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Portable Nuclear Battery in the Development Stages
Xight writes "The Santa Fe Reporter has up an article about a portable nuclear reactor, about the size of a hot tub. Despite it's 'small' size the company that is planning to develop the product (Hyperion Power Generation), claims it could power up to 25,000 homes. 'Though it would produce 27 megawatts worth of thermal energy, Hyperion doesn't like to think of its product as a reactor. It's self-contained, involves no moving parts and, therefore, doesn't require a human operator. "In fact, we prefer to call it a 'drive' or a 'battery' or a 'module' in that it's so safe," Hyperion spokeswoman Deborah Blackwell says. "Like you don't open a double-A battery, you just plug [the reactor] in and it does its chemical thing inside of it. You don't ever open it or mess with it."' If all goes according to plan, Hyperion could have a factory in New Mexico by late 2012, and begin producing 4,000 of these
reactors."
> Al Qaeda? Show me Al Qaeda. Not the US-Government spun version - but actually who they are.
At present, Al Qaeda is whoever says they're associated with Al Qaeda. I know that sounds like a cop-out but these guys don't exactly keep a public membership roster. It is estimated that world wide at least serveral tens of thousands of people subscribe to the basic tenets of this 'organization', which are that they need to try to take this world back to where we were centuries ago, and failing that to kill as many people as they can get away with. It's hard to try to get into the mind-set of a person that can subscribe to this, but there are enough gullible idiots in this world that we have a real problem here. The label Al Qaeda is as much a media invention as anything else, it exists because we like to label things for convenience, otherwise you have nothing to talk about. Again, there are only facts, no fear mongering or sticking your head in the sand is going to change those facts. The dis-enfranchised muslim youths in western europe are prime target for recruitment into these loose aggregations of dissatisfied people. They are unhappy with the prospects that life is offering them and these organizations give them a way to vent their anger.
For the record, I'm Dutch, and have lived all over the world, I've seen up close what religious hatred can make people do and I'm seriously impressed with the kind of idiocy people are prepared to subscribe to in the name of their religion. And that - again for the record - includes all religions.
What the US is doing in Iraq is despicable, I have no other words for it. It is a false flag operation so large and so totally ruthlessly sold to the public that it makes me wonder about what we are going to have to do to ever get the world back on an even footing after this. America has lost each and every bit of goodwill that it had in the rest of the world because of it (except maybe in Poland). Time will tell if there is a way out of the hole that has been dug there but from where I'm sitting I can't see it ending in on a positive note.
The fact that the US can now designate anybody a US enemy combatant and that habeas corpus is effectively disbanded is a very scary development, it is a harbinger of the world to come and it is something that the American public should react against until the issue gets solved.
However, given the fact that the superbowl, britney's latest album and reality tv are more on the radar than what is happening to the foundations of society almost guarantee that not enough people are going to wake up to do something about it until it is way too late.
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The French figured this out long ago, and have the safest and cleanest energy on the planet.
Perhaps, the US might start working on ways to have fewer (asshole) people in the world angry at them and wanting to blow up their cities with dirty bombs? That might be a good place to start.
Uh... You wouldn't happen be European would you?
Either that, or you've clearly never been there. France has more than its fair share of assholes (and dirty cities).
There's an unattributed story here, which seems quite relevant to your attitude:
It a conference in France where a number of international engineers were taking part, including French and American. During a break one of the French engineers came back into the room saying "Have you heard the latest dumb stunt Bush has done? He has sent an aircraft carrier to Indonesia to help the tsunami victims. What does he intend to do, bomb them?"
A Boeing engineer stood up and replied quietly: "Our carriers have three hospitals on board that can treat several hundred people; they are nuclear powered and can supply emergency electrical power to shore facilities; they have three cafeterias with the capacity to feed 3,000 people three meals a day, they can produce several thousand gallons of fresh water from sea water each day, and they carry half a dozen helicopters for use in transporting victims and injured to and from their flight deck.. We have eleven such ships; how many does France have?"