Slashdot Mirror

That's not true. This report from 2010 - the most recent I can find - shows massive amounts of Chinese coal plants being built.

https://www.netl.doe.gov/File%... page 16
https://imgur.com/a/NDlL3

And this is different from CO2...how, exactly?

Oh, that's right, it's not.

Actually, quite a lot, and sometimes significantly.

Carbon dioxide might not be as bad as Carbon Monoxide , but it is quite different in its biological effect than Nitrogen.

In fact any gas you inhale other than oxygen displaces oxygen by definition.

While CO2 suffocation is a real problem, and can lead to deaths in itself, you might want to look at the health effects some more.

Heinlein wrote a very far-sighted story -- in 1941! -- called "Solution Unsatisfactory" that imagined a deadly weapon, "nuclear dust". Just drop the dust from an ordinary bomber, and anyone who breathes or touches the dust dies. All the animals and plants die too; the land becomes uninhabitable until the radiation dies away after many many years.

It's not very far away from fictional. You might be interested in [pdf warning, 2 pages] Project Pluto which was a supersonic nuclear powered ramjet cruise missle. Essentially the reactor that powered the missile was also the warhead.

Part of it's offensive plan was to simply fly, supersonically, at low altitudes where its shockwave would destroy anything underneath it and the radiation from its engine exhaust would also cause death to anything that survived its multi mach wake. It could effectively fly for weeks doing damage until it ran out of enough engine power to maintain altitude and it would then hit it's target with the now highly radioactive contents of its engines and explode.

Fortunately plans were shelved for this truely diabolical weapon as it would "deafen, flatten, and irradiate" allies enroute to the target.

Wrong. Fossil fuels took about 300-400 million years to form according to the DoE, and your own link states that it'll be 600 million years before plants die off due to lack of carbon dioxide. Our successors will have another shot at destroying the world with fossil fuel.

http://www.nv.doe.gov/outreach...

The Nevada Test Site has to be on every true nerd's bucket list. See places like Frenchman's Flat, Yucca Mountain and Sedan Crater for yourself. See what railroad overpasses, houses, buildings, and a grid of Fifties cars, lined up as though at a drive-in (ask Gramps what one of those was) looks like when nuked. See an original Cold War test control room, with all the Doctor Strangelove gear.

A far easier way is to use a Tritium Producing Burnable Absorber Rod. (pdf link) Rather than putting UO2 in the fuel pellet, put lithium aluminate (LiAlO2) in there.

This has been going on at the Watts Bar Unit 1 nuclear power station since 2004. Sure, more tritium has leaked into the coolant than expected, but tritium is a pretty benign radioactivity source.

Harvest the tritium, which decays into He-3. Voila. Far easier than going to the moon. Sheesh.

According to the DOE, it's 29% Transportation, 19% Commercial, 22% Residential, and 30% Industrial. So, while residential is relatively smaller, it's certainly not as insignificant as you are claiming.

http://buildingsdatabook.eren....

Commercial light water reactors can't generate weapons grade plutonium without shutting down very early in the cycle (around a month) as the Pu-239 is effectively poisoned by Pu-240, Pu-241. Then separating the plutonium is very challenging as they need to reprocess it. A brief overview of this is here.

If you are referring to tritium producing burnable absorber rods (TPBARS), that is only done in one unit in the United States.

The complications of the molten salt reactors are much more numerous than thorium reactor proponents would suggest, the reactor in Oak Ridge was hardly at commercial scale.

I believe that the Nevada Flats facility is basically just "storage" in this context. However, if you read this, you will see that most of the material is in other forms, such as "Molten Salt Reactor (MSRE) traps, Oxide powders and Zero Power Reactor Plates," and that potentially critical material will be "downblended," "driving the U-233 concentration below criticality and security concerns. It is to be dissolved and then downblended with depleted uranium so it can be disposed safely."

In other words, it's not like that they will put bomb components into a landfill, but everything will be converted to some form where it would be fairly complicated to make a bomb out of it.

A metallographic examination (Fig. 10) of the tensile tested specimen showed a complete absence of grain boundary cracks.

