Slashdot Mirror

The manufacturing energy & strip-mining of new materials & toxic chemicals plus shipping from the other side of the planet would far-exceed anything I would save by switching to LCD or a new iCore CPU.

That's probably not true.

I've heard this kind of thing said a number of time before, for example about electric cars, the theory being that it somehow costs more energy to manufacture a battery pack than it will ever save compared to an ICE engine.

However, a simple economic analysis shows this to be false in many cases. Energy is largely fungible, that is, it doesn't really matter if you're using electricity or oil, it's all pretty much just watt-hours at some fairly equal cost. There's variances of course -- electricity is cheaper near a hydroelectric dam, oil is cheaper in some countries, and both is cheaper to buy in bulk.

Manufacturers pay for energy the same as everyone else, and they're not just going to ignore that cost out of the goodness of their hearts, it's going to be baked right into the cost of manufacture. So, looking at the cost of a good gives you an idea of the maximum amount of energy it could have taken to produce. You don't need to know anything about the specifics of its manufacturing process, just the cost.

You can get a 23" Dell LED backlit LCD monitor for USD 170 delivered. Now, at most half of that is the manufacturing cost, because Dell has to pay taxes, make a profit, and this is the RRP that resellers can also make a profit on. Hence, lets say $85 manufacturing cost, including all design, materials, factory and equipment depreciation, etc... Of that, at most $40 would be energy costs, directly or indirectly, the other half would be paying for "man hours" in one way or another. These are rough numbers, but bear with me.

Now, taking that estimated $40 worth of energy, we can figure that at a typical cost of $0.15 per kWh, it cost 280 kWh of energy to make that monitor. Now, an energy efficiency review shows that that model uses 16.65W of power when on, so that means that after 9,930 hours of operation, it will have made back its own manufacturing energy cost in savings compared to your current 50W CRT. At 8 hours per day, that's just over 3 years, and you've had your CRT for 6 years.

Admittedly, this won't make it cost effective for you to personally purchase this monitor based on energy saving alone, that would take well over a decade of usage. However, it shows that it isn't wasteful environmentally to buy a new monitor, and you do get a new monitor that would look much better than your old CRT. Better colour gamut, no flicker, always perfectly sharp, no distortion, etc...

Your example of CFLs is even more clear, in which case you would be personally saving money quite quickly by switching away from incandescent bulbs. That's been true for pretty much all models of CFLs for years now, and LED lights promise to improve on those savings even further.

You quoted a blog which has figures pulled from some guys arse, seriously he excludes many potential deaths including mining deaths for nuclear, I'll bet yellow-cake isn't mined safely everywhere.

Estimates of Chernobyl deaths vary widely, according to who is counting; WHO estimated 47-212 immediate deaths, and 4000-9000 excess cancers. Greenpeace estimated 270,000 excess cancers, of which 93,000 would be fatal. IPPNW expects 50,000 cancers , 10,000 deformities, and 5,000 infant deaths. The Ukranian health minister estimates that 2.4 million Ukrainians have health problems of some kind as a result of Chernobyl.

Wind power does not cause more deaths than nuclear and if you include the psychological harm done to the victims of cancer and those victims families it is far far worse.

See:
http://www.inquisitr.com/18588/wind-power-causes-more-deaths-than-nuclear-power/

and

http://environmentalchemistry.com/yogi/hazmat/articles/chernobyl1.html

And read my other posts, it's not just about money and it's not just about numbers of people dying. It's about not having millions of people have to worry about the nasty shit that is nuclear power and the waste from it. Humans have shown time and time again they can't handle this stuff responsibly, Italian crooks were recently found to have been dumping nuclear waste illegally since the 1980s.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_waste_dumping_by_the_'Ndrangheta

Plane crashes.... So why do we keep having nuclear accidents then - because the engineers work out the risk and then the PHBs make the decisions to take slight risks and then the shit hits the fan, again and again and again.

And since we can run our world several times over with renewables, why shouldn't we - and we'd most likely be creating a few jobs along the way.

Renewables = good quality sustainable living, nuclear = dystopian fucking nightmare which we should end asap.

http://environmentalchemistry.com/yogi/hazmat/articles/chernobyl1.html

Have YOU lived with a nuclear cloud dropping radioactive shit on you?

