Literally every nuclear plant in construction throughout the entire world is way overbudget, even the ones in China.
You're right... but China aims to change that. China is cool with the delays in AP1000 construction... why? Because Westinghouse is refining the pump design.
China is much more than a happy customer experiencing some delays in delivery and construction. They have a plan in place to build the CAP1400, their own proprietary version of the Westinghouse AP1000.
If you're a flag-waving American who believes that we're still in the race to help develop and industrialize the world, this August 2014 slide show from China's SNPTC (State Nuclear Power Technology Corporation) is worth a look. "China has basically established the 3rd generation nuclear power industrial system, built up the complete equipment supplied chain, completed the standard design of localized AP1000, and prepared for mass construction of the localized AP1000."
And that is merely to ensure its entry into the market as a supplier of AP1000-compatible reactors in the short term. Their CAP1400 project promises to build on the AP1000 concept while scaling up the output by half (to 1530MWe). They are also suggesting an actual four-year construction cycle.
So if Westinghouse (majority owner: Toshiba) wishes to delay construction today in order to improve the design of coolant pumps --- I'm sure China is amenable. They will note the improvements and incorporate them.
So if China supplies nuclear reactors to the world --- and ultimately also the United States for a hefty price, when natural gas declines and we shake ourselves awake from this renewables nightmare, what a pity. We could have done it first and we could have done it better. ___ "Oh dear! We're late!" Down the nuclear rabbit hole we go.
The rest was rubbish. To say we can only accomplish a goal via one single method is obviously wrong. Also, care to explain the DC thing? Are you Edison, back to try electrocuting elephants again?
Sometimes one can come to the conclusion that we can only accomplish a goal one way when one is presented with a clear winner and a bunch of sorry-ass alternatives, such as... nuclear versus 'solutions' that require imaginary infrastructure and imaginary storage technology that (nevertheless) will shut down in cold or cloudy weather. Despite anything I may have believed once upon a time, or just not thought about, I am now being drawn kicking and screaming to advocate nuclear energy. Because the alternatives suck because extinction sucks. And about the DC thing.
Well I'm sure they can afford you, your nuclear shilling and your sockpuppets to mod you up. C'mon slashdot this is so fucking obvious. As for the other guy you were responding to, that's probably you too.
In fact... I'M SOOO CLEVER I even wrote your comment too! Bwaa-haa-haaa!
No need for lithium batteries of that size. Just settle down politics (that's fantasy part of the plan, I know) and build power line across continents, crossing that tiny Bering Strait and connecting all solar plants around the world. Then shuffle electricity around the globe as needed. It's quite doable today, with today tech and moderate expenses.
I like the way you think... it's a beautiful dream and I'm right there with you, except for the 'doable' part. See this great Megastructures documentary, Bridging The Bering Strait. So many great things to accomplish. If more than ~19.6% of engineers receiving a Bachelors in engineering were women I think we would be much better off. (Not what you said, just thinking that because my daughter is choosing a major.)
There is such an expanse between things that are good ideas and those that are practical --- that is, practical in the sense that you can imagine them happening in your own lifetime or would bet on them. As opposed to merely being able to imagine them. Unless mankind blows a stinky one and goes tits-up, a global power grid is desirable, inevitable and necessary. But when? And what first?
Presently deployed technology principally uses resonant AC generated mechanically. A inter-continental or global grid MUST be spanned with high voltage direct current. The converters that render DC to properly synchronized AC (and back) are not perfected and are expensive. A series of overlapping HVDC loops within a continent is a good start. Presently North America utilizes three grids with no appreciable energy connection between. This is ridiculous. A country should be able to pool electrical energy as necessary coast to coast. We did it with railroads and then highways. Sometimes positive change requires reasons beyond corporate interests. The US was once spanned by crappy roads. The Interstate Highway System was Eisenhower's way to insure that the US could move troops quickly if invaded. From awful scenarios and bad times, good things may arise. Likewise with nuclear energy.
BUT. Grid rebuilding does not 'create' new energy. The politics of spanning the globe with cable are insurmountable. Because an idiot with a hacksaw just cut off Northern Arizona. There are a lot of idiots out there with hacksaws and explosives. Therefore, any single globe-spanning initiative is actually a single point of failure. In engineering, despite the beauty of this planet-spanning solar dream, it is a bad idea. I don't like it, you don't like it, but could we bet our future, our childrens' future, that it would never happen?
SO. What is the next step? Some form of wealth creation. Energy is wealth, so let's create energy. Something that requires a few hundred somethings, not tens of thousands or millions of something. A few hundred somethings that are weatherproof, self-contained concrete fortresses that just output energy. Something we can build, not just (for example) borrow money to have the Chinese build for us. We can defend hundreds of things located in our back yard. We must.
[AC first post that was modded -1 once and +1 twice] I never would have guessed. The nuclear power industry which funds the entire fraudulent "global warming" faux-science scam, would like to tell you there's still time, if you act now.
My that's a lot of crap in one sentence. You see the word 'Atomic' on a web page and you think you're listening to someone from the nuclear power industry? And you think THEY are deep-pocket funding some 'faux-science' scam? You've got it so backwards.
First, the nuclear power industry, for all its glory and base load contribution, is not wealthy at all. Their construction costs are high due to a combination of deliberate over-engineering and a degree of government oversight unprecedented in history. They have historically competed with coal and held their own. They are presently competing with a rising glut of natural gas power generation on the grid, a glut that will level off and decline in a few years. Carbon-neutral, reliable nuclear plants are being shut by corporate 'cents per kWh' fuck-it let's decommission it vandalism and a type of malfeasance that arises from eco-radiophobes. And when gas does decline, a whole bunch of corporate fucks will wake up and ask, "Gee, where do we put our stupid money now?" Why, coal --- of course.
So no, the nuclear power industry did not 'fund' a global warming scam. In fact, they have been taken in by its urgency along with so many people. They have been SCREWED by it because they honestly thought that a nigh-well limitless source of carbon-neutral energy would be embraced by a world in desperate need to solve the 'problem'. Well I guess it wasn't that much of a problem, or the world is not so desperate to solve it after all. Or perhaps the people who happen to be most convinced of runaway warming scenarios are the same people who (irrationally) fear nuclear energy?
And... where did the click-bait headline "we stopped at two bombs" come from!?
(yes I know you were not the original poster) The last sentence of the linked article.
Considering that there have been over 2000 nuclear tests, it's a miracle that we have stopped at two bombs. And not gone on to do THIS or THIS or THIS or THIS or THIS or THIS.
So, where did all this caterwauling about 2 verses 2000 come from? I really had to think about it for a minute... WHY would anyone question that 'stopped at 2 bomb' figure...? Then it hit me.
Testing of nuclear bombs is being conflated here with their actual use in war. These things do not conflate, people. I'd recommend you go on to consider that doing so is kind of sick. It is as if the original intent of these weapons, to kill millions of people and devastate their lands, is being marginalized in favor of some point of view where nuclear explosions are 'eco-unfriendly'. Not as some regrettable side-effect but as a primary talking point. That is really an ugly type of thinking in my opinion. It anthropomorphizes the Earth at the expense of humanity.
With all due respect, a certain casual misanthropy has been creeping into the culture, and it is most often heard these days from people passionate about climate change. It is an unproductive, poisonous evolutionary dead end. I don't mean to offend anyone but this is a difficult subject to discuss because people don't realize they are doing it.
Atomic energy is being conflated with atomic warfare, as if the mere
From the perspective of the head it's a body transplant. The body typically has no perspective of its own so the idea of a head transplant is ludicrously funny. We laugh to drown out the screaming inside.
Those heads are perfectly functional
Welcome back my friends to the show that never ends We're so glad you could attend, come inside, come inside Come inside, the show's about to start Guaranteed to blow your head apart Rest assured you'll get your money's worth Greatest show in Heaven, Hell or Earth You've got to see the show, it's a dynamo There behind a glass stands a real blade of grass Be careful as you pass, move along, move along. [...] Left behind the bars, rows of Bishops' heads in jars
What the fuck is it with this endless series of bottom of the barrel, idiotic 3D printing stories?
For all of recorded history, medical luminaries have done vivisection on things to learn by looking at cross sections. It takes a special type of person to do this calmly. Arby's has this hypnotic machine that renders part of an animal into perfect slices, exploding the animal-flesh surface area for maximum release of flavor, but we would not want it to happen to us. MRI machines produce animations that when played along the Z axis, look like your internal organs are morphing into some horrifying Cthulhu, your own kidneys become accusing eyes drilling into your soul. William Gibson imagines nanowire weapons that pass through objects with practically zero resistance, rending a man so completely in half that the upper half slides disgustingly down the bottom half as the doomed victim's face shows mere surprise. Trypophobia (fear of holes in places where holes should not be) is likely an ancient fear-response to help one recognize, imagine the possibility of and therefore avoid severe injury, disfiguring or flesh-eating diseases. So over the course of evolution up to the present level of sentience, the sight of cross-sections of things has made us feel uncomfortable.
That is why the idea of building things up (somehow) from cross sections is oddly fascinating. We are crafting a process by which this instinctual horror is reversed. It is cathartic. Unlike horticulture, where you merely combine seed and shoot and watch as the life process does all the work, grows the result, 3D printing is a purely mechanical building process, one in which the inventor must realize the complete structure of a functional item.
