Your words: > They had also melted down if the cooling had failed 4 weeks later...
No. If the cooling was fine for 4 weeks and subsequently failed, cooling requirements would be small enough the reactor would survive without a meltdown or a hydrogen explosion. After 4 weeks decay heat is down to less than 0.1% of pre shutdown power. Or 15 times less heat than 1 hour after shutdown (around 1.5%), or 65 times less than immediately after the shutdown.
I'm pretty sure 0.1% power levels can be dealt with without damage to the reactor or radioactivity release, even without cooling for a whole other 4 weeks.
Began operation december 9th 1972, or weeks from my birthday. I'm 42. Of course some of those ultra old reactors will have some issues. I hope the NRC forces a shutdown of this one in the next license renewal. But having those issues doesn't mean an accident waiting to happen. Nuclear is robust. It's crazy robust. Its easy to focus on Fukushima or Chernobyl. And ignore the fact that if all of those 40+ year old reactors weren't built there would a whole lot more CO2 in the atmosphere, along with millions of tons of coal ash filled with Mercury, Cadmium, Arsenic, Uranium, Thorium in a format prime to fly with strong winds, be washed with strong rain. By far the highest threat to nuclear reactors in the USA is earthquakes. Because they often come without any prior warning. A few hours at most. Everything else is manageable, and new england has no earthquakes remotelly threatening to a nuke. It's like trying to use Fukushima as a reason to get rid of Brazil's Angra I reactor. About as old a design as Pilgrim. But started operation in the early 80s. Its built in one of the safest possible nuclear sites in the world. It's 100km away from the nearest metro area (Rio de Janeiro). Brazil is actually building a Gen II nuclear reactor (Angra 3), materials were purchased 30+ years ago, and due to Brazilian incompetence it was left in storage, construction started 10 years ago. Am I concerned, hell no, cause it's built on the very same optimal site. No quakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, in a site impervious to floods, cooled with sea water. Lets progressively replace those Gen II reactors, but then we have the problem that nuclear is crazy expensive to build today. It doesn't have to be expensive. But with the certainty of a costly and lenghty lawsuit from green peace and others (at least in the USA), with the people paranoid against any nuclear power, and politicians following the ignorant masses. And the NRC absolutelly unwilling to make it cost reasonable to do it the French way (absolute standardization leading to mass certification, only site specific issues must be reviewed on a site by site basis), but the NRC gets its money by the hour of regulatory services rendered, so they are vested in making regulatory services as lenghty (and expensive) as possible. Something like US$ 300 / hr this days.
The problem wasn't lack of heat decay weeks later. It was a cascade of problems that started with a full disruption in decay heat removal early on. The tsunami hit 50 minutes after the shutdown.
Right after shutdown, decay heat produces 6.5% of pre shutdown power settings. After one hour its down to 1.5%. After a day its down to 0.4%. After a week its down to 0.2%. Assuming a large 4GWt reactor at full power prior to shutdown, 0.2% is less than 10MWt. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D...
After a week a reactor can probably survive another week without cooling power. It's not a usual condition, but it can be handled. The most critical aspect is having electricity to operate the plants monitoring systems to know when to do small steam releases. Some radioactivity might be released, but it will be TMI levels of radioactivity (inconsequential). The critical aspect is avoiding the meltdown and avoiding hydrogen buildups. Water doesn't hold radioactivity, the concerns are releasing radioactivity sources (radio nuclides) which stay inside the reactor as long as it doesn't meltdown.
Days passed between loosing electricity for cooling and the hydrogen explosion. You should focus on when power was lost instead of when the explosion happened. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F...
Another good reason to go to a molten salt reactor (MSR). Regular reactors are very lousy at load following (if they can do it at all). MSRs are also much, much safer, so they could be deployed to handle a local city + export power to neighboring cities. With its load following and much safer operation, just keep it online, only shutdown if 100% of its grid connections are finished. Also it's higher temperature operation allow for making hydrogen, amonia and other chemicals from CO2, H2O and N2, instead of petroleum. Dessalinating sea water. General process heat for factories. For dual (or triple) usage reactors, if they can't make a whole lot of electricity, turn up the chemical plant side. Zero need for diesel generators, as decay heat dissipation is totally passive. The fear of nuclear prevent reactors from being installed close to cities where they could provide massive district heating, like they do in the Baltic states.
