What you guys seem to miss is that if the British government were replaced by a facist regime at some point in the future, not having an ID card won't help you. In that particular future, they'd still lock you up for speaking against the government, ID card or not. And they'd probably tattoo you with a bar code at the same time.
But an ID card system allows them to find you oh so much quicker than one without.
I can't recommend IBM and the Holocaust (Edwin Black, ISBN: 0316857718) highly enough for anyone even vaguely interested in the social effects of advanced technology. The book covers IBM's relationship with the Nazis through their German subsidiary.
During the 1930s many European countries were automating data for censuses and social provision. Almost all of these systems were based on IBM punchcard technology manufactured in Germany.
The Nazis loved censuses and openly included racial profiling on their punch cards. Other countries wanted to know about race, religion and occupation for benign purposes such as providing social services. The Dutch were at the forefront of this, wanting to make sure that everyone was given equal access to social services. So they innocently asked about individuals race - so as to ensure there was no discrimination.
When the Nazis rolled in to the Netherlands they grabbed all the census records and the punchcard machines. They then just ran the cards looking for Jews - and out popped all their addresses.
In short, 75% of Dutch Jews were murdered by the Nazis thanks to an extensive automated ID system. In France, which had similar levels of Jewish integration into the population, but no automation, 'only' 25% were killed.
That our politicians are prepared to go ahead with such a system despite this clear warning from history is terrifying. I'd say Blunkett was blind - but that might be in poor taste.
We have all of the "good" points of your list and very little of the "bad" ones
Knowing nothing about Swedish constitutional law can I assume that the Swedish constitution lays out the fundamental rights of the citizen? Things like rights to privacy, association, religion that sort of thing?
Britain is practically unique in not having such a constitution. Whereas most of Europe and the US believe in positive rights - those that are fundamental and cannot be infringed, Britain has negative rights - you are allowed to do anything that is not forbidden by law - but no entitlements are protected from infringement by the government passing a law. We call this Parliamentary Supremacy and it is a very bad thing for democracy.
An Act of Parliament could be introduced which is utterly crazy, repressive or just plain evil - and it could not be overturned in the British Courts. If an extreme government gets into power - even with a slim majority they can do what they want without checks or balances applying.
The UK incorporated the European Convention on Human Rights through the 1998 Human Rights Act which should protect people from abuse of their rights.
However, the HRA specifically permits the government to introduce legislation which is in violation of the ECHR - provided they tell Parliament that it is such. The Courts are obliged to follow UK law over international law even in the case of direct conflict.
Where we do have some hope is if UK legislation conflicts with European Community legislation. The UK - as a member of the EU must incorporate European law into domestic law (which is done through the European Communities Act 1972.
EC legislation is supreme over UK law where there is a conflict. Fortunately, the EC has a sizeable body of law that protects people's rights in cases of discrimination, economic activities and movement. Which is something that never gets mentioned by all those people who want to take the UK out of Europe.
What I can't work out is the motive for enforcing face recognition biometrics.
Well for the UK government the reason is 'because it's new and a very nice man from [insert name of big IT company] told us that everyone would want it next year.'
The British government must be the World's largest consumer of bad IT projects - a magistrates' courts system that had to be abandoned, a procurement system for the Ministry of Defence that didn't procur, passports not being issued, tax refunds not paid, child support payments being delayed that people were left in poverty, an air traffic control that failed basic HCI requirements, the current NHS IT system which could work out so expensive there won't be money to treat patients...
About the only good thing that can be said about the British government's ability to deliver IT is that the ID card system is probably going to be DOA.
Friend of mine was, but remember paypal is an American company, out of UK jurisdiction.
It's worth UK PayPal users remembering that paypal.com/uk *IS* subject to UK and European regulation. Any problems through the UK site and you would have recourse through your bank, your card issuer AND the Financial Services Authority.
That's small consolation to someone who won't be alive 10,000 years from now, and is mourning the loss of some pretty scenery.
Well speaking as a geologist I always find that when you think in terms of geological time so many other problems - the bank, work, Dubya - all fall into perspective. That scenery has been changed time and time again. It's inevitable that this will go on.
The people of Washington are getting a chance to see how their planet formed. In a couple of decades whole new forests will be established, there will be new mountain meadows and all the time a new mountain will be growing. Fantastic!
Take the kids and go look in awe at Mount St. Helens, show them that Nature isn't just wallpaper, its always changing.
And as a Brit - I'm thoroughly jealous that the US has volcanoes and we don't...
