My username is the character of a book I was reading more than a decade ago when I signed up and can't be changed now. Sorry.
And, I may not, asserting without proof or even attempt at investigation, that the amount of nuclear waste is a handful whereas PVs take a truckload.
There is some waste created in the construction process of the plant. but not particularly more than any other industrial facility. After it is built a nuclear power plant can generate a gigawatt-year of power while only producing about a ton of waste.
Solar panels don't produce any waste while they are operating but produce quite a bit in the manufacturing phase and even more if you don't recycle them (which is difficult).
If you want to start talking about moving to a solar economy how many panels must be manufactured to replace that power plant? Don't forget about all the extra panels you need to compensate for solar's 12%-19% capacity factor.
Recycling accounts for end-of-life pollution but not the manufacturing process itself.
Also no one has yet proven an lifecycle EROEI of greater than 1.0 yet. Until then happens they might very well be nothing more than expensive, unreliable batteries.
The US Aircraft Reactor Experiment (ARE) was a 2.5 MW thermal nuclear reactor experiment designed to attain a high power density for use as an engine in a nuclear powered bomber. It used the molten fluoride salt NaF-ZrF4-UF4 (53-41-6 mol%) as fuel and was moderated by beryllium oxide (BeO), liquid sodium as a secondary coolant, and it had a peak temperature of 860 C, it operated for a 1000 hr cycle in 1954. It was the first molten salt reactor. Work on this project in the US stopped after ICBMs made it obsolete. The designs for its engines can currently be viewed at the EBR-I memorial building at the Idaho National Laboratory.
Oak Ridge National Laboratory took the lead in researching the MSR through 1960s, and much of their work culminated with the Molten-Salt Reactor Experiment (MSRE). The MSRE was a 7.4 MWth test reactor simulating the neutronic "kernel" of an inherently safe epithermal thorium breeder reactor. It tested molten salt fuels of uranium and plutonium. The tested 233UF4 fluid fuel has a unique decay path that minimizes waste, with waste isotopes having half-lives under 50 years. The red-hot 650 C temperature of the reactor could power high-efficiency heat engines such as gas turbines. The large, expensive breeding blanket of thorium salt was omitted in favor of neutron measurements.
The MSRE was located at ORNL. Its piping, core vat and structural components were made from Hastelloy-N and its moderator was pyrolytic graphite. It went critical in 1965 and ran for four years. The fuel for the MSRE was LiF-BeF2-ZrF4-UF4 (65-30-5-0.1), the graphite core moderated it, and its secondary coolant was FLiBe (2LiF-BeF2). It reached temperatures as high as 650 C and operated for the equivalent of about 1.5 years of full power operation.
Two problems were subsequently solved by researchers at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The corrosion of the pipes was stopped by the addition of a trace amount of titanium to Hastelloy-N alloy.
All this "clean" crap is irrelevent to industrial processes and only really applies to washing powder. All these things are "dirty" so the problem is to make sure it doesn't hurt anyone.
I guess, but if producing 1 GW-hour of electricity in a nuclear power plant creates a handful of toxic waste that must be disposed of while producing that same GW-hour via photovoltaics creates a truckload of waste then don't you think that should should enter into the equation?
We know that reprocessing liquid fuel is trivial in comparison to reprocessing solid fuel. In fact, it's so simple that it can be integrated into the reactor plant and done in real time.
Besides, name the worst of the toxic byproducts created by manufacturing solar panels and I'll top it with various nasties from oil refining.
Make sure you factor in the EROEI too. If technology X produces 10 times the nasties of technology Y but has a 30 times advantage in EROEI then it's actually the cleaner choice.
Competition is not a sin. It's a part of life. But competition taken to it's logical conclusion is the decline of America. Until we get it that we're a team together and that there are bigger problems to solve than how to dominate a market, we're going to face a serious decline in our standard of living relative to other nations.
For every honest, well intentioned person using this line there are a thousand con men using it to prey on the good intentions of their victims.
They're only "greener" if they produce less pollution per GW-year than the coal power plants they are replacing. Until they catch up on the EROEI front this isn't assured.
We can't build an education system to teach the mass based on a few gifted students. In the same way, we can't build an education system to teach the mass based on a those few that are slow learners.
If you'd read his Underground History then you'd see how the education system was used to establish that system in the first place.
We can't build an education system to teach the mass based on a few gifted students. In the same way, we can't build an education system to teach the mass based on a those few that are slow learners.
Think of all the things that children learn to do before they are ever exposed to formal education. Why are they so successful at learning these things and so comparatively unsuccessful at learning in school?
[quote]I am skeptical that kids taught themselves to read. Surely, at least a parent or nanny was involved.[/quote]The taught themselves to read the same way that they taught themselves to walk and talk. For some slightly more modern examples there's the cases of Truman Capote and Nicholas Delbanco.