All this report is talking about is that more things can be done to address big bang type stuff,

Oh well, that's ok then, thanks for the re-assurance.

http://environmentalchemistry.com/yogi/hazmat/articles/chernobyl1.html

I remember when 'big bang type stuff' poisoned half of Europe with nuclear fallout, we had to drink powdered milk for a while and some livestock were quarantined for many years because they were concentrating radioactive isotopes in their meat and milk.

Humans are greedy and stupid and fuck-up regularly, when the problem of humans fucking up regularly has been solved then and only then will I accept nuclear power.

Yes, it is classified as an explosive and needs placarded in any amounts now. The chemical page from the first site I could find dealing with DOT regulations describes some of the hazards. your can find it here in the lookup table and the responce number indicates it should be treated as an oxidizor as well.

It used to be that certain exceptions in limited quantities were able to bypass the placarding rules. After the oklahoma city bombing, It became neccesary to placard any amounts of explosives reguardless of thier amounts. The only way you can transport explosive material (as defined by the DOT and UN regulations legaly is with a CLD and Hazmat endorsment. Even If just 1/4 stick of dynamite going down the street. Seeing how the lawsuite is 7 years old and 911 was about 5 years ago, it might be something with the transportation requiremts or even storage requirment. A little known fact comming from the oklohoma city bombing is that if you have enough materials sitting around that someone could make a bomb from them, you can be charged with possesion of bombmaking materials even if they happen to be some liguid drano, a can of galoine, some twine and a pipe in the same room, Maybe some ductape and some types of glue, you could be guilty of it. Alot of households have enough stuff to construc weak bombs acording to the guidlines for this.

More likley though, It is involving this law look all the way to the bottom and see section P. This seems a little disturbing if the rocketeer shows anyone how ot make the stuff, sells it to the wrong person and so on.

Yes, it is classified as an explosive and needs placarded in any amounts now. The chemical page from the first site I could find dealing with DOT regulations describes some of the hazards. your can find it here in the lookup table and the responce number indicates it should be treated as an oxidizor as well.

It used to be that certain exceptions in limited quantities were able to bypass the placarding rules. After the oklahoma city bombing, It became neccesary to placard any amounts of explosives reguardless of thier amounts. The only way you can transport explosive material (as defined by the DOT and UN regulations legaly is with a CLD and Hazmat endorsment. Even If just 1/4 stick of dynamite going down the street. Seeing how the lawsuite is 7 years old and 911 was about 5 years ago, it might be something with the transportation requiremts or even storage requirment. A little known fact comming from the oklohoma city bombing is that if you have enough materials sitting around that someone could make a bomb from them, you can be charged with possesion of bombmaking materials even if they happen to be some liguid drano, a can of galoine, some twine and a pipe in the same room, Maybe some ductape and some types of glue, you could be guilty of it. Alot of households have enough stuff to construc weak bombs acording to the guidlines for this.

More likley though, It is involving this law look all the way to the bottom and see section P. This seems a little disturbing if the rocketeer shows anyone how ot make the stuff, sells it to the wrong person and so on.

Yes, it is classified as an explosive and needs placarded in any amounts now. The chemical page from the first site I could find dealing with DOT regulations describes some of the hazards. your can find it here in the lookup table and the responce number indicates it should be treated as an oxidizor as well.

It used to be that certain exceptions in limited quantities were able to bypass the placarding rules. After the oklahoma city bombing, It became neccesary to placard any amounts of explosives reguardless of thier amounts. The only way you can transport explosive material (as defined by the DOT and UN regulations legaly is with a CLD and Hazmat endorsment. Even If just 1/4 stick of dynamite going down the street. Seeing how the lawsuite is 7 years old and 911 was about 5 years ago, it might be something with the transportation requiremts or even storage requirment. A little known fact comming from the oklohoma city bombing is that if you have enough materials sitting around that someone could make a bomb from them, you can be charged with possesion of bombmaking materials even if they happen to be some liguid drano, a can of galoine, some twine and a pipe in the same room, Maybe some ductape and some types of glue, you could be guilty of it. Alot of households have enough stuff to construc weak bombs acording to the guidlines for this.

