You have a point. My university stopped giving out Electrical and Computer engineering degrees (like mine) about the same time I graduated. They went to two degrees, Electrical Engineer (power systems and electronics) and Computer Engineering (Designing computer systems components) way back then.
If you think about it, Power systems Electrical engineers have been generally on life support for 30 years, being relegated to designing power systems in buildings for the most part, ever since the bulk of the rural USA was finally provided electric service. Electronics engineers are suffering the same kind of fate, where with the birth of digital making analog a thing of the past and pushing them into regulated power supplies and not much more. Is it surprising that the growth markets are now someplace else?
Since we're not bothering with making things in the USA anymore, and we're not improving our country's infrastructure, this was to be expected, no?
Not so fast. The issue is not where it's built, but where it is designed. Building stuff doesn't take all that much electrical engineering skill. DESIGNING it still does, although these days, with the layout and simulation tools we have doing design work is not that difficult unless you have to do something analog. Digital circuits are not all that complex to design and layout anymore. Analog though, can take a bit more effort if you depart from the part manufacturer's reference design by much.
Mostly from what I've seen, custom hardware is being replaced by off the shelf components with customizable software.
Which is why this EE major from 25 years ago is now a programmer.... Actually the writing has been on the wall for decades and I realized early in my career that engineering hardware like in the 50, 60, and 70 was quickly going to die out. Bailed out into Software Engineering to beat the mad rush.
Now that's an interesting test idea... Send out your own phishing E-mails and see who clicked on them..
Personally, where I work, all external attachments are removed from any inbound Emails and all attachments from inside are scanned before they are allowed to be sent. Also, all web browsing happens within an isolated virtual machine that is hard coded to only transit corporate's proxy/filters regardless of if you are inside or outside the network. The way you transfer stuff is though an external file transfer server that requires that you login and encrypts the data in transit. It too is able to scan just about everything... Pain in the butt, but effective.
I'm all for trusting folks to do the right thing and train them what that is, but I'm also for making sure they cannot do anything stupid if there is a reasonable way to prevent it.
Not easy under normal circumstances. The grid is designed to be redundant and an attacker is going to need to attack at multiple points to make much of a dent. Yea, a lucky attacker might be able to bring down a small town's grid, but nothing major is going to happen.
Of course, if the grid is already under stress, and the attacker knows it, then they might be able to push it over the cliff, but there is no real way to know that kind of stuff unless you are hooked in to a lot more places than the electric distribution company is and can react faster than they can.
I too am trying to stay vague, not that a 2nd year electrical engineering student who is struggling with applying the square root of 2 and 3 properly couldn't figure out how to do it in general. It's not like power distribution systems have changed much since Westinghouse's AC beat Edison's DC back in the day. Yea, we've automated parts of it, but the fundamentals are all the same.
The prearranged plan is not only for generation, it is also for distribution, it is called a "grid schedule".
Touche'
But you'd have to admit that in order to cause the grid to become unstable enough over a large area you are going to need to come up with a multiple point attack. You are going to need to take targeted distribution lines out of service and/or trip some plants off line in some coordinated way that you know will generate some cascade failure that happens in a way the automation cannot save the grid and humans don't have time to react. This is going to be pretty tough to accomplish from a computer screen, given the remote attacker doesn't really *know* what they are messing with in the first place, much less how it's all interconnected to the grid and doesn't likely have any real time monitoring information.
Oh sure, you might bring down a manufacturing plant, maybe two, but you are NOT bringing down the country's electric grid by doing this.
The electric grid has multiple redundancy and even if you can hack in and touch something, it's not going to do anything of importance to the grid. It's like some vandal with a can of spray paint. You can make a mess, but that's about it.
Bringing the electric grid down is going to take a pretty complex set of actions for the prospective hacker. They will have to disrupt more than part of the grid, they will have to coordinate their disruptions to happen fast enough that the operators cannot adjust fast enough. Because of this, there will need to be a LOT of surveillance and test work done to find enough unprotected points in the system that have enough influence together to make the grid unstable. Then there will need to be an understanding of how these unprotected points are interconnected and what control each point affords an attacker. Then, there will need to be an attack plan, specifying exactly what points to attack, what to do at each point and when to do it in order to destabilize the grid. Finally, somebody will have to pull all this off. Good luck.