However on the west side of the mountain, there was a nuclear power plant on the Columbia river about 50 miles (80 km) away. If the volcano had blown out through the west side of the mountain instead of the north side, there was the serious possiblility that the shock wave would have ruptured the reactor coolant tanks and damaged the control and safety systems. In a worst case, this could have led to the release of radioactive material into the last 50 miles of the Columbia river. The river would have been closed for shipping. Which means that the port of Portland would have been closed, stopping shipment of massive amounts of grain to Asia from the Pacific Northwest. It would have also caused the extinction of the fisheries, such as salmon and steelhead trout in the Columbia.
It's unlikely that even the most massive eruption from Mt. St. Helens could have threatened the plant. The incredible first lateral blast only travelled 25km and IIRC the pyroclastic flows only extended about 20km. Ashfall would not have been a problem for the plant, and the quakes associated with vulcanism are (Hollywood aside) fairly small.
In the event, they had a pretty good idea that Mount St. Helens was going to erupt through its side. The area that bulged was called Goat's Roack and was actually the result of an earlier eruption through the side of the cone.
What no one had predicted was that the whole side of the mountain would slide off. Instantly a huge section of the magma below the mountain depressurised - like a champagne cork blowing off. And that did the damage.
What we have now is young magma pushing up under the mountain. We'll probably see a series of small eruptions as the dome is built, extended and then blown apart. We could have centuries of this sort of activity ahead of us.
The eruption was too bad because Mt. St. Helens was a perfect cone before the eruption. It looked like Mt. Fuji in Japan. Now it looks like a million-seat football stadium: a big hole with a circular ridge around half of it.
You're not thinking long-term - the cone of Mt. St. Helens was only a few tens of thousands of years old, it will rebuild itself in the next few millennia. In the meantime, sit back and watch the mountain heal itself.
I'm a bit late for this, but I have a question about the Buran: I saw a documentary about the russian shuttle program on TV once, and they mentioned that the Buran was initially designed to be able to act as an orbital bomber.
The worry came out of the American decision to put a Shuttle base in Vandenberg CA. Flights from Vandenberg would have entered a polar orbit taking them over the Soviet Union. It was an immensely provocative idea that was bound to attract the attentions of the Soviet military.
The Soviets quickly worked out that the Shuttle had an enormous cross-range capability - that is it could be steered back to a landing, so they concluded that a Shuttle could be blasted out of Vandenberg and drop a weapon on the Soviet Union as part of a first strike, then return to Edwards Air Force base after a single orbit.
When the Politburo was informed of the American plans, Breschnev effectively turned the carefully planned Soviet strategy for reusable spacecraft on a dime and ordered that his engineers produce something equivalent to the American Shuttle. Which was a disaster as the Soviets had plenty of original ideas including the Spiral hypersonic aircraft which were in an advanced stage of development.
In reality the US Air Force had already concluded that the Shuttle would make a lousy weapons platform. Submarine launched missiles could achieve much more at a lower cost and were already being deployed. However, the USAF did want Vandenberg to put heavy reconnaisance satellites into polar orbit and perhaps use the Shuttle itself as a reconnaisance ship.
In the end, Vandenberg was mothballed after the Challenger disaster and no Shuttles ever took off from the enormously expensive facility.
So perhaps the Buran is a good reminder of how often we view the world in the light of our own worst fears.
Actually, I think that nuclear is even with coal & oil, but it's overall fuel efficiency would be much higher if we were allowed to reprocess the fuel, or use breeder reactors.
Nuclear is less efficient because the core temperature is lower than the furnace in a fossil fuel plant. Efficiency is increased by increasing the difference in temperatures between the heat source and where heat is discharged from the plant. For obvious reasons, too high a temperature with nuclear plants is not usually a good thing.
Practical coolants all have trouble at high temperatures - water becomes immensely corrosive and begins to attack the pressure vessel and the fuel cladding, liquid metals need fantastically intricate plumbing, and helium has a very low heat capacity and requires enormous volumes to be pumped over the core to remove the heat.
Reprocessing wouldn't actually increase efficiency of plants because it would still use reactors running at the same temperatures. What it would do is increase the total amount of energy that can be extracted.
However we must ask if we want to use fast breeder reactors and reprocessing with their inherent complexities, risks of proliferation and immense potential for pollution.
The answer from the UK's experience of both is that breeders are technological nightmares of dubious economy and reprocessing is a fabulous way of producing lots of nuclear waste and fuel that no one wants.
