Do they have this right? I thought the reason Carter went toward Thorium instead of Uranium/Plutonium was because U-233 only emitted 1.3 neutrons (on average) per fission vs U235's 1.9 and Pu239's 2.4. Note: these numbers are from memory over 30 years ago, and I've not been able to find the google in-can-ation that can confirm/correct the values. If anyone has the correct values, or the reasoning, please feel free to chime in.
Yup, its just like rape victims years ago. YOU THE VICTIM must have provoked it. YOU THE VICTIM ARE THE CAUSE. I'm glad that rape victims are usually not blamed any more. I just hope in the future that bully victims are afforded the same. Unfortunately, in the 40 years since I was that victim, I see not much has changed.
It's marketing. And it's excellent marketing. Plausible risk has little to do with it, but it makes me want to invest in the company.
Its very good marketing, I can almost hear him saying "oh yeah, take that".
On the negative side, I bet there is some teenage brat "suffering" from Affluzenza who is going to drive this car off a cliff, and when he skins his knee he is going to get his daddy to sue the company for a billion or so dollars.
Indeed it does; it makes me wonder why they don't make the Tesla S look more like a badass car and less like a family sedan.Wouldn't take much revision to have, say, a Tesla Se, that's got minor revisions ala body panels.
I have to wonder if they are going to do a "Mad Max" version of the Tesla:-) Driving through massive potholes, smashing concrete blocks in the street, deflecting steel rods. Perfect for driving in NYC:-).
Cost and strength. You can extrude something for a fraction of the cost of 3D printing or milling. You can even extrude titanium if you have a big enough press. (google "heavy press program" if you want to see some MONSTER presses.) Both extrusion and milling still have strength advantages over 3D printing. Where 3D printing shines is prototyping, small run, or fancy designs that are too difficult to extrude or cast or mill. But give it a few more years. The other methods have been around far longer, so we know how to do things well.
Well, "Lead" and "technically savvy" doesn't mean "doing the actual building." We're quite good giving money to china for building stuff. That SORTA fits the bill.
Yeah, how'd that Chinese moon rover work out for them, huh?
How many of our missions blew up on the launch pad or burned up in the atmosphere due to a conversion error or had mirrors ground to the wrong focal length? With every step you should learn something, even if its what not to do. To paraphrase Q: if your that afraid of risk you should go crawl under your bed and hide.
No reason to go? Exploration, research, challenges and opportunities and technical advances that we can't even begin to articulate. We have not even begun to explore the moon.
More men accompanied Christopher Columbus on his first voyage to the New World than have landed on the moon. Even without men we can send dozens of missions to help iron out the details of new propulsion systems like ion or hall or vascimar.
We can develop and deploy robotic probes with a far faster turn around time (and less need to gold plate everything) by doing the development on the moon instead of Mars.
We can see the long term radiation effects on materials once they are outside of Earth's protective magnetic field.
Put even a small observatory on the far side of the moon and you open up huge opportunities shielded from all the transmitters on Earth, and outside of Earth's atmosphere. I would put several at different spots to enable long baseline measurements as well as lessen the expense of triple redundant systems in case of failure.
H
And lastly, give this generation something to shoot for.
Something other than the newest Angry Birds or social media app.
Something to shoot for, to make history, to inspire a new generation like JFK's speech on going to the moon.
It will happen.
The question is, will they speak Chinese or American?
I'm not an expert in radio isotope absorption. But my understanding of the protective effects of potassium iodide is that it floods the body with iodide, thus lowering the odds that the radioactive version will be absorbed. My understanding of strontium-137 is that it is chemically similar to calcium, and therefore is absorbed when there is insufficient calcium.
I read these theories in articles on Three Mile Island, so the research may be very old. If anyone has newer research I'd be interested.
Its good that they are checking the kids, and that the detectors are picking up the normal potassium exposure.
Like it or not, they have become a laboratory on radiation exposure.