We have found that if the U(IV)/U(III) ratio in fuel salt is kept below about 60, embrittlement is essentially prevented when CrTel.266 is used as the source of tellurium.

They recorded a crack depth of 0, and very minimal cracking for other sources of Te.

The evolution of fluorine gas was solved in 1970 by putting insulation (a reflective layer) around it.

Nevertheless it is clear that prevention of fluorine evolution from stored MSR salt will not be very difficult or expensive,

A decommissioning process was developed in 1997 and the original MSRE, without the later developments, improper defueling and storage and all, was decommissioned and now serves as a source of thorium for medical research at present. The original decomissioned procedure in 1969 was simply to turn it off and walk away. So we don't do that anymore. Wiki summaries:

Cleanup of the Molten-Salt Reactor Experiment was about $130 Million, for a small 8 MW(th) unit. Much of the high cost was caused by the unpleasant surprise of fluorine and uranium hexafluoride evolution from cold fuel salt in storage that ORNL did not defuel and store correctly, but this has now been taken into consideration in MSR design.

If the fluoride fuel salts are stored in solid form over many decades, radiation can cause the release of corrosive fluorine gas, and uranium hexafluoride.[94] This was due to radiolysis of the salt from remaining fission products, when colder than 100 degrees Celsius.[79] The salts should be defueled and wastes removed before extended shutdowns. Fluorine and uranium hexafluoride evolution can be prevented by storing the salts above 100 degrees Celsius.[79] Because some of the fission product fluorides have high solubility in water, fluorides are less suitable for long term storage. For longer term storage, fluoride containing wastes could go through a vitrification process to be encased in insoluble borosilicate glass suitable for long-term disposal.

Corrosion from tellurium—The reactor makes small amounts of tellurium as a fission product. In the MSRE, this caused small amounts of corrosion at the grain boundaries of the special nickel alloy, Hastelloy-N used for the reactor. Metallurgical studies showed that adding 1 to 2% niobium to the Hastelloy-N alloy improves resistance to corrosion by tellurium.[24](pp81–87) One additional strategy against corrosion was to keep the fuel salt slightly reducing by maintaining the ratio of UF4/UF3 to less than 60. This was done in the MSRE by continually contacting the flowing fuel salt with a beryllium metal rod submersed in a cage inside the pump bowl. This causes a fluorine shortage in the salt, reducing tellurium to a less aggressive (elemental) form. This method is also effective in reducing corrosion in general from the fluoride salt, because the fission process produces more fluorine atoms freed from the fissioned uranium that would otherwise attack the structural metals.[92](pp3–4)

Radiation damage to nickel alloys—The standard Hastelloy N alloy, a high nickel alloy use

I think it's delightful that someone is bright enough to identify this as propaganda. Please help me fight such pernicious lies that Heritage purports to justify these "facts".