More likley though, It is involving this law look all the way to the bottom and see section P. This seems a little disturbing if the rocketeer shows anyone how ot make the stuff, sells it to the wrong person and so on.

Yes, it is classified as an explosive and needs placarded in any amounts now. The chemical page from the first site I could find dealing with DOT regulations describes some of the hazards. your can find it here in the lookup table and the responce number indicates it should be treated as an oxidizor as well.

It used to be that certain exceptions in limited quantities were able to bypass the placarding rules. After the oklahoma city bombing, It became neccesary to placard any amounts of explosives reguardless of thier amounts. The only way you can transport explosive material (as defined by the DOT and UN regulations legaly is with a CLD and Hazmat endorsment. Even If just 1/4 stick of dynamite going down the street. Seeing how the lawsuite is 7 years old and 911 was about 5 years ago, it might be something with the transportation requiremts or even storage requirment. A little known fact comming from the oklohoma city bombing is that if you have enough materials sitting around that someone could make a bomb from them, you can be charged with possesion of bombmaking materials even if they happen to be some liguid drano, a can of galoine, some twine and a pipe in the same room, Maybe some ductape and some types of glue, you could be guilty of it. Alot of households have enough stuff to construc weak bombs acording to the guidlines for this.

More likley though, It is involving this law look all the way to the bottom and see section P. This seems a little disturbing if the rocketeer shows anyone how ot make the stuff, sells it to the wrong person and so on.

Gamma absorptions by an atomic nucleus usually result in re-emission (although perhaps with different wavelengths) and isomeric transitions, and are bloody rare. Gamma scattering off the electron shell is the usual mechanism, which just gets you various X-Ray energies. Normal Paladium isotope decay modes are electron capture, beta emissions, and the aforementioned IT's (usually seen in U/Pu reactor fission products). If you start with naturally occuring Pd isotopes and use neutron absorption, only one isotope decays via electron capture: Pd 103 goes to stable Rhenium 103. Pd 107/109 decay via Beta emission to Silver 107/109, Pd 111 to unstable Ag 111, which goes to stable Cd 111 the same route.

Decay modes such as neutron emission, proton emission, positron emission, or alpha emission again only give a slight shift in the position of the periodic table, and are not usually observed in Pd isotopes. C-12 emission gives a slightly larger shift, but is very rare even in the few uranic-range isotopes where it has been observed.

The only way you can get from Palladium-one-hundred-whatever to Aluminum-27, Magnesium-24/25/26, or Zinc-sixty-something is some sort of fission. In fact, looking at the number of protons involved, Pd -> Al + Zn + loose change looks ballpark plausible.

Decay products? Ridiculous. Fission products? Not so ridiculous.

I hit a site that gave me a redirect and told me to turn off Adblock...But somehow they knew that their ads were not getting rendered (received?) by my browser.

Here's an example.

Intresting. When I go to that site http://environmentalchemistry.com/, I get asked to disable my Adblock plugin before proceding. Somehow it can detect it.

I'm going to lose all of the moderations I've made to this discussion :(

Not mozilla, but here's a site that blocks you if you use Opera: http://www.environmentalchemistry.com/. It's been linked to on a couple slashdot posts, and so after I sent the webmasters a note telling them what I thought, I added it to my hosts file pointing to 0.0.0.0 so I won't click through to it again.

You said "Since a nuclear engine can run on any fluid, what more efficient method exists than pulling oxygen from the atomosphere?

Amazingly, we already have the engine to do this. Pratt & Whitney's TRITON engine is the perfect solution."

I didn't see anywhere in that article linked where it said that the oxygen would be pulled from the atmosphere. As long as no air is sent through the reactor, there will be no problem (and in the design linked LOX is sent downstream of the reactor). Once you send air through a reactor the radiation released from the rocket will go up by orders of magnitude due to neutron activation of Ar-40 to Ar-41.

It should be noted that just because it is tungsten clad doesn't mean that no radioactive material will be released. Very small uranium impurities very close to the edge of the cladding in the reactor will allow fission products to travel into the effluent hydrogen stream. This will not allow a significant amount of radiation released (nowhere near what a air cooled reactor would generate--around 2000 rem/hr on contact at full power not including radiation from the reactor), but it will be detectable.