Very interesting. I never read this before. Do you have a solid article explaining this ? The type of argument the anti nuclear types will never accept. Need to get this world out, after I'm convinced it's solid.
What matters is you are an anonymous coward, which suggests you have a vested interest against Tesla. All you show is you don't understand the Tesla model. Tesla's goal isn't to take over Toyota or GM. So they don't need to sell cheap cars. Their goal is to prove that EVs aren't glorified golf carts. They they can have style, performance, range, comfort. Its better exemplified by Musk's statement that Tesla is going to make the best car in the world, which happens to be electric. I'm far more interested in seeing Tesla quick BMW, Mercedez, Porsche, Audi, and other brands selling cars at the US$ 100k price point and higher. You probably will ignore the fact that a Tesla Model S is so safe it destroyed the machine used in some safety tests. Normally the machine destroys the car, and how much force the machine applied to the car grades how safe it is. Tesla is so safe, its built like a tank. That's a huge selling point which attracts millions of rich enough mommies which value their children above all the money in the world. And the P85D, or the insane performance Tesla, with a supercar performance (half a million car) for 1/3rd the price. Its what happens when the company is run by people like Elon instead of lawyers and accountants like detroit and germany.
I also don't have enough money to buy any Tesla right now. But I'm selfless enough to understand the goal isn't making me buy a Tesla, but rather threaten the high end manufacturers enough they will be force to go electric, with cars that can actually compete with Tesla. Then after the high end has gone electric, the tech trickles down to more affordable car. Like it happens in every industry. VHS once were too expensive, DVDs too, same for BluRays. The challenges to make cheap EVs are resolved in the high end.
Tesla only needs to capture 0.01% of total car shipments worldwide to be established. Or 100 thousand cars / year. Realisticly Tesla will get there in 2016 or 2017. I expect Tesla Model S + Model X sales (its high end luxury models) will eventually reach 200k cars / yr, or US$ 20 billion in sales ! At that point Tesla will start accumulating billions in the bank. Tesla isn't making a profit cause they are innovating and growing at stellar pace.
You can buy a Tesla for US$ 20k more than a regular car, at the same real total cost of ownership. Except if you drive very little. Even at today's cheap gas, a Tesla costs less than half per mile to fuel and maintain. If you put solar panels to offset that electricity, then even considering the solar PV costs, that goes down to 75% cheaper or better (was 90% cheaper with expensive gas). Gasoline would have to be below US$ 1 / gallon to negate the Tesla cost advantage. And the USA is one of the few countries in the world that sells cheap gas. In Europe the advantage is huge.
What reality distortion ? Tesla is already tooled for 100k cars / yr (2k cars / wk). The retooling was done already to handle the model X. Tesla has managed to reach current production levels with zero paid advertisement. That's Tesla's biggest enemy. Since the paid media isn't getting a penny from Tesla, they have every interest to smear tesla continously. By end of 2015 Tesla will have a formidable operational supercharger network, which will enable people to drive between every metro area of at least 2 million people in North America in a fairly direct way. Coverage in Europe is already a little better than North America. I suggest you take a look. http://supercharge.info/ Interactive realtime super charger tool. Only superchargers already operating, in construction or already licensed are shown. China superchargers only show up after they are online. Plenty of European superchargers also show up when ready or nearly so. I predict around 6 billion USD in 2015 total revenues. Being conservative. Not bad for a "reality distorted" company.
You really should read up on hydrogen fuel cells. Germany has a substantial line of ultra quiet hydrogen fuel cell subs, with significant range. Deadly. Type 212 class. In fact to deadly they only offer third parties a watered down version of their subs. They can't go many times around the world, but they have enough autonomy to go for a month with surfacing, without the heat signature, radiation signature, and noise a nuclear reactor generates. The ultimate defensive weapon for the seas, and deadly enough an enemy would think many times over to launch an armada against a country with a few dozens of fuel cell subs. With the ability to perform some deadly offensive strikes (specially when loitering close to enemy shore isn't needed).