No remote attack is going to be able to have the same affect, even from a sophisticated enemy state who had the resources to launch one. Trust me, you are going to have to disrupt the system at multiple points in a coordinated way no matter what way you do this and that's a hard task to accomplish when all you have is some IP addresses where you don't really know how they interact or are interconnected. You might be able to disrupt a couple of things, but you won't be able to really do serious damage to the redundant grid if you don't have a very good idea what you are touching.
And we've not yet had reports of this happening, even with a limited scope. If the hackers are truly capable, one would assume they would be testing this capability, if for nothing else but to feel out how the network is interconnected and what does what. Because it takes multiple failures to bring down a multiple redundant system and in this case, you'd have to know multiple attack points, understand the distribution grid well enough, and coordinate the attack so it happened faster than the humans watching all of this could respond and reconfigure the grid in a way that you cannot counter. Good luck with that.
My perspective of what the power companies are doing with their data networks pretty much matches what you describe for communications. They do not depend on "Internet" (i.e. public network) connections for their operations and in the rare instance they do, it's likely over encrypted VPN links.
Your picture of how power dispatch is done is pretty messed up though. There are two aspects to this, power generation and power distribution. Power generation is usually controlled by a pre-arranged plan which is adjusted throughout the day to fine tune capacity to match demand when necessary for economic reasons. Communication of this information can go by all sorts of means, even a phone call, but in reality everybody kind of knows what's going on and in the absence of any distribution problems can tell what they need to do to keep the voltage up and frequency in spec. Beyond the forecast and load schedules the only critical information is if a plant trips off line and another needs to make up the slack, but it's not like we run close enough to the margins that a phone call isn't fast enough.
Power distribution is what's *really* the risk and where the real problems exist that are difficult to solve. The switch yards are sometimes remote and spread over a large area and getting somebody onsite to do something can take hours. However, luckily the redundancy of the "grid" helps with that problem, making it unnecessary to worry too much about major blackouts. The only time it becomes critical is if the system is degraded, parts are out of service unexpectedly and what's left cannot maintain enough stability to get power from where it's generated to where it's being used. This is the scenario that we should fear, but in almost all cases this really requires multiple failures in diversely located areas that cannot be corrected. This happens rarely, and usually requires multiple human errors that happen to line up with natural causes..
Truly, we are at greater risk to the *physical" parts of the transmission system than any of this. It's not that hard to take down a transmission line and if you know what you are doing and have a bit of coordination in your attacks, one could do some grave damage. This worries me a lot more than some hacker disrupting dataflow or sending false information to folks.
There are a whole lot easer ways to bring down the grid than hack your way in if you can access it physically (IE you have somebody on the ground, or some way to work your mischief.) All it really takes is a little bit of coordination and planning and looking at the power distribution network topology and some 2nd year undergraduate electrical engineering knowledge.
Why all the cloak and dagger stuff? BECAUSE, it's political.
That's right, this is about some rumblings I've been hearing about the dangers our electric grid faces. We've been regaled by tails of CME's, HEMP pulses and now the risk of hacking in an effort to push the of "modernization" of the Electric grid because what we have now is old and obviously unsafe. Heck, I heard an NPR news story about this just last week.
There may be risks with our electric distribution facilities here in North America, but seriously, hackers taking down the grid is pretty low on the list of viable risks here. There are a whole lot bigger fish to fry on this subject, and IMHO this particular fish is a red herring.
Anonymous so called "experts" and all these examples read like a plot from the TV show "24" lead me to a hypothesis that this story is complete and utter BS or more likely propaganda to increase some governmental budget that benefits from cyberwar funding.
This is EXACTLY what this is.
