With nuclear it's not the spent fuel that is the problem, but the spent reactor. Low and medium level radioactive materials from decommissioned reactors have far more mass, volume and are much more difficult to break down and transport to disposal sites than the minuscule volume of spent fuel from a reactor.
BTW, I'm a nuclear advocate (who works in the petroleum industry - go figure). You want to build a nuke power plant here in Australia? I'll buy the land right where the trucks drive the fuel in and out and move there with my family.
Hopefully the design selected will be a GT-MHR which produces 100,000 times less waste than a coal plant.
The Australian government spent $84 million trying to do something similar for our measly population and failed. Why should China be any different. Sadly, the Australian government knows that the great firewall works, so now they are biding their time until after the looming election when they will announce the the mere fact they were elected means that they have a mandate to ram internet filtering down our throats at who knows what cost. And the firewall will STILL totally fail to meet its stated goals. Australian Government = FAIL.
The last category - fatty fish has been long touted as a source of Omega-3 and has many other benefits to developing brains. So like entropy, you can't win- and most likely you won't break even either...
According to some material I have been reading, dioxin and dioxin-like compounds are highest in breast milk in the early stages of breastfeeding. And that formula has far lower levels of these toxins, especially the ones that contain plant based proteins. The plant based ones are not encouraged by UK nutritional specialists. The same book went further to say that the benefits of breast milk still outweigh the disadvantages of having higher dioxin levels but that mothers who intend on breastfeeding might consider changing their diet to remove the major sources of dioxin exposure for humans. Wiki says those are:
* Animal fats found in meats
* Full fat dairy products
* Fatty fish (herring, mackerel, salmon, sardines, trout, tuna)
(accounting for 96% of human exposure)
Gentlemen,
I stand corrected. Should have done more research before blindly posting. Seems most of the issues I had read about (several years!) earlier have been solved.
Getting enough of the materials to make the batteries for a significant number of electric vehicles. And then the fact that you have to replace a major and expensive component of your vehicle (batteries) every 3-5 years.
1 fire, flood or spilled starbucks? Haven't these idiots heard of a PHOTOCOPIER yet????
Oh, you'll also need some offsite storage for your duplicate but you'd need that for your database anyways. Besides, the paper copy will be "readable" for far longer than a digital one under ideal conditions.
Ask the former residents of Chernobyl, and all those within hundreds of miles who suffered - and still suffer - high occurrences of cancer, birth defects etc.
Probably I didn't get the thrust of your question, but the reason a giant boulder won't work is the bottom of the GOM is mostly soft mud. Your bolder would twist and split the top of the pipe. Oil would then erode its way through the soft sediment and squirt around the side of the boulder. All you'd achieve is making it even more difficult to plug the leak. In fact we are all pretty lucky that the wellhead is in such good condition. Sometimes a blowout will blow pipe out of the hole- if that had happened a relief well would be your only solution. Recently there was a a similar blowout off Western Australia. It took 3 months to kill the failed well with a relief well. People don't seem to understand just how hard it is to hit a target that is 9 5/8ths inch across when it is a mile deep in seawater AND 18,000 feet below the surface of the seafloor.
The sad fact is that the Australian political system is substantially broken. When minority political parties can hold the balance of power and push their adjendas it is blisteringly clear that the true purpose of a democracy: representing the will of the majority of its constituents - is not achieved.
In Australia this is evident at all three levels of government. Federal where issues such as this one, emissions trading and other questionable undertakings such as the proposed mining super profits tax are decided. State governments who are responsible for large scale public infrastructure like schools, hospitals and transport networks - who have for decades let public infrastructure decay while conducting failed scheme after failed scheme of so-called "improvements" which are finally never implemented at a cost of millions to hundreds of millions to the public purse. Local governments who make intelligent decisions like reducing rubbish bin sizes by 1/3rd then only clearing them fortnightly instead of weekly. If you have a family of young kids, two weeks of nappies over summer leaves a stench over the suburb which can not be described.
I am ashamed to be an Australian.
One thing that is generally underdone in our industry is proper labeling of the backup media.
You NEED:
software that wrote the backup including version
Date
Tape number in the sequence for this backup (tape 1 of x)
hopefully a brief description of what was backed up.
In 8 years 10,000 tapes in archive boxes with nothing but barcodes is pretty useless. The catalogues no longer exist.
Actually, that NYT article is no better than most.