3D printing carries the potential to help us atone for the guilt of pulling so many helpless things apart over the years and cutting them into little bits. It helps us to imagine a karmic balance in the world, where on one hand people are running around with machettes slicing shit up, while in the laboratory (or the kitchen!) forward-thinking peoples are watching over intricate machines that reassemble, repair and "revivify" these things.
I, for one, look forward to eating a beautiful juicy steak that tastes like glop the printer squeezed out of its cartridges. Slice it thick, Ma!
Distributed rooftop solar is a threat not only to fossil fuel power generation, but also to the profits of monopolistic model of utilities. While the overall amount of electrical capacity represented by distributed solar power remains miniscule for now, it's quickly becoming one of leading sources of new energy deployment.
Weary of formula rally cries like "[nice thing associated with friendly eco-concious entrepreneurs that we all want] is a threat to [not so nice Large Corporate Thing that everyone should agree is bad]" I've decided someone has to take a stand. To put a human face on it,
I feel personally threatened by rooftop solar net-metering initiatives. They are really out to get me.
I. I buy my electricity from the City, who makes bulk grid purchases. There is also a competing Co-op which does the same. Anything that affects their bottom line affects mine also. They are overpaying for wind (ultimately everyone is) but fortunately it is mostly coal+gas energy. What would I be willing to pay to re-tool so a few hipsters can play kWh games? Zero. I do not believe in free Federal Unicorn money either.
II. I am poor. I rent. I pay the utilities. My landlord is not interested. I am most people. End of section.
III. I like or resonant grid. We built it and it works! It was made for few major sources and many sinks. Power plants and distribution networks are complicated. Customer premises equipment is simple. Mine, and my neighbors'. I like it that way. If the grid is happy, I'm happy. Subsynchronous resonance makes the grid unhappy. Fixing this for good involves overlapping loops of HVDC spanning the continent. That is a good idea. It will cost trillions of dollars. But until we accomplish it I do not like subsynchronous resonance. I feel personally threatened by people who want to jump the gun and do "this little dirty thing" (wind farm) or "that dumb thing" (rooftop solar peak surplus wasted) just because some people want to do something right now and that is what they want to do, even though it is not the 'right' thing to do first. Fixing the grid is not even the first thing to do. We need a reliable non-fossil 24x7 base load source. Carbon neutral preferred but in the context of survival, not strictly necessary. I feel personally threatened by people who gloss over the 'survival' part because they imagine the planet will blow up if it is not done with (specifically) wind and solar.
IV. People feel helpless at the thought of monopolistic utilities. They are just being silly. Sometimes so-called monopolism (so-called because it is more complex than that) is an evil conspiracy. Sometimes, as in grid energy, it is simply the best way to make energy in bulk and distribute it for least cost. It is why we need more female engineers. These days, that is my best answer for everything because my daughter will be attending college soon. Hint hint, sweetie.
Still feeling personally threatened by rooftop solar net-metering initiatives.
Well if a volcano jumped off a cliff would you do that too?
Thank you for making me laugh.
For some reason your comment and all this "change our climate before climate change changes our changes" weirdness makes me think of this brief anticlimactic interlude.
I'm bored, said humanity. Let's fuck with the albedo. Ratchet it up until we trigger Snowball Earth. Then we'll squeak it back a bit and have the perfect setting.
* will make all the WiFi Barbies hiccup * Pebble Smartwatch with AC synchronous motor all start running backwards * hasten return plague infested gerbils * make Slashdot say "read rest of comment..." when is no rest of comment to read or is whitespace (oops already happened) * make AT&T undercharge customers * will change spelling of some words even in old dictionaries * will change hidden embedded satanic message into incomprehensible phenomic gobblegook * will turn chemtrail into contrail * will contaminate Portland Reservoir with water they will drain and refill at taxpayer expense * will do nothing out in the desert no surprise there * will cause brain cloud * will change Lady Gaga name to Ydal Agag and Huckleberry Finn to Fuckeberry Hinn no one will notice * will solve discrete logarithm and knapsack problem by making people realize that despite their insolubility everyone is all ok the kids are alright so there really is no problem * will make apocalypse crazed people reset back to factory defaults and they will walk around with default wallpaper for faces * will reveal that we have two suns but only to drunk people * will short out Hillary Russia reset button because it used cheap copper click disc design and was not properly shielded and we do not need woman president we need more female engineers * will not be televised
cite "I sit in my cubicle, here on the motherworld. When I die, they will put my body in a box and dispose of it in the cold ground. And in all the million ages to come, I will never breathe, or laugh, or twitch again. So won't you run and play with me here among the teeming mass of humanity? The universe has spared us this moment..."
HELLO? Could you please take that thing off? There is a dreary urban landscape to explore.
You know that door opening on to the empty lot, the one that someone painted too thickly, large flakes shedding from the rotting wood? A tiny spider has laid eggs there, they will hatch in a couple weeks. The chain link fence to the South has one link untwisted on the bottom. What could have done that? In your bathroom cabinet under the sink there is a hole where the drain goes into the wall. If you shine a flashlight there you just might glimpse something. Once in a great while a white cockroach is born. How many have you seen? Where would you look? One of the buildings in town has a really incredible basement. Subterranean parking garages typically contain strange crawlspaces. At the bottom of every elevator shaft is a pit where lost items have fallen. There is nothing as exciting and terrifying as a rotten wooden ladder on the roof of a tall building, which (shakily) allows one to climb to its most dramatic and amazing place, where one can sit and dangle the legs over empty space. Where is a largest storm drain, that one can walk into the gloom with a flashlight? Some empty lots in tornado country have storm cellars. One of them is waiting for you to discover the hatch. Do you know where that creek goes? How far could you follow it? Set out right now. Bring a change of clothes, water and snacks and bus fare. That empty lot with the discarded furniture, old tires and lumber is so haphazardly arranged. If someone were to re-arrange the items so that they would touch one another and form a labyrinth, children would find it and walking through. Somewhere next to the railroad track there are discarded metal spikes and the green glass insulators that once suspended telegraph wires. If you spotted your town's wooded areas in Google Earth you might discover a clearing where there is the old foundation of a building. Perhaps it has a basement. Head for that power pylon, the one where massive cable or chain is suspended high above the ground carrying hundreds of thousands of volts. Follow it. Every now and then you will come to a spot that buzzes. Can you hear the variations in power load drawn into distant cities? Somewhere nearby is a tower with a climbable ladder. Somewhere nearby is a small wooded area where people dump old appliances. With a pliers, a cutter and a couple of screwdrivers you could fill a bag with interesting things, that you might some day fit together in a surprising way. Start out in a park or off to one side of town. Now close your eyes and listen until you hear something interesting. Open your eyes and head in the direction of the sound. Discover what it is. Now listen for another. At the end of four hours, where have you traveled to? I had the great fortune to discover one day, while I was out walking, a large steel door leading into the side of a hill. It was slightly open and led into the gloom of a a tunnel with a side tunnel, two other entrances, ladders and hatches. I hope you will find one too some day but you best start looking. Near the ruins of old houses you can spot where there were tended gardens. What might still be growing there? That creek has a spot where water tumbles over something and falls a few feet. Scrounge around to find bits and pieces that harness the power of the water to make a little sculpture that moves or spins. Every few days, bring something else there to add to it. Many buildings in your town have fallout shelters from the 50s and 60s. Somewhere in one of them you'll find the remains of a Civil Defense stockpile, or at the very least, a rusty s
Oh yeah ENCRYPTION that's the ticket! It's the answer because... we think encryption is cool and we like to talk about it. The extra cycles and massive overhead of it fit so well into our every day lifestyle, social conventions and habits already, it will be easy as butter to bread.
Whenever the subject turns to Civil Liberties, privacy and especially Freedom of Association, and I hear CRITTERS MADE OF FUCKING MEAT flapping and squealing and wheezing about encryption being a solution, I wonder, have they really given it enough thought.
It's a like-like-like dere's dese nano-supercharged characters in some Neal Stephenson saga who have fantastic reconfigurable polymers and nanotech-grit embedded in their pores, and the raise of an eyebrow and nod of the head precipitates a public key exchange Then the gents' throat sacs become engorged with a fluid ring of octave-resonant modulators, and the cilia in their ears pulls apart and twists like some virtual Enigma Machine plugboard to bring into place a Session Key and the two gentlemen begin to converse in a series of chirp-noisy warbles... And WHAM! The bus squashes the stupid ugly toad-people who have deliberately re-configured their biology because long ago someone took Slashdot by storm with the idea that HIDING BEHIND ENCRYPTION is the answer for everything and these poor bloated idiots whose senses are reconfigured for their Clear Private Channel cannot even resolve the world around them. "Oh but that's solvable, so simple!" We cry. "There needs to be a third device in the loop that also receives a copy of the session key. It is a device attached to their ear-pods with a quantum Monster Cable, and it scans ambient sounds and injects encrypted packets into the private stream so the toad-gentlemen can perceive plain text sense data such as traffic noise as they converse!" Too bad it relies on a Malaysian chip that contains an NSA backdoor... "Oh but that's solvable, so simple... we just use THREE of them and turn one upside-sown like 3DES..."