Power companies may have exposed some of their automation equipment inadvertently, but in general they totally understand the risks here and are taking steps to be careful. They usually don't use internet control to stuff anyway, given the internet's propensity to not be operational when there are power issues. I'd bet that some monitoring happens over internet connectivity, but I'll be willing to bet this is behind reasonable levels of encryption and it doesn't really matter to the safe operation of the system, only the efficient operation of it.
Rest assured that, at least in North America, your electric providers don't have their preverbal pants down network wise. The internet, at least locally, is not very reliable so the power distributors have their own networks and back channel routes they use to manage their distribution networks.
Exactly. This crazy idiot could have stared a pandemic of Biblical proportions with this stunt. I may not have been likely, but there was a risk he could have introduced an old bacteria for which modern humans didn't have adequate immune system defenses into the population of the world and killed a bunch of folks.
This kind of stupid stunt needs to draw the ire of EVERY researcher in related areas and the scorn of reporters world wide. What he did was unethical, unsafe to him and others, and pointless because it has no scientific value.
I'm with you, both are stupid stunts with little scientific value. However, a manned mission to Mars would spur on development of technology which is likely to be of some value here on earth and have very little potential for worldwide risk. Injecting oneself with some old strain of bacteria, risking your life and the lives of others should it prove to be contagious and fatal was very STUPID.
No generalized health insurance, the NRA, limitless capitalism, sugar in nearly all processed foods, Trump, the Bushes - Americans really know how to take risks.
Sheh.... You know it ALL started by a group of folks who took great risks, sailed across an ocean with their families and supplies, landed in some remote, inaccessible land they knew nothing about, hoping to make a better life for themselves and descendants. Ever since, it's been generally the same kind of folks who choose to come here. Risk takers, big thinkers, people who work hard to make things better for themselves and their children. So why are you surprised?
In my view, it is possible to support such policies and NOT be a racist at all. In fact, I wonder if the true racist in this specific discussion are those throwing the race card here. But that's a whole different argument.
My point here is that the race card gets played and people get accused of being racists who are, by definition, NOT racist. The problem for your argument is being a racist is an INTERNAL condition, it's a mind set, an attitude, a motivation, and as such is something you cannot really know in this example case. It's about *why* a person supports one side of an issue, and you have made assumptions about folks motives which you cannot accurately know. The issue has no specifics about race in it and there is a plausible non-racist motive to support it, yet you confidently claim your opponents are racist?
I don't think the charge is fair because I think your assumptions are inaccurate in at least some cases.
It is a reprocessing facility which was put into mothballs. It is capable of any number of reprocessing techniques and I believe is something we could restart easily if we wanted too.
BTW the USA is unique among the major nuclear powers in that we are NOT running a reprocessing operation. There are other countries which still have reprocessing plants in operation.
Seriously, you are a socialist then and in the wrong country.
You know that Communist Russia had as one of it's founding principles EXACTLY what you say. You see, if I have a right to basic needs, the government is now required to provide my rights, and in your view, this is accomplished by taking property from one group of citizens and giving to another.
But you won't answer that charge, nor will you see that your "basic needs" is really open ended and subjective and limitless. Healthcare is not a right, nor is food or shelter. Where I'm all for *helping* those less fortunate, especially those who are unable to help themselves, I stop WAY short of making what you call "basic needs" a right. They are not rights, they are not guarantees that we can expect from government, especially our form of government. If you won't admit that, then call yourself what you are, a socialist and let's move on.
Unless Nuclear Engineering has changed in the last 20 years, on this subject I am well informed....
Look, They just opened the reactor where they made the plutonium for one of the first two nuclear bombs to the PUBLIC as a national park and once a year they let folks tour the "Trinity site" where the first nuclear explosion took place. Both areas where extremely dangerous less than 60 years ago, but you can walk around them safely now. Neither of these sites where planned to be decommissioned like current power plants, where we have gone to lengths to contain the real nasty bits in the fuel assemblies, which are dangerous but pretty small considering, and have systems that can safely handle them. You pull the fuel out of the core and there isn't much left that's dangerous. Most of the stuff left will be pretty safe to handle in a fairly short time, say a few years at most.