Anyone who has had any experience with drilling opreations in the Gulf will know that loss of drilling fluids, kicks and other well control events are common, expected and routine. Dressing them up to be problems with the well design is pure horsepuckey. If you don't know what you're talking about then STFU. Even so-called "underground blowouts" are common and can be insured by lloyds. Furthermore the phrase 'casing was unlikely to be a successful cement job' makes no sense. The article is poorly written by people who do not have a grasp of oilfield equipment and procedures and obviously could not be bothered consulting with someone who was (familiar with them) in the rush to attempt to smear Pulitzer all over themselves.
Now, this statement has nothing whatsoever to do with the actual issues which were: failure on BP and Transoceans part to identify excessive fluid flows following the cementation of the production liner AND failure (or so it seems from public information) to maintain the BOP- quite a difficult task given its located at the sea floor but any indication that it has problems should call for immediate halt and repair work. When drilling, your BOP is all that stands between you, catastrophe and death.
Yep, clearly someone who has only ever seen nodding donkeys and thinks that all oil is on pump.
Generally speaking, wells only require pump when the reserviors are shallow or depleted (or both). The reservior that BP had reached was neither- by a long, long margin.
Anyone who has had any experience with drilling opreations in the gulf will know that loss of drilling fluids, kicks and other well control events are common, expected and routine. Dressing them up to be problems with the well design is pure horsepuckey. If you don't know what you're talking about then STFU. Even so-called "underground blowouts" are common and can be insured by lloyds.
Furthermore the phrase 'casing was unlikely to be a successful cement job' makes no sense. The article is poorly written by people who do not have a grasp of oilfield equipment and procedures and obviously could not be bothered consulting with someone who was in the rush to attempt to smear Pulitzer all over themselves.
Now, this statement has nothing whatsoever to do with the actual issues which were: failure on BP and Transoceans part to identify excessive fluid flows following the cementation of the production liner AND failure (or so it seems from public information) to maintain the BOP- quite a difficult task given its located at the sea floor but any indication that it has problems should call for immediate halt and repair work. When drilling any well, your BOP is all that stands between you, catastrophe and death./rant
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And yet this will be the endgame for the Indian power generation system. Perhaps you should just ask them how they're going to do it?
With nuclear it's not the spent fuel that is the problem, but the spent reactor. Low and medium level radioactive materials from decommissioned reactors have far more mass, volume and are much more difficult to break down and transport to disposal sites than the minuscule volume of spent fuel from a reactor. BTW, I'm a nuclear advocate (who works in the petroleum industry - go figure). You want to build a nuke power plant here in Australia? I'll buy the land right where the trucks drive the fuel in and out and move there with my family. Hopefully the design selected will be a GT-MHR which produces 100,000 times less waste than a coal plant.
The Australian government spent $84 million trying to do something similar for our measly population and failed. Why should China be any different. Sadly, the Australian government knows that the great firewall works, so now they are biding their time until after the looming election when they will announce the the mere fact they were elected means that they have a mandate to ram internet filtering down our throats at who knows what cost. And the firewall will STILL totally fail to meet its stated goals. Australian Government = FAIL.
The last category - fatty fish has been long touted as a source of Omega-3 and has many other benefits to developing brains. So like entropy, you can't win- and most likely you won't break even either...
According to some material I have been reading, dioxin and dioxin-like compounds are highest in breast milk in the early stages of breastfeeding. And that formula has far lower levels of these toxins, especially the ones that contain plant based proteins. The plant based ones are not encouraged by UK nutritional specialists. The same book went further to say that the benefits of breast milk still outweigh the disadvantages of having higher dioxin levels but that mothers who intend on breastfeeding might consider changing their diet to remove the major sources of dioxin exposure for humans. Wiki says those are: * Animal fats found in meats * Full fat dairy products * Fatty fish (herring, mackerel, salmon, sardines, trout, tuna) (accounting for 96% of human exposure)
Gentlemen, I stand corrected. Should have done more research before blindly posting. Seems most of the issues I had read about (several years!) earlier have been solved.
Getting enough of the materials to make the batteries for a significant number of electric vehicles. And then the fact that you have to replace a major and expensive component of your vehicle (batteries) every 3-5 years.
Yeah, communications majors may get a job more easily but "Do you want fries with that?" is not a great result from tertiary education.
