I believe that a well-build, well-managed nuclear reactor is one of the best options we have for producing the electricity our industry and population needs. And yet, as a Belgian, I do think we should close those old reactors ASAP, and don't even think about building new ones. Call it NIMBY, if you want, but I think there are good reasons in this case. Nowhere in the world there is another reactor where so many people live within a 30 km radius. Even worse, a tiny safety zone of just 3 km would render one of the most important ports in the world completely inaccessible - don't even start to calculate the economic consequences. Just last week, the agency that supervises nuclear safety advised on extending the zone for disaster plans to a 100 km radius - which effectively includes every square meter of the country.
And, worst of all, the vowed purpose of the prolongation (avoid black-outs), probably won't even be gained. There were already lots of non-nuclear incidents in the past year that caused an emergency-shutdown. Exactly the kind of thing that easily could cause a black-out. And according to current plans, ALL nuclear reactors (7, producing about 50% of our electricity) should be closed in the same year, 2025. There is not even a start of a plan on how we can replace that much capacity in such a short period...
If movies are banned because of the laws of that country - well, it's up to the people of that country to decide whether that's ok. But if that would be the only - or major - reason I'm quite sure the mentioned list here would contain lots of "99%"
Alas, research reveals that some 30% of 'canadian' FSC-labeled wood is actually illegally cut tropical hardwood. That's cheaper than growing perfectly straight trees in a tree-farm. I'd guess that everything that has no such label would do even worse.
While the author probably is very right about journalists being focused on 'surprising' and 'spectacular' results, there might also be a problem with the science itself.
In an effort to reward 'good' researchers, scientists all over the world are caught in a rat-race to produce x papers each year. Now, while the goal is very noble, this is often at odds with the way science works. Sometimes experiments fail. Sometimes they just confirm what everyone already assumed. Sometimes results are not conclusive. Not something that gets you easily published in 'Nature'... but still your job depends on you publishing enough papers, each year again.
That leads to situations where researchers themselves massaging their results. Leave out certain 'outliers', or 'forget' to mention something, and suddenly your result does get very significant! Bingo! According to some, up to 75% of all papers have applied some trick to get published. Of course, combining these embellished papers with the bias of journalists does lead to lots of interesting, but nonsense articles.
And this comes from someone whose income depends on said research.
Nice feat, but does this also have a practical usage, or is this a purely academic exercise? From the article: 'But in contrast to its conventional form, it is soft and malleable by hand' - so not quite usable for jewelry. Where gold is used for its conductivity, it is mostly used as plating, not as solid or foamy object. So... what am I missing?
That is certainly possible - no one will ever be able to tell what is happening > at that distance.
Yet, why do you think it is 'more than likely'? 1500 years is not that long. 1500 years ago, the Western Roman Empire collapsed. Human history goes back a lot further. And plenty of artifacts that those Romans, Greeks, Egyptians and lots of others build around or before that time still exist. And, at this moment, we are still alive too...
Possibly the real reason for this decision is a bit more pragmatic: nude photographs of famous models cost money - a lot of it. That was not a problem when the magazine sold in the millions - but with recent sales numbers it might just be too expensive. With dropping nudity, they save a lot of money - possibly enough to keep the magazine afloat - albeit irrelevant.
If you want to compare the potential for wave energy between two countries, you probably shouldn't look at the mere number of km of coastline, but to the length of the coastline compared to the number of inhabitants, or compared to the actual energy consumption in those countries.
Surely everyone who is relevant knows about the meaning of all of DOE's internal acronyms. However, not everyone working at the DOE may know the meaning of 'kW' and 'MW'...
Just wondering - if you spent 150$/month on fuel, you must be driving *a lot* (assuming your previous car was also something golf-like, not some gas-gobbling truck). Are you doing the same kind of trips with your egolf? How do you handle range issues? Oh -yes, I see - you take your wife's car. Then the extra fuel used there must be included in your comparison...
Also, please note that the Tesla Powerwalls are operating on 400 V DC. So even if you are going to run a low-voltage DC line from them, that still means a DC-DC converter at the battery side from 400 V to i.e. 12V, and probably a second DC-DC converter at the device to convert the 12V to the voltage the device was designed for. What is there the efficiency?
AC to the doorstep, yes. An efficient whole house power supply - yes. Separate 12vdc and 48vdc rails, probably not. No battery backup for the 220vac appliances, definitely not, because exactly the 220vac appliances are the appliances that you want to keep running during a blackout. A possibility could be 12VDC and 220VAC running on the same line, which could probably even be done on current wires and current outlets. And every device (or a filter plugin) could use the most appropriate voltage. Your washing machine could even use both - 12VDC to power its electronic circuits, and 220VAC to power the actual motor.
Sure, you can save a lot of losses in this 24VDC -> 120VAC -> 5VDC cycle. But just how relevant is that? All electronic devices and LED-lighting run internally on low voltage DC - but the household appliances that really impact your electricity bill run on 120/230 V AC. Which leaves us at the 95% efficiency the GP mentioned. These appliances could be designed to run on low voltage DC - but whether that would make them any more efficient remains to be seen.
