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Intelligent Absorbent Removes Radioactive Material
Zothecula writes "Nuclear power plants are located close to sources of water, which is used as a coolant to handle the waste heat discharged by the plants. This means that water contaminated with radioactive material is often one of the problems to arise after a nuclear disaster. Researchers at Australia's Queensland University of Technology (QUT) have now developed what they say is a world-first intelligent absorbent that is capable of removing radioactive material from large amounts of contaminated water, resulting in clean water and concentrated waste that can be stored more efficiently."
It's a case of too little, too late. I have zero trust in the nuclear industry because no matter how urgent, present, demanding, and obvious the need to make double-extra super-safe reactors presents itself to the manufacturers of these facilities, they seem hell-bent on cutting corners and cheaping out on the front-end, to disastrous consequences (insert whatever link to "Japanese Reactor Meltdown / Chernobyl / Three Mile Island" you want here) which in retrospect were the result of shoddy workmanship, sloppy maintenance, wilfully stupid cost-cutting and just general all-around stupid douchebaggery of the kind you get when you give too much power and responsibility unto the hands of those fatally unprepared for the responsibility part.
While zombie-like steps continue to be made towards legitimizing this super-expensive but also unbelievably fraught with peril method of boiling fucking water the public's opinion on nuclear power seems to have solidified somewhere around the spectrum of "Holy Fucking Shit Those Things Are Massively Unsafe" and thank God and the FSM for it. There seems to be no amount of regulation or incentive that can persuade private or public nuclear power plant operators to actually operate safely, and none of that would even matter one damn bit if Mother Nature brought on sufficient catastrophe.
Can we please be done with nuclear energy? Yesterday? Solar, geothermal and wind are all coming rapidly into their own, already cost less than traditional non-renewables (especially if we take away Big Oil/Gas/Nuclear's free rides and subisdies) and it looks like about 30 years down the road give or take we could be living with a distributed power grid that takes inputs from every single solar roof/windmill/vent in the country.
Proof positive that this cultural shift in the trust of big, unaccountable institutions to manage such dangerous materials is the ever-burned-into-our-brains image of Homer Dumbass Simpson, nuclear power plant worker who routinely blows up his plant with his fumbling incompetence. THAT is what most of America and the world think of when we think "nuclear power plant."
One day I feel I'm ahead of the wheel / the next it's rolling over me / I can get back on / I can get back on
Rad-X
India and China do. Though given the shorter lifespans of their new range of reactors it might not be regarded as a problem.
However, there's plenty of spills that need cleaning. The Irish Sea is the most radioactive in the world because of contamination from nuclear power stations and recycling. Strathclyde is now considered "incurably" contaminated from Dounray power station, as conventional cleanup would likely stir up radioactive sediment that would be far more dangerous if mobile. Something that would clean up these locations would be of enormous interest to a LOT of people, especially the power station owners who are under enormous pressure to do something.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
RTFA, How does it work?
"the world-first intelligent absorbent, which uses titanate nanofibre and nanotube technology, differed from current clean-up methods, such as layered clays and zeolites, because it could efficiently lock in deadly radioactive material from contaminated water."
Once it's absorbed radioactive material it becomes a problem all by itself. But at least it doesn't flow downhill.... much.
No one ever had to evacuate a city because the solar panels broke!
I wonder how much it would cost to construct solar panels in orbit which then transmit their power to Earth's surface through a focused microwave beam, vs the cost of building (and decommissioning) a nuclear reactor. http://space.mike-combs.com/spacsetl.htm#SPS
You must have missed the part where they said this is the first "intelligent" absorbent. Apparently they have developed a radiation filter with the capacity for learning, reasoning, and understanding. Pretty impressive! :D
Fucking SELECTIVE, goddammit.
Upward mobility is a slippery slope - the higher you climb the more you show your ass.
The University of Manchester collected house dust from people living in the Seascale area. There was BLOODY PLUTONIUM in the sea spray contaminating nearby houses! So much of the damn stuff, they had to remove the house dust because it exceeded the University's limit for nuclear material.
Shove a telescope over the Irish Sea and you'd end up with a glowing telescope. That is how dangerous the blasted place is. It is so frigging dangerous that BNFL advised workers and local inhabitants not to have children. (Caused an outrage amongst the public at the time, as did Granada's documentary on the place "Fighting For Gemma", but nothing much was done. The workers lost their lawsuit against BNFL and the newspapers lost interest.)
