You cannot turn any given power plant on and off at will. The only power plant that can do this is the gas turbine, which works like a big jet engine. This is rather inefficient. The more efficient plants use steam cycle, but they cannot be started at will. Same with coal. Nuclear can load-follow to some extent (typical figure is a few % per minute, which translates to 50 MW per minute for large reactors), but the technical capabilities were not realized in the US for economical reasons. It cannot be used for peaking. Power generation is not a zero sum game. Inconvenient patterns of wind can actually increase CO2 emissions, because the less efficient gas turbine plants have to be used more.
Capacity factor for wind farms is actually around 35% for offshore wind and closer to 25% for onshore wind. So under your assumptions the required investment is $21 billion. To have a similar level of reliability as a nuclear plant, you also have to consider the cost of natural gas backup.
Fuel might cost nothing, but the wind farm is definitely not free to operate. To compare the all-inclusive costs, look for an analysis that compares levelized costs. Price per watt of capacity is particularly misleading, because for wind farms you have to multiply it by at least 3 (33% capacity factor is a very high one).
Levelized cost of new nuclear electricity is still much lower than that of wind electricity. The cheapest source of electricity is existing power plants that have been fully depreciated (around 2 cents per kWh, less than half the cost of coal). That's why not extending the life of old reactors would be an economical crime.
Solar and wind both vary wildly at a single-mill or roof-full-of-panels level. But spread them out over a few square miles (do individual clouds, gusts, and storm cells aren't the issue) and multiple sites separated by tens and hundreds of miles (so local weather timing also gets many distinct samples) and the rapid variations average out. They become at least as predictable as the weather - which is very predictable at a 3-day level.
Except it's not true. There are 2-3 day periods when the entirety of Ireland or Denmark, both wind-heavy countries, gets next to no power from wind (1% of capacity). I see this "dispersal argument" parroted all the time but it's simply not true. Also consider how much you need to overbuild to have the baseload covered at all time, and how much land it would take.
So up to a point adding solar and especially wind to the grid - if it's spread out a bit - IMPROVES the grid's ability to handle the cyclic nature of the load and REDUCES the variability that you need to cover with "peaking plants".
This argument is true only on the statistical level (see above). On a practical level, the output of renewable sources, particularly wind, is not that predictable. There is no way to smooth out the variations using renewable sources - you need to burn natural gas.
Near the surface the more important source of heat is radioactive decay. At surface the power density from radioactive decay is 40 mW/m2, while conduction from the mantle is only 10 mW/m^2. So in some way geothermal power is an inefficient form of nuclear power.
2: Done (see Price-Anderson Act) 3: What is full liability? If you define it as being covered for the "worst possible accident" (regardless of whether it is even remotely plausible, like 1 gas truck exploding in a city and burning to the ground because all the firemen were down with flu) then no entity on Earth has full liability.
Very old information. Japan Steel Works are no longer the only game in town. Moreover forging a 500-ton ingot (the bottleneck most people are talking about) is only necessary for the EPR. Read this. http://www.neimagazine.com/story.asp?storyCode=2052302
There is a somewhat larger Toshiba 4S that is real. You could put this in your backyard if you live on a ranch and have an aluminium smelter in your basement.
There's more to it. The side effect of the Greens' pushing of wind is the massive expansion and increased reliance on natural gas backup. Gas backup is integral to wind power, as otherwise it simply cannot participate in the grid. This piece information suggests that at least some of anti-nuclear activism might be sponsored by fossil fuel companies that want to protect their NG investment - they are the only ones really set to lose from a nuclear renaissance. Ever seen the typical energy company ad? They will always say that country X needs all the energy resources, and they mention wind, solar and gas - never nuclear.
The fission products from the natural nuclear reactor in Gabon did not move appreciably for 2 billion years, despite being surrounded by porous sandstone which is readily permeated by water. Deep geological storage has already been proven effective for us by Nature.
"It is now known that low-level radiation is five times more dangerous than bomb radiation with respect to human chromosome damage." Even linear no-threshold is disputable, and their going as far as inverse hormesis is just silly.