Not mentioning the cabling cost - powering your 2000 W oven on 24V DC will require 5 (US) to 10 (EU) times more Ampere - and thus much thicker copper wires. And that is not exactly free these days.
Foreign policy was never the strongest point of the EU. In fact, there's hardly any international issue where the EU really can speak with one voice, without some national leaders acting directly against it. And the EU has nothing to say about military actions at all. So foreign policy, or counterweighting Russia, is really the worst possible reason to support the EU.
I agree. Upgrading to the latest OS on your existing device is definitely not always the best choice. The OP says that people might be switching to other platforms, but that is utter bullshit. The 6% that is still running 2.3 are definitely not the people that would switch (as in, buy another expensive smart phone) because of security issues - hell, forcing them to install 5.1 on their hardware is more likely to scare them away from Android. How many people upgraded Windows XP to Windows 7 or 8? They didn't - they bought a new system with a recent OS already installed.
The real problem lays not in the OS upgrades, but in (security) fixes. 5 years after you bought any Windows desktop, you still got security updates - actually, almost daily. 1 year after you bought an Android phone you're stuck with whatever is running, bugs and security holes all included.
Outside the US, there is a huge world where most phones are not distributed by, and locked to, carriers. I bought my Moto G simlock-free at a local shop, inserted the sim and was ready to go. Yet, it is still running 4.4.4, and says that the OS is up to date...
The carriers may -and most probably will- aggravate the situation - but they are most certainly not the only ones to blame.
I can't deny that 'eventually' it might not be enough at some point in time - but at any point within the foreseeable future you are _way_ wrong. In fact, the sun produces about 1.2×10^34 J per year, where the total energy consumption on earth was, in 2008, just 474x10^18 J. So, before we would need to enclose the sun entirely, we would need to consume about 10.000.000.000.000 times as much as we do now...
I'm sure the lifeforms on that asteroid will be very upset by this unprovoked act of aggression. There is no doubt that their leaders will retaliate by sending their biggest asteroid in a collision course with earth.
And yet, they do., today. Of course, these are prototypes, and it will take many years to go from these prototypes to actual mass-production - but if you look at how far they got in 5 years of research, I bet self-driving cars will be on the market by 2025.
(and BTW, you are right - they solved the 'deer' problem long before tackling the urban environment)
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I believe that a well-build, well-managed nuclear reactor is one of the best options we have for producing the electricity our industry and population needs. And yet, as a Belgian, I do think we should close those old reactors ASAP, and don't even think about building new ones. Call it NIMBY, if you want, but I think there are good reasons in this case. Nowhere in the world there is another reactor where so many people live within a 30 km radius. Even worse, a tiny safety zone of just 3 km would render one of the most important ports in the world completely inaccessible - don't even start to calculate the economic consequences. Just last week, the agency that supervises nuclear safety advised on extending the zone for disaster plans to a 100 km radius - which effectively includes every square meter of the country. And, worst of all, the vowed purpose of the prolongation (avoid black-outs), probably won't even be gained. There were already lots of non-nuclear incidents in the past year that caused an emergency-shutdown. Exactly the kind of thing that easily could cause a black-out. And according to current plans, ALL nuclear reactors (7, producing about 50% of our electricity) should be closed in the same year, 2025. There is not even a start of a plan on how we can replace that much capacity in such a short period...
If movies are banned because of the laws of that country - well, it's up to the people of that country to decide whether that's ok. But if that would be the only - or major - reason I'm quite sure the mentioned list here would contain lots of "99%"
Alas, research reveals that some 30% of 'canadian' FSC-labeled wood is actually illegally cut tropical hardwood. That's cheaper than growing perfectly straight trees in a tree-farm. I'd guess that everything that has no such label would do even worse.
While the author probably is very right about journalists being focused on 'surprising' and 'spectacular' results, there might also be a problem with the science itself. In an effort to reward 'good' researchers, scientists all over the world are caught in a rat-race to produce x papers each year. Now, while the goal is very noble, this is often at odds with the way science works. Sometimes experiments fail. Sometimes they just confirm what everyone already assumed. Sometimes results are not conclusive. Not something that gets you easily published in 'Nature'... but still your job depends on you publishing enough papers, each year again. That leads to situations where researchers themselves massaging their results. Leave out certain 'outliers', or 'forget' to mention something, and suddenly your result does get very significant! Bingo! According to some, up to 75% of all papers have applied some trick to get published. Of course, combining these embellished papers with the bias of journalists does lead to lots of interesting, but nonsense articles. And this comes from someone whose income depends on said research.
Nice feat, but does this also have a practical usage, or is this a purely academic exercise? From the article: 'But in contrast to its conventional form, it is soft and malleable by hand' - so not quite usable for jewelry. Where gold is used for its conductivity, it is mostly used as plating, not as solid or foamy object. So ... what am I missing?
That is certainly possible - no one will ever be able to tell what is happening > at that distance. Yet, why do you think it is 'more than likely'? 1500 years is not that long. 1500 years ago, the Western Roman Empire collapsed. Human history goes back a lot further. And plenty of artifacts that those Romans, Greeks, Egyptians and lots of others build around or before that time still exist. And, at this moment, we are still alive too...