I strolled along the beach with a geiger counter, just to see what regular alpha particle emitters I could find. The beach was littered in the damn things. 14x background was commonplace.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
http://www.koksu.kz/koksu/gb_en/ecology.html
Gamma rays shielding. A layer of shaly shungite provides a more effective level of shielding than equally thick layers of concrete or aluminium. Shungite shields can be used in the areas of potential ecological disasters, such as oil pipelines, gas-condensate reservoirs, handling grounds for combustible materials, sump and sewage tanks, etc. A promising area of shungite application is seen to be the construction of chemical and radioactive waste storages.
http://lists.drizzle.com/pipermail/rockhounds/2009-January/027781.html
Shungite occurs in rocks as 1 mm to 20 cm clasts of lustrous shungite that probably represent redeposited, oxidised oil derived from oil spills.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016913680300043X
The shungite-bearing rocks were accumulated within a volcanic continental rift setting, in a non-euxinic, brackish-water, lagoonal environment developed on the rifted margin of the Archaean craton. The occurrences of shungite-bearing rocks represent a combination of a petrified oil field, petrified organosiliceous diapirs and oil spills.
Researchers at Australia's Queensland University of Technology (QUT) have now developed what they say is a world-first intelligent absorbent that is capable of removing radioactive material from large amounts of contaminated water
So, they've reinvented zeolite filters which have been used since the 40s to do the exact same task exactly the same way?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeolite#Nuclear_industry
"One gram of the nanofibres can effectively purify at least one tonne of polluted water," Professor Zhu said.
That's extremely efficient.
http://yetanotherpoliticalrant.blogspot.com
if it's willing to just sit there and absorb radiation like that.
I'm sure there was also Lead-210 in it - which is almost exactly 1000 times more radioactive than Plutonium-239 ... and occurs naturally.
So what if it occurs naturally? It wasn't in the seaspray, wasn't on the beach and wasn't in people's homes.
The isotope ratios for uranium, plutonium and americium match the ratios produced by Windscale and Sellafield - which is as good as a fingerprint. Further, leukemia rates are 2000x the national level -- with considerably smaller spikes near other nuclear power plants but even those aren't as drastic.
And, yes, I've read the papers on what WAS found. This was research carried out starting 1979 through to 1994. I've done the background reading. I've read the court notes. (I was even periphially involved in the court case and the later research.) I was there. Where were you? Plugging your lugholes and crying lalalalala, like BNFL?
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Don't get hysterical, the risk of cancer from heavy diet of seafood from Irish sea is on the order of one in over perhaps fifteen to twenty million, while all Irish people have a 1 in 550 chance of getting cancer anyway. (see the nice wikipedia article on Irish sea). As for the alpha emitting pieces of garbage you found on beach, public service announcement: *don't eat the alpha-emitting garbage". Most anything equal to or thicker than a sheet of paper will stop those alphas, you know, and those that do hit your skin might burrow in a bit and then soak up a couple electrons to become the dreaded He gas that terrorists put in rubber bladders and sell to children.
Wow, I know a lot of AI researchers who are going to be pretty pissed off that these materials scientists scooped them.
Has it passed the Turing test yet?
As I noted elsewhere, the risk of childhood leukemia in the Seascale region is 2000x the national average. Repeated investigations by Greenpeace (the university lent them boats + geiger counters and provided free radionuclide analysis), the BBC and several Universities in the Manchester/Lancashire region have shown that there is a sizable plutonium sludge in the estuary and that plutonium is migrating both round the coastlines and up rivers.
This isn't something to be hysterical about, but there's a difference between knowing the facts on the ground and imagining that nothing is there. I am not telling you or anyone to panic, I'm not the one who is outside the scope of reality. I AM telling you that levels that Universities themselves cannot legally handle are FAR too high for households to handle.
I am ALSO telling you that this is extremely manageable. The Original Article (the one you've not read, apparently) talks about filtering nuclear waste. Well, here we have an estuary full of the stuff. Pump the sludge up, filter it and pump the water back out. That's not hysteria, that's cleaning up the environment in a way that avoids the risks being touted for the old-fashioned clean-up. Where's YOUR bright idea?