Each cell of a human's body has to cope with about 20000 DNA damage events per year from oxidative damage, and natural radiation adds about 5 such events. Maximum allowed exposure adds another 2-3 events. They also completely omit the fact that there are considerable doses of radioactivity to be found in almost anything in the environment. Potassium-40 in an average human's body generates over 4000 beta decays PER SECOND. And they fail to mention that even under LNT, harm is assumed to be proportional to exposure - sufficiently small doses are completely negligible because they might on average reduce your lifespan by a fraction of a second. It's more rational to worry about a meteor hitting you on the head.
This is not an elected award so I wouldn't waste my time trying to impose outside influence on a committee for a Nobel prize.
There's more to it. If you try to influence the Nobel committee they will with absolute certainty not give the prize to that person. For example, there was a nomination for Irena Sendlerowa who rescued 2500 Jewish children during WWII, but the Polish president who is a mindblowing idiot tried to influence the committee through stupid public statements and she was not given the prize. Instead some unknown guy who made microloans to Bangladeshis got it.
Video playback with an audio lag of several seconds?
Latency != Audio desynchronization.
He specifically says that you need accurate timing information to compensate for audio latency, and display the video later so that it matches audio. Assuming that the latency is always less than 1ms and not compensating at all is NOT the way to get acceptable audio sync.
There have not been any new nuclear plants built in this country in a long time not because of protesters, but because they are insanely and hideously expensive to build. They are for the most part not cost-effective.
Nuclear plants are actually a viable long-term investment - there are several scheduled for construction in the US right now. The limiting factor until recently was the mind-boggling amount of red tape, but the situation has improved. There is still the ban on reprocessing and an implied moratorium on the construction of breeder reactors, but the recent changes are a promising move in the right direction.
There are groups who argue against nuclear power for a variety of reasons, some environmental, some political, and some were formed to protest the operation of specific plants that have a track record of environmental damage.
You are FUDding at this point. There are no such plants. They would have been shut down long ago if there was any significant release of radioactivity. If you're talking about tritium leaks - they are not even measurable in the environment, and actually highlight the ignorance of the masses ("it leaks something radioactive so it must be very dangerous" - well, except it's not, as you will be irradiated more by decaying potassium-40 in the body of a girl you're sleeping with than by most tritium leaks).
Some of these organizations are led by or advised by nuclear physicists and engineers, who know a hell of a lot more about the technical aspects of nuclear power than 99% of the people reading this.
There is a PhD at my university who is an expert on chemical NMR, so you could say he is a nuclear physicist to some extent, yet he keeps saying stupid things like "nuclear chemistry is dying" (in case you wonder, it's not - see positron emission tomography). The fact that you're competent in one field does not give you much credibility in other fields.
No, I'm only saying that Netgear should require their networking hardware vendors to provide open source drivers, or choose vendors that do provide them, before touting the openness of their platform.
I also was there. The cleaning crews work late at night (I encoutered one), and the city is rather filthy then. I heard that there are no trashcans because of IRA - people were afraid that terrorists would leave bombs in them.
Very true. Similarly, the success of USB is not in using the same plug for everything but in standard device interfaces. You can grab any USB HID device and it will work everywhere, because one can write an unified driver for all current and future USB HID devices. Same for USB mass storage, audio, etc.
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Nuclear (centrifuge): 18.1, 18.4, 14.5, 13.6 and 14.8
Vattenfall has demonstrated an EROEI of 93 on the Forsmark nuclear plant, by actually measuring their energy inputs, rather than inventing formulas.
http://nuclearinfo.net/Nuclearpower/WebHomeEnergyLifecycleOfNuclear_Power
You cannot turn any given power plant on and off at will.
The only power plant that can do this is the gas turbine, which works like a big jet engine. This is rather inefficient.
The more efficient plants use steam cycle, but they cannot be started at will. Same with coal.