But I don't know how those weird toad-people snuck into my message in the first place. Oh yeah, now I remember. THAT is how all this "normal" chatter around here about hiding behind encryption and Who Cares Anyway I Have No Secrets Ha Ha stuff sounds to me. Like a small pond full of croaky toad people.
This is serious shit that can be resolved in yours-mine-our time. But it has to get CREATIVE and a little BIZARRE. Because such things are the only way to cut through the noise. Once again you see a story about NSA ending "telephone records collection program" When they don't NEED the record collection program. They have backbone taps. They want to keep those taps. So they want YOU and CONGRESS to talk about telephone record metadata instead. They want to control the discussion. People have to press Congress and the Press to de-fund and dismantle FULL-TAPS and UTAH. And if they try to change the subject, people have to jump upand shout, "If you cannot address the real issue, you're an UGLY FUCKING TOAD!" This has to happen in a National press conference, on billboards, on T-shirts. It really will be THAT HARD to get the subject on track.
"The WOPR spends all of its time thinking about [Turing Tests]. 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, it plays an endless series of [Turing test 'games'], using all available information on the state of [human sentience]. It has already proved the existence of [machine intelligence] as a game, time and time again. It estimates human and machine responses to our test responses to their responses, and so on. Estimates probabilities, tallies the score, and it looks for ways to ---"
"The point is, key decisions of every available option in determining [the presence of Artificial Intelligence] have already been made by the WOPR."
"So what you're really telling me is all this trillion dollar hardware is really at the mercy of those men with the little brass keys...?"
"That's exactly right. Whose only problem is that they are human beings. In 30 days, we could upgrade the Turing Test scoring process with electronic relays. Get the men out of the loop."
Which... as it would seem... we might all welcome, I for one.
Heh, it would be pretty easy to figure out if it was wooden ash or volcanic ash.
Yeah, lack of even simple chemical analysis -- let alone spectral at this point in time. It's disturbing. I've been tracking this odd phenomenon, I even had a Slashdot submission typed up about it. No, not about the cloud/substance itself, about the reaction.
We seem to be a whole country filled with cell phone cameras, social media sharers, windshield wipers, action news reporters, meteorologists running computer models. Our news sources (correctly) posit that it is likely volcanic ash, and the comments on the news stories are peppered with the usual shallow pond tripe about chemtrails, Fukushima crap. And a news item here and there ends with some expert musing obviously, "without a chemical analysis it's difficult to tell..."
Every one is seeming to allude to a a series of samples collected and sent to a lab by the Weather Service. We're not curious enough to go out and get the stuff ourselves, that's the job of experts. We're all waiting --- not for more information, such as preliminary results of base composition... nope, we will wait for the source to be scientifically determined beyond doubt, at which point a press conference will be held.
Here is an interesting mystery that has dropped right into our lap. How many chem labs are in the affected area? How many undergrad students, Universities laboratories? How many mass spectrometers?
It's like the Dog That Didn't Bark. Blah blah blah, no actual boots on the ground analysis. News blah, wait for expert results blah.
In a world with more technical capability than ever before, less than ever was actually attempted.
[...] and hurricanes will become more frequent along with droughts, and flooding, as rainfall will go up [...]
"...and the wolf will shack up with the lamb, the leopard will go down on the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together, in the climacticus, calamitous tumult of the wicked Anthropocene, and acne, AIDS, poppy/opium genocide, elder death, the end of Africa, hostile weed takeovers, airplane crashes, more Al Qaeda/Taliban, allergies, alligator migration and sex-ratio disruption, anxiety, asteroid strikes, jellyfish attacks, worse beer, brain shrinkage, brothel shortages, return of the black plague, cannibalism, cataracts, cat love, reduction in circumcisions, cougar attacks, thin and healthy rich people, gingerbread house apocalypse, end of golf, no more outdoor ice hockey, no more pasta, maple syrup shortages, pirates, rapes, redhead extinction, sea snot, sexual dysfunction, pug and other short-nosed animals' extinction, new shrimp sex patterns ever weirder than before, giant spiders, alarmingly small spiders, murders, fewer truffles, UFO sightings, noisier oceans, violin extinction, drop in GDP..."
The torus is a known weak point in any boiling reactor design. Triple-redundancy is our best approach right now. High pressure operation, what can you do?
Truth is, I never set out to 'defend' light water reactors at all. I got into this to push for a renaissance of molten salt designs. But seeing the level of hysteria and outright disinformation out there, I find myself compelled to speak out on behalf of those who have made this dangerous practice of mixing uranium and water routine and as safe as it can possibly be.
Some inspection at Fukushima has been carried by endoscopy and is still incomplete, but conditions observed do not appear to support full meltdown and especially melt-through. And about pool #4 catching fire... and #3's 'prompt criticality'... those are straight from the Arne Gundersen playbook, which is a muddle of quotes and speculations, confused tenses and intentional failure to communicate whether he is fronting a speculation or citing observed fact, and a smarmy, deliberate dishonesty with which he holds on to those theories as contrary evidence becomes available. He misleads people. Gundersen's apocalyptic poop may litter the Internet forever, but it is hoped that his meal ticket as a doom-lecturer will be cancelled.
Not sure what exactly it was that got you riled up like that.
Because when the Global Governance folk roll into town you have to lock up your daughters, stop issuing parking tickets (they won't pay 'em anyway) and create an entirely new layer of quasi-government to 'interface' and 'negotiate' with them. Ultimately this leads to some time-wasting end that will benefit them more than it does you, *if* you are convinced what you're doing is sound.
The way we have operated nuclear plants in the US is sound. The safety record shows it, and the gigawatt-years of reliable power underscore that success. I believe that as a layman who has researched the topic I am more objective saying this than even the most experienced plant operator... because I am looking from a grand perspective of history, while their own safety culture imposes a certain vulnerability on them, it discourages them from making self-serving statements, even if true. A humility that keeps them from standing up to say "Enough is enough!"
Nuclear energy, as we have done it, has proven to be the most promising and most sustainable --- to use the proper definition of the word --- way to ensure the continuance of modern life.
But there will always be those who try to convince you that another layer of governance is good for you. So when Switzerland proposes that "making the principle of "avoiding off-site contamination" legally binding in the Convention would be a vital step towards improved global nuclear safety...." the rational human response is What the fuck.
As in... what the fuck, do these people believe off-site contamination is like a drunk running a stop sign? That keeping Earth safe from contamination is for lack of some simple rule?
As in... what the fuck does 'legally binding' mean in this context? Again, a governance organization arrogantly asserts that there is some evil malfeasance let loose in a lawless world, for lack of something that would be 'legally binding'. Here they come to save the day. What form would a legally binding punishment be, if a signatory is unfortunate to suffer a disaster that spreads a discernible count of radiation across the border? A preemptive strike? Sanctions? Regime change? I'm sure all of this will be discussed at the next meeting.
They want to give this nebulous diplomatic instrument teeth with the stroke of the pen. It has not earned them. The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission has teeth. It has earned them. It is also a very specific and useful framework tailored to our task at hand.
Now if the Swiss had said, "Be sure you have some form of containment at all" (Chernobyl) or "don't put all your generators in the basement" (Fukushima), you could sink your teeth into that. Such may be the way "things are done". But I would propose that for the most part in real life, things are done by rules of common sense anyway. Has anyone ever asked a plant operator if safety interferes with their bottom line?
Sorry to vent so, thanks for your comment. Also thanks to mdsolar for bringing to our attention evidence that nuclear energy is in a total shambles and the US is once again disappointing the world by acting in its own self-interest.
The Convention on Nuclear Safety (CNS) is a treaty-ish pile of broad and anti-specific foofy diplo-language. Its purpose is not to share or agree on a single iota of practical knowledge, though over time a tiny bit might creep into it. It exists to permit and encourage the ratification of itself by as many parties as possible, and in this, it is like those "bad luck if you do not forward me" chain letters.
The Swiss proposal said in effect, stop all the music and implement every feature ever conceived to make new plant designs safer, to every existing plant. Somehow. Even if it is redundant and absurd. The whole kitchen sink. They cannot be bothered with specifics, that is not the game being played. Signing on to every broad recommendation would be a direct insult to our own NRC, which does not dabble in such diplomatic newspeak, preferring to assess actual risk, look at each site, mandate practical and specific engineering guidelines, evaluate what has been done.
This stuff was written by people from another planet. It was probably leaked from Planet X which is orbiting with the Earth directly behind the Sun. Planet X is just like ours only its United Nations truly runs everything. That is why they send UFOs to abduct an engineer every now and then, to keep their shit from falling apart. Then we send one of our own (out of Hangar 19) to bring 'em back. Maybe we got the wrong one back, one of their 'senior diplomats' instead.
In it you will find some vague things that sound like good ideas. You're supposed to imagine that this is a world where people do not apply common sense unless they are acting directly on the recommendations of a multi-national NGO.
The compromise statement now says basically, "New nuclear power plants should be designed and constructed with the objective of preventing accidents, and minimizing off-site contamination in case of accidents. Reasonably achievable safety improvements identified at existing plants during... safety assessments should be oriented to these objectives and be implemented in a timely manner."
Engineers should not be afraid to stand up and express their anger when they are insulted. This is an insult. We lose an essential part of our human self-respect and tenacity when insults like this go unanswered. Governance of the world should not be bestowed upon folks who cannot be bothered to delve into detail. Regardless, some people will be comforted by the mere presence of the CNS, they're the people who distrust corporations and their own government, to find solace in the flowery language of international diplomacy even though there is little substance in it.