Except the USA has used their hunter killer subs to strike their enemies with tomahawks again and again. Subs have very high strategic value. They offer an ideal means to block an incoming enemy armada at long range. They can launch dozens of anti surface missiles from medium range, before they can be detected. And then screen for enemies that survived that first strike. The real problem is cost. The true powers that decide on NATO strategic investments have no interest in forcing their military industrial complexes to get to affordable price points. That is the real threat to all high cost weapons, not just subs. Its not by chance that all top NATO weapons are unaffordable to richer developing countries. Their prices isn't based on real cost, but rather on how much they can gouge their local governments for. Pure corruption.
It seems they were talking about hunter killer subs only. Large ballistic subs have no interest in hanging out in shallow waters. Their job is to hide, and nothing like the deep, vast oceans to do that. They can cruise at 600-900 meters depth for their entire mission life, except for launching missiles and replenishing. Hunter killer subs can launch torpedoes that can hunt their targets for 100Km. The reality is subs are of limited usefulness in today's hush hush war times, they make a lot of noise moving above 1/3rd their speeds, which means that in order to be quiet, they need to go very slow (like 10 knots or lower). Subs also have zero means to attack their most deadly prey, sub hunting helicopters and long range aircraft (like the new Poseidon). Being able to drop active sonar buoys is a significant threat to subs, but there are thermoclines to hide under (very hard to listen through thermal layers, specially through double thermal layers).
I'm a long time UNIX guy, started way back in 1988. So far I like systemd. Have been using it on OpenSuSE. Can't see what is the fuzz all about. There are plenty of non systemd linuxes anyways. I particularly love the systemd logging system.
I'm more of a Python guy myself, but the big issue with both, is there's no standard for browser side python or perl. We need that to hope those get rid of java. Python and/or perl on the server side, easy.
Java,.net and windows are mainly means to make your shinny 4GB core i7 seem slow. If Oracle cared at all about safety, Java wouldn't have so much security updates every month. It's riddled with bugs, cause they never cared about making it secure. If they did, they wouldn't stuff it with so much bloat its pretty much impossible to inspect all of it for bugs in the first place.
Dont buy a smart TV. Buy a normal one, and use an external video streaming gadget. If anything on your TV breaks you might have to buy a brand new one, or pay for ultra expensive repairs. I'm using a 40" Samsung LED TV right now. It has no ethernet or wifi. Was extremely cheap. If I want to watch videos, I plug my blu ray player, my laptop, my Linux gadget (banana Pi), or my satellite dish receiver. Oh and you can also download videos into a USB flash drive and plug them in. Even without the ads, a smart TV with Internet conectivity could be uploading all the names of files you played to their vendors. Who knows one day you'll get sued for playing downloaded videos because Samsung or LG sold the list of customers to DCMA sharks ?
The Dragon return is a low overhead task. For a company of 3000 people, it takes less than a dozen people at mission control in Hawthorne to monitor plus the recovery boat assets (which apparently are outsourced).
The folks involved on the Cape Launch are totally non overlapping, except at the managerial levels, those managers aren't involved in the execution of those tasks.
There is plenty to be amazed about SpaceX, but this just isn't it.
The real challenge for SpaceX right now is ramping up F9R production, getting the first Falcon Heavy in the air, Dragon 2 tests, and maintaining a 100% primary mission success Falcon 9 has achieved, oh and finishing LC39A launch pad preparations at the Cape (allowing LC40 to be dedicated for F9R private launches, and LC39A to do NASA / DoD / Falcon Heavy missions). Should SpaceX loose a payload, this would change the whole dynamics of DoD launch certification.
SpaceX needs to demonstrate a handful of landings on the barge before it can land in terra firma. The primary concern isn't that the stage doesn't crash land, but that it's able to navigate with high precision to the landing spot. Some launches have large performance margins such that the first stage will perform a boostback burn and land directly at the landing spot (near the launchpad). But in many missions the barge will be needed. The generic number is boostback = 30% performance loss, landing at the barge at the optimal location = 15% performance loss. The Falcon Heavy has 3 stages, so in many cases the side boosters will RTLS (Return to Launch Site) and the center booster will land on the barge.