If you have a nice modern combined cycle gas plant you can wring about 60% efficiency. Burn the gas to spin the turbine, then use the hot exhaust to boil water and drive a steam turbine.
Coal and oil are much lower - down around 40%, and nuclear is even lower - mid 30s%.
Maybe, but it would have prevented the attempted murder that happened opposite my house!
That is a horrific story - but you cannot say that CCTV would have prevented the attack. It may have deterred a person or persons acting in full control of their faculties. If the story is halfway correct, the perpetrators of the attack seem to have anything other than rational.
CCTV may have aided their capture had it been in place, but in of itself, it would not have stopped the attack.
OK, so lets say you're caught up in a terrible train crash that scars you for life, and this Government you seem to trust so much decides they need to dig up some dirt on you to try and discredit your testimony.
Or you are an old lady who is treated disgracefully whilst waiting for treatment in hospital? Make a complaint and all of a sudden your private health records are made public by a government spokesman. Not just that, it is then alleged you are racist.
Why should anyone trust the government? They have shown time and time again that they do not trust the people.
Speaking of that, I could never figure out why scientists would assume such a thing. Certainly there fluids, materials and chemical reactions which can result in life like properties, but exist at very low temperatures. Why do people always assume that you need an earth like environment for life to exist. Maybe all the life-forms we've seen require an earth like environment because we've only seen life-forms on earth. I think that scientists who believe that there's no way life could exist on Titan, simply lack imagination.
A common rule of thumb is that the rate of chemical reactions doubles for every 10C increase in temperature. Going the other way, that means they halve for every 10C decrease.
A place as bitterly cold as Titan would see chemistry taking place at a crawl - if at all. There may not have been time to assembled complex molecules at such temperatures.
Furthermore, there are precious few solvents that could dissolve complex molecules that remain liquid at Titanian temperatures. Life as we know it requires polar solvents (those that dissolve ionic compounds (such as salt) or covalent compounds that ionise in solution) - I'm trying to think of any that are liquid down there - liquid ammonia perhaps.
Not really. Titan is stuck in way out in the cold of space. Everyone believes that Titan is WAY to cold for life to ever exist. This however changes in about 5 billion years when the sun goes red giant and Titan might possibly enter a period of a few 100 million years where it gets earth-like tempatures
It's quite significant, since many of the complex organic compounds on Titan are very similar to those that would have been raining down on the primordial Earth before that began evolving. Spectroscopy has already found chemicals such as hydrogen cyanide (HCN), cyanoacetylene (HC3N) and cyanogen (C2N2) in the Titanian atmosphere - these are thought to be essential in the manufacture of amino acides.
Secondly, Titan is in a cold place, but it may not be cold - it is a sizeable body which may well have differentiated - under all of that ice there may be rock heated by radioactive decay - which would provide plenty of energy to drive chemical reactions.
I'm sure a physicist will be along shortly to say if Titan also receives energy from tidal pumping in its orbit around Saturn - that keeps Io, Europa and Ganymede hot around Jupiter, and Triton hot around Neptune.
There is no lack of oil at reasonable prices. Even with the recent price spike, US gas prices are lower in inflation-adjusted terms than they were during the "Oil Crisis" of the late-1970s. Prices would be a lot higher if we were running out of oil.
The oil crises were all political events caused by the taps being turned off. It's not really a fair comparison.
We are almost certainly at, or very close to, the peak of oil production - from here on it is a short plateau before oil production goes into an irreversible decline.
Most major provinces outside of the Middle East are (such as Venezuela or Nigeria) all now at their peak or past their peak (North America, and the North Sea). Countries like the UK which have been self-sufficient in oil are soon going to be looking to top up dwindling domestic reserves with imported fuel.
The Caspian, for all the excitement it raises has not actually transformed the world. Talk of 200 billion barrels in the region are at the far end of expectations, so that isn't going to bail us out.
There aren't many more big fields left to discover, what's left is in smaller fields, deeper down, harder to drill and with commensurate higher costs.
But at the same time, China and India have turned their growth to maximum. Both countries need to import oil and gas to maintain economic growth and both have plenty of hard cash to spend on fuel imports. Both are becoming major players in the Gulf where they are signing agreements to drill and produce oil for export to their own markets.
So even if oil isn't in immediate risk of vanishing from our lives, the World's addiction to the stuff is getting worse - not better. There may be plenty of oil down there - but will we be able to afford it?
Yep, hydroelectric power can do a lot of local damage. But it doesn't poison the whole world.
