Don't you think that they would have already done that? We're limited though because of the temperature differential. Efficiency would be great if we had an absolute zero sinkhole to dump the heat into, but we don't.
There's new reactors that can get 44% efficiency, they'd operate around 900C. Current light water reactors are 350C and get between 30-36% efficiency(there's a lot of factors in this, like whether they're using cooling towers).
If we can get high temperature reactors good enough, that'll reduce fuel costs, probably be fairly neutral on O&M and construction - more expensive reactor components, fewer cooling components needed. More expensive reactor maintenance, reduced cooling maintenance.
Unless the increases costs in corn prices make it to prohibitive to compete with regular gasoline.
You got it right here. NG/Coal is cheaper to heat with than corn.
Corn has an enormous amount of energy in it. When I was a kid i saw a Plume of corn husks/dust catch a spark and take the top off a corn silo that was about half full. the resulting fire burned for about 3 days and the fire department could only keep it from spreading. That has been a while ago, they probable have ways of putting it out now.
Not really.
Of course pepsin could probably turn soybeans into something with an even higher sugar content that might make the methenol production even more efficient.
We're talking about ethanol production, a much less toxic substance than methenol.
Its not that simple - often these calculations do not factor things like security (which is something specific to nuclear power) and the cost of disposal, which is not a immediate cost.
Already factored into O&M costs. And no longer unique to nuclear plants - even coal and NG plants have to have security today, and security is pretty tight around oil refineries.
As well you have dismantling costs which need to be recovered before the end of the power plant's life (which are around 300 million for a normal plant).
Becomes not a big deal when you figure in the 40 year lifespan of the plant, and even less of a deal when you turn around and extend the life of the plant to 60 or even 80 years.
On top of that the cost of nuclear fuel is increasing - around 45% of current supply comes from decommissioned Russian military materiel - once this runs out combined with the decreasing supply from other sources (check the wiki article) and increased consumption around the world will push the price even higher.
Same deal as with oil - as price increases, providing supplies will become profitable again, exploration and exploitation will resume and the costs will be controlled. Worst case we actually start recycling our fuel waste into more fuel. That'll extend the effectiveness of any given amount of mining around 20X.
Every little bit of clothing etc that gets used becomes waste
Not at a nuclear power plant. If clothing becomes contaminated there's a HUGE problem. What you're probably thinking is medical waste - which today tends to dwarf nuclear plant's in the production of low level nuclear waste.
and once you shut a nuke station down you have a huge chunk of waste on your hands.
How often do we actually have to shut one down? By the looks of it, some plants are going to be operating for more than 60 years. They're practically the B-52s of the power world. Most of the plant can be recycled - the designers were careful to limit the sections exposed to radiation. You have the containment structure and that's about it.
By comparison, with any other generation technology you can just call in the scrap iron merchants etc and recycle it. Then of course there's handling the actual nuke waste too.
As we all keep saying, that stuff's actually useful. Reprocess and reuse. The remainder decays faster and isn't an issue for geological time periods.
The mining/extraction is a big problem too since you're dealing with pretty nasty stuff. Coal mining is no walk in the park, but uranium mining is a lot worse.
Sure, per pound of uranium ore and pound of coal, uranium is worse. Still, the ratios are so skewed that a coal plant in the first year of operation will pollute more than a nuclear plant will in it's lifetime. Even figuring in the occasional Chernobyl.
Most environmentalists supporting the Nuclear option do so only because it is the lesser of two evils
Lacking a suitable replacement that can truly compete at this time, I'd support building nuclear plants as at least a stopgap measure - to cease the pollution caused by the worst of the coal plants, for example.
To expand a bit - the government is looking at type approval - rather than each power plant being unique and costing $2-3k per kilowatt because of it, they're looking at the first plant of a type costing that, and each subsequent one costing only $1k per kilowatt.
Regulatory costs are literally doubling the price of reactors. That's crazy.
As a bonus, because they're all the same design, you can crosscheck with discovered issues, much like with the FAA does with planes. A problem is discovered on one 747, they check all the 747s for that problem. So costs would be less in the future(catching problems before they become too big).
Large quantities of long-lived radioactive isotopes are produced as waste and even after 60 years we still don't have any place to put them.
Don't really need to put them anywhere, actually. A year's worth of radioactive fuel/waste for a gigawatt reactor is about a railcar's worth. Besides, it's still about 95% fuel, so when the price of uranium rises a bit more, we can take our decades old waste that's sitting in above ground casks and recycle it. Separate out the short lived waste isotopes, put the long lived usable fuel isotopes back in the reactor. You use the old stuff because while it's still radioactive, it's much less so than stuff fresh out of the reactor, so it's easier and cheaper to handle.
Result: 20x more power from the same amount of fuel. 5% of the waste needing medium term(much less than a thousand years) storage.
(Washington, South Carolina, Nevada, Tennessee) are contaminated with historical fission wastes that are poorly contained and could contaminate much larger areas as corrosion, wind, and rain allow them to spread.
I've looked at many of these concerns, and I've found pretty much one constant: It's all nuclear weapons production waste, not commercial power waste. Bad on us and our nuclear weapon production program during the cold war. It was dirty as all heck.
Large quantities of commercial fission wastes are stored in temporary facilities at nuclear power stations waiting for a safe long-term storage site to be available.
This is because the feds messed up. By federal law the feds essentially forced the nuclear industry into a contract that has them pay a fee per kwh in exchange for permanent disposal of their waste. The feds haven't solved the problem, so they came up with their own solution - one that'll work for the next hundred or so years actually.
Nuclear wastes don't 'go away' and don't decompose, at least in normal historical timespans.
Yep, like mercury, arsenic, and lead will decompose over time.
They just stay around and accumulate, requiring ever-greater expenditures and effort to contain them. Intentionally planning to produce even more of these wastes than we are already producing is... insane. Windmills, bicycles, sweaters, walking, transit, oil, coal, gas, hydropower, and solar cells are all much better alternatives.
