The number is actually in the range of 15%-20% rejected on average, and many of these are because the signer and the petitioner are from different counties, the name is illegible, or the signatures don't match closely enough (some people change their signature styles and don't update the voting cards).
In this case, more than 1.3 million signatures were found to be valid out of 1.6 million submitted, or a bit more than 80%.
I know people who didn't vote in the last election because they didn't like the candidates. I chide them for not expressing viewpoints on the other issues, but I understand to a small extent why they didn't cast their votes. I can't think of a time when we've had the primary choices come down to two people so completely unqualified for the job. Davis is a money-hungry, corrupt, inept politician who would probably dance if you waved a $100 bill over his head, and Simon is just... dumb. That stunt he pulled during the debate of accusing Davis of accepting campaign money in his office, when the money was accepted in Los Angeles... I can't even come up with the words to describe how lame that was.
I'm in favor of scrapping the current voting rolls, and making everyone re-register, maybe sometime in January (assuming the October 7 date stays in place). If they're interested, they'll register. If not (like if they're dead or moved away), they won't. It will provide better information for the politicians to target their mailings, and it will make the voter turnout numbers look better for us.
Possession of any amount of marijuana (even hemp with no narcotic effects) in Nevada, for instance, results in a manditory 25 year jail term - FOR FIRST OFFENSES!
Incorrect, as I read the law.
NRS 453.096 "Marijuana" defined. 1. "Marijuana" means:
(a) All parts of any plant of the genus Cannabis, whether growing or not;
(b) The seeds thereof;
(c) The resin extracted from any part of the plant; and
(d) Every compound, manufacture, salt, derivative, mixture or preparation of the plant, its seeds or resin.
2. "Marijuana" does not include the mature stems of the plant, fiber produced from the stems, oil or cake made from the seeds of the plant, any other compound, manufacture, salt, derivative, mixture or preparation of the mature stems (except the resin extracted therefrom), fiber, oil or cake, or the sterilized seed of the plant which is incapable of germination.
This sounds to me as though hemp-fiber necklaces are perfectly legal, as they are not "marijuana" in the eyes of the law.
NRS 453.3363 Suspension of proceedings and probation of accused under certain conditions; effect of discharge and dismissal.
1. If a person who has not previously been convicted of any offense pursuant to NRS 453.011 to 453.552, inclusive, or pursuant to any statute of the United States or of any state relating to narcotic drugs, marijuana, or stimulant, depressant or hallucinogenic substances tenders a plea of guilty, guilty but mentally ill, nolo contendere or similar plea to a charge pursuant to subsection 2 or 3 of NRS 453.336, NRS 453.411 or 454.351, or is found guilty of one of those charges, the court, without entering a judgment of conviction and with the consent of the accused, may suspend further proceedings and place him on probation upon terms and conditions that must include attendance and successful completion of an educational program or, in the case of a person dependent upon drugs, of a program of treatment and rehabilitation pursuant to NRS 453.580.
The judge has the option of sentencing a first offender to probation and treatment.
NRS 453.336 Unlawful possession not for purpose of sale: Prohibition; penalties.
1. A person shall not knowingly or intentionally possess a controlled substance, unless the substance was obtained directly from, or pursuant to, a prescription or order of a physician, osteopathic physician's assistant, physician assistant, dentist, podiatric physician, optometrist, advanced practitioner of nursing or veterinarian while acting in the course of his professional practice, or except as otherwise authorized by the provisions of NRS 453.005 to 453.552, inclusive.
2. Except as otherwise provided in subsections 3 and 4 and in NRS 453.3363, and unless a greater penalty is provided in NRS 212.160, 453.3385, 453.339 or 453.3395, a person who violates this section shall be punished:
(a) For the first or second offense, if the controlled substance is listed in schedule I, II, III or IV, for a category E felony as provided in NRS 193.130.
NRS 193.130 Categories and punishment of felonies.
(e) A category E felony is a felony for which a court shall sentence a convicted person to imprisonment in the state prison for a minimum term of not less than 1 year and a maximum term of not more than 4 years. Except as otherwise provided in paragraph (b) of subsection 1 of NRS 176A.100, upon sentencing a person who is found guilty of a category E felony, the court shall suspend the execution of the sentence and grant probation to the person upon such conditions as the court deems appropriate. Such conditions of probation may include, but are not limited to, requiring the person to serve a term of confinement of not more than 1 year in the county jail. In addition to any other penalty, the court may impose a fine of not more than $5,000, unless a greater penalty is authorized or required by statute.