Nuclear can load-follow to some extent (typical figure is a few % per minute, which translates to 50 MW per minute for large reactors), but the technical capabilities were not realized in the US for economical reasons. It cannot be used for peaking.
Power generation is not a zero sum game. Inconvenient patterns of wind can actually increase CO2 emissions, because the less efficient gas turbine plants have to be used more.
Capacity factor for wind farms is actually around 35% for offshore wind and closer to 25% for onshore wind. So under your assumptions the required investment is $21 billion. To have a similar level of reliability as a nuclear plant, you also have to consider the cost of natural gas backup.
Fuel might cost nothing, but the wind farm is definitely not free to operate. To compare the all-inclusive costs, look for an analysis that compares levelized costs. Price per watt of capacity is particularly misleading, because for wind farms you have to multiply it by at least 3 (33% capacity factor is a very high one).
Levelized cost of new nuclear electricity is still much lower than that of wind electricity.
The cheapest source of electricity is existing power plants that have been fully depreciated (around 2 cents per kWh, less than half the cost of coal). That's why not extending the life of old reactors would be an economical crime.
Solar and wind both vary wildly at a single-mill or roof-full-of-panels level. But spread them out over a few square miles (do individual clouds, gusts, and storm cells aren't the issue) and multiple sites separated by tens and hundreds of miles (so local weather timing also gets many distinct samples) and the rapid variations average out. They become at least as predictable as the weather - which is very predictable at a 3-day level.
Except it's not true. There are 2-3 day periods when the entirety of Ireland or Denmark, both wind-heavy countries, gets next to no power from wind (1% of capacity). I see this "dispersal argument" parroted all the time but it's simply not true. Also consider how much you need to overbuild to have the baseload covered at all time, and how much land it would take.
So up to a point adding solar and especially wind to the grid - if it's spread out a bit - IMPROVES the grid's ability to handle the cyclic nature of the load and REDUCES the variability that you need to cover with "peaking plants".
This argument is true only on the statistical level (see above). On a practical level, the output of renewable sources, particularly wind, is not that predictable.
There is no way to smooth out the variations using renewable sources - you need to burn natural gas.
Near the surface the more important source of heat is radioactive decay. At surface the power density from radioactive decay is 40 mW/m2, while conduction from the mantle is only 10 mW/m^2. So in some way geothermal power is an inefficient form of nuclear power.
2: Done (see Price-Anderson Act)
3: What is full liability? If you define it as being covered for the "worst possible accident" (regardless of whether it is even remotely plausible, like 1 gas truck exploding in a city and burning to the ground because all the firemen were down with flu) then no entity on Earth has full liability.
Very old information. Japan Steel Works are no longer the only game in town. Moreover forging a 500-ton ingot (the bottleneck most people are talking about) is only necessary for the EPR. Read this.
http://www.neimagazine.com/story.asp?storyCode=2052302
There is a somewhat larger Toshiba 4S that is real. You could put this in your backyard if you live on a ranch and have an aluminium smelter in your basement.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toshiba_4S
There's more to it. The side effect of the Greens' pushing of wind is the massive expansion and increased reliance on natural gas backup. Gas backup is integral to wind power, as otherwise it simply cannot participate in the grid. This piece information suggests that at least some of anti-nuclear activism might be sponsored by fossil fuel companies that want to protect their NG investment - they are the only ones really set to lose from a nuclear renaissance. Ever seen the typical energy company ad? They will always say that country X needs all the energy resources, and they mention wind, solar and gas - never nuclear.
The answer is E = mc2.
Or a typo because I'm too lazy at the moment to do the math.
The fission products from the natural nuclear reactor in Gabon did not move appreciably for 2 billion years, despite being surrounded by porous sandstone which is readily permeated by water. Deep geological storage has already been proven effective for us by Nature.
The source you cite is gibberish.
"It is now known that low-level radiation is five times more dangerous than bomb radiation with respect to human chromosome damage." Even linear no-threshold is disputable, and their going as far as inverse hormesis is just silly.
