And this is why OPEC, specifically the Saudis, try to keep oil prices down. As long as oil is cheap, we won't find alternatives, and keep sending money into their pockets.
Me, I'd like to try what some countries & large companies did with microsft. Threaten to switch away from them(fund alternative research), forcing them to drop prices.
Realistically speaking, even if the USA went completely alternative, there'd still be a huge oil market consisting of the rest of the world.
Actually, from the studies I've read, school funding actually has no to negative correlation with how well the school does. Believe it or not, you don't often need the latest textbook to teach a subject. A math textbook from the '60s is as good today as it was back then. They usually contain harder problems, too.
What really affects the quality of education? Parental involvement.
There are far, far more students that *need* grants than there are grants to get.
I haven't seen it. I've seen scholarships go unfilled because of lack of applications. Then you go and say Did you actually mean public colleges? These are mostly run by the town/cities, and are free or very close to it.
I'm in a track where I get a two year degree. Then I can apply those credits straight to a four year degree. Many of the courses transfer. Prove you can handle the two year college, do well, and you'll be able to get grants. Or at least loans.
"Clean" does not apply to anything you need to take a huge amount of care to contain Clean isn't a word you can really apply to any industrial process anyway In my definition, as long as you contain any dangerous waste, it's not an issue, other than the fact that the cost ends up in the expense column.
You are comparing apples and aardvarks - it's a small purpose built (solar)plant in a very remote area designed to be as maintainance free as possible. photovolatic cells are the expensive way to go Except that you're wrong on a couple points: a: It's a 200Megawatt plant, not a small installation. b: The plant features not one photovoltaic cell. It's a mirror-tower type that uses mirrors to heat water to steam in a tower, which is then run through a conventional steam turbine. At about $400 million for 200MW, it runs about twice as expensive as a PBMR plant, and in a high-sun location, at that.
You don't build nuclear plants to save money, you do it for other reasons, but hopefully pebble bed will change all of that. I hope they do turn out well. But we still have reactor designs generations better than the ones used in the USA at the moment. Simpler, Safer, cheaper, more fuel efficient...
How about this, minus the political regulations, when you consider wind, solar, hydro, as well as nuclear, nuclear makes sense if you don't want to be burning hydrocarbons?
Personal rail would be great. It's not going to happen anytime soon, especially since I'm sure that different cities will impliment incompatible systems. I wonder how well it would work between cities, for longer distances. If it can reach say, ~100 mph even if it takes a special car, it'd slaughter cars, trains, and seriously hurt planes on the shorter hauls. At least as long as planes have as many delays as they do. You figure an hour to the airport, one hour loading delay, an hour flight, an hour wait for the transfer, another hour flight. About five hours to start! Anything less than ~500 miles, this would be faster.
You JUST looked at the economics of it? Ultimatly, when looking at economic items like power generation, isn't that the only way that makes sense?
Combining energy sources aways makes sence! Your far to used to power just being there when you turn on the switch. However it takes time for a power station to be switched on. Nuke plants have a very slow power up cycle and almost all cannot be run 24/7 (roll on pebble bed). Sure, the ones currently in use have to shut down for about 40 days every 2 years for refueling. PBMR won't have this, and some of the newer designs can also refuel online. Nevertheless, once you have enough stations, you just have some extra capacity to deal with planned and unplanned outages. Yes, nuclear plants start slow. But you can adjust their output much more quickly when started up. So you don't just turn them off, you run them at lower power until demand hits.
Think of the wasted energy think of the wasted resorces Huh? So nuclear has to be shut down occasionally. A solar plant doesn't work for about half the day, wind has outages, the turbines still have to be maintained.
Now if we combine that with a other sources, pump storage. Generates no "new" power gives back 1/3 of the power used to pump the water up (over night) limited capacity very fast to turn on, hydrogen is the same, its better to burn fuel ONE time not TWICE. Sure is. Though why you'd bother to do this with nuclear plants, which generate power continuously, I don't know. If solar cost less, it would compliment nicely. Put wind in enough places you'd reduce the backup costs (wind should be blowing somewhere on average). Keep a few gas plants for spikes, and use the sheer size of the grid to keep those minor & expected (law of averages).
Its all about an intergated power policy, use each fuel for this best. Nuke plants would be great for the "average" load but sucks for peek and all your "economics" will go out the window with 100% nuke. I don't think I suggested 100% nuke. I think that a baseline of nuke (with your 10% excess to deal with unexpected occurances), supplimented with hydro, solar, and wind would be good. Maybe some emergency generation capacity with gas (cheap to build, expensive to run). But I really dislike coal. Heck, I disagree with the Kyoto protocols, but given my way, I'd be meeting the requirements just by replacing the CO2 producers with nuclear generators.
Get with the major power consumers, and give them discounts to let the power companies turn non-critical items off during power spikes. Heck, my grandmother gets a cut on her electric bills because she let them install a switch that lets them turn off the water heater and pool pump at times.
Ok, do you see why I "fall back to defending nuclear"?
As a consumer I want clean & cheap power. I've looked up how much it's costing the australians to build their solar plant, I've looked up how much it's costing to build the PBMR. I've spent some time trying to sort between the political, research (it is a first), and some allegations of corruption. I see China planing to build something like a hundred of them.
Yes, nuclear plants are run at full power all the time. But because of the nature of the fuel, smart companies will turn down other plants more than nuclear ones. For example, gas plants are very cheap to build, but the fuel costs you. So you shut down the gas plants first...
Solar thermal air-conditioning looks like it will be used soon in large installions which will cut the power consumption. Why use solar generated power to run heating elements to expand the gas on a hot day when you can use solar on the hot side of the cycle?
