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Now what to do with those pesky spent reactors?

You cut them up into pieces and feed them into a Gen IV reactor. The radioactive bits get turned into energy and valuable medical isotopes.
https://articles.thmsr.nl/the-...

New reactors solve the problems of radioactive waste, energy shortages, and provide cures for nasty diseases that previous treatments have proven ineffective. Then there is the US Navy project to synthesize jet fuel and fuel oil from CO2 and hydrogen, both of which would be extracted from the sea.
https://www.nrl.navy.mil/news/...

Synthesized fuel using CO2 from the environment closes the carbon loop. This means no addition of CO2 to the atmosphere to fly a plane or propel a ship.

Huh, the numbers are in the actual article and its link. The "error" in production was a factor of 4, not bad given the efforts and money spent on solar over the last decade. Yet the error in capacity is what is hyped, because it's a factor of 46! In fact, looking at that, we increased capacity at nearly 12 TIMES the rate of actual generation, which leads one to think that perhaps actual SOLAR generation is about 1/12th as effective as often claimed.

And about the naval vessels claim? Oh, I love trolls! The Navy confirms my statement: 275 ships in 2016, 774 in 1918. Poor AC, staying hidden because he's embarrassed to be proven so wrong!

An electric engine becomes instantly cleaner the moment a coal plant is turned off, and anything else is turned on.

What would that "anything else" be? There's not a whole lot of choices out there. We'd need something reliable, cheap (at a cost comparable to coal), safe, and if we agree that CO2 output is a problem then it needs to have a low CO2 output. There are only two energy sources we have today that meet those requirements, hydro and nuclear. We've already dammed up nearly every river worth a dam. That leaves nuclear. This might change in the future with some future technological development but that's what we have right now.

There is nothing terribly wrong with nuclear, but it works best in tandem with electric cars, and electric cars work well with any improvement on electrical generation, not just nuclear.

Electric cars can solve only a portion of the transportation CO2 problem. Electric vehicles cannot fly any meaningful distance, or sail across oceans, or even do long haul trucking. Synthesized fuel solves the CO2 problem and it does not require new vehicles. To synthesize fuels requires nuclear power, nothing else we have today will do.

With synthetic fuels every car on the road today becomes instantly cleaner. We don't need electric vehicles to do this. That's not saying electric vehicles don't have a place, only that electric vehicles are not required to get a carbon neutral economy.

Here's something I found real quick on the technology, do some more searching on your own to find more.
https://www.nrl.navy.mil/media...

Remember the US carrier fleet commander who got into an argument about who should change course with a lighthouse?

That was a joke which never actually took place. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... & http://www.navy.mil/navydata/q...

I figure it's much more likely that the captain demanded the traffic (driven by or for nignogs, clearly, it's the middle east) change course and played chicken with a tanker that has no chance of complying due to their massive size.

The accident took place in the straits of Malacca which is hardly the middle east. If the Captain was so arrogant as to play chicken he could've just sunk the merchant ship when it got to close.

It'd take an awfully crazy Navy captain to sink a foreign flagged ship in a public shipping channel.

Most likely cause was probably weather reducing visibility (heavy fog/mist is quite common in that area) so they didn't see the ship until it was to late.

That might be a valid excuse if either vessel was a 20 ft sailboat, but a 2 billion dollar Arleigh Class destroyer has 6MW worth of radar. Even my friend's 30 foot boat has a 4KW radar system than can see ships miles away through heavy fog and rain.

If it can't see a 500 ft tanker approaching, what chance does it have in wartime?

Remember the US carrier fleet commander who got into an argument about who should change course with a lighthouse?

That was a joke which never actually took place. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... & http://www.navy.mil/navydata/q...

I figure it's much more likely that the captain demanded the traffic (driven by or for nignogs, clearly, it's the middle east) change course and played chicken with a tanker that has no chance of complying due to their massive size.

The accident took place in the straits of Malacca which is hardly the middle east. If the Captain was so arrogant as to play chicken he could've just sunk the merchant ship when it got to close. Most likely cause was probably weather reducing visibility (heavy fog/mist is quite common in that area) so they didn't see the ship until it was to late.