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I just read a 1999 report number of leukemia cases in Seascale, five cases of which four were before 1970. Did things suddenly go south in the 21st century, or is "a handful" just about the right phrase for the absolute number of total cases? There is a hereditary component to risk for that disease.
Now I don't like pollution of any kind, and my brilliant idea is to first mandating true filtration of ejected waste or else closing down all places pumping or leaking rad crap into the ocean and groundwater. I'd rather the Irish sea was much cleaner, but your first post gave impression that the cerenkov radation from the sea made it an eerie blue daylight 24x7
Wow, I like how this material is so intelligent that it can differentiate and select radioactive ions from non-radioactive ones. Nice work.
RTFA, How does it work?
"the world-first intelligent absorbent, which uses titanate nanofibre and nanotube technology, differed from current clean-up methods, such as layered clays and zeolites, because it could efficiently lock in deadly radioactive material from contaminated water."
Great, now define "efficiently", because by many measurements, Zeolites are quite efficient at this purpose. They are also incredibly inexpensive; you can get food-grade Zeolites at any ag supply store for practically nothing, though you can also buy a tiny bottle at the health food store for the same amount. Zeolites are a bit gritty though, at least the cheap ones. They were used with great success to treat isotope poisoning after chernobyl, baking them into breads. I made some corn bread with Sweet PDZ, but like I said, it was a bit gritty. I prefer diatoms for ingestion. For cleaning water, though, Zeolites are an incredibly effective method. And they probably work through the same mechanism as the new method, so the question is, how much better is this new method than Zeolites which occur naturally in abundance and which actually work amazingly well?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Nobody said that. It's for cleaning up the sort of heavy metals that would be in the water after a leak whether they are radioactive or not. It would be a safe bet that it was tested and perfected with non-radioactive materials.
You kids have to learn about context. A reactor boils water, a turbine turns that into motion, and a generator produces electricity from that motion. There is nothing at all wrong with the statement you are pretending to correct and building an enormous house of cards of false superiority on. It appears to all be about winning a spelling bee instead of understanding - the depressing tendancy of seeing science as an incantation where you have to get the spelling correct but don't require the merest clue of what is going on. Pointless attacks over semantics AND GETTING IT WRONG are a depressing thing to see, and an exposure of a lack of knowlege of the subject you are mindlessly cheering for even more so. For fuck sake learn SOMETHING about the subject you are pretending to correct people on before doing so.
YA!!! Coal is safer and cleaner than anything.
Bluff collapse at power plant sends dirt, coal ash into lake
Containing the damage at We Energies site
Collapsed bluff got pass from state regulators
Bluff collapse came weeks after Congress rebuffed EPA on coal ash rule
I used to consider myself a Republican. Now I'm embarrassed to admit that. I however am not a Democrat either. I belong to the party of "The Screwed."
The current political party that would like to call itself "Republican" is a party of and for the wealthy elitist businessmen. They have NO interest in the well-being of the general population. Their only concern is for a double-digit profit at the end of the quarter and they don't care how many resources they have to destroy or consume to get it.
The robber barons are back and this time they openly want it all. They're not making any secret of their intentions.
And just like all the spin selling and PR that has been going on for coal, the natural gas guys are starting up their own story-telling machine to support fracking.
With fresh water shortages developing all over the world, how is a technology that uses fresh water that is loaded with all sorts of nasty stuff (and thus rendered useless to any life form) and can destroy fresh water sources be a sensible solution?
And BTW, several fresh water wells have been contaminated by this WE Energies coal plant. WE Energies has bought the properties after the people have signed agreements to not sue them.
I'd rather take my chances with nuclear.
@Baloroth: thanks for "the facts" link.
An effective "democracy" creates the illusion the people have a say in their government.
Are then any published testing results, experimental data? Sounds great, but we do hear about all kinds of wonderful stuff that "can do XYZ" really soon now.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
Wrong. It is in seaspray, it is on the beach and it is in everybody's homes, and lungs, and stomachs and what have you.
"Corporate America's" pattern of behavior suggests to me that a suit in an executive suite somewhere will order a bunch of this material to be put in the water discharges of all the nuke facilities he can affect to contain "minor problems", and then lay all maintenance crews off except one - which will be tasked with doing what they can to prevent a major catastrophe at all of the facilities on a rotating basis.
Thereby generating "shareholder value" by reducing labor costs and increasing the possibility of a major nuclear catastrophe.