It seems to be amply footnoted, with 50+ references:
[1]Carmen DeNavas-Walt, Bernadette D. Proctor, and Jessica C. Smith, âoeIncome, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2010,â U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Reports: Consumer Income, P60-239, September 2011, at http://www.census.gov/prod/2011pubs/p60-239.pdf (September 13, 2011). The Census Bureau defines an individual as poor if his or her family cash income falls below certain specified income thresholds. These thresholds vary by family size. In 2010, a family of four was deemed poor if its annual income fell below $22,314. A family of three was deemed poor if its annual income was below $17,374.
[2] See Catholic Campaign for Human Development, âoePoverty Pulse, Wave IV,â January 2004, at http://old.usccb.org/cchd/PP4FINAL.PDF (September 7, 2011). Interestingly, only about 1 percent of those surveyed regarded poverty in the terms the government does: as having an income below a specified level.
[3]These surveys include the Residential Energy Consumption Survey, What We Eat in America, Food Security, the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, the American Housing Survey, and the Survey of Income and Program Participation. See U.S. Department of Energy, Energy Information Administration, Residential Energy Consumption Survey, at http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/recs/ (June 22, 2011); U.S. Department of Agriculture, What We Eat in America, NHANES 2007â"2008, Table 4, at http://www.ars.usda.gov/SP2UserFiles/Place/12355000/pdf/0708/Table_4_NIN_POV_07.pdf (June 22, 2011); Mark Nord, âoeFood Insecurity in Households with Children: Prevalence, Severity, and Household Characteristics,â U.S. Department of Agriculture, September 2009, at http://www.ers.usda.gov/Publications/EIB56/EIB56.pdf (September 7, 2011); U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, âoeAbout the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey,â at http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nhanes/about_nhanes.htm (September 7, 2011); U.S. Census Bureau, âoeAmerican Housing Survey (AHS),â at http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/housing/ahs/ahs.html (June 27, 2011); and U.S. Census Bureau, Survey of Income and Program Participation, 2001 Panel, Wave 8 Topical Module, 2003, at http://www.bls.census.gov/sipp_ftp.html#sipp01 (June 27, 2011).
[4]U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and U.S. Census Bureau, American Housing Survey for the United States: 2009, at http://www.census.gov/prod/2011pubs/h150-09.pdf (September 8, 2011).
[5] U.S Department of Energy, Residential Energy Consumption Survey.
[6]Derek Thompson, âoe30 Million in Poverty Arenâ(TM)t as Poor as You Think, Says Heritage Foundation,â The Atlantic Monthly, July 19, 2011, at http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/07/30-million-in-poverty-arnt-as-poor-as-you-think-says-heritage-foundation/242191/ (September 7, 2011).
[7] C. T. Windham, B. W. Wyse, and R. G. Hansen, âoeNutrient Density of Diets in the USDA Nationwide Food Consumption Survey, 1977â"1978: I. Impact of Socioeconomic Status on Dietary Density,â Journal of

Uranium-233 Inventory in Oak Ridge Lightened with First Shipment of Material from Building 3019 - press release from DOE, 2012-01-05.

OAK RIDGE, Tenn. - - The first shipment of inventory from Building 3019 at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory arrived at the Nevada Nuclear Security Site (NNSS) on December 22, marking the beginning of the end for the 50-year old Uranium-233 national storage facility. ...[snip]...
The U-233 Disposition Project is responsible for preparing 450 kilograms of fissile material stored in approximately 1,100 canisters for disposition. The transfer of the ZPR plates, and a future direct disposition campaign of a second inventory component, constitutes the first phase of the disposition program, which addresses approximately half of the inventory. A Phase 2 analysis is being finalized, and will set a path forward for eliminating the remaining inventory from Building 3019.

Also google "destroy U-233" you'll see dozens of articles at various thorium promotion sites, mostly from 2010. Again, this is not my area of expertise but it does indeed appear to be the case. My first response is to think this is the result of persuasion by the 'old' nuke industry (and/or maybe the old guard in the US nuke agencies, who were trained during the period when MSR reactors were on the verboten list - the politics in 1970 were pretty extreme), whose entire business model is based on fabrication of expensive fuel rods. If MSR reactors go into production, Westinghouse and a couple of other biggies will lose a huge revenue stream.

Looks like the media jumped the gun.

http://www.netl.doe.gov/publications/press/2013/StudyStatement.pdf

As was asked above, how much is discharged?
According to this whitepaper, water use for once-through cooling is 37.7gal/kWh with 0.1gal/kWh consumed. For the recirculating plants, they use 1.2gal/kWh, consuming 1.1gal/kWh.

Here's a PDF

According to the process flow diagram, it's just compressed CO2 and water as the output. I assume the CO2 would be bottled and used for the various uses it is currently for.

Re: scale up so they can feed 100 tons/hr through the plant cycle?
Sure they can, South Africa did it http://www.netl.doe.gov/technologies/coalpower/gasification/gasifipedia/6-apps/6-3-5-1_sasol.html
Everything old is new again- 'green' is paying out to the private sector like a state under sanctions :)
The US has had local tech to clean coal releasing only CO2 and water at a fair market price but does seem committed to replacing its old generation capacity :(
What is left on the grid will be very costly :) Expect cuts to supply too as regions are dropped for areas that can pay more :)

Who said it was emission less? The hyperlink phrase, you know the underlined part, even says that the process captures 99% of the CO2 produced. That means it 1) produces CO2, 2) captures 99% of the CO2 produced, and 3) allows 1% to escape. No where does the article claim that it is emission less.