The best answer to your comments is contained in the book I linked to, but I'll provide a summary:
250 years ago we didn't have schools as we know them now but children taught themselves to read. Today our states spend almost 1/3 of their budgets on public education yet we are less literate than an any time during this nation's history.
If you assert that the above statement is bullshit then please provide the evidence that refutes the historical facts presented in the aforementioned book.
If you think that there is anything inherently good about public schools you first need to read this essay, then read a book written by a public school teacher of 20 years.
The Six-Lesson Schoolteacher
by John Taylor Gatto, New York State Teacher of the Year, 1991
Call me Mr. Gatto, please. Twenty-six years ago, having nothing better to do, I tried my hand at schoolteaching. My license certifies me as an instructor of English language and literature, but that isn't what I do at all. What I teach is school, and I win awards doing it.
Teaching means many different things, but six lessons are common to schoolteaching from Harlem to Hollywood. You pay for these lessons in more ways than you can imagine, so you might as well know what they are:
The first lesson I teach is: "Stay in the class where you belong." I don't know who decides that my kids belong there but that's not my business. The children are numbered so that if any get away they can be returned to the right class. Over the years the variety of ways children are numbered has increased dramatically, until it is hard to see the human being under the burden of the numbers each carries. Numbering children is a big and very profitable business, though what the business is designed to accomplish is elusive.
In any case, again, that's not my business. My job is to make the kids like it -- being locked in together, I mean -- or at the minimum, endure it. If things go well, the kids can't imagine themselves anywhere else; they envy and fear the better classes and have contempt for the dumber classes. So the class mostly keeps itself in good marching order. That's the real lesson of any rigged competition like school. You come to know your place.
Nevertheless, in spite of the overall blueprint, I make an effort to urge children to higher levels of test success, promising eventual transfer from the lower-level class as a reward. I insinuate that the day will come when an employer will hire them on the basis of test scores, even though my own experience is that employers are (rightly) indifferent to such things. I never lie outright, but I've come to see that truth and [school]teaching are incompatible.
The lesson of numbered classes is that there is no way out of your class except by magic. Until that happens you must stay where you are put.
The second lesson I teach kids is to turn on and off like a light switch. I demand that they become totally involved in my lessons, jumping up and down in their seats with anticipation, competing vigorously with each other for my favor. But when the bell rings I insist that they drop the work at once and proceed quickly to the next work station. Nothing important is ever finished in my class, nor in any other class I know of.
The lesson of bells is that no work is worth finishing, so why care too deeply about anything? Bells are the secret logic of schooltime; their argument is inexorable; bells destroy past and future, converting every interval into a sameness, as an abstract map makes every living mountain and river the same even though they are not. Bells inoculate each undertaking with indifference.
The third lesson I teach you is to surrender your will to a predestined chain of command. Rights may be granted or withheld, by authority, without appeal. As a schoolteacher I intervene in many personal decisions, issuing a Pass for those I deem legitimate, or initiating a disciplinary confrontation for behavior that threatens my control. My judgments come thick and fast, because individuality is trying constantly to assert itself in my classroom. Individuality is a curse to all systems of classification, a contradiction of class theory.
Here are some common ways it shows up: children sneak away for a private moment in the toilet on the pretext of moving their bowels; they trick me out of a private instant in the hallway on the grounds that they need water. Sometimes free will appears right in front of
A common misunderstanding is that rights are granted by governments to their citizens. Rights are inherent to individuals as a consequence of being alive. Whether any particular government recognizes this and acts appropriately is beside the point.
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My username is the character of a book I was reading more than a decade ago when I signed up and can't be changed now. Sorry.
There is some waste created in the construction process of the plant. but not particularly more than any other industrial facility. After it is built a nuclear power plant can generate a gigawatt-year of power while only producing about a ton of waste.
Solar panels don't produce any waste while they are operating but produce quite a bit in the manufacturing phase and even more if you don't recycle them (which is difficult).
If you want to start talking about moving to a solar economy how many panels must be manufactured to replace that power plant? Don't forget about all the extra panels you need to compensate for solar's 12%-19% capacity factor.
Recycling accounts for end-of-life pollution but not the manufacturing process itself.
Also no one has yet proven an lifecycle EROEI of greater than 1.0 yet. Until then happens they might very well be nothing more than expensive, unreliable batteries.
Good thing that people have already been working on that problem.
I guess, but if producing 1 GW-hour of electricity in a nuclear power plant creates a handful of toxic waste that must be disposed of while producing that same GW-hour via photovoltaics creates a truckload of waste then don't you think that should should enter into the equation?
We know that reprocessing liquid fuel is trivial in comparison to reprocessing solid fuel. In fact, it's so simple that it can be integrated into the reactor plant and done in real time.
So we just need to start building liquid fuel reactors.
Make sure you factor in the EROEI too. If technology X produces 10 times the nasties of technology Y but has a 30 times advantage in EROEI then it's actually the cleaner choice.