Also I agree that the environmental and anti business people will be trying to scare everyone.
I don't think I said doomed to failure or it will never work. When they start losing money or generating bad publicity, they will hopefully fix it. Microsoft comes to mind, as does Adobe, as does WEB going to WPA, as does the original cordless phone to something like DECT, as does the old blue boxing of phone booths to out of band signaling.
Hopefully they will get it right the first time, but judging by the rest of the industries, they won't. Frankly I can't think of a single instance where someone did a good job right from the start. Can you?
...and you need to keep control of that vehicle for a few weeks to get it into a friendly port for unloading, during which time (1) folks with guns are doing their best to find you, and (2) you have no hostages to use as bargaining chips if they do so.
That's an awfully high-risk venture to get the kind of talent you'd need to hijack control in the first place [stealing private keys used to encrypt/authenticate the control chanel, etc] to sign off on.
I do information security for a living. I've seen hundreds of products where security is left out because (a) they need to get it to market faster, (b) it would add a dollar to the cost, (c) security is the users' responsibility, (d) I can design security better than anyone else on the planet, or (e) I don't care. Go through the archives of comp.risks if you want a few examples. Read Schneider's blog if you want more. Read slashdot.org if you want more.
Now here is a fun one: man in the middle attack. Take over the boat, but keep sending "normal" conditions back to the owners.
Support pylons of the Golden Gate Bridge, have several of them collide at the entrance to the Long Beach shipping terminal, blocking access for a few weeks, run over the deep water loading ports for crude oil. Run over a deep water drilling rig. I can think of any number of terrorist activities one could do. And remember, time and time again, no one really thinks of security until that "oh s___, we've been hacked" moment.
Except they could already do that with a manned vessel if it was at all feasible.
I'm not talking about boarding the vessel. I'm talking about hijacking the communications link and taking over the vessel. Then you could do it from anywhere in the world and have just about zero chance of getting caught.
Support pylons of the Golden Gate Bridge, have several of them collide at the entrance to the Long Beach shipping terminal, blocking access for a few weeks, run over the deep water loading ports for crude oil. Run over a deep water drilling rig. I can think of any number of terrorist activities one could do. And remember, time and time again, no one really thinks of security until that "oh s___, we've been hacked" moment.
Oh gee, our enemies are going to love this, the ability to nuke all the cells phones in the US at one shot. How much do you think a cracker could sell this exploit for?
Better solution: create a database of stolen IMEI numbers. In that way it can be reversed if/when the eventual screwup occurs.
Is anyone else suspicious of this announcement? Every article I can find is very vague on exactly how this is supposed to work. The one article I found that has a hint was it mentioning a filter with pores smaller than a water molecule. This infers they are extracting oxygen dissolved in the water. I wonder how much water one would need to pass through. Fish are cold blooded, and therefore have a lower metabolism than mammals. So we would need to filter a lot more water than a typical fish to make this work.
The problem is, what do we replace it with? Right now, coal, oil, and natural gas are the only viable alternatives.
All the places to put dams are already used, and we know how much they damage the local ecosystems.
Windmills kill thousands of birds and bats every year.
Solar would require destroying millions of acres of wilderness.
Fusion has been 5 years away for the past 50 years.
For the next 10 years I see nuclear and natural gas.
At least we can cut down on the carbon dioxide, soot, and heavy metals going into the air.
I'm hoping that energy storage from something like cyrogenic air storage will help, but I see it as at least 10 years away.
Not quite: the fissioning reaction is gone the moment you loose the water. The water acts as a modulator that slows down the neutrons to the right speed to have the best change of fissioning a uranium atom. This is not a bomb where you have 90% U235. In a reactor its usually 2-5%.
What causes the meltdown is actually the waste products of the reaction. The waste products are radiologically and thermally hot. If not cooled they cause the fuel rods to melt. The molten mass will go downwards absorbing more material until the heat output is less than can be absorbed by the surrounding environment.
