ainsoph wrote:
While your statistics are very how you say, "interesting", I have been to Nepal (have you?) No, but thanks for asking an irrelevant question.
and I would venture to say the people there are far from retarded. Write it up in a report and submit it for publication to a peer-reviewed journal. When it has been accepted, let me know and I will read it.
In fact the people are quite wonderful and intelligent in ways number pushers like your sort could not even fathom. For one, they have created a system of Hinduism/Buddhism that it elegant, diverse, imaginative, beautiful, etc. Neat. What's the average g there, and what's the standard deviation?
The Newari people(one of Nepals many many ethnic groups) are considered some of the worlds most accomplished urban planners [newarcommunity.com]. No way. What's their average g, BTW? And while you're at it, what's their standard deviation?
Your Christain Eugenics doctrine Christianity is an anti-eugenics doctrine that demands the stupid be encouraged to breed the most and the intelligent be prevented from breeding.
is a veiled attempt at Nazisism and really needs to be shoved very far up the collective nether region of people who spew this rhetoric. I know your a troll, but I am risking Karma to call you on it. This paragraph explains why the very-young-boy with his tongue shoved into Rob Malda's anus modded you up.
The people of Nepal at this point need education, The intelligent can educate themselves. You just said they were intelligent. g = The ability to create new knowledge. They're smart -- so let's see them create new knowledge.
in the form of computers, Ummm...what's their average g?
reading materials, Ummm...what's their average g?
sex education They don't know how to have sex? How smart are these people you say?
It is our culture who[sic] exposed them to this world of "development" where they lost their isolation and now have to be part of the "real world". With that comes a loss of culture and values as they struggle to be part of your paradigm of statistics. Poor babies. What is their average g BTW?
I say fsck it. And fsck you for wishing the extermination of anyone. Yeah. Fsck me for not wanting to mass-produce genetic defectives. I'm so evil.
aminorex wrote:
In any community with low mean intelligence there will be a number of individuals with exceptional intelligence, Yes, but, firstly, _exceptional_ by which community's standards? A third-worlder could be exceptional to a first-world population, or merely exceptional compared to his own population. So we have local standards and world standards.
Secondly, things of the nature of _exceptional_ depend on the homogeneity of the population from which the exceptional person emerges. The standard deviation from the mean in the first world is 15 IQ points. In a more homogeneous population (and there is reason to believe Nepal may have a more homogeneous population), the standard deviation will be smaller. We don't know, but the standard deviation in Nepal might only be 10 IQ points.
In that case, the exceptional, 4-standard deviations of the mean 1st worlder would have a world standard IQ of 160. The exceptional, 4-standard deviations of the mean Nepalese would have a world standard IQ of 118 and would be considered rather unremarkable and of low capability. In both populations, these near-geniuses would have an identical presence in their respective populations of about 1 in 30,000 -- equally exceptional subjectively yet drastically dissimilar objectively .
and providing the means for those individuals to exploit their productive capacity is much more important than is similarly equipping those who live in a priviledged community, because those exceptional individuals residing in a disadvantaged community will support a very large number of less capable individuals in their community. Or perhaps they would simply move to the States where they could apply themselves even more productively. You are proposing the imposition of iron welfare-state status on Nepal. Welfare states magnetically attract the under-capable and megnetically repel the highly capable.
Mere productivity is in fact non-productive, if the produce is not distributed. In other words, the more genetically defective Nepalese we continue to mass produce, the better, because the more of our valuable resources we give away to genetically defectives, the more productive we are. Imagine how unproductive we would be if everyone was highly capable. Giving anything of value to anyone would be fruitless.
By making ...Coercing...
the capable individuals ..._capable_ as in really capable or capable in terms of being a hellaciously capable Nepales?
in a disadvantaged ...how did it become disadvantaged?
community as productive as possible, one improves the proximity of the product to the site of greatest need. ...where it can then be used to mass produce more of the highly uncapable. Doesn't it feel so good to feed these morons? God, I'm getting a boner myself just thinking about it.
There is no way to directly measure g, but there is a way of measuring a strong correlate of g: The Raven's Progressive Matrices.
The IQ is a statistical survey, nothing more. g is the highly predictive component of IQ. It is said to be highly predictive because it correlates strongly with a wide variety of social outcomes and abilities. It is this predictiveness which makes highly g-loaded IQ a useful tool for persons who care about their worlds and the people they share those worlds with.
The IQ is calculated using statistical averages Not one single scientific measurement does proceed this way. All scientific measurement proceeds that way. The one thing all scientists unanimously agree upon is that nothing can be measured exactly. Therefore, all sciences rely on statistical averages to determine the probability of the error in their measurements. Not most, not some, but all sciences operate this way.
IQ = Incorrect Quotient That is true. IQ is false. Since the degrees of it's falseness can be determined with high probablity, it can be used for socially noble purposes by persons with high concientiousness.
Science never tells the truth. Science tells the probable. Religion tells the truth. The only exact measurements humans will ever come across are those contained within holy scripture.
Anonymous Coward wrote:
IQ is an outdated method of determining intelligence, IQ is a well-developed, statistical scale of wide-spectrum social-outcome prediction. It is a measurement of deviation from a given population mean according to the to the measure "g". g is the ability to educe relations and correlates. g is highly heritable. As far as non-heritable factors influencing the development of g, the most important is early-life nutrition, both pre- and post-natal. One of the least important factors (if it even has any effect at all -- this is currently still being debated) is institutionalized education.
Normally, the g mean is set to 100 and the standard deviation is set to 15. According to these settings, 68% of the given population lies within one standard deviation of the mean (between IQ 85 and IQ 115). IQ 115 means you are above 84% of the population and below the remaining 16%. IQ 85 means you are above 16% of the population and below the remaining 84%. IQ 120 means you are above 90%, IQ 126 means you are above 95%, and IQ 130 means you are above 97.7%.
and is biased towards the west, Which explains why the top five nations on my list are Hong Kong, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and Singapore.
when ppl were also using shock therapy to treat schizophrenia, that puts the relevance of IQ tests in perspe
ctive huh... Exactly. I think "huh..." is the perfect response to that statement.
there are countries that dont even recognise IQ as a measure of intelligence. Well. That's pretty interesting.
if you had the serious impediments to education that nepalese children have, do you think you would score anything close to what you would on your IQ test? I do. However, even for those who do not, the recommendation for eugenics is still valid. In that type of eugenics program, breeding would be restricted at the least to those families capable of providing a stimulating intellectual environment for their children. If you are arguing for lifting the most serious impediments to education, then you are arguing just as vociferously as I am for hard-line eugenics.
ever had to trek 3 days over mountains and then catch a helicopter to get to school???? (thats a true story
btw) No. Have you ever considered that encouraging uncontrolled breeding by the mentally retarded won't necessarily put a stop to this madness?
theres already a $300 US billion flow from the third world to the first each year.. by your logic we should further increase the lead of the first world at the expense of the third world? thats more flawed than the IQ tests themselves =p Since dollars are vouchers for economic resources, and value in the economy is founded on the bedrock of a)nuclear power and b)other advanced technologies, you must mean that the U.S. is robbing the illiterate retardates of the third world of 1)their proprietary advanced nuclear power plant designs and 2)the other advanced technologies they single-handedly develop.
id feel a lot more comfortable with you espousing your elitist -BS- if it actually had some scientific basis Prepare to get nice and comfy, then:
ht
tp://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0275961036/ qi d=1003792538/ref=sr_11_0_1/104-6231499-6599137
other than flimsy tests Have you ever seen a Raven? Have you ever studied the reasoning behind its creation? See the above book for a history of the Raven. Take a test very much like a Raven, here:
http://www.queendom.com/tests/iq/culture_fair_i
q.html
which were developed by, and for, Americans A people who collectively do relatively poorly on these tests compared to orphaned South Korean children with no exposure to U.S. culture.
in a time when people considered themselves safe under a nuclear umbrella Isn't the average American dumb? World-class scientists must not know anything.
and sprayed DDT around like it was water. DDT was sprayed because it was a relatively safe way to save millions of lives that would otherwise have been snuffed out by malaria.