Well, for one your standard electric air conditioner doesn't use heating elements Solar thermal air-conditioning looks like neat technology! Why hasn't there been a slashdot article on this? Sure, it's expensive, can't cool very well compared to traditional AC, but it can help. It maybe doesn't help that it's being touted by a gas comany, which mostly touts it for use when electricity is expensive, when you're making steam anyways, or to flatten your usage during 'peak' hours (when electric companies nail big users with bigger rates). However, by combining it with solar, you don't have to use gas. I guess it comes down to the guys with calculators and charts for considering when it's worth it to install it. There's plenty of charts in the pdf file. At a cost three times that of a good quality electric AC system, electricity needs to be pretty expensive, no? Solar AC: $9,000/ton Traditional AC: $7,000/3 tons.(SEER 19.2, just about the best available).
Definitely, but I think the "one true power" ethos from anyone is silly. Like I said, I'd like to see the green powers used where economical. It's just that they aren't economical enough to beat nuclear all the time.
"yes the capital cost is very high, but the fuel is virtaully free" The reason that Nuclear plants are so expensive to build is that the government often forced construction to be halted on nothing more than a letter complaining "something could happen", until a study could be done disproving the letter, just in time for the next letter to show up.
it is the most complicated steam engine on earth Actually, they're not all that complicated in the newer designs. That's why, after I've shut down the coal plants, I'd be looking at updating/replacing the aging light water reactors.
All of those rare earth materials used in nuclear power compents are not common and cost money. Sure, Uranium's expensive. But you don't need much of it. It's got something like 20,000 times the power density of coal. Even more if you take steps to 'burn' it better.
Wind generators in comparison are incredibly simple. Hydro is incredibly simple. But they're also relatively low-density. You need a lot of wind generators to equal a full size nuke plant, and the construction cost adds up. And you don't get out of maintenance either. Those blades don't last forever.
but there has NEVER been a wind/hydro/tidal plant that has cost as much as a producing nuclear power plant
And are these plants generally measered in the thousands of megawatts? Can they operate just about 24/7/365? I've had trouble finding out what an averale wind turbine runs, installed. The University of Chicago has determined that the cost per kilwatt of capacity for nuclear would run $1,200-$1,800. (Note: The "standard" 1000 megawatt plant would start at 1.2 billion). But in the end, once your economy of scale takes over, it would only cost 3.4 cents per kw/h. Versus 3.7 cents for non-backed up wind, or 5.4 cents with backup. Add 1.8 cents to go offshore. Hydro: Well, we're pretty much getting all that we can already get.
Doing research finds that Coal/Nuclear has a cost of about 2.3 cents kw/h. Wind is 3.7 cents a kw/h. Wind has quite a ways to go. Solar at least provides power when people run AC the most.
Nuclear plants are run at just about 100% load, all the time. For the other power sources, you'd need backup power. IE, you'd have to build two plants to provide the constant power 1 nuclear plant does.
That's using the old mining methods. Just like new technology is reducing the pollution from coal, new technology is being used to reduce the amount of tailings, safely isolate the tailings, and often put the tailings back in the mine where you got it from when you close it.
Umm, do you realize that the newest fighters(besides the still prototype F-22) the Air Force have were built in the early 80's? We need the new aircraft.
As far as helping the schools out. Why doesn't the state build more schools there? Why doesn't the city?
And my highschool had this problem due to poor planning by the city. But then they got on the ball and built more classrooms and schools. . Consider how many additional lower-income students could recieve full tuition to tier-one universities with another billion dollars
Why do they need to attend "Tier 1"? Are you talking about the Harvard/Yale type colleges, or the State University level ones? Besides, there are so many grants, scholarships, and loan programs out there that anybody can attend college already. They just have to take advantage of the oppertunities.
Well, to be honest, an awful lot of the military's budget is for education/training. The military is one of the largest sources of technical training. You join, they teach you a skill. They pay for college. The military paid me to train and learn for almost six months when I came in, and while not the shortest tech school, there were some that were far longer.
"Military funding" covers everything from base schools, military, housing, to bombers, trucks, research, fuel and bombs.
Besides, federal funding of education is limited. Most of those funds come from the state or lower level.
As far as putting it on an island, it's supposed to be the first commercial plant. IE, net positive energy, long running, so that they can sell the power from it. You stick it on an island you wouldn't be able to sell all the power.
Besides, a fusion plant doesn't have enough hydrogen at any one point to penetrate the containment.
And properly designed fission plants aren't that dangerous.
I have no problems with Solar, Wind, and tidal. Other than I've looked at the economics of it, and it seems that nuclear would be far cheaper to build, especially if you consider shutting down every hydrocarbon powered plant. Also, when deployed on that scale, all of the green power techs have enviromental effects. I can't say good or bad, but they'll have effects.
So many of the greenies are set against nuclear power being part of the solution that I fall back to defending nuclear power.
But when the paper/trees decay/burn, the carbon is mixed with the oxygen, making CO2 again. So trees are ultimatly carbon-neutral. Unless you bury the paper underground where it won't decay in a reasonable period of time. Studies have shown that conditions in modern landfills are very short on oxygen, so any decay must be anarobic, not producing CO2.
So by throwing your paper into a landfill, you interdict the carbon in it, and make the paper industry grow some more trees, removing more CO2 from the atmosphere.
Businesses want to make money. If "Green" energy becomes cheaper than the polluting stuff, they'll switch to it. There will be a lag because of the risk/capitol/inefficiency/regulation factors. In other words, the coal plant's won't shut down overnight.
Don't need to replace plastic. We can make plastic from organic wastes now. We're making plastic out of stuff like soy beans and corn stalks now. It's just that the stuff that we currently use from oil to make plastic was a waste product, so it's still incredably cheap.
True, but it doesn't eject all of that into the atmosphere. At least, not if something doesn't go horribly wrong.;-)
Some of the sources said that a gigawatt light water plant only produces 1 ton of high level radioactive waste a year. That takes up so little room that nuclear plants are able to store thirty years of waste onsite.