Fukushima's containment vessel could (and did) contain the molten core... but not the hydrogen explosions that also occurred inside the reactor chamber because of the total coolant loss.
My language should imply that nuclear reactors are safe against the foreseen failure modes. At Fukushima Daiichi, it was not expected that all of the coolant systems would fail at once and that repairs would be hampered by the tsunami damage.
The hydrogen explosion could not happen in the reactor chamber. What happens is that the reactor overheats, the zircornium reacts with the water. The oxygen atom is ripped away from the water to form zircronium oxide. The left over hydrogen cannot explode inside the reactor vessel because the oxygen is gone.
So it leaks out and is eventually ignited.
Question for everyone: does anyone know if Fukushima has the US style concrete containment buildings? The explosions I saw on tv were clearly of an industrial type building, not the 6 foot reinforced concrete I'd expect of a containment building.
As for failures, one definite failure mode that was overlooked was for the grid power and the backup generators to be wiped out by the same event. That's called a common mode failure, and is one of the definite problems of nuclear power plants. Heck, of any system.
I don't know why the molten salt reactor was not pursued, but it was not because of the lack of the ability to produce nuclear weapons. As well as producing Pu239, power reactors produce lots of Pu238, Pu240, and Pu241. These guys are harmless in a nuclear reactor, but are a big problem in weapons. They tend to set the weapon off prematurely, which is usually a bad idea. These isotopes almost killed the original plutonium bomb until they learned to lessen the neutron exposure. If you want to produce weapons grade plutonium, you use a research reactor where the U238 can be exposed to neutrons for only a short period of time.
Slashdot Mirror
I'd be curious how much Bitcoin would it take to tempt people.
Do they have this right? I thought the reason Carter went toward Thorium instead of Uranium/Plutonium was because U-233 only emitted 1.3 neutrons (on average) per fission vs U235's 1.9 and Pu239's 2.4. Note: these numbers are from memory over 30 years ago, and I've not been able to find the google in-can-ation that can confirm/correct the values. If anyone has the correct values, or the reasoning, please feel free to chime in.
Yup, its just like rape victims years ago. YOU THE VICTIM must have provoked it. YOU THE VICTIM ARE THE CAUSE. I'm glad that rape victims are usually not blamed any more. I just hope in the future that bully victims are afforded the same. Unfortunately, in the 40 years since I was that victim, I see not much has changed.
50k tons is indeed huge,
Huge isn't the word. The battleship USS New Jersey is 58,000 tons, Empty its 48K tons. Can you imagine bench pressing a battleship?
It's marketing. And it's excellent marketing. Plausible risk has little to do with it, but it makes me want to invest in the company.
Its very good marketing, I can almost hear him saying "oh yeah, take that".
On the negative side, I bet there is some teenage brat "suffering" from Affluzenza who is going to drive this car off a cliff, and when he skins his knee he is going to get his daddy to sue the company for a billion or so dollars.
Indeed it does; it makes me wonder why they don't make the Tesla S look more like a badass car and less like a family sedan.Wouldn't take much revision to have, say, a Tesla Se, that's got minor revisions ala body panels.
I have to wonder if they are going to do a "Mad Max" version of the Tesla :-) Driving through massive potholes, smashing concrete blocks in the street, deflecting steel rods. Perfect for driving in NYC :-).
Cost and strength. You can extrude something for a fraction of the cost of 3D printing or milling. You can even extrude titanium if you have a big enough press. (google "heavy press program" if you want to see some MONSTER presses.) Both extrusion and milling still have strength advantages over 3D printing. Where 3D printing shines is prototyping, small run, or fancy designs that are too difficult to extrude or cast or mill. But give it a few more years. The other methods have been around far longer, so we know how to do things well.
Well, "Lead" and "technically savvy" doesn't mean "doing the actual building." We're quite good giving money to china for building stuff. That SORTA fits the bill.