They can seriously screw up international relations. Turkey's enormous Ataturk Dam brought it and Syria and Iraq to the brink of war after the Euphrates dwindled to a trickle as the reservoir filled. Israel has threatened Jordan with attack if the Jordanians build a dam on a tributary of the River Jordan. Egypt has threatened Sudan if they dam the Blue Nile.
China is now engaged in an internation dispute over its damming of the Upper Mekong which has disrupted flow on the lower part of the river, causing fisheries to crash.
Dams have caused river bank erosion in Egypt, the Nile Delta is crumbling and the soil is becoming degraded. The fisheries of the Eastern Mediterranean are in serious trouble and Egypt now suffers from increased prevalence of illnesses such as bilharzia. Mexico does not receive its international ration of water from the Colorado and what it does get is contaminated with salt and pesticides from irrigation runoff.
Oh and they also cause increased seismic activity. A bit of a problem when you whack a monster dam through a seismically active region such as the Three Gorges.
What a tremendous technology - consume huge amounts of energy and water to get the stuff out of the ground. Then use even more energy and produce biblical amounts of carbon dioxide to make the muck actually usable. THEN create even more carbon dioxide when you burn it.
Thank goodness the profligate use of fossil fuels and carbon dioxide pollution aren't causing long term problems for humanity.
Just one drawback - the US puts about 8 times as much energy INTO producing crops as it extracts from those crops (by eating them, distilling them whatever). This number is called the Fuel Energy Subsidy and has been increasing through the last century thanks to the advent of mechanisation and artificial fertilisers.
That energy is obtained from fossil fuels.
Corn ethanol is no more than a tax subsidy for farmers, it certainly does not replace petroleum and gas.
You're right, these missiles are well past their sell-by date. the SS18 is a liquid-fuelled missiled (like the US Titan) burning nitrogen tetroxide and dimethyl hydrazine - both of which are corrosive and highly toxic.
Such rockets can be kept readied for launch far longer than the previous kerosene/liquid oxygen monsters like the R7 and Atlas missiles, but they must be regularly drained and inspected - a hazardous process which has been known to cause explosions.
The Russians have been moving to solid fuel rockets over the last couple of decades which have none of these problems and offer almost instant launch. Their current nasty is the Topol-M which is easily a match for anything the West has to offer, being designed to be both launched from vehicles and take on anti-missile defence systems.
So the SS18 might as well earn some hard cash rather than go to the breakers yard.
The US uses its Titan as a launcher for heavy military satellites and deep space probes - but I *think* they are now build especially for space flight - the Titan misile has been out of front-line service for almost 30 years now.
I would urge all UK-based \.ers to go and visit Bletchley Park as soon as possible. It's an amazing day out. It's just sad that the UK government doesn't appear to recognise the historical significance of BP and spend whatever is required to restore the site. Hut 6 and Hut 1, where most of the decoding was done are practically falling down these days.
One of the few industrial donors to Bletchley Park has been - ummm - Siemens - who made Lorenz.
So German industry understands the importance of Bletchley Park - but seemingly not their British counterparts.
I don't know how many of the "earliest" reactors are still operational. My guess is none, but that's a guess.
Oh we just missed out - Calder Hall in Cumbria was closed last year after 47 years of operation. It suffered less from embrittlement than other Magnox stations as it was run at relatively low power.
I don't understand the details of how the reactor vessel works, but I'm wondering: do you care if it gets heavily radiated? I mean, let's say it's heavily radiated, does that mean it's no longer suitable as a reactor vessel?
Prolonged neutron bombardment makes many metals brittle. Fortunately it is a relatively well understood phenomenon which is familiar from the operation of current reactors - some of which have run for over 40 years.
Fusion reactors can expect some embrittlement with time, but the consequences are much less likely to be serious than with a pressurised vessel such as a PWR.
The biggest problem will be that the plant will have to be mothballed for a period before dismantling at the end of its life. Again that is something we know about as the US and UK are already dismantling their first generation of nuclear reactors.
We're digging all this nuclear fuel up from somewhere in the ground already. It's already radioactive there, right?
Why don't we take the still-radioactive waste products of using that fuel, throw them back where the fuel came from and bury them again?
If it was only so simple, nuclear waste is a grab-bag of stuff, ranging from used protective clothing through to spent fuel. It is usually graded into low, medium and high level waste depending on its radioactivity. So pretty much anything that comes into contact with radioactive materials has to be classified as nuclear waste.
Low-level waste is usually buried in lined trenches and does not present much of a problem. Fortunately it constitutes about 90% of all waste.