Coal Direct Chemical Looping Retrofit for Pulverized Coal-fired Power Plants with In-Situ CO2 Capture (PDF - but why the hell in this day and age do I need t tell you that? Can't you just look at the link?)

Apparently some of us can't.

Its not emission-less. If you read his presentation from 2008 you'll see that the C02 is the byproduct of the reaction that is is used to transfer heat to the steam boiler. The C02 still gets generated as before, just now it can be more readily sequestered - assuming that you want to spend the money on that part of the equation.

Coal Direct Chemical Looping Retrofit for Pulverized Coal-fired Power Plants with In-Situ CO2 Capture (PDF - but why the hell in this day and age do I need t tell you that? Can't you just look at the link?)

Wrong plant. ORNL is a completely separate laboratory from Y-12, even though they're located in the same city.

There's a better way to do this. Just grow a bunch of plants, collecting solar energy in chemical form. You can then convert that plant biomass into natural gas and oil via an exothermic process (requiring no energy to be added).

Basically this process would be a version of the Fischer-Tropsch Synthesis used by the Germans in WW2. This may surprise you but WW2 Germans knew how to power conventional cars with wood! First, subject your biomass to a process know as gasification where you burn it in a low-oxygen environment. Such a burn produces a ton of smoke, which contains methane (natural gas) and complex hydrocarbons (oil/tar) as well as other components like carbon monoxide (flammable), hydrogen gas (highly flammable), water vapor and carbon dioxide. If you do this in a refinery environment you could separate out the non-flammable elements, the flammable gasses, and the oil/tar. You can then use the flammable gasses (natural gas plus some others) and oil/tar for anything you typically use fossil fuels for, including producing plastic from the oil which would amount to carbon sequestration.

I just solved the world's energy and carbon pollution problems with smoke. Petrol from air and electricity? Good luck making that as efficient as plants already are.

"B&W Y-12, a partnership of the Babcock & Wilcox Company and Bechtel Corporation, operates Y-12 under contract to the U.S. Department of Energy, of which the NNSA is a part". link

I tried that, but Acrobat Reader did not open it in "presentation mode". Looks like I did not try hard enough, since this one opens just fine. Thanx.

No it's for weapons testing.

The Nation Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory will be an integral part of the National Nuclear Security Administration's (NNSA) mission of maintaining the safety, reliability, and effectiveness of the nuclear stockpile without underground nuclear testing.

... is that there were (and likely still are) plenty of thoughtless dickheads involved who have no concept of, nor reasonable care about, consequences-to-others of what they do. And they have government and/or corporate funding to do it with.

The U.S. D.o.E. is one such organization. Have a look:
http://www.lm.doe.gov/Albany/Sites.aspx

Sent this to the Author:

Just read "Blackle vs. Google Monitor Power Consumption Tested".

Compared the worst and best (for LCD - who still used CRT??) is about 4w of difference. Compared that to a user (such as a office worker who uses a PC
and internet all day at work) and can work in nearly total screen blackness to achieve this saving. Averages 8 hours of PC screen time a day. There is 365 days a year (not counting weekend or holidays-he may work at home or watch PC based TV - Who knows!!) Thus 4w 'saving' (which is per hour) X 8
hours per day X 365 Days = 11680 watt hour or 'wh' worth of power 'saving'.

Now consider electrical companies charger per 1000 w or by kw.... so that is 11.68kwh of saving.
National average charged is $0.1099/kwh (as per http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epm/table5_6_a.html) so that is
$1.28 savings (PER YEAR!). That is if you can read a nearly all black screen.

My coffee to keep my bugged eyes open enough to view that screen is more than that per day. Not to mention the DAMAGE to my eyes from squinting
trying to read or watch the PC.

