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mpweiher
Joined 57,320 karma
http://blog.metaobject.com/
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- In 1979 the “standard practice in C of passing a large struct to a function” wasn’t just not standard practice, it didn’t exist!
All you could pass as a parameter to a function were pointers to structs. In fact, with one exception, all parameters to functions were basically a machine word. Either a pointer or a full size int. Exception were doubles (and all floating point args were passed as doubles).
Hmm..maybe two exceptions? Not sure about long.
The treatment of structs as full values that could be assigned and passed to or returned from functions was only introduced in ANSI C, 1989.
And of course the correct recommendation to Bjarne would be: just look at what Brad is doing and copy that.
- 4 points
- 597 points
- Since turning off the remaining nuclear plants, Germany has become a net importer of electricity.
- 4 points
- 4 points
- 40 points
- 2022. My kind of humor.
Until March of 2023, decreasing the nuclear share was the law in France. The law said that the nuclear share was to be decreased to below 50%.
In addition, the absolute capacity of nuclear power was not allowed to increase.
So in order to build even just one new nuclear power plant, for example to maintain industrial capacity, they had to shut down two existing plants.
Which generally makes very little sense. And it precluded building nuclear power plants the way we know how to build them quickly and cheaply: multiple units of the same design, slightly overlapping.
So the law forced France to build Flamanville 3 the exact way we know how not to do it.
- Tell that to the Spaniards.
- Exactly!
For example, French nuclear capacity factors are currently rising. One reason, as far as I can tell, is that they can now use intermittent renewables for at least some of the peak load, meaning they don't have to ramp their nuclear plants up and down.
Win win!
Also, PV is absolutely fantastic for hot deserts: lots of sunshine and a lot of load that correlates almost perfectly with that very same sunshine.
- >> 2) Vogtle is Lazard's ONLY source of data for new nuclear > Adding Flamanville 3, Hinkley Point C, the proposed EPR2 fleet, Virgil C. Summer ...
...doesn't broaden the data on which you base your conclusions nearly enough to make any broad predictions. Even if things were normal, a couple of hand-picked examples don't show much of anything. But things are not "normal" with that selection.
All of these projects are of just two reactor types, the Westinghouse AP-1000 and the French EPR.
One of these has even been discontinued by its manufacturer, because it was too difficult to build. Do you know which?
All of these builds were also First of a Kind (FOAK) builds. Westinghouse had submitted plans for the AP-1000 to the NRC that were not actually buildable. Do you think that generalizes to future AP-1000 builds, now that they have modified the plans to make them buildable and have, you know, built them?
Speaking of the different between FOAK and NOAK builds (Nth of a Kind): China's first two AP-1000 reactors took about 10 years to build. They are now building a slightly uprated version, the CAP-14000 (so 1,4GW electric instead of 1,0GW), in 5 years. For $3.5 bn.
Coming back to FOAK builds: Hinkley Point C had 7000 changes applied by the regulator to the design while it was being built.
- Comparison:
1. France decarbonized their electricity sector in 15 years. Cost was €228 billion.
2. Germany has been trying and failing to decarbonize their electricity sector for the last 20+ years, the "Energiewende". Cost so far: €700 billion and rising. Specific CO₂ emissions for electricity are 10x worse than France (2024 numbers, 2025 isn't over yet, but so far it looks like little or no change).
Which is faster and cheaper, in your humble opinion: (1) or (2)?
- In fact, Lazard themselves are very aware that their numbers are not representative for nuclear (as indicated by the footnote) and they themselves are very bullish on nuclear.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16HVh_Fx6LQ
“We do not, in this study, try to cost out new nuclear” (2:35)
“We think nuclear will be a big part of the future” (2:47)
“the costs of nuclear should go down “ (12:54)
“next five to 10 years the nuclear bar the one that's most likely to change the most in in terms of cost reduction” (14:06)
- I agree with your last 4 paragraphs 100%.
The framing of an either/or situation is one that renewables advocates (commonly) make, it is not shared by nuclear advocates. Almost all industrialized nations are doing both.
- 3 points
- This is completely false. Nuclear plants can and do ramp up quickly, thought not from/to 0, but that's generally not necessary.
And they provide grid stability by having rotating masses on the grid, and thus combine pretty nicely with small to medium amounts of intermittent renewals that can provide some of the peak power.
- > [UK quadrupling target] That was the 2050 target from the last government.
Yes. The only criticism the new labor government had of the previous government's nuclear policy was them not getting enough done:
"Starmer hits out at Tories’ ‘shambolic’ failure to open nuclear power plants"
https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/b/starmer-targets-to...
> In terms of actual commitments the only planned plant after Hinkley C is currently Sizewell C.
Well sure, they only got those commitments through this summer. At around the same time as they were getting the commitments for Sizewell-C (and pre-construction work has commenced), they also designated the next site.
And, yes, they also selected the winner of the SMR competition.
Here current statements from the government:
"Starmer pledges to ‘build, baby, build’ as green groups criticise nuclear plans"
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/feb/06/starmer-...
In my mind, they didn't exist yet, and certainly the 1978 definition of C that I read and you also cite confirms this: "they cannot be passed to or returned from functions". Not much time between 1978 and 1979, so while that's possible it doesn't seem particularly likely.
My first C compiler, Manx Aztec C for the Amiga (obviously from the mid 1980s) didn't support structures as function arguments, and only got them with a later upgrade that supported ANSI C.
The 2nd edition of "The C Programming Language" from 1988 also describes ANSI C (at least that's what it says on the cover), so I don't see any documentation that points to C with structures as function arguments in the 1979 timeframe.
So I think even my less important claim, that structure passing came about with ANSI C, is pretty solid, even if there may have been isolated compilers that supported structure passing before that.
And never mind the "common practice".