Nuclear Ion propulsion would be an interesting application if nuclear reactors could be scaled down effectively (they can't). The mass of the rocket would be too high, requiring monster levels of Argon (Xenon or Krypton is just too expensive to be procured in scales large enough to be used in such a monster). Xenon and Krypton are produced by nuclear fission, but extracting those from the fuel isn't economical in solid fuel reactors. Liquid fueled reactors (MSRs) enable Xenon and Krypton extraction to happen online. Maybe one day. The T/W ratio of such a monster would be too low even though ISP would be high. The minimum weight would be huge. But I doubt we'll ever see operational NTR rockets. The ISP gain is too low compared to the weight of the reactor.
Kirk Sorensen is one of the few people I know that both worked at a space agency (NASA) and in the terrestrial nuclear power industry (Flibe energy, Teledyne Brown Engineering), says this is a fools errand. While NTR rockets could offer high ISP, they will weight wayyyy too much (too low thrust to weight). Plus nuclear reactors can't be scaled down like other rocket engines. We looked into all deep space propulsion technologies. Until we have a fairly lightweight nuclear reactor, it's unlikely this will fly (pun intended). At the very least the nuclear rocket would have to have its final assembly in space, and would consume a lot of monster LEO launches to bring the components up (billions in launch costs even using the cheapest rocket to become available, the Falcon Heavy).
Except for very few people, FoxNews is 100% based on lying to their viewers. Chris Wallace and one or other guy there have a shred of integrity. The rest are just pawns. The reason they decided to post the video is to help create outrage to push Obama to put boots on the ground to combat ISIS. With the end game of giving billions to the military industrial complex. Oh, and generate more anti american hate leading to more anti american fundamentalists. Don't get me wrong. I'm actually in favor of american boots on the ground, but strict small special forces operations chosen for maximum effect and minimum loss of life. Just Navy Seals, Recon Marines, Delta Force, specially to interdict troop movements between ISIS strongholds, cutting their lines of communications and supply, then withdraw. I'm against any kind of semi permanent deployment of american forces to occupy Iraq or Syria towns. That should be the job of the Peshmerga and the Iraqui Army. Better give them some weapons than create more hate from an ostensive american presence there.
Gay rights and drugs deregulation are cultural issues. I would not put those in the same pot as economical issues. I hope you're right thought, but I wouldn't bet on it. Realize deep red states are also those with the lowest education and lowest internet penetration levels. It's what corporations want for customers, dumb, uninformed people they can lie to easily.
The anti nuclear groups want to get rid even of the most advanced, safe AP1000 reactors in operation.
Many others wants to shutdown every Gen II reactors in operation. That's around 75% of all reactors in operation. There are even some Gen II reactors being built, projects that got frozen for decades and restarted (Angra III and Watts Bar).
But Germany has shutdown all of its reactors the same design of Fukushima. Other countries are littering those old GE BWRs with a ton of regulations that ignore the fact that only in Japan there can be a massive Tsunami that flood nuclear reactors.
The one reactor we might have commercially by 2020ish that might qualify to your expectations is the ISMR from Terrestrial Energy-Canada. Since it's a molten salt reactor, it can't melt down, and since the core fluids are a solid below 300C temps, even if one such reactor were blow to pieces (asteroid/comet/precision military attack), it would release almost no radiation more than the blast radius since the materials would solidify and fall to the ground.
It's already over engineered. It's called Gen 3+ reactors. Fusion ! Keep dreaming. I doubt we'll get fusion commercially before 2050, and that's if we're lucky. Fukushima was a Gen II reactor (designed in the 60s). Nuclear operators can't afford to replace all existing reactors with new one because some Japanese idiots tried to save a buck !
> And the Tea Party wouldn't exist. And Sarah Palin wouldn't be on anyone's radar. You're really foolish if you think the Tea Party is about reducing middle class taxes. It's about allowing billionaires to keep paying less than 10% income taxes (15% dividend taxes - all the deductions), while most middle class pays over 1/3 of their income directly on income taxes. Get rid of the loopholes, that's what should be done, and you fools defend the filthy rich, while most of us get screwed. Get those earning over a million dollars to actually pay 15% income taxes, no deductions, this would get rid of all budget shortfalls, fix social security. PS: I'm not a democrat, nor a republican, just someone that thinks about facts and data instead of political ideology that prevents people from analyzing the data (on both sides).
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Your words: ...
