Do you fly? Do you consider flying to be safe? Nothing is ever completely safe. However, you can look at the odds and history, and say 'for distances over 800 miles, flying is safer than driving'. What are the alternatives to nuclear?
Coal and uranium are both used for production of electrical power. Therefore you can compare them. You can do research that gives you a 'deaths per Gigawatt-hour'. You can total up pollution. They already do it for costs. Lower is better, right?
I live in North Dakota. They're going on about how the state is trying to get more coal plants built. People are complaining. I've heard on the radio that 40,000 deaths a year are attributable to just the pollution from coal plants. How living close to a coal plant gives you the same chances for cancers and diseases as a former smoker.
I'd rather live next to a nuclear plant and the miniscule risk of being exposed to some radiation than live next to a coal plant and the surety of being exposed. Trivia point: Coal plants release more radioactive material into the atmosphere than a nuclear plant produces. After all, there are radioactive particles in coal.
As for the radiation: Define 'Huge'. How much radioactivity was required before meat from the deer was considered unsafe? As I've already stated, people are naturally exposed to radiation every day.
Everything that I've read that uses math to define problems in a scientific way says that nuclear power is safer than coal. Therefore, I support nuclear over coal.
And you are horrified about your six year old seeing the playboy channel why? Did you have severe nightmares for weeks after your exposure to the channel? Did you have to have years of expensive therapy to repair the damage done to your immature neurons?
The biggest problem with youthfull access to 'adult' material is that the parents might have to explain sex to their kids before they're 'ready' too. Not the 'Birds and the Bees', not the 'Stork', but SEX. If a kid is too young to understand, they'll be bored and change the channel.
Heck, when I was about 10 I borrowed a movie that turned out to be in the wrong box from a friend's house. Turned out to be a wierd Caluga video in spanish. It was only soft core in what it showed, but for the inuendo... Well, you know how the decadent romans were...
About the only effect it had on me was a raised awarness that there are perverts out there.
Because you can't do an incremental backup on many types of mail server. For example, I don't know of any way to do an incremental backup on exchange's information store.
Of course, from what I've read, Exchange's storage works like a database system. You have no guarantee where new stuff is stored, as it ends up overwriting old deleted data. It's like a file system that way.
Now that's a thought, anybody know of a mail server solution that uses SQL for it's datastore?
True- Because the raw cost of getting the metal tends to exceed the value of the coin, unless you're buying in government sized lots. And then you need the press to stamp out the coins. All for what ends up being literally - pocket change.
I'd say he made his point. A gun is a tool, like any other mechanical device. There are concrete nail drivers that use.22 shells to drive nails. They're handy for jobs where you don't have a pneumatic system handy, or want to deal with electrical.
And last I heard, even with the prohibition criminals aren't having any trouble getting firearms. Heck, illegal factories are springing up. If I wanted to, I could make a firearm from materials found in any hardware shop. Add a trip to the grocery store, and I'd have the propellent too.
The point is that they're going overboard trying to stop the criminals from doing what they do. Laws should stop/punish the criminals... Not the innocent people.
That's the same point as in this article. You would be putting a massive amount of pressure on the software makers for this 'preventive' technology that through false-positives, would end up being a huge pain for the end user (why isn't this working!), and wouldn't even slow the pros down.
The point is that: 1. Being open source, you can just as easily remove the 'protection', rendering it as useful as a holey condem. 2. If the 'black box' detection routine is open source, well, the blackhats know exactly what you're looking for. And they aim to please. Their counterfeits just got better.
It's already happening. I've heard of a number of cases of burglers/muggers hauling their victims over to cash machines for more loot. Mostly over in Europe.
The thing is, a design this flawed would never have been or will be certified for construction inside the United States or most other countries.
Coal Mining kills thousands a year in the world. Nuclear plants already have to show that they'll maintain containment within specified levels even at catastrophic failures. The worst nuclear disaster in the world has led to... 50 deaths and 600 extra cases of cancer. More people die from Grain Silo Explosions.
If you really want to do some research, find out about the coal fires that happened occasionally, back in the 18-19th centuries.
We have more problems with the occasional industrial accident than we would with nuclear. Your 'scope of disaster' fear is unfounded, as the plant's designs have progressed far beyond what they used to be. You could hit the containment dome with a 747 and not penetrate to the core.
How are you suggesting we build the LED's? The best I've heard about is 5 watts for the high-power luxeons. They might have 10-15 watt lab models, though. For any wide-scale operation, you need hundreds of watts. Your 'bulb' would get very expensive with an array of LEDs.