From the FA -
Well in such case I have a brilliant idea.
Why don't all the website owners that feel cheated by those who use Adblock put a clear, visible banner that says it's illegal to view this website with advertising stripped off?
As soon as I see one of those, I will put their hostname in the proxy's blacklist forever. Problem solved.

I just tried to access a site today (on Mozilla with Adblock, sever filtering...), and got this -

"Your web browser, software on your computer or some other event (like you have image loading turned off) is preventing some or all of our banner ads from being displayed on our pages correctly. In order to access our content, you must either allow us to display ads on our pages (by turning on image loading and/or disabling ad-blocking) or purchasing a paid ad-free subscription to this site."

An interesting developement... wonder how soon mainline sites will start doing this...

Sources: Found in natural gas deposits & in the air (5 parts per billion) Constantly lost to space; replenished by radioactive decay (alpha particles). Helium is the second most abundant element in the universe by mass (25%).

The nice people over at Jefferson Lab Education site confirm this:

Helium makes up about 0.0005% of the earth's atmosphere. This trace amount of helium is not gravitationally bound to the earth and is constantly lost to space. The earth's atmospheric helium is replaced by the decay of radioactive elements in the earth's crust.

Also in the "it leaks into space" camp are HowStuffWorks.com and Encarta.

Note the explosive limits here.

Hydrogen [...] needs a dense concentration to ignite

This is too bad inaccurate. The only serious point where hydrogen is less safe than gasoline is the flammable and explosive limits (see e.g. here). While you need a spark to start a gasoline fire, a air-hydrogen mixture can start burning only because of environmental static electricity (i.e. a windy day).

...even a hydrogen fuel cell

Not sure it is relevant, BMW are committed to using internal-combustion engines with hydrogen. This may not be efficient as fuel cells, but is definitely cheaper from the point of view of who buys the engine. Furthermore, BMW have already manufactured some 11 models of a series 7 running on both hydrogen and gasoline, with 150 kW of power.

And yet, cyanide is found in cyanoacrilic adhesives, which were developed (IIRC) for the military in Vietnam to instantly bond flesh back together on nasty chest wounds, to stop bleeding.

Using Adhesives for Laceration Repair During Sports Events

They mean instantly, btw. Some "Zap-A-Gap" almost bound my fingertips together with brief passing touch.

Parents are trolls.

Get your Hafnium fix here.

If anyone is actually interested in seeing the whole thing it is here, but be forewarned - since they seem to think copyright means they have ultimate legal control over which browser is used to access it you may be breaking thier made up law by viewing it.

The rest of thier stuff is interesting also:

"Blocking Opera users was not our first choice of action on this issue; however, we feel we have been left with no other options as Opera and/or Google have refused to provide any other mechanism to prevent Opera from displaying ads that are based on the content of our sites."

Look - Opera is doing something legal with our public information. We do not like it so we told them to stop, they didn't. Of the different choices we had we want you to believe that we *really* wanted to let you on here, but well, most people will believe any crap we say so we have no choice in the matter.

"Web Publishers like our selves provide content. Companies like Opera deliver that content. Each has to find a way to make a living. There are many publishers and there are many content delivery companies. As a company Opera is saying if they are to deliver a publisher's content, they are going to charge the publisher a "fee". That "fee" is that in exchange for delivering the content, Opera gets to place an ad in their toolbar that is content sensitive. If a publisher does not agree to these terms, their only option is to block Opera and prevent Opera users from accessing their content."

Ahh, this is like another type of "Theft". You charge us a fee, in that we don't owe you anything. In fact we don't even make less money than before. But, hey, if we said "Screw you!!" no one would like us. Thus we now have no choice but to block you because opera is charging us a fee to display our webpage.

"If Opera is going to "charge" web publishers a "fee" (by means of getting to use the content of the webpage to display targeted ads), then Opera has an obligation to their users to provide web publishers with a FOOLPROOF method of opting out of Opera's content targeted ads if publishers do not want their copyrighted materials used in such a fashion."