Medium and high level waste is actually more radioactive than materials found in nature. It is stuff like spent fuel, reprocessing waste and contaminated coolant. In the UK this is mainly liquid waste which is currently kept in cooled tanks at Sellafield. It can't be disposed of directly as it will either seep into the environment, or contaminate groundwater. The aim is to eventually combine it with glass at high temperatures - so called vitrifaction to produce an inert ceramic which can be buried.
However, the UK has singularly failed to find a site for the long-term storage of waste. Generally speaking, you are looking for dry, stable rocks that present a relatively low risk of releasing any contamination. The UK actually has plenty of space for a dump - the central part of the country is underlain by thick deposits of salt, gypsum and anhydrite. This stuff has been dry for hundreds of millions of years, there are no earthquakes worthy of the name and we are volcano free.
Indeed such sites were put forward in the 1980s for burying some waste - they just happened to all be under Conservative-held constituencies - the plan but not the waste was buried.
The Conservative government then proposed burying the waste near Sellafield in Cumbria. They were within months of starting drilling a test laboratory, when common-sense kicked in, and they concluded that the rocks in the area were saturated with water and shot through with faults.
At the present, there are absolutely no plans for the long-term storage of waste in this country. It is becoming increasingly likely that reprocessing will come to an end when the economics finally catch up, which would mean that spent fuel will be stored at the power stations where it can be monitored for deterioration.
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But an ID card system allows them to find you oh so much quicker than one without.
I can't recommend IBM and the Holocaust (Edwin Black, ISBN: 0316857718) highly enough for anyone even vaguely interested in the social effects of advanced technology. The book covers IBM's relationship with the Nazis through their German subsidiary.
During the 1930s many European countries were automating data for censuses and social provision. Almost all of these systems were based on IBM punchcard technology manufactured in Germany.
The Nazis loved censuses and openly included racial profiling on their punch cards. Other countries wanted to know about race, religion and occupation for benign purposes such as providing social services. The Dutch were at the forefront of this, wanting to make sure that everyone was given equal access to social services. So they innocently asked about individuals race - so as to ensure there was no discrimination.
When the Nazis rolled in to the Netherlands they grabbed all the census records and the punchcard machines. They then just ran the cards looking for Jews - and out popped all their addresses.
In short, 75% of Dutch Jews were murdered by the Nazis thanks to an extensive automated ID system. In France, which had similar levels of Jewish integration into the population, but no automation, 'only' 25% were killed.
That our politicians are prepared to go ahead with such a system despite this clear warning from history is terrifying. I'd say Blunkett was blind - but that might be in poor taste.
Best wishes,
Mike.
Knowing nothing about Swedish constitutional law can I assume that the Swedish constitution lays out the fundamental rights of the citizen? Things like rights to privacy, association, religion that sort of thing?
Britain is practically unique in not having such a constitution. Whereas most of Europe and the US believe in positive rights - those that are fundamental and cannot be infringed, Britain has negative rights - you are allowed to do anything that is not forbidden by law - but no entitlements are protected from infringement by the government passing a law. We call this Parliamentary Supremacy and it is a very bad thing for democracy.
An Act of Parliament could be introduced which is utterly crazy, repressive or just plain evil - and it could not be overturned in the British Courts. If an extreme government gets into power - even with a slim majority they can do what they want without checks or balances applying.
The UK incorporated the European Convention on Human Rights through the 1998 Human Rights Act which should protect people from abuse of their rights.
However, the HRA specifically permits the government to introduce legislation which is in violation of the ECHR - provided they tell Parliament that it is such. The Courts are obliged to follow UK law over international law even in the case of direct conflict.
Where we do have some hope is if UK legislation conflicts with European Community legislation. The UK - as a member of the EU must incorporate European law into domestic law (which is done through the European Communities Act 1972.
EC legislation is supreme over UK law where there is a conflict. Fortunately, the EC has a sizeable body of law that protects people's rights in cases of discrimination, economic activities and movement. Which is something that never gets mentioned by all those people who want to take the UK out of Europe.
Best wishes,
Mike.
Well for the UK government the reason is 'because it's new and a very nice man from [insert name of big IT company] told us that everyone would want it next year.'
The British government must be the World's largest consumer of bad IT projects - a magistrates' courts system that had to be abandoned, a procurement system for the Ministry of Defence that didn't procur, passports not being issued, tax refunds not paid, child support payments being delayed that people were left in poverty, an air traffic control that failed basic HCI requirements, the current NHS IT system which could work out so expensive there won't be money to treat patients...