Army space command
https://www.army.mil/info/orga...

Navy space command
http://www.navy.mil/local/spaw...

Coast Guard Space command
http://coastguard.dodlive.mil/...

But it's DoD and DHS. The two worst US Government Departments. They are never held accountable.

Or you could use the USNO, the other official time reference for the United States.

Except she didn't. DoD standards require wiping and disk destruction. Even Google fucking wipes and shreds their disks. http://www.doncio.navy.mil/Con... http://www.networkworld.com/ar...

Since it had Secret Data it was still incorrect. Where I worked we would wiped the hard drive and then they were taken to steel mill and melted down. Also it isn't standard procedure to suddenly to delete all the data on all the servers. Also there is offsite data backups for TS/S data, you just don't delete. Clinton's lawyers had the emails on USB drives , then destroyed them too. (Note Google even shreds their disk http://www.doncio.navy.mil/Con...)

They're not $600k, that is obvious just from the idiotic summary. An "earlier version" (prototype) cost $600k, the production version is likely much cheaper. The actual cost is negative, because manned security uses the same sensors and simply costs more because of the desire to protect humans.

In October 2010 the first MDARS vehicle went online at Nevada National Security Site (NNSS)...

The MDARS will save NNSS an estimated $1 million in annual force protection labor and equipment maintenance costs. Additionally, use of the platforms will save the site approximately $6 million in infrastructure costs for equipment such as lights, towers, cameras, trenching and burial of cables to support the towers and motion detection units needed to provide protection of remote sensitive areas.

(From http://www.public.navy.mil/spa... )

If there is an IED on the base then who cares if it can disable the thing? If the sets it off, it saved lives. Could a high powered rifle damage it? Of course, it has cameras and sensors and stuff. But if snipers are taking up position right outside a base, directing fire onto the base, and you can get them to take pot shots at a robot, that is pretty awesome tactically.

And yeah, if somebody attacks the base and penetrates the perimeter and damages the robot... a recovery team would need to wait for combat to conclude, and would have all the normal risks of that combat without worrying about the robot.

arf arf. But seriously, almost 600,000 copies of a piece of software when the Department of the Navy has fewer official user workstations than that...much fewer. That's Army level of personnel, not Navy.

Then, there's some data online about the system in question. Seems like it's a system to support infrastructure for Navy bases and such. Seems like Northrop Grumman is involved, as well as some smaller contractors. Like this one, Synergy Software Design, with the terrible web site. Also appears that Synergy is the sole vendor and technical support provider for Bitmanagement Software GmbH in the US.

The conclusion I come to is that Synergy fucked over Bitmanagement somehow, and the Navy is being held in.

The US Navy is also working on that.

It is already possible to synthesis fuel from seawater so that's not a question.

Then again, the Fischer-Tropsch process has been around for a century now, and ammonia and methane can easily be used as a fuel. Or to make a fuel.

Synthetic carbon-neutral jet fuel produced from hydrogen and CO2 is a possibility.

The US Navy is currently working on it.

http://www.med.navy.mil/sites/... explains why it wouldn't (page 4).

I was thinking something similar... after all, why keep depending on old-fashioned nukes? We got railguns - why not work on miniaturization (of sorts) and launching same into orbit*? If nothing else, we could do the relatively low-tech route of carefully aiming large meteors at a city (or seven) that needs to die, wiping 'em off the map completely without so much as a single sievert of radiation as byproduct.

* yes, yes - treaties and such... but if used purely for defensive purposes, I think it counts as utilizing a loophole.

http://www.navy.mil/submit/dis...

Which seems a more fitting description for s puny 50kW installation.

It looks like the actual problem was a bad data upload; Specifically, some satellites were transmitting incorrect parameters for UTC offset correction. https://www.febo.com/pipermail... is the posting from a gentlemen at Meinberg that has the details. http://www.usno.navy.mil/USNO/... has more information about the time offset parameters (A0 and A1) and how they interact with GPS and UTC time.