Better yet - use a power setting to turn off that 34.8w to 38.4w LCD Screen after lets say 5 mins - will save nearly 10 time the power than when you view a Dark gloomy hard to view website. BOTH option will give you a BLACK screen to view!!! LOL! Good WORK!


And he responded:


I still use a (good) CRT for photo editing... it has better colour than an
LCD can display. :-)

Thanks for the comments, I don't disagree with anything you say. We were more interested in testing the claims Blackle was making... while there is a
mathmatical difference, how relevant that figure is an entirely different question.

Cheers,

Max


NOW who wants to "save" UP to $1.28 per year on power - but end a life squinting at a dark screen only

e-ink.

http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showpost.php?p=619831&postcount=11

The vast majority of trees which are cut for paper pulp are quick-growing loblolly pines which will be re-planted almost immediately, larger, older, nicer trees are usually cut for lumber, so one should be able to let the 8.85 pounds of CO_2 for per book figure stand for paper products w/o concern for deforestation.

Here's a page which indicates most CO_2 production is for energy:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/1605/ggrpt/carbon.html

And here's a page which indicates that CO_2 production is a much larger problem for the manufacturing of electronics:
http://www.energybulletin.net/node/49730
w/ a ratio of 12 to 1 for energy usage to weight, so my PRS-505 weighs roughly 9 ozs., so presumably required 108 ounces of fuel to manufacture (on-going energy usage is discounted as being negligible so is not considered)
http://www.epa.gov/oms/climate/420f05001.htm
gives us a figure of 19.4 pounds of CO_2 per gallon of gasoline which equals roughly 16.36875 pounds of CO_2 to make the ebook reader.

So getting two books for the Sony should make it roughly break even, and each printed book beyond that which is not purchased should result in a net reduction of CO_2 emissions, since the energybulletin.net page indicates that the embodied energy usage for electronics is much greater than the lifetime usage.

It's not the fuel that is dirty.

Yes it is. The incomplete burning is an additional problem, but the fuel is dirty in the US. It's getting better now, but we still have dirtier fuel that Europe.

http://www.netl.doe.gov/technologies/coalpower/fuelcells/publications/DOE%20Diesel%20Final%20040629.pdf

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra-low-sulfur_diesel

Actually, the reserve will last just 33 days (assuming daily consumption of 21 million barrels). It has specific emergency uses and is too small to be a real buffer for the US economy.

Also, it's Canada, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Nigeria and Venezuela which supply 75% of US oil imports. Some of those countries have been, and may be problematic in the future.

Fun fact... you say "or Saudi Arabia for that matter," but the US actually imports more than twice as much petroleum from Canada as we do from Saudi Arabia.

can you cite sources for this argument? I want to believe it, but without any sources it is not creditable. (please no Wikipedia links)

Sure can! But only because you asked so nicely...

Libertarian think-tank contends nuclear power is not economically viable in a free and fair marketplace

If you prefer to trudge through raw data sources, which will contain tons of stuff that isn't relevant, you can look at the DOE's 1992 report on direct government subsidies to energy production and the 1999 update to that report, and of course you can look up the actual Price-Anderson act at the NRC site (note in passing how the NRC pretends it isn't a subsidy, and how they gloss over the goverment's role in assuming costs of fuel and waste processing). At the NRC's site you can find an attempt to refute my statement, in which the NRC will do all sorts of gymnastics to try to explain the fact that no profitable enterprise is willing to build a plant without subsidization. That's the real proof - when subsidies exist, there are new license applications, and when subsidies expire, there are none. I can link stuff all day long but the empirical proof is hard to ignore!

This post will likely get marked "troll" too, because the nuke shills have a bury brigade here on slashdot. Sorry about that.

B.S.
 
According to data released by the U.S. Energy Information Administration on Tuesday, the U.S. sent abroad 753.4 million barrels of everything from gasoline to jet fuel in the first nine months of this year, while it imported 689.4 million barrels.
  link.

You are mixing up refined petroleum products and crude oil. As you can see by our net exports of refined products, we currently have excess refinery capacity.