One last time... Stop with the economic fairness arguments. To me, all they mean is you are a socialist and want a communistic country which has no limits on wealth transfer because as long as you can find ONE person who is living below your subjective standard and one who is above it is your policy to take from the richer and give to the poorer. You talk in generality, your ideas are subjective as are your limits. We need OBJECTIVE well defined limits, or there are none.
This idea of yours is the FOUNDATION of socialism which needs a communistic government to work and every time I give you a chance to answer my objection, you follow with a re-iteration of the same ideas and don't answer my objection. Re-read our founding documents, what you suggest is incompatible with them, yet embodies the very ideas behind the Communist manifesto, and you won't see it.
One last time.... If you do this properly and don't try to rush a decommissioning, radiation is not an issue. The tiny fraction of waste material that remains an issue is not that "hot" radioactively to start with and all you do is wait awhile and the problem goes away on it's own. The only real issue is the waste fuel assemblies, but they are not a serious problem because we have designed into the system ways to deal with this.
The *only* time decommissioning might not be possible as planed is if the plant has experienced some kind of fault where the fuel assemblies didn't stay together or if it had to be abruptly shut down. In these cases, because the toxic radio active waste wasn't able to be burned off by the continued neutron flux as happens in a controlled shutdown, they remain dangerous for centuries. Thankfully there are only really three examples of this and two which where of any consequence to public safety. In these cases, you simply wait longer, but you can still remove the plant eventually, though it may be your grand kids the complete the job...
Ok, Research done and you and I are both right....
The most popular kind of natural gas fueled electrical generation plant is a "Combined Cycle" plant. This is where the fuel is combusted in a your turbine and the waste heat is used to generate steam that powers a secondary generator. Such plants are about 50-60% efficient where a steam only plant is 35-40 and a turbine alone is less.
One last time... While that may be true, it doesn't mean that people who support Voter ID laws are racist. They may be motivated by reasons other than race to support Voter ID laws, say preventing voter fraud...
Slashdot Mirror
You have a point. My university stopped giving out Electrical and Computer engineering degrees (like mine) about the same time I graduated. They went to two degrees, Electrical Engineer (power systems and electronics) and Computer Engineering (Designing computer systems components) way back then.
If you think about it, Power systems Electrical engineers have been generally on life support for 30 years, being relegated to designing power systems in buildings for the most part, ever since the bulk of the rural USA was finally provided electric service. Electronics engineers are suffering the same kind of fate, where with the birth of digital making analog a thing of the past and pushing them into regulated power supplies and not much more. Is it surprising that the growth markets are now someplace else?
Yea, they are also conflating "Java Script" and "Java"
Since we're not bothering with making things in the USA anymore, and we're not improving our country's infrastructure, this was to be expected, no?
Not so fast. The issue is not where it's built, but where it is designed. Building stuff doesn't take all that much electrical engineering skill. DESIGNING it still does, although these days, with the layout and simulation tools we have doing design work is not that difficult unless you have to do something analog. Digital circuits are not all that complex to design and layout anymore. Analog though, can take a bit more effort if you depart from the part manufacturer's reference design by much.
Mostly from what I've seen, custom hardware is being replaced by off the shelf components with customizable software.
Which is why this EE major from 25 years ago is now a programmer.... Actually the writing has been on the wall for decades and I realized early in my career that engineering hardware like in the 50, 60, and 70 was quickly going to die out. Bailed out into Software Engineering to beat the mad rush.
Now that's an interesting test idea... Send out your own phishing E-mails and see who clicked on them..
Personally, where I work, all external attachments are removed from any inbound Emails and all attachments from inside are scanned before they are allowed to be sent. Also, all web browsing happens within an isolated virtual machine that is hard coded to only transit corporate's proxy/filters regardless of if you are inside or outside the network. The way you transfer stuff is though an external file transfer server that requires that you login and encrypts the data in transit. It too is able to scan just about everything... Pain in the butt, but effective.
I'm all for trusting folks to do the right thing and train them what that is, but I'm also for making sure they cannot do anything stupid if there is a reasonable way to prevent it.