Let's see... He could have perhaps... I don't know... maybe made the meetings public, instead of hiding them behind a closed door and not letting people in the industry who knew better have a look at the contracts before signing them?
It's not like they were necessary in the first place. There were a couple of days when a few small sections of the state experienced power loss for an hour at a time. A few major users had to shut down power, as stipulated in their contracts with the utility companies they signed in exchange for lower rates. California didn't exactly come to a screeching halt on those days.
There was no power crisis. There was more than enough power the summer before, and there was more than enough power that summer. So people needed to cut back 10% or so. I would have been more impressed if Davis had stood up to the companies and said, "NO!" while the Legislature drafted new laws to fix the loopholes.
Children can't vote. Felons can't vote. Illegal immigrants can't vote. Unregistered people can't vote. That's a lot of the population that isn't able to legitimately sign. If half of the state population can vote, that doubles your percentage to 6%, and figuring that the turnout hovers around 50% as it is, that makes for 12% equivalent. Not so bad in those terms.
The "cure" may turn out to be no better then msblaster if it generates massive network traffic looking for new hosts. In a sense, a day of traffic and seeing the systems patched without much intervention is better than several days of trying to get people to wake up, patch, answer questions, re-answer questions, handle complaints, deal with people who think they're immune but aren't, explain firewalls, explain AV, update AV...
Yeah, I know how it should work, but that's not always how it does.
Interesting... I matched up the Alienware Area-51M Extreme and the Sager 5670-V, and found prices of $3115 and $2570, respectively ($2510.89 for the Sager if purchased via cash-equivalent).
Any others out there?
For that matter, any non-major-nameplate manufacturers that don't require losing one's laptop for a week when in need of repair? I'd like to find one that will both have the Radeon 9600 Mobile available and be close enough to a repair place that I can just drop off the laptop for pickup the next day. Sager and ProStar have some good configs, but they require the units to be sent to them for repair, and losing a main business computer for that long can be painful.
I notice that a number of the laptop manufacturers have product listings on their websites, but do any of them make their products available more or less directly, rather than having to go through Dell or Sony? I seem to remember someone at a LAN party a few years back showing up with something that looked a lot like a Dell Inspiron, but it had no major name badging anywhere, and he said that it was an OEM laptop.
Pfft. If they were TRUE geeks, they would have had a backup generator to provide power, 24 hours of fuel, and contracts with at least two companies to provide additional fuel.
Environmentalists are never satisfied with the steps that have been taken. Over the past 20 or more years we have take huge steps to please the environmentalist however if you talk to them the government has done nothing.
You need some karma, my friend.
Prime example: Los Angeles. I grew up in Southern California, and I remember staying indoors for recess or PE sessions because of smog alerts. I remember at least once when there was the possibility that school might be cancelled because of a possible Stage III alert the next day.
Now, we have one Stage I alert or so each summer if we have one at all, and it's been that way for years, and I can see the mountains that are 30 miles off on many days. Yet the local environmentalists claim that there is so much more that has to be done.
I challenge anyone to look at pictures of Los Angeles on random days during the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, and today, and tell me honestly that nothing has improved.
What do you do with the mining tailings after extracting the fissionalbles? Most of that is somewhat radioactive as well as the hardware that extracts it.
I guess it depends on the level of radioactivity. If you have any information on this, I'd be interested in reading it. But how would it compare to the tailings left from coal extraction?
What do you do with the spent rods (old skool nuke) or pebbles (new skool nuke); they are still radioactive, just not efficently radioactive from a power producing point of view.
Run them back through breeder reactors to create more fuel, reducing the mining operations needed to keep the system supplied. Some mining will be required, but breeder reactors with 10-year doubling times (and perhaps less) can be built, and begin recycling fuel for existing reactors after that.
What about the containters you transport the hot waste in?
You mean the 25- to 125-ton (depending on transport method), reinforced concrete containers designed and tested to withstand a 30-foot freefall into an unyielding surface, 30 minutes of 1475 degree F fires immediately on the surface of the container, and submergence in 200m of water for eight hours, among other tests? The containers which have hit immobile walls or been hit by locomotives at speeds of 80mph and been basically scratched or chipped? The containers which have withstood powerful anti-tank weapons with only a tiny piercing of the primary containment wall?