Ok, now that we have established that Opera is charging us money we do not want to pay them. Since we are being assesed money anyway, Opera now has an obligation to not force us to pay them. Why you ask? Because we can cause monkeys to fly out of our ass!!! No really, it is an obligation because we say so.

"if you have any questions or concerns about this issue, please contact Opera Software. Don't bother sending us a message objecting to our anti-Opera policy or to report a false positive the message will simply be ignored."

Don't call us - we don't really give a fuck. Opera has small user base so SCREW YOU GUYS!!! Opera sucks and you really should be running mocrosoft anyway since they do not charge us money to display our website and give you the freedom to innovate and choice in the market place. Plus we figure that if what microsoft says there is true, so can Opera charging us money leaving us no choice but to block you be true!

"Banner Blocking Detected You have been brought to this page because it was detected that your web browser, software on your computer or some other event is preventing some or all of our banner ads from being displayed on our pages correctly. If you are not using a utility to block banners, you may have been inadvertently brought here because a banner image did not load correctly. Please make sure you have enabled images and disable any ad blocking software then try again.

If you sincerely want a banner free experience on our site and are willing to help support our efforts directly, we do offer a paid subscription option. This option is especially useful for educators who would like to use our site in their classroom without the distractions banner ads create.

Banner Blocking Manifesto
We understand that you may find banner advertising annoying. This website, however, is not sponsored or produced by some faceless rich corporation or public entity. This site is the product of the hard labor of one individual and his family. Producing and delivering the content on this site is expensive. If we are to continue to make the resources on this website available to individuals like yourself free of charge, we must be allowed to use banner advertising as a means of paying the costs of maintaining this website.

The relationship between the web content provider (in this case us) and the content consumer (you) must be a symbiotic relationship. If small web publishers like us are to continue to be able to provide access to useful information free of charge, we must get something in return. In this case it is the ability to display and earn revenue off of banner advertising.

Kenneth Barbalace
Creator of EnvironmentalChemistry.com

How to Disable Ad Blocking Software

There are scores programs and services on the market that offer banner ad blocking abilities. As such we will only focus on a few of the most common programs.

Symantec Norton Internet Security: If you are using Symantec's "Norton Internet Security" software, banner blocking may have been turned on without your knowledge. You can turn off ad blocking in Symantec NIS by opening Norton Internet Security. In the main window, double-click Ad Blocking and then uncheck "Ad Blocking".

ZoneAlarm Pro firewall: If you are using the firewall ZoneAlarm pro, you can turn off ad blocking under the tab "Privacy" and then slide the "Ad Blocking" control to the off position.

AdSubtract: If you ar using AdSubtract, right mouse click on the AdSubtract icon in your task tray (looks like an orange circle with a plus and minus sign) and select "Disable AdSubtract".

WebWasher: If you are using WebWasher, right mouse click on the WebWasher icon in your task tray (looks like a blue circle with a white "W" and then select "Deactivate standard filter".

Related Resources TechTV - Rage Against the Ad-Blocking Machines
"Ask SlashDot" article
Steal this Site"

"Banner Blocking Detected You have been brought to this page because it was detected that your web browser, software on your computer or some other event is preventing some or all of our banner ads from being displayed on our pages correctly. If you are not using a utility to block banners, you may have been inadvertently brought here because a banner image did not load correctly. Please make sure you have enabled images and disable any ad blocking software then try again.

If you sincerely want a banner free experience on our site and are willing to help support our efforts directly, we do offer a paid subscription option. This option is especially useful for educators who would like to use our site in their classroom without the distractions banner ads create.

Banner Blocking Manifesto
We understand that you may find banner advertising annoying. This website, however, is not sponsored or produced by some faceless rich corporation or public entity. This site is the product of the hard labor of one individual and his family. Producing and delivering the content on this site is expensive. If we are to continue to make the resources on this website available to individuals like yourself free of charge, we must be allowed to use banner advertising as a means of paying the costs of maintaining this website.

The relationship between the web content provider (in this case us) and the content consumer (you) must be a symbiotic relationship. If small web publishers like us are to continue to be able to provide access to useful information free of charge, we must get something in return. In this case it is the ability to display and earn revenue off of banner advertising.