No, not worldwide. At least the Dutch Playboy has already said they won't be dropping nudity any time soon. Lucky me :-)
Possibly the real reason for this decision is a bit more pragmatic: nude photographs of famous models cost money - a lot of it. That was not a problem when the magazine sold in the millions - but with recent sales numbers it might just be too expensive. With dropping nudity, they save a lot of money - possibly enough to keep the magazine afloat - albeit irrelevant.
So, "acre-foot" is now the standard unit for measuring water quantities? Last time I checked, the standard unit was cubic metres...
Maybe that's the point - when the enemy shoots them out of the air, THEY get the radioactive waste!
If you want to compare the potential for wave energy between two countries, you probably shouldn't look at the mere number of km of coastline, but to the length of the coastline compared to the number of inhabitants, or compared to the actual energy consumption in those countries.
Surely everyone who is relevant knows about the meaning of all of DOE's internal acronyms. However, not everyone working at the DOE may know the meaning of 'kW' and 'MW'...
Just wondering - if you spent 150$/month on fuel, you must be driving *a lot* (assuming your previous car was also something golf-like, not some gas-gobbling truck). Are you doing the same kind of trips with your egolf? How do you handle range issues? Oh -yes, I see - you take your wife's car. Then the extra fuel used there must be included in your comparison...
Also, please note that the Tesla Powerwalls are operating on 400 V DC. So even if you are going to run a low-voltage DC line from them, that still means a DC-DC converter at the battery side from 400 V to i.e. 12V, and probably a second DC-DC converter at the device to convert the 12V to the voltage the device was designed for. What is there the efficiency?
AC to the doorstep, yes. An efficient whole house power supply - yes. Separate 12vdc and 48vdc rails, probably not. No battery backup for the 220vac appliances, definitely not, because exactly the 220vac appliances are the appliances that you want to keep running during a blackout. A possibility could be 12VDC and 220VAC running on the same line, which could probably even be done on current wires and current outlets. And every device (or a filter plugin) could use the most appropriate voltage. Your washing machine could even use both - 12VDC to power its electronic circuits, and 220VAC to power the actual motor.
Your city block doesn't qualify as long range.
Sure, you can save a lot of losses in this 24VDC -> 120VAC -> 5VDC cycle. But just how relevant is that? All electronic devices and LED-lighting run internally on low voltage DC - but the household appliances that really impact your electricity bill run on 120/230 V AC. Which leaves us at the 95% efficiency the GP mentioned. These appliances could be designed to run on low voltage DC - but whether that would make them any more efficient remains to be seen. Not mentioning the cabling cost - powering your 2000 W oven on 24V DC will require 5 (US) to 10 (EU) times more Ampere - and thus much thicker copper wires. And that is not exactly free these days.
Foreign policy was never the strongest point of the EU. In fact, there's hardly any international issue where the EU really can speak with one voice, without some national leaders acting directly against it. And the EU has nothing to say about military actions at all. So foreign policy, or counterweighting Russia, is really the worst possible reason to support the EU.
I agree. Upgrading to the latest OS on your existing device is definitely not always the best choice. The OP says that people might be switching to other platforms, but that is utter bullshit. The 6% that is still running 2.3 are definitely not the people that would switch (as in, buy another expensive smart phone) because of security issues - hell, forcing them to install 5.1 on their hardware is more likely to scare them away from Android. How many people upgraded Windows XP to Windows 7 or 8? They didn't - they bought a new system with a recent OS already installed. The real problem lays not in the OS upgrades, but in (security) fixes. 5 years after you bought any Windows desktop, you still got security updates - actually, almost daily. 1 year after you bought an Android phone you're stuck with whatever is running, bugs and security holes all included.
"And unlike a PC, the base hardware between phones varies much more, " Either you are joking, or you don't know what you are talking about.
Outside the US, there is a huge world where most phones are not distributed by, and locked to, carriers. I bought my Moto G simlock-free at a local shop, inserted the sim and was ready to go. Yet, it is still running 4.4.4, and says that the OS is up to date... The carriers may -and most probably will- aggravate the situation - but they are most certainly not the only ones to blame.
I can't deny that 'eventually' it might not be enough at some point in time - but at any point within the foreseeable future you are _way_ wrong. In fact, the sun produces about 1.2×10^34 J per year, where the total energy consumption on earth was, in 2008, just 474x10^18 J. So, before we would need to enclose the sun entirely, we would need to consume about 10.000.000.000.000 times as much as we do now...
I'm sure the lifeforms on that asteroid will be very upset by this unprovoked act of aggression. There is no doubt that their leaders will retaliate by sending their biggest asteroid in a collision course with earth.
And yet, they do., today. Of course, these are prototypes, and it will take many years to go from these prototypes to actual mass-production - but if you look at how far they got in 5 years of research, I bet self-driving cars will be on the market by 2025. (and BTW, you are right - they solved the 'deer' problem long before tackling the urban environment)
A kill switch on an aircraft would be one of the very few instances where the switch is label quite correctly 'kill' switch...