We consume about 20 million barrels of crude oil a day in the USA. About half of that is imported (~9M barrels/day in Sept 2011). The top 5 countries we import oil from are Canada, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Venezuela and Nigeria in that order which account for about 70% of our oil imports.

ftp://ftp.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petroleum/data_publications/company_level_imports/current/import.html

The ~60 million barrels of petroleum products we exported the first 9 months of 2011 represent about a weeks worth of oil imports. Not even close to being a net exporter of oil.

Los Alamos tried one out. They were satisfied with the radiation safety. Of course, their people wore their routine three dosimeters (cumulative, short term, and alarming.)

even if there is no other reason to product E85, if it causes pause in oil-rich countries that hate us and our freedoms, but want to gobble down our money while it's still good, hell yes, go E85.

if the US would build the appropriate pipelines to use the ND/MT/WY oil from the Bakken and other formations, where we have three Saudi Arabias worth of oil availiable for the fracking where there are no earthquake zones, we wouldn't even need to think about E85 or other alternatives to oil for a good hundred years.

as it is, we need to use everything we have to get away from using... everything we have... and build an alternate energy system in this country.

How would this cause pause to the oil-rich countries if conventional fertilizers use 2 calories of petroleum for every one calorie of corn grown (source: Michael Pollun's book, The Omnivore's Dilemna )? It sounds to me like E85 a good thing for them. Also, keep in mind that when you talk about foreign oil in America, realize that our number 1 provider of foreign oil is Canada. America imports far more oil from Canada than anywhere else in the world.

I'm a nuclear engineer.

These things are not cheap. We have recovered one from the ocean floor before to fly it on a later mission. (albeit, the relative shallows of the florida coast.) If its possible to build a remote sub that could find it, I would bet the cost of recovery would be less than the cost of manufacture. (radar, sonar? how many right angles are on that thing? HOW would you find it?)

Its not dangerous. PU-238 cannot be used to make weapons.

Ref: http://www.ne.doe.gov/space/neSpace2c.html --- SNAP-19B2

Nimbus-B-1

Meteorological

18-May-68 Status: Mission was aborted because of range safety destruct. RTG heat sources recovered and recycled. ---

As a nuclear engineer, you'd also realise that as an RTG, it's had over 40 years of radioactive decay, so reclaiming it for reuse is not a terribly viable option given how many half lives have passed since then.

I'm a nuclear engineer.

These things are not cheap. We have recovered one from the ocean floor before to fly it on a later mission. (albeit, the relative shallows of the florida coast.) If its possible to build a remote sub that could find it, I would bet the cost of recovery would be less than the cost of manufacture. (radar, sonar? how many right angles are on that thing? HOW would you find it?)

Its not dangerous. PU-238 cannot be used to make weapons.

Ref:
http://www.ne.doe.gov/space/neSpace2c.html
---
SNAP-19B2

Nimbus-B-1

Meteorological

18-May-68
Status: Mission was aborted because of range safety destruct. RTG heat sources recovered and recycled.
---

Indeed that is what became of classified material I have dealt with. Shredded using a military cross-cut shedder (output pieces smaller than 1x10mm), mixed thoroughly, and then incinerated using a purpose built belt-fed, gas fired machine.

Actually, a quick check of online regs states that the maximum size must be 1mm x 5mm. When you use an approved shredder, the pieces are very small, producing thousands of bits per page. The magnitude of this challenge is huge.

In some cases the challenge will be to determine just which side is up. If the document was double sided, then the order of difficulty will increase greatly.

(except that would mean I'm buying oil from countries that finance terrorism and hate our guts; but that's another story).

most of US oil imports are from your fellow Americans: ftp://ftp.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petroleum/data_publications/company_level_imports/current/import.html

I guess the "hate our guts" is up for discussion ^_~

UJ

Oh look, here's a 50 kW electric-arc furnace capable of smelting steel. I imagine that would work well with a 50 kW windmill...