According to another message (https://www.febo.com/pipermail/time-nuts/2016-January/095686.html), PRNs 2, 6, 7, 9, and 23 got hit. It is interesting to note that the satellite that was taken out of service this morning (PRN 32) is not in this list. It looks like the decommissioning of PRN32 was quite possibly scheduled (see http://gpsworld.com/last-block...), and even if not, a failure of that specific satellite could not have caused multiple satellites to start broadcasting incorrect offset data.

I'm really looking forward to the postmortem on this.

The navy has demonstrated technology to create fuel from seawater. This is a carbon neutral process that can be performed on site with clean nuclear electricity, rather than razing forests and shipping them across the sea. None of the "biofuels" in common use are remotely friendly to the environment.

Waste heat from nuclear reactors can also be used to desalinate seawater, or produce synthetic fuels and fertilizer.

I never really took the situation that serious either after looking at the long term data for hives. The right time to freak out was in the 90s with the big drop, not recently.

When the "crisis" first hit the news and kept being repeated, I suggested the issue might be Ultraviolet Irradiance. Bees see in the UV range and the sun's UV levels vary fairly drastically over the sun cycle.

The 90s was an low UV irradiance period. Compare this to the world-wide hive population graphs.

http://wwwsolar.nrl.navy.mil/s...

I wish I could find another UV irradiance data source besides UARS. Data seems to end in 2005.

You may have read the report of the USS Srark. This was a US naval ship fired on by an Iraqi F1. The facts of the case are that it was fired on and hit by two missiles and never fired a shot in defense or revenge. The captain was indicted and several officers were drummed out of the Navy. The official inquiry essentially blamed the ships officers. I looked more deeply into the matter a few months ago when I wanted to find out about possible reasons these guys weren't blown out of the water. Back to that later.

My research on the Stark indicated that most of the ship's defensive systems including two kinds of fire control radar and the PHALANX CIWS were offline awaiting parts or maintenance that needed to be done by a contractor in port.. The real cause of the ship's poor performance under fire was accounting procedures designed to provide an 80% readiness/50% cost solution. Instead of acknowledging the cause the Navy chose to blame the closest people to the incident and call it done.

Now the piracy incident. First, one of the comments says the pirates were in the big boat and the rafts were US Navy attacking it. I don't believe this to be true. I looked up comments on several forums found a consensus agreeing with a Youtube comment:

This happened in 2006, the ship in the video is the USS Cape St George and then video was shot from the USS Gonzalez. They didn't try to attack or board anything, we sent a boarding team to talk to them and they pointed an RPG at us. All of the mounts kept jamming because they had old shitty ammo sitting on them exposed to the weather for months and there are no sights on those weapons (you're supposed to walk fire onto targets, difficult to do when your weapon jams every 3 rounds). Source: I was there

The consensus was that the ammunition on the firing ship hadn't been properly kept dry, and was old. This causes jams. And they didn't do enough live-fire exercises to be able to reliably prevent this problem. Again, an 80%/50% solution. This isn't to say it's easy to hit small rafts in the dark with a jamming weapon but that's not the point. The Navy has all the latest whizbangery and night vision gear. Those rafts should have been shot up by the third burst.

A third happenstance, part of the Stark incident IIRC: The ship was carrying old missiles and had to dump them into the sea ASAP. This prevented returning fire on the attacking jet. My conclusion is that the US Navy has a firmly entrenched culture of saving money at the cost of readiness.

incomplete source: http://www.jag.navy.mil/librar...

All that said: Why should we believe that if general military readiness is flagging to save costs in official government programs the government would do any better than these contractors? A choice has to be made and stuck to: budget or safety. The half assing, ass grabbing, and ass covering needs to stop.

Oh bull. Therapy is a throw away thing today. The stigmata evaporated along about the '80s.

http://www.med.navy.mil/sites/nmcsd/nccosc/healthProfessionalsV2/reports/Documents/Stigma%20White%20Paper.pdf from the Navy says seeking mental health treatment is still heavily stigmatized in the military / clearance world and the American Psychological Association agrees with them http://www.apa.org/monitor/2009/06/stigma-war.aspx

The NMCI was supposed to be a manageable intranet, with the Initiative back in 2000 the first step, identifying apps, updating systems, blah blah blah.

Sort of got done. Sort of. The history of the NMCI is a study in vendor management, high expectations, and bureaucracy.