About the only good thing that can be said about the British government's ability to deliver IT is that the ID card system is probably going to be DOA.
Best wishes,
Mike.
It's worth UK PayPal users remembering that paypal.com/uk *IS* subject to UK and European regulation. Any problems through the UK site and you would have recourse through your bank, your card issuer AND the Financial Services Authority.
Best wishes,
Mike.
Done - just so long as I can put the volcano right next to Parliament.
'News just breaking: the country celebrates as 600 odd - very odd - parliamentarians are buried under tens of feet of white-hot ash....'
C'mon - a guy's gotta dream!
Best wishes,
Mike.
Well speaking as a geologist I always find that when you think in terms of geological time so many other problems - the bank, work, Dubya - all fall into perspective. That scenery has been changed time and time again. It's inevitable that this will go on.
The people of Washington are getting a chance to see how their planet formed. In a couple of decades whole new forests will be established, there will be new mountain meadows and all the time a new mountain will be growing. Fantastic!
Take the kids and go look in awe at Mount St. Helens, show them that Nature isn't just wallpaper, its always changing.
And as a Brit - I'm thoroughly jealous that the US has volcanoes and we don't...
Best wishes,
Mike.
It's unlikely that even the most massive eruption from Mt. St. Helens could have threatened the plant. The incredible first lateral blast only travelled 25km and IIRC the pyroclastic flows only extended about 20km. Ashfall would not have been a problem for the plant, and the quakes associated with vulcanism are (Hollywood aside) fairly small.
In the event, they had a pretty good idea that Mount St. Helens was going to erupt through its side. The area that bulged was called Goat's Roack and was actually the result of an earlier eruption through the side of the cone.
What no one had predicted was that the whole side of the mountain would slide off. Instantly a huge section of the magma below the mountain depressurised - like a champagne cork blowing off. And that did the damage.
What we have now is young magma pushing up under the mountain. We'll probably see a series of small eruptions as the dome is built, extended and then blown apart. We could have centuries of this sort of activity ahead of us.
The eruption was too bad because Mt. St. Helens was a perfect cone before the eruption. It looked like Mt. Fuji in Japan. Now it looks like a million-seat football stadium: a big hole with a circular ridge around half of it.
You're not thinking long-term - the cone of Mt. St. Helens was only a few tens of thousands of years old, it will rebuild itself in the next few millennia. In the meantime, sit back and watch the mountain heal itself.
Best wishes,
Mike.
The worry came out of the American decision to put a Shuttle base in Vandenberg CA. Flights from Vandenberg would have entered a polar orbit taking them over the Soviet Union. It was an immensely provocative idea that was bound to attract the attentions of the Soviet military.
The Soviets quickly worked out that the Shuttle had an enormous cross-range capability - that is it could be steered back to a landing, so they concluded that a Shuttle could be blasted out of Vandenberg and drop a weapon on the Soviet Union as part of a first strike, then return to Edwards Air Force base after a single orbit.
When the Politburo was informed of the American plans, Breschnev effectively turned the carefully planned Soviet strategy for reusable spacecraft on a dime and ordered that his engineers produce something equivalent to the American Shuttle. Which was a disaster as the Soviets had plenty of original ideas including the Spiral hypersonic aircraft which were in an advanced stage of development.
In reality the US Air Force had already concluded that the Shuttle would make a lousy weapons platform. Submarine launched missiles could achieve much more at a lower cost and were already being deployed. However, the USAF did want Vandenberg to put heavy reconnaisance satellites into polar orbit and perhaps use the Shuttle itself as a reconnaisance ship.
In the end, Vandenberg was mothballed after the Challenger disaster and no Shuttles ever took off from the enormously expensive facility.
So perhaps the Buran is a good reminder of how often we view the world in the light of our own worst fears.
Best wishes,
Mike.
Nuclear is less efficient because the core temperature is lower than the furnace in a fossil fuel plant. Efficiency is increased by increasing the difference in temperatures between the heat source and where heat is discharged from the plant. For obvious reasons, too high a temperature with nuclear plants is not usually a good thing.
Practical coolants all have trouble at high temperatures - water becomes immensely corrosive and begins to attack the pressure vessel and the fuel cladding, liquid metals need fantastically intricate plumbing, and helium has a very low heat capacity and requires enormous volumes to be pumped over the core to remove the heat.
Reprocessing wouldn't actually increase efficiency of plants because it would still use reactors running at the same temperatures. What it would do is increase the total amount of energy that can be extracted.
