that doesn't produce nuclear fallout.

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Given the amount of energy required to compress the deuterium-tritium and initiate the reaction.
I think weaponising it would present some interesting challenges of packaging and deployment.

Park life.

Stick it on one of the Boston Dynamics dogs and you've got a weapon folks'll happily let dance into their city... like a Trojan robot death machine.

Good point, the first thermonuclear ‘device’ in the 1950s was the size of a small building though. The question might be whether they can miniaturise the first laser/d-t stage and use that to initiate a cascade of larger fusion stages, but my grasp of physics isn’t remotely sufficient to know if that’s possible.

You can minimise the tech to a point but there are issues with energy source density and running lasers doesn't come energy cheap.

Edit:Unless you initiate a self sustaining fusion reaction that you allow to become uncontained, essentially arming the bomb at base.
This would likely still require a pretty hefty reactor at origin, so portable nuclear reactors on military bases?

How about an aircraft carrier?