Kenneth Barbalace
Creator of EnvironmentalChemistry.com

How to Disable Ad Blocking Software

There are scores programs and services on the market that offer banner ad blocking abilities. As such we will only focus on a few of the most common programs.

Symantec Norton Internet Security: If you are using Symantec's "Norton Internet Security" software, banner blocking may have been turned on without your knowledge. You can turn off ad blocking in Symantec NIS by opening Norton Internet Security. In the main window, double-click Ad Blocking and then uncheck "Ad Blocking".

ZoneAlarm Pro firewall: If you are using the firewall ZoneAlarm pro, you can turn off ad blocking under the tab "Privacy" and then slide the "Ad Blocking" control to the off position.

AdSubtract: If you ar using AdSubtract, right mouse click on the AdSubtract icon in your task tray (looks like an orange circle with a plus and minus sign) and select "Disable AdSubtract".

WebWasher: If you are using WebWasher, right mouse click on the WebWasher icon in your task tray (looks like a blue circle with a white "W" and then select "Deactivate standard filter".

Related Resources TechTV - Rage Against the Ad-Blocking Machines
"Ask SlashDot" article
Steal this Site"

"Banner Blocking Detected You have been brought to this page because it was detected that your web browser, software on your computer or some other event is preventing some or all of our banner ads from being displayed on our pages correctly. If you are not using a utility to block banners, you may have been inadvertently brought here because a banner image did not load correctly. Please make sure you have enabled images and disable any ad blocking software then try again.

If you sincerely want a banner free experience on our site and are willing to help support our efforts directly, we do offer a paid subscription option. This option is especially useful for educators who would like to use our site in their classroom without the distractions banner ads create.

Banner Blocking Manifesto
We understand that you may find banner advertising annoying. This website, however, is not sponsored or produced by some faceless rich corporation or public entity. This site is the product of the hard labor of one individual and his family. Producing and delivering the content on this site is expensive. If we are to continue to make the resources on this website available to individuals like yourself free of charge, we must be allowed to use banner advertising as a means of paying the costs of maintaining this website.

The relationship between the web content provider (in this case us) and the content consumer (you) must be a symbiotic relationship. If small web publishers like us are to continue to be able to provide access to useful information free of charge, we must get something in return. In this case it is the ability to display and earn revenue off of banner advertising.

Kenneth Barbalace
Creator of EnvironmentalChemistry.com

How to Disable Ad Blocking Software

There are scores programs and services on the market that offer banner ad blocking abilities. As such we will only focus on a few of the most common programs.

Symantec Norton Internet Security: If you are using Symantec's "Norton Internet Security" software, banner blocking may have been turned on without your knowledge. You can turn off ad blocking in Symantec NIS by opening Norton Internet Security. In the main window, double-click Ad Blocking and then uncheck "Ad Blocking".

ZoneAlarm Pro firewall: If you are using the firewall ZoneAlarm pro, you can turn off ad blocking under the tab "Privacy" and then slide the "Ad Blocking" control to the off position.

AdSubtract: If you ar using AdSubtract, right mouse click on the AdSubtract icon in your task tray (looks like an orange circle with a plus and minus sign) and select "Disable AdSubtract".

WebWasher: If you are using WebWasher, right mouse click on the WebWasher icon in your task tray (looks like a blue circle with a white "W" and then select "Deactivate standard filter".

Related Resources TechTV - Rage Against the Ad-Blocking Machines
"Ask SlashDot" article
Steal this Site"

http://environmentalchemistry.com/yogi/periodic/

Here's an example of this style of anti-popup-blocker advertisement. This site, which is very useful by the way, will not "work" if javascript is not enable or ads are not shown.

I haven't tested this in other browsers, but this system is pretty neat (awful?)... it changes itself so its hard to detect the functions and block them.

Environmentalchemistry.com is the first site I've seen so far that actively filters for ad-blockers. If you have javascript off, it doesn't show its main page (gives a message saying you need javascript instead). If you have javascript on but their ads are blocked by an ad blocker, then it doesn't show you the page and eventually redirects you to a page explaining about ad blockers and why they're bad, etc...

The source rewrites all the variable names and function calls with different, random names every time its loaded (sorta neat). Of course, not having CSS or javascript support will probably get around all this, but the majority of web users do have them enabled.