Let's see: Oil leads to pollution that kills tens of thousands each year, coal power spews more radioactive particles into the air than nuclear power produces, windmills still use concrete and steel in job lots, are only effective in limited areas, solar cells are currently six times as expensive(and require nasty chemicals to produce), and the rest are conservation measures that can be enacted even with nuclear power.
Big, highly centralised power stations are expensive to construct (about 2 billion/reactor)
They're currently looking at 1.5 Billion, but oh well.
expensive to maintain (average $126 million per reactor per year)
Looks about right. Nuclear cost report I eyeball the chart on page 11 at around $120 per kw, or $120 million for a gigawatt plant.
Expensive compared to what? At 90% capacity factor and.05 per kwh, it'll sell $394 million of electricity. Enough to, in the first year, pay the $200 million of interest(@10%) for the loans to build the plant, and pay down the loan $68M.
Using a handy dandy student loan calculator(principals the same, I just used 'k' instead of 'm'), the loan would be paid off in 13 years and 10 months. If it ends up costing only 1.5B, we're down to 8 years and 3 months. 5 years 7 months quicker isn't bad.
have long construction lead times (10-12 years) and are expensive in fuel, particularly when waste disposal costs are factored in.
People figure that they have the construction lead times mostly solved. New plants are expected to take 5-6 years.
Refueling, about $40million for a gigawatt plant every 18-24 months, or.46 cents per kwh. It also says O&M at 1.26 cents per kwh. Totals, 1.72 cents per kwh, or 168 million for the year. Raises payoff to 21 yrs, 8 months. Still less than most houses. 11 years even for 1.5billion construction cost.
In the USA at least, nuclear plants have been paying uncle sam for years to take care of the waste, have ended up taking care of it themselves so far, and are still profitable.
In fully economically deregulated environments, nuclear power simply can't compete with other clean technologies. It may be suitable for a limited set of circumstances, but it's not a final answer that deserves trillions of dollars of commitment. We need to keep looking.
In fully economically deregulated environments, solar and wind would be slaughtered by nuclear.
Solar, even the more cost effective thermal designs: 11-13 cents a kwh. Hint: I pay less retail for my electricity. Common figures per watt of capacity is $6. Wind: Even if it's only $1/watt, it gets slaughtered by capacity factor - some farms are as low as 7%, most average 30% - meaning a gigawatt of wind turbines will only generate a third of the energy a nuclear plant of the same maximum capacity would. That raises capital construction costs for an equivalent generation of power to $3 Billion, a billion more than the nuclear plant - That's an extra $100 million in interest the first year. Just killed the fuel savings over a nuclear plant, didn't it? And wind farms aren't free from O&M costs either. Good locations are limited - a wind farm takes up more space than a nuclear plant, probably even if you only consider the footprint of the towers.
Note: I don't think orbital power's going to be a solution any time soon, but I had to respond.
You want to show me where the prototype exists to convert a very-high-powered laser beam to an electricity source
First, most proposals I've seen merely reflected and concentrated the sun. Second, the 'prototypes' would most likely be solar thermal plants, merely adjusted for receiving more energy.
We just don't have the launch capacity, keeping the mirror focused on the right spot would require the satellite to perform gymnastics that would tear one big enough to be useful to shreds. Coordinating multiple satellites is still too complicated, and our orbitals are too dirty, as they'd be too large to dodge like the ISS and shuttle currently do.
Only two real factors will bring about nukes...either the natural supply and price of coal will make us turn to other alternatives, or the natural progression of advancing technology will make nuke power cheaper. The second is far more likely. We're in no danger of running out of coal.
I tend to say that our increasing intolerance of pollution, requiring ever more stringent pollution control measures(even discounting CO2), combined with new less expensive nuclear technologies is the most likely cost.
I mean, they were trying to build a dozen or so 'clean coal' plants down in Texas - between the locals not wanting them and ever spiraling construction costs* due to increasing stringent pollution requirements, they've recently morphed into nuclear plants. I think it just reached the point that coal plants were going to be more expensive than nuclear - they couldn't even get cheaper loans because of all the CO2 concerns - who knows, carbon credits might come and the plants become uneconomical. Or you have to build them for CO2 sequestration, which increases costs again.
*Sounds a lot like what Nuclear power faced back when.
And they've been saying this for how long for oil? We haven't even put 1% of the effort into finding uranium supplies than we have oil.
Smart usage, like breeder reactors, would give us centuries more with our existing nuclear reactors. Heck, the energy density of nuclear power is such that with thorium reactors we could pull enough out of seawater for it to be an energy positive measure.
Any completely private venture to build a nuclear power plant is uneconomical as it takes decades before you can return the cost of investment.
They're currently shooting for $1k/kilowatt of capacity, but let's assume $2/kilowatt. 1kW*365*24*.9(capacity factor)= 7.9k kWh. Let's figure they can put 5 cents/kWh down on the loan, that's $394.2. A nuclear plant isn't going anywhere, it's a known technology. Still, lenders might be nervous*. Let's figure 8% interest. Punching the numbers into a calculator - I get about 6 years. Some power companies have figured they can reach payback quicker as they figure in that they can stop using a more expensive form of power such as natural gas.
*Anybody know where I could invest in a nuclear power bond fund? I don't have enough to be my own manager.
Putting them away from population centers wastes a lot of energy in the transmission lines and also gives people a false sense of security where they won't press for answers or safety. The Enrico Fermi reactor that melted would have contaminated the whole northeast corridor. Too many don't realize that and think setting them 50 or 100 miles away makes them safe. It doesn't.
This made me think of another point. Any such plant like this creates about 2 units of heat for every unit of electricity.
While you can't get this up to 100% obviously, you can collocate various industries that need heat - such as ethanol plants*. Heck, run steam pipes to various buildings to provide heat. Ammonia refrigeration using heat is a known technology, so it can even provide AC.