> They had also melted down if the cooling had failed 4 weeks later
No. If the cooling was fine for 4 weeks and subsequently failed, cooling requirements would be small enough the reactor would survive without a meltdown or a hydrogen explosion. After 4 weeks decay heat is down to less than 0.1% of pre shutdown power. Or 15 times less heat than 1 hour after shutdown (around 1.5%), or 65 times less than immediately after the shutdown.
I'm pretty sure 0.1% power levels can be dealt with without damage to the reactor or radioactivity release, even without cooling for a whole other 4 weeks.
Began operation december 9th 1972, or weeks from my birthday. I'm 42. Of course some of those ultra old reactors will have some issues.
I hope the NRC forces a shutdown of this one in the next license renewal.
But having those issues doesn't mean an accident waiting to happen.
Nuclear is robust. It's crazy robust.
Its easy to focus on Fukushima or Chernobyl.
And ignore the fact that if all of those 40+ year old reactors weren't built there would a whole lot more CO2 in the atmosphere, along with millions of tons of coal ash filled with Mercury, Cadmium, Arsenic, Uranium, Thorium in a format prime to fly with strong winds, be washed with strong rain.
By far the highest threat to nuclear reactors in the USA is earthquakes. Because they often come without any prior warning. A few hours at most.
Everything else is manageable, and new england has no earthquakes remotelly threatening to a nuke.
It's like trying to use Fukushima as a reason to get rid of Brazil's Angra I reactor. About as old a design as Pilgrim. But started operation in the early 80s. Its built in one of the safest possible nuclear sites in the world. It's 100km away from the nearest metro area (Rio de Janeiro). Brazil is actually building a Gen II nuclear reactor (Angra 3), materials were purchased 30+ years ago, and due to Brazilian incompetence it was left in storage, construction started 10 years ago. Am I concerned, hell no, cause it's built on the very same optimal site. No quakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, in a site impervious to floods, cooled with sea water.
Lets progressively replace those Gen II reactors, but then we have the problem that nuclear is crazy expensive to build today. It doesn't have to be expensive. But with the certainty of a costly and lenghty lawsuit from green peace and others (at least in the USA), with the people paranoid against any nuclear power, and politicians following the ignorant masses. And the NRC absolutelly unwilling to make it cost reasonable to do it the French way (absolute standardization leading to mass certification, only site specific issues must be reviewed on a site by site basis), but the NRC gets its money by the hour of regulatory services rendered, so they are vested in making regulatory services as lenghty (and expensive) as possible. Something like US$ 300 / hr this days.
The problem wasn't lack of heat decay weeks later. It was a cascade of problems that started with a full disruption in decay heat removal early on.
The tsunami hit 50 minutes after the shutdown.
Right after shutdown, decay heat produces 6.5% of pre shutdown power settings.
After one hour its down to 1.5%.
After a day its down to 0.4%.
After a week its down to 0.2%.
Assuming a large 4GWt reactor at full power prior to shutdown, 0.2% is less than 10MWt.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D...
After a week a reactor can probably survive another week without cooling power. It's not a usual condition, but it can be handled.
The most critical aspect is having electricity to operate the plants monitoring systems to know when to do small steam releases. Some radioactivity might be released, but it will be TMI levels of radioactivity (inconsequential). The critical aspect is avoiding the meltdown and avoiding hydrogen buildups. Water doesn't hold radioactivity, the concerns are releasing radioactivity sources (radio nuclides) which stay inside the reactor as long as it doesn't meltdown.
Days passed between loosing electricity for cooling and the hydrogen explosion. You should focus on when power was lost instead of when the explosion happened.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F...
Another good reason to go to a molten salt reactor (MSR).
Regular reactors are very lousy at load following (if they can do it at all).
MSRs are also much, much safer, so they could be deployed to handle a local city + export power to neighboring cities.
With its load following and much safer operation, just keep it online, only shutdown if 100% of its grid connections are finished.
Also it's higher temperature operation allow for making hydrogen, amonia and other chemicals from CO2, H2O and N2, instead of petroleum. Dessalinating sea water. General process heat for factories.
For dual (or triple) usage reactors, if they can't make a whole lot of electricity, turn up the chemical plant side.
Zero need for diesel generators, as decay heat dissipation is totally passive.
The fear of nuclear prevent reactors from being installed close to cities where they could provide massive district heating, like they do in the Baltic states.