FWIW: http://www.navsea.navy.mil/nsw...
      Opportunity to have essentially unlimited use of one of the most powerful computer complexes in the country.
Still guessing... I have no direct knowledge or information.

http://www.nrl.navy.mil/media/... Navy capturing the CO2 and H2 in the same process. You could put it on a new tanker as well, anything big enough out on the water should work.

It's a current area of research, but electronics can be hardened to an astonishing degree.

http://www.popsci.com/technolo...

http://www.navsea.navy.mil/nsw... (warning, BIG PDF).

What's interesting to me that most of the 6000 ships were small vessels: patrol boats, amphibious, mine warfare, etc.

http://www.history.navy.mil/br...

In 1939 the total active warships list is 394, so not too far in terms of total numbers to what we have in 2006 (285 is shown for 2011).

The summary missed the most damning part of the article:

After a clandestine meeting at a Hampton park, FBI agents say engineer Mostafa Ahmed Awwad provided four computer-aided design drawings of the Ford and described where to strike the vessel with a missile to sink it.

ONE missile?

Oh, yeah. Sure. That'll work..

You're clueless.

18 munitions explosions, including 8 500- or 2000-lb bombs, 15 fueled aircraft, including full fuel tankers added to the mess.

And it was put out in three hours.

Look at what the much-smaller, built-with-a-wood-instead-of-an-armored-steel-flight-deck USS Franklin went through in WWII:

On 19 March 1945 while conducting air strikes against targets on the Japanese Islands of Kyushu and Honshu, Franklin was struck by two bombs which detonated in the hangar. This attack occurred at a most inopportune time inasmuch as a strike was being launched and 31 planes were still on the flight deck, fully gassed and armed with bombs and rockets and 22 planes were parked in the hangar, some of which were gassed and armed with rockets. Direct damage resulting from detonation of the enemy bombs was extensive in itself, but appears minor compared with the immense damage caused by subsequent fires, explosions of bombs and rockets, and water used in firefighting. Major fires raged on the flight and hangar decks and in gallery spaces for approximately ten hours. Stubborn smoldering fires in the gallery spaces and Commanding Officer's country plus recurring gasoline fires on the fantail were not completely burned out or extinguished until 22 March. During the first five hours following the initial damage, conditions were totally out of control due to the early loss of firefighting facilities and intermittent heavy explosions of 500-pound and 250-pound GP bombs loaded on the flight deck planes, some of which fell through to the hangar deck, and Tiny Tim rockets on both the flight and hangar decks. Large areas of the flight deck and hangar and gallery spaces were wrecked. All power was lost when dense smoke and heat forced engineering spaces to be evacuated. Personnel, casualties were severe. Even before the fires were extinguished and while ship's ammunition was still exploding, Franklin was taken in tow. Main propulsion power was regained on 20 March and the ship proceeded to Ulithi and thence to the Navy Yard, New York where complete repairs and authorized alterations were accomplished.

That one missile better have a nuclear warhead.

Oh woops. They were reactivated from 83-91. Not sure how I missed those.

http://www.history.navy.mil/br...

Many manuals of style indicate italicizing for names of vessels

• Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W...
• National Geographic: http://stylemanual.ngs.org/hom...
• NASA: http://history.nasa.gov/printF...
• US Navy: http://www.navy.mil/tools/view...

... it's a giant submarine http://www.navy.mil/navydata/c...

You would think this but there is a component of the US government doing significant nuclear research in Idaho (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idaho_National_Laboratory). They had installed something like 50 nuclear reactors in the last 50 years. On top of that they are currently working on building the "next generation" reactor design.. etc. Just because commercial plants were not being built didn't mean that research stopped or that we stopped building reactors all together. Hell, we are currently building something like 5 just for submarines alone: http://www.navy.mil/navydata/f...

Decades ago the US GPS gave wrong coordinates to civilians, a few 10 meters off. That is what I call distortion.

Deliberate distortion, aka "selective availability" was turned off.
There are multiple other sources of distortion.

The ionosphere does not distort or hinder GPS signals, why should it? The signals are in the wrong wavelength for that, and: they come from the outside. Again: easy to google.