And actually, breeders do use Uranium, but one of the side products is Plutonium, which is also used as a fuel in the system, which helps to explain why they're so efficient. Also, you can burn plutonium in them, making them usefull for getting rid of nuclear bomb material.
Does personal electric rail really require new power sources? I can't see how transmission losses would lower power plant efficiency down below the inefficiency of current gasoline engines (perhaps down below diesel efficiencies...)
Not really, but I imagine that we'd need a few more (preferably clean) power plants if we started putting the pod system practically into people's garages.
I was mostly thinking of systems that would change the way we do business if power became uber-cheap. Ideas like hydroponic farms slipped my mind.
I like the rest of your idea. I don't particularly care for driving myself. It's fun sometimes, but during the north dakota wintertime, I'd love to be moving by a system that doesn't happily let you slide into various things...
For comparison, according to NCRP Reports No. 92 and No. 95, population exposure from operation of 1000-MWe nuclear and coal-fired power plants amounts to 490 person-rem/year for coal plants and 4.8 person-rem/year for nuclear plants. Thus, the population effective dose equivalent from coal plants is 100 times that from nuclear plants. For the complete nuclear fuel cycle, from mining to reactor operation to waste disposal, the radiation dose is cited as 136 person-rem/year; the equivalent dose for coal use, from mining to power plant operation to waste disposal, is not listed in this report and is probably unknown.
For a large number of coal samples, according to Environmental Protection Agency figures released in 1984, average values of uranium and thorium content have been determined to be 1.3 ppm and 3.2 ppm, respectively
And a 1,000 megawatt plant uses 4 million tons of coal a year, resulting in the release of 5.2 tons of Uranium and 12.8 tones of thorium.
A 1000 megawatt light water nuclear plant of the type used in the USA uses about 25 tons of uranium a year.
If you're willing to use breeder reactors and their ilk, you can actually get more power out the the uranium in the ash than you got burning the coal!
I have to agree with you. There are huge numbers of processes that given cheap enough electricity(power) will become economical rather than laboratory curios.
Desalination, processing of ocean water for minerals, various welding/forging processes. Personal electric rail would make even more sense.
How do you figure out what a business will do? Figure out, within the bounds of risk and human inefficiency, what will earn them the most money. If a new measure will repay itself, over say, ten years, it'll be deployed left and right. There are formulas for this. For example, even if you pay in cash, you have to figure in about 10% interest per year to get closer to the "true cost" as investing the money would make about 10%. So if you'd make more money investing in the market, the new measure doesn't make sense. That's true for solar panels in many areas.
My thoughts exactly. I know of places that have 1 server. Not 1 fileserver, 1 webserver, 1 email server... 1 Server. And it's for a business, and it's a workstation box. They don't care. They have <20 employees.
No one cares what prisoners do in prison, as long as they're locked away from the greater population for as long as possible.
But I do care. I don't think about it every day, but I do think about it. I've watched a history of prisons documentary. There are plenty of reform/rehab programs in most prisons. What happens is that certain classes of criminal are considered reformable, and some are not. You try to seperate the two.
And this reminds me of Abu Graib. I think that it's significant that the highest ranking soldier tried&convicted of abuse was a reservist who's civilian job was being a prison guard. I mean, come on! Why haven't I heard anything about a review of the guy's practices back home. A review of the prison's practices.
I was just raising the point that the vast majority of people on death row are in general pretty disadvantaged when it comes to intellect/money.
intellect->money intellect->more lawful?
It's like saying that because blacks have a higher percent on death row than the % of blacks are in the USA's general population. It's been documented that Blacks also commit a disportionate amount of the violent crime.
If anything, the fact that they're up for the death penalty means that there are private groups out there willing to help with appeals. Trials for death sentence cases tend to be very very meticulous because of the stakes.
How does putting a murderer peacefully to sleep like an old dog exact vengeance on the level required to somehow avenge a brutal murder? They get a painless release from the drudgery of waking up every day and knowing that they're stuck in prison with no hope of freedom, ever.
Well, it's like putting a rabid dog down. You've decided he can't be rehabilitated, he's still dangerous, so you put him down. There's no need to be mean about it. And it's not exactly peacefull. I think that the stress the prisoner experiences during the wait has caused some heart attacks. They often administer sedatives such as valium way before the execution. If I really wanted to be nice, I'd let the prisoner out in the yard during daily exercies (on his own), then have a sniper take him out with a headshot using a supersonic bullet to the back of the head. At least that way, if the criminal's not otherwise contaminated, you can use his organs to benefit others, possibly saving a few lives.