Very interesting. I never read this before. Do you have a solid article explaining this ?
The type of argument the anti nuclear types will never accept. Need to get this world out, after I'm convinced it's solid.
What matters is you are an anonymous coward, which suggests you have a vested interest against Tesla.
All you show is you don't understand the Tesla model.
Tesla's goal isn't to take over Toyota or GM.
So they don't need to sell cheap cars.
Their goal is to prove that EVs aren't glorified golf carts. They they can have style, performance, range, comfort.
Its better exemplified by Musk's statement that Tesla is going to make the best car in the world, which happens to be electric.
I'm far more interested in seeing Tesla quick BMW, Mercedez, Porsche, Audi, and other brands selling cars at the US$ 100k price point and higher.
You probably will ignore the fact that a Tesla Model S is so safe it destroyed the machine used in some safety tests. Normally the machine destroys the car, and how much force the machine applied to the car grades how safe it is. Tesla is so safe, its built like a tank.
That's a huge selling point which attracts millions of rich enough mommies which value their children above all the money in the world.
And the P85D, or the insane performance Tesla, with a supercar performance (half a million car) for 1/3rd the price.
Its what happens when the company is run by people like Elon instead of lawyers and accountants like detroit and germany.
I also don't have enough money to buy any Tesla right now. But I'm selfless enough to understand the goal isn't making me buy a Tesla, but rather threaten the high end manufacturers enough they will be force to go electric, with cars that can actually compete with Tesla. Then after the high end has gone electric, the tech trickles down to more affordable car. Like it happens in every industry. VHS once were too expensive, DVDs too, same for BluRays. The challenges to make cheap EVs are resolved in the high end.
Tesla only needs to capture 0.01% of total car shipments worldwide to be established.
Or 100 thousand cars / year. Realisticly Tesla will get there in 2016 or 2017.
I expect Tesla Model S + Model X sales (its high end luxury models) will eventually reach 200k cars / yr, or US$ 20 billion in sales !
At that point Tesla will start accumulating billions in the bank.
Tesla isn't making a profit cause they are innovating and growing at stellar pace.
You can buy a Tesla for US$ 20k more than a regular car, at the same real total cost of ownership.
Except if you drive very little.
Even at today's cheap gas, a Tesla costs less than half per mile to fuel and maintain. If you put solar panels to offset that electricity, then even considering the solar PV costs, that goes down to 75% cheaper or better (was 90% cheaper with expensive gas).
Gasoline would have to be below US$ 1 / gallon to negate the Tesla cost advantage.
And the USA is one of the few countries in the world that sells cheap gas.
In Europe the advantage is huge.
What reality distortion ?
Tesla is already tooled for 100k cars / yr (2k cars / wk).
The retooling was done already to handle the model X.
Tesla has managed to reach current production levels with zero paid advertisement.
That's Tesla's biggest enemy. Since the paid media isn't getting a penny from Tesla, they have every interest to smear tesla continously.
By end of 2015 Tesla will have a formidable operational supercharger network, which will enable people to drive between every metro area of at least 2 million people in North America in a fairly direct way. Coverage in Europe is already a little better than North America.
I suggest you take a look.
http://supercharge.info/
Interactive realtime super charger tool. Only superchargers already operating, in construction or already licensed are shown. China superchargers only show up after they are online. Plenty of European superchargers also show up when ready or nearly so.
I predict around 6 billion USD in 2015 total revenues. Being conservative.
Not bad for a "reality distorted" company.
You really should read up on hydrogen fuel cells.
Germany has a substantial line of ultra quiet hydrogen fuel cell subs, with significant range. Deadly. Type 212 class.
In fact to deadly they only offer third parties a watered down version of their subs.
They can't go many times around the world, but they have enough autonomy to go for a month with surfacing, without the heat signature, radiation signature, and noise a nuclear reactor generates.
The ultimate defensive weapon for the seas, and deadly enough an enemy would think many times over to launch an armada against a country with a few dozens of fuel cell subs.
With the ability to perform some deadly offensive strikes (specially when loitering close to enemy shore isn't needed).
Except the USA has used their hunter killer subs to strike their enemies with tomahawks again and again.
Subs have very high strategic value.
