I was about to rip the summary for pointlessly linking to an MIT group (everything thing they do is gold and everyone else sucks, right?), but then I read the article.
Apparently, Bill Gates backs Sadoway directly. Thus, the link makes sense.
But, in contrast, I've read a lot of negative (and sometimes incredibly stupid) reviews that got published with no problem at all.
Like the story talks about, I've also been approached by a company to give a review on Amazon in exchange for a free duplicate of the product. On personal ethics grounds, I rejected their offer and never wrote a review. I never would have thought that the number of people approached was anywhere near as high as the article claims, though.
From looking at just a few emails, it seems like absolutely everything of interest is redacted. One that comes to mind is an email detailing a set of campaign plans. The moment the writer gets to a bulleted list (I think), everything from then on out is redacted.
And so yes, this is a completely pointless exercise, and nothing will likely come out of it except putting Palin back in the spotlight.
Of course, your modification sounds twisted and convoluted in colloquial speech. The voice of the letter is colloquial, and this sounds like how people talk, so the way he constructed the sentence is fine.
And here I thought I was done with this discussion...
In Chernobyl, well, it was a Russian plant, well, of course communists can't build proper plants. In Fukushima, it was either (a) the reactor design is outdated, or (b) the scale of the natural disaster was so unexpectedly large.
Couple of things: first, Chernobyl was built without any sort of containment, and was operated with all controls disabled. It was like driving a truck through rough mountains with a nuclear bomb in the back on a hair trigger. And they were running experiments to test the limits of the thing!
In the case of Fukushima, yes, the reactors were outdated. Very outdated. Criminally outdated, considering that nuclear advocates have been screaming about that particular design flaw since 1972.
but of course we didn't anticipate a terrorist attack / software glitch in the controls / human error
As I pointed out earlier, the new reactor designs (the ones that we should be building, while demolishing Mark I (and some II) reactors) are invulnerable to those three. Why? Because modern reactors are designed to only keep and accept a small amount of fissionable material critical. In this sense, the controls are not required to prevent a disaster, because the reaction would simply fizzle, with all potential radiation leakage coming from the core being stopped at the containment. In fact, the controls are only required to keep the reaction going (and you can always shut everything down with control rods, but again, you can just let it fizzle in an emergency).
What this means is that human error and control failure would only cause a power failure, not a dangerous overload.
As for terrorism: the only way to possibly make an inherently-safe reactor design experience a far-reaching accident would be to detonate a nuclear bomb inside of it (this is the only thing the new containments cannot necessarily withstand). To do so would be a waste of a nuclear bomb, since the resulting disaster (if containment was even breached, and all fissionable material went critical) would be less devastating than, say, detonating the device at a sports stadium, or even a city street.
I think it is not too convincing to keep hearing, "of course, in the past we were too stupid to prevent such disasters, but now we got the hang of it, honest"
Since reactors have been built, we have had 50 years to pick apart every design aspect. We now know the physics in great detail, and can rationally design reactors. That we still have designs from the 70s in operation and causing disasters boggles the mind, but the new ones are safe. There's no delusions about it, just the physics behind it.
It's easier to dump nuclear power than get rid of corrupt and lazy regulators, arrogant and secretive companies and a huge cloud of deluded online denialists.
Well that's a pretty generic argument. Seems you could substitute just about anything for "nuclear power": "coal power", "privatized health insurance", "the military-industrial complex", "Soylent Green", etc.
Joking aside, the only "deluded online denialists" are the ones screaming to keep all current nuclear power plans operational (this, sadly, makes up most of the "huge cloud"...people just as uninformed as most nuclear opponents). But the fact remains that the modern nuclear reactor designs cannot produce the types of runaway reactions that led to the major meltdowns of old. No delusion, just physics.
If you discount the very first accident (at a testing center, and having nothing to do with the core), then the first "real" (read: injury, death, or radiation leakage) accident was in 1975. The warnings about Mark I reactors began in 1972.
Yes, but I think the "1 in 2000 years" statistic includes Mark 1 reactors, which should have been phased out years ago.