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
A reactor boils water, a turbine turns that into motion, and a generator produces electricity from that motion.
Indeed. Both myself and SlippyToad know this damn well, so what's your point?
There is nothing at all wrong with the statement you are pretending to correct
Yes there is, but it it lies in the implications of the way it was (deliberately) phrased and not in the surface meaning. *That* was correct, but misses the point.
It appears to all be about winning a spelling bee instead of understanding - the depressing tendancy of seeing science as an incantation where you have to get the spelling correct but don't require the merest clue of what is going on.
No. Despite your sanctimonious and condescending rant, you *entirely* missed the whole damn point of what I said.
Stating that nuclear power was an "unbelievably fraught with peril method of boiling fucking water" (while pedantically correct) rather than "...of generating electricity" carries the subtle but deliberate shift of emphasis away from the real and useful end purpose as well as implying that the nuclear part is trivial because it should just be a minor step in the process of boiling water.
No, it's obtaining the energy (in whatever form) to boil the water in the first place that's the whole damn hard part. The remainder is relatively trivial energy conversion.
I'm not implying that SlippyToad put as much conscious thought into his choice of words as I did in dissecting them, but it's pretty clear that on some level he knew damn well why he chose those words. This is how politicians, PR and the real world works, how one shifts arguments by subtly pushing an implied message via the choice of emphasis.
Please continue ranting to yourself if you still don't get that.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Show me. Link to the papers charting everything that has been found at Seascale and show me, line and paragraph, where lead-210 is mentioned by isotope and quantity. Go on.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Strange. Now that it is no longer your argument, you suddenly demand "line and paragraph" and mentioning by "isotope and quantity". None of which you yourself provided so long as it was your argument.
Don't you think that you should stop just dropping the term Plutonium as if this was a viable argument, if you can't even accept it yourself when somebody else does it?
Certainly not daylight, but probably quite visible to any decent gamma ray detector. If you did a Google Earth but at the gamma or x-ray frequencies, the Irish Sea would certainly be the brightest mass of water anywhere in the world and quite possibly THE brightest mass of anything outside of the remnants of nuclear test sites.
Well, the one from the NRPB might be a better one to look at. There have certainly been more than 5 cases - indeed the only 5 I could see in this report is to a specific section in the references. The Gardner Report, which DOES mention 5 cases, refers to 5 cases that occurred in a specific time interval over the entire nation where 4 of those occurred in Seascale. The Gardner Report is the one which is the most-cited reference to childhood leukemia in Britain.
In fact, the table at the bottom-right for the Gardner Report is the most interesting for this purpose - a six-fold rise in leukemia incidents in the region surrounding Seascale with levels of leukemia remaining (a) constant and (b) at expected levels everywhere else over the same time period.
Radionuclide research groups *fried* the attempts by BNFL to conceal the link at the time and would doubtless be disgusted by the other posters here trying to attribute the cancers to "natural lead poisoning". I look forward to seeing these alleged papers "proving" that these distinguished experts were wrong and that a pseud-anonymous Slashdot poster is so vastly better and brighter that they can identify a wholly imagined lead isotope as the cause without having done an ounce of legwork.
Other links to papers that may be of interest:
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
See my other post. I have provided more than enough. And any damn fool can look up either the Gardner Report or the CERRIE report.
Further, I did indeed provide references earlier. You ignored them, sure, but I did provide them. You refusing to bother to look them up is not my concern. You, however, provided NOTHING. NADA. ZIPPO. ZILCH.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
So, we're apparently agreed that I have 24 references to peer-reviewed papers to your bugger all, my experience to your zilch and my being there and involved in the work to your nothing whatsoever.
Conclusions, anyone?
(Mine would probably be that picking a fight with a researcher involved in the work is NEVER a good way to win an argument.)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
And those 24 references would be which? Please include paragraph, line, isotopes and amount. Those are your demands, not mine. Also, for all I know you're a dog in front of a keyboard.
Well, paper is to a decent degree C12, though there's some C14 as it's organic. The toner was probably graphite, so C12 and C14 again. Amounts - well, all of it.
There are 2 links on the 2nd paragraph, 1 on the 4th and the rest are on the unordered list as part of the 5th.
No, those are NOT my demands. Bloody Flat-Earther. My demands, as you know damn well, were that you show me the paper YOU got YOUR claim from. I've shown what papers I've got mine from, not that any other person needed those links - they googled them on their own, using the information I had already provided. A skill you apparently have yet to learn.