What Nepal needs more than anything is a strict Eugenics program. The average IQ in Nepal is 78 right now. This is well below the threshold for mental retardation (retardation threshold = IQ85). Since IQ is 80% inherited (see Arthur Jensen's _The g Factor_) nothing can directly help this nation except stopping, by any means necessary, irresponsible breeding.
World resources, especially computer hardware, should be reserved for the world's most intelligent poulations. It is these population that have the capability of raising world economic standards. Yes, these are the only ways you can help the people of Nepal: Contribute to the economic growth of the first world and educate yourself about eugenics.
In his recent book _The Wealth of Nations_, Richard Lynn published a table of g-loaded IQ's for 78 nations, they're gross domestics products, and his computed gross domestic products (computed according to his formula of what a given nation should be making per capita based on that nation's average IQ).
Table copied from a review of the book at:
http://home.att.net/~eugenics/lynn.htm
wronkiew wrote:
As nuclear and fossil fuels become harder to find... You might be waiting along time for this to happen. The oceans contain 4 billion tons of dissolved uranium, most of which is extractable with today's seawater extraction technology at easily affordable prices for today's reactors.
Comments from:
Richard L. Garwin
Philip D. Reed Senior Fellow for Science and Technology
Council on Foreign Relations, New York
..snip..
In fact, the cost of expanding and continuing nuclear power may be far less than has been supposed by nuclear power technology enthusiasts. They have usually jumped to the consideration of breeder reactors because of the "shortage" of uranium fuel. With proven reserves of some three million tons of natural uranium, and a consumption of some 200 tons per year per 1-GWe reactor, this resource would last for only about 15,000 reactor years-- 50 years at a consumption of 300 reactors equivalent, and a mere two years if reactors are to supply half of the world's future total energy needs.
Of great interest are the terrestrial "reasonably assured resources" of uranium, which are likely to amount to 100 to 300 million tons of uranium at a price of $350 per kg (in comparison with the current spot market price of $20-30 per kg)(21).
Of course, nobody of right mind would buy uranium at $350/kg when the same material is available at $30/kg, but it is of primary importance to note that at $350/kg these high-cost terrestrial resources would still be cheaper than the cost of recycling fuel in an LWR (perhaps $700/kg of natural uranium avoided) or of building a breeder reactor with a capital cost that might be double that of an LWR.
Ultimately, we may have safe, economical breeder reactors, but we can take centuries to perfect them. Because in addition to the 200 million tons of terrestrial high-cost uranium, there are four billion tons of uranium in the oceans-2000 years of operation of a population of 10,000 LWRs. Half of this seawater uranium could be harvested without substantial increase in cost above that of harvesting the first seawater uranium in bulk. And that might cost from $100-$1000/kg-- probably still cheaper than recycle and breeders, but even at the higher figure the cost of fuel is still affordable.
If all enrichment costs and tails fraction remain the same, to buy 200 tons of uranium at $1000/kg to fuel a typical LWR for a year would involve costs of $200 million. This would approximately double the cost of power from an LWR, but the additional cost per kWh would be some 2 cents per kWh-- easily affordable in comparison with the 10 cents or 20 cents per kWh charged to the consumer and the 40 cents or 70 cents per kWh recently experienced in California.
Seawater uranium is available in principle to any producer and would be an article of commerce. The estimates of $100 to $300/kg come from French and Japanese groups,(10) but a recent paper provides an estimate of $1000/kg.(11) More such analyses are needed, and I comment on this paper by Kato, et al, not to attack it but to motivate additional work. A sounder estimate, whether it supports a high cost or a low cost for seawater uranium, is important to the evolution of nuclear power in the next half century. Kato, et al, consider as a unit a plant capable of extracting 200 tons of uranium per year from seawater-enough to supply fuel continuously for a single 1 GWe power reactor (at current tails fraction). At 100 yen per dollar, the investment cost for an Ashore Facility is $269 M, of which $16 M is for chelating resin to retain uranium, and $253 M for equipment; Transport Ships amount to $66 M; and Ocean Facilities to $1,721 M (of which $1045 is for an Ocean Floating Facility). The primary absorbent in the ocean facility total amounts to only $82 M.
Although the Kato study is more detailed and perhaps more realistic in its costing than previous estimates, in my judgment it has analyzed the wrong system. It has an ashore facility because the authors reject the environmental hazard of a 2000-ton ship with a load consisting largely of 15% hydrochloric acid. Yet far more dangerous loads are carried every day over the seas. So we clearly need a cost and absolute risk analysis of what would be a much cheaper system such as that sketched by Foos, et al, with the processing aboard ship. This would enable uranium farming in vast ocean areas far from shore.
In his book, "The Mythical Man-month," Fred Brooks-the architect of the IBM-360 computer line of the 1960s-wisely counsels that one should "plan to discard the first one." That is, the first large project (computer operating system, for instance) should not be put into production, but should be a training exercise. The design should by analyzed, criticized, and used as a stepping stone to a second version, which might be brought to market. And that is exactly what is needed in the design of seawater uranium farms. In particular, even if one were to depend on Ashore Facilities, it seems unnecessary and costly to have Ocean Floating Facilities on the surface of the sea. Instead, the buoyed adsorbent structures should approach no more closely than 30 m to the surface, and the vertical strings of adsorbent beds could be loaded vertically into the ship either for processing aboard or for transport to a structure in the neighborhood. Since even at a cost of $300/kg-U, the investment per reactor in uranium farm will amount to about $700 M, it is worth planning substantial R&D and design refinement to arrive at minimum cost. Of course, specialized design of the lift system to bring aboard the adsorbent bed strings is one candidate a prospect in the longer run is to use a non-standard small-waterline-area ship that would be largely immune to heavy seas and would improve the fraction of the time the ship can operate. And it must be recognized that an annual compensation rate of 10 million yen per person-year for Japanese workers will make uranium farming attractive for organizations with much lower labor costs. Japan buys its uranium now of terrestrial origin; it is likely that Japan will buy its seawater uranium as well, and be richer for doing so.
..snip..
If you want to read a real review of this movie (i.e. one from a reviewer who isn't certified mentally retarded like, say, Jon Katz), just say
mrcranky!
-nukebuddy
Historical revisionism aims to uncover the truth
on
Review: Zoolander
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· Score: 1
Judas96' wrote:
...it reminds me of the term "revisionist history".
It shouldn't. The mission of historical revisionism is to set the record straight. Read this site and you'll agree:
http://codoh.com/
Nicolas MONNET wrote:
>So was the World Trade Center.
What are you talking about? It has been proven that the claimed attempted genocide of the Jews never happened and is therefore a hoax. What is a hoax about the WTC incident?
Hypertension 2001 Aug;38(2):227-31
Acute effect of caffeine on arterial stiffness and aortic pressure waveform.
Mahmud A, Feely J
Department of Pharmacology and Therapeutics, Trinity Centre for Health Sciences and Hypertension Clinic, St James's Hospital, Dublin, Ireland.
Caffeine acutely increases blood pressure and peripheral vascular resistance, in part because of sympathetic stimulation. Its effects on large artery properties are largely unknown. In a double-blind crossover study, 7 healthy subjects 26+/-2.6 years of age (mean+/-SEM) were studied for 90 minutes while in the supine position on 2 occasions separated by a week in random order after ingestion of 250 mL caffeinated (150 mg) and decaffeinated (2 mg) coffee. Compared with baseline, arterial stiffness measured by carotid femoral pulse wave velocity increased progressively from 7.2+/-0.41 to 8.0+/-0.6 m/s (P0.05) at 90 minutes after caffeine intake, an effect that may be independent of changes in blood pressure. In addition, arterial wave reflection, measured by applanation tonometry from the aortic pressure waveform, also increased from -5.7+/-7.6% to 5.28%+/-5.6 (P0.01). No such changes were seen with decaffeinated coffee intake. Although the integral of the brachial systolic and diastolic blood pressure values over the 90 minutes was larger (P0.05) after caffeinated than decaffeinated coffee intake, the effect on aortic systolic and diastolic blood pressures was more pronounced (P0.05) than on the brachial artery. These results show a significant effect of caffeine intake on arterial tone and function and suggest that caffeine acutely increases arterial stiffness.