Even if you end up selling the heat ridiculously cheap prices - it's currently going up the evaporation cooling tower. Just like how a number of pollution products collected by scrubbers are actually valuable materials.
An ethanol plant getting cheap heat from a nuclear plant for it's processes would help lower the cost of the nuclear power(more money to pay off the building loan quicker) as well as lower the cost for the ethanol(cheaper to produce).
You're getting up to, at minimum, a large town to provide all the workers in the two(or more) plants, as well as all the support workers for them. People like doctors, teachers, waiters, accountants, police, etc...
Nationalise all the coal mines then shut them down. (Any which are still operating, by any rate.)
No need. And yes, there are quite a few operating.
Slap a large carbon tax on import coal for power plants
Actually, what I'd do is start charging increasing fees for any and all pollution, with no grandfathering. Coal is dirty enough without having to wave the global warming stick. Use the fees to subsidize replacement power, of which nuclear would be a large portion of it. Once the coal power stations are gone, the coal mines shut down.
This has the added advantage of driving the dirtiest plants out of business first.
Power generators which run on natural gas or oil, slap a carbon tax on those, too.
Oil suffers from some of the same pollution concerns that coal does, besides, with oil getting as expensive as it is, it's no longer economical. As for NG, it's an important part of our peak power for now. Tax it for it's pollution as well. Encourage off peak solutions to help level loads. Hydro can help as well.
# Hydro, well the enviromentalists hate hydro because it interfers with the social lives of fish, such as the snail darter so bust the dams. # Enviros also hate those wind generators, which kill wild fowl with their big blades, knock 'em down.
I'm a serious nukee, but I believe that newer models of wind generators don't have the bird kill rate many of the older, faster spinning ones do. New wind turbines don't spin fast enough to nail many birds. Most dams have wildlife management programs and diversions so species like salmon can still get upstream, so that's good.
The last battleground and current battle ground for decades, where to bury the waste from Nuclear Power. Nimbys are the log-jam there. Just find the place with the weakest resistance and bury it there.
Breeder reactors - sure they cost a little more, but 20X the power from a given amount of fuel, and the ability to burn current waste as fuel is a bonus. Benefits: not only are you using somewhere between 95 and 99% less fuel, meaning that much less waste, the waste is composed of shorter halflife materials - it's even more radioactive at first, but dies quicker. It'll reach ore ambient in less than a thousand years.
There's hardly anyone in North Dakota, so that state should be a push-over.
All you gotta do is promise good paying jobs and most ND people will flock to your banner, at least as far as a plant goes. I missed the proposal to dump waste here, which isn't really possible - our water table is too high.
Don't anybody even suggest raising rates to reduce consumption, that's anti-progress!
They're going to go up anyways, at least for a time. An operational coal plant is cheaper than building a new nuclear one, after all. Still, we'll reap some rewards - reduced pollution should drop medical costs for breathing and various other disorders. After that we just need to transfer to non-polluting vehicles of whatever stripe.
Adding DX10 capabilities to their engine makes their games slightly prettier for people who can already run it
While I deliberately installed XP on my newest system, I just did some searching for 'DX9 vs DX10'.
Except for Crysis, which they point out that the game developers turned off a number of DX9.0c features to emphasize the difference, it's a bunch of 'meh' at this time. 20fps penalty for differences you need to pour over stillframes to see, much less see while playing a game where you're concentrating on staying alive while killing your latest round of opponents.
While this may change in the future, indeed it probably will, it looks like Vista is another ME. It doesn't answer any pressing needs on behalf of either gamers or corporate users.
Microsoft would have probably been better off working on creating a 64bit operating system that's more compatible with 32bit versions.
Given the '3GB' limit on memory* in windows style 32bit systems, that's the barrier we're currently bumping against.
But it's going to be a while before decently programmed** software will benefit more from the additional memory available vs the performance hit by using 64bit pointers vs 32 bit.
Given the way the market looks to be heading, I wouldn't be surprised to see non-microsoft affiliated games require a 64bit OS before they require DX10. As for the microsoft affiliated games that require DX10 and therefore Vista - I didn't buy them.
*Sure, it can address 4GB, but various memory holes like the video card eat about a gig. **By all indications, not Vista
The only sticky point with something like that though, is making the out-of-game punishment equal to the out-of-game cost of the crime (which still exists, even if the "crime" is perpetrated in-game).
My point was that, as long as you aren't committing a 'real world' crime like hacking accounts or violating the TOS by exploiting bugs, if you're playing a MMRPG like 'Mob Wars 2175', While your avatar will be commiting many 'virtual' crimes that are part of the game - even when it's to the detriment of other players, stealing or destroying equipment, capturing territory, etc... It's all part of the game - not something to take to realworld justice systems. Going to court 'Waghh - they stole $100k of my in-game money' will garner a 'tough luck' - much like if the individual had lost the money in a legal poker game. It's a game. You lost. Tough luck.
You'd need to somehow restrict the real person behind the avatar from simply dumping their account and creating a new one to get around the punishment.
This would only be a problem in a 'in game' punishment system.
Being that I was picturing a cyberpunk universe, I was figuring on the ministry of justice being pretty corrupt and ineffectual. 'Justice' would max out around the same as getting killed(IE not much in a MMRPG). Worst case, you can't play that avatar for a couple days(as he's sitting in a prison cell or regrowing in a clone tank). You'd be interested in completing the requirements as reseting your avatar would result in, even if you're dead broke, losing all your skill increases.
Let's say a high level character goes on a spree killing* in a newbie area, killing dozens. He get's sentenced to the 'maximum' penalty of 150 years - or a week of realworld time(going by 1 year sentance = 1 hour realtime). Such a character would have much more than a week invested, so the player isn't likely to dump him.
IE the levels your character has already earned can do more to getting yourself set back up than starting out with $1k at level 1. Even butt naked a high level character would be able to wander into a mid level area and punch enemies to death. This gets him equipment he wouldn't get for a month starting from level 1, then he wanders into a higher level area and, balancing his 'sucky' equipment against higher than normal levels for the area, gets better stuff. Rinse and repeat until he's got 'good' equipment again.