You would never vote for a democrat so please stop saying such ridiculous things. Why not? I'm for pro-choice, for gay rights, balanced budget, legalized drugs, free speech, the environment, and equal opportunity. You say your against big governmant which has increased 100 fold during Bush During Clinton's time, government consumed approximately 30% of the economy. You could barely triple the federal government before taking everything up. Did you miss the part where I said I'm unhappy with Bush? I think he spends our money way to easy. Use your veto power! Clinton had the dotcom boom. Bush had the crash of that, 9/11, Enron, and worldcom. That depressed income quite a bit. Conservative economic theory states that lowering taxes (expenses) on wanted a tougher stance on terrorism yet Bush changed his whole focus from terrorism to settling old scores I happen to think that Iraq was supporting terror, evidence has been found that he had, and hopefully in a few years resources will be freed up from Iraq, allowing us to go after others. And Iraq needed to be taken care of. If anything, the War on Terror delayed the invasion of Iraq. I felt things were coming up even before 9/11 He has Musharraf chasing the terrorists now, which I am sure will work once he( musharraf) stops funding and hiding the terrorists. Other than invading Pakistan, who else is Bush going to 'work' with? As far as taxes go you think they will go lower? Do you understand anything at all about world finance? I don't know what you mean by "world finance", but I do know enough to know that having a balanced budget and not having to pay interest allows a lower income level to match that of a higher one. ? People have to want to buy U.S debt in order for us to continue to deficit spend, but when you continually tell all the people in the world who would buy our debt to eat shit what do you think will happen? I don't think that we should be deficit spending. I'd be cutting spending left and right, before cutting taxes. Once we stop having to borrow more money, we'll pay the bonds on schedule until they expire. Not to mention the more bad policies deflate the dollar causing investors not to buy the dollar as an investment. And with the dollar being worth less, that increases the cost of foreign products, reducing the demand for outsourcing, keeping jobs in the USA. For the first time in a long time the dollar is not the currency of choice to buy anymore. You would think that with the deflation of the dollar and the inflation of the Euro the Europeans would be buying american products like crazy but they are not because the hate Bush because he has called them all kinds of things I haven't heard Bush call the Euros any names, but I've seen plenty of Euros calling Bush various nasty things. They hate him, not because of what he's said, but because he's shown them to be irrelevant. I grow tired of this I didn't vote for Kerry becuase of what he said after Nam. Please at least he went and fought unlike that coward Bush. Yes, Kerry went and joined the Navy and requested duty with Units that were safely patrolling the coastline at the time. When he got there, the mission changed to a more dangerous one. Then he arranged to get three purple hearts and get out. Meanwhile, Bush qualified in a plane that had a higher death rate for the pilots than the swiftboats. The sister unit of Bush's squadron did deploy. Bush is an idiot. According to tests, Bush is smarter than Kerry. or for that matter anyone other than Bush You would have voted for Hitler? Pol Pot? Stalin? I'll turn it around. There are many people I would have voted for rather than have Kerry. I would have definately voted John McCain Believe it or not, I would have had a harder choice if he had won the primaries. Kerry was a good man, not the greatest pick mind you, who served his country and can lead un
I've read that in some countries the state pays for both the prosecution and defense in all cases (no determination of ability to pay).
How's this: The government pays for both prosecution and defense. Like for sports, they're both allowed an equal amount of money. I won't even quible if the defense is allowed a little more. Limit the budget of the prosecution, so they have to consider carefuly which cases they go after.
Are you pro-death penalty as it's implemented in this country, or just in theory?
More or less both. While I'm not entirely happy with how it's been implemented in some states, it's more or less what I want. Use it in the most heinious cases(multiple murders, child murder, torture&murder), where guilt is clear. No implementation will ever be perfect, so if we hold to that standard, we might as well go with life sentences, but then, even true life sentences don't prevent the murderer from doing it again, if 'only' in prison. When I say that I support the death penalty, I remember the incidents like the bank killings in Nebraska, that happened when I was visiting my parents there. Four people walked into the Bank, shot and killed everybody there, without taking any money. We listened to the events on the radio, and yelled when the anchor talked about the possibility that the police were tracking the suspects using the onstar system on the SUV they stole(which was ditched shortly after). The Wisconsin shooting of seven hunters this year. Columbine. Oklahoma City. Dahmer. I don't necessarily require that Scott Peterson be sentenced to death.
On the other hand, when in high school, I deliberately tried to be extreme to piss off my civic issues teacher. I proposed having a lottery system whenever a prisoner came to a prison that put it over capacity. You would get a ticket for each full year of sentence remaining. 200 tickets per life sentence. The person whose number is drawn gets executed. I even backed it up with principles from the psychology class I was taking at the time. It was about how random, low-probability risks/events can actually have a larger psychological effect than a sure thing.
My problem with the implementation in this country is that it seems all too often that if you've got enough money to pay a good legal team to raise enough reasonable doubt and/or stack the jury in your favor, you at least avoid the death penalty, and maybe even get an acquittal. If you're poor and get stuck with the schmuck from the Public Defenders' office, you're right fucked, mate.
If you have enough money you can also get out of: Life sentences, serving any time for murder (OJ Simpson?), can park in handicapped spots (the occasional $200 fine fits in the budget), speeding, driving drunk, using drugs... If nothing else, being up for a death penalty case gets you the good public defender.
If their crime was heinous enough (child rapist/killer, etc.), their prison mates will take care of them in time.
I realllly don't like this. As much as I grin about dahmer getting it, we're trying to teach prisoners how to act properly, and shanking somebody in the restroom isn't proper.
the entire prison system should be segregated between violent and non-violent offenders
I like this idea. It's already implemented somewhat in the form of minimal to max security prisons. You put the dangerous ones in max, and let the embezzler sit in min where it's cheaper. As for Martha being comfy, well, women's prisons are about as nice as you can get in the penal system. And it's not like Martha's dangerous. The sheer hassle of this should keep her on the straight and narrow.
Remember the legalize drugs thing? I'd try to get the prisons back down to capacity, allowing more programs that might actually push reform.
Sorry, I hadn't even heard about the movie "The Execution of Wanda Jean". I mostly watch action and sci-fi flicks. It does raise an interesting issue, about the execution of not only 'retarded' people, but also minors, mentally disturbed, and just plain stupid. The problem this raises is that you can quite successfully argue that every murderer is mentally disturbed. Criminals tend to have lower than average intelligence (or at least the ones who get caught are). As far as being "borderline retarded", how is that determined? Do I realize that every person on death row is more than just a figure, that
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And this is why OPEC, specifically the Saudis, try to keep oil prices down. As long as oil is cheap, we won't find alternatives, and keep sending money into their pockets.
Me, I'd like to try what some countries & large companies did with microsft. Threaten to switch away from them(fund alternative research), forcing them to drop prices.
Realistically speaking, even if the USA went completely alternative, there'd still be a huge oil market consisting of the rest of the world.