...the recovery of the uranium-235 released by coal combustion from a typical utility anywhere in the world could provide the equivalent of several World War II-type uranium-fueled weapons. Consequently, fissionable nuclear fuel is available to any country that either buys coal from outside sources or has its own reserves. The material is potentially employable as weapon fuel by any organization so inclined. Although technically complex, purification and enrichment technologies can provide high-purity, weapons-grade uranium-235.
Funny that no one is worried about keeping track of any of this weapons material.
So that leaves us with dams and nuclear power (fission) as our clean energy sources...
Damming is the dirtiest power source. It's true that nuclear is the cleanest, though.
-nukebuddy
Re:Great idea, you personal own ...
on
Fission in a Box
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· Score: 1
Zeinfeld wrote:
As for 'modern', go have a look at a real nuclear station. Most of the technology is out of the 1960s or earlier. There hasn't been a new station started since three mile island.
There are new stations started and completed every year. (China, France, Japan, etc.)
localroger wrote:
[Would it be possible to make a mostly clean H-bomb by removing the depleted uranium? Just a thought.]
Yes, it would. It would be another animal entirely, though; the neutrons created by the fusion reaction have to do something. So when you replace the tamper in an H-bomb with something that won't fission, you get what is called a neutron bomb.
I'm sure you've heard of them.
Clean nukes are made with a lead tamper. They are useful for excavation work and for recovering oil from oil shale.
Deanasc:
BTW I chose a Palm vs the other PDA's as it seemed to have the best handwriting recognition for my way of holding a pen. Why are people using grafitti instead of the Twiddler2 for Palm input?
neowintermute:
how likely do you think it is that there are a lot of game show contestants who are going to qualify for space travel? Most black-diamond skiers would qualify and there are quite a few of those.
Mr_Dyqik:
On other matters, the cost of the fuel also depends heavily on demand.
When the cost of fuel passes a certain low point then this can be made the sole parameter determining the economic viability of a plant, throwing out all other parameters?
It's possible for fuel cost to go to zero and still not matter.
What's the cost of storing the spent fuel for ~10,000 years before it's radioactivity drops below background?
The cost of storing spent fuel for 500 years is one mill (one tenth of a penny) per kilowatt-hour. No one cares about storing it ultra-securely any longer than that because: The radiation would have dropped to below that of raw ore by then; it is hardly dangerous at any radiation level since it would be so difficult to get it into humans from any underground storage place (and moreso from a highly engineered one) in any appreciable quantities; cancer will likely be cured by that time, making carcinogens something of a moot point.
Certainly fusion only produces helium 4 which is entirely safe and makes up 25% of the universe
You're comparing something which is petty durned safe with something that is merely extremely safe. This doesn't necessarilly matter.
If fusion were perfectly safe, it might not be so much more safe than fission that it could make up for the inherent danger of higher expense. People can and do die when cost is ignored. ALARA kills.
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If the only argument for fusion is that fission is dangerous, then there is no argument for fusion since fission isn't significantly dangerous.
Mr. Slippery:
There are designs, they're just experimental. A reactor is not a power plant.
(didn't Israel destroy what Iraq claimed was a fission power plant?) Israel destroyed an Iraqi research reactor which was constructed (in secret) for the purpose of producing weapons materials.
[Fission is] only an alternative for nations we trust to not only not use the tech and fuels to enhance their nuclear weapons programs... Nuclear power tech has nothing to do with nuclear bomb tech. Any nation with sufficient resources to embark on a bomb-building program can do so without any nuclear power plants, and if they had nuclear power plants it wouldn't help them. The bomb materials can be produced by reactors dedicated to that purpose. These reactors are far easier to build than power plants and would be the easiest route for obtaining bomb materials. Reactor tech is out there and any nation that has any hope of making bombs already has it.
...but to build stable, safe, durable, non-Chernobyl-able reactors, since fallout tends not to respect national boundaries. First world countries shouldn't build good nuclear power plants, because if they do, third world countries will build bad ones? And if first world countries don't build nuclear power plants at all this will prevent third world countries from building bad ones?
Oh, and do you want your neighbor to bury nuclear waste near their border wth you? It wouldn't matter if they did since high-level nuclear waste is rendered essentially non-toxic by being buried.
Keep in mind that in 500 years the dump may be forgotten... In 500 years, high-level nuclear waste is less radioactive than the ore it was mined from.
Not to mention that digging uranium out of the ground is hardly enviromentally friendly. Actually, it's quite environmentally friendly since so little of it is required to produce adequate amounts of power. And digging it out of the ground and running it through a reactor produces a net reduction in radiation -- radiation which people would otherwise be exposed to in the form of radioactive radon gas, a natural decay product of uranium, seeping out of the ground from natural uranium veins buried there.
spitzak:
Almost everything contains traces of elements like uranium. Is this coal dust really a better source than if the bad guys just dug up their own dirt, or if they processed the coal on purpose to extract uranium rather than burn it to produce electricity? ORNL:
During combustion, the volume of coal is reduced by over 85%, which increases the concentration of the metals originally in the coal. Although significant quantities of ash are retained by precipitators, heavy metals such as uranium tend to concentrate on the tiny glass spheres that make up the bulk of fly ash. This uranium is released to the atmosphere with the escaping fly ash, at about 1.0% of the original amount, according to NCRP data. The retained ash is enriched in uranium several times over the original uranium concentration in the coal because the uranium, and thorium, content is not decreased as the volume of coal is reduced.
What was true is that the trace amounts of uranium and other elements, when multiplied by the huge quantaties of coal burned, and with the rather efficient method of spewing it into the atmosphere that we used to use, produced far more radiation than most plausable nuclear power plant accidents.... Unfortunately it sounds to me that modern pollution-control may have cut the ash so much that this rather good argument is no longer true.
When the particle precipitators (filters) we have been using since the sixties are working properly, they filter 99.5% of the fly ash. In other words, even when they work, they hardly work at all, so coal-fired power plants both collect lots of radioactive material as solid waste and release lots of radioactive material as aerial pollution.
Mr_Dyqik:
But the cost of developing fusion power is tiny to the cost of breeding that much uranium (especially if you take security into account) The cost of security is negligible.
The cost of running breeders (Advanced Light Metal Reactors {AMLRs}, in this case the General Electric design {a modular fast reactor concept consisting of three modules with a modular power of 496 megawatts each and using a break-even fuel scheme}) vs. the cost of fusion (in this case the tokomak magnetic fusion energy {MFE} Advanced Reactor Innovation and Evaluation Studies {ARIES} design studies, the ARIES-RS and Aries-ST) is 9.32 cents/kilowatt-hour for ARIES-ST, 8.74 cents/kilowatt-hour for ARIES-RS, and 5.13 cents for ALMR, all in 1999 dollars and assuming this is taking place around 2050.
This makes the cost of breeding uranium substantially lower than the cost of fusion.
These costs include capital (design and construction), O&M (operation and maintenance), fuel and decommissioning. All of these are significantly higher in the case of the ALMR except the capital category, where it is less than half. With these types of power plants, the capital cost is the cost that matters the most and fusion does very badly here, thus losing overall very badly.
Notice that the things you mentioned in your previous posts like fuel cost and decommissioning (where fusion is clearly superior) hardly make a dent in the overall cost. Decommissioning the ALMR cost 0.19 cents vs. 0.09 cents for both tyoes of fusion plant. Fuel is 0.88 cents for the ALMR vs. 0.54 and 0.38 cents respectively for the RS and ST fusion plants. Fusion saves at best half a penny per kilowatt-hour in these categories.
Source: The Oak Ridge National Laboratory report: An Assessment of the Economics of Future Electric Power Generation Options and the Implications for Fusion
RaveX:
A: Given the amount of energy required to mine and process uranium from the Earth's crust, nuclear fission is actually a less efficient form of power than traditional coal-fired power plants. Dr. Helen Caldicott says this. (For those who don't know, she's a physician, founder of Physicians for Social Responsibility, author, public speaker, and anti-nuclear {both of them} activist.) She says she gets the data from a Friends of the Earth Study of which she says:
A Friends of the Earth study showed that a nuclear power plant must operate for 18 years before realizing one net calorie of energy. This is because of the amount of fossil fuel used in the manufacture and construction of the reactor and in the mining of the uranium, the milling and enriching of the uranium and the fabrication of the fuel rods. This calculation does not include transport and storage of radioactive waste or decommissioning the reactor.