Unless, I suppose, wealth was easily regained, and getting robbed was all part of the ebb and flow of the game.
That was my idea. I'd make it difficult for somebody to lose everything(both the thief facing justice and the victim when the stolen goods aren't recovered), to the point that reseting, on average, wouldn't be worth it. Unless you managed to piss off a clan or vastly higher level character enough that they decide to spend the effort to knock you down and keep you down.
Heck, for victims - purchasing insurance should be a given!;)
Isn't it a bit like saying "The US Mint can print as many bills as they like!" ?
I'd tend to say that it is right along that saying - with the same caveat that that would mean that since there's more furniture in the market due to their replacing it, that the value of any given piece of furniture would decline(inflation).
Though I'll note that as a monetary system, it's a good thing that it's virtual. Furniture is up there with the huge stone rings used as money by some tribes in history for unportability..;)
At least the summary points out this is actually a case in which you have to essentially steal someone's password, and then steal things they've paid actual money for. This is one of the few rare ones which actually seems to amount of fraud.
Agreed, It might also be prosecutable under identity theft laws as the criminal is using stolen logins - representing himself as somebody else.
I'm still waiting for trials for virtual murder in RPGs as people kill of other player characters for fun
I'm pretty sure that 'virtual' crimes committed in cyberspace that is considered part of the experience, like player killing or even theft in a game that supports it as an 'official feature' will be considered part of the game - to be prosecuted by the laws and rules of the game.
Heck, that was one of the 'features' of a MMRPG I kinda dreamed up using a cyberpunk background - you could own property, build it up. As a consequence other PCs could raid your property and steal stuff. Getting caught would result in in-game consequences.
Hmm.. Normally I don't respond to ACs, but as you've been modded up.
You've missed my point. Most state constitutions leave the exact details on how to hold an election up to law. The state constitution only broadly specifies the requirements, like terms of service and such.
As such, step 1 is still very much in effect. The plaintiff still has to show a reasonable expectation that law/constitution is being violated.
So in many states, the court will look at the lawsuit and ask 'which law or provision of the constitution are you saying that electronic voting/counting violates?'. If they can't come up with a good answer, bye-bye lawsuit.
The votes are counted by hand at the end of the election.
One of my arguments is that a properly operating optical system is more accurate than hand counting. Besides, we don't have the volunteership necessary in many areas, or the finances, to conduct a 100% handcount.
If you're too stupid to work that out each party also hands out "how to vote" cards.
In most municipalities you don't even need that in the states. They're nice enough to mark (D) or (R) next to all the names. Of course, I'm also of the opinion that if you're too stupid(or mad) to mark the form correctly, it's correctly a spoiled ballet and shouldn't count. After all, I'm talking about a system used in schools for various tests.
We simply write numbers 1-whatever indicating our preferences.
What about people like my grandfather? He has a disorder where his hands shake uncontrollably. Your average person is going to have a difficult time telling the difference between a 1 and a 2, much less something like a 1 and a 7.
Look - I'm advocating using pen and paper for the most part - with electronic 'voting' machines being used by the disabled to help fill out the ballot.
We might also be getting distracted a bit - but at least in the USA, your typical presidential election also has you voting for your representative, a 50-50 of voting for a senator, in addition to state level elections like governor, local representatives, even city mayor, school board, judges, multiple propositions, etc...
Last election I had over a hundred items to vote on - that's part of the reason I find electronic counting, properly audited, to be more accurate and cheaper than hand counting.
hmmm.. interesting. Another similar take: a candidate has to be selected by more than 50% of the *eligible voters*. That means the candidate actually represents the majority of the electorate instead of the plurality of voters. Big difference. Of course you'd have to get people to actually vote in that case.
The problem with this would be that you'd end up with chaos far too often as nobody can pull in enough voters for it to matter. Unless you want to make voting mandatory.
A majority of those motivated enough to haul themselves into a polling place is sufficient, though I agree on some sort of instant run-off system.
although depending on their metabolism they may see the production of hydrogen as inefficient way of reproducing themselves and switch to a different by-product that works faster
That's indeed part of the problem from what I've heard for using bacteria to produce stuff.
Likely any home user would have to 'scrub' his system every so often as non-hydrogen producing bacteria start emerging and taking over. Hopefully the fix would be equivalent as opening a yeast packet for making bread is today.
Still, I don't see home fuel production spreading much further than it has today. It's always going to be a niche market - most people just aren't going to want to go through the hassle, no matter how simple you make it. Plugging in at night is about as far as I'll give them.
Naturally many of the poorer households had little computer experience, and took longer than expected (surprised?) to vote, thus preventing many of the poorer(Democratic) voters from voting.
I thought it was that the richer republican communities had the machines, and thus were able to vote easily and quickly, while poorer counties still had the old machines, resulting in higher percentages of spoiled votes? Still, there was an unacceptable amount of questions for a system that can't be readily audited after the fact. Even a mechanical polling station can be tested/inspected for physical jiggering after an election if questions come up.
No Sir - I do not trust e-voting machine, unless the source is open code, and would print out an easily (machine+human)countable ticket+receipt showing for whom the vote was cast.
No receipts showing who was voted for. That's the path to vote purchasing and intimidation. There should be no way to prove who somebody voted for when he or she exits the polling station.
Paper ballots, of a type where physical wear will not potentially change the vote, is a much better idea.
Chads can be ripped loose through pure paper to paper rubbing. A pen mark is harder to fake or change, especially if you don't allow pens into the counting areas.
Slashdot Mirror
Well duh...
But if you noticed what I was proposing, we're talking 'magnifying glass' levels of increase, over an area measured in acres.
Not exactly a 1 meter diameter orbital death ray.
Don't you think that they would have already done that? We're limited though because of the temperature differential. Efficiency would be great if we had an absolute zero sinkhole to dump the heat into, but we don't.