Basically, this organization-thing was spawned in 1994 and went to sleep. Fukushima woke it up, and they've been running in little circles ever since to come up with a timely response. The response has finally arrived and is on the table in early 2015. This is the kind of time frame you can expect if you pursue world governance.
Meanwhile, the United States Nuclear Power industry and its associated regulatory body NRC hit the ground running in 2011, assessing the disaster and lessons learned from Fukushima. If you are expecting me to elaborate on them and think there is something to be learned from every earthly experience you wil
Yeah, OK, I can agree that thorium is probably the way to go for standing reactors. But not for transportation needs. We are gonna need fuels for cars, planes, trucks, and trains. Running 1000 mile extension cords is PROBABLY not the way to go here.
What I'm hoping for is some form of pulse-charging track built into roadways, so that electric vehicles could maintain charge while traveling and even arrive at their destinations with a surplus of energy.
But when it comes to practical transportation liquid fuel reigns supreme today. Ammonia has been proposed as an alternative for vehicle fuel, though it has its problems, such as being only half the energy density of gasoline. And it would be stinky and hazardous in a new way. But it does provide liquid fuel while taking carbon out of the equation altogether. Elemental hydrogen is really dangerous but some form of solid encapsulation to ensure its slow release would help.
Barring some Jetsons miracle invention, I think the eventual winner for cars and airplanes as oil and gas runs out might be the very same gasoline and jet fuel. All you would need is an economical and massive source of heat or neutrons to separate hydrogen from water, to be bound with carbon to make our own 'fossil' fuel, as nature does. If you sequester that carbon from CO2 in the atmosphere you at least achieve break-even what it burns.
But that sequestration process to extract carbon from the thin atmospheric ~0.04% carbon dioxide would itself be a massive endeavor requiring additional energy. Would you run this Dr. Seuss Carbon-Gallomper with its giant sucking mechanical lungs for an hour to get a lump of carbon... or when no one is looking, feed trees and grass into it and get a dozen lumps a minute? Or sneak into a coal mine for a hundred? In the end the best way is to electrify transportation to the greatest extent possible, and pursue a sequestration strategy that operates independently of the fuel producers --- making use of plants and farmed algae as well as direct feats of applied chemical engineering.
We deserve the chance to discover what we could accomplish with such a win-win energy source. So many environmental 'solutions' come down to (you first) conservation or outright malicious sabotage of modern lifestyle. I want no fewer options for my own children than I have, and a whole lot more.
Got to go work on the blueprints for the Dr. Seuss Carbon-Gallomper. Because there really ought to be such a thing.
Actually we can not do _anything_ with the _depleted_ uranium as it is not useable in a fission reactor.
That is like saying we'll never get beyond the nuclear bronze age (thermal spectrum). We already have, fast breeders can output enriched product even from low-yield inputs like depleted uranium, though the reactor is expensive and dangerous and fun to operate, like a fine sports car.
But the GP poster was obviously referring not to depleted uranium, but spent irradiated fuel stockpiled from conventional reactors which contains significant amounts of unburned fissile. You probably knew that but forgot to point it out. Glad to be of assistance. Aside from re-enrichment, fuel-diverse Thorium breeders or even burners could use fission reactor waste 'as-is'.
why it is "sitting around" at the first place?
Short answer: Shoddy thinking, broken promises and irrational fear.
The best thing you can you are do for your kids is take their summers and make sure that for large portions of them they don't have access to media other than books.
Aside from a timeless Summer, there is also the every-day time. You're not going to achieve the proper effect unless, during the evening time when they are supposed to be doing homework, you are nearby and are also reading a book.
Abridged history of the Great Distraction.
1. parents reading or knitting, kids have nothing but homework in front of them (until it is done) 2. family gathers around the radio, kids manage to multitask just enough to complete homework 3. early television, all watch a favorite TV show then it is turned off, followed by silent book and homework time [... several years omitted...] 10. Television in every room blaring age-targeted drivel. Parents drooling in front of television glancing at Facebook shouting something about homework. Kids in another room with TV, radio and cell phone beeping constant SMS messages from local friends, rolling chats and web pages with countless worldwide near-acquaintances recommending youtube videos, endless Buzzfeed and Tweety scrolls.
The Distraction Ends.
"We were all excited when the package arrived. Daddy opened it slowly as we put down our screens and watched. 'It was recommended by someone on Facebook... I don't remember friending him, but he saw me post about the problems we've been having with sleep and schoolwork... said this is the first step towards a solution.' It was a large heavy metal box with a single red button. We looked at it for a moment and as I reached for the button Daddy grabbed my arm and said 'hold on...' and rooted through the wrapping but all he found was a small sheet of paper written in some strange script. Chinese, Korean, Tagalog...? 'Well, that doesn't help.' so with a shrug he nodded and let me press the button. There was a loud hum, the lights dimmed and went out and the little screens in our hands threw sparks with a loud Snap!. We shrieked, then a silence set in. We could hear the neighbors talking and shouting, doors down the block opening. Mom stepped toward the front door carefully, feeling for it in the dark. As she opened it and stepped outside I remember clearly her shape superimposed on the night sky."
"Then she said softly, 'Look... at all those stars!'."
Bulbous-eyed fellow, throat sac a-billow, sweet voice melodic as the pip-squeaks of sneakers at an NBA playoff, what is your secret, your purpose? I am unable to fathom you by light scattered as if by Cupid's arrows that never found the mark.
By photonic lance I have found thee as in the manner of mine own kind, ever tossing a mess of things at other things to see what bounces back. I am surrounded by light. Why am I blind??
But perhaps this tuned möbius laser will do the trick.
By use of this special lens... we see that the frog is quite handsome...! Plaid waistcoat and chain fob handkerchief at the ready, Oxfords and scarf, setting aside a walking stick of oak, with a doff of his derby, he stoops and squats to fertilize a clutch of eggs left by his beloved, in gentle seminal rain. All in all, a most proper gentleman.
Now I will set my möbius laser skyward to illuminate Mars! Where it will resolve the illusion of dry valleys and magnificent desolation into a cheerful reality of watery canals, tall spires of intelligent, unknown purpose, and one can even see the ripples spreading outward from the poles and oars of longboats and trailing garlands of flowers.
We're talking about mosquitoes. I'll accept the risk.
You're placing a guaranteed positive outcome for the human race over any number of imaginings of potentially negative outcomes.
Congratulations.
When Diadema Antillarum, commonly known as the Caribbean God Damned Motherfucking Black Sea Urchin, began to die off in the 80s from an unknown cause... we're talking ~97% mortality... we knew we were in deep shit. Any day the World Wildlife Fund would issue a press release and lobby regional governments to cease all human activity. The Greenpeace ship would arrive and putt-putt around harassing fishermen, charter boats or anything that did not resemble a sea urchin or baby seal. There would be impassioned speeches at the UN to tie urchin preservation with environmental sustainability so they could use financial aid as a blunt instrument to conk small nation-states over the head.
What a relief. None of this happened.
Certainly the young girl who stepped on one and screamed, and her father who ran into the water to help her and wound up with dozens of spines in his feet and legs (which break off leaving the tips in the body), hospitalized with sepsis, they didn't object. The only creature that might have spoken up, Balistes Vetula, commonly known as Ole Wife --- whose pouty lips are perfectly suited to this spine-plucking lip smacking treat --- was too busy dining on shrimp and crabs to feel threatened. The urchins have come back but not in obscene numbers as before.
So not all die-offs are bad. Send those Aedes Aegypti mosquitoes home to Jesus.
Slashdot Mirror
Literally every nuclear plant in construction throughout the entire world is way overbudget, even the ones in China.
You're right... but China aims to change that. China is cool with the delays in AP1000 construction... why? Because Westinghouse is refining the pump design.
China is much more than a happy customer experiencing some delays in delivery and construction. They have a plan in place to build the CAP1400, their own proprietary version of the Westinghouse AP1000.
If you're a flag-waving American who believes that we're still in the race to help develop and industrialize the world, this August 2014 slide show from China's SNPTC (State Nuclear Power Technology Corporation) is worth a look. "China has basically established the 3rd generation nuclear power industrial system, built up the complete equipment supplied chain, completed the standard design of localized AP1000, and prepared for mass construction of the localized AP1000."
And that is merely to ensure its entry into the market as a supplier of AP1000-compatible reactors in the short term. Their CAP1400 project promises to build on the AP1000 concept while scaling up the output by half (to 1530MWe). They are also suggesting an actual four-year construction cycle.
So if Westinghouse (majority owner: Toshiba) wishes to delay construction today in order to improve the design of coolant pumps --- I'm sure China is amenable. They will note the improvements and incorporate them.
While the United States feeds Africa for a day and attempts to impose unworkable energy solutions, Japan and China will build its coal plants today and become its infrastructure partners. Then with the same steadfast determination with which the USA built out railroads, the Chinese will lay high speed rail, energize itself and New Africa with grids and mature PWR nuclear energy tomorrow. And on the third day, Thorium reactors using liquid fuel. Ultimately a quadrillion dollars of infrastructure... financed and built without the US dollar, perhaps.