The fuel for nuclear power plants is extremely power-dense and therefore requires negligible amounts of power to mine, process, transport and subsequently re-bury after it is used. This is reflected in the cost of fuel which is, in 1987 dollars,.64 cents (yes, less than a penny) per kilowatt-hour for nuclear plants and 2.1 cents per kilowatt-hour for coal. (Bernard L. Cohen, The Nuclear Energy Option ch. 10 p. 169.)
B: The energy expended in mining and processing (which is far more intensive for uranium than for any form of traditional fossil fuel) comes in the form of fossil fuels. Pound for pound it may be more energy intensive, but not energy unit per energy unit. Again, this is why the fossil energy input is negligible and therefore the price of fuel (per energy unit -- not per pound) is so low.
C: Chernobyl A power plant of a design called RBMK which is intended to blow up and hurt people when operator mistakes are made. We don't use these designs in the western world, though we had one at Hanford for quite a while. It was permanently decommisioned right after Chernobyl sent us its not very subtle warning.
D: Three Mile Island An excellent power plant (considering it's age) designed to not hurt people when operator errors are made. Witness, operator errors were made and the ECCS (emergency core cooling system) operated as per its design. No one was injured and no one came close to being injured. Thanks to Three Mile Island, newer power plants are designed with an increased emphasis on providing critical and accurate information to the operator. This is among a myriad other improvements that have been made to an already, as was stated, excellent design.
E: What were you saying about fission being "one such power source" that has "little environmental impact?" Nuclear fission has the least environmental impact kilowatt-hour for kilowatt-hour of any electricity generation technology in existence.
F: The inventor of the LISP programming language does not qualify as a source. He is a programmer, not a scientist, not any qualified authority on energy or sustainability. I find he has an amusing writing style and he provides references for his words. Quoting a scientist in the field wouldn't be any better since he might be considered a maverick by his peers, unless he put forth a convincing argument that he was merely presenting the opinions of the overwhelming majority his peers -- as Bernard L. Cohen does, complete with survey statistics.
G: If you want to contend that an accident on the scale of or larger than Chernobyl will not occur, you're a moron. An accident far larger than Chernobyl, killing 3,500 people outright, is predicted to happen once in every 100,000 meltdowns. This is according the Dr. Norman Rasmussen (of MIT) led Reactor Safety Study who's famous final report in 1975 was titled, "WASH-1400". The advanced reactors of today are many times safer than the old reactors assumed in the study. It should be noted that 3,500 people died in an air pollution episode in 1952 in London caused by coal-fired power plants.
The fact of the matter is, it cannot be guaranteed that an accident or deliberate attack or earthquake or unforseen incident will not occur. Yes. We can't guarantee safety, but we can guarantee that nuclear fission is calculated to be the safest form of electrical power production. In other words, we can guarantee that the odds are with you when you choose nuclear power. In fact, it can be guaranteed that it is calculated to be safer than going without power, or even anything more than minimal energy conservation -- something which turns out to be surprisingly deadly, both for humans and the environment.
Nuclear disasters can happen, but their infrequency makes nuclear power by far the safe choice. Bernard L. Cohen, from p. 286 of The Nuclear Energy Option:
Q. What harm could terrorists do if they took control of a nuclear power plant?
A. In principal, they could cause a very bad accident, thereby killing tens ofthousands of people, including themselves. However, nearly all of their victims would suffer no immediate effects, but would rather die of cancer 10 to 50 years later. In view of the high normal incidence of cancer, these excess cases would be unnoticable (see chapter 6). This would hardly serve the purposes of terrorists.
By contrast, there are many simple ways these terrorists could kill at least as many people immediately. For example, they could put a poison gas into the ventilation sytem of a large building. Other examples are given in chapter 13.
Nuclear power plants have very eleborate security measures with over a dozen armed guards on duty at all times, electronic aids for detecting intruders, emergency procedures, radio communications, and so on. To sabotage a nuclear plant effectively would require a considerable amount of technical knowledge, and a substantial quantity of explosives.
Worst case scenario with solar or similar sources of power, power goes out. Solar in any of it's forms represents substantial risk to human life. Because its "fuel" is so diffuse, the plants must be massive and therefore require massive amounts of labor to build. Construction is highly hazardous labor. Maintenance labor is similarly massive and similarly hazardous. If we're talking about PV panels, there is hazard dealing with the chemicals in the factory, dealing with the hazardous waste from that and dealing with the hazardous waste from decommissioning. Cadmium sulfide is highly toxic and 60 people will die per solar power plant year of operation because of exposure to it.
...even fusion is a better idea, given its far lower likelihood of massive explosions... Fusion is a worse idea because it costs substantially more. This makes it substantially more dangerous. Expensiveness of electricity is quite lethal.
spitzak:
But I don't understand the "nuclear proliferation danger". I doubt the coal exaust is really that much use for making nuclear weapons!
Coal-fired power plants collect large amounts of hazardous solid waste from their combustion of coal. This solid waste contains the fissionable metals necessary to produce nuclear weapons. From the article I linked:
Since the 1960s particulate precipitators have been used by U.S. coal-fired power plants to retain significant amounts of fly ash rather than letting it escape to the atmosphere. When functioning properly, these precipitators are approximately 99.5% efficient. Utilities also collect furnace ash, cinders, and slag, which are kept in cinder piles or deposited in ash ponds on coal-plant sites along with the captured fly ash.
Trace quantities of uranium in coal range from less than 1 part per million (ppm) in some samples to around 10 ppm in others. Generally, the amount of thorium contained in coal is about 2.5 times
greater than the amount of uranium. For a large number of coal samples, according to Environmental
Protection Agency figures released in 1984, average values of uranium and thorium content have been determined to be 1.3 ppm and 3.2 ppm, respectively. Using these values along with reported consumption and projected consumption of coal by utilities provides a means of calculating the amounts of potentially recoverable breedable and fissionable elements (see sidebar). The concentration of fissionable uranium-235 (the current fuel for nuclear power plants) has been
established to be 0.71% of uranium content.
snip
by collecting the uranium residue from coal combustion, significant quantities of fissionable
material can be accumulated. In a few year's time, the recovery of the uranium-235 released by coal
combustion from a typical utility anywhere in the world could provide the equivalent of several World War II-type uranium-fueled weapons. Consequently, fissionable nuclear fuel is available to any country that either buys coal from outside sources or has its own reserves. The material is potentially employable as weapon fuel by any organization so inclined. Although technically complex, purification and enrichment technologies can provide high-purity, weapons-grade uranium-235. Fortunately, even though the technology is well known, the enrichment of uranium is an expensive and time-consuming process.
Because electric utilities are not high-profile facilities, collection and processing of coal ash for recovery of minerals, including uranium for weapons or reactor fuel, can proceed without attracting outside attention, concern, or intervention. Any country with coal-fired plants could collect combustion by-products and amass sufficient nuclear weapons material to build up a very powerful arsenal, if it has or develops the technology to do so. Of far greater potential are the much larger quantities of thorium-232 and uranium-238 from coal combustion that can be used to breed fissionable isotopes. Chemical separation and purification of uranium-233 from thorium and
plutonium-239 from uranium require far less effort than enrichment of isotopes. Only small fractions of these fertile elements in coal combustion residue are needed for clandestine breeding of fissionable fuels and weapons material by those nations that have nuclear reactor technology and the inclination to carry out this difficult task.
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ainsoph wrote:
While your statistics are very how you say, "interesting", I have been to Nepal (have you?)
No, but thanks for asking an irrelevant question.
and I would venture to say the people there are far from retarded.
Write it up in a report and submit it for publication to a peer-reviewed journal. When it has been accepted, let me know and I will read it.
In fact the people are quite wonderful and intelligent in ways number pushers like your sort could not even fathom. For one, they have created a system of Hinduism/Buddhism that it elegant, diverse, imaginative, beautiful, etc.