Actually, from the studies I've read, school funding actually has no to negative correlation with how well the school does. Believe it or not, you don't often need the latest textbook to teach a subject. A math textbook from the '60s is as good today as it was back then. They usually contain harder problems, too.
What really affects the quality of education? Parental involvement.
There are far, far more students that *need* grants than there are grants to get.
I haven't seen it. I've seen scholarships go unfilled because of lack of applications. Then you go and say Did you actually mean public colleges? These are mostly run by the town/cities, and are free or very close to it.
I'm in a track where I get a two year degree. Then I can apply those credits straight to a four year degree. Many of the courses transfer. Prove you can handle the two year college, do well, and you'll be able to get grants. Or at least loans.
"Clean" does not apply to anything you need to take a huge amount of care to contain
Clean isn't a word you can really apply to any industrial process anyway
In my definition, as long as you contain any dangerous waste, it's not an issue, other than the fact that the cost ends up in the expense column.
You are comparing apples and aardvarks - it's a small purpose built (solar)plant in a very remote area designed to be as maintainance free as possible.
photovolatic cells are the expensive way to go
Except that you're wrong on a couple points:
a: It's a 200Megawatt plant, not a small installation.
b: The plant features not one photovoltaic cell. It's a mirror-tower type that uses mirrors to heat water to steam in a tower, which is then run through a conventional steam turbine.
At about $400 million for 200MW, it runs about twice as expensive as a PBMR plant, and in a high-sun location, at that.
You don't build nuclear plants to save money, you do it for other reasons, but hopefully pebble bed will change all of that.
I hope they do turn out well. But we still have reactor designs generations better than the ones used in the USA at the moment. Simpler, Safer, cheaper, more fuel efficient...
How about this, minus the political regulations, when you consider wind, solar, hydro, as well as nuclear, nuclear makes sense if you don't want to be burning hydrocarbons?
Personal rail would be great. It's not going to happen anytime soon, especially since I'm sure that different cities will impliment incompatible systems. I wonder how well it would work between cities, for longer distances. If it can reach say, ~100 mph even if it takes a special car, it'd slaughter cars, trains, and seriously hurt planes on the shorter hauls. At least as long as planes have as many delays as they do. You figure an hour to the airport, one hour loading delay, an hour flight, an hour wait for the transfer, another hour flight. About five hours to start! Anything less than ~500 miles, this would be faster.
You JUST looked at the economics of it?
Ultimatly, when looking at economic items like power generation, isn't that the only way that makes sense?
Combining energy sources aways makes sence! Your far to used to power just being there when you turn on the switch. However it takes time for a power station to be switched on. Nuke plants have a very slow power up cycle and almost all cannot be run 24/7 (roll on pebble bed).
Sure, the ones currently in use have to shut down for about 40 days every 2 years for refueling. PBMR won't have this, and some of the newer designs can also refuel online. Nevertheless, once you have enough stations, you just have some extra capacity to deal with planned and unplanned outages. Yes, nuclear plants start slow. But you can adjust their output much more quickly when started up. So you don't just turn them off, you run them at lower power until demand hits.
Think of the wasted energy think of the wasted resorces
Huh? So nuclear has to be shut down occasionally. A solar plant doesn't work for about half the day, wind has outages, the turbines still have to be maintained.
Now if we combine that with a other sources, pump storage. Generates no "new" power gives back 1/3 of the power used to pump the water up (over night) limited capacity very fast to turn on, hydrogen is the same, its better to burn fuel ONE time not TWICE.
Sure is. Though why you'd bother to do this with nuclear plants, which generate power continuously, I don't know. If solar cost less, it would compliment nicely. Put wind in enough places you'd reduce the backup costs (wind should be blowing somewhere on average). Keep a few gas plants for spikes, and use the sheer size of the grid to keep those minor & expected (law of averages).
Its all about an intergated power policy, use each fuel for this best. Nuke plants would be great for the "average" load but sucks for peek and all your "economics" will go out the window with 100% nuke.
I don't think I suggested 100% nuke. I think that a baseline of nuke (with your 10% excess to deal with unexpected occurances), supplimented with hydro, solar, and wind would be good. Maybe some emergency generation capacity with gas (cheap to build, expensive to run). But I really dislike coal. Heck, I disagree with the Kyoto protocols, but given my way, I'd be meeting the requirements just by replacing the CO2 producers with nuclear generators.
Get with the major power consumers, and give them discounts to let the power companies turn non-critical items off during power spikes. Heck, my grandmother gets a cut on her electric bills because she let them install a switch that lets them turn off the water heater and pool pump at times.
Ok, do you see why I "fall back to defending nuclear"?
As a consumer I want clean & cheap power. I've looked up how much it's costing the australians to build their solar plant, I've looked up how much it's costing to build the PBMR. I've spent some time trying to sort between the political, research (it is a first), and some allegations of corruption. I see China planing to build something like a hundred of them.
Yes, nuclear plants are run at full power all the time. But because of the nature of the fuel, smart companies will turn down other plants more than nuclear ones. For example, gas plants are very cheap to build, but the fuel costs you. So you shut down the gas plants first...
Solar thermal air-conditioning looks like it will be used soon in large installions which will cut the power consumption. Why use solar generated power to run heating elements to expand the gas on a hot day when you can use solar on the hot side of the cycle?
Well, for one your standard electric air conditioner doesn't use heating elements
Solar thermal air-conditioning looks like neat technology! Why hasn't there been a slashdot article on this? Sure, it's expensive, can't cool very well compared to traditional AC, but it can help. It maybe doesn't help that it's being touted by a gas comany, which mostly touts it for use when electricity is expensive, when you're making steam anyways, or to flatten your usage during 'peak' hours (when electric companies nail big users with bigger rates). However, by combining it with solar, you don't have to use gas. I guess it comes down to the guys with calculators and charts for considering when it's worth it to install it. There's plenty of charts in the pdf file. At a cost three times that of a good quality electric AC system, electricity needs to be pretty expensive, no?