It also sits in the Nevada Test Site. The NTS is a HUGE tract of the (uninhabitable) Nevadan desert reserved for the government. It's a no fly zone, it's a no-go zone, and it's generally one of the most secure pieces of land in the world. If you don't believe me, I suggest you try to drive there. (No, really, don't - you're likely to be shot.)

It's secure due mostly to health concerns. You can tour the NTS.

From the article

"It is no secret, especially here in America, that we live in a post-Enlightenment age in which rationality, science, evidence, logical argument and debate have lost the battle in many sectors, and perhaps even in society generally, to superstition, faith, opinion and orthodoxy."

They have a point. And it's a real problem, because when some new problem comes along, society seems unable to deal with it.

Consider the current messes. Nobody in public life expresses a good understanding of the current economic situation. The political consensus is "it's just a big recession". It might be a permanent situation. (Japan had a real estate crash in 1989, and neither real estate nor the stock market ever came back. To some extent, the current US model of capitalism is broken, yet nobody is proposing a better model. (Should we have a tax model that doesn't favor debt so much? The US taxes companies' dividends but not interest paid on debt, stock buybacks, or executive compensation. As a result, most companies don't pay dividends and borrow too much.)

In the 1930s, it was very different. All sorts of big ideas were proposed to deal with the Great Depression. Some of them were nutty, like Technocracy. Some of them were implemented, like the Works Progress Administration. It was a tough time, but the problems were discussed and solutions tried.

There's a fundamental assumption that economic growth will continue. That may be incorrect. Looking ahead, we have big issues. Some major natural resources run out in the next few decades. There's no cheap source of energy even being seriously talked about. No new source of energy has been developed in the last 50 years. (Nuclear reactors and solar cells are now more than 50 years old.) Demand is going up as China modernizes. Now what? We have no clue how to run a post-oil world with 6 billion people. World oil production peaked in 2005.

At venture capital conferences, I'm not seeing new great ideas. More like endless me-too presentations. (Way too much "social networking". I've seen a pitch for a social network for cats.)

We're seeing regression in developed countries. Israel used to be a modern country dominated by kibbutzim with a strong work ethic, the people who "made the desert bloom". Now, Israeli politics is dominated by the religious right (the "ultra-orthodox"), who are a welfare-supported dead weight on the country. The Islamic world's religious right is at least as bad. (It's amusing to observe how much the Jewish and Islamic right wings resemble each other. Oppress women, check. Anti-education, check. Anti-progress, check. Old Testament mindset, check. Old guys in black with beards in charge, check.)

Lots of paperwork and prep work.

http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/files/msl/APP_MSL_Launch_Nuclear_Safety_FS_3-2-11.pdf

http://www.ne.doe.gov/pdfFiles/MMRTG_Jan2008.pdf

http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/files/msl/APP%20MSL%20LaunchContg%20FS%204-14-11.pdf

etc.
http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/news/newsroom/

For example, nobody with a Top Secret security clearance should have to undergo more than a cursory check. Their background, habits and the people they know have already been fully investigated.

You know, that sounds good at first, but probably isn't worth the effort:

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/10/screening_peopl.html

Even the new HSPD-12 federal credentials don't list one's clearances in a standard way. For example, the DOE indicates the badge-holder's clearance level in an "Agency Specific Text" field:

http://www.fedidcard.gov/images/card_front.jpg
http://www.hss.doe.gov/HSPD12/HSPD12_DOE_Credential_Samples_2_5_08.ppt

Other agencies have different standards. How is a TSA agent supposed to correctly determine one's clearance level without access to a centralized database? And is it really worth the effort at that point?

ftp://ftp.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petroleum/data_publications/company_level_imports/current/import.html that's a better link, but the point was that the majority of US oil does NOT come from the middle east.

The average price of electricity in the US for residential customers is 11 cents/kWHr".

So 93 kWHr/day works out to an average electric bill of $312 -- which is likely on the high side for a house in the south using A/C (or perhaps a house in the north with electric heat) but far from excessively high.

I imagine that this bylaw gives them the right to inspect a significant percentage their customer's houses at least once a year ... at least the larger houses, anyways.