Are you a Fox News reporter? They're the only ones THIS incompetent.
The 24 references are listed in another of my posts and you are quite capable of going to my profile, selecting from this topic and looking them up. You won't? Ohhhh, now THERE'S a surprise! Not bothering to read is something that should have been evident to anyone within a mile of this thread.
Oh, and for those others still bothering to read, polonium-210 is the only radioisotope weighing at 210 reported in the Sellafield area. (Why bother with the link? Well, it's handy for illustrating the difference in credibility. I *CAN* show links, you CANNOT.)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Having searched the CERRIE report for all places in which plutonium was mentioned, not one of them managed to provide either isotopes or amounts of plutonium actually found anywhere. Nor did you. Having done this to no avail, I will not so much as twitch a finger before you stop the subterfuges and provide those numbers. Having pointed out that you are a "researcher involved in the work" you should have very little trouble to provide them and you should do so, as you happen to go around, telling people to provide numbers for you.
You're the researcher, you work for the public - go do your work. Provide the isotopes and amount of Plutonium found at those houses supposedly contaminated by the sea spray of the Irish sea.
In fact, you can find plutonium wherever you care to take samples, because people put them into huge bombs blowing them up all over the world. Some 500 of them all told (not counting subsurface tests). Just saying that you found plutonium at some place without providing isotopes and amount means nothing at all.
But still, just by mentioning plutonium being found somewhere was proof of how badly the Irish sea is contaminated. As a researcher, you should have known very well, that this is insufficient.
Conclusions, anyone?
(Mine would be, that picking a fight and trying to win it by pointing out "I'm a researcher" doesn't work with people who have dealt with enough "researchers" of that field who couldn't tell an atom from a molecule if you put a gun to their head.)
Of course I "get it" otherwise I could not point out your pointless attack over semantics could I? In this case "pedantically correct" is technically correct so you've got a whole lot of bullshit there attacking the truth. Is this inspired by the example of corrupt politics or something?
Also of course it's condescending, how else can such a pathetic example such as your above post be addressed? It's a shining example of what happens when you cut educational spending for years and get kids that think a spelling bee is more important than knowing what the words mean.
Reactors make steam. That is what they do. Beyond that it could be just about any other thermal power station.
How many offshore oil rigs are there in the estuary around Seascale? (If you answered "lots", you're probably from Texas and haven't a bloody clue where Seascale is. Clue - it's not in the fucking North Sea, where the bloody oil rigs are.)
Go read what it says about the Irish Sea, Sellafield/Seascale specifically, and stop with your bullshit crap.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
You did not read the report. You didn't even bother with the report. You aren't twitching a finger because you know you've lost the argument. You're trolling because that's all you have left. You're pathetic.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Go, read it yourself. You don't even read the links you're posting. And you still haven't said a single word about the amounts and isotopes of plutonium that were found. You're a researcher of the field. You should know them, but obviously they are insignificant.
I've read it, I've understood it, you're trolling it and ignoring it. That's the end of it.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Still not seeing any links from you that rebut a damn thing. Just spittle. Link or be damned.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Of course I "get it" otherwise I could not point out your pointless attack over semantics could I? In this case "pedantically correct" is technically correct so you've got a whole lot of bullshit there attacking the truth.
I've already clearly explained the point I was attacking twice, and it wasn't the surface meaning that "reactors produce steam" (duh). I don't intend repeating it. I'd say "go back and read it", but in your case that would obviously be a waste of time.
Even mildly autistic people (who often have trouble picking up on hidden meaning and implication in practice) can at least understand the existence of this concept in principle when it's explained to them. The fact that *you* can't suggests that you're more likely just an idiot.
It's a shining example of what happens when you cut educational spending for years and get kids that think a spelling bee is more important than knowing what the words mean.
Another example of your blinkered, spelling-bee-in-your-bonnet insularity. I'm not even a product of the US education system- matter of fact I've never even been there.
And yes, it was pretty obvious that this was your underlying assumption- the "spelling bee" thing gave it away. While spelling bees aren't solely an American phenomenom, they don't have the same cultural importance elsewhere.
But yeah. My analysis of the underlying meaning demonstrates that I only have a superficial understanding of language.....?! The fact that you can't tell the difference between this and spelling-obsessed superficiality says a lot more about your ignorance than it does about mine.