Solar AC: $9,000/ton
Traditional AC: $7,000/3 tons.(SEER 19.2, just about the best available).
Definitely, but I think the "one true power" ethos from anyone is silly.
Like I said, I'd like to see the green powers used where economical. It's just that they aren't economical enough to beat nuclear all the time.
"yes the capital cost is very high, but the fuel is virtaully free"
The reason that Nuclear plants are so expensive to build is that the government often forced construction to be halted on nothing more than a letter complaining "something could happen", until a study could be done disproving the letter, just in time for the next letter to show up.
it is the most complicated steam engine on earth
Actually, they're not all that complicated in the newer designs. That's why, after I've shut down the coal plants, I'd be looking at updating/replacing the aging light water reactors.
All of those rare earth materials used in nuclear power compents are not common and cost money.
Sure, Uranium's expensive. But you don't need much of it. It's got something like 20,000 times the power density of coal. Even more if you take steps to 'burn' it better.
Wind generators in comparison are incredibly simple. Hydro is incredibly simple.
But they're also relatively low-density. You need a lot of wind generators to equal a full size nuke plant, and the construction cost adds up. And you don't get out of maintenance either. Those blades don't last forever.
but there has NEVER been a wind/hydro/tidal plant that has cost as much as a producing nuclear power plant
And are these plants generally measered in the thousands of megawatts? Can they operate just about 24/7/365? I've had trouble finding out what an averale wind turbine runs, installed.
The University of Chicago has determined that the cost per kilwatt of capacity for nuclear would run $1,200-$1,800. (Note: The "standard" 1000 megawatt plant would start at 1.2 billion). But in the end, once your economy of scale takes over, it would only cost 3.4 cents per kw/h. Versus 3.7 cents for non-backed up wind, or 5.4 cents with backup. Add 1.8 cents to go offshore.
Hydro: Well, we're pretty much getting all that we can already get.
Backup for wind power makes costs up to 3.5 times greater?
The economies of nuclear power
Only 20 suitable tidal sites? Only 10 hours of power a day?
You know, I didn't list geothermal due to the limited areas it can be done in...
Doing research finds that Coal/Nuclear has a cost of about 2.3 cents kw/h. Wind is 3.7 cents a kw/h. Wind has quite a ways to go. Solar at least provides power when people run AC the most.
Nuclear plants are run at just about 100% load, all the time.
For the other power sources, you'd need backup power. IE, you'd have to build two plants to provide the constant power 1 nuclear plant does.
That's using the old mining methods. Just like new technology is reducing the pollution from coal, new technology is being used to reduce the amount of tailings, safely isolate the tailings, and often put the tailings back in the mine where you got it from when you close it.
Tailings are nasty for every mine type.
not build a few new fighters this year.
Umm, do you realize that the newest fighters(besides the still prototype F-22) the Air Force have were built in the early 80's? We need the new aircraft.
As far as helping the schools out. Why doesn't the state build more schools there? Why doesn't the city?
And my highschool had this problem due to poor planning by the city. But then they got on the ball and built more classrooms and schools.
. Consider how many additional lower-income students could recieve full tuition to tier-one universities with another billion dollars
Why do they need to attend "Tier 1"? Are you talking about the Harvard/Yale type colleges, or the State University level ones? Besides, there are so many grants, scholarships, and loan programs out there that anybody can attend college already. They just have to take advantage of the oppertunities.
Well, to be honest, an awful lot of the military's budget is for education/training. The military is one of the largest sources of technical training. You join, they teach you a skill. They pay for college. The military paid me to train and learn for almost six months when I came in, and while not the shortest tech school, there were some that were far longer.
"Military funding" covers everything from base schools, military, housing, to bombers, trucks, research, fuel and bombs.
Besides, federal funding of education is limited. Most of those funds come from the state or lower level.
As far as putting it on an island, it's supposed to be the first commercial plant. IE, net positive energy, long running, so that they can sell the power from it. You stick it on an island you wouldn't be able to sell all the power.
Besides, a fusion plant doesn't have enough hydrogen at any one point to penetrate the containment.
And properly designed fission plants aren't that dangerous.
Hmm...
I have no problems with Solar, Wind, and tidal. Other than I've looked at the economics of it, and it seems that nuclear would be far cheaper to build, especially if you consider shutting down every hydrocarbon powered plant. Also, when deployed on that scale, all of the green power techs have enviromental effects. I can't say good or bad, but they'll have effects.
So many of the greenies are set against nuclear power being part of the solution that I fall back to defending nuclear power.
But when the paper/trees decay/burn, the carbon is mixed with the oxygen, making CO2 again. So trees are ultimatly carbon-neutral. Unless you bury the paper underground where it won't decay in a reasonable period of time. Studies have shown that conditions in modern landfills are very short on oxygen, so any decay must be anarobic, not producing CO2.
So by throwing your paper into a landfill, you interdict the carbon in it, and make the paper industry grow some more trees, removing more CO2 from the atmosphere.
Businesses want to make money. If "Green" energy becomes cheaper than the polluting stuff, they'll switch to it. There will be a lag because of the risk/capitol/inefficiency/regulation factors. In other words, the coal plant's won't shut down overnight.
man, what are you gonna replace plastic with?
Don't need to replace plastic. We can make plastic from organic wastes now. We're making plastic out of stuff like soy beans and corn stalks now. It's just that the stuff that we currently use from oil to make plastic was a waste product, so it's still incredably cheap.
I think that it was mentioned in the article that thorium is a better fuel. Or at least more common.
of the 12.8 tons of Thorium only a tiny amount is the radioactive isotope
Actually, all of it's radioactive
"Twenty five isotopes of thorium are known with atomic masses ranging from 212 to 236. All are unstable."