There's new reactors that can get 44% efficiency, they'd operate around 900C. Current light water reactors are 350C and get between 30-36% efficiency(there's a lot of factors in this, like whether they're using cooling towers).
Source
If we can get high temperature reactors good enough, that'll reduce fuel costs, probably be fairly neutral on O&M and construction - more expensive reactor components, fewer cooling components needed. More expensive reactor maintenance, reduced cooling maintenance.
Unless the increases costs in corn prices make it to prohibitive to compete with regular gasoline.
You got it right here. NG/Coal is cheaper to heat with than corn.
Corn has an enormous amount of energy in it. When I was a kid i saw a Plume of corn husks/dust catch a spark and take the top off a corn silo that was about half full. the resulting fire burned for about 3 days and the fire department could only keep it from spreading. That has been a while ago, they probable have ways of putting it out now.
Not really.
Of course pepsin could probably turn soybeans into something with an even higher sugar content that might make the methenol production even more efficient.
We're talking about ethanol production, a much less toxic substance than methenol.
Its not that simple - often these calculations do not factor things like security (which is something specific to nuclear power) and the cost of disposal, which is not a immediate cost.
Already factored into O&M costs. And no longer unique to nuclear plants - even coal and NG plants have to have security today, and security is pretty tight around oil refineries.
As well you have dismantling costs which need to be recovered before the end of the power plant's life (which are around 300 million for a normal plant).
Becomes not a big deal when you figure in the 40 year lifespan of the plant, and even less of a deal when you turn around and extend the life of the plant to 60 or even 80 years.
On top of that the cost of nuclear fuel is increasing - around 45% of current supply comes from decommissioned Russian military materiel - once this runs out combined with the decreasing supply from other sources (check the wiki article) and increased consumption around the world will push the price even higher.
Same deal as with oil - as price increases, providing supplies will become profitable again, exploration and exploitation will resume and the costs will be controlled. Worst case we actually start recycling our fuel waste into more fuel. That'll extend the effectiveness of any given amount of mining around 20X.
Every little bit of clothing etc that gets used becomes waste
Not at a nuclear power plant. If clothing becomes contaminated there's a HUGE problem. What you're probably thinking is medical waste - which today tends to dwarf nuclear plant's in the production of low level nuclear waste.
and once you shut a nuke station down you have a huge chunk of waste on your hands.
How often do we actually have to shut one down? By the looks of it, some plants are going to be operating for more than 60 years. They're practically the B-52s of the power world. Most of the plant can be recycled - the designers were careful to limit the sections exposed to radiation. You have the containment structure and that's about it.
By comparison, with any other generation technology you can just call in the scrap iron merchants etc and recycle it. Then of course there's handling the actual nuke waste too.
As we all keep saying, that stuff's actually useful. Reprocess and reuse. The remainder decays faster and isn't an issue for geological time periods.
The mining/extraction is a big problem too since you're dealing with pretty nasty stuff. Coal mining is no walk in the park, but uranium mining is a lot worse.
Sure, per pound of uranium ore and pound of coal, uranium is worse. Still, the ratios are so skewed that a coal plant in the first year of operation will pollute more than a nuclear plant will in it's lifetime. Even figuring in the occasional Chernobyl.
Most environmentalists supporting the Nuclear option do so only because it is the lesser of two evils
Lacking a suitable replacement that can truly compete at this time, I'd support building nuclear plants as at least a stopgap measure - to cease the pollution caused by the worst of the coal plants, for example.
To expand a bit - the government is looking at type approval - rather than each power plant being unique and costing $2-3k per kilowatt because of it, they're looking at the first plant of a type costing that, and each subsequent one costing only $1k per kilowatt.
Regulatory costs are literally doubling the price of reactors. That's crazy.
As a bonus, because they're all the same design, you can crosscheck with discovered issues, much like with the FAA does with planes. A problem is discovered on one 747, they check all the 747s for that problem. So costs would be less in the future(catching problems before they become too big).
Large quantities of long-lived radioactive isotopes are produced as waste and even after 60 years we still don't have any place to put them.
... insane. Windmills, bicycles, sweaters, walking, transit, oil, coal, gas, hydropower, and solar cells are all much better alternatives.
Don't really need to put them anywhere, actually. A year's worth of radioactive fuel/waste for a gigawatt reactor is about a railcar's worth. Besides, it's still about 95% fuel, so when the price of uranium rises a bit more, we can take our decades old waste that's sitting in above ground casks and recycle it. Separate out the short lived waste isotopes, put the long lived usable fuel isotopes back in the reactor. You use the old stuff because while it's still radioactive, it's much less so than stuff fresh out of the reactor, so it's easier and cheaper to handle.
Result: 20x more power from the same amount of fuel. 5% of the waste needing medium term(much less than a thousand years) storage.
(Washington, South Carolina, Nevada, Tennessee) are contaminated with historical fission wastes that are poorly contained and could contaminate much larger areas as corrosion, wind, and rain allow them to spread.
I've looked at many of these concerns, and I've found pretty much one constant: It's all nuclear weapons production waste, not commercial power waste. Bad on us and our nuclear weapon production program during the cold war. It was dirty as all heck.
Large quantities of commercial fission wastes are stored in temporary facilities at nuclear power stations waiting for a safe long-term storage site to be available.
This is because the feds messed up. By federal law the feds essentially forced the nuclear industry into a contract that has them pay a fee per kwh in exchange for permanent disposal of their waste. The feds haven't solved the problem, so they came up with their own solution - one that'll work for the next hundred or so years actually.
Nuclear wastes don't 'go away' and don't decompose, at least in normal historical timespans.
Yep, like mercury, arsenic, and lead will decompose over time.
They just stay around and accumulate, requiring ever-greater expenditures and effort to contain them. Intentionally planning to produce even more of these wastes than we are already producing is
Let's see: Oil leads to pollution that kills tens of thousands each year, coal power spews more radioactive particles into the air than nuclear power produces, windmills still use concrete and steel in job lots, are only effective in limited areas, solar cells are currently six times as expensive(and require nasty chemicals to produce), and the rest are conservation measures that can be enacted even with nuclear power.
