Reading List 1/10/2026

Waymos as kid shuttles, naval reactors for data centers, welder’s anthrax, flood buyouts, and more.

Bubble chamber scanner, via Reddit.

Welcome to the reading list, a weekly roundup of news and links related to buildings, infrastructure and industrial technology. This week we look at Waymos as kid shuttles, naval reactors for data centers, welder’s anthrax, flood buyouts, and more. Roughly 2/3rds of the reading list is paywalled, so for full access become a paid subscriber.

LA fridge law

One annoying aspect of moving is that it’s often hard to coordinate your move to take place exactly when your old lease runs out and your new one starts, and so you end up with a period where you’re paying rent on two homes/apartments (when I was living in apartments I don’t think I ever moved without paying for an extra months rent somewhere). This is a specific instance of the more general idea that I describe in my book, that if two adjacent processes aren’t in sync — if you can’t get your new lease to start on the day your old one ends, and get the move done in on that day — you end up needing a buffer between them (in this case extra time on an apartment lease).

Here’s something that would make syncing your move-out and move-in even harder. Apparently up until January 1st of this year, Los Angeles rentals didn’t come with stoves or fridges: renters had to provide them, and remove them when moving out. Via the New York Times:

When Gov. Gavin Newsom of California signed a new state law in October mandating landlords supply tenants with a working stove and refrigerator starting on Jan. 1, 2026, it marked the end of a bizarre rite of passage for many moving to Los Angeles.

Unlike most of the country, or even many other cities in California, Los Angeles renters are often responsible for buying and installing their own refrigerators — and with removing them when they leave.

This has led to a robust network of used appliance shops, Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace ads, under the table swaps between incoming and outgoing renters, landlords who rent fridges by the month and Reddit queries like, “Quick question: do LA apartments not come with refrigerators?!!.”

There’s a longstanding joke that many Angelenos own their refrigerators but not their own homes.

Waymos as kid shuttles

In other LA news, the New York Times has a piece about parents in LA using Waymos to shuttle their kids around. Parents don’t necessarily want their kids taking the bus, school buses may not be available, and Uber/Lyft will apparently often cancel trips if they find out the rider is a minor. Thus, the robotaxi:

Here, it is not unusual for families to have multiple children attending different schools far from home. School buses, if you are deemed eligible, are limited to dropping off and picking up children at locations and times that are often unhelpful. The city bus, if there is somehow a direct route to school, comes with its own set of risks that can make parents uneasy.

Ms. Rivera, a psychiatric social worker, is stuck at work until 6 p.m. most days, while her husband, who installs and repairs glass, comes home even later.

The couple struggles to coordinate their jobs and their three children. They tried Uber, and Lyft, but found that those drivers tended to cancel after discovering their riders were minors. They turned to HopSkipDrive, a service geared toward students, but the drivers had to be scheduled in advance, and would leave if children were late.

Then, a few months ago, Ms. Rivera and Alexis did a test run with Waymo.

“It was the only option where I was like, ‘Oh my God, she can order a car, nobody’s in there, she can unlock it with her phone,’” Ms. Rivera, 42, said. “I know she’s going to be safe and she’s going to get home.”

Interestingly, apparently in California minors are technically not allowed to ride in a robotaxi without an adult. So this is a story as much about the trickiness of enforcing rule-following with self-driving cars as it is anything else.

Seán O’Casey Bridge

This week I learned about the Seán O’Casey Bridge, a footbridge in Ireland that was built over a river, and designed to be swung out of the way so boats could pass. In 2010 the remote to open the bridge was lost, and the bridge couldn’t open until four years later when a new remote was programmed. Via The Journal:

Spanning the Liffey between the IFSC and City Quay, it’s designed to swing apart to allow sail-craft upriver as far as the Talbot Memorial Bridge.

The design includes two 44-metre-long arms, capable of swinging open when required. That operation is controlled by a hand-held remote device — but, as TheJournal.ie reported last year — that device went missing some years ago, meaning openings were no longer possible.

The Authority — which is set to be wound-up in the coming months — moved offices several times in the past few years, and it’s understood the remote (which is about the size of a 1990s-era mobile phone) may have been simply misplaced in the move.

Speaking to this website, Financial Advisor to the Authority John Crawley — who was appointed to oversee the wind-up process — confirmed that it was once again possible to open the structure to shipping, following an engineering review. A lack of funding meant the process couldn’t happen until recently, he said.

Naval reactors for data centers

The immense data center buildout in the US, combined with difficulties in getting new power plants constructed and connected to the grid, has inspired a lot of creative thinking for ways to provide power for data centers. So you have things like supersonic aircraft startup Boom pivoting to gas turbines for data centers, oceangoing ship engine supplier Wartsila offering versions of their engines for data centers, and companies retrofitting jet engines to provide data center power.

Here’s another idea along these lines: using nuclear submarine reactors to power data centers. Via Bloomberg:

A Texas power developer is proposing to repurpose nuclear reactors from Navy warships to supply the US grid as the Trump administration pushes to secure massive amounts of energy for the artificial intelligence boom.

HGP Intelligent Energy LLC filed an application to the Energy Department to redirect two retired reactors to a data center project proposed at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, according to a letter submitted to the agency’s Office of Energy Dominance Financing. The project, filed for the White House’s Genesis Mission, would produce about 450-520 megawatts of around-the-clock electricity, enough to power roughly 360,000 homes.

It’s not clear how they plan to deal with the nuclear proliferation risks — naval reactors apparently use weapons-grade enriched uranium from decommissioned nuclear weapons.