So if China supplies nuclear reactors to the world --- and ultimately also the United States for a hefty price, when natural gas declines and we shake ourselves awake from this renewables nightmare, what a pity. We could have done it first and we could have done it better.
___
"Oh dear! We're late!" Down the nuclear rabbit hole we go.
The rest was rubbish. To say we can only accomplish a goal via one single method is obviously wrong. Also, care to explain the DC thing? Are you Edison, back to try electrocuting elephants again?
Since you mention DC I guess this is a reply to this message and this one.
Sometimes one can come to the conclusion that we can only accomplish a goal one way when one is presented with a clear winner and a bunch of sorry-ass alternatives, such as... nuclear versus 'solutions' that require imaginary infrastructure and imaginary storage technology that (nevertheless) will shut down in cold or cloudy weather. Despite anything I may have believed once upon a time, or just not thought about, I am now being drawn kicking and screaming to advocate nuclear energy. Because the alternatives suck because extinction sucks. And about the DC thing.
Eh, everything you wrote in your first post.
Eh. Actually my first post was a short essay inspired by the Clock of the Long Now.
Well I'm sure they can afford you, your nuclear shilling and your sockpuppets to mod you up. C'mon slashdot this is so fucking obvious. As for the other guy you were responding to, that's probably you too.
In fact... I'M SOOO CLEVER I even wrote your comment too! Bwaa-haa-haaa!
you bable A-lot!
Thank you. Feel free to sample our other fine products.
No need for lithium batteries of that size. Just settle down politics (that's fantasy part of the plan, I know) and build power line across continents, crossing that tiny Bering Strait and connecting all solar plants around the world. Then shuffle electricity around the globe as needed. It's quite doable today, with today tech and moderate expenses.
I like the way you think... it's a beautiful dream and I'm right there with you, except for the 'doable' part. See this great Megastructures documentary, Bridging The Bering Strait. So many great things to accomplish. If more than ~19.6% of engineers receiving a Bachelors in engineering were women I think we would be much better off. (Not what you said, just thinking that because my daughter is choosing a major.)
There is such an expanse between things that are good ideas and those that are practical --- that is, practical in the sense that you can imagine them happening in your own lifetime or would bet on them. As opposed to merely being able to imagine them. Unless mankind blows a stinky one and goes tits-up, a global power grid is desirable, inevitable and necessary. But when? And what first?
Presently deployed technology principally uses resonant AC generated mechanically.
A inter-continental or global grid MUST be spanned with high voltage direct current.
The converters that render DC to properly synchronized AC (and back) are not perfected and are expensive.
A series of overlapping HVDC loops within a continent is a good start.
Presently North America utilizes three grids with no appreciable energy connection between.
This is ridiculous. A country should be able to pool electrical energy as necessary coast to coast.
We did it with railroads and then highways.
Sometimes positive change requires reasons beyond corporate interests.
The US was once spanned by crappy roads.
The Interstate Highway System was Eisenhower's way to insure that the US could move troops quickly if invaded.
From awful scenarios and bad times, good things may arise.
Likewise with nuclear energy.
BUT.
Grid rebuilding does not 'create' new energy.
The politics of spanning the globe with cable are insurmountable.
Because an idiot with a hacksaw just cut off Northern Arizona.
There are a lot of idiots out there with hacksaws and explosives.
Therefore, any single globe-spanning initiative is actually a single point of failure.
In engineering, despite the beauty of this planet-spanning solar dream, it is a bad idea.
I don't like it, you don't like it, but could we bet our future, our childrens' future, that it would never happen?
SO.
What is the next step?
Some form of wealth creation.
Energy is wealth, so let's create energy.
Something that requires a few hundred somethings, not tens of thousands or millions of something.
A few hundred somethings that are weatherproof, self-contained concrete fortresses that just output energy.
Something we can build, not just (for example) borrow money to have the Chinese build for us.
We can defend hundreds of things located in our back yard. We must.
DO IT! Let's Get Off Our Buts.
[AC first post that was modded -1 once and +1 twice]
I never would have guessed. The nuclear power industry which funds the entire fraudulent "global warming" faux-science scam, would like to tell you there's still time, if you act now.
My that's a lot of crap in one sentence. You see the word 'Atomic' on a web page and you think you're listening to someone from the nuclear power industry? And you think THEY are deep-pocket funding some 'faux-science' scam? You've got it so backwards.
First, the nuclear power industry, for all its glory and base load contribution, is not wealthy at all. Their construction costs are high due to a combination of deliberate over-engineering and a degree of government oversight unprecedented in history. They have historically competed with coal and held their own. They are presently competing with a rising glut of natural gas power generation on the grid, a glut that will level off and decline in a few years. Carbon-neutral, reliable nuclear plants are being shut by corporate 'cents per kWh' fuck-it let's decommission it vandalism and a type of malfeasance that arises from eco-radiophobes. And when gas does decline, a whole bunch of corporate fucks will wake up and ask, "Gee, where do we put our stupid money now?" Why, coal --- of course.
So no, the nuclear power industry did not 'fund' a global warming scam. In fact, they have been taken in by its urgency along with so many people. They have been SCREWED by it because they honestly thought that a nigh-well limitless source of carbon-neutral energy would be embraced by a world in desperate need to solve the 'problem'. Well I guess it wasn't that much of a problem, or the world is not so desperate to solve it after all. Or perhaps the people who happen to be most convinced of runaway warming scenarios are the same people who (irrationally) fear nuclear energy?
And... where did the click-bait headline "we stopped at two bombs" come from!?
(yes I know you were not the original poster) The last sentence of the linked article.
Considering that there have been over 2000 nuclear tests, it's a miracle that we have stopped at two bombs. And not gone on to do THIS
or THIS
or THIS
or THIS
or THIS
or THIS.
So, where did all this caterwauling about 2 verses 2000 come from? I really had to think about it for a minute... WHY would anyone question that 'stopped at 2 bomb' figure...? Then it hit me.
Testing of nuclear bombs is being conflated here with their actual use in war. These things do not conflate, people. I'd recommend you go on to consider that doing so is kind of sick. It is as if the original intent of these weapons, to kill millions of people and devastate their lands, is being marginalized in favor of some point of view where nuclear explosions are 'eco-unfriendly'. Not as some regrettable side-effect but as a primary talking point. That is really an ugly type of thinking in my opinion. It anthropomorphizes the Earth at the expense of humanity.
With all due respect, a certain casual misanthropy has been creeping into the culture, and it is most often heard these days from people passionate about climate change. It is an unproductive, poisonous evolutionary dead end. I don't mean to offend anyone but this is a difficult subject to discuss because people don't realize they are doing it.
Atomic energy is being conflated with atomic warfare, as if the mere
From the perspective of the head it's a body transplant.
The body typically has no perspective of its own
so the idea of a head transplant is ludicrously funny.
We laugh to drown out the screaming inside.
Those heads are perfectly functional
Welcome back my friends to the show that never ends
We're so glad you could attend, come inside, come inside
Come inside, the show's about to start
Guaranteed to blow your head apart
Rest assured you'll get your money's worth
Greatest show in Heaven, Hell or Earth
You've got to see the show, it's a dynamo
There behind a glass stands a real blade of grass
Be careful as you pass, move along, move along.
[...]
Left behind the bars, rows of Bishops' heads in jars
What the fuck is it with this endless series of bottom of the barrel, idiotic 3D printing stories?
For all of recorded history, medical luminaries have done vivisection on things to learn by looking at cross sections. It takes a special type of person to do this calmly. Arby's has this hypnotic machine that renders part of an animal into perfect slices, exploding the animal-flesh surface area for maximum release of flavor, but we would not want it to happen to us. MRI machines produce animations that when played along the Z axis, look like your internal organs are morphing into some horrifying Cthulhu, your own kidneys become accusing eyes drilling into your soul. William Gibson imagines nanowire weapons that pass through objects with practically zero resistance, rending a man so completely in half that the upper half slides disgustingly down the bottom half as the doomed victim's face shows mere surprise. Trypophobia (fear of holes in places where holes should not be) is likely an ancient fear-response to help one recognize, imagine the possibility of and therefore avoid severe injury, disfiguring or flesh-eating diseases. So over the course of evolution up to the present level of sentience, the sight of cross-sections of things has made us feel uncomfortable.
That is why the idea of building things up (somehow) from cross sections is oddly fascinating. We are crafting a process by which this instinctual horror is reversed. It is cathartic. Unlike horticulture, where you merely combine seed and shoot and watch as the life process does all the work, grows the result, 3D printing is a purely mechanical building process, one in which the inventor must realize the complete structure of a functional item.
3D printing carries the potential to help us atone for the guilt of pulling so many helpless things apart over the years and cutting them into little bits. It helps us to imagine a karmic balance in the world, where on one hand people are running around with machettes slicing shit up, while in the laboratory (or the kitchen!) forward-thinking peoples are watching over intricate machines that reassemble, repair and "revivify" these things.
I, for one, look forward to eating a beautiful juicy steak
that tastes like glop the printer squeezed out of its cartridges.
Slice it thick, Ma!
Distributed rooftop solar is a threat not only to fossil fuel power generation, but also to the profits of monopolistic model of utilities. While the overall amount of electrical capacity represented by distributed solar power remains miniscule for now, it's quickly becoming one of leading sources of new energy deployment.
