@Soyweiser https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albigensian/_Crusade
Try finding some Cathar writings.
While I think it's entirely fair to say that the medieval period gets a bad rap in terms of equating feudalism to the later god-king aristocracies, it's not in any way unfair to say the medieval church reacted to heresy with violence. (Generally effective and overwhelming violence; if you're claiming sole moral authority you can't really tolerate anyone questioning your position.)
@cstross @mirrorwitch In a bunch of ways, the unspeakable 19th and 20th centuries of Chinese history are constructed as the consequences of powerlessness; the point is to do a magic to abolish all traces of powerlessness.
Retaking control of Taiwan is not a question and cannot be a question. Policy toward Taiwan is not what Hong Kong got, they're going to get what the Uyghur are getting. (The official stance on democracy is roughly the medieval Church's stance on heresy.)
@cstross @mirrorwitch Having the fab is worthless. (Nearly. They're expensive to build.) The irreplaceable thing is the specific people and the community of practice. (Same as with a TCP/IP stack that works in the wild, or bind; this is really hard to do and the accumulated knowledge involved in getting where it is now is a full career thing to acquire and brains are rate-limited.)
China most probably doesn't have that yet.
That is, however, not in any way the point. Unification is an axiom.
@fullsquare Sub reactors use enriched for service life (and some compactness); having to get things through the pressure hull is such a pain you will pay high upfront costs to not do it. A reactor designed to push a large cargo vessel around doesn't have those constraints and could be designed for easy refueling. (There are some marine thermal siphon designs with very few moving parts, come to that.)
High latitude hydro has "and it froze" issues, same after anything else outside up there.
@frezik there is an economic case for three nuclear reactor applications.
Medical isotopes need to come from somewhere, and so far as I'm aware, you can't do all of them with particle accelerators.
Marine power; your 250,000 DWT bulk transport or large container ship pollute significantly, can't go solar, and marine nuclear is not obviously a bad technical option. (They can maybe go with some sort of fuel cell, but that's not developed tech.)
High-latitude baseline power.
@Soyweiser The Cathars are the heretics being extirpated during the Albigensian Crusade.