And I don't mean to sound pedantic, but "1 in 2000 years" does not mean "1 every 14 years" (and actually, "1 in 2000 years" was an improper way for the industry to state this to begin with). In this case, the industry was trying to refer to the core integrity, which is designed to last a very long time; its expected lifetime is several hundred years. Additionally, "end of life" does not refer to "catastrophic failure", and modern reactors have an absurdly low chance that even an accident would produce a meltdown, or even a large radiation leak.
The only reason the "1 in 14 years" condition works, historically, is because the chance of failure for the Mark 1 containment reactors is much higher than the designed failure chance.
Uh, no. Mark 1 reactors are fundamentally flawed, in that they can easily build up hydrogen and explode if the cooling system is compromised (leaving out the detail here). Even Mark 2 designs are built strong enough to withstand a failed cooling system.
Even if you were correct, that age is the most important factor, then why is that the fault of nuclear power in general, and not the governments for a fire-and-forget attitude?
Out of curiosity, what makes you opposed to the modern iteration of nuclear reactors? The major accidents have all been Mark I reactors, which have been known to be unsafe since 1972 (warnings ignored, thank GE in the U.S.). For modern reactors, "real science" reveals mostly positives, with almost no chance of a critical meltdown.
Moreover, I really wonder how things will pan out with people who downloaded but didn't seed. The wording of the court order seems to suggest that they're assuming all downloaders infringed on multiple copies, but most would only have viewed one. Even with punitive fines, there's no way the typically insane awards should hold up in court.
Remember that the 24-hour news channels rarely fact-check anything, preferring instead to report "breaking news". This has the nasty side-effect of turning hearsay into well-reported "facts", which then stick around and confuse people.
Once upon a time there was an internet with little beyond basic HTML, images, and maybe a downloadable file or two. Gradually, people started wanting to do more and more with this internet, and started introducing embedding ability to HTML, using Flash to the point of abuse in order to get dynamic content while Javascript implementations lagged, and soon a myriad of plugins began to emerge for every piece of content imaginable. What this meant is that one could no longer just download a browser to view content, since while many sites remained readable without the crazy dynamic content, more and more sites began using this stuff extensively, and with very little consistency. Meanwhile, the big bad public began using the internet in droves, and many in the public had (have) little to no computer skills to sort through it all.
Suddenly, a browser alone is no longer what most people want when they download one...instead, they really want everything to work right out of the box. In order to stay competitive, browser developers began using integrating a large assortment of built-in abilities, which now includes PDF viewers and even video/audio codecs, right in line with what many people want.
tl;dr: Firefox was good when they were still a garage band.
Ok, seriously: why do so many people harp on the "awesomebar"? I'm beginning to think it's just a strawman for some strange repulsion to Firefox, brought on by something else entirely.
I want an in-browser PDF viewer, because to me PDFs I find online are just an alternative to an HTML page with the same information. That's not what PDFs are supposed to be for, but many web developers use them as such.
A built-in viewer would likely load much faster than an external plugin, too. So why does anyone not want an in-browser PDF viewer?
watered down the healthcare bill to next to nothing
If you're looking for blame on that one, look no further than the solid, bright-red block that was sitting in the room with them. The bill didn't pass as it was originally written because, unlike the Republicans in that Congress, the Democrats didn't always vote as a hive mind. Meanwhile, no one from the Republican side was willing to vote for the original bill, even if they and their constituents actually agreed with it.
I guess I should have prefaced by saying that I live in the Northeast U.S., and in an odd area where many of my coworkers commute by train from the larger cities more than an hour away. I guess those are the people I was thinking of.
Slashdot Mirror
I was about to rip the summary for pointlessly linking to an MIT group (everything thing they do is gold and everyone else sucks, right?), but then I read the article.
Apparently, Bill Gates backs Sadoway directly. Thus, the link makes sense.
But, in contrast, I've read a lot of negative (and sometimes incredibly stupid) reviews that got published with no problem at all.