Neat. What's the average g there, and what's the standard deviation?
The Newari people(one of Nepals many many ethnic groups) are considered some of the worlds most accomplished urban planners [newarcommunity.com].
No way. What's their average g, BTW? And while you're at it, what's their standard deviation?
Your Christain Eugenics doctrine
Christianity is an anti-eugenics doctrine that demands the stupid be encouraged to breed the most and the intelligent be prevented from breeding.
is a veiled attempt at Nazisism and really needs to be shoved very far up the collective nether region of people who spew this rhetoric. I know your a troll, but I am risking Karma to call you on it.
This paragraph explains why the very-young-boy with his tongue shoved into Rob Malda's anus modded you up.
The people of Nepal at this point need education,
The intelligent can educate themselves. You just said they were intelligent. g = The ability to create new knowledge. They're smart -- so let's see them create new knowledge.
in the form of computers,
Ummm...what's their average g?
reading materials,
Ummm...what's their average g?
sex education
They don't know how to have sex? How smart are these people you say?
It is our culture who[sic] exposed them to this world of "development" where they lost their isolation and now have to be part of the "real world". With that comes a loss of culture and values as they struggle to be part of your paradigm of statistics.
Poor babies. What is their average g BTW?
I say fsck it. And fsck you for wishing the extermination of anyone.
Yeah. Fsck me for not wanting to mass-produce genetic defectives. I'm so evil.
-nukebuddy
aminorex wrote:
In any community with low mean intelligence there will be a number of individuals with exceptional intelligence,
Yes, but, firstly, _exceptional_ by which community's standards? A third-worlder could be exceptional to a first-world population, or merely exceptional compared to his own population. So we have local standards and world standards.
Secondly, things of the nature of _exceptional_ depend on the homogeneity of the population from which the exceptional person emerges. The standard deviation from the mean in the first world is 15 IQ points. In a more homogeneous population (and there is reason to believe Nepal may have a more homogeneous population), the standard deviation will be smaller. We don't know, but the standard deviation in Nepal might only be 10 IQ points.
In that case, the exceptional, 4-standard deviations of the mean 1st worlder would have a world standard IQ of 160. The exceptional, 4-standard deviations of the mean Nepalese would have a world standard IQ of 118 and would be considered rather unremarkable and of low capability. In both populations, these near-geniuses would have an identical presence in their respective populations of about 1 in 30,000 -- equally exceptional subjectively yet drastically dissimilar objectively .
and providing the means for those individuals to exploit their productive capacity is much more important than is similarly equipping those who live in a priviledged community, because those exceptional individuals residing in a disadvantaged community will support a very large number of less capable individuals in their community.
Or perhaps they would simply move to the States where they could apply themselves even more productively. You are proposing the imposition of iron welfare-state status on Nepal. Welfare states magnetically attract the under-capable and megnetically repel the highly capable.
Mere productivity is in fact non-productive, if the produce is not distributed.
In other words, the more genetically defective Nepalese we continue to mass produce, the better, because the more of our valuable resources we give away to genetically defectives, the more productive we are. Imagine how unproductive we would be if everyone was highly capable. Giving anything of value to anyone would be fruitless.
By making
...Coercing...
the capable individuals
..._capable_ as in really capable or capable in terms of being a hellaciously capable Nepales?
in a disadvantaged
...how did it become disadvantaged?
community as productive as possible, one improves the proximity of the product to the site of greatest need.
...where it can then be used to mass produce more of the highly uncapable. Doesn't it feel so good to feed these morons? God, I'm getting a boner myself just thinking about it.
-nukebuddy
nofutureuk wrote:/ qid=1003803627/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_3_1/104-6231499-659 9137
maybe I am wrong, but, as far as I know, there no scientific way for measuring intelligence or whatsoever.
If that's as far as you know, then feel free to read the last word on IQ from the world's #1 authority on mental testing, Arthur Jensen:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0275961036
There is no way to directly measure g, but there is a way of measuring a strong correlate of g: The Raven's Progressive Matrices.
The IQ is a statistical survey, nothing more.
g is the highly predictive component of IQ. It is said to be highly predictive because it correlates strongly with a wide variety of social outcomes and abilities. It is this predictiveness which makes highly g-loaded IQ a useful tool for persons who care about their worlds and the people they share those worlds with.
The IQ is calculated using statistical averages Not one single scientific measurement does proceed this way.
All scientific measurement proceeds that way. The one thing all scientists unanimously agree upon is that nothing can be measured exactly. Therefore, all sciences rely on statistical averages to determine the probability of the error in their measurements. Not most, not some, but all sciences operate this way.
IQ = Incorrect Quotient
That is true. IQ is false. Since the degrees of it's falseness can be determined with high probablity, it can be used for socially noble purposes by persons with high concientiousness.
Science never tells the truth. Science tells the probable. Religion tells the truth. The only exact measurements humans will ever come across are those contained within holy scripture.
-nukebuddy
Anonymous Coward wrote:
x .html
/ qi d=1003792538/ref=sr_11_0_1/104-6231499-6599137
IQ is an outdated method of determining intelligence,
IQ is a well-developed, statistical scale of wide-spectrum social-outcome prediction. It is a measurement of deviation from a given population mean according to the to the measure "g". g is the ability to educe relations and correlates. g is highly heritable. As far as non-heritable factors influencing the development of g, the most important is early-life nutrition, both pre- and post-natal. One of the least important factors (if it even has any effect at all -- this is currently still being debated) is institutionalized education.
Normally, the g mean is set to 100 and the standard deviation is set to 15. According to these settings, 68% of the given population lies within one standard deviation of the mean (between IQ 85 and IQ 115). IQ 115 means you are above 84% of the population and below the remaining 16%. IQ 85 means you are above 16% of the population and below the remaining 84%. IQ 120 means you are above 90%, IQ 126 means you are above 95%, and IQ 130 means you are above 97.7%.
and is biased towards the west,
Which explains why the top five nations on my list are Hong Kong, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and Singapore.
remember IQ tests were created in the USA
The first IQ test was created in France:
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Parthenon/1
234/binet.html
when ppl were also using shock therapy to treat schizophrenia, that puts the relevance of IQ tests in perspe
ctive huh...
Exactly. I think "huh..." is the perfect response to that statement.
there are countries that dont even recognise IQ as a measure of intelligence.
Well. That's pretty interesting.
if you had the serious impediments to education that nepalese children have, do you think you would score anything close to what you would on your IQ test?
I do. However, even for those who do not, the recommendation for eugenics is still valid. In that type of eugenics program, breeding would be restricted at the least to those families capable of providing a stimulating intellectual environment for their children. If you are arguing for lifting the most serious impediments to education, then you are arguing just as vociferously as I am for hard-line eugenics.
ever had to trek 3 days over mountains and then catch a helicopter to get to school???? (thats a true story
btw)
No. Have you ever considered that encouraging uncontrolled breeding by the mentally retarded won't necessarily put a stop to this madness?
given those figures you quoted,
These ones here?:
http://home.att.net/~eugenics/lynn.htm
the higher IQ's appear in the wealthier countries...
That is 1) an astute observation and 2) why the title of Dr. Lynn's book is _IQ and the Wealth of Nations_:
http://info.greenwood.com/books/0275975/027597510
theres already a $300 US billion flow from the third world to the first each year.. by your logic we should further increase the lead of the first world at the expense of the third world? thats more flawed than the IQ tests themselves =p
Since dollars are vouchers for economic resources, and value in the economy is founded on the bedrock of a)nuclear power and b)other advanced technologies, you must mean that the U.S. is robbing the illiterate retardates of the third world of 1)their proprietary advanced nuclear power plant designs and 2)the other advanced technologies they single-handedly develop.
id feel a lot more comfortable with you espousing your elitist -BS- if it actually had some scientific basis
Prepare to get nice and comfy, then:
ht
tp://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0275961036
other than flimsy tests
Have you ever seen a Raven? Have you ever studied the reasoning behind its creation? See the above book for a history of the Raven. Take a test very much like a Raven, here:
http://www.queendom.com/tests/iq/culture_fair_i
q.html
which were developed by, and for, Americans
A people who collectively do relatively poorly on these tests compared to orphaned South Korean children with no exposure to U.S. culture.
in a time when people considered themselves safe under a nuclear umbrella
Isn't the average American dumb? World-class scientists must not know anything.
and sprayed DDT around like it was water.