Weary of formula rally cries like "[nice thing associated with friendly eco-concious entrepreneurs that we all want] is a threat to [not so nice Large Corporate Thing that everyone should agree is bad]" I've decided someone has to take a stand. To put a human face on it,
I feel personally threatened by rooftop solar net-metering initiatives.
They are really out to get me.
I.
I buy my electricity from the City, who makes bulk grid purchases.
There is also a competing Co-op which does the same.
Anything that affects their bottom line affects mine also.
They are overpaying for wind (ultimately everyone is) but fortunately it is mostly coal+gas energy.
What would I be willing to pay to re-tool so a few hipsters can play kWh games?
Zero. I do not believe in free Federal Unicorn money either.
II.
I am poor. I rent. I pay the utilities. My landlord is not interested.
I am most people. End of section.
III.
I like or resonant grid. We built it and it works! It was made for few major sources and many sinks.
Power plants and distribution networks are complicated.
Customer premises equipment is simple. Mine, and my neighbors'. I like it that way.
If the grid is happy, I'm happy. Subsynchronous resonance makes the grid unhappy.
Fixing this for good involves overlapping loops of HVDC spanning the continent. That is a good idea.
It will cost trillions of dollars.
But until we accomplish it I do not like subsynchronous resonance.
I feel personally threatened by people who want to jump the gun and do "this little dirty thing" (wind farm) or "that dumb thing" (rooftop solar peak surplus wasted) just because some people want to do something right now and that is what they want to do, even though it is not the 'right' thing to do first.
Fixing the grid is not even the first thing to do. We need a reliable non-fossil 24x7 base load source.
Carbon neutral preferred but in the context of survival, not strictly necessary.
I feel personally threatened by people who gloss over the 'survival' part because they imagine the planet will blow up if it is not done with (specifically) wind and solar.
IV.
People feel helpless at the thought of monopolistic utilities.
They are just being silly.
Sometimes so-called monopolism (so-called because it is more complex than that) is an evil conspiracy.
Sometimes, as in grid energy, it is simply the best way to make energy in bulk and distribute it for least cost.
It is why we need more female engineers.
These days, that is my best answer for everything because my daughter will be attending college soon.
Hint hint, sweetie.
Still feeling personally threatened by rooftop solar net-metering initiatives.
Well if a volcano jumped off a cliff would you do that too?
Thank you for making me laugh.
For some reason your comment and all this "change our climate before climate change changes our changes" weirdness makes me think of this brief anticlimactic interlude .
I'm bored, said humanity. Let's fuck with the albedo. Ratchet it up until we trigger Snowball Earth. Then we'll squeak it back a bit and have the perfect setting.
The associated EMP pulse
* will make all the WiFi Barbies hiccup
* Pebble Smartwatch with AC synchronous motor all start running backwards
* hasten return plague infested gerbils
* make Slashdot say "read rest of comment..." when is no rest of comment to read or is whitespace (oops already happened)
* make AT&T undercharge customers
* will change spelling of some words even in old dictionaries
* will change hidden embedded satanic message into incomprehensible phenomic gobblegook
* will turn chemtrail into contrail
* will contaminate Portland Reservoir with water they will drain and refill at taxpayer expense
* will do nothing out in the desert no surprise there
* will cause brain cloud
* will change Lady Gaga name to Ydal Agag and Huckleberry Finn to Fuckeberry Hinn no one will notice
* will solve discrete logarithm and knapsack problem by making people realize that despite their insolubility everyone is all ok the kids are alright so there really is no problem
* will make apocalypse crazed people reset back to factory defaults and they will walk around with default wallpaper for faces
* will reveal that we have two suns but only to drunk people
* will short out Hillary Russia reset button because it used cheap copper click disc design and was not properly shielded and we do not need woman president we need more female engineers
* will not be televised
tl;dr
Would have read if you knew what paragraphs are.
your unwillingness to
read Ogg words make Ogg sad
Ogg sorry
maybe you read more in next life
when we are both cats
cite "I sit in my cubicle, here on the motherworld. When I die, they will put my body in a box and dispose of it in the cold ground. And in all the million ages to come, I will never breathe, or laugh, or twitch again. So won't you run and play with me here among the teeming mass of humanity? The universe has spared us this moment..."
HELLO?
Could you please take that thing off?
There is a dreary urban landscape to explore.
You know that door opening on to the empty lot, the one that someone painted too thickly, large flakes shedding from the rotting wood? A tiny spider has laid eggs there, they will hatch in a couple weeks. The chain link fence to the South has one link untwisted on the bottom. What could have done that? In your bathroom cabinet under the sink there is a hole where the drain goes into the wall. If you shine a flashlight there you just might glimpse something. Once in a great while a white cockroach is born. How many have you seen? Where would you look? One of the buildings in town has a really incredible basement. Subterranean parking garages typically contain strange crawlspaces. At the bottom of every elevator shaft is a pit where lost items have fallen. There is nothing as exciting and terrifying as a rotten wooden ladder on the roof of a tall building, which (shakily) allows one to climb to its most dramatic and amazing place, where one can sit and dangle the legs over empty space. Where is a largest storm drain, that one can walk into the gloom with a flashlight? Some empty lots in tornado country have storm cellars. One of them is waiting for you to discover the hatch. Do you know where that creek goes? How far could you follow it? Set out right now. Bring a change of clothes, water and snacks and bus fare. That empty lot with the discarded furniture, old tires and lumber is so haphazardly arranged. If someone were to re-arrange the items so that they would touch one another and form a labyrinth, children would find it and walking through. Somewhere next to the railroad track there are discarded metal spikes and the green glass insulators that once suspended telegraph wires. If you spotted your town's wooded areas in Google Earth you might discover a clearing where there is the old foundation of a building. Perhaps it has a basement. Head for that power pylon, the one where massive cable or chain is suspended high above the ground carrying hundreds of thousands of volts. Follow it. Every now and then you will come to a spot that buzzes. Can you hear the variations in power load drawn into distant cities? Somewhere nearby is a tower with a climbable ladder. Somewhere nearby is a small wooded area where people dump old appliances. With a pliers, a cutter and a couple of screwdrivers you could fill a bag with interesting things, that you might some day fit together in a surprising way. Start out in a park or off to one side of town. Now close your eyes and listen until you hear something interesting. Open your eyes and head in the direction of the sound. Discover what it is. Now listen for another. At the end of four hours, where have you traveled to? I had the great fortune to discover one day, while I was out walking, a large steel door leading into the side of a hill. It was slightly open and led into the gloom of a a tunnel with a side tunnel, two other entrances, ladders and hatches. I hope you will find one too some day but you best start looking. Near the ruins of old houses you can spot where there were tended gardens. What might still be growing there? That creek has a spot where water tumbles over something and falls a few feet. Scrounge around to find bits and pieces that harness the power of the water to make a little sculpture that moves or spins. Every few days, bring something else there to add to it. Many buildings in your town have fallout shelters from the 50s and 60s. Somewhere in one of them you'll find the remains of a Civil Defense stockpile, or at the very least, a rusty s
Oh yeah ENCRYPTION that's the ticket! It's the answer because... we think encryption is cool and we like to talk about it. The extra cycles and massive overhead of it fit so well into our every day lifestyle, social conventions and habits already, it will be easy as butter to bread.
Whenever the subject turns to Civil Liberties, privacy and especially Freedom of Association, and I hear CRITTERS MADE OF FUCKING MEAT flapping and squealing and wheezing about encryption being a solution, I wonder, have they really given it enough thought.
It's a like-like-like dere's dese nano-supercharged characters in some Neal Stephenson saga who have fantastic reconfigurable polymers and nanotech-grit embedded in their pores, and the raise of an eyebrow and nod of the head precipitates a public key exchange Then the gents' throat sacs become engorged with a fluid ring of octave-resonant modulators, and the cilia in their ears pulls apart and twists like some virtual Enigma Machine plugboard to bring into place a Session Key and the two gentlemen begin to converse in a series of chirp-noisy warbles... And WHAM! The bus squashes the stupid ugly toad-people who have deliberately re-configured their biology because long ago someone took Slashdot by storm with the idea that HIDING BEHIND ENCRYPTION is the answer for everything and these poor bloated idiots whose senses are reconfigured for their Clear Private Channel cannot even resolve the world around them. "Oh but that's solvable, so simple!" We cry. "There needs to be a third device in the loop that also receives a copy of the session key. It is a device attached to their ear-pods with a quantum Monster Cable, and it scans ambient sounds and injects encrypted packets into the private stream so the toad-gentlemen can perceive plain text sense data such as traffic noise as they converse!" Too bad it relies on a Malaysian chip that contains an NSA backdoor... "Oh but that's solvable, so simple... we just use THREE of them and turn one upside-sown like 3DES..."
But I don't know how those weird toad-people snuck into my message in the first place. Oh yeah, now I remember. THAT is how all this "normal" chatter around here about hiding behind encryption and Who Cares Anyway I Have No Secrets Ha Ha stuff sounds to me. Like a small pond full of croaky toad people.
This is serious shit that can be resolved in yours-mine-our time.
But it has to get CREATIVE and a little BIZARRE.
Because such things are the only way to cut through the noise.
Once again you see a story about NSA ending "telephone records collection program"
When they don't NEED the record collection program.