Yeah, you should really give this google thing a try:

GPS and Ionosphere
The influence of the ionosphere on GPS Operations (contains a nice "Summary of GPS Errors")
Ionospheric Effects on GPS
There even are pretty pictures.

No body at NRL especially division 6700 is studying polywell.

The only fusion relevant research conducted at NRL is at the Nike laser. That studies ICF funded by the Department of Energy. Now a days its mainly used for laser material interactions.

Even if they were studying polywell it's not for energy research. It would only be as a cheep neutron source.

Your post is inaccurate. The Naval Research Laboratory Plasma Physics Division is investigating magnetic confinement focus fusion, the very version referenced in TFA.

The Navy's cumulative funding over the last several years is about 50 times larger than this Kickstarter campaign target.

http://www.nrl.navy.mil/resear... http://www.nrl.navy.mil/search... http://www.nrl.navy.mil/media/... HAARP was used for all kinds of testing related to the ionosphere. Looks like the Navy's initial interest was trying to use the ionosphere to send messages to submarines.

http://www.nrl.navy.mil/resear... http://www.nrl.navy.mil/search... http://www.nrl.navy.mil/media/... HAARP was used for all kinds of testing related to the ionosphere. Looks like the Navy's initial interest was trying to use the ionosphere to send messages to submarines.

http://www.nrl.navy.mil/resear... http://www.nrl.navy.mil/search... http://www.nrl.navy.mil/media/... HAARP was used for all kinds of testing related to the ionosphere. Looks like the Navy's initial interest was trying to use the ionosphere to send messages to submarines.

http://www.navy.mil/submit/dis... Based on paygrade. I actually wore the covers off _Starship Troopers_ in the Navy, so I can see some off them... PS, The Caine Mutiny is on the LPO list

This article is linked in the story article. It has a lot more info on the process.

http://www.nrl.navy.mil/media/...

Yes, they have. At least in the new Virginia-class.

From http://www.public.navy.mil/sub...

"The Virginias incorporate several innovations. Instead of periscopes, the subs have a pair of extendable "photonics masts" outside the pressure hull. Each contains several high-resolution cameras with light-intensification and infrared sensors, an infrared laser rangefinder, and an integrated Electronic Support Measures (ESM) array. Signals from the masts' sensors are transmitted through fiber optic data lines through signal processors to the control center. "

I think the areas involved tells a story of its own. Check out the map of participants at the bottom.

Sorry, but your history is a bit off.

Only 5th Marine Expeditionary Brigade was afloat as part of the deception plan. As to the rest ...

V: "THUNDER AND LIGHTNING"- THE WAR WITH IRAQ

The 1st and 2nd Marine Divisions, each more than 18,000 strong, and the U.S. Army 1st Brigade ("Tiger Brigade"), 2nd Armored Division, plunged into the attack. They were supported by the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing and thousands of combat service support staff from the 1st and 2nd Force Service Support Groups, and by Navy air forces.

Except they generally are. At any given time, only about 30% of our Navy is doing something, with another 15% in transit or training.

More than half of our fleet is just hanging out in port waiting:

http://www.navy.mil/navydata/n...

What year did Zummie step down from that office? I served in Zummie's Navy. Remember the bus driver uniforms? I resented that inanity more than any other policy, doctrine, regulation, tradition, or law which I was made aware of. The damned fool fucked with military tradition and custom to no good end.

http://www.history.navy.mil/li...

Coming Soon The New Uniforms

The first of July this year will mark the beginning of a period which will see great changes in the Navy uniform. Inasmuch as All Hands Magazine and the Navy Uniform Affairs Office have received a number of questions on this subject, the Uniform Affairs Office has provided us the following answers:

Q. Why was the enlisted men's uniform changed?

A. Mainly because Navymen indicated that they wanted a change. In December 1970, a poll was taken among 4000 Navymen of all ranks and rates. Those queried were scientifically selected so their views would represent those of 95 per cent of the entire Navy. Results of the questionnaire showed that 80 per cent of all enlisted men E-6 and below preferred that the dress blue uniform be replaced by a coat and tie style. Since 92 per cent of the officers and chiefs who were queried had a favorable opinion of their dress blues, the Navy decided to use it as the basic uniform to symbolize a united organization striving for common goals.