DDT was sprayed because it was a relatively safe way to save millions of lives that would otherwise have been snuffed out by malaria.
-nukebuddy
What Nepal needs more than anything is a strict Eugenics program. The average IQ in Nepal is 78 right now. This is well below the threshold for mental retardation (retardation threshold = IQ85). Since IQ is 80% inherited (see Arthur Jensen's _The g Factor_) nothing can directly help this nation except stopping, by any means necessary, irresponsible breeding.
0 X/ qid=1003769269/ref=sr_11_0_1/104-6231499-6599137
World resources, especially computer hardware, should be reserved for the world's most intelligent poulations. It is these population that have the capability of raising world economic standards. Yes, these are the only ways you can help the people of Nepal: Contribute to the economic growth of the first world and educate yourself about eugenics.
In his recent book _The Wealth of Nations_, Richard Lynn published a table of g-loaded IQ's for 78 nations, they're gross domestics products, and his computed gross domestic products (computed according to his formula of what a given nation should be making per capita based on that nation's average IQ).
Table copied from a review of the book at:
http://home.att.net/~eugenics/lynn.htm
Country average IQ GDP fitted GDP
Hong Kong 107 20,763 19,817
Korea, South 106 13,478 19,298
Japan 105 23,257 18,779
Taiwan 104 13,000 18,260
Singapore 103 24,210 17,740
Austria 102 23,166 17,221
Germany 102 22,169 17,221
Italy 102 20,585 17,221
Netherlands 102 22,176 17,221
Sweden 101 20,659 16,702
Switzerland 101 25,512 16,702
Belgium 100 23,223 16,183
China 100 3,105 16,183
NewZealand 100 17,288 16,183
U. Kingdom 100 20,336 16,183
Hungary 99 10,232 15,664
Poland 99 7,619 15,664
Australia 98 22,452 15,145
Denmark 98 24,218 15,145
France 98 21,175 15,145
Norway 98 26,342 15,145
United States 98 29,605 15,145
Canada 97 23,582 14,626
Czech Republic 97 12,362 14,626
Finland 97 20,847 14,626
Spain 97 16,212 14,626
Argentina 96 12,013 14,107
Russia 96 6,460 14,107
Slovakia 96 9,699 14,107
Uruguay 96 8,623 14,107
Portugal 95 14,701 13,589
Slovenia 95 14,293 13,588
Israel 94 17,301 13,069
Romania 94 5,648 13,069
Bulgaria 93 4,809 12,550
Ireland 93 21,482 12,550
Greece 92 13,943 12,031
Malaysia 92 8,137 12,031
Thailand 91 5,456 11,512
Croatia 90 6,749 10,993
Peru 90 4,282 10,993
Turkey 90 6,422 10,993
Colombia 89 6,006 10,474
Indonesia 89 2,651 10,474
Suri name 89 5,161 10,474
Brazil 87 6,625 9,436
Iraq 87 3,197 9,436
Mexico 87 7,704 9,436
Samoa (Western) 87 3,832 9,436
Tonga 87 3,000 9,436
Lebanon 86 4,326 8,917
Philippines 86 3,555 8,917
Cuba 85 3,967 8,398
Morocco 85 3,305 8,398
Fiji 84 4,231 7,879
Iran 84 5,121 7,879
Marshall Islands84 3,000 7,879
Puerto Rico 84 8,000 7,879
Egypt 83 3,041 7,360
India 81 2,077 6,322
Ecuador 80 3,003 5,803
Guatemala 79 3,505 5,284
Barbados 78 12,001 4,765
Nepal 78 1,157 4,765
Qatar 78 20,987 4,765
Zambia 77 719 4,246
Congo (Brazz) 73 995 2,170
Uganda 73 1,074 2,170
Jamaica 72 3,389 1,651
Kenya 72 980 1,651
South Africa 72 8,488 1,651
Sudan 72 1,394 1,651
Tanzania 72 480 1,651
Ghana 71 1,735 1,132
Nigeria 67 795 -944
Guinea 66 1,782 -1,463
Zimbabwe 66 2,669 -1,463
Congo (Zaire) 65 822 -1,982
Sierra Leone 64 458 -2,501
Ethiopia 63 574 -3,020
Equatorial Guinea59 1,817 -5,096
As can be concluded from inspecting this table, the nation that most deserves donations of computer hardware is South Korea.
See the book listing at Amazon.com:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/02759751
-nukebuddy
wronkiew wrote:
As nuclear and fossil fuels become harder to find...
You might be waiting along time for this to happen. The oceans contain 4 billion tons of dissolved uranium, most of which is extractable with today's seawater extraction technology at easily affordable prices for today's reactors.
Comments from:
Richard L. Garwin
Philip D. Reed Senior Fellow for Science and Technology
Council on Foreign Relations, New York
and
IBM Fellow Emeritus
IBM Research Division
P.O. Box 218
Yorktown Heights, NY 10598
http://www.nci.org/conf/garwin/index.htm
..snip..
In fact, the cost of expanding and continuing nuclear power may be far less than has been supposed by nuclear power technology enthusiasts. They have usually jumped to the consideration of breeder reactors because of the "shortage" of uranium fuel. With proven reserves of some three million tons of natural uranium, and a consumption of some 200 tons per year per 1-GWe reactor, this resource would last for only about 15,000 reactor years-- 50 years at a consumption of 300 reactors equivalent, and a mere two years if reactors are to supply half of the world's future total energy needs.
Of great interest are the terrestrial "reasonably assured resources" of uranium, which are likely to amount to 100 to 300 million tons of uranium at a price of $350 per kg (in comparison with the current spot market price of $20-30 per kg)(21).
Of course, nobody of right mind would buy uranium at $350/kg when the same material is available at $30/kg, but it is of primary importance to note that at $350/kg these high-cost terrestrial resources would still be cheaper than the cost of recycling fuel in an LWR (perhaps $700/kg of natural uranium avoided) or of building a breeder reactor with a capital cost that might be double that of an LWR.
Ultimately, we may have safe, economical breeder reactors, but we can take centuries to perfect them. Because in addition to the 200 million tons of terrestrial high-cost uranium, there are four billion tons of uranium in the oceans-2000 years of operation of a population of 10,000 LWRs. Half of this seawater uranium could be harvested without substantial increase in cost above that of harvesting the first seawater uranium in bulk. And that might cost from $100-$1000/kg-- probably still cheaper than recycle and breeders, but even at the higher figure the cost of fuel is still affordable.
If all enrichment costs and tails fraction remain the same, to buy 200 tons of uranium at $1000/kg to fuel a typical LWR for a year would involve costs of $200 million. This would approximately double the cost of power from an LWR, but the additional cost per kWh would be some 2 cents per kWh-- easily affordable in comparison with the 10 cents or 20 cents per kWh charged to the consumer and the 40 cents or 70 cents per kWh recently experienced in California.
Seawater uranium is available in principle to any producer and would be an article of commerce. The estimates of $100 to $300/kg come from French and Japanese groups,(10) but a recent paper provides an estimate of $1000/kg.(11) More such analyses are needed, and I comment on this paper by Kato, et al, not to attack it but to motivate additional work. A sounder estimate, whether it supports a high cost or a low cost for seawater uranium, is important to the evolution of nuclear power in the next half century. Kato, et al, consider as a unit a plant capable of extracting 200 tons of uranium per year from seawater-enough to supply fuel continuously for a single 1 GWe power reactor (at current tails fraction). At 100 yen per dollar, the investment cost for an Ashore Facility is $269 M, of which $16 M is for chelating resin to retain uranium, and $253 M for equipment; Transport Ships amount to $66 M; and Ocean Facilities to $1,721 M (of which $1045 is for an Ocean Floating Facility). The primary absorbent in the ocean facility total amounts to only $82 M.