White LED's are only marginally more efficient than incandescent for light generation. They're nice for flashlights because they are shockproof/long life and provide more useful light than incandescent at lower powers as they don't dim into the infrared. This makes them useful as flashlights, but not for building lighting. Dan's Data has a lot of info on LED lighting. Just look around for his flashlight reviews.
As for your dad's car, I don't know. I did a little research, and the quotes I saw were 25-30 mpg. But then, I don't know the model or anything else.
They might have been 'state of the art', but they differ significantly from most other reactor types in that they have a Positive void coefficient. Reactors built in the USA and most other countries have a Negative void coefficient.
What this means is that for the RBMK reactor(water-cooled, graphite moderated), when excessive steam is produced, power production increases, leading to a meltdown. In other reactors with a negative void coefficient, when excessive steam is generated, power production decreases, as the water acts as both coolant and moderator. With no moderator, the reaction ceases, stopping heat production. I'd say that would mean physical forces stop further meltdown. Some safety systems operate like a fuse. When the reaction gets too hot, the parts melt, and cause a response, varying from seperating the core to dropping the control rods. This all will prevent a meltdown from happening.
RBMK implemented the way the Soviet Union did at Chernobyl was a flawed design. It was along the line of Ford's exploding fuel tanks. Why should we be scared of properly designed reactors, based off of an accident that represented criminal negligence?
You can build a nuclear plant in about 3-5 years. Quicker if you're willing to pay the overtime. Meanwhile, you leave the other plants operating, use renewable sources where practicle.
I think that thermal depolymerization might be a source of fuel for vehicles in the future. Combine this with electric/hydrogen for short range vehicles, and you just let market forces dictate the number of plants built.
Point 3: LED doesn't scale like incandescent. Fluorescent is a better solution for larger scale lighting needs. And we already use it. German vehicles getting 40mpg? Maybe the ultra-economies, but not the average car there. I think you're thinking about the diesels.
Point 4: Who says that nuclear has zero tolerance failure? Things go wrong in nuclear plants all the time, just like in any other plant(not limited to power), however there are so many safeguards that hazardous releases of radiation don't occur. The dome that you see at nuclear plants isn't the core, but the last containment vessel for catastrophic failure, as well as protecting the core from outside events.
My point: Coal is bad. Terrorists will come up with something no matter what. I think I'd prefer them to try hitting a nuclear plant and most likely giving themselves a lethal dose of radiation than sitting back and developing a bio-weapon. I'd rather see a zero emission (other than heat) power production facility than the pollution stack of a coal plant. And the economies of solar/wind/water just isn't there as the replacement. Build fission plants now, close the coal plants, and replace the fission plants with the fusion/quantom/antimatter/whatever plant when the time comes along.
you should read something more about chernobyl before writing something like this
I have. I've read reports and seen a feature-length documentary about the accident and consequences.
If I have to blame something, I'd blame the Soviet management techniques, ie, No Failure Allowed! Or Else! This encouraged them to try to cover up the failure, and not shut down the reactor for the week or so it would have taken to restabilize it. They weren't just experimenting, they shut off safety systems, manually forced continued operation, and all sorts of bad ideas.
Sure, it'll take a number of reactors. But nuclear reactors can be scaled like coal plants. And we already have huge numbers of them...
If anything, it there's an 'effeciency' point for the nuclear plants, build that size close to the consumers. That should cut down on transmission costs. When the fuel only takes a Semi-load a year, you don't have to build next to a mine to get your fuel efficiently.
Did a lookup on some sites. From this site, a 1000 megawatt capacity seems about fair, as I see capacities running from about 800-1200 megawatts. They list their Megawatt hours at 8-9 million MWh a year. USA consumption is 3.602 trillion kWh (2001)
Doing the math, this comes out to 400-450 nuclear plants to power the USA, or 8-9 plants a state. Hardly an unsustainable number.
It's kinda like how people talk about Libertarians, Republicans, Democrats, Gun-Owners, Lawyers, Executives, CEO's, and Politicians.
People tend to see the extremists. Go to the green party's website, and see some of the wierd (to normal people) things they suggest. Heck, I'm mostly a libertarian, and look at some of the kookie stuff my 'leaders' espouse.
I'm 'kinda' green too. I drive a 30mpg car, recycle cans, and try to avoid wasting stuff (I won't take a bag if I'm only buying a couple items). But what some of the greenies suggest... They're as bad as the PETA people.
Better yet, you drop it into a subduction zone, where instead of pushing up into mountains, they're pushing down towards the core.
And as far as corroding goes: it'd be so slow and deep that the we wouldn't be able to tell the difference. There's already all sorts of heavy metals in diluted concentrations in the ocean.
