If by 100s of millions, you mean 23 thousand millions, ok. Here's one estimate saying 23 billion dollars just in compensation TEPCO owes to local communities, and that's just the first year.
I am told that properly prepared raw horsemeat tastes very like high-grade tuna. We were going to go there anyway after the Japanese fished out the last tuna, but now maybe we'll be eating horse sushi sooner, while perhaps tuna stocks can recover (with a bit of extra heavy metal and the odd beta particle emitter).
How many people evacuated due to wind, solar, oil, coal power accidents?
How many hundreds of square kilometers of land declared no-go zones due to wind, solar, oil, coal power accidents (yeah, I know about the pennsylvania coal fire).
Give it a rest. Fukushima is an indictment of for-profit management of nuclear power. The profits are private, the risks are a socialized externality.
Mentioned in TFA but not the summary, is the idea that these could be deployed to work on the plastic fragments floating around in the pacific gyre. Don't know if the scope is feasible, but it's fairly original and more scalable than any other approach I've heard of.
Also, they've developed an articulating hull to deal with drag of a long tail--it's rather original. They're up front about not yet knowing howing it'll behave when the tail accumulates a full load of oil. That's why they're raising money for the next version (#6).
The reason the public lumps all nuclear power technologies into the same hopper is that they are all run by the same corrupt management culture. Management cuts safety margins, defers upgrades, miscategorizes more frequent natural disasters as once in 1000 years, all the while paying themselves performance bonuses for having improved operating margins. Then the "nobody could have foreseen" event happens, and we the taxpayers have to spend 10s to 100s of billions cleaning up the mess. If the nuclear industry had to post an insurance bond against their future screwups there would be no nuclear industry.
This isn't a technology problem, it's a regulatory and human problem.
Nice straw man and projection, dude (or dudette). But you're projecting a no-nuke agenda. What I do have is a no-regulatory-capture agenda. I have this quaint notion that regardless of industry if you deliberately shave your safety margins to the point of causing a BP Macondo or other disasters of that scale, you should go to jail for a significant portion of your life. Without the fear of jail these disasters will continue to happen, at least in the US. I imagine in China some folks got bulletized.
The Fukushima meltdown didn't have to happen: Japan Nuclear Disaster Caps Decades of Faked Reports, Accidents. I've read other reports of non-functioning standby diesels in US-based boiling water reactors. Do you really think it's any better here or whereever you live?
The current business as usual culture where you can gut safety margins in favor of profits, and collect and keep huge cash bonuses during the years that go by until the blowup happens, make nuclear power untenable. Nuclear energy accidents destroy land for centuries. By contrast even the gulf of mexico will mostly recover in my lifetime, though I won't be eating any food from the gulf for a decade.
And yes, I cheerfully acknowlege that scary fusion reactor that's irradiating me multiple frequencies every day. I'll walk on the shady side of the street.
I think we're mostly in agreement as far as what is happening on the ground at Fukushima. There are genuinely different degrees of meltdown, that somewhat map to the higher numbers of the 1-7 scale.
What I am trying to address is the non-sensical prattle about how it can't/won't be as bad as Chernobyl because there's no graphite and the reactor didn't explode. Hydrogen explosions from oxidized zirconium (and oxidized uranium at the next "bad shit happens" temperature threshold) will work just fine to create a radioactive particle plume, that may be smaller or larger than Chernobyl's.
People have this idea that if the molten reactor core isn't visibly red hot from above that "it's not a chernobyl" and therefore can be put out of mind. That's right, it's not a chernobyl. It's something different, it's not over yet, it is still a critical situation getting worse every day, and it could end up worse than chernobyl.
Maybe they were distracted cause of 10,000+ people killed, 300,000+ homeless in freezing temps, no power anywhere, fires burning, streets blocked 5 miles inland, yadayadayada.