Not to mention the fact that your average coal burning plant simply doesn't have the potential to cause a catastrophe on the scale of Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, etc.

Why does everyone insist on calling the accident at Three Mile Island a catastrophe? As I recall, the accident released Xenon 133 and Krypton 85, certainly bad gasses, but hardly anything to freak out about.

Xenon 133 is a beta emitter, which means it launches electrons fast. (Cathode ray tubes anyone?) In addition, its half life is about 5.25 days, (in a month, less than 2 percent of the isotope is left at all). The end product? Caesium 133, non-radioactive.

As for Krypton 88, it has a slightly more interesting decay pattern, it undergoes beta decay, like Kr133. First from Kr88 -> Rubidnium(sp) 88, with a half life of about 2.8 hours, so in the first week(about 60 half lives), it was all gone (to at least ten nines .0000000001% of its original mass)

Rb88 is radioactive, again with beta emmission to Strontium 88, only this time, its half life is a bit shorter at roughly 18 minutes (17.78 minutes). In the same week, there would have been 567 half-lives, so effectively, there is no Rb88 out there.

Strontium 88 is stable. So, within a month, the only radiation we have out of this is effectively that of the Krypton, and at less than 2% of its original level. All of the radiation is beta-emissions, the kind that all of you (LCD panels excluded) have aimed at your faces right now from your monitors.

Not one person died, not one person got sick. Containment CONTAINED, as it was supposed to. Effective contamination now? Zero. Where is the problem?

Isotope and half life information from This periodic table

Not to mention the fact that your average coal burning plant simply doesn't have the potential to cause a catastrophe on the scale of Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, etc. Why does everyone insist on calling the accident at Three Mile Island a catastrophe? As I recall, the accident released Xenon 133 and Krypton 85, certainly bad gasses, but hardly anything to freak out about. Xenon 133 is a beta emitter, which means it launches electrons fast. (Cathode ray tubes anyone?) In addition, its half life is about 5.25 days, (in a month, less than 2 percent of the isotope is left at all). The end product? Caesium 133, non-radioactive. As for Krypton 88, it has a slightly more interesting decay pattern, it undergoes beta decay, like Kr133. First from Kr88 -> Rubidnium(sp) 88, with a half life of about 2.8 hours, so in the first week(about 60 half lives), it was all gone (to at least ten nines .0000000001% of its original mass) Rb88 is radioactive, again with beta emmission to Strontium 88, only this time, its half life is a bit shorter at roughly 18 minutes (17.78 minutes). In the same week, there would have been 567 half-lives, so effectively, there is no Rb88 out there. Strontium 88 is stable. So, within a month, the only radiation we have out of this is effectively that of the Krypton, and at less than 2% of its original level. All of the radiation is beta-emissions, the kind that all of you (LCD panels excluded) have aimed at your faces right now from your monitors. Not one person died, not one person got sick. Containment CONTAINED, as it was supposed to. Effective contamination now? Zero. Where is the problem? Isotope and half life information from This periodic table

We have plenty of methane that doesn't even need to be mined. Most public landfills have to vent methane properly to prevent explosions. With the right business model, I'm sure state & local governments could use income from selling off methane to be refined into an energy source Hell, even the EPA supports this course of action. Why bother with underwater mining, when it's practically in our own backyards?

My question is, what ARE the byproducts of this process, and are they radioactive? Would a drive based on this process wind up spitting out a radioactive plume?

That depends on which isomer of Am242 they're referring to ("m" denotes an isomer, a metastable energetic state of Am242 with its own decay properties). According to the handy description of Am242 at http://environmentalchemistry.com/yogi/periodic/Am -pg2.html , most of the decay chains involve alpha and beta emissions, which will (hopefully) leave the Americium atoms in the film on the engine. A few low-probability reactions (or one high-probability reaction for the most energetic isomer of Am242) result in spontaneous fission, which will indeed send a likely-radioactive fragment out into space.

They key words here are "into space". This drive will never produce enough thrust to be useful for lifting off of a planet; the exhaust throughput is far too low. Out in space, a few traces of radioactive atoms are a non-issue (we already have plenty streaming down in the form of cosmic rays).