Not easy under normal circumstances. The grid is designed to be redundant and an attacker is going to need to attack at multiple points to make much of a dent. Yea, a lucky attacker might be able to bring down a small town's grid, but nothing major is going to happen.
Of course, if the grid is already under stress, and the attacker knows it, then they might be able to push it over the cliff, but there is no real way to know that kind of stuff unless you are hooked in to a lot more places than the electric distribution company is and can react faster than they can.
I too am trying to stay vague, not that a 2nd year electrical engineering student who is struggling with applying the square root of 2 and 3 properly couldn't figure out how to do it in general. It's not like power distribution systems have changed much since Westinghouse's AC beat Edison's DC back in the day. Yea, we've automated parts of it, but the fundamentals are all the same.
The prearranged plan is not only for generation, it is also for distribution, it is called a "grid schedule".
Touche'
But you'd have to admit that in order to cause the grid to become unstable enough over a large area you are going to need to come up with a multiple point attack. You are going to need to take targeted distribution lines out of service and/or trip some plants off line in some coordinated way that you know will generate some cascade failure that happens in a way the automation cannot save the grid and humans don't have time to react. This is going to be pretty tough to accomplish from a computer screen, given the remote attacker doesn't really *know* what they are messing with in the first place, much less how it's all interconnected to the grid and doesn't likely have any real time monitoring information.
Oh sure, you might bring down a manufacturing plant, maybe two, but you are NOT bringing down the country's electric grid by doing this.
The electric grid has multiple redundancy and even if you can hack in and touch something, it's not going to do anything of importance to the grid. It's like some vandal with a can of spray paint. You can make a mess, but that's about it.
Bringing the electric grid down is going to take a pretty complex set of actions for the prospective hacker. They will have to disrupt more than part of the grid, they will have to coordinate their disruptions to happen fast enough that the operators cannot adjust fast enough. Because of this, there will need to be a LOT of surveillance and test work done to find enough unprotected points in the system that have enough influence together to make the grid unstable. Then there will need to be an understanding of how these unprotected points are interconnected and what control each point affords an attacker. Then, there will need to be an attack plan, specifying exactly what points to attack, what to do at each point and when to do it in order to destabilize the grid. Finally, somebody will have to pull all this off. Good luck.
No remote attack is going to be able to have the same affect, even from a sophisticated enemy state who had the resources to launch one. Trust me, you are going to have to disrupt the system at multiple points in a coordinated way no matter what way you do this and that's a hard task to accomplish when all you have is some IP addresses where you don't really know how they interact or are interconnected. You might be able to disrupt a couple of things, but you won't be able to really do serious damage to the redundant grid if you don't have a very good idea what you are touching.
And we've not yet had reports of this happening, even with a limited scope. If the hackers are truly capable, one would assume they would be testing this capability, if for nothing else but to feel out how the network is interconnected and what does what. Because it takes multiple failures to bring down a multiple redundant system and in this case, you'd have to know multiple attack points, understand the distribution grid well enough, and coordinate the attack so it happened faster than the humans watching all of this could respond and reconfigure the grid in a way that you cannot counter. Good luck with that.
I think you read my post wrong.
My perspective of what the power companies are doing with their data networks pretty much matches what you describe for communications. They do not depend on "Internet" (i.e. public network) connections for their operations and in the rare instance they do, it's likely over encrypted VPN links.
Your picture of how power dispatch is done is pretty messed up though. There are two aspects to this, power generation and power distribution. Power generation is usually controlled by a pre-arranged plan which is adjusted throughout the day to fine tune capacity to match demand when necessary for economic reasons. Communication of this information can go by all sorts of means, even a phone call, but in reality everybody kind of knows what's going on and in the absence of any distribution problems can tell what they need to do to keep the voltage up and frequency in spec. Beyond the forecast and load schedules the only critical information is if a plant trips off line and another needs to make up the slack, but it's not like we run close enough to the margins that a phone call isn't fast enough.