Run a death scenario for the Hoover Dam breaking...
Sure, you can come up with doomsday scenarios for nuclear plants, but how likely are they? All US reactors that are not small-scale experimentals are built so that a Chernobyl style meltdown isn't possible. The meltdown process physically triggers events that shut the reaction down, stopping the meltdown.
If you want to talk about what ifs, how about blade breakages hitting cars/buildings for wind, mirror mis-alignment hitting an aircraft for solar, coal mine collapes/accidents/fires (already happen), and explosions for natural gas.
If I had my way, I'd replace every coal plant with a nuclear one. Preferably a breeder.
Huh, it looks like that the Uranium reserves are just a matter of price point per kilogram. Did you figure on the $80 a kilogram, or the $130 a kilo? I think that it'd be just like oil. We're still finding new sources of oil, so if we switched all the coal to nuclear, I think the same thing would happen with Uranium. New technologies would drop the cost of mining, as well as finding new sources.
Also, one point many people don't realize is that if you're looking to make an actual atomic bomb the hardest part isn't getting ahold of the uranium/plutonium, it's purifying and enriching it. This is the process they look for in the spy sats to figure out if other countries are pursuing a nuclear program.
In the USA right now, we are forbidden by law from building breeder reacters, which would solve our waste problem almost overnight. Not only is the most conservative figure I've heard for the power generation 10 times what the original plant recieved from the fuel, the resultant waste has a shorter half-life. Which means that it doesn't need to be stored as long.
Wind & Solar have problems with scalability, and the fact that it can't respond to demand like other plant types can. A solar plant isn't going to be producing power at night, and wind plants require wind, where there are limited areas with the constant wind needed.
We have the technology to build efficient, safe, and cost effective reactors if it wasn't for the people being scared of the radiation bogeyman.
Slashdot Mirror
Car accidents are a different subject.
Do you fly? Do you consider flying to be safe? Nothing is ever completely safe. However, you can look at the odds and history, and say 'for distances over 800 miles, flying is safer than driving'. What are the alternatives to nuclear?
Coal and uranium are both used for production of electrical power. Therefore you can compare them. You can do research that gives you a 'deaths per Gigawatt-hour'. You can total up pollution. They already do it for costs. Lower is better, right?
I live in North Dakota. They're going on about how the state is trying to get more coal plants built. People are complaining. I've heard on the radio that 40,000 deaths a year are attributable to just the pollution from coal plants. How living close to a coal plant gives you the same chances for cancers and diseases as a former smoker.
I'd rather live next to a nuclear plant and the miniscule risk of being exposed to some radiation than live next to a coal plant and the surety of being exposed. Trivia point: Coal plants release more radioactive material into the atmosphere than a nuclear plant produces. After all, there are radioactive particles in coal.
As for the radiation: Define 'Huge'. How much radioactivity was required before meat from the deer was considered unsafe? As I've already stated, people are naturally exposed to radiation every day.
Everything that I've read that uses math to define problems in a scientific way says that nuclear power is safer than coal. Therefore, I support nuclear over coal.
Note:
Three Mile Island happened in 1979.
Chernobyl happened in 1983
And you are horrified about your six year old seeing the playboy channel why? Did you have severe nightmares for weeks after your exposure to the channel? Did you have to have years of expensive therapy to repair the damage done to your immature neurons?
The biggest problem with youthfull access to 'adult' material is that the parents might have to explain sex to their kids before they're 'ready' too. Not the 'Birds and the Bees', not the 'Stork', but SEX. If a kid is too young to understand, they'll be bored and change the channel.
Heck, when I was about 10 I borrowed a movie that turned out to be in the wrong box from a friend's house. Turned out to be a wierd Caluga video in spanish. It was only soft core in what it showed, but for the inuendo... Well, you know how the decadent romans were...
About the only effect it had on me was a raised awarness that there are perverts out there.
Because you can't do an incremental backup on many types of mail server. For example, I don't know of any way to do an incremental backup on exchange's information store.
Of course, from what I've read, Exchange's storage works like a database system. You have no guarantee where new stuff is stored, as it ends up overwriting old deleted data. It's like a file system that way.
Now that's a thought, anybody know of a mail server solution that uses SQL for it's datastore?
True-
Because the raw cost of getting the metal tends to exceed the value of the coin, unless you're buying in government sized lots. And then you need the press to stamp out the coins. All for what ends up being literally - pocket change.
I'd say he made his point. A gun is a tool, like any other mechanical device. There are concrete nail drivers that use .22 shells to drive nails. They're handy for jobs where you don't have a pneumatic system handy, or want to deal with electrical.
