This whole article severely understates the difficulty of making a bomb.
There are two ways to make a bomb: either using weapons grade uranium (like the Hiroshima bomb) or weapons grade plutonium (like the Nagasaki bomb). The first requires uranium enrichment facilities and the second requires spent fuel reprocessing facilities. No such facilities exits in the Nordic countries, and both are stupendously complex. You can't just wave a want and build them. And certainly not in a clandestine way (which the author does not actually propose). If they start on this path, maybe, maybe, their own population would accept, but it's unlikely the population of other countries would accept too. Lots of the parts and raw materials needed for these facilities will need to be imported, the Nordic countries can't simply build the entire supply chain, no matter how rich they are per capita. The access to some of that upstream supply chain will be curtailed, because other countries are either strategic adversaries (Russia, China) or democracies where a large fraction of the population opposes nuclear armament. Add to that that some of the key scientists and engineers involved in such a project could be the target of assassinations (oh, wait, Russia would never do that, would it?).
Yes, Sweden had a nuclear weapons program and they stopped short of building a bomb. But things are very different today.
There are 2 main differences. Sweden has signed the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT) and Sweden is now a member of NATO. Both of these things result in Sweden being extremely unlikely to be able to pursue a nuclear weapons program in a clandestine way. And the article doesn't even imply that it would try that, given that it talks about a Nordic compact to pursue the bomb.
Announcing to everyone that you are trying to get the bomb implies that you first withdraw from the NPT. Legally, all the nuclear suppliers (such as Urenco) are obligated to immediately stop shipments to you. All your nuclear power plants will run on fumes. Once you run out of whatever inventories you have (most importantly nuclear fuel), you need to find way to supply yourself with what you need. Sweden gets 30% of its electricity from nuclear power plants [1].
If the population really, really wants to pursue a bomb, they can probably tough it out and find ways to overcome a 30% drop in electricity generation. But it's a tall ask.
Not sure the choice of the word "bankruptcy" is meaningful. "Bankruptcy" is short for "bankruptcy protection", where an insolvent debtor tells a court they have no way of paying back all their current debts with whatever assets they have, and the court deals with the creditors and restructures all those debts in an equitable way (according to the law), so the debtors liability is limited. This is one of the cornerstones of capitalism, the limited liability concept.
When it comes to nature, there is no limited liability. If you don't have water, you don't have water, there's no way to get any "bankruptcy protection" from anyone.
> but these days for most people there’s little to no new maths.
You are right. For most people there's little to no new maths.
But not for all. There's still plenty of good quality math to be done in the exotics space. However, there's a bit of Catch 22 that prevents people from doing new math: all the big shops have had exotics libraries since before 2008, and because of the exotics hiatus between about 2008 and maybe 2013, the research momentum was lost. After that, most quants in the space were happy to find ways to use the old stuff, and apply small tweaks at the margins. Most small shops use vendor models (Numerix, Murex) or open source (QuantLib), and people who use vendor solutions or open source are not looking for cutting edge stuff.
I assume exotic derivatives (binary, asian, barrier options...) and structured notes that predominantly use above said derivatives (autocallables, barrier reverse convertibles, accumulators etc.)
Patrick Boyle, early in his YouTube career, made some videos on exotic options. This is a lot more engaging and possibly more informative than reading Hull.
For a structured products introduction you may take a look at this one: https://sspa.ch/en/book/
It's a very simple book, very high level, but explains the most popular structured products in a very simple manner. If you can read a payoff diagram, then this is the simplest intro.
Looking at their website though, they seem to have some nice online material there also. For example this explains the 5 most popular products, and perhaps that's good enough for an introduction (really these 5 products cover 90% of the market anyway, though there's no limit to how exotic some bespoke structures can get): https://sspa.ch/en/lab/?underlying=CH0012221716&final_fixing...
In case you're interested in getting to get to learn about them on a deeper level I would recommend https://www.amazon.com/Exotic-Options-Hybrids-Structuring-Pr.... This book explains not only the products, but also the pricing dynamics and hedging too.
Despite its appalling Amazon reviews I consider this book to be a real gem when it comes to the introduction to vol trading (basically dynamic hedging of equity derivatives)
> who can be relied upon to run these things, who can be trusted to regulate them and the failure modes of accidents.
I personally trust the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. I also trust the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, and the regulatory bodies in the UK and the EU.
Why?
The failure modes are not binary. A reactor is not just operating fine or going boom. There are multiple small failures that can happen, and you can get an idea if a country's nuclear fleet is run with safety in mind or not.
Chernobyl happened during a safety exercise, an exercise that was attempted 3 times before and failed 3 times before. In principle the plant should not even have been allowed to operate until the exercise had been completed. The exercise was supposed to demonstrate if in case of reactor emergency shut-down the cooling water can be kept circulating in the core for one minute, the amount of time it took for the Diesel generators to ramp up power; it was an essential exercise to perform before starting full power operations. The fact that the plant was allowed to operate for 3 years without completing this exercise - no, actually, while failing this exercise multiple times, tells you a lot about the safety mentality of the nuclear industry in the Soviet Union.