Power distribution is what's *really* the risk and where the real problems exist that are difficult to solve. The switch yards are sometimes remote and spread over a large area and getting somebody onsite to do something can take hours. However, luckily the redundancy of the "grid" helps with that problem, making it unnecessary to worry too much about major blackouts. The only time it becomes critical is if the system is degraded, parts are out of service unexpectedly and what's left cannot maintain enough stability to get power from where it's generated to where it's being used. This is the scenario that we should fear, but in almost all cases this really requires multiple failures in diversely located areas that cannot be corrected. This happens rarely, and usually requires multiple human errors that happen to line up with natural causes..
Truly, we are at greater risk to the *physical" parts of the transmission system than any of this. It's not that hard to take down a transmission line and if you know what you are doing and have a bit of coordination in your attacks, one could do some grave damage. This worries me a lot more than some hacker disrupting dataflow or sending false information to folks.
There are a whole lot easer ways to bring down the grid than hack your way in if you can access it physically (IE you have somebody on the ground, or some way to work your mischief.) All it really takes is a little bit of coordination and planning and looking at the power distribution network topology and some 2nd year undergraduate electrical engineering knowledge.
Why all the cloak and dagger stuff? BECAUSE, it's political.
That's right, this is about some rumblings I've been hearing about the dangers our electric grid faces. We've been regaled by tails of CME's, HEMP pulses and now the risk of hacking in an effort to push the of "modernization" of the Electric grid because what we have now is old and obviously unsafe. Heck, I heard an NPR news story about this just last week.
There may be risks with our electric distribution facilities here in North America, but seriously, hackers taking down the grid is pretty low on the list of viable risks here. There are a whole lot bigger fish to fry on this subject, and IMHO this particular fish is a red herring.
Anonymous so called "experts" and all these examples read like a plot from the TV show "24" lead me to a hypothesis that this story is complete and utter BS or more likely propaganda to increase some governmental budget that benefits from cyberwar funding.
This is EXACTLY what this is.
Power companies may have exposed some of their automation equipment inadvertently, but in general they totally understand the risks here and are taking steps to be careful. They usually don't use internet control to stuff anyway, given the internet's propensity to not be operational when there are power issues. I'd bet that some monitoring happens over internet connectivity, but I'll be willing to bet this is behind reasonable levels of encryption and it doesn't really matter to the safe operation of the system, only the efficient operation of it.
Rest assured that, at least in North America, your electric providers don't have their preverbal pants down network wise. The internet, at least locally, is not very reliable so the power distributors have their own networks and back channel routes they use to manage their distribution networks.
Exactly. This crazy idiot could have stared a pandemic of Biblical proportions with this stunt. I may not have been likely, but there was a risk he could have introduced an old bacteria for which modern humans didn't have adequate immune system defenses into the population of the world and killed a bunch of folks.
This kind of stupid stunt needs to draw the ire of EVERY researcher in related areas and the scorn of reporters world wide. What he did was unethical, unsafe to him and others, and pointless because it has no scientific value.
He already got his Nobel prize... Hadn't done a blessed thing beyond being elected and still got the Peace Prize...
I'm with you, both are stupid stunts with little scientific value. However, a manned mission to Mars would spur on development of technology which is likely to be of some value here on earth and have very little potential for worldwide risk. Injecting oneself with some old strain of bacteria, risking your life and the lives of others should it prove to be contagious and fatal was very STUPID.
No generalized health insurance, the NRA, limitless capitalism, sugar in nearly all processed foods, Trump, the Bushes - Americans really know how to take risks.
Sheh.... You know it ALL started by a group of folks who took great risks, sailed across an ocean with their families and supplies, landed in some remote, inaccessible land they knew nothing about, hoping to make a better life for themselves and descendants. Ever since, it's been generally the same kind of folks who choose to come here. Risk takers, big thinkers, people who work hard to make things better for themselves and their children. So why are you surprised?
In your view...
In my view, it is possible to support such policies and NOT be a racist at all. In fact, I wonder if the true racist in this specific discussion are those throwing the race card here. But that's a whole different argument.