Transport of ores, refined fissionables and waste is vulnerable to accident. Then there is the chance of theft of materials for various criminal and terrorist schemes.
They're sealed and guarded, and in 3,000 shipments of used fuel assemblies across 1.7 million miles of road and rail, there have been only eight accidents, and no injuries, fatalities, or release of radioactive materials has happened in any of them. Frankly, I'd be more worried about LNG trucks being stolen. Those are mobile bombs in their own right.
A far better power solution is using solar power to heat a sterling engine to produce electricity.
How much land would this require? And are they efficient enough on that scale? Friction in larger Sterling engines could rob efficiency. Looking around the web, I see smaller implementations that are 30% efficient at solar-electrical conversion, but this still means only 300W/square meter, and that's assuming clear skies at the height of the day in a sunny part of the world. What happens in, say, Minnesota? Even if this could be achieved the whole day, it would take at least 3300 square meters of heat-absorbing panels, plus the spacing between them for sun-tracking and maintenance access. What is the realistic capture amount? Would batteries be available to store the energy for evening use in hot areas when the sun can no longer supply energy? What kind of environmental impact would their construction and disposal entail?
I agree that the Sterling engine would be potentially less polluting than fission reactors, but I still see some potentially serious gaps. Good that Slashdotters can have a serious conversation once in a while.
Oddly enough, there was an article in New Scientist today on just this, about a laser transmuting iodine-129 with its 15.7 million year half-life to iodine-128, with a halflife of 25 minutes. It takes a lot of power, and I imagine kicks out a lot of radiation, but it's a start.
I didn't mean for it to sound as though that was a complete analysis, as it of course is not. What I was pointing out was that the construction costs really are not that much when compared to just the ongoing fuel costs associated with the current batch of conventional powerplants.
There are, of course, significant other issues associated with the nuclear plants. Special training is required to handle the fuel, extra emergency training, public awareness, and so forth. There are also significant court cost issues, because I imagine every single plant would be challenged in court, something that would have to be handled by new legislation to smooth the ride for those willing to take the financial risks associated with constructing a nuclear plant. Waste disposal becomes less of a problem with breeder reactors, as material is recycled over time, and the Yucca Mountain Waste Repository could become known as the Yucca Mountain Fuel Depot.
That's still 500 cubic meters and 11,000 tons as opposed to however many million (billion?) tons of CO2, not to mention NOx's and whatever else, gets out there. Coal reactors are also responsible for the release of thousands of tons of radioactive material over the last several decades; the radiation dosage from a 1000MW coal plant at a given distance is 100 times that of a 1000MW fission plant at an equivalent distance because of uranium and thorium that is released in combustion.
Anyway, the plutonium is still fissile, and can then be recycled and used as fuel. Seems a lot safer and more effective to me than simply storing it.
BTW, is anyone else having trouble access Slashdot? For almost the last week, it takes me three or four requests to reach it, all of the others timing out, whether accessing a story or submitting a comment. No other site gives me this trouble.
Stop making the reactors as one-off designs. Making them individually raises costs as they have to be indepentently designed, rearchitected (is that a word?), and re-evaluated. The Westinghouse design is made for multiple uses, with some customization for the particulars of the construction site, but mostly identical, lowering overall costs.
In 2000, there were 9351 plants producing power levels of 604,514MW in the summer and 615,030MW in the winter. (I'll use the summer numbers since those are the lowest and arguably the most important.) Of those 9351 plants, 91 were nuclear, representing 0.97% of the power plants by number but producing 86,163MW in the summer -- about 14% of overall output.
Of the remaining, there were 1024 coal plants, 3007 petroleum (oil) plants, and 2068 gas (methane) plants, combining to produce 419,852MW. Taking the average output of 947MW per nuclear plant, it would take 444 plants to take up the slack, though I suspect plants being designed now are more powerful than that. Westinghouse believes their new AP1000 1000MW reactors can be built for $1400 per KW for the first few, and $1000 per KW starting around the seventh plant. The total construction cost is about $447 billion, which, if spaced over 20 years, is a bit more than $22 billion per year. In 2000, the US burned 995 million tons of coal, 195 million barrels of petroleum, and 6.2 billion MMBtu of gas. The costs of these fuels? In today's terms, it would be, at $25 per ton, $30 per barrel of undistilled petroleum, and $5 per MMBtu (all approximations, but close to current prices), $24.9 billion, $5.9 billion, and $31 billion, or a total of about $61.8 billion. The cost for those plants, spaced out, would be a little more than a third of what we pay for fuels as it is.