And last I heard, even with the prohibition criminals aren't having any trouble getting firearms. Heck, illegal factories are springing up. If I wanted to, I could make a firearm from materials found in any hardware shop. Add a trip to the grocery store, and I'd have the propellent too.
The point is that they're going overboard trying to stop the criminals from doing what they do. Laws should stop/punish the criminals... Not the innocent people.
That's the same point as in this article. You would be putting a massive amount of pressure on the software makers for this 'preventive' technology that through false-positives, would end up being a huge pain for the end user (why isn't this working!), and wouldn't even slow the pros down.
Hmmm....
I need the binary for my TI-94/A. My buddy needs one for his Atari, and the neighbor one for the TRS-80.
Gov: Xerox, here's a copy we need to trace
Xerox: One moment, Ah, it's Serial Number XYZ, and we sold it to ACME inc's office at this address...
Why should the gov have to do the work?
The point is that:
1. Being open source, you can just as easily remove the 'protection', rendering it as useful as a holey condem.
2. If the 'black box' detection routine is open source, well, the blackhats know exactly what you're looking for. And they aim to please. Their counterfeits just got better.
It's already happening. I've heard of a number of cases of burglers/muggers hauling their victims over to cash machines for more loot. Mostly over in Europe.
The thing is, a design this flawed would never have been or will be certified for construction inside the United States or most other countries.
Coal Mining kills thousands a year in the world. Nuclear plants already have to show that they'll maintain containment within specified levels even at catastrophic failures. The worst nuclear disaster in the world has led to... 50 deaths and 600 extra cases of cancer. More people die from Grain Silo Explosions.
If you really want to do some research, find out about the coal fires that happened occasionally, back in the 18-19th centuries.
We have more problems with the occasional industrial accident than we would with nuclear. Your 'scope of disaster' fear is unfounded, as the plant's designs have progressed far beyond what they used to be. You could hit the containment dome with a 747 and not penetrate to the core.
How are you suggesting we build the LED's? The best I've heard about is 5 watts for the high-power luxeons. They might have 10-15 watt lab models, though. For any wide-scale operation, you need hundreds of watts. Your 'bulb' would get very expensive with an array of LEDs.
White LED's are only marginally more efficient than incandescent for light generation. They're nice for flashlights because they are shockproof/long life and provide more useful light than incandescent at lower powers as they don't dim into the infrared. This makes them useful as flashlights, but not for building lighting.
Dan's Data has a lot of info on LED lighting. Just look around for his flashlight reviews.
As for your dad's car, I don't know. I did a little research, and the quotes I saw were 25-30 mpg. But then, I don't know the model or anything else.
RBMK Reactors
They might have been 'state of the art', but they differ significantly from most other reactor types in that they have a Positive void coefficient. Reactors built in the USA and most other countries have a Negative void coefficient.
What this means is that for the RBMK reactor(water-cooled, graphite moderated), when excessive steam is produced, power production increases, leading to a meltdown. In other reactors with a negative void coefficient, when excessive steam is generated, power production decreases, as the water acts as both coolant and moderator. With no moderator, the reaction ceases, stopping heat production. I'd say that would mean physical forces stop further meltdown. Some safety systems operate like a fuse. When the reaction gets too hot, the parts melt, and cause a response, varying from seperating the core to dropping the control rods. This all will prevent a meltdown from happening.
RBMK implemented the way the Soviet Union did at Chernobyl was a flawed design. It was along the line of Ford's exploding fuel tanks. Why should we be scared of properly designed reactors, based off of an accident that represented criminal negligence?
I'm not saying that 50 people dead is a good thing, nor 600 extra cases of cancer. But when you look at the alternatives, it doesn't seem as bad.
You can build a nuclear plant in about 3-5 years. Quicker if you're willing to pay the overtime. Meanwhile, you leave the other plants operating, use renewable sources where practicle.
I think that thermal depolymerization might be a source of fuel for vehicles in the future. Combine this with electric/hydrogen for short range vehicles, and you just let market forces dictate the number of plants built.
Point 3: LED doesn't scale like incandescent. Fluorescent is a better solution for larger scale lighting needs. And we already use it.
German vehicles getting 40mpg? Maybe the ultra-economies, but not the average car there. I think you're thinking about the diesels.
Point 4: Who says that nuclear has zero tolerance failure? Things go wrong in nuclear plants all the time, just like in any other plant(not limited to power), however there are so many safeguards that hazardous releases of radiation don't occur. The dome that you see at nuclear plants isn't the core, but the last containment vessel for catastrophic failure, as well as protecting the core from outside events.