Each cell of a human's body has to cope with about 20000 DNA damage events per year from oxidative damage, and natural radiation adds about 5 such events. Maximum allowed exposure adds another 2-3 events. They also completely omit the fact that there are considerable doses of radioactivity to be found in almost anything in the environment. Potassium-40 in an average human's body generates over 4000 beta decays PER SECOND. And they fail to mention that even under LNT, harm is assumed to be proportional to exposure - sufficiently small doses are completely negligible because they might on average reduce your lifespan by a fraction of a second. It's more rational to worry about a meteor hitting you on the head.
Tritium does not emit alpha particles.
This is not an elected award so I wouldn't waste my time trying to impose outside influence on a committee for a Nobel prize.
There's more to it. If you try to influence the Nobel committee they will with absolute certainty not give the prize to that person. For example, there was a nomination for Irena Sendlerowa who rescued 2500 Jewish children during WWII, but the Polish president who is a mindblowing idiot tried to influence the committee through stupid public statements and she was not given the prize. Instead some unknown guy who made microloans to Bangladeshis got it.
In other languages you cannot even use those libraries without bindings, so it's not a valid criticism...
The package name is now ttf-mscorefonts-installer. You can also install ttf-liberation to get fonts with the same metrics as Times, Arial and Courier.
You don't "own" your cellphone, SIM card, or it's data. You simply rent it, for a "small monthly fee".
Speak for yourself. I own my phone, my SIM card, my data and my computer. It's you Americans who are enslaved by your own corporations.
Video playback with an audio lag of several seconds?
Latency != Audio desynchronization.
He specifically says that you need accurate timing information to compensate for audio latency, and display the video later so that it matches audio. Assuming that the latency is always less than 1ms and not compensating at all is NOT the way to get acceptable audio sync.
There have not been any new nuclear plants built in this country in a long time not because of protesters, but because they are insanely and hideously expensive to build. They are for the most part not cost-effective.
Nuclear plants are actually a viable long-term investment - there are several scheduled for construction in the US right now. The limiting factor until recently was the mind-boggling amount of red tape, but the situation has improved. There is still the ban on reprocessing and an implied moratorium on the construction of breeder reactors, but the recent changes are a promising move in the right direction.
There are groups who argue against nuclear power for a variety of reasons, some environmental, some political, and some were formed to protest the operation of specific plants that have a track record of environmental damage.
You are FUDding at this point. There are no such plants. They would have been shut down long ago if there was any significant release of radioactivity. If you're talking about tritium leaks - they are not even measurable in the environment, and actually highlight the ignorance of the masses ("it leaks something radioactive so it must be very dangerous" - well, except it's not, as you will be irradiated more by decaying potassium-40 in the body of a girl you're sleeping with than by most tritium leaks).
Some of these organizations are led by or advised by nuclear physicists and engineers, who know a hell of a lot more about the technical aspects of nuclear power than 99% of the people reading this.
There is a PhD at my university who is an expert on chemical NMR, so you could say he is a nuclear physicist to some extent, yet he keeps saying stupid things like "nuclear chemistry is dying" (in case you wonder, it's not - see positron emission tomography). The fact that you're competent in one field does not give you much credibility in other fields.
No, no. Muhammad was not an enemy of Jesus.
They'd have to go for a "Pontius Pilate Phone" or a "Sanhedrin Phone".
No, I'm only saying that Netgear should require their networking hardware vendors to provide open source drivers, or choose vendors that do provide them, before touting the openness of their platform.
I also was there. The cleaning crews work late at night (I encoutered one), and the city is rather filthy then. I heard that there are no trashcans because of IRA - people were afraid that terrorists would leave bombs in them.
Very true. Similarly, the success of USB is not in using the same plug for everything but in standard device interfaces. You can grab any USB HID device and it will work everywhere, because one can write an unified driver for all current and future USB HID devices. Same for USB mass storage, audio, etc.
Government doing anything in "efficient and cost effective manner"? What color is the sky on your planet?
Example from US turf: Medicare / Medicaid is more efficient at keeping patients alive than private health care insurance.