There is half a page of more Q. and A. at that link.

The 90% losses for the Germans is, I believe, correct. It should be remembered, however, that most of those losses were towards the end of the war, facing steeply unfavorable odds (in particular, massive Allied air supremacy). As far as I can determine, the US lost 52 subs out of a force of 300 S-class and fleet boats, not counting the older R-class and O-class, which didn't see combat.

Of course, all of these subs, Germans and US, were diesel subs. Nuclear subs are a very different beast.

NRL has had this technology since 1957.

Sort of like how Lyndon Johnson lied about the Gulf of Tomkin incident?

Not quite. They key part is here: "....it concluded[7] that the Maddox had engaged the North Vietnamese Navy on August 2 ..."

There clearly was a meaningful naval engagement on one day, but they were mistaken about events on the second day. Calk it up to the fog of war, it happens. There are many unknowns, uncertainties, and mistakes that occur in warfare. You don't have perfect knowledge, and the enemy tries to fool you. Electronic equipment is not infallible and is subject to miscalibration, spoofing, and other faults. The interpretation of results is not immune to mistakes of many kinds, including faulty judgment.

Actions in the Gulf of Tonkin, August 1964

On the afternoon of 2 August 1964, while steaming well offshore in international waters, Maddox was attacked by three North Vietnamese motor torpedo boats. The destroyer maneuvered to avoid torpedoes and used her guns against her fast-moving opponents, hitting them all. In turn, she was struck in the after gun director by a single 14.5-millimeter machine gun bullet. Maddox called for air support from the carrier Ticonderoga, whose planes strafed the three boats, leaving one dead in the water and burning. Both sides then separated. ... more

You can't just wipe that away by claiming the mistakes that followed on another day mean it didn't happen.

Sort of like how Lyndon Johnson lied about the Gulf of Tomkin incident?

Not quite. They key part is here: "....it concluded[7] that the Maddox had engaged the North Vietnamese Navy on August 2 ..."

There clearly was a meaningful naval engagement on one day, but they were mistaken about events on the second day. Calk it up to the fog of war, it happens. There are many unknowns, uncertainties, and mistakes that occur in warfare. You don't have perfect knowledge, and the enemy tries to fool you. Electronic equipment is not infallible and is subject to miscalibration, spoofing, and other faults. The interpretation of results is not immune to mistakes of many kinds, including faulty judgment.

Actions in the Gulf of Tonkin, August 1964

On the afternoon of 2 August 1964, while steaming well offshore in international waters, Maddox was attacked by three North Vietnamese motor torpedo boats. The destroyer maneuvered to avoid torpedoes and used her guns against her fast-moving opponents, hitting them all. In turn, she was struck in the after gun director by a single 14.5-millimeter machine gun bullet. Maddox called for air support from the carrier Ticonderoga, whose planes strafed the three boats, leaving one dead in the water and burning. Both sides then separated. ... more

You can't just wipe that away by claiming the mistakes that followed on another day mean it didn't happen.

Chips Ahoy: Do you think the current popularity of micros is just a fad?

Hopper: No, the big mainframes are going to disappear. In fact, I intend to scuttle them. They have to go. They’ll be too slow. We’ll build systems of computers. It will be a whole bunch of micros, and they’ll all call each other up and talk. If you use a big mainframe, first you have to do inventory and then you do payroll and so on. You might just as well have a micro doing each of those jobs all working in parallel. That’s the way you get the speed. The big pressure is going to be on faster answers. There never was a good reason for putting inventory and payroll on the same machine. The only reason you did it was because you could only afford to own one computer. That’s no longer true. The micros are as big [in terms of processing capacity] as mainframes were only 10 or 12 years ago. Back then a big mainframe had 64K. That’s smaller than today’s micros by a long shot.

Chips Ahoy: Is there a limit of what micros can do for us?

Hopper: They’ll only be limited if our imaginations are limited. It’s all up to us. Remember, there were people who said the airplane couldn’t fly.

http://www.history.navy.mil/bios/hopper_grace.htm#limits