Big, highly centralised power stations are expensive to construct (about 2 billion/reactor)
.05 per kwh, it'll sell $394 million of electricity. Enough to, in the first year, pay the $200 million of interest(@10%) for the loans to build the plant, and pay down the loan $68M.
.46 cents per kwh. It also says O&M at 1.26 cents per kwh. Totals, 1.72 cents per kwh, or 168 million for the year. Raises payoff to 21 yrs, 8 months. Still less than most houses. 11 years even for 1.5billion construction cost.
They're currently looking at 1.5 Billion, but oh well.
expensive to maintain (average $126 million per reactor per year)
Looks about right. Nuclear cost report I eyeball the chart on page 11 at around $120 per kw, or $120 million for a gigawatt plant.
Expensive compared to what? At 90% capacity factor and
Using a handy dandy student loan calculator(principals the same, I just used 'k' instead of 'm'), the loan would be paid off in 13 years and 10 months. If it ends up costing only 1.5B, we're down to 8 years and 3 months. 5 years 7 months quicker isn't bad.
have long construction lead times (10-12 years) and are expensive in fuel, particularly when waste disposal costs are factored in.
People figure that they have the construction lead times mostly solved. New plants are expected to take 5-6 years.
Refueling, about $40million for a gigawatt plant every 18-24 months, or
In the USA at least, nuclear plants have been paying uncle sam for years to take care of the waste, have ended up taking care of it themselves so far, and are still profitable.
In fully economically deregulated environments, nuclear power simply can't compete with other clean technologies. It may be suitable for a limited set of circumstances, but it's not a final answer that deserves trillions of dollars of commitment. We need to keep looking.
In fully economically deregulated environments, solar and wind would be slaughtered by nuclear.
Solar, even the more cost effective thermal designs: 11-13 cents a kwh. Hint: I pay less retail for my electricity. Common figures per watt of capacity is $6.
Wind: Even if it's only $1/watt, it gets slaughtered by capacity factor - some farms are as low as 7%, most average 30% - meaning a gigawatt of wind turbines will only generate a third of the energy a nuclear plant of the same maximum capacity would. That raises capital construction costs for an equivalent generation of power to $3 Billion, a billion more than the nuclear plant - That's an extra $100 million in interest the first year. Just killed the fuel savings over a nuclear plant, didn't it? And wind farms aren't free from O&M costs either. Good locations are limited - a wind farm takes up more space than a nuclear plant, probably even if you only consider the footprint of the towers.
Note: I don't think orbital power's going to be a solution any time soon, but I had to respond.
You want to show me where the prototype exists to convert a very-high-powered laser beam to an electricity source
First, most proposals I've seen merely reflected and concentrated the sun.
Second, the 'prototypes' would most likely be solar thermal plants, merely adjusted for receiving more energy.
We just don't have the launch capacity, keeping the mirror focused on the right spot would require the satellite to perform gymnastics that would tear one big enough to be useful to shreds. Coordinating multiple satellites is still too complicated, and our orbitals are too dirty, as they'd be too large to dodge like the ISS and shuttle currently do.
Only two real factors will bring about nukes...either the natural supply and price of coal will make us turn to other alternatives, or the natural progression of advancing technology will make nuke power cheaper. The second is far more likely. We're in no danger of running out of coal.
I tend to say that our increasing intolerance of pollution, requiring ever more stringent pollution control measures(even discounting CO2), combined with new less expensive nuclear technologies is the most likely cost.
I mean, they were trying to build a dozen or so 'clean coal' plants down in Texas - between the locals not wanting them and ever spiraling construction costs* due to increasing stringent pollution requirements, they've recently morphed into nuclear plants. I think it just reached the point that coal plants were going to be more expensive than nuclear - they couldn't even get cheaper loans because of all the CO2 concerns - who knows, carbon credits might come and the plants become uneconomical. Or you have to build them for CO2 sequestration, which increases costs again.
*Sounds a lot like what Nuclear power faced back when.
And they've been saying this for how long for oil? We haven't even put 1% of the effort into finding uranium supplies than we have oil.
Smart usage, like breeder reactors, would give us centuries more with our existing nuclear reactors. Heck, the energy density of nuclear power is such that with thorium reactors we could pull enough out of seawater for it to be an energy positive measure.
Any completely private venture to build a nuclear power plant is uneconomical as it takes decades before you can return the cost of investment.
They're currently shooting for $1k/kilowatt of capacity, but let's assume $2/kilowatt. 1kW*365*24*.9(capacity factor)= 7.9k kWh. Let's figure they can put 5 cents/kWh down on the loan, that's $394.2. A nuclear plant isn't going anywhere, it's a known technology. Still, lenders might be nervous*. Let's figure 8% interest. Punching the numbers into a calculator - I get about 6 years. Some power companies have figured they can reach payback quicker as they figure in that they can stop using a more expensive form of power such as natural gas.
*Anybody know where I could invest in a nuclear power bond fund? I don't have enough to be my own manager.
Putting them away from population centers wastes a lot of energy in the transmission lines and also gives people a false sense of security where they won't press for answers or safety. The Enrico Fermi reactor that melted would have contaminated the whole northeast corridor. Too many don't realize that and think setting them 50 or 100 miles away makes them safe. It doesn't.
This made me think of another point. Any such plant like this creates about 2 units of heat for every unit of electricity.
While you can't get this up to 100% obviously, you can collocate various industries that need heat - such as ethanol plants*. Heck, run steam pipes to various buildings to provide heat. Ammonia refrigeration using heat is a known technology, so it can even provide AC.
Even if you end up selling the heat ridiculously cheap prices - it's currently going up the evaporation cooling tower. Just like how a number of pollution products collected by scrubbers are actually valuable materials.