In the US, the NRC performs a lot of monitoring, and the results are published. For example, here's [1] a dashboard of performance indicators. There are 17, such as: Unplanned Scrams per 7000 Critical Hours, Unplanned Power Changes, Residual Heat Removal System, Reactor Coolant System Leak, etc. Out of about 100 reactors, you can see only green, with the exception of one yellow; that yellow is for the Palisades plant that is not currently operating, it is in the process of restarting operations, and I am sure it will not be allowed to restart until all the performance indicators are green.
Yes. Vistra is the largest power generator in the US [1]. Most of the deal that Meta announced is with Vistra, and the power will come from some existing facilities.
There is a sampling bias. Earth-like planets are too small to retain hydrogen and helium, so even if the proportion of heavier elements in the initial gas cloud were 10 times lower, the planets would still be rich in heavy elements.
And if SpaceX was not there, who would the government turn to? Fun fact: the US is way ahead of China in space launches, but if you remove SpaceX, then China is way ahead of the US.
Where do you stand on encryption? Do you feel like the "I have nothing to hide" argument has any merit? If you think people have the right to privacy, why should real estate be an exception? I personally find the fact that real estate ownership is public in the US to be quite bizarre.
Property is a physical thing in the real world that has been here long before anyone "owned it", and will be here long after all the "owners" are gone.
The public, i.e. the people on this planet, have a right to know who is claiming to own which part of the grass and soil that we all share.
This is a really complicated and broad topic that I cant take the time to type out here. I do not stand on the side of "I have nothing to hide." I fully understand the risks of that position. People must keep some secrets to protect themselves from society. Especially as everything devolves into increasingly strict "purity" tests.
With that said, I don't think the right to obfuscate real estate transactions is the same as spicy personal beliefs/private conversations/etc. IMO there is nothing more public than real estate. I do not consider real estate transactions as protected speech nor one that can be legally hidden. We live in this world together.
You are right. I checked the source, it is the graph on slide 14 of the Lazard presentation [1]. The graph is the levelized cost of energy (LCOE) in dollars per MWh.
That is not quite true. The advantages of LNG are much more important for high supersonic jets (Mach 2.5 and higher) than for subsonic jets. There are disadvantages too, and they are quite significant for all jets, but altogether the tradeoff is worth it at high speed long endurance supersonic jets.
Here's why. LNG offers 2 main benefits. The first is the higher energy density (53.6 MJ/kg vs 43 MJ/kg, so 25% more [1]). Airplanes are subject to the rocket equation, even if they are not rockets. The rocket equation says that the mass of the fueled vehicle is the mass of the vehicle at the end of the trip times the exponential of delta-v divided by the exhaust velocity. For airplanes, it is not exhaust velocity, but "effective exhaust velocity", because they borrow a lot of reaction mass from the atmosphere (the air used as oxidizer, and more importantly, the bypass air). The effective exhaust velocity is very high for subsonic airplanes, and much lower for high supersonic airplanes. The delta-v for subsonic airplanes is lower than the delta-v for supersonic airplanes because of the lower drag (although not as much lower as one would expect, because they need a higher attack angle). Overall, the benefit from the high energy density LNG is much more pronounced for high supersonic jets.
The second benefit is the use of the cryogenic LNG to cool off the engine. For very high speed engines, this is huge. So huge that the famous (but never materialized) SABRE engine was supposed to use liquid hydrogen, which is stored at much lower temperatures.
The disadvantage of LNG is, surprisingly, not the need for cryogenic storage. It is the lower volumetric energy density. It is 22% lower than that of jet fuel. The rocket equation does not care about volumes, only about mass, but larger volumes means bigger airplanes, so more drag.
So, for subsonic airplanes the advantages of LNG are not all that important, while the bulkier tanks are a pretty big downside. For high supersonic jets, the advantages of LNG are so high that they simply open up possibilities that are not there with jet fuel. The fact that the LNG is cheaper is a nice thing to have, but it's really not that important, since the economics of high supersonic jets are more impacted by the construction cost and very high maintenance cost than by the fuel cost.
Wikipedia lists LNG as 53.6 MJ/kg and 22.2 MJ/L and jet fuel as 43MJ/kg and 35MJ/L.
53.6 / 43 = 1.247
22.2 / 35 = 0.634
Energy density by mass is higher than jet fuel. But it is higher by less than jet fuel's energy density by volume is higher than LNG. And LNG requires heavier tanks.
So all in all, if it's not absolutely needed because of the cooling advantages, LNG can store less energy in the fuel tanks.
You are absolutely right. My 22% was a mistake, the correct number is indeed 36.5% lower volumetric energy density. But that strengthens my argument, doesn't it?
There are two ways to make a bomb: either using weapons grade uranium (like the Hiroshima bomb) or weapons grade plutonium (like the Nagasaki bomb). The first requires uranium enrichment facilities and the second requires spent fuel reprocessing facilities. No such facilities exits in the Nordic countries, and both are stupendously complex. You can't just wave a want and build them. And certainly not in a clandestine way (which the author does not actually propose). If they start on this path, maybe, maybe, their own population would accept, but it's unlikely the population of other countries would accept too. Lots of the parts and raw materials needed for these facilities will need to be imported, the Nordic countries can't simply build the entire supply chain, no matter how rich they are per capita. The access to some of that upstream supply chain will be curtailed, because other countries are either strategic adversaries (Russia, China) or democracies where a large fraction of the population opposes nuclear armament. Add to that that some of the key scientists and engineers involved in such a project could be the target of assassinations (oh, wait, Russia would never do that, would it?).
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