Like the story talks about, I've also been approached by a company to give a review on Amazon in exchange for a free duplicate of the product. On personal ethics grounds, I rejected their offer and never wrote a review. I never would have thought that the number of people approached was anywhere near as high as the article claims, though.
Bush got congressional authorization by lying to Congress. Obama thinks he doesn't have to. That's the key difference.
FTFY
From looking at just a few emails, it seems like absolutely everything of interest is redacted. One that comes to mind is an email detailing a set of campaign plans. The moment the writer gets to a bulleted list (I think), everything from then on out is redacted.
And so yes, this is a completely pointless exercise, and nothing will likely come out of it except putting Palin back in the spotlight.
Of course, your modification sounds twisted and convoluted in colloquial speech. The voice of the letter is colloquial, and this sounds like how people talk, so the way he constructed the sentence is fine.
That sentence is perfectly clear, and gets his point across. I mean, you could surround "annually" with commas, but who cares?
And here I thought I was done with this discussion...
In Chernobyl, well, it was a Russian plant, well, of course communists can't build proper plants. In Fukushima, it was either (a) the reactor design is outdated, or (b) the scale of the natural disaster was so unexpectedly large.
Couple of things: first, Chernobyl was built without any sort of containment, and was operated with all controls disabled. It was like driving a truck through rough mountains with a nuclear bomb in the back on a hair trigger. And they were running experiments to test the limits of the thing!
In the case of Fukushima, yes, the reactors were outdated. Very outdated. Criminally outdated, considering that nuclear advocates have been screaming about that particular design flaw since 1972.
but of course we didn't anticipate a terrorist attack / software glitch in the controls / human error
As I pointed out earlier, the new reactor designs (the ones that we should be building, while demolishing Mark I (and some II) reactors) are invulnerable to those three. Why? Because modern reactors are designed to only keep and accept a small amount of fissionable material critical. In this sense, the controls are not required to prevent a disaster, because the reaction would simply fizzle, with all potential radiation leakage coming from the core being stopped at the containment. In fact, the controls are only required to keep the reaction going (and you can always shut everything down with control rods, but again, you can just let it fizzle in an emergency).
What this means is that human error and control failure would only cause a power failure, not a dangerous overload.
As for terrorism: the only way to possibly make an inherently-safe reactor design experience a far-reaching accident would be to detonate a nuclear bomb inside of it (this is the only thing the new containments cannot necessarily withstand). To do so would be a waste of a nuclear bomb, since the resulting disaster (if containment was even breached, and all fissionable material went critical) would be less devastating than, say, detonating the device at a sports stadium, or even a city street.
I think it is not too convincing to keep hearing, "of course, in the past we were too stupid to prevent such disasters, but now we got the hang of it, honest"
Since reactors have been built, we have had 50 years to pick apart every design aspect. We now know the physics in great detail, and can rationally design reactors. That we still have designs from the 70s in operation and causing disasters boggles the mind, but the new ones are safe. There's no delusions about it, just the physics behind it.
It's easier to dump nuclear power than get rid of corrupt and lazy regulators, arrogant and secretive companies and a huge cloud of deluded online denialists.
Well that's a pretty generic argument. Seems you could substitute just about anything for "nuclear power": "coal power", "privatized health insurance", "the military-industrial complex", "Soylent Green", etc.
Joking aside, the only "deluded online denialists" are the ones screaming to keep all current nuclear power plans operational (this, sadly, makes up most of the "huge cloud"...people just as uninformed as most nuclear opponents). But the fact remains that the modern nuclear reactor designs cannot produce the types of runaway reactions that led to the major meltdowns of old. No delusion, just physics.
If you discount the very first accident (at a testing center, and having nothing to do with the core), then the first "real" (read: injury, death, or radiation leakage) accident was in 1975. The warnings about Mark I reactors began in 1972.
Yes, but I think the "1 in 2000 years" statistic includes Mark 1 reactors, which should have been phased out years ago.