They have backbone taps. They want to keep those taps.
So they want YOU and CONGRESS to talk about telephone record metadata instead.
They want to control the discussion.
People have to press Congress and the Press to de-fund and dismantle FULL-TAPS and UTAH.
And if they try to change the subject, people have to jump upand shout,
"If you cannot address the real issue, you're an UGLY FUCKING TOAD!"
This has to happen in a National press conference, on billboards, on T-shirts.
It really will be THAT HARD to get the subject on track.
For the part of my point that actually makes sense, please see this previous Slashdot post.
"The WOPR spends all of its time thinking about [Turing Tests]. 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, it plays an endless series of [Turing test 'games'], using all available information on the state of [human sentience]. It has already proved the existence of [machine intelligence] as a game, time and time again. It estimates human and machine responses to our test responses to their responses, and so on. Estimates probabilities, tallies the score, and it looks for ways to ---"
"The point is, key decisions of every available option in determining [the presence of Artificial Intelligence] have already been made by the WOPR."
"So what you're really telling me is all this trillion dollar hardware is really at the mercy of those men with the little brass keys...?"
"That's exactly right. Whose only problem is that they are human beings. In 30 days, we could upgrade the Turing Test scoring process with electronic relays. Get the men out of the loop."
Which... as it would seem... we might all welcome, I for one.
And then, 150,000 years later...
Heh, it would be pretty easy to figure out if it was wooden ash or volcanic ash.
Yeah, lack of even simple chemical analysis -- let alone spectral at this point in time. It's disturbing. I've been tracking this odd phenomenon, I even had a Slashdot submission typed up about it. No, not about the cloud/substance itself, about the reaction.
We seem to be a whole country filled with cell phone cameras, social media sharers, windshield wipers, action news reporters, meteorologists running computer models. Our news sources (correctly) posit that it is likely volcanic ash, and the comments on the news stories are peppered with the usual shallow pond tripe about chemtrails, Fukushima crap. And a news item here and there ends with some expert musing obviously, "without a chemical analysis it's difficult to tell..."
Every one is seeming to allude to a a series of samples collected and sent to a lab by the Weather Service. We're not curious enough to go out and get the stuff ourselves, that's the job of experts. We're all waiting --- not for more information, such as preliminary results of base composition... nope, we will wait for the source to be scientifically determined beyond doubt, at which point a press conference will be held.
Here is an interesting mystery that has dropped right into our lap. How many chem labs are in the affected area? How many undergrad students, Universities laboratories? How many mass spectrometers?
It's like the Dog That Didn't Bark. Blah blah blah, no actual boots on the ground analysis. News blah, wait for expert results blah.
In a world with more technical capability than ever before,
less than ever was actually attempted.
Could be fallout from a Transit Cloud
Or residue from a Brain Cloud
"You have some time left. You have some life left.
My advice to you is, live it well."
[...] and hurricanes will become more frequent along with droughts, and flooding, as rainfall will go up [...]
"...and the wolf will shack up with the lamb, the leopard will go down on the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together, in the climacticus, calamitous tumult of the wicked Anthropocene, and acne, AIDS, poppy/opium genocide, elder death, the end of Africa, hostile weed takeovers, airplane crashes, more Al Qaeda/Taliban, allergies, alligator migration and sex-ratio disruption, anxiety, asteroid strikes, jellyfish attacks, worse beer, brain shrinkage, brothel shortages, return of the black plague, cannibalism, cataracts, cat love, reduction in circumcisions, cougar attacks, thin and healthy rich people, gingerbread house apocalypse, end of golf, no more outdoor ice hockey, no more pasta, maple syrup shortages, pirates, rapes, redhead extinction, sea snot, sexual dysfunction, pug and other short-nosed animals' extinction, new shrimp sex patterns ever weirder than before, giant spiders, alarmingly small spiders, murders, fewer truffles, UFO sightings, noisier oceans, violin extinction, drop in GDP..."
SOYLENT GREEN IS PEOPLE
Pressed for time this morning... but may I suggest a commentary and analysis of the failure modes of Fukushima reactors and fuel pool#4?
Fukushima âoeMelt Throughsâ: Fact or Fiction?
Fukushima Unit 4 Spent Fuel Pool
Fukushima Fear Uncertainty and Doubt
The torus is a known weak point in any boiling reactor design. Triple-redundancy is our best approach right now. High pressure operation, what can you do?
Truth is, I never set out to 'defend' light water reactors at all. I got into this to push for a renaissance of molten salt designs. But seeing the level of hysteria and outright disinformation out there, I find myself compelled to speak out on behalf of those who have made this dangerous practice of mixing uranium and water routine and as safe as it can possibly be.
Some inspection at Fukushima has been carried by endoscopy and is still incomplete, but conditions observed do not appear to support full meltdown and especially melt-through. And about pool #4 catching fire... and #3's 'prompt criticality' ... those are straight from the Arne Gundersen playbook, which is a muddle of quotes and speculations, confused tenses and intentional failure to communicate whether he is fronting a speculation or citing observed fact, and a smarmy, deliberate dishonesty with which he holds on to those theories as contrary evidence becomes available. He misleads people. Gundersen's apocalyptic poop may litter the Internet forever, but it is hoped that his meal ticket as a doom-lecturer will be cancelled.
Not sure what exactly it was that got you riled up like that.
Because when the Global Governance folk roll into town you have to lock up your daughters, stop issuing parking tickets (they won't pay 'em anyway) and create an entirely new layer of quasi-government to 'interface' and 'negotiate' with them. Ultimately this leads to some time-wasting end that will benefit them more than it does you, *if* you are convinced what you're doing is sound.
The way we have operated nuclear plants in the US is sound. The safety record shows it, and the gigawatt-years of reliable power underscore that success. I believe that as a layman who has researched the topic I am more objective saying this than even the most experienced plant operator... because I am looking from a grand perspective of history, while their own safety culture imposes a certain vulnerability on them, it discourages them from making self-serving statements, even if true. A humility that keeps them from standing up to say "Enough is enough!"
Nuclear energy, as we have done it, has proven to be the most promising and most sustainable --- to use the proper definition of the word --- way to ensure the continuance of modern life.
But there will always be those who try to convince you that another layer of governance is good for you. So when Switzerland proposes that "making the principle of "avoiding off-site contamination" legally binding in the Convention would be a vital step towards improved global nuclear safety. ..." the rational human response is What the fuck.
As in... what the fuck, do these people believe off-site contamination is like a drunk running a stop sign? That keeping Earth safe from contamination is for lack of some simple rule?
As in... what the fuck does 'legally binding' mean in this context? Again, a governance organization arrogantly asserts that there is some evil malfeasance let loose in a lawless world, for lack of something that would be 'legally binding'. Here they come to save the day. What form would a legally binding punishment be, if a signatory is unfortunate to suffer a disaster that spreads a discernible count of radiation across the border? A preemptive strike? Sanctions? Regime change? I'm sure all of this will be discussed at the next meeting.
Don't get me wrong. The IAEA has done some excellent work. Not all international conventions are trite and insulting. To render assistance in a disaster, responsibly notify one's neighbors, agree on safe handling practices, and even address liability in our litigious world, are worth things to agree on.
They want to give this nebulous diplomatic instrument teeth with the stroke of the pen. It has not earned them. The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission has teeth. It has earned them. It is also a very specific and useful framework tailored to our task at hand.
Now if the Swiss had said, "Be sure you have some form of containment at all" (Chernobyl) or "don't put all your generators in the basement" (Fukushima), you could sink your teeth into that. Such may be the way "things are done". But I would propose that for the most part in real life, things are done by rules of common sense anyway. Has anyone ever asked a plant operator if safety interferes with their bottom line?
Sorry to vent so, thanks for your comment. Also thanks to mdsolar for bringing to our attention evidence that nuclear energy is in a total shambles and the US is once again disappointing the world by acting in its own self-interest.
The Convention on Nuclear Safety (CNS) is a treaty-ish pile of broad and anti-specific foofy diplo-language. Its purpose is not to share or agree on a single iota of practical knowledge, though over time a tiny bit might creep into it. It exists to permit and encourage the ratification of itself by as many parties as possible, and in this, it is like those "bad luck if you do not forward me" chain letters.
The Swiss proposal said in effect, stop all the music and implement every feature ever conceived to make new plant designs safer, to every existing plant. Somehow. Even if it is redundant and absurd. The whole kitchen sink. They cannot be bothered with specifics, that is not the game being played. Signing on to every broad recommendation would be a direct insult to our own NRC, which does not dabble in such diplomatic newspeak, preferring to assess actual risk, look at each site, mandate practical and specific engineering guidelines, evaluate what has been done.
See INFCIRC/449 and Add.2 and Add.3 and Add.4 and Swiss Amendment.
This stuff was written by people from another planet. It was probably leaked from Planet X which is orbiting with the Earth directly behind the Sun. Planet X is just like ours only its United Nations truly runs everything. That is why they send UFOs to abduct an engineer every now and then, to keep their shit from falling apart. Then we send one of our own (out of Hangar 19) to bring 'em back. Maybe we got the wrong one back, one of their 'senior diplomats' instead.
In it you will find some vague things that sound like good ideas. You're supposed to imagine that this is a world where people do not apply common sense unless they are acting directly on the recommendations of a multi-national NGO.