However we must ask if we want to use fast breeder reactors and reprocessing with their inherent complexities, risks of proliferation and immense potential for pollution.
The answer from the UK's experience of both is that breeders are technological nightmares of dubious economy and reprocessing is a fabulous way of producing lots of nuclear waste and fuel that no one wants.
Best wishes,
Mike.
If you have a nice modern combined cycle gas plant you can wring about 60% efficiency. Burn the gas to spin the turbine, then use the hot exhaust to boil water and drive a steam turbine.
Coal and oil are much lower - down around 40%, and nuclear is even lower - mid 30s%.
Best wishes,
Mike.
That is a horrific story - but you cannot say that CCTV would have prevented the attack. It may have deterred a person or persons acting in full control of their faculties. If the story is halfway correct, the perpetrators of the attack seem to have anything other than rational.
CCTV may have aided their capture had it been in place, but in of itself, it would not have stopped the attack.
Best wishes,
Mike.
Or you are an old lady who is treated disgracefully whilst waiting for treatment in hospital? Make a complaint and all of a sudden your private health records are made public by a government spokesman. Not just that, it is then alleged you are racist.
Why should anyone trust the government? They have shown time and time again that they do not trust the people.
Best wishes,
Mike.
Did you read the article? Study after study has shown that CCTV has NO effect on violent crime.
Best wishes,
Mike.
A common rule of thumb is that the rate of chemical reactions doubles for every 10C increase in temperature. Going the other way, that means they halve for every 10C decrease.
A place as bitterly cold as Titan would see chemistry taking place at a crawl - if at all. There may not have been time to assembled complex molecules at such temperatures.
Furthermore, there are precious few solvents that could dissolve complex molecules that remain liquid at Titanian temperatures. Life as we know it requires polar solvents (those that dissolve ionic compounds (such as salt) or covalent compounds that ionise in solution) - I'm trying to think of any that are liquid down there - liquid ammonia perhaps.
But you still run into the lack of energy.
Best wishes,
Mike.
It's quite significant, since many of the complex organic compounds on Titan are very similar to those that would have been raining down on the primordial Earth before that began evolving. Spectroscopy has already found chemicals such as hydrogen cyanide (HCN), cyanoacetylene (HC3N) and cyanogen (C2N2) in the Titanian atmosphere - these are thought to be essential in the manufacture of amino acides.
Secondly, Titan is in a cold place, but it may not be cold - it is a sizeable body which may well have differentiated - under all of that ice there may be rock heated by radioactive decay - which would provide plenty of energy to drive chemical reactions.
I'm sure a physicist will be along shortly to say if Titan also receives energy from tidal pumping in its orbit around Saturn - that keeps Io, Europa and Ganymede hot around Jupiter, and Triton hot around Neptune.
I'm just surprised how much this composite image of Titan looks like the early images of Mars.
Best wishes,
Mike.
Because at the end of the day no politician can be photographed putting their arm round a space probe.
Best wishes,
Mike.
The oil crises were all political events caused by the taps being turned off. It's not really a fair comparison.
We are almost certainly at, or very close to, the peak of oil production - from here on it is a short plateau before oil production goes into an irreversible decline.
Most major provinces outside of the Middle East are (such as Venezuela or Nigeria) all now at their peak or past their peak (North America, and the North Sea). Countries like the UK which have been self-sufficient in oil are soon going to be looking to top up dwindling domestic reserves with imported fuel.
The Caspian, for all the excitement it raises has not actually transformed the world. Talk of 200 billion barrels in the region are at the far end of expectations, so that isn't going to bail us out.
There aren't many more big fields left to discover, what's left is in smaller fields, deeper down, harder to drill and with commensurate higher costs.
But at the same time, China and India have turned their growth to maximum. Both countries need to import oil and gas to maintain economic growth and both have plenty of hard cash to spend on fuel imports. Both are becoming major players in the Gulf where they are signing agreements to drill and produce oil for export to their own markets.
So even if oil isn't in immediate risk of vanishing from our lives, the World's addiction to the stuff is getting worse - not better. There may be plenty of oil down there - but will we be able to afford it?
Best wishes,
Mike.
They can seriously screw up international relations. Turkey's enormous Ataturk Dam brought it and Syria and Iraq to the brink of war after the Euphrates dwindled to a trickle as the reservoir filled. Israel has threatened Jordan with attack if the Jordanians build a dam on a tributary of the River Jordan. Egypt has threatened Sudan if they dam the Blue Nile.