BTW, onsite radiation is measured in the 100s of millisieverts/hr. You want to by the guy manning that hose? Also, the volume of water put out by a high pressure firehose compared with what is needed to cool 3 reactors and refill 4 reactors' spent fuel ponds is kind of like trying to fill your backyard swimming pool by pissing in it. Drink lots of beer.
The point is that a clueless don't worry be happy posting from a very-non expert was picked up and broadcast over the web 30,000 times in one day, while being misrepresented as coming from an MIT nuclear scientist. This guy had literally zero history of posting on the subject or credentials in the space, yet his first-time posting got promoted very energetically.
Describes the curious case of how a reassuring first time web post ("Why I am not worried about Japans nuclear reactors") from a guy working on a liason project at MIT in a non-nuclear engineering or physicist role somehow got reposted 30,000 times in one day.
Just something to keep in mind when you see crap like "If nuclear powerplants were merely as safe as they are advertised to be, there should have been a major failure right then". Hey clueless, the cores haven't melted. Yet. They are losing their heat removal capacity over time as less and less water surrounds them. When they do get hot enough, they will melt their containers, and we will have a chernobyl-style release. Not exactly the same as chernobyl, because there's no graphite to burn. Instead the particulate radioactive isotopes and actinides (and plutonium, yay!) will be propelled into the atmosphere via hydrogren explosions. There's also a hell of a lot more uranium and plutonium on site since some clever laddie beancounter got the used fuel rods containment pools located above the reactors.
Fukushima hasn't completely melted down, yet. If it doesn't it will because we (the planet) threw everything we have at it.
Actually, it was astroturfing. Or at least the extremely rapid promotion of an article written by a non-nuclear scientist who happened to be working on a liason project with MIT in no nuclear engineering capacity, was coordinated by a siemens astroturf group.
You do realize that the reactor containers for reactors 2 and 3 are now assumed to have been breached? And that the reactors are boiling off approximately 100 gallons of water per minute, and as they get hotter a cascade effect occurs?
Guess what? These "safe" reactors of yours require external active pumping of water, non-stop. It takes months to shut down the reactors to the point they don't require external cooling. When that cooling isn't available they get hotter. At 2100 degrees C the zirconium cladding of the fuel rods starts oxidizing water (the coolant), producing hydrogen gas. Boom. That's already happened 3 times the past two days. When the reactor reaches 4000 degrees the uranium fuel starts melting then aerosolizing, mixing with the hydrogen gas that goes BOOM and flowing upwards as a heated gas. Oh, and reactor 4 is fueled by a mixture or plutonium and uranium. Aerosolized plutonium is very deadly. One of the most toxic substances known.
Then there's the "spent" fuel rods sitting in pools of water. Pools of water that also need replenishment to cool the rods for the next few months. Those rods have been boiling off their coolant too (pool temp last measured at 84 degrees C). The parts of the rods exposed to air due to coolant loss have been, you guessed it, oxidizing the water and catching fire. Twice, in the last 24 hours.
This ain't getting better folks, and denial is a river in egypt.
Think about it, nuclear energy can likely be cleaner than the alternatives, but the same culture of shaving the safety margins to increase profitability that brought us BP's Macondo blowout, and PG&E's gas pipeline explosion exists in the nuclear industry. Until we solve the issues of regulatory capture and temporal externalities (take a risk now that won't burn you for likely 10 years, collect bonuses for next 5), it is idiotic to bring online more destroyers of land.
Dude, the entire public float of GOOG is insufficient to gain control of the company. I forget whether it is simply non-voting shares or whether they allocated a 10% total net vote to the float, but either way, it ain't happening.
The article is either crap, paid for by Verizon, or both. AT&T does offer an unlimited data plan for the iphone--that's the plan I have. What AT&T does NOT offer is unlimited data with tethering, where you use your iphone as a data modem for your laptop. The tethering plan is limited to 2 gig a month. If Verizon were to offer tethering with unlimited data that would be ballsy. Yet the word "tether" or "modem" does not even appear in the article.
Project much, do you?