And I don't mean to sound pedantic, but "1 in 2000 years" does not mean "1 every 14 years" (and actually, "1 in 2000 years" was an improper way for the industry to state this to begin with). In this case, the industry was trying to refer to the core integrity, which is designed to last a very long time; its expected lifetime is several hundred years. Additionally, "end of life" does not refer to "catastrophic failure", and modern reactors have an absurdly low chance that even an accident would produce a meltdown, or even a large radiation leak.
The only reason the "1 in 14 years" condition works, historically, is because the chance of failure for the Mark 1 containment reactors is much higher than the designed failure chance.
Uh, no. Mark 1 reactors are fundamentally flawed, in that they can easily build up hydrogen and explode if the cooling system is compromised (leaving out the detail here). Even Mark 2 designs are built strong enough to withstand a failed cooling system.
Even if you were correct, that age is the most important factor, then why is that the fault of nuclear power in general, and not the governments for a fire-and-forget attitude?
Out of curiosity, what makes you opposed to the modern iteration of nuclear reactors? The major accidents have all been Mark I reactors, which have been known to be unsafe since 1972 (warnings ignored, thank GE in the U.S.). For modern reactors, "real science" reveals mostly positives, with almost no chance of a critical meltdown.
It's the one that often sides with the US Dairy Association (USDA), and is a sub-agency of the US Department of Happy Human Specialists (HHS).
And, sure enough, it runs in the js version of Linux.
That would work the same way that stealing millions of dollars and spending it all on cocaine would make it unrecoverable (i.e. not at all).
Moreover, I really wonder how things will pan out with people who downloaded but didn't seed. The wording of the court order seems to suggest that they're assuming all downloaders infringed on multiple copies, but most would only have viewed one. Even with punitive fines, there's no way the typically insane awards should hold up in court.
The U.S. is at war. Congress authorized the military action.
In your own oft-repeated words, stop being an idiot.
Remember that the 24-hour news channels rarely fact-check anything, preferring instead to report "breaking news". This has the nasty side-effect of turning hearsay into well-reported "facts", which then stick around and confuse people.
So Fox News is "the news" now? I thought it was where rage and intolerance went to fester.
Are there any simple ways to turn it onto C and O2?
Short answer? No.
This is an ongoing area of research, but CO2 reduction is difficult to do in any practical amount.
Once upon a time there was an internet with little beyond basic HTML, images, and maybe a downloadable file or two. Gradually, people started wanting to do more and more with this internet, and started introducing embedding ability to HTML, using Flash to the point of abuse in order to get dynamic content while Javascript implementations lagged, and soon a myriad of plugins began to emerge for every piece of content imaginable. What this meant is that one could no longer just download a browser to view content, since while many sites remained readable without the crazy dynamic content, more and more sites began using this stuff extensively, and with very little consistency. Meanwhile, the big bad public began using the internet in droves, and many in the public had (have) little to no computer skills to sort through it all.
Suddenly, a browser alone is no longer what most people want when they download one...instead, they really want everything to work right out of the box. In order to stay competitive, browser developers began using integrating a large assortment of built-in abilities, which now includes PDF viewers and even video/audio codecs, right in line with what many people want.
tl;dr: Firefox was good when they were still a garage band.
Ok, seriously: why do so many people harp on the "awesomebar"? I'm beginning to think it's just a strawman for some strange repulsion to Firefox, brought on by something else entirely.
I want an in-browser PDF viewer, because to me PDFs I find online are just an alternative to an HTML page with the same information. That's not what PDFs are supposed to be for, but many web developers use them as such.
A built-in viewer would likely load much faster than an external plugin, too. So why does anyone not want an in-browser PDF viewer?
watered down the healthcare bill to next to nothing
If you're looking for blame on that one, look no further than the solid, bright-red block that was sitting in the room with them. The bill didn't pass as it was originally written because, unlike the Republicans in that Congress, the Democrats didn't always vote as a hive mind. Meanwhile, no one from the Republican side was willing to vote for the original bill, even if they and their constituents actually agreed with it.
I guess I should have prefaced by saying that I live in the Northeast U.S., and in an odd area where many of my coworkers commute by train from the larger cities more than an hour away. I guess those are the people I was thinking of.