An ethanol plant getting cheap heat from a nuclear plant for it's processes would help lower the cost of the nuclear power(more money to pay off the building loan quicker) as well as lower the cost for the ethanol(cheaper to produce).
You're getting up to, at minimum, a large town to provide all the workers in the two(or more) plants, as well as all the support workers for them. People like doctors, teachers, waiters, accountants, police, etc...
*Many of which are currently coal or gas fired.
Nationalise all the coal mines then shut them down. (Any which are still operating, by any rate.)
No need. And yes, there are quite a few operating.
Slap a large carbon tax on import coal for power plants
Actually, what I'd do is start charging increasing fees for any and all pollution, with no grandfathering. Coal is dirty enough without having to wave the global warming stick. Use the fees to subsidize replacement power, of which nuclear would be a large portion of it. Once the coal power stations are gone, the coal mines shut down.
This has the added advantage of driving the dirtiest plants out of business first.
Power generators which run on natural gas or oil, slap a carbon tax on those, too.
Oil suffers from some of the same pollution concerns that coal does, besides, with oil getting as expensive as it is, it's no longer economical. As for NG, it's an important part of our peak power for now. Tax it for it's pollution as well. Encourage off peak solutions to help level loads. Hydro can help as well.
# Hydro, well the enviromentalists hate hydro because it interfers with the social lives of fish, such as the snail darter so bust the dams.
# Enviros also hate those wind generators, which kill wild fowl with their big blades, knock 'em down.
I'm a serious nukee, but I believe that newer models of wind generators don't have the bird kill rate many of the older, faster spinning ones do. New wind turbines don't spin fast enough to nail many birds. Most dams have wildlife management programs and diversions so species like salmon can still get upstream, so that's good.
The last battleground and current battle ground for decades, where to bury the waste from Nuclear Power. Nimbys are the log-jam there. Just find the place with the weakest resistance and bury it there.
Breeder reactors - sure they cost a little more, but 20X the power from a given amount of fuel, and the ability to burn current waste as fuel is a bonus. Benefits: not only are you using somewhere between 95 and 99% less fuel, meaning that much less waste, the waste is composed of shorter halflife materials - it's even more radioactive at first, but dies quicker. It'll reach ore ambient in less than a thousand years.
There's hardly anyone in North Dakota, so that state should be a push-over.
All you gotta do is promise good paying jobs and most ND people will flock to your banner, at least as far as a plant goes. I missed the proposal to dump waste here, which isn't really possible - our water table is too high.
Don't anybody even suggest raising rates to reduce consumption, that's anti-progress!
They're going to go up anyways, at least for a time. An operational coal plant is cheaper than building a new nuclear one, after all. Still, we'll reap some rewards - reduced pollution should drop medical costs for breathing and various other disorders. After that we just need to transfer to non-polluting vehicles of whatever stripe.
Adding DX10 capabilities to their engine makes their games slightly prettier for people who can already run it
While I deliberately installed XP on my newest system, I just did some searching for 'DX9 vs DX10'.
Except for Crysis, which they point out that the game developers turned off a number of DX9.0c features to emphasize the difference, it's a bunch of 'meh' at this time. 20fps penalty for differences you need to pour over stillframes to see, much less see while playing a game where you're concentrating on staying alive while killing your latest round of opponents.
While this may change in the future, indeed it probably will, it looks like Vista is another ME. It doesn't answer any pressing needs on behalf of either gamers or corporate users.
Microsoft would have probably been better off working on creating a 64bit operating system that's more compatible with 32bit versions.
Given the '3GB' limit on memory* in windows style 32bit systems, that's the barrier we're currently bumping against.
But it's going to be a while before decently programmed** software will benefit more from the additional memory available vs the performance hit by using 64bit pointers vs 32 bit.
Given the way the market looks to be heading, I wouldn't be surprised to see non-microsoft affiliated games require a 64bit OS before they require DX10. As for the microsoft affiliated games that require DX10 and therefore Vista - I didn't buy them.
*Sure, it can address 4GB, but various memory holes like the video card eat about a gig.
**By all indications, not Vista
The only sticky point with something like that though, is making the out-of-game punishment equal to the out-of-game cost of the crime (which still exists, even if the "crime" is perpetrated in-game).
;)
;)
My point was that, as long as you aren't committing a 'real world' crime like hacking accounts or violating the TOS by exploiting bugs, if you're playing a MMRPG like 'Mob Wars 2175', While your avatar will be commiting many 'virtual' crimes that are part of the game - even when it's to the detriment of other players, stealing or destroying equipment, capturing territory, etc... It's all part of the game - not something to take to realworld justice systems. Going to court 'Waghh - they stole $100k of my in-game money' will garner a 'tough luck' - much like if the individual had lost the money in a legal poker game. It's a game. You lost. Tough luck.
You'd need to somehow restrict the real person behind the avatar from simply dumping their account and creating a new one to get around the punishment.
This would only be a problem in a 'in game' punishment system.
Being that I was picturing a cyberpunk universe, I was figuring on the ministry of justice being pretty corrupt and ineffectual. 'Justice' would max out around the same as getting killed(IE not much in a MMRPG). Worst case, you can't play that avatar for a couple days(as he's sitting in a prison cell or regrowing in a clone tank). You'd be interested in completing the requirements as reseting your avatar would result in, even if you're dead broke, losing all your skill increases.
Let's say a high level character goes on a spree killing* in a newbie area, killing dozens. He get's sentenced to the 'maximum' penalty of 150 years - or a week of realworld time(going by 1 year sentance = 1 hour realtime). Such a character would have much more than a week invested, so the player isn't likely to dump him.
IE the levels your character has already earned can do more to getting yourself set back up than starting out with $1k at level 1. Even butt naked a high level character would be able to wander into a mid level area and punch enemies to death. This gets him equipment he wouldn't get for a month starting from level 1, then he wanders into a higher level area and, balancing his 'sucky' equipment against higher than normal levels for the area, gets better stuff. Rinse and repeat until he's got 'good' equipment again.