They offer an ideal means to block an incoming enemy armada at long range. They can launch dozens of anti surface missiles from medium range, before they can be detected. And then screen for enemies that survived that first strike.
The real problem is cost. The true powers that decide on NATO strategic investments have no interest in forcing their military industrial complexes to get to affordable price points. That is the real threat to all high cost weapons, not just subs.
Its not by chance that all top NATO weapons are unaffordable to richer developing countries. Their prices isn't based on real cost, but rather on how much they can gouge their local governments for. Pure corruption.
It seems they were talking about hunter killer subs only.
Large ballistic subs have no interest in hanging out in shallow waters. Their job is to hide, and nothing like the deep, vast oceans to do that.
They can cruise at 600-900 meters depth for their entire mission life, except for launching missiles and replenishing.
Hunter killer subs can launch torpedoes that can hunt their targets for 100Km.
The reality is subs are of limited usefulness in today's hush hush war times, they make a lot of noise moving above 1/3rd their speeds, which means that in order to be quiet, they need to go very slow (like 10 knots or lower).
Subs also have zero means to attack their most deadly prey, sub hunting helicopters and long range aircraft (like the new Poseidon).
Being able to drop active sonar buoys is a significant threat to subs, but there are thermoclines to hide under (very hard to listen through thermal layers, specially through double thermal layers).
I'm a long time UNIX guy, started way back in 1988. So far I like systemd. Have been using it on OpenSuSE.
Can't see what is the fuzz all about.
There are plenty of non systemd linuxes anyways.
I particularly love the systemd logging system.
I'm more of a Python guy myself, but the big issue with both, is there's no standard for browser side python or perl. We need that to hope those get rid of java. Python and/or perl on the server side, easy.
Java, .net and windows are mainly means to make your shinny 4GB core i7 seem slow.
If Oracle cared at all about safety, Java wouldn't have so much security updates every month. It's riddled with bugs, cause they never cared about making it secure. If they did, they wouldn't stuff it with so much bloat its pretty much impossible to inspect all of it for bugs in the first place.
Dont buy a smart TV. Buy a normal one, and use an external video streaming gadget. If anything on your TV breaks you might have to buy a brand new one, or pay for ultra expensive repairs.
I'm using a 40" Samsung LED TV right now. It has no ethernet or wifi. Was extremely cheap. If I want to watch videos, I plug my blu ray player, my laptop, my Linux gadget (banana Pi), or my satellite dish receiver. Oh and you can also download videos into a USB flash drive and plug them in.
Even without the ads, a smart TV with Internet conectivity could be uploading all the names of files you played to their vendors. Who knows one day you'll get sued for playing downloaded videos because Samsung or LG sold the list of customers to DCMA sharks ?
The Dragon return is a low overhead task. For a company of 3000 people, it takes less than a dozen people at mission control in Hawthorne to monitor plus the recovery boat assets (which apparently are outsourced).
The folks involved on the Cape Launch are totally non overlapping, except at the managerial levels, those managers aren't involved in the execution of those tasks.
There is plenty to be amazed about SpaceX, but this just isn't it.
The real challenge for SpaceX right now is ramping up F9R production, getting the first Falcon Heavy in the air, Dragon 2 tests, and maintaining a 100% primary mission success Falcon 9 has achieved, oh and finishing LC39A launch pad preparations at the Cape (allowing LC40 to be dedicated for F9R private launches, and LC39A to do NASA / DoD / Falcon Heavy missions). Should SpaceX loose a payload, this would change the whole dynamics of DoD launch certification.
SpaceX needs to demonstrate a handful of landings on the barge before it can land in terra firma. The primary concern isn't that the stage doesn't crash land, but that it's able to navigate with high precision to the landing spot.
Some launches have large performance margins such that the first stage will perform a boostback burn and land directly at the landing spot (near the launchpad). But in many missions the barge will be needed. The generic number is boostback = 30% performance loss, landing at the barge at the optimal location = 15% performance loss.
The Falcon Heavy has 3 stages, so in many cases the side boosters will RTLS (Return to Launch Site) and the center booster will land on the barge.
Nuclear Ion propulsion would be an interesting application if nuclear reactors could be scaled down effectively (they can't).
The mass of the rocket would be too high, requiring monster levels of Argon (Xenon or Krypton is just too expensive to be procured in scales large enough to be used in such a monster).