I live within easy walking distance of an Apple store. Some of my peers have bought macbook airs. I have enjoyed many, many opportunities to use the chiclet keyboard. It does not work for me. I'm glad it works for you.
Will the new macbookpro address the chiclet keyboard? The original macbookpro had a real keyboard--that's why I keep mine, battered as it is. If I wanted to attempt to work on a chiclet keyboard I'd get a PC junior just to be all retro and cool.
There's no technology helping with ethanol production, unless you consider technology oriented towards lobbying congresscritters. There's only a tiny, tiny band of US farmland where one can grow corn efficiently enough to achieve a small (1.01 coefficient) energy-positive margin for the ethanol produced. Everywhere else it's a subsidised net energy loss--you use more petroleum products fertilizing, transporting product, and moving water than you save with the ethanol generated.
The juror lays out the legal issues pretty effectively, and makes a compelling case for conviction on those issues, while also discussing the incompetence of the city's IT department. Apparently he does not believe in jury nullification.
Personaly I disagree with the outcome on the basis that I think the City of San Francisco illegitimately used its combined capabilities as employer, and owner of a court system and police force to escalate a civil employment matter into a criminal case, and then jailed a man for 2 years pre-trial on a laughable pretext. But I appreciate this juror's willingness to discuss the issues.
Bet you one of the conditions of Childs' "release" is a prohibition on using computers for the next 5 years.
You did what you thought right, and interpreted the judge's jury instructions as carrying the same weight as black-letter law. But they don't, and as others have pointed out the catch-all term "jury nullification" can be the right thing to do when the law is an ass, or when the prosecution has wildly overreached. Hopefully this'll be overturned on appeal, and I really would like Childs' managers and the key prosecutor's names to become as well-known as Childs. There was (and still is) plenty of blame to go around.
As others have pointed out, if the employer did not have a police force and court system handy, this never would have become a criminal matter.
I have mod points, but there's no "-1 stupid" option so I'm replying instead.
The wind is not hard to predict on a macro level. You build in spots that have consistent winds with a better-than-oil economically viable percentage days out of the year. The whole gist of the article is storage systems for wind power so that it can be tapped in the off-hours.
Realistically, Newsom wasn't involved in the debacle until they realized that the only way they were going to get the authentication credentials was to do it by the book, as Terry Childs was insisting, which meant the mayor, in person, receiving the credentials. Not over a freaking speakerphone as Childs' supervisor attempted. It's possible that Gavin Newsom appointed some of the idiot IT managers that let a single contractor have undivided ownership of the network...
And no, da mayor does not get to tell the prosecutor to drop a case. Maybe in Chicago, but not in most cities. The real question is why the prosecutor went balls-out for 5 million dollars bail. BTW, the trial judge already tossed 4 of the 5 indictments. Just arresting the guy for a few days was enough to send the message "don't be a prick".
Most of the city is run worse. We kind of like it that way, except when the insider dealing takes out a treasured park or restaurant.
But, the prosecutor who slapped five million dollars bail on Terry Childs needs to be taken down, have his political career ended over this. The judge who approved the bail (different from the judge presiding over the trial) also has some explaining to do. ITS COMPUTERZ AND SCARY AND DIFFERENT AND I DONT UNDERSTAAAAAND is not sufficient reason to take away 2 years of a man's life, no matter how big an aspie asshole he might be.
Not to mention the 14-odd jurors who have to show up 8:30AM at the courthouse for 12-16 weeks while this idiocy unfolds. Part of their lives is being stolen away too.
How about we tax microsoft for their polluting the internet with their insecure-by-design OS installs? About $50 per install will put a dent in all the economic damage Windows causes.
Don't press the F1 key? Jesus fucking christ. What next, don't power up the box?
Slashdot Mirror
If by 100s of millions, you mean 23 thousand millions, ok. Here's one estimate saying 23 billion dollars just in compensation TEPCO owes to local communities, and that's just the first year.