1 fire, flood or spilled starbucks? Haven't these idiots heard of a PHOTOCOPIER yet???? Oh, you'll also need some offsite storage for your duplicate but you'd need that for your database anyways. Besides, the paper copy will be "readable" for far longer than a digital one under ideal conditions.
Ask the former residents of Chernobyl, and all those within hundreds of miles who suffered - and still suffer - high occurrences of cancer, birth defects etc.
Probably I didn't get the thrust of your question, but the reason a giant boulder won't work is the bottom of the GOM is mostly soft mud. Your bolder would twist and split the top of the pipe. Oil would then erode its way through the soft sediment and squirt around the side of the boulder. All you'd achieve is making it even more difficult to plug the leak. In fact we are all pretty lucky that the wellhead is in such good condition. Sometimes a blowout will blow pipe out of the hole- if that had happened a relief well would be your only solution. Recently there was a a similar blowout off Western Australia. It took 3 months to kill the failed well with a relief well. People don't seem to understand just how hard it is to hit a target that is 9 5/8ths inch across when it is a mile deep in seawater AND 18,000 feet below the surface of the seafloor.
The sad fact is that the Australian political system is substantially broken. When minority political parties can hold the balance of power and push their adjendas it is blisteringly clear that the true purpose of a democracy: representing the will of the majority of its constituents - is not achieved. In Australia this is evident at all three levels of government. Federal where issues such as this one, emissions trading and other questionable undertakings such as the proposed mining super profits tax are decided. State governments who are responsible for large scale public infrastructure like schools, hospitals and transport networks - who have for decades let public infrastructure decay while conducting failed scheme after failed scheme of so-called "improvements" which are finally never implemented at a cost of millions to hundreds of millions to the public purse. Local governments who make intelligent decisions like reducing rubbish bin sizes by 1/3rd then only clearing them fortnightly instead of weekly. If you have a family of young kids, two weeks of nappies over summer leaves a stench over the suburb which can not be described. I am ashamed to be an Australian.
One thing that is generally underdone in our industry is proper labeling of the backup media. You NEED: software that wrote the backup including version Date Tape number in the sequence for this backup (tape 1 of x) hopefully a brief description of what was backed up. In 8 years 10,000 tapes in archive boxes with nothing but barcodes is pretty useless. The catalogues no longer exist.
Actually, that NYT article is no better than most. Anyone who has had any experience with drilling opreations in the Gulf will know that loss of drilling fluids, kicks and other well control events are common, expected and routine. Dressing them up to be problems with the well design is pure horsepuckey. If you don't know what you're talking about then STFU. Even so-called "underground blowouts" are common and can be insured by lloyds. Furthermore the phrase 'casing was unlikely to be a successful cement job' makes no sense. The article is poorly written by people who do not have a grasp of oilfield equipment and procedures and obviously could not be bothered consulting with someone who was (familiar with them) in the rush to attempt to smear Pulitzer all over themselves. Now, this statement has nothing whatsoever to do with the actual issues which were: failure on BP and Transoceans part to identify excessive fluid flows following the cementation of the production liner AND failure (or so it seems from public information) to maintain the BOP- quite a difficult task given its located at the sea floor but any indication that it has problems should call for immediate halt and repair work. When drilling, your BOP is all that stands between you, catastrophe and death.
Yep, clearly someone who has only ever seen nodding donkeys and thinks that all oil is on pump. Generally speaking, wells only require pump when the reserviors are shallow or depleted (or both). The reservior that BP had reached was neither- by a long, long margin.
Anyone who has had any experience with drilling opreations in the gulf will know that loss of drilling fluids, kicks and other well control events are common, expected and routine. Dressing them up to be problems with the well design is pure horsepuckey. If you don't know what you're talking about then STFU. Even so-called "underground blowouts" are common and can be insured by lloyds. Furthermore the phrase 'casing was unlikely to be a successful cement job' makes no sense. The article is poorly written by people who do not have a grasp of oilfield equipment and procedures and obviously could not be bothered consulting with someone who was in the rush to attempt to smear Pulitzer all over themselves. Now, this statement has nothing whatsoever to do with the actual issues which were: failure on BP and Transoceans part to identify excessive fluid flows following the cementation of the production liner AND failure (or so it seems from public information) to maintain the BOP- quite a difficult task given its located at the sea floor but any indication that it has problems should call for immediate halt and repair work. When drilling any well, your BOP is all that stands between you, catastrophe and death. /rant