Aside from the virtual end of power plant-produced carbon dioxide emissions, and that some of these reactors could be breeder reactors, helping to make better use of nuclear fuel (of which we have centuries of supply in the United States alone), this would shut down much of the incredibly damaging coal mining in the country, drop natural gas prices to reasonable levels so that people can pay for their homes, and slash oil consumption drastically.
The construction of these plants would also create thousands of jobs at each site for two to three years, spurring the local economies. Even if there were only 1500 jobs created per site, that's 33,000 jobs if 23 plants were built at a time. There would probably be enough to offset job losses at conventional power plants, and my understanding is that nuclear construction work carries higher paychecks than standard construction work.
Nuclear reactors are fairly close to terrorist-proof. In California, they've survived earthquakes, and they're designed to handle most airliners crashing straight into them. Their common dome housings also would help to deflect anything larger than they were designed for, and the lessons learned from Three Mile Island have gone a long way in improving responses and designs.
I want a nuclear reactor in my backyard. I don't see why the fears about them are so prevalent. I almost wish the planes had hit a reactor instead of the WTC just so that people could see how they wouldn't crack, though part of me fears that it would heighten the fears of others attacking such plants.
I don't think there were as many as you might think, though with the normal turnouts in this state, I wouldn't be surprised if they made up a few percentage points. However, I think Riordan lost it early on because of the short-sightedness of the California Republican Party who for the last few years has been putting up as many people as possible who are "true" to the platform, not realizing that, outside of a handful of counties, those positions just don't fly with voters. Riordan not only was a great balance for California, but he was able to become a Republican mayor of Los Angeles, possibly one of the most liberal cities outside of the Bay Area, and was able to work with the city council there amicably and effectively.
Right now, I'm looking at Arnold for governor now, and I hope he'll turn things over to Riordan in the next election. That would be a good 11-year block.
No Democrat-registered voters voted for Simon in the Republican primary, because California does not allow that. You may vote only for your own party nomination, not for any other, with the exception of people who chose "Decline to State", who may choose from any of the party ballots for those parties which accept voters registered as such. There was a process in place that allowed an open primary, but that was shot down in court as an abridgment of the right to free assembly by forcing the party to accept those with whom they don't agree.
However, Davis DID run a campaign targeting Riordan, nominally telling the public that he was prone to flipping back and forth on issues, but concentrating on his pro-choice, pro-gay, pro-environment stances in an effort to get the most conservative Republicans to vote for Simon (a true nitwit) instead.
Davis's budgets were submitted on time, but left alone things like the state prison guard union. BTW, he received $119,500 from Enron and its employees from 1996 to early 2002. Can't find immediate numbers on Cisco, but I know that one of its upper-level people donated $25K to his campaign last year.
Besides, whoever is elected is protected from any recall efforts for six months after taking office, which would happen as soon as the election results were certified.
In California (can't speak for the other states, but I believe they're similar), the Lieutenant Governor is elected separately from the Governor. Back when Davis (a Democrat) was the Lt. Gov. for Pete Wilson (a Republican), the Democrat-strong Legislature would pass bills when Wilson was out of state (vacations, meeting business leaders, participating in meetings with other governors) so Davis could sign them into law. It kept Wilson in the state often, his out-of-state schedule usually closely synchronized with the Legislature's schedule.
This is opposite to how presidents and vice presidents are elected, which is as a part of the same ticket.
I've seen the effect before. The bottoms of the clouds get wispy when seen from a distance of a few miles, and in some cases, you can see the wisps reaching to the ground, which is how it looks when the rain actually hits. Sometimes the raindrops don't quite make it, and evaporate several hundred feet above the ground. If the wisps are long enough to reach the ground, driving for a few minutes may see you getting wet.
I never said California doesn't exceed its allotment. You, however, said that Nevada has never exceeded its allotment, when in fact they did just last year. That was my point.
"Nevada exceeded its own 300,000-acre-foot allotment by about 8 percent last year, but it was the breakdown of the Golden State negotiations that prompted Norton to temporarily suspend the use of the additional water."
Slashdot Mirror
The number is actually in the range of 15%-20% rejected on average, and many of these are because the signer and the petitioner are from different counties, the name is illegible, or the signatures don't match closely enough (some people change their signature styles and don't update the voting cards).
