I was always taught to estimate HOW you are going to do something, not WHAT you are going to build. If you start with a block diagram with 8 blocks and your work breakdown structure has 8 major headings you are probably going to get rubbish estimates. Building those 8 blocks and connecting them up probably involves 20 macro-level steps. Many of the developers I've seen get this wrong don't think through HOW they will build the final state they are trying to get to so their estimates miss a lot of stuff.

Can you honestly put your hand on your heart and say the true decommissioning costs of these nuclear plants are built into the prices today? I don't think anyone can. We have properly decommissioned and cleaned up so few nuclear plants that all of the cost estimates I see have a massive risk of cost overruns associated with them. The unfortunate feature of such a long-lived asset and then waste stream is that it's very hard to price in the true cost and the community end up wearing the risk if these are miscalculated. I don't claim malice or conspiracy, just that pricing long term costs is really, really hard.

If this means a Windows 7 install that has been around for 2-3 years won;t have 50GB+ consumed by windows installer cache files I'll be pretty happy with the change. Not sure it is going to mean that though...

I know Jeff Dagle and he knows what he is talking about. I meet him when visiting PNNL earlier in the year and he understands how the bulk transmission system in the US works better than most people on the planet.

The best thing the US TSOs have done to prevent this happening again is install lots of PMUs under the NASPI program (see https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.naspi.org%2F) which Jeff is a member of. This is what gives the TSOs (and all the regional coordination authorities etc....) the real-time operational awareness of the stability of the bulk transmission system that just didn't exist a decade ago.