If we ever get LFTR reactors built and deploymend then it will be the cleanest power.
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
For every honest, well intentioned person using this line there are a thousand con men using it to prey on the good intentions of their victims.
They're only "greener" if they produce less pollution per GW-year than the coal power plants they are replacing. Until they catch up on the EROEI front this isn't assured.
I'm surprised that we can ignore all the toxic byproducts created by manufacturing solar panels and still call them "green".
Correct quote:
If you'd read his Underground History then you'd see how the education system was used to establish that system in the first place.
Think of all the things that children learn to do before they are ever exposed to formal education. Why are they so successful at learning these things and so comparatively unsuccessful at learning in school?
[quote]I am skeptical that kids taught themselves to read. Surely, at least a parent or nanny was involved.[/quote]The taught themselves to read the same way that they taught themselves to walk and talk. For some slightly more modern examples there's the cases of Truman Capote and Nicholas Delbanco.
The best answer to your comments is contained in the book I linked to, but I'll provide a summary:
250 years ago we didn't have schools as we know them now but children taught themselves to read. Today our states spend almost 1/3 of their budgets on public education yet we are less literate than an any time during this nation's history.
If you assert that the above statement is bullshit then please provide the evidence that refutes the historical facts presented in the aforementioned book.
You are either grossly misinformed, or you have a vested interest in the current system, or you are just trolling.
The problem with granting children adult rights is that they don't have adult responsibilities.
If you think that there is anything inherently good about public schools you first need to read this essay, then read a book written by a public school teacher of 20 years.
The Six-Lesson Schoolteacher
by John Taylor Gatto, New York State Teacher of the Year, 1991
Call me Mr. Gatto, please. Twenty-six years ago, having nothing better to do, I tried my hand at schoolteaching. My license certifies me as an instructor of English language and literature, but that isn't what I do at all. What I teach is school, and I win awards doing it.
Teaching means many different things, but six lessons are common to schoolteaching from Harlem to Hollywood. You pay for these lessons in more ways than you can imagine, so you might as well know what they are:
The first lesson I teach is: "Stay in the class where you belong." I don't know who decides that my kids belong there but that's not my business. The children are numbered so that if any get away they can be returned to the right class. Over the years the variety of ways children are numbered has increased dramatically, until it is hard to see the human being under the burden of the numbers each carries. Numbering children is a big and very profitable business, though what the business is designed to accomplish is elusive.
In any case, again, that's not my business. My job is to make the kids like it -- being locked in together, I mean -- or at the minimum, endure it. If things go well, the kids can't imagine themselves anywhere else; they envy and fear the better classes and have contempt for the dumber classes. So the class mostly keeps itself in good marching order. That's the real lesson of any rigged competition like school. You come to know your place.
Nevertheless, in spite of the overall blueprint, I make an effort to urge children to higher levels of test success, promising eventual transfer from the lower-level class as a reward. I insinuate that the day will come when an employer will hire them on the basis of test scores, even though my own experience is that employers are (rightly) indifferent to such things. I never lie outright, but I've come to see that truth and [school]teaching are incompatible.
The lesson of numbered classes is that there is no way out of your class except by magic. Until that happens you must stay where you are put.
The second lesson I teach kids is to turn on and off like a light switch. I demand that they become totally involved in my lessons, jumping up and down in their seats with anticipation, competing vigorously with each other for my favor. But when the bell rings I insist that they drop the work at once and proceed quickly to the next work station. Nothing important is ever finished in my class, nor in any other class I know of.
The lesson of bells is that no work is worth finishing, so why care too deeply about anything? Bells are the secret logic of schooltime; their argument is inexorable; bells destroy past and future, converting every interval into a sameness, as an abstract map makes every living mountain and river the same even though they are not. Bells inoculate each undertaking with indifference.
The third lesson I teach you is to surrender your will to a predestined chain of command. Rights may be granted or withheld, by authority, without appeal. As a schoolteacher I intervene in many personal decisions, issuing a Pass for those I deem legitimate, or initiating a disciplinary confrontation for behavior that threatens my control. My judgments come thick and fast, because individuality is trying constantly to assert itself in my classroom. Individuality is a curse to all systems of classification, a contradiction of class theory.
Here are some common ways it shows up: children sneak away for a private moment in the toilet on the pretext of moving their bowels; they trick me out of a private instant in the hallway on the grounds that they need water. Sometimes free will appears right in front of
A common misunderstanding is that rights are granted by governments to their citizens. Rights are inherent to individuals as a consequence of being alive. Whether any particular government recognizes this and acts appropriately is beside the point.
What is to stop teachers from brainwashing kids under the guise of public schooling?
So who has the responsibility to protect children from whack-job governments?
Now anyone who defends the administration online can immediately be accused of being a paid shill and marginalized.
Unless you underestimate the number of lone gunmen and you security apparatus suddenly suffers a total existence failure.
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