Although the Kato study is more detailed and perhaps more realistic in its costing than previous estimates, in my judgment it has analyzed the wrong system. It has an ashore facility because the authors reject the environmental hazard of a 2000-ton ship with a load consisting largely of 15% hydrochloric acid. Yet far more dangerous loads are carried every day over the seas. So we clearly need a cost and absolute risk analysis of what would be a much cheaper system such as that sketched by Foos, et al, with the processing aboard ship. This would enable uranium farming in vast ocean areas far from shore.
In his book, "The Mythical Man-month," Fred Brooks-the architect of the IBM-360 computer line of the 1960s-wisely counsels that one should "plan to discard the first one." That is, the first large project (computer operating system, for instance) should not be put into production, but should be a training exercise. The design should by analyzed, criticized, and used as a stepping stone to a second version, which might be brought to market. And that is exactly what is needed in the design of seawater uranium farms. In particular, even if one were to depend on Ashore Facilities, it seems unnecessary and costly to have Ocean Floating Facilities on the surface of the sea. Instead, the buoyed adsorbent structures should approach no more closely than 30 m to the surface, and the vertical strings of adsorbent beds could be loaded vertically into the ship either for processing aboard or for transport to a structure in the neighborhood. Since even at a cost of $300/kg-U, the investment per reactor in uranium farm will amount to about $700 M, it is worth planning substantial R&D and design refinement to arrive at minimum cost. Of course, specialized design of the lift system to bring aboard the adsorbent bed strings is one candidate a prospect in the longer run is to use a non-standard small-waterline-area ship that would be largely immune to heavy seas and would improve the fraction of the time the ship can operate. And it must be recognized that an annual compensation rate of 10 million yen per person-year for Japanese workers will make uranium farming attractive for organizations with much lower labor costs. Japan buys its uranium now of terrestrial origin; it is likely that Japan will buy its seawater uranium as well, and be richer for doing so.
..snip..
-nukebuddy
If you want to read a real review of this movie (i.e. one from a reviewer who isn't certified mentally retarded like, say, Jon Katz), just say
mrcranky!
-nukebuddy
Judas96' wrote:
...it reminds me of the term "revisionist history".
It shouldn't. The mission of historical revisionism is to set the record straight. Read this site and you'll agree:
http://codoh.com/
-nukebuddy
Nicolas MONNET wrote:
>So was the World Trade Center.
What are you talking about? It has been proven that the claimed attempted genocide of the Jews never happened and is therefore a hoax. What is a hoax about the WTC incident?
-nukebuddy
Nicolas MONNET wrote: ... do you really think I'm not aware of history? FYI I've met holocaust survivors.
>Excuse me
The holocaust is a hoax.
-nukebuddy
The Times article says, "[This study by European Society of Cardiology in Stockholm] is the first to measure the effect of coffee on arteries."
r y_old?uid=11509481&form=6&db=m&Dopt=b
Oops. The following study by Department of Pharmacology and Therapeutics, Trinity Centre for Health Sciences and Hypertension Clinic, St James's Hospital, Dublin, Ireland, was published last month:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/htbin-post/Entrez/que
Hypertension 2001 Aug;38(2):227-31
Acute effect of caffeine on arterial stiffness and aortic pressure waveform.
Mahmud A, Feely J
Department of Pharmacology and Therapeutics, Trinity Centre for Health Sciences and Hypertension Clinic, St James's Hospital, Dublin, Ireland.
Caffeine acutely increases blood pressure and peripheral vascular resistance, in part because of sympathetic stimulation. Its effects on large artery properties are largely unknown. In a double-blind crossover study, 7 healthy subjects 26+/-2.6 years of age (mean+/-SEM) were studied for 90 minutes while in the supine position on 2 occasions separated by a week in random order after ingestion of 250 mL caffeinated (150 mg) and decaffeinated (2 mg) coffee. Compared with baseline, arterial stiffness measured by carotid femoral pulse wave velocity increased progressively from 7.2+/-0.41 to 8.0+/-0.6 m/s (P0.05) at 90 minutes after caffeine intake, an effect that may be independent of changes in blood pressure. In addition, arterial wave reflection, measured by applanation tonometry from the aortic pressure waveform, also increased from -5.7+/-7.6% to 5.28%+/-5.6 (P0.01). No such changes were seen with decaffeinated coffee intake. Although the integral of the brachial systolic and diastolic blood pressure values over the 90 minutes was larger (P0.05) after caffeinated than decaffeinated coffee intake, the effect on aortic systolic and diastolic blood pressures was more pronounced (P0.05) than on the brachial artery. These results show a significant effect of caffeine intake on arterial tone and function and suggest that caffeine acutely increases arterial stiffness.
Publication Types:
Clinical trial
Randomized controlled trial
PMID: 11509481, UI: 21400656
-nukebuddy
Any nation with a coal-fired power plant has access to nuclear materials. And I quote:
...the recovery of the uranium-235 released by coal combustion from a typical utility anywhere in the world could provide the equivalent of several World War II-type uranium-fueled weapons. Consequently, fissionable nuclear fuel is available to any country that either buys coal from outside sources or has its own reserves. The material is potentially employable as weapon fuel by any organization so inclined. Although technically complex, purification and enrichment technologies can provide high-purity, weapons-grade uranium-235.
Funny that no one is worried about keeping track of any of this weapons material.
-nukebuddy
These girls are the real thing: the absolutely most primo donnas around.
doorbot.com wrote:
So that leaves us with dams and nuclear power (fission) as our clean energy sources...
Damming is the dirtiest power source. It's true that nuclear is the cleanest, though.
-nukebuddy
Zeinfeld wrote:
As for 'modern', go have a look at a real nuclear station. Most of the technology is out of the 1960s or earlier. There hasn't been a new station started since three mile island.
There are new stations started and completed every year. (China, France, Japan, etc.)
-Nukebuddy
localroger wrote:
[Would it be possible to make a mostly clean H-bomb by removing the depleted uranium? Just a thought.]
Yes, it would. It would be another animal entirely, though; the neutrons created by the fusion reaction have to do something. So when you replace the tamper in an H-bomb with something that won't fission, you get what is called a neutron bomb.
I'm sure you've heard of them.
Clean nukes are made with a lead tamper. They are useful for excavation work and for recovering oil from oil shale.
-Nukebuddy
Deanasc:
BTW I chose a Palm vs the other PDA's as it seemed to have the best handwriting recognition for my way of holding a pen.
Why are people using grafitti instead of the Twiddler2 for Palm input?
neowintermute:
how likely do you think it is that there are a lot of game show contestants who are going to qualify for space travel?
Most black-diamond skiers would qualify and there are quite a few of those.
Mr_Dyqik:
On other matters, the cost of the fuel also depends heavily on demand.
When the cost of fuel passes a certain low point then this can be made the sole parameter determining the economic viability of a plant, throwing out all other parameters?
It's possible for fuel cost to go to zero and still not matter.
What's the cost of storing the spent fuel for ~10,000 years before it's radioactivity drops below background?
The cost of storing spent fuel for 500 years is one mill (one tenth of a penny) per kilowatt-hour. No one cares about storing it ultra-securely any longer than that because: The radiation would have dropped to below that of raw ore by then; it is hardly dangerous at any radiation level since it would be so difficult to get it into humans from any underground storage place (and moreso from a highly engineered one) in any appreciable quantities; cancer will likely be cured by that time, making carcinogens something of a moot point.
Certainly fusion only produces helium 4 which is entirely safe and makes up 25% of the universe
You're comparing something which is petty durned safe with something that is merely extremely safe. This doesn't necessarilly matter.
If fusion were perfectly safe, it might not be so much more safe than fission that it could make up for the inherent danger of higher expense. People can and do die when cost is ignored. ALARA kills.
.
.
.
.
.
.
If the only argument for fusion is that fission is dangerous, then there is no argument for fusion since fission isn't significantly dangerous.
Mr. Slippery:
...but to build stable, safe, durable, non-Chernobyl-able reactors, since fallout tends not to respect national boundaries.
There are designs, they're just experimental.
A reactor is not a power plant.
(didn't Israel destroy what Iraq claimed was a fission power plant?)
Israel destroyed an Iraqi research reactor which was constructed (in secret) for the purpose of producing weapons materials.