My point: Coal is bad. Terrorists will come up with something no matter what. I think I'd prefer them to try hitting a nuclear plant and most likely giving themselves a lethal dose of radiation than sitting back and developing a bio-weapon. I'd rather see a zero emission (other than heat) power production facility than the pollution stack of a coal plant. And the economies of solar/wind/water just isn't there as the replacement. Build fission plants now, close the coal plants, and replace the fission plants with the fusion/quantom/antimatter/whatever plant when the time comes along.
I have. I've read reports and seen a feature-length documentary about the accident and consequences.
If I have to blame something, I'd blame the Soviet management techniques, ie, No Failure Allowed! Or Else! This encouraged them to try to cover up the failure, and not shut down the reactor for the week or so it would have taken to restabilize it. They weren't just experimenting, they shut off safety systems, manually forced continued operation, and all sorts of bad ideas.
Sure, it'll take a number of reactors. But nuclear reactors can be scaled like coal plants. And we already have huge numbers of them...
If anything, it there's an 'effeciency' point for the nuclear plants, build that size close to the consumers. That should cut down on transmission costs. When the fuel only takes a Semi-load a year, you don't have to build next to a mine to get your fuel efficiently.
Did a lookup on some sites. From this site, a 1000 megawatt capacity seems about fair, as I see capacities running from about 800-1200 megawatts. They list their Megawatt hours at 8-9 million MWh a year. USA consumption is 3.602 trillion kWh (2001)
Doing the math, this comes out to 400-450 nuclear plants to power the USA, or 8-9 plants a state. Hardly an unsustainable number.
It's kinda like how people talk about Libertarians, Republicans, Democrats, Gun-Owners, Lawyers, Executives, CEO's, and Politicians.
People tend to see the extremists. Go to the green party's website, and see some of the wierd (to normal people) things they suggest. Heck, I'm mostly a libertarian, and look at some of the kookie stuff my 'leaders' espouse.
I'm 'kinda' green too. I drive a 30mpg car, recycle cans, and try to avoid wasting stuff (I won't take a bag if I'm only buying a couple items). But what some of the greenies suggest... They're as bad as the PETA people.
Better yet, you drop it into a subduction zone, where instead of pushing up into mountains, they're pushing down towards the core.
And as far as corroding goes: it'd be so slow and deep that the we wouldn't be able to tell the difference. There's already all sorts of heavy metals in diluted concentrations in the ocean.
The moon is still a much cheaper solution. That extra 30KM/S that you need to cancel means that you have to send up a bigger rocket, yada yada yada.
Run a death scenario for the Hoover Dam breaking...
Sure, you can come up with doomsday scenarios for nuclear plants, but how likely are they? All US reactors that are not small-scale experimentals are built so that a Chernobyl style meltdown isn't possible. The meltdown process physically triggers events that shut the reaction down, stopping the meltdown.
If you want to talk about what ifs, how about blade breakages hitting cars/buildings for wind, mirror mis-alignment hitting an aircraft for solar, coal mine collapes/accidents/fires (already happen), and explosions for natural gas.
If I had my way, I'd replace every coal plant with a nuclear one. Preferably a breeder.
Huh, it looks like that the Uranium reserves are just a matter of price point per kilogram. Did you figure on the $80 a kilogram, or the $130 a kilo? I think that it'd be just like oil. We're still finding new sources of oil, so if we switched all the coal to nuclear, I think the same thing would happen with Uranium. New technologies would drop the cost of mining, as well as finding new sources.
Also, one point many people don't realize is that if you're looking to make an actual atomic bomb the hardest part isn't getting ahold of the uranium/plutonium, it's purifying and enriching it. This is the process they look for in the spy sats to figure out if other countries are pursuing a nuclear program.
In the USA right now, we are forbidden by law from building breeder reacters, which would solve our waste problem almost overnight. Not only is the most conservative figure I've heard for the power generation 10 times what the original plant recieved from the fuel, the resultant waste has a shorter half-life. Which means that it doesn't need to be stored as long.
Wind & Solar have problems with scalability, and the fact that it can't respond to demand like other plant types can. A solar plant isn't going to be producing power at night, and wind plants require wind, where there are limited areas with the constant wind needed.
We have the technology to build efficient, safe, and cost effective reactors if it wasn't for the people being scared of the radiation bogeyman.
This reminds me when I was yelling at the screen when I was watching Terminator 3. There's PEOPLE still in the loop. YELL ABORT ABORT ABORT.
Um, I suggest you check out
An Article
Another Article
Bureau of Justice Statistics
Especially the Crime rates from victim surveys.
Bingo. Having to worry about your 'customers' shooting you would tend to skew the profit/risk ratio, wouldn't it?