True, but it doesn't eject all of that into the atmosphere. At least, not if something doesn't go horribly wrong. ;-)
Some of the sources said that a gigawatt light water plant only produces 1 ton of high level radioactive waste a year. That takes up so little room that nuclear plants are able to store thirty years of waste onsite.
And actually, breeders do use Uranium, but one of the side products is Plutonium, which is also used as a fuel in the system, which helps to explain why they're so efficient. Also, you can burn plutonium in them, making them usefull for getting rid of nuclear bomb material.
Does personal electric rail really require new power sources? I can't see how transmission losses would lower power plant efficiency down below the inefficiency of current gasoline engines (perhaps down below diesel efficiencies...)
Not really, but I imagine that we'd need a few more (preferably clean) power plants if we started putting the pod system practically into people's garages.
I was mostly thinking of systems that would change the way we do business if power became uber-cheap. Ideas like hydroponic farms slipped my mind.
I like the rest of your idea. I don't particularly care for driving myself. It's fun sometimes, but during the north dakota wintertime, I'd love to be moving by a system that doesn't happily let you slide into various things...
according to Alex Gabbard
For comparison, according to NCRP Reports No. 92 and No. 95, population exposure from operation of 1000-MWe nuclear and coal-fired power plants amounts to 490 person-rem/year for coal plants and 4.8 person-rem/year for nuclear plants. Thus, the population effective dose equivalent from coal plants is 100 times that from nuclear plants. For the complete nuclear fuel cycle, from mining to reactor operation to waste disposal, the radiation dose is cited as 136 person-rem/year; the equivalent dose for coal use, from mining to power plant operation to waste disposal, is not listed in this report and is probably unknown.
For a large number of coal samples, according to Environmental Protection Agency figures released in 1984, average values of uranium and thorium content have been determined to be 1.3 ppm and 3.2 ppm, respectively
And a 1,000 megawatt plant uses 4 million tons of coal a year, resulting in the release of 5.2 tons of Uranium and 12.8 tones of thorium.
A 1000 megawatt light water nuclear plant of the type used in the USA uses about 25 tons of uranium a year.
If you're willing to use breeder reactors and their ilk, you can actually get more power out the the uranium in the ash than you got burning the coal!
I have to agree with you.
There are huge numbers of processes that given cheap enough electricity(power) will become economical rather than laboratory curios.
Desalination, processing of ocean water for minerals, various welding/forging processes. Personal electric rail would make even more sense.
How do you figure out what a business will do? Figure out, within the bounds of risk and human inefficiency, what will earn them the most money. If a new measure will repay itself, over say, ten years, it'll be deployed left and right. There are formulas for this. For example, even if you pay in cash, you have to figure in about 10% interest per year to get closer to the "true cost" as investing the money would make about 10%. So if you'd make more money investing in the market, the new measure doesn't make sense. That's true for solar panels in many areas.
My thoughts exactly. I know of places that have 1 server. Not 1 fileserver, 1 webserver, 1 email server... 1 Server. And it's for a business, and it's a workstation box. They don't care. They have <20 employees.
No one cares what prisoners do in prison, as long as they're locked away from the greater population for as long as possible.
But I do care. I don't think about it every day, but I do think about it. I've watched a history of prisons documentary. There are plenty of reform/rehab programs in most prisons. What happens is that certain classes of criminal are considered reformable, and some are not. You try to seperate the two.
And this reminds me of Abu Graib. I think that it's significant that the highest ranking soldier tried&convicted of abuse was a reservist who's civilian job was being a prison guard. I mean, come on! Why haven't I heard anything about a review of the guy's practices back home. A review of the prison's practices.
I was just raising the point that the vast majority of people on death row are in general pretty disadvantaged when it comes to intellect/money.
intellect->money
intellect->more lawful?
It's like saying that because blacks have a higher percent on death row than the % of blacks are in the USA's general population. It's been documented that Blacks also commit a disportionate amount of the violent crime.
If anything, the fact that they're up for the death penalty means that there are private groups out there willing to help with appeals. Trials for death sentence cases tend to be very very meticulous because of the stakes.
How does putting a murderer peacefully to sleep like an old dog exact vengeance on the level required to somehow avenge a brutal murder? They get a painless release from the drudgery of waking up every day and knowing that they're stuck in prison with no hope of freedom, ever.
Well, it's like putting a rabid dog down. You've decided he can't be rehabilitated, he's still dangerous, so you put him down. There's no need to be mean about it. And it's not exactly peacefull. I think that the stress the prisoner experiences during the wait has caused some heart attacks. They often administer sedatives such as valium way before the execution. If I really wanted to be nice, I'd let the prisoner out in the yard during daily exercies (on his own), then have a sniper take him out with a headshot using a supersonic bullet to the back of the head. At least that way, if the criminal's not otherwise contaminated, you can use his organs to benefit others, possibly saving a few lives.
You would never vote for a democrat so please stop saying such ridiculous things.
Why not? I'm for pro-choice, for gay rights, balanced budget, legalized drugs, free speech, the environment, and equal opportunity.
You say your against big governmant which has increased 100 fold during Bush
During Clinton's time, government consumed approximately 30% of the economy. You could barely triple the federal government before taking everything up. Did you miss the part where I said I'm unhappy with Bush? I think he spends our money way to easy. Use your veto power! Clinton had the dotcom boom. Bush had the crash of that, 9/11, Enron, and worldcom. That depressed income quite a bit. Conservative economic theory states that lowering taxes (expenses) on
wanted a tougher stance on terrorism yet Bush changed his whole focus from terrorism to settling old scores
I happen to think that Iraq was supporting terror, evidence has been found that he had, and hopefully in a few years resources will be freed up from Iraq, allowing us to go after others. And Iraq needed to be taken care of. If anything, the War on Terror delayed the invasion of Iraq. I felt things were coming up even before 9/11
He has Musharraf chasing the terrorists now, which I am sure will work once he( musharraf) stops funding and hiding the terrorists.