The compromise statement now says basically, "New nuclear power plants should be designed and constructed with the objective of preventing accidents, and minimizing off-site contamination in case of accidents. Reasonably achievable safety improvements identified at existing plants during... safety assessments should be oriented to these objectives and be implemented in a timely manner."
Engineers should not be afraid to stand up and express their anger when they are insulted. This is an insult. We lose an essential part of our human self-respect and tenacity when insults like this go unanswered. Governance of the world should not be bestowed upon folks who cannot be bothered to delve into detail. Regardless, some people will be comforted by the mere presence of the CNS, they're the people who distrust corporations and their own government, to find solace in the flowery language of international diplomacy even though there is little substance in it.
Basically, this organization-thing was spawned in 1994 and went to sleep. Fukushima woke it up, and they've been running in little circles ever since to come up with a timely response. The response has finally arrived and is on the table in early 2015. This is the kind of time frame you can expect if you pursue world governance.
Meanwhile, the United States Nuclear Power industry and its associated regulatory body NRC hit the ground running in 2011, assessing the disaster and lessons learned from Fukushima. If you are expecting me to elaborate on them and think there is something to be learned from every earthly experience you wil
Yeah, OK, I can agree that thorium is probably the way to go for standing reactors. But not for transportation needs. We are gonna need fuels for cars, planes, trucks, and trains. Running 1000 mile extension cords is PROBABLY not the way to go here .
What I'm hoping for is some form of pulse-charging track built into roadways, so that electric vehicles could maintain charge while traveling and even arrive at their destinations with a surplus of energy.
But when it comes to practical transportation liquid fuel reigns supreme today. Ammonia has been proposed as an alternative for vehicle fuel, though it has its problems, such as being only half the energy density of gasoline. And it would be stinky and hazardous in a new way. But it does provide liquid fuel while taking carbon out of the equation altogether. Elemental hydrogen is really dangerous but some form of solid encapsulation to ensure its slow release would help.
Barring some Jetsons miracle invention, I think the eventual winner for cars and airplanes as oil and gas runs out might be the very same gasoline and jet fuel. All you would need is an economical and massive source of heat or neutrons to separate hydrogen from water, to be bound with carbon to make our own 'fossil' fuel, as nature does. If you sequester that carbon from CO2 in the atmosphere you at least achieve break-even what it burns.
But that sequestration process to extract carbon from the thin atmospheric ~0.04% carbon dioxide would itself be a massive endeavor requiring additional energy. Would you run this Dr. Seuss Carbon-Gallomper with its giant sucking mechanical lungs for an hour to get a lump of carbon... or when no one is looking, feed trees and grass into it and get a dozen lumps a minute? Or sneak into a coal mine for a hundred? In the end the best way is to electrify transportation to the greatest extent possible, and pursue a sequestration strategy that operates independently of the fuel producers --- making use of plants and farmed algae as well as direct feats of applied chemical engineering.
Some calculations showing actual energy/thermal output of some ~2.5Gwt for a year from tonne of Thorium. This is an amazing, unprecedented amount of carbon-neutral energy for a fuel source that is present on every continent, and can be mined with a very small footprint.
We deserve the chance to discover what we could accomplish with such a win-win energy source. So many environmental 'solutions' come down to (you first) conservation or outright malicious sabotage of modern lifestyle. I want no fewer options for my own children than I have, and a whole lot more.
Got to go work on the blueprints for the Dr. Seuss Carbon-Gallomper. Because there really ought to be such a thing.
___
"Oh dear! We're late!" Down the nuclear rabbit hole we go.
Actually we can not do _anything_ with the _depleted_ uranium as it is not useable in a fission reactor.
That is like saying we'll never get beyond the nuclear bronze age (thermal spectrum). We already have, fast breeders can output enriched product even from low-yield inputs like depleted uranium, though the reactor is expensive and dangerous and fun to operate, like a fine sports car.
But the GP poster was obviously referring not to depleted uranium, but spent irradiated fuel stockpiled from conventional reactors which contains significant amounts of unburned fissile. You probably knew that but forgot to point it out. Glad to be of assistance. Aside from re-enrichment, fuel-diverse Thorium breeders or even burners could use fission reactor waste 'as-is'.
why it is "sitting around" at the first place?
Short answer: Shoddy thinking, broken promises and irrational fear.
Longer answer: a brief history of nuclear fear in the United States
___
Please see Thorium Remix and my own letters on energy,
To The Honorable James M. Inhofe, United States Senate
To whom it may concern, Halliburton Corporate
Also of interest, Faulkner [2005]: Electric Pipelines for North American Power Grid Efficiency Security
The best thing you can you are do for your kids is take their summers and make sure that for large portions of them they don't have access to media other than books.
Aside from a timeless Summer, there is also the every-day time. You're not going to achieve the proper effect unless, during the evening time when they are supposed to be doing homework, you are nearby and are also reading a book.
Abridged history of the Great Distraction.
1. parents reading or knitting, kids have nothing but homework in front of them (until it is done) ...]
2. family gathers around the radio, kids manage to multitask just enough to complete homework
3. early television, all watch a favorite TV show then it is turned off, followed by silent book and homework time
[... several years omitted
10. Television in every room blaring age-targeted drivel. Parents drooling in front of television glancing at Facebook shouting something about homework. Kids in another room with TV, radio and cell phone beeping constant SMS messages from local friends, rolling chats and web pages with countless worldwide near-acquaintances recommending youtube videos, endless Buzzfeed and Tweety scrolls.
The Distraction Ends.
"We were all excited when the package arrived. Daddy opened it slowly as we put down our screens and watched. 'It was recommended by someone on Facebook... I don't remember friending him, but he saw me post about the problems we've been having with sleep and schoolwork... said this is the first step towards a solution.' It was a large heavy metal box with a single red button. We looked at it for a moment and as I reached for the button Daddy grabbed my arm and said 'hold on...' and rooted through the wrapping but all he found was a small sheet of paper written in some strange script. Chinese, Korean, Tagalog...? 'Well, that doesn't help.' so with a shrug he nodded and let me press the button. There was a loud hum, the lights dimmed and went out and the little screens in our hands threw sparks with a loud Snap!. We shrieked, then a silence set in. We could hear the neighbors talking and shouting, doors down the block opening. Mom stepped toward the front door carefully, feeling for it in the dark. As she opened it and stepped outside I remember clearly her shape superimposed on the night sky."
"Then she said softly, 'Look... at all those stars!'."
We lost our memories.
Now we need to make new ones.
Bulbous-eyed fellow, throat sac a-billow,
sweet voice melodic as the pip-squeaks
of sneakers at an NBA playoff,
what is your secret, your purpose?
I am unable to fathom you by light
scattered as if by Cupid's arrows
that never found the mark.
By photonic lance I have found thee
as in the manner of mine own kind, ever
tossing a mess of things at other things
to see what bounces back.
I am surrounded by light.
Why am I blind??
But perhaps this tuned möbius laser
will do the trick.
By use of this special lens...
we see that the frog is quite handsome...!
Plaid waistcoat and chain fob
handkerchief at the ready, Oxfords and scarf,
setting aside a walking stick of oak,
with a doff of his derby, he stoops and squats
to fertilize a clutch of eggs left by his beloved,
in gentle seminal rain.
All in all, a most proper gentleman.
Now I will set my möbius laser skyward
to illuminate Mars! Where it will resolve the illusion
of dry valleys and magnificent desolation
into a cheerful reality of watery canals,
tall spires of intelligent, unknown purpose,
and one can even see the ripples
spreading outward from the poles and oars
of longboats and trailing garlands of flowers.
I was blind,
but now I see.
We're talking about mosquitoes. I'll accept the risk.
You're placing a guaranteed positive outcome for the human race over any number of imaginings of potentially negative outcomes.
Congratulations.
When Diadema Antillarum , commonly known as the Caribbean God Damned Motherfucking Black Sea Urchin, began to die off in the 80s from an unknown cause... we're talking ~97% mortality... we knew we were in deep shit. Any day the World Wildlife Fund would issue a press release and lobby regional governments to cease all human activity. The Greenpeace ship would arrive and putt-putt around harassing fishermen, charter boats or anything that did not resemble a sea urchin or baby seal. There would be impassioned speeches at the UN to tie urchin preservation with environmental sustainability so they could use financial aid as a blunt instrument to conk small nation-states over the head.
What a relief. None of this happened.
Certainly the young girl who stepped on one and screamed, and her father who ran into the water to help her and wound up with dozens of spines in his feet and legs (which break off leaving the tips in the body), hospitalized with sepsis, they didn't object. The only creature that might have spoken up, Balistes Vetula , commonly known as Ole Wife --- whose pouty lips are perfectly suited to this spine-plucking lip smacking treat --- was too busy dining on shrimp and crabs to feel threatened. The urchins have come back but not in obscene numbers as before.
So not all die-offs are bad. Send those Aedes Aegypti mosquitoes home to Jesus.
That is why space-based solar power is very likely the only way to go.
My inner nerd wholly agrees with you.
My outer nerd thinks orbital base load energy would be a single point of failure, and the entity that provides it would become the de-facto world government. Better to build autonomous terrestrial plants in sovereign countries fueled by an element present on every continent.
And yes, I have even more layers of nerd underneath. It's nerd all the way down.