China is now engaged in an internation dispute over its damming of the Upper Mekong which has disrupted flow on the lower part of the river, causing fisheries to crash.
Dams have caused river bank erosion in Egypt, the Nile Delta is crumbling and the soil is becoming degraded. The fisheries of the Eastern Mediterranean are in serious trouble and Egypt now suffers from increased prevalence of illnesses such as bilharzia. Mexico does not receive its international ration of water from the Colorado and what it does get is contaminated with salt and pesticides from irrigation runoff.
Oh and they also cause increased seismic activity. A bit of a problem when you whack a monster dam through a seismically active region such as the Three Gorges.
Best wishes,
Mike.
Thank goodness the profligate use of fossil fuels and carbon dioxide pollution aren't causing long term problems for humanity.
Oh...
Best wishes,
Mike.
That energy is obtained from fossil fuels.
Corn ethanol is no more than a tax subsidy for farmers, it certainly does not replace petroleum and gas.
Best wishes,
Mike.
Such rockets can be kept readied for launch far longer than the previous kerosene/liquid oxygen monsters like the R7 and Atlas missiles, but they must be regularly drained and inspected - a hazardous process which has been known to cause explosions.
The Russians have been moving to solid fuel rockets over the last couple of decades which have none of these problems and offer almost instant launch. Their current nasty is the Topol-M which is easily a match for anything the West has to offer, being designed to be both launched from vehicles and take on anti-missile defence systems.
So the SS18 might as well earn some hard cash rather than go to the breakers yard.
The US uses its Titan as a launcher for heavy military satellites and deep space probes - but I *think* they are now build especially for space flight - the Titan misile has been out of front-line service for almost 30 years now.
Best wishes,
Mike.
One of the few industrial donors to Bletchley Park has been - ummm - Siemens - who made Lorenz.
So German industry understands the importance of Bletchley Park - but seemingly not their British counterparts.
Best wishes,
Mike.
Oh we just missed out - Calder Hall in Cumbria was closed last year after 47 years of operation. It suffered less from embrittlement than other Magnox stations as it was run at relatively low power.
Best wishes,
Mike.
Prolonged neutron bombardment makes many metals brittle. Fortunately it is a relatively well understood phenomenon which is familiar from the operation of current reactors - some of which have run for over 40 years.
Fusion reactors can expect some embrittlement with time, but the consequences are much less likely to be serious than with a pressurised vessel such as a PWR.
The biggest problem will be that the plant will have to be mothballed for a period before dismantling at the end of its life. Again that is something we know about as the US and UK are already dismantling their first generation of nuclear reactors.
Best wishes,
Mike.
Why don't we take the still-radioactive waste products of using that fuel, throw them back where the fuel came from and bury them again?
If it was only so simple, nuclear waste is a grab-bag of stuff, ranging from used protective clothing through to spent fuel. It is usually graded into low, medium and high level waste depending on its radioactivity. So pretty much anything that comes into contact with radioactive materials has to be classified as nuclear waste.
Low-level waste is usually buried in lined trenches and does not present much of a problem. Fortunately it constitutes about 90% of all waste.
Medium and high level waste is actually more radioactive than materials found in nature. It is stuff like spent fuel, reprocessing waste and contaminated coolant. In the UK this is mainly liquid waste which is currently kept in cooled tanks at Sellafield. It can't be disposed of directly as it will either seep into the environment, or contaminate groundwater. The aim is to eventually combine it with glass at high temperatures - so called vitrifaction to produce an inert ceramic which can be buried.
However, the UK has singularly failed to find a site for the long-term storage of waste. Generally speaking, you are looking for dry, stable rocks that present a relatively low risk of releasing any contamination. The UK actually has plenty of space for a dump - the central part of the country is underlain by thick deposits of salt, gypsum and anhydrite. This stuff has been dry for hundreds of millions of years, there are no earthquakes worthy of the name and we are volcano free.
Indeed such sites were put forward in the 1980s for burying some waste - they just happened to all be under Conservative-held constituencies - the plan but not the waste was buried.
The Conservative government then proposed burying the waste near Sellafield in Cumbria. They were within months of starting drilling a test laboratory, when common-sense kicked in, and they concluded that the rocks in the area were saturated with water and shot through with faults.
At the present, there are absolutely no plans for the long-term storage of waste in this country. It is becoming increasingly likely that reprocessing will come to an end when the economics finally catch up, which would mean that spent fuel will be stored at the power stations where it can be monitored for deterioration.
Best wishes,
Mike.