In this case, more than 1.3 million signatures were found to be valid out of 1.6 million submitted, or a bit more than 80%.
I did say it was a 12% equivalent.
I know people who didn't vote in the last election because they didn't like the candidates. I chide them for not expressing viewpoints on the other issues, but I understand to a small extent why they didn't cast their votes. I can't think of a time when we've had the primary choices come down to two people so completely unqualified for the job. Davis is a money-hungry, corrupt, inept politician who would probably dance if you waved a $100 bill over his head, and Simon is just... dumb. That stunt he pulled during the debate of accusing Davis of accepting campaign money in his office, when the money was accepted in Los Angeles... I can't even come up with the words to describe how lame that was.
I'm in favor of scrapping the current voting rolls, and making everyone re-register, maybe sometime in January (assuming the October 7 date stays in place). If they're interested, they'll register. If not (like if they're dead or moved away), they won't. It will provide better information for the politicians to target their mailings, and it will make the voter turnout numbers look better for us.
Possession of any amount of marijuana (even hemp with no narcotic effects) in Nevada, for instance, results in a manditory 25 year jail term - FOR FIRST OFFENSES!
Incorrect, as I read the law.
NRS 453.096 "Marijuana" defined.
1. "Marijuana" means:
(a) All parts of any plant of the genus Cannabis, whether growing or not;
(b) The seeds thereof;
(c) The resin extracted from any part of the plant; and
(d) Every compound, manufacture, salt, derivative, mixture or preparation of the plant, its seeds or resin.
2. "Marijuana" does not include the mature stems of the plant, fiber produced from the stems, oil or cake made from the seeds of the plant, any other compound, manufacture, salt, derivative, mixture or preparation of the mature stems (except the resin extracted therefrom), fiber, oil or cake, or the sterilized seed of the plant which is incapable of germination.
This sounds to me as though hemp-fiber necklaces are perfectly legal, as they are not "marijuana" in the eyes of the law.
NRS 453.3363 Suspension of proceedings and probation of accused under certain conditions; effect of discharge and dismissal.
1. If a person who has not previously been convicted of any offense pursuant to NRS 453.011 to 453.552, inclusive, or pursuant to any statute of the United States or of any state relating to narcotic drugs, marijuana, or stimulant, depressant or hallucinogenic substances tenders a plea of guilty, guilty but mentally ill, nolo contendere or similar plea to a charge pursuant to subsection 2 or 3 of NRS 453.336, NRS 453.411 or 454.351, or is found guilty of one of those charges, the court, without entering a judgment of conviction and with the consent of the accused, may suspend further proceedings and place him on probation upon terms and conditions that must include attendance and successful completion of an educational program or, in the case of a person dependent upon drugs, of a program of treatment and rehabilitation pursuant to NRS 453.580.
The judge has the option of sentencing a first offender to probation and treatment.
NRS 453.336 Unlawful possession not for purpose of sale: Prohibition; penalties.
1. A person shall not knowingly or intentionally possess a controlled substance, unless the substance was obtained directly from, or pursuant to, a prescription or order of a physician, osteopathic physician's assistant, physician assistant, dentist, podiatric physician, optometrist, advanced practitioner of nursing or veterinarian while acting in the course of his professional practice, or except as otherwise authorized by the provisions of NRS 453.005 to 453.552, inclusive.
2. Except as otherwise provided in subsections 3 and 4 and in NRS 453.3363, and unless a greater penalty is provided in NRS 212.160, 453.3385, 453.339 or 453.3395, a person who violates this section shall be punished:
(a) For the first or second offense, if the controlled substance is listed in schedule I, II, III or IV, for a category E felony as provided in NRS 193.130.
NRS 193.130 Categories and punishment of felonies.
(e) A category E felony is a felony for which a court shall sentence a convicted person to imprisonment in the state prison for a minimum term of not less than 1 year and a maximum term of not more than 4 years. Except as otherwise provided in paragraph (b) of subsection 1 of NRS 176A.100, upon sentencing a person who is found guilty of a category E felony, the court shall suspend the execution of the sentence and grant probation to the person upon such conditions as the court deems appropriate. Such conditions of probation may include, but are not limited to, requiring the person to serve a term of confinement of not more than 1 year in the county jail. In addition to any other penalty, the court may impose a fine of not more than $5,000, unless a greater penalty is authorized or required by statute.