Xenon and Krypton are produced by nuclear fission, but extracting those from the fuel isn't economical in solid fuel reactors. Liquid fueled reactors (MSRs) enable Xenon and Krypton extraction to happen online.
Maybe one day. The T/W ratio of such a monster would be too low even though ISP would be high. The minimum weight would be huge.
But I doubt we'll ever see operational NTR rockets. The ISP gain is too low compared to the weight of the reactor.
Kirk Sorensen is one of the few people I know that both worked at a space agency (NASA) and in the terrestrial nuclear power industry (Flibe energy, Teledyne Brown Engineering), says this is a fools errand. While NTR rockets could offer high ISP, they will weight wayyyy too much (too low thrust to weight). Plus nuclear reactors can't be scaled down like other rocket engines.
We looked into all deep space propulsion technologies.
Until we have a fairly lightweight nuclear reactor, it's unlikely this will fly (pun intended).
At the very least the nuclear rocket would have to have its final assembly in space, and would consume a lot of monster LEO launches to bring the components up (billions in launch costs even using the cheapest rocket to become available, the Falcon Heavy).
Except for very few people, FoxNews is 100% based on lying to their viewers. Chris Wallace and one or other guy there have a shred of integrity. The rest are just pawns.
The reason they decided to post the video is to help create outrage to push Obama to put boots on the ground to combat ISIS. With the end game of giving billions to the military industrial complex. Oh, and generate more anti american hate leading to more anti american fundamentalists.
Don't get me wrong. I'm actually in favor of american boots on the ground, but strict small special forces operations chosen for maximum effect and minimum loss of life. Just Navy Seals, Recon Marines, Delta Force, specially to interdict troop movements between ISIS strongholds, cutting their lines of communications and supply, then withdraw.
I'm against any kind of semi permanent deployment of american forces to occupy Iraq or Syria towns. That should be the job of the Peshmerga and the Iraqui Army. Better give them some weapons than create more hate from an ostensive american presence there.
Gay rights and drugs deregulation are cultural issues. I would not put those in the same pot as economical issues.
I hope you're right thought, but I wouldn't bet on it.
Realize deep red states are also those with the lowest education and lowest internet penetration levels. It's what corporations want for customers, dumb, uninformed people they can lie to easily.
I said 2050 if we're lucky.
The anti nuclear groups want to get rid even of the most advanced, safe AP1000 reactors in operation.
Many others wants to shutdown every Gen II reactors in operation. That's around 75% of all reactors in operation. There are even some Gen II reactors being built, projects that got frozen for decades and restarted (Angra III and Watts Bar).
But Germany has shutdown all of its reactors the same design of Fukushima. Other countries are littering those old GE BWRs with a ton of regulations that ignore the fact that only in Japan there can be a massive Tsunami that flood nuclear reactors.
The one reactor we might have commercially by 2020ish that might qualify to your expectations is the ISMR from Terrestrial Energy-Canada. Since it's a molten salt reactor, it can't melt down, and since the core fluids are a solid below 300C temps, even if one such reactor were blow to pieces (asteroid/comet/precision military attack), it would release almost no radiation more than the blast radius since the materials would solidify and fall to the ground.
It's already over engineered. It's called Gen 3+ reactors.
Fusion ! Keep dreaming. I doubt we'll get fusion commercially before 2050, and that's if we're lucky.
Fukushima was a Gen II reactor (designed in the 60s). Nuclear operators can't afford to replace all existing reactors with new one because some Japanese idiots tried to save a buck !
> And the Tea Party wouldn't exist. And Sarah Palin wouldn't be on anyone's radar.
You're really foolish if you think the Tea Party is about reducing middle class taxes. It's about allowing billionaires to keep paying less than 10% income taxes (15% dividend taxes - all the deductions), while most middle class pays over 1/3 of their income directly on income taxes.
Get rid of the loopholes, that's what should be done, and you fools defend the filthy rich, while most of us get screwed.
Get those earning over a million dollars to actually pay 15% income taxes, no deductions, this would get rid of all budget shortfalls, fix social security.
PS: I'm not a democrat, nor a republican, just someone that thinks about facts and data instead of political ideology that prevents people from analyzing the data (on both sides).