Reactors make steam.
Well, duh. Clever boy. You get a gold star!
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
None of this is relevant to nuclear power at all is it?
You also didn't seem to get the point above was a not very subtle hint to piss off and let people with a clue have a say instead of building pointless arguments pretending right is wrong. Now if you DO have a clue what you are writing about please stop pretending to be an arrogant uneducated child.
You didn't seem to get it when nearly everyone would, which is why I was holding you up as an example of a failure of education.
I'm not disputing that Dounreay has produced contamination ; I'm not disputing that there is contamination in Strathclyde, and probably also in the Firth of Clyde, but on vanilla geographic grounds, I'd suspect the sources of contamination are much more likely to be the East Kilbride reactor centre and the Faslane Septic bomb target respectively.
(Memo to self : I must get that Geiger counter working for Tom!)
Someone mentioned getting readings of "14 times background" at Seascale, which raises a "So?" from me, living in Aberdeen with at least 10 times "background" (depending of course, on where you're measuring your background!) glowing on street corners. To say nothing of the natural beaches with up to 20 times "background" that I've encountered as reservoirs at work previously.
If I chose a different place to measure my "background", I could probably vary the value of "background" by around a factor of a hundred without leaving the UK and without resorting to artificial concentrations of natural radioactive materials.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
you've childishly pretended they said something completely different to what was written just
On the contrary, I made quite clear that I agreed that boiling water was a part of the nuclear process, just not the end product.
You know this very well, so you're either incredibly stupid or intentionally repeating a lie on the basis that if you say it enough times it'll be true.
Then after I called you to task you are accusing me of being mentally ill.
Actually, I called you an "idiot". (*)
I said that even a mildly autistic ("mentally ill" in your words) person could understand in *principle* something that you apparently couldn't.
You didn't seem to get it when nearly everyone would
The part in my original post where I said, and I quote:-
I'm surprised that you didn't know that the boiling water *isn't* the final product! In fact, it's simply a means to an end- a minor *intermediate* step used to convert the heat created by the nuclear reactions into the final product- electricity!
None of this is relevant to nuclear power at all is it?
The OP's comment was relevant insofar as it was a subtle and intellectually dishonest way of attacking nuclear electricity using the same techniques that politicians and PR people use.
You didn't seem to get it when nearly everyone would, which is why I was holding you up as an example of a failure of education.
No, you *specifically* tried to use me as an example to serve the bee in your bonnet about the US education system with relation to *its* spelling obsession and *its* cuts.
(Given you likely didn't know how old I am or where I was educated, you couldn't have known for sure that there had even been "cuts" when and where I was educated).
Now that you've been proven wrong, you're weaselling out by trying to pretend that you were merely talking about "the failure of education" in general. Nice try.
(*) Yes, I know that "idiot" has various technical and formal meanings that would count as "mentally ill". Most people wouldn't take it that way in everyday use, and I think it's more likely you're just a sloppy reader and assumed I was calling you "autistic" when I wasn't.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
There's an easy way to stop such ridicule. Think before you post something that is so incredibly stupid as to claim that something very obviously true is false.
By using such inconvenient things as facts instead of transparent fiction like your post above? You really appear to be trying very hard to make people think even less of you with each outpouring.
You appear to be far too thick to realise that your earlier post was so incredibly stupid that it provoked my post along the lines of "look at how badly these kids are taught today".
Yep, that's certainly what you meant. *cough*
As well as incorrectly assuming I was a product of the US education system, you're still talking about how "those kids" are taught "today"... with no knowledge of when I attended school. For all you *actually* know, maybe I left school last year, or maybe it was fifty years ago.
You're right... you were "provoked" into your spelling-bee-obsessed rant of narrow-minded stupidity!
By using such inconvenient things as facts instead of transparent fiction like your post above?
Thanks for clarifying that when I said:-
You're either incredibly stupid or intentionally repeating a lie [that I disagreed that nuclear power generated steam, even though I acknowledge this in my original and all subsequent posts] on the basis that if you say it enough times it'll be true.
You were going for the "repeating a lie" bit... in addition to being incredibly stupid.
You really appear to be trying very hard to make people think even less of you with each outpouring.
Sorry to disappoint you (oh no, wait.... I'm not). But the only people likely still following- or at least giving a damn about- this conversation are you and me.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).