If the court deci
Let's see... He could have perhaps... I don't know... maybe made the meetings public, instead of hiding them behind a closed door and not letting people in the industry who knew better have a look at the contracts before signing them?
It's not like they were necessary in the first place. There were a couple of days when a few small sections of the state experienced power loss for an hour at a time. A few major users had to shut down power, as stipulated in their contracts with the utility companies they signed in exchange for lower rates. California didn't exactly come to a screeching halt on those days.
There was no power crisis. There was more than enough power the summer before, and there was more than enough power that summer. So people needed to cut back 10% or so. I would have been more impressed if Davis had stood up to the companies and said, "NO!" while the Legislature drafted new laws to fix the loopholes.
Children can't vote. Felons can't vote. Illegal immigrants can't vote. Unregistered people can't vote. That's a lot of the population that isn't able to legitimately sign. If half of the state population can vote, that doubles your percentage to 6%, and figuring that the turnout hovers around 50% as it is, that makes for 12% equivalent. Not so bad in those terms.
The "cure" may turn out to be no better then msblaster if it generates massive network traffic looking for new hosts.
In a sense, a day of traffic and seeing the systems patched without much intervention is better than several days of trying to get people to wake up, patch, answer questions, re-answer questions, handle complaints, deal with people who think they're immune but aren't, explain firewalls, explain AV, update AV...
Yeah, I know how it should work, but that's not always how it does.
Judging by the list below, they're made by a company called Chicony, Clevo, or Kapok (which owns Clevo).
http://www.laptopworldwide.com/laptops.html
Remember... No gnus is good gnus with Gary Gnu.
Interesting... I matched up the Alienware Area-51M Extreme and the Sager 5670-V, and found prices of $3115 and $2570, respectively ($2510.89 for the Sager if purchased via cash-equivalent).
Any others out there?
For that matter, any non-major-nameplate manufacturers that don't require losing one's laptop for a week when in need of repair? I'd like to find one that will both have the Radeon 9600 Mobile available and be close enough to a repair place that I can just drop off the laptop for pickup the next day. Sager and ProStar have some good configs, but they require the units to be sent to them for repair, and losing a main business computer for that long can be painful.
I notice that a number of the laptop manufacturers have product listings on their websites, but do any of them make their products available more or less directly, rather than having to go through Dell or Sony? I seem to remember someone at a LAN party a few years back showing up with something that looked a lot like a Dell Inspiron, but it had no major name badging anywhere, and he said that it was an OEM laptop.
Pfft. If they were TRUE geeks, they would have had a backup generator to provide power, 24 hours of fuel, and contracts with at least two companies to provide additional fuel.
:P
Not that I have any of this.
Environmentalists are never satisfied with the steps that have been taken. Over the past 20 or more years we have take huge steps to please the environmentalist however if you talk to them the government has done nothing.
You need some karma, my friend.
Prime example: Los Angeles. I grew up in Southern California, and I remember staying indoors for recess or PE sessions because of smog alerts. I remember at least once when there was the possibility that school might be cancelled because of a possible Stage III alert the next day.
Now, we have one Stage I alert or so each summer if we have one at all, and it's been that way for years, and I can see the mountains that are 30 miles off on many days. Yet the local environmentalists claim that there is so much more that has to be done.
I challenge anyone to look at pictures of Los Angeles on random days during the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, and today, and tell me honestly that nothing has improved.
What do you do with the mining tailings after extracting the fissionalbles? Most of that is somewhat radioactive as well as the hardware that extracts it.
I guess it depends on the level of radioactivity. If you have any information on this, I'd be interested in reading it. But how would it compare to the tailings left from coal extraction?
What do you do with the spent rods (old skool nuke) or pebbles (new skool nuke); they are still radioactive, just not efficently radioactive from a power producing point of view.
Run them back through breeder reactors to create more fuel, reducing the mining operations needed to keep the system supplied. Some mining will be required, but breeder reactors with 10-year doubling times (and perhaps less) can be built, and begin recycling fuel for existing reactors after that.
What about the containters you transport the hot waste in?
You mean the 25- to 125-ton (depending on transport method), reinforced concrete containers designed and tested to withstand a 30-foot freefall into an unyielding surface, 30 minutes of 1475 degree F fires immediately on the surface of the container, and submergence in 200m of water for eight hours, among other tests? The containers which have hit immobile walls or been hit by locomotives at speeds of 80mph and been basically scratched or chipped? The containers which have withstood powerful anti-tank weapons with only a tiny piercing of the primary containment wall?