My point here is that the race card gets played and people get accused of being racists who are, by definition, NOT racist. The problem for your argument is being a racist is an INTERNAL condition, it's a mind set, an attitude, a motivation, and as such is something you cannot really know in this example case. It's about *why* a person supports one side of an issue, and you have made assumptions about folks motives which you cannot accurately know. The issue has no specifics about race in it and there is a plausible non-racist motive to support it, yet you confidently claim your opponents are racist?
I don't think the charge is fair because I think your assumptions are inaccurate in at least some cases.
It is a reprocessing facility which was put into mothballs. It is capable of any number of reprocessing techniques and I believe is something we could restart easily if we wanted too.
BTW the USA is unique among the major nuclear powers in that we are NOT running a reprocessing operation. There are other countries which still have reprocessing plants in operation.
Seriously, you are a socialist then and in the wrong country.
You know that Communist Russia had as one of it's founding principles EXACTLY what you say. You see, if I have a right to basic needs, the government is now required to provide my rights, and in your view, this is accomplished by taking property from one group of citizens and giving to another.
But you won't answer that charge, nor will you see that your "basic needs" is really open ended and subjective and limitless. Healthcare is not a right, nor is food or shelter. Where I'm all for *helping* those less fortunate, especially those who are unable to help themselves, I stop WAY short of making what you call "basic needs" a right. They are not rights, they are not guarantees that we can expect from government, especially our form of government. If you won't admit that, then call yourself what you are, a socialist and let's move on.
Unless Nuclear Engineering has changed in the last 20 years, on this subject I am well informed....
Look, They just opened the reactor where they made the plutonium for one of the first two nuclear bombs to the PUBLIC as a national park and once a year they let folks tour the "Trinity site" where the first nuclear explosion took place. Both areas where extremely dangerous less than 60 years ago, but you can walk around them safely now. Neither of these sites where planned to be decommissioned like current power plants, where we have gone to lengths to contain the real nasty bits in the fuel assemblies, which are dangerous but pretty small considering, and have systems that can safely handle them. You pull the fuel out of the core and there isn't much left that's dangerous. Most of the stuff left will be pretty safe to handle in a fairly short time, say a few years at most.
One last time... Stop with the economic fairness arguments. To me, all they mean is you are a socialist and want a communistic country which has no limits on wealth transfer because as long as you can find ONE person who is living below your subjective standard and one who is above it is your policy to take from the richer and give to the poorer. You talk in generality, your ideas are subjective as are your limits. We need OBJECTIVE well defined limits, or there are none.
This idea of yours is the FOUNDATION of socialism which needs a communistic government to work and every time I give you a chance to answer my objection, you follow with a re-iteration of the same ideas and don't answer my objection. Re-read our founding documents, what you suggest is incompatible with them, yet embodies the very ideas behind the Communist manifesto, and you won't see it.
One last time.... If you do this properly and don't try to rush a decommissioning, radiation is not an issue. The tiny fraction of waste material that remains an issue is not that "hot" radioactively to start with and all you do is wait awhile and the problem goes away on it's own. The only real issue is the waste fuel assemblies, but they are not a serious problem because we have designed into the system ways to deal with this.
The *only* time decommissioning might not be possible as planed is if the plant has experienced some kind of fault where the fuel assemblies didn't stay together or if it had to be abruptly shut down. In these cases, because the toxic radio active waste wasn't able to be burned off by the continued neutron flux as happens in a controlled shutdown, they remain dangerous for centuries. Thankfully there are only really three examples of this and two which where of any consequence to public safety. In these cases, you simply wait longer, but you can still remove the plant eventually, though it may be your grand kids the complete the job...
Ok, Research done and you and I are both right....
The most popular kind of natural gas fueled electrical generation plant is a "Combined Cycle" plant. This is where the fuel is combusted in a your turbine and the waste heat is used to generate steam that powers a secondary generator. Such plants are about 50-60% efficient where a steam only plant is 35-40 and a turbine alone is less.
One last time... While that may be true, it doesn't mean that people who support Voter ID laws are racist. They may be motivated by reasons other than race to support Voter ID laws, say preventing voter fraud...
Beam me up Scotty.... (You know the rest..)