Tepco may face $23.6 billion compensation costs: JP Morgan
I am told that properly prepared raw horsemeat tastes very like high-grade tuna. We were going to go there anyway after the Japanese fished out the last tuna, but now maybe we'll be eating horse sushi sooner, while perhaps tuna stocks can recover (with a bit of extra heavy metal and the odd beta particle emitter).
How many people evacuated due to wind, solar, oil, coal power accidents?
How many hundreds of square kilometers of land declared no-go zones due to wind, solar, oil, coal power accidents (yeah, I know about the pennsylvania coal fire).
Give it a rest. Fukushima is an indictment of for-profit management of nuclear power. The profits are private, the risks are a socialized externality.
Mentioned in TFA but not the summary, is the idea that these could be deployed to work on the plastic fragments floating around in the pacific gyre. Don't know if the scope is feasible, but it's fairly original and more scalable than any other approach I've heard of.
Also, they've developed an articulating hull to deal with drag of a long tail--it's rather original. They're up front about not yet knowing howing it'll behave when the tail accumulates a full load of oil. That's why they're raising money for the next version (#6).
The reason the public lumps all nuclear power technologies into the same hopper is that they are all run by the same corrupt management culture. Management cuts safety margins, defers upgrades, miscategorizes more frequent natural disasters as once in 1000 years, all the while paying themselves performance bonuses for having improved operating margins. Then the "nobody could have foreseen" event happens, and we the taxpayers have to spend 10s to 100s of billions cleaning up the mess. If the nuclear industry had to post an insurance bond against their future screwups there would be no nuclear industry.
This isn't a technology problem, it's a regulatory and human problem.
Nice straw man and projection, dude (or dudette). But you're projecting a no-nuke agenda. What I do have is a no-regulatory-capture agenda. I have this quaint notion that regardless of industry if you deliberately shave your safety margins to the point of causing a BP Macondo or other disasters of that scale, you should go to jail for a significant portion of your life. Without the fear of jail these disasters will continue to happen, at least in the US. I imagine in China some folks got bulletized.
The Fukushima meltdown didn't have to happen: Japan Nuclear Disaster Caps Decades of Faked Reports, Accidents. I've read other reports of non-functioning standby diesels in US-based boiling water reactors. Do you really think it's any better here or whereever you live?
The current business as usual culture where you can gut safety margins in favor of profits, and collect and keep huge cash bonuses during the years that go by until the blowup happens, make nuclear power untenable. Nuclear energy accidents destroy land for centuries. By contrast even the gulf of mexico will mostly recover in my lifetime, though I won't be eating any food from the gulf for a decade.
And yes, I cheerfully acknowlege that scary fusion reactor that's irradiating me multiple frequencies every day. I'll walk on the shady side of the street.
I think we're mostly in agreement as far as what is happening on the ground at Fukushima. There are genuinely different degrees of meltdown, that somewhat map to the higher numbers of the 1-7 scale.
What I am trying to address is the non-sensical prattle about how it can't/won't be as bad as Chernobyl because there's no graphite and the reactor didn't explode. Hydrogen explosions from oxidized zirconium (and oxidized uranium at the next "bad shit happens" temperature threshold) will work just fine to create a radioactive particle plume, that may be smaller or larger than Chernobyl's.
People have this idea that if the molten reactor core isn't visibly red hot from above that "it's not a chernobyl" and therefore can be put out of mind. That's right, it's not a chernobyl. It's something different, it's not over yet, it is still a critical situation getting worse every day, and it could end up worse than chernobyl.
Maybe they were distracted cause of 10,000+ people killed, 300,000+ homeless in freezing temps, no power anywhere, fires burning, streets blocked 5 miles inland, yadayadayada.
BTW, onsite radiation is measured in the 100s of millisieverts/hr. You want to by the guy manning that hose? Also, the volume of water put out by a high pressure firehose compared with what is needed to cool 3 reactors and refill 4 reactors' spent fuel ponds is kind of like trying to fill your backyard swimming pool by pissing in it. Drink lots of beer.