Transport of ores, refined fissionables and waste is vulnerable to accident. Then there is the chance of theft of materials for various criminal and terrorist schemes.
They're sealed and guarded, and in 3,000 shipments of used fuel assemblies across 1.7 million miles of road and rail, there have been only eight accidents, and no injuries, fatalities, or release of radioactive materials has happened in any of them. Frankly, I'd be more worried about LNG trucks being stolen. Those are mobile bombs in their own right.
A far better power solution is using solar power to heat a sterling engine to produce electricity.
How much land would this require? And are they efficient enough on that scale? Friction in larger Sterling engines could rob efficiency. Looking around the web, I see smaller implementations that are 30% efficient at solar-electrical conversion, but this still means only 300W/square meter, and that's assuming clear skies at the height of the day in a sunny part of the world. What happens in, say, Minnesota? Even if this could be achieved the whole day, it would take at least 3300 square meters of heat-absorbing panels, plus the spacing between them for sun-tracking and maintenance access. What is the realistic capture amount? Would batteries be available to store the energy for evening use in hot areas when the sun can no longer supply energy? What kind of environmental impact would their construction and disposal entail?
I agree that the Sterling engine would be potentially less polluting than fission reactors, but I still see some potentially serious gaps. Good that Slashdotters can have a serious conversation once in a while.
Oddly enough, there was an article in New Scientist today on just this, about a laser transmuting iodine-129 with its 15.7 million year half-life to iodine-128, with a halflife of 25 minutes. It takes a lot of power, and I imagine kicks out a lot of radiation, but it's a start.
I didn't mean for it to sound as though that was a complete analysis, as it of course is not. What I was pointing out was that the construction costs really are not that much when compared to just the ongoing fuel costs associated with the current batch of conventional powerplants.
There are, of course, significant other issues associated with the nuclear plants. Special training is required to handle the fuel, extra emergency training, public awareness, and so forth. There are also significant court cost issues, because I imagine every single plant would be challenged in court, something that would have to be handled by new legislation to smooth the ride for those willing to take the financial risks associated with constructing a nuclear plant. Waste disposal becomes less of a problem with breeder reactors, as material is recycled over time, and the Yucca Mountain Waste Repository could become known as the Yucca Mountain Fuel Depot.
That's still 500 cubic meters and 11,000 tons as opposed to however many million (billion?) tons of CO2, not to mention NOx's and whatever else, gets out there. Coal reactors are also responsible for the release of thousands of tons of radioactive material over the last several decades; the radiation dosage from a 1000MW coal plant at a given distance is 100 times that of a 1000MW fission plant at an equivalent distance because of uranium and thorium that is released in combustion.
Anyway, the plutonium is still fissile, and can then be recycled and used as fuel. Seems a lot safer and more effective to me than simply storing it.
BTW, is anyone else having trouble access Slashdot? For almost the last week, it takes me three or four requests to reach it, all of the others timing out, whether accessing a story or submitting a comment. No other site gives me this trouble.
Stop making the reactors as one-off designs. Making them individually raises costs as they have to be indepentently designed, rearchitected (is that a word?), and re-evaluated. The Westinghouse design is made for multiple uses, with some customization for the particulars of the construction site, but mostly identical, lowering overall costs.
Solution: Build more nuclear plants.
In 2000, there were 9351 plants producing power levels of 604,514MW in the summer and 615,030MW in the winter. (I'll use the summer numbers since those are the lowest and arguably the most important.) Of those 9351 plants, 91 were nuclear, representing 0.97% of the power plants by number but producing 86,163MW in the summer -- about 14% of overall output.
Of the remaining, there were 1024 coal plants, 3007 petroleum (oil) plants, and 2068 gas (methane) plants, combining to produce 419,852MW. Taking the average output of 947MW per nuclear plant, it would take 444 plants to take up the slack, though I suspect plants being designed now are more powerful than that. Westinghouse believes their new AP1000 1000MW reactors can be built for $1400 per KW for the first few, and $1000 per KW starting around the seventh plant. The total construction cost is about $447 billion, which, if spaced over 20 years, is a bit more than $22 billion per year. In 2000, the US burned 995 million tons of coal, 195 million barrels of petroleum, and 6.2 billion MMBtu of gas. The costs of these fuels? In today's terms, it would be, at $25 per ton, $30 per barrel of undistilled petroleum, and $5 per MMBtu (all approximations, but close to current prices), $24.9 billion, $5.9 billion, and $31 billion, or a total of about $61.8 billion. The cost for those plants, spaced out, would be a little more than a third of what we pay for fuels as it is.
