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Superconductors as Electrical Grid Surge Suppressors

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the keeping-power-flowing dept.

securitas writes "The New York Times published a story about Intermagnetics -- a company that plans to use 'superconductors as valves on the electric-utility power grid, letting their temperature rise to choke off the flow of power,' a day before the largest blackout in North American history. The timing couldn't have been better. On the day of the blackout, Intermagnetics announced a $6 million contract from the Department of Energy to develop and install superconductor 'valve' prototypes by 2006 in the Niagara Mohawk distribution system. Considering that one of the leading theories for the cause of the cascading blackout is a surge in the Niagara Mohawk power grid, this announcement seems incredibly timely."

6 of 162 comments (clear)

  1. Germans like shit porn by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Flamebait

    maybe that has something to do with it. Faggot.

  2. Is it just me, or is it a conspiracy .... by leoaugust · · Score: 1, Flamebait

    Is it just me, for in this "New" world, everytime I see a coincidence, me thinks conspiracy ....

    If Pigs in Orwell's Animal Farm could start walking on two legs, and a war could be staged for Halliburton to get billions in contracts .... could a power outage have been staged ...

    please spare me the flames; I am already close to dying laughing at my own stupidity ....

    --
    To see a world in a grain of sand, and then to step back and see the beach where the sand lies ...
  3. Are you UNCIRCUMCISED? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Flamebait

    Then you should FEEL dirty and ASHAMED! How can you have that aardvark hanging between your filthy puke inducing crotch when there is a treatment for the UGLY DICK condition? That's right, as a Linux chick I can't count the many times I've encountered this DIGUSTING problem.

    Linux Guys are VERY GROSSLY uncircumcised do to the fact that the leaders of this movement are not. Linus "long foreskin" Torvalds and Alan "uncut" Cox are PRIME examples of ugly SMELLY SMEGMA dick. I suggest that we take up a collection and CIRCUMCISE these guys.

    Until this is done, I'll only use GPL software from properly circumcised and beautiful cocked men like RMS. So NO Linux kernel for this HOT GPL chick..only the HURD until these filthy uncircumcised Linux guys get the operation and become clean.

  4. not like it really matters by beyonddeath · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    the us is already blaming canada

  5. Settle down! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Flamebait

    It was a power outage - for gods sake shut the hell up about it now! Ok - your electricity weent off the other day.. wow - that's never happened ANYWHERE before - oh, wait... it has... it's just that it happened in America, so the rest of the world has to listen to you bitch about it for the next month.

  6. Wow by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Flamebait
    Good God. In the time it took you to write a fucking shell script to show how clever you are in striping out the added space, you could have just used proper fucking HREF tags, you fucknut. I mean, this is a new fucking low in Slashdot stupidity. How fucking hard can these be for you morons? Seriously, I don't get. Its about the most basic form of HTML you can imagine, and yet there are brain dead idiots like yourself that insist that they won't use it and instead dance around the fucking maypoll and write god damn shell scripts instead!

    Watch!
    <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,36 04,1019996,00.html">The Gaurdian</a>

    The Gaurdian

    Whats so hard about this? Even the special school kids from Kuro5hin could manage that. Why can't you?