How much is enough? A von neumann machine shouldn't need to be that big. You can send a single one to a solar system and let it replicate itself indefinitely. A single seed can sprout an entire civilization.

> If an intelligent species directed such an object to our galaxy, how close would is need to be for us to detect it?

We could probably detect it for many hundreds of lightyears if not orders of magnitude further. Why? Because an intelligent species capable of sending a von neumann machine to another solar system would probably be intelligent enough to make large scale infrastructure projects like dyson swarms. Such structures would basically be visible from any distance we could see the individual star from, which we can do from at least 50 million light years.

And not only that, but we could see evidence of a von neumann machine coming through in the distant past as well, even if for some reason its no longer active, because it would have left an enormous amount of artifacts behind.

> When it is part of the question, how is it irrelevant?

Fair enough. But what I mean is that if life isn't "rare" (for any definition of rare really), one would expect to see a massive amount of evidence of life and civilizations etc. Since we don't see that evidence, we should assume either that life is rare, or we're not the "average" planet that the copernican principle assumes.

> If it was on the other side of the galaxy, how would they know to send someone to our solar system

They wouldn't have to know. They would simply send spaceships everywhere and would happen across us by random chance within a million years.

I don't think we should be subsidizing power (or most things) but it seems disingenuous for an article to claim that nuclear power isn't viable because it gets subsidies, even tho fossil fuel gets at least as much subsidies per mwh as nuclear.

> you eont get to have multiple roads or power lines to your home

Why the fuck not? You are asserting things that you clearly haven't thought much about. But I don't have time to try and change your mind. Your biases are clearly too ingrained.

Yes. Granting anyone a monopoly (a corporation or a government) is always a terrible idea. Let's stop doing that.

The idea that existing nuclear power plants are losing money because they aren't operationally competitive with oil and gas does not square with the facts. The total cost of running a nuclear plant is 30% less than oil and gas per kilowatt-hour. And if all our nuclear plants weren't 50 years old and saddled with massive overregulation, the operation and maintenance of a nuclear plant would probably be equivalent to running a fossil fueled power plant, which would cut ANOTHER 30% off the cost of nuclear because fuel costs of fossil fueled power plants are 4 times the cost of nuclear fuel per kwh.

https://www.eia.gov/electricity/annual/html/epa_08_04.html

And as for construction costs, you can see that the massive increase in construction costs in the early 60s and 70s was because regulation required enormous increases in staffing, which ballooned labor costs.

https://ifp.org/nuclear-power-plant-construction-costs/

And even so a nuclear plant should be expected to be profitable as long as you can manage to operate it for long enough without the government shutting you down (one of the major regulatory risks I mentioned).

Nuclear power plants in the past generally took 7 years to build and pay off in 16-24 years. While a natural gas plant can be built in 2 years and pay off in 8 years. Nuclear power plants are so cost effective tho, that if you can manage to run it for 17 years, you'll make more money than running a natural gas plant.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UC_BCz0pzMw

> a previous conservative Goverment saddling it with 16 billion of extra costs due to grift

Oh really? A government run monopoly being involved in grift? How surprising. Guess what? That's what happens with government run companies. You can't simply wish away the opposing party. And I bet the party you like best also does awful crap you conveniently ignore.

For every great nationalized business you can point out, I could point out 100 that are awful wastes of money.