Aside from the virtual end of power plant-produced carbon dioxide emissions, and that some of these reactors could be breeder reactors, helping to make better use of nuclear fuel (of which we have centuries of supply in the United States alone), this would shut down much of the incredibly damaging coal mining in the country, drop natural gas prices to reasonable levels so that people can pay for their homes, and slash oil consumption drastically.
The construction of these plants would also create thousands of jobs at each site for two to three years, spurring the local economies. Even if there were only 1500 jobs created per site, that's 33,000 jobs if 23 plants were built at a time. There would probably be enough to offset job losses at conventional power plants, and my understanding is that nuclear construction work carries higher paychecks than standard construction work.
Nuclear reactors are fairly close to terrorist-proof. In California, they've survived earthquakes, and they're designed to handle most airliners crashing straight into them. Their common dome housings also would help to deflect anything larger than they were designed for, and the lessons learned from Three Mile Island have gone a long way in improving responses and designs.
I want a nuclear reactor in my backyard. I don't see why the fears about them are so prevalent. I almost wish the planes had hit a reactor instead of the WTC just so that people could see how they wouldn't crack, though part of me fears that it would heighten the fears of others attacking such plants.
I don't think there were as many as you might think, though with the normal turnouts in this state, I wouldn't be surprised if they made up a few percentage points. However, I think Riordan lost it early on because of the short-sightedness of the California Republican Party who for the last few years has been putting up as many people as possible who are "true" to the platform, not realizing that, outside of a handful of counties, those positions just don't fly with voters. Riordan not only was a great balance for California, but he was able to become a Republican mayor of Los Angeles, possibly one of the most liberal cities outside of the Bay Area, and was able to work with the city council there amicably and effectively.
Right now, I'm looking at Arnold for governor now, and I hope he'll turn things over to Riordan in the next election. That would be a good 11-year block.
No Democrat-registered voters voted for Simon in the Republican primary, because California does not allow that. You may vote only for your own party nomination, not for any other, with the exception of people who chose "Decline to State", who may choose from any of the party ballots for those parties which accept voters registered as such. There was a process in place that allowed an open primary, but that was shot down in court as an abridgment of the right to free assembly by forcing the party to accept those with whom they don't agree.
However, Davis DID run a campaign targeting Riordan, nominally telling the public that he was prone to flipping back and forth on issues, but concentrating on his pro-choice, pro-gay, pro-environment stances in an effort to get the most conservative Republicans to vote for Simon (a true nitwit) instead.
Davis's budgets were submitted on time, but left alone things like the state prison guard union. BTW, he received $119,500 from Enron and its employees from 1996 to early 2002. Can't find immediate numbers on Cisco, but I know that one of its upper-level people donated $25K to his campaign last year.
Besides, whoever is elected is protected from any recall efforts for six months after taking office, which would happen as soon as the election results were certified.
In California (can't speak for the other states, but I believe they're similar), the Lieutenant Governor is elected separately from the Governor. Back when Davis (a Democrat) was the Lt. Gov. for Pete Wilson (a Republican), the Democrat-strong Legislature would pass bills when Wilson was out of state (vacations, meeting business leaders, participating in meetings with other governors) so Davis could sign them into law. It kept Wilson in the state often, his out-of-state schedule usually closely synchronized with the Legislature's schedule.
This is opposite to how presidents and vice presidents are elected, which is as a part of the same ticket.
I've seen the effect before. The bottoms of the clouds get wispy when seen from a distance of a few miles, and in some cases, you can see the wisps reaching to the ground, which is how it looks when the rain actually hits. Sometimes the raindrops don't quite make it, and evaporate several hundred feet above the ground. If the wisps are long enough to reach the ground, driving for a few minutes may see you getting wet.
I never said California doesn't exceed its allotment. You, however, said that Nevada has never exceeded its allotment, when in fact they did just last year. That was my point.
"Nevada exceeded its own 300,000-acre-foot allotment by about 8 percent last year, but it was the breakdown of the Golden State negotiations that prompted Norton to temporarily suspend the use of the additional water."
- 10 -Thu-2003/news/21701082.html
http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2003/Jul
You said something about facts?