[Fission is] only an alternative for nations we trust to not only not use the tech and fuels to enhance their nuclear weapons programs...
Nuclear power tech has nothing to do with nuclear bomb tech. Any nation with sufficient resources to embark on a bomb-building program can do so without any nuclear power plants, and if they had nuclear power plants it wouldn't help them. The bomb materials can be produced by reactors dedicated to that purpose. These reactors are far easier to build than power plants and would be the easiest route for obtaining bomb materials. Reactor tech is out there and any nation that has any hope of making bombs already has it.
First world countries shouldn't build good nuclear power plants, because if they do, third world countries will build bad ones? And if first world countries don't build nuclear power plants at all this will prevent third world countries from building bad ones?
Oh, and do you want your neighbor to bury nuclear waste near their border wth you?
It wouldn't matter if they did since high-level nuclear waste is rendered essentially non-toxic by being buried.
Keep in mind that in 500 years the dump may be forgotten...
In 500 years, high-level nuclear waste is less radioactive than the ore it was mined from.
Not to mention that digging uranium out of the ground is hardly enviromentally friendly.
Actually, it's quite environmentally friendly since so little of it is required to produce adequate amounts of power. And digging it out of the ground and running it through a reactor produces a net reduction in radiation -- radiation which people would otherwise be exposed to in the form of radioactive radon gas, a natural decay product of uranium, seeping out of the ground from natural uranium veins buried there.
Source
Almost everything contains traces of elements like uranium. Is this coal dust really a better source than if the bad guys just dug up their own dirt, or if they processed the coal on purpose to extract uranium rather than burn it to produce electricity?
ORNL:
What was true is that the trace amounts of uranium and other elements, when multiplied by the huge quantaties of coal burned, and with the rather efficient method of spewing it into the atmosphere that we used to use, produced far more radiation than most plausable nuclear power plant accidents.... Unfortunately it sounds to me that modern pollution-control may have cut the ash so much that this rather good argument is no longer true.
When the particle precipitators (filters) we have been using since the sixties are working properly, they filter 99.5% of the fly ash. In other words, even when they work, they hardly work at all, so coal-fired power plants both collect lots of radioactive material as solid waste and release lots of radioactive material as aerial pollution.
Mr_Dyqik:
But the cost of developing fusion power is tiny to the cost of breeding that much uranium (especially if you take security into account)
The cost of security is negligible.
The cost of running breeders (Advanced Light Metal Reactors {AMLRs}, in this case the General Electric design {a modular fast reactor concept consisting of three modules with a modular power of 496 megawatts each and using a break-even fuel scheme}) vs. the cost of fusion (in this case the tokomak magnetic fusion energy {MFE} Advanced Reactor Innovation and Evaluation Studies {ARIES} design studies, the ARIES-RS and Aries-ST) is 9.32 cents/kilowatt-hour for ARIES-ST, 8.74 cents/kilowatt-hour for ARIES-RS, and 5.13 cents for ALMR, all in 1999 dollars and assuming this is taking place around 2050.
This makes the cost of breeding uranium substantially lower than the cost of fusion.
These costs include capital (design and construction), O&M (operation and maintenance), fuel and decommissioning. All of these are significantly higher in the case of the ALMR except the capital category, where it is less than half. With these types of power plants, the capital cost is the cost that matters the most and fusion does very badly here, thus losing overall very badly.
Notice that the things you mentioned in your previous posts like fuel cost and decommissioning (where fusion is clearly superior) hardly make a dent in the overall cost. Decommissioning the ALMR cost 0.19 cents vs. 0.09 cents for both tyoes of fusion plant. Fuel is 0.88 cents for the ALMR vs. 0.54 and 0.38 cents respectively for the RS and ST fusion plants. Fusion saves at best half a penny per kilowatt-hour in these categories.
Source: The Oak Ridge National Laboratory report: An Assessment of the Economics of Future Electric Power Generation Options and the Implications for Fusion
A: Given the amount of energy required to mine and process uranium from the Earth's crust, nuclear fission is actually a less efficient form of power than traditional coal-fired power plants.
Dr. Helen Caldicott says this. (For those who don't know, she's a physician, founder of Physicians for Social Responsibility, author, public speaker, and anti-nuclear {both of them} activist.) She says she gets the data from a Friends of the Earth Study of which she says:
The fuel for nuclear power plants is extremely power-dense and therefore requires negligible amounts of power to mine, process, transport and subsequently re-bury after it is used. This is reflected in the cost of fuel which is, in 1987 dollars,
B: The energy expended in mining and processing (which is far more intensive for uranium than for any form of traditional fossil fuel) comes in the form of fossil fuels.
Pound for pound it may be more energy intensive, but not energy unit per energy unit. Again, this is why the fossil energy input is negligible and therefore the price of fuel (per energy unit -- not per pound) is so low.
C: Chernobyl
A power plant of a design called RBMK which is intended to blow up and hurt people when operator mistakes are made. We don't use these designs in the western world, though we had one at Hanford for quite a while. It was permanently decommisioned right after Chernobyl sent us its not very subtle warning.
D: Three Mile Island
An excellent power plant (considering it's age) designed to not hurt people when operator errors are made. Witness, operator errors were made and the ECCS (emergency core cooling system) operated as per its design. No one was injured and no one came close to being injured. Thanks to Three Mile Island, newer power plants are designed with an increased emphasis on providing critical and accurate information to the operator. This is among a myriad other improvements that have been made to an already, as was stated, excellent design.
E: What were you saying about fission being "one such power source" that has "little environmental impact?"
Nuclear fission has the least environmental impact kilowatt-hour for kilowatt-hour of any electricity generation technology in existence.
F: The inventor of the LISP programming language does not qualify as a source. He is a programmer, not a scientist, not any qualified authority on energy or sustainability.
I find he has an amusing writing style and he provides references for his words. Quoting a scientist in the field wouldn't be any better since he might be considered a maverick by his peers, unless he put forth a convincing argument that he was merely presenting the opinions of the overwhelming majority his peers -- as Bernard L. Cohen does, complete with survey statistics.
G: If you want to contend that an accident on the scale of or larger than Chernobyl will not occur, you're a moron.
An accident far larger than Chernobyl, killing 3,500 people outright, is predicted to happen once in every 100,000 meltdowns. This is according the Dr. Norman Rasmussen (of MIT) led Reactor Safety Study who's famous final report in 1975 was titled, "WASH-1400". The advanced reactors of today are many times safer than the old reactors assumed in the study. It should be noted that 3,500 people died in an air pollution episode in 1952 in London caused by coal-fired power plants.
The fact of the matter is, it cannot be guaranteed that an accident or deliberate attack or earthquake or unforseen incident will not occur.
Yes. We can't guarantee safety, but we can guarantee that nuclear fission is calculated to be the safest form of electrical power production. In other words, we can guarantee that the odds are with you when you choose nuclear power. In fact, it can be guaranteed that it is calculated to be safer than going without power, or even anything more than minimal energy conservation -- something which turns out to be surprisingly deadly, both for humans and the environment.
Nuclear disasters can happen, but their infrequency makes nuclear power by far the safe choice. Bernard L. Cohen, from p. 286 of The Nuclear Energy Option:
Worst case scenario with solar or similar sources of power, power goes out.
Solar in any of it's forms represents substantial risk to human life. Because its "fuel" is so diffuse, the plants must be massive and therefore require massive amounts of labor to build. Construction is highly hazardous labor. Maintenance labor is similarly massive and similarly hazardous. If we're talking about PV panels, there is hazard dealing with the chemicals in the factory, dealing with the hazardous waste from that and dealing with the hazardous waste from decommissioning. Cadmium sulfide is highly toxic and 60 people will die per solar power plant year of operation because of exposure to it.
Fusion is a worse idea because it costs substantially more. This makes it substantially more dangerous. Expensiveness of electricity is quite lethal.
IS FISSION WORTH THE RISK?
Absolutely.
But I don't understand the "nuclear proliferation danger". I doubt the coal exaust is really that much use for making nuclear weapons!
Coal-fired power plants collect large amounts of hazardous solid waste from their combustion of coal. This solid waste contains the fissionable metals necessary to produce nuclear weapons. From the article I linked:
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