Unless, I suppose, wealth was easily regained, and getting robbed was all part of the ebb and flow of the game.
That was my idea. I'd make it difficult for somebody to lose everything(both the thief facing justice and the victim when the stolen goods aren't recovered), to the point that reseting, on average, wouldn't be worth it. Unless you managed to piss off a clan or vastly higher level character enough that they decide to spend the effort to knock you down and keep you down.
Heck, for victims - purchasing insurance should be a given!
*Thank heavens it's virtual
Isn't it a bit like saying "The US Mint can print as many bills as they like!" ?
;)
I'd tend to say that it is right along that saying - with the same caveat that that would mean that since there's more furniture in the market due to their replacing it, that the value of any given piece of furniture would decline(inflation).
Though I'll note that as a monetary system, it's a good thing that it's virtual. Furniture is up there with the huge stone rings used as money by some tribes in history for unportability..
At least the summary points out this is actually a case in which you have to essentially steal someone's password, and then steal things they've paid actual money for. This is one of the few rare ones which actually seems to amount of fraud.
Agreed, It might also be prosecutable under identity theft laws as the criminal is using stolen logins - representing himself as somebody else.
I'm still waiting for trials for virtual murder in RPGs as people kill of other player characters for fun
I'm pretty sure that 'virtual' crimes committed in cyberspace that is considered part of the experience, like player killing or even theft in a game that supports it as an 'official feature' will be considered part of the game - to be prosecuted by the laws and rules of the game.
Heck, that was one of the 'features' of a MMRPG I kinda dreamed up using a cyberpunk background - you could own property, build it up. As a consequence other PCs could raid your property and steal stuff. Getting caught would result in in-game consequences.
Hmm.. Normally I don't respond to ACs, but as you've been modded up.
You've missed my point. Most state constitutions leave the exact details on how to hold an election up to law. The state constitution only broadly specifies the requirements, like terms of service and such.
As such, step 1 is still very much in effect. The plaintiff still has to show a reasonable expectation that law/constitution is being violated.
So in many states, the court will look at the lawsuit and ask 'which law or provision of the constitution are you saying that electronic voting/counting violates?'. If they can't come up with a good answer, bye-bye lawsuit.
The votes are counted by hand at the end of the election.
One of my arguments is that a properly operating optical system is more accurate than hand counting. Besides, we don't have the volunteership necessary in many areas, or the finances, to conduct a 100% handcount.
If you're too stupid to work that out each party also hands out "how to vote" cards.
In most municipalities you don't even need that in the states. They're nice enough to mark (D) or (R) next to all the names.
Of course, I'm also of the opinion that if you're too stupid(or mad) to mark the form correctly, it's correctly a spoiled ballet and shouldn't count. After all, I'm talking about a system used in schools for various tests.
We simply write numbers 1-whatever indicating our preferences.
What about people like my grandfather? He has a disorder where his hands shake uncontrollably. Your average person is going to have a difficult time telling the difference between a 1 and a 2, much less something like a 1 and a 7.
Look - I'm advocating using pen and paper for the most part - with electronic 'voting' machines being used by the disabled to help fill out the ballot.
We might also be getting distracted a bit - but at least in the USA, your typical presidential election also has you voting for your representative, a 50-50 of voting for a senator, in addition to state level elections like governor, local representatives, even city mayor, school board, judges, multiple propositions, etc...
Last election I had over a hundred items to vote on - that's part of the reason I find electronic counting, properly audited, to be more accurate and cheaper than hand counting.
hmmm.. interesting. Another similar take: a candidate has to be selected by more than 50% of the *eligible voters*. That means the candidate actually represents the majority of the electorate instead of the plurality of voters. Big difference. Of course you'd have to get people to actually vote in that case.
The problem with this would be that you'd end up with chaos far too often as nobody can pull in enough voters for it to matter. Unless you want to make voting mandatory.
A majority of those motivated enough to haul themselves into a polling place is sufficient, though I agree on some sort of instant run-off system.
although depending on their metabolism they may see the production of hydrogen as inefficient way of reproducing themselves and switch to a different by-product that works faster
That's indeed part of the problem from what I've heard for using bacteria to produce stuff.
Likely any home user would have to 'scrub' his system every so often as non-hydrogen producing bacteria start emerging and taking over. Hopefully the fix would be equivalent as opening a yeast packet for making bread is today.
Still, I don't see home fuel production spreading much further than it has today. It's always going to be a niche market - most people just aren't going to want to go through the hassle, no matter how simple you make it. Plugging in at night is about as far as I'll give them.
One of my intents, unstated here, would be to save money by using the school system's scanners for at least some of the counting.
They're normally 'fill in the bubble' type machines, so the ballets would have to conform.
Besides, these instructions normally only take up a 1x.5" box. And anybody who's gone to school in the past 30 years should be familiar with them.
Heck, my grandmother's familiar with them.
Hmm... Do you think I trust the things?
Naturally many of the poorer households had little computer experience, and took longer than expected (surprised?) to vote, thus preventing many of the poorer(Democratic) voters from voting.
I thought it was that the richer republican communities had the machines, and thus were able to vote easily and quickly, while poorer counties still had the old machines, resulting in higher percentages of spoiled votes? Still, there was an unacceptable amount of questions for a system that can't be readily audited after the fact. Even a mechanical polling station can be tested/inspected for physical jiggering after an election if questions come up.
No Sir - I do not trust e-voting machine, unless the source is open code, and would print out an easily (machine+human)countable ticket+receipt showing for whom the vote was cast.
No receipts showing who was voted for. That's the path to vote purchasing and intimidation. There should be no way to prove who somebody voted for when he or she exits the polling station.
Paper ballots, of a type where physical wear will not potentially change the vote, is a much better idea.
Chads can be ripped loose through pure paper to paper rubbing. A pen mark is harder to fake or change, especially if you don't allow pens into the counting areas.