The point is that a clueless don't worry be happy posting from a very-non expert was picked up and broadcast over the web 30,000 times in one day, while being misrepresented as coming from an MIT nuclear scientist. This guy had literally zero history of posting on the subject or credentials in the space, yet his first-time posting got promoted very energetically.
This link:
Bad Oehmen: Confirmation Bias, Sources & Astroturfing
Describes the curious case of how a reassuring first time web post ("Why I am not worried about Japans nuclear reactors") from a guy working on a liason project at MIT in a non-nuclear engineering or physicist role somehow got reposted 30,000 times in one day.
Just something to keep in mind when you see crap like "If nuclear powerplants were merely as safe as they are advertised to be, there should have been a major failure right then". Hey clueless, the cores haven't melted. Yet. They are losing their heat removal capacity over time as less and less water surrounds them. When they do get hot enough, they will melt their containers, and we will have a chernobyl-style release. Not exactly the same as chernobyl, because there's no graphite to burn. Instead the particulate radioactive isotopes and actinides (and plutonium, yay!) will be propelled into the atmosphere via hydrogren explosions. There's also a hell of a lot more uranium and plutonium on site since some clever laddie beancounter got the used fuel rods containment pools located above the reactors.
Fukushima hasn't completely melted down, yet. If it doesn't it will because we (the planet) threw everything we have at it.
Actually, it was astroturfing. Or at least the extremely rapid promotion of an article written by a non-nuclear scientist who happened to be working on a liason project with MIT in no nuclear engineering capacity, was coordinated by a siemens astroturf group.
Described here: bad-oehmen-confirmation-bias-sources-astroturfing/
You do realize that the reactor containers for reactors 2 and 3 are now assumed to have been breached? And that the reactors are boiling off approximately 100 gallons of water per minute, and as they get hotter a cascade effect occurs?
Guess what? These "safe" reactors of yours require external active pumping of water, non-stop. It takes months to shut down the reactors to the point they don't require external cooling. When that cooling isn't available they get hotter. At 2100 degrees C the zirconium cladding of the fuel rods starts oxidizing water (the coolant), producing hydrogen gas. Boom. That's already happened 3 times the past two days. When the reactor reaches 4000 degrees the uranium fuel starts melting then aerosolizing, mixing with the hydrogen gas that goes BOOM and flowing upwards as a heated gas. Oh, and reactor 4 is fueled by a mixture or plutonium and uranium. Aerosolized plutonium is very deadly. One of the most toxic substances known.
Then there's the "spent" fuel rods sitting in pools of water. Pools of water that also need replenishment to cool the rods for the next few months. Those rods have been boiling off their coolant too (pool temp last measured at 84 degrees C). The parts of the rods exposed to air due to coolant loss have been, you guessed it, oxidizing the water and catching fire. Twice, in the last 24 hours.
This ain't getting better folks, and denial is a river in egypt.
Think about it, nuclear energy can likely be cleaner than the alternatives, but the same culture of shaving the safety margins to increase profitability that brought us BP's Macondo blowout, and PG&E's gas pipeline explosion exists in the nuclear industry. Until we solve the issues of regulatory capture and temporal externalities (take a risk now that won't burn you for likely 10 years, collect bonuses for next 5), it is idiotic to bring online more destroyers of land.
Dude, the entire public float of GOOG is insufficient to gain control of the company. I forget whether it is simply non-voting shares or whether they allocated a 10% total net vote to the float, but either way, it ain't happening.
The article is either crap, paid for by Verizon, or both. AT&T does offer an unlimited data plan for the iphone--that's the plan I have. What AT&T does NOT offer is unlimited data with tethering, where you use your iphone as a data modem for your laptop. The tethering plan is limited to 2 gig a month. If Verizon were to offer tethering with unlimited data that would be ballsy. Yet the word "tether" or "modem" does not even appear in the article.
This seems likely to support leased computers--miss a payment, your processor gets switched off.
Just like buy-here/pay-here car "dealers", with a remote vehicle disabler. ...and as others have said, DO NOT WANT.
