Slashdot Mirror
Giant Microwave Turns Plastic Back to Oil
An anonymous reader writes "From the newscientist article: "Key to GRC's process is a machine that uses 1200 different frequencies within the microwave range, which act on specific hydrocarbon materials. As the material is zapped at the appropriate wavelength, part of the hydrocarbons that make up the plastic and rubber in the material are broken down into diesel oil and combustible gas.""
That is exactly why I think the current Yucca Mountain nuclear waste disposal facility stuff is insane and a total waste of money. Just dump the waste in a damn mountain cavern that will keep it completely contained for a hundred-odd years. Some time before then someone is going to come along with some neat-o future technology and want to PAY for the chance to harvest that waste for some useful purpose.
... ... enough money to put that facility on freaking Mars.
But nooo.... those brain damaged idiots are spending and planning to spend insane amounts of money (apparently somewhere on the order of fifty to one hundred BILLION dollars - $160 to $320 dollars for every man woman and child in the country) on planning research and facilities for the Year One Million A.D. The idiot the Environmental Protection Agency is actually dicking around with containment issues to to limit radiation leakage to at most 350 millirem per year, in the year one million.
That warrants a huge **SMACK** to the skull!
Trying to plan anything for a hundred year span is seriously pushing it. Science, technology, society, and for all practical purposes reality itself will be completely rewritten in fifty or a hundred years.
If anyone serious wants to worry about properly preparing this storage facility for super-long term time, here's what you do. You design it and dump it "cheaply" for a hundred-odd years. And you take ONE billion dollars (rather than fifty to a hundred billion dollars) and you divide it into a thousand million-dollar-chunks invested in different basic interest bearing investment options all across the globe. If on average they get a 4.7% return per year (even factoring that *some* of those investments and even some entire nations may disappear completely in that time span), you still wind up with a TRILLION dollar nuclear storage financial portfolio in a hundred and fifty years. And in a hundred and fifty years you can use that trillion dollars to do a massive nuclear waste site cleanup.... and to build a brand new super-duper storage facility... enough to build that facility with diamond encrusted 24 carat gold walls...
People planning ten thousand and million year disposal facilities..... SMACK!
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
PCs are clearly of major importance in the promotion of human well being. Electronic publication is cheap, effective and revolutionizing all fields of human practice and learning. A lifetime's worth of expensive textbooks can easily be replaced by one or two cheap electronic devices. Electronic records keeping and commerce saves business billions each years. Medical records prevent mixups and save lives. All of these savings can be safely recouped by the software industry if software piracy can be prevented.
M$ Research's amazing new Soul Scan has this potential. It is biometric feedback device that verifies the user's identity and deepest thoughts, which can be used for further profit as well as piracy prevention. Before using the computer, the consumer must insert his fingers into the Soul Scanner, which instantly creates a neural network to read the consumer's mind. If the consumer is not authorized to access the computer or any of it's records, the device electrocutes the consumer and ends the piracy threat. The cost of the device will add a trivial $100 cost per unit, which can be passed on, but much more will be extractable from users because of it.
Because the profit potential is so strong that all major governments are being lobbied at this moment to mandate Soul Scann. They are being told that it's the only way to defeat the terrorists and others who would exist outside the US economy.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Yay, distraction and hand-waving! It's the most important weapon in the ecodefiler tool box.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"