>> 30kWh per day

Holy kilowatts, Batman! I thought you slipped a digit, but you're right!

WTF are people doing, leaving their hair-drier on while they're at work? My wife and I both work from home and we use a quarter of that.

Agree. Geothermal binary cycle is costly up front, but it has many advantages and according to the DOE it's ten percent cheaper than advanced nuclear in the long run. Japan is rich in geothermal energy resources - the third such richest nation in the world. It's a closed loop, so there's no emissions at all. There is no fuel, so running out of imported fuel is not a problem. It produces no waste, uses far less water than even nuclear. It's hugely scalable. It works all the time and capacity factors of up to 97% have been achieved. The turbines wear out or need upgrading, but the plants themselves don't so once the cost of building the thing is paid it's straight profits from then on. The geothermal plants in the Sendai neighborhood are still operating.

So what's not to like about geothermal? Cheaper, reliable, available, waste-free, riskless. The new methods weren't available when the Fukushima plants were built, but they are now. Japan is probably going to give geothermal a closer look as they turn from nuclear power.

I assume that these politicians saw the reality you are talking about.

They probably did. Then, because they're politicians, when Fukushima happened they promptly jumped on the anti-nuclear bandwagon again.

11 of Germany's 17 nukes are currently offline, yet there are no blackouts.

Probably because you're buying power from France and buying(and burning) more natural gas from Russia, increasing your CO2 emissions and marginally increasing the amount of pollution in your air. Then again ~43.6% of your power is generated from coal, so you might be burning more of that. 23.3% nuclear, 13% natural gas.

Also, your electricity averages 30.66 cents a kwh, compared to France's 19.25, so you're paying roughly 50% more for your avoidance of nuclear power. The USA? We average 9.28.

Of course, in the USA we are a touch more dependent upon coal, and a touch less on nuclear(until you shut reactors off in a knee-jerk reaction). 45% Coal, 24% natural gas, 20% nuclear for the USA. .

For all of Germany's investment into renewable energy, only 15% of it's power comes from renewables. The USA? 11%. A significant lead, but at what price?

Personally, I hate coal with a passion, such that yes, I'd love to take our investments into renewable power, plow it into nuclear, and get OFF of coal. Even with the occasional nuclear accident, coal power kills more people every year and costs more in increased medical expenses.

I'll also note that ideally you'd also build the nuclear plants as either cogeneration or even trigeneration plants - do more with that waste heat.

My 'plan' for the USA would be ~60% nuclear, 20% solar, 20% wind, 20% 'other' - mix of hydro, tidal, geothermal, etc...

Bullshit. Gasoline accounted for 45% of US oil usage in 2004. See the referred-to graph for details. Most electricity is not generated by oil in the USA, and more than twice as much oil was used for gas than for industrial applications (e.g. plastic).

As for tankers, there are an estimated 250 million cars on the road, and that's just in the United States. The number of tankers is about four orders of magnitude lower. Given the vastly different population sizes, there are simply too many cars for tankers to dwarf them.

Bullshit. Gasoline accounted for 45% of US oil usage in 2004. See the referred-to graph for details. Most electricity is not generated by oil in the USA, and more than twice as much oil was used for gas than for industrial applications (e.g. plastic).

As for tankers, there are an estimated 250 million cars on the road, and that's just in the United States. The number of tankers is about four orders of magnitude lower. Given the vastly different population sizes, there are simply too many cars for tankers to dwarf them.

Those subsidies are literally a drop in the bucket. Obama stated the petroleum industry gets $4 billion/yr in subsidies and tax breaks. In 2009, the U.S. used 18.7 million barrels of oil per day. That's 6.83 billion barrels per year. The subsidy works out to $4 / 6.83 barrels = $0.586 per barrel. From one barrel of oil, we get 10 gallons of diesel, 19.4 gallons of gasoline.

So ignoring all the other uses for the oil, the subsidy works out to $0.586 / (10 + 19.4 gallons) = 2 cents per gallon of diesel or gasoline. While getting rid of them may be the right thing to do, they're not going to change the cost nor demand for petroleum energy in the slightest.