Other than invading Pakistan, who else is Bush going to 'work' with?
As far as taxes go you think they will go lower? Do you understand anything at all about world finance?
I don't know what you mean by "world finance", but I do know enough to know that having a balanced budget and not having to pay interest allows a lower income level to match that of a higher one.
? People have to want to buy U.S debt in order for us to continue to deficit spend, but when you continually tell all the people in the world who would buy our debt to eat shit what do you think will happen?
I don't think that we should be deficit spending. I'd be cutting spending left and right, before cutting taxes. Once we stop having to borrow more money, we'll pay the bonds on schedule until they expire.
Not to mention the more bad policies deflate the dollar causing investors not to buy the dollar as an investment.
And with the dollar being worth less, that increases the cost of foreign products, reducing the demand for outsourcing, keeping jobs in the USA.
For the first time in a long time the dollar is not the currency of choice to buy anymore. You would think that with the deflation of the dollar and the inflation of the Euro the Europeans would be buying american products like crazy but they are not because the hate Bush because he has called them all kinds of things
I haven't heard Bush call the Euros any names, but I've seen plenty of Euros calling Bush various nasty things. They hate him, not because of what he's said, but because he's shown them to be irrelevant.
I grow tired of this I didn't vote for Kerry becuase of what he said after Nam. Please at least he went and fought unlike that coward Bush.
Yes, Kerry went and joined the Navy and requested duty with Units that were safely patrolling the coastline at the time. When he got there, the mission changed to a more dangerous one. Then he arranged to get three purple hearts and get out. Meanwhile, Bush qualified in a plane that had a higher death rate for the pilots than the swiftboats.
The sister unit of Bush's squadron did deploy.
Bush is an idiot.
According to tests, Bush is smarter than Kerry.
or for that matter anyone other than Bush
You would have voted for Hitler? Pol Pot? Stalin?
I'll turn it around. There are many people I would have voted for rather than have Kerry.
I would have definately voted John McCain
Believe it or not, I would have had a harder choice if he had won the primaries.
Kerry was a good man, not the greatest pick mind you, who served his country and can lead un
Hmm, had a thought about the court system.
I've read that in some countries the state pays for both the prosecution and defense in all cases (no determination of ability to pay).
How's this: The government pays for both prosecution and defense. Like for sports, they're both allowed an equal amount of money. I won't even quible if the defense is allowed a little more. Limit the budget of the prosecution, so they have to consider carefuly which cases they go after.
Are you pro-death penalty as it's implemented in this country, or just in theory?
More or less both. While I'm not entirely happy with how it's been implemented in some states, it's more or less what I want. Use it in the most heinious cases(multiple murders, child murder, torture&murder), where guilt is clear. No implementation will ever be perfect, so if we hold to that standard, we might as well go with life sentences, but then, even true life sentences don't prevent the murderer from doing it again, if 'only' in prison. When I say that I support the death penalty, I remember the incidents like the bank killings in Nebraska, that happened when I was visiting my parents there. Four people walked into the Bank, shot and killed everybody there, without taking any money. We listened to the events on the radio, and yelled when the anchor talked about the possibility that the police were tracking the suspects using the onstar system on the SUV they stole(which was ditched shortly after). The Wisconsin shooting of seven hunters this year. Columbine. Oklahoma City. Dahmer. I don't necessarily require that Scott Peterson be sentenced to death.
On the other hand, when in high school, I deliberately tried to be extreme to piss off my civic issues teacher. I proposed having a lottery system whenever a prisoner came to a prison that put it over capacity. You would get a ticket for each full year of sentence remaining. 200 tickets per life sentence. The person whose number is drawn gets executed. I even backed it up with principles from the psychology class I was taking at the time. It was about how random, low-probability risks/events can actually have a larger psychological effect than a sure thing.
My problem with the implementation in this country is that it seems all too often that if you've got enough money to pay a good legal team to raise enough reasonable doubt and/or stack the jury in your favor, you at least avoid the death penalty, and maybe even get an acquittal. If you're poor and get stuck with the schmuck from the Public Defenders' office, you're right fucked, mate.
If you have enough money you can also get out of: Life sentences, serving any time for murder (OJ Simpson?), can park in handicapped spots (the occasional $200 fine fits in the budget), speeding, driving drunk, using drugs... If nothing else, being up for a death penalty case gets you the good public defender.
If their crime was heinous enough (child rapist/killer, etc.), their prison mates will take care of them in time.
I realllly don't like this. As much as I grin about dahmer getting it, we're trying to teach prisoners how to act properly, and shanking somebody in the restroom isn't proper.
the entire prison system should be segregated between violent and non-violent offenders
I like this idea. It's already implemented somewhat in the form of minimal to max security prisons. You put the dangerous ones in max, and let the embezzler sit in min where it's cheaper. As for Martha being comfy, well, women's prisons are about as nice as you can get in the penal system. And it's not like Martha's dangerous. The sheer hassle of this should keep her on the straight and narrow.
Remember the legalize drugs thing? I'd try to get the prisons back down to capacity, allowing more programs that might actually push reform.
Sorry, I hadn't even heard about the movie "The Execution of Wanda Jean". I mostly watch action and sci-fi flicks. It does raise an interesting issue, about the execution of not only 'retarded' people, but also minors, mentally disturbed, and just plain stupid. The problem this raises is that you can quite successfully argue that every murderer is mentally disturbed. Criminals tend to have lower than average intelligence (or at least the ones who get caught are). As far as being "borderline retarded", how is that determined? Do I realize that every person on death row is more than just a figure, that