Project much, do you? I live within easy walking distance of an Apple store. Some of my peers have bought macbook airs. I have enjoyed many, many opportunities to use the chiclet keyboard. It does not work for me. I'm glad it works for you.
Will the new macbookpro address the chiclet keyboard? The original macbookpro had a real keyboard--that's why I keep mine, battered as it is. If I wanted to attempt to work on a chiclet keyboard I'd get a PC junior just to be all retro and cool.
There's no technology helping with ethanol production, unless you consider technology oriented towards lobbying congresscritters. There's only a tiny, tiny band of US farmland where one can grow corn efficiently enough to achieve a small (1.01 coefficient) energy-positive margin for the ethanol produced. Everywhere else it's a subsidised net energy loss--you use more petroleum products fertilizing, transporting product, and moving water than you save with the ethanol generated.
My country tis of thee, sweet land of subsidy.
Pretty interesting interview with one of the jury members, who appears to understand the issues. Terry Childs juror explains why he voted to convict
The juror lays out the legal issues pretty effectively, and makes a compelling case for conviction on those issues, while also discussing the incompetence of the city's IT department. Apparently he does not believe in jury nullification.
Personaly I disagree with the outcome on the basis that I think the City of San Francisco illegitimately used its combined capabilities as employer, and owner of a court system and police force to escalate a civil employment matter into a criminal case, and then jailed a man for 2 years pre-trial on a laughable pretext. But I appreciate this juror's willingness to discuss the issues.
Bet you one of the conditions of Childs' "release" is a prohibition on using computers for the next 5 years.
You did what you thought right, and interpreted the judge's jury instructions as carrying the same weight as black-letter law. But they don't, and as others have pointed out the catch-all term "jury nullification" can be the right thing to do when the law is an ass, or when the prosecution has wildly overreached. Hopefully this'll be overturned on appeal, and I really would like Childs' managers and the key prosecutor's names to become as well-known as Childs. There was (and still is) plenty of blame to go around.
As others have pointed out, if the employer did not have a police force and court system handy, this never would have become a criminal matter.
Why, does the PDF have a javascript exploit?
I have mod points, but there's no "-1 stupid" option so I'm replying instead.
The wind is not hard to predict on a macro level. You build in spots that have consistent winds with a better-than-oil economically viable percentage days out of the year. The whole gist of the article is storage systems for wind power so that it can be tapped in the off-hours.
Realistically, Newsom wasn't involved in the debacle until they realized that the only way they were going to get the authentication credentials was to do it by the book, as Terry Childs was insisting, which meant the mayor, in person, receiving the credentials. Not over a freaking speakerphone as Childs' supervisor attempted. It's possible that Gavin Newsom appointed some of the idiot IT managers that let a single contractor have undivided ownership of the network...
And no, da mayor does not get to tell the prosecutor to drop a case. Maybe in Chicago, but not in most cities. The real question is why the prosecutor went balls-out for 5 million dollars bail. BTW, the trial judge already tossed 4 of the 5 indictments. Just arresting the guy for a few days was enough to send the message "don't be a prick".
Most of the city is run worse. We kind of like it that way, except when the insider dealing takes out a treasured park or restaurant.
But, the prosecutor who slapped five million dollars bail on Terry Childs needs to be taken down, have his political career ended over this. The judge who approved the bail (different from the judge presiding over the trial) also has some explaining to do. ITS COMPUTERZ AND SCARY AND DIFFERENT AND I DONT UNDERSTAAAAAND is not sufficient reason to take away 2 years of a man's life, no matter how big an aspie asshole he might be.
Not to mention the 14-odd jurors who have to show up 8:30AM at the courthouse for 12-16 weeks while this idiocy unfolds. Part of their lives is being stolen away too.
How about we tax microsoft for their polluting the internet with their insecure-by-design OS installs? About $50 per install will put a dent in all the economic damage Windows causes.
Don't press the F1 key? Jesus fucking christ. What next, don't power up the box?