Yeah, how'd that Chinese moon rover work out for them, huh?
How many of our missions blew up on the launch pad or burned up in the atmosphere due to a conversion error or had mirrors ground to the wrong focal length? With every step you should learn something, even if its what not to do. To paraphrase Q: if your that afraid of risk you should go crawl under your bed and hide.
Who needs a movie set when you can do everything CGI?
H
And lastly, give this generation something to shoot for. Something other than the newest Angry Birds or social media app. Something to shoot for, to make history, to inspire a new generation like JFK's speech on going to the moon. It will happen. The question is, will they speak Chinese or American?
Its good that they are checking the kids, and that the detectors are picking up the normal potassium exposure. Like it or not, they have become a laboratory on radiation exposure. Also I agree that the environmental and anti business people will be trying to scare everyone.
I don't think I said doomed to failure or it will never work. When they start losing money or generating bad publicity, they will hopefully fix it. Microsoft comes to mind, as does Adobe, as does WEB going to WPA, as does the original cordless phone to something like DECT, as does the old blue boxing of phone booths to out of band signaling. Hopefully they will get it right the first time, but judging by the rest of the industries, they won't. Frankly I can't think of a single instance where someone did a good job right from the start. Can you?
...and you need to keep control of that vehicle for a few weeks to get it into a friendly port for unloading, during which time (1) folks with guns are doing their best to find you, and (2) you have no hostages to use as bargaining chips if they do so.
That's an awfully high-risk venture to get the kind of talent you'd need to hijack control in the first place [stealing private keys used to encrypt/authenticate the control chanel, etc] to sign off on.
I do information security for a living. I've seen hundreds of products where security is left out because (a) they need to get it to market faster, (b) it would add a dollar to the cost, (c) security is the users' responsibility, (d) I can design security better than anyone else on the planet, or (e) I don't care. Go through the archives of comp.risks if you want a few examples. Read Schneider's blog if you want more. Read slashdot.org if you want more.
Now here is a fun one: man in the middle attack. Take over the boat, but keep sending "normal" conditions back to the owners.
Support pylons of the Golden Gate Bridge, have several of them collide at the entrance to the Long Beach shipping terminal, blocking access for a few weeks, run over the deep water loading ports for crude oil. Run over a deep water drilling rig. I can think of any number of terrorist activities one could do. And remember, time and time again, no one really thinks of security until that "oh s___, we've been hacked" moment.
Except they could already do that with a manned vessel if it was at all feasible.
I'm not talking about boarding the vessel. I'm talking about hijacking the communications link and taking over the vessel. Then you could do it from anywhere in the world and have just about zero chance of getting caught.
Waving assumes that you need to get on board to take control. How about hacking the communications link? Then you have the world's largest RC vehicle.
Support pylons of the Golden Gate Bridge, have several of them collide at the entrance to the Long Beach shipping terminal, blocking access for a few weeks, run over the deep water loading ports for crude oil. Run over a deep water drilling rig. I can think of any number of terrorist activities one could do. And remember, time and time again, no one really thinks of security until that "oh s___, we've been hacked" moment.
Not exactly, you will be arresting those who buy the stolen property. But hey, after a while people will start to get the idea.
Its amazing that technology and companies are finally catching up with the old Speed Racer cartoons.
Better solution: create a database of stolen IMEI numbers. In that way it can be reversed if/when the eventual screwup occurs.
Is anyone else suspicious of this announcement? Every article I can find is very vague on exactly how this is supposed to work. The one article I found that has a hint was it mentioning a filter with pores smaller than a water molecule. This infers they are extracting oxygen dissolved in the water. I wonder how much water one would need to pass through. Fish are cold blooded, and therefore have a lower metabolism than mammals. So we would need to filter a lot more water than a typical fish to make this work.
By the way, we don't supply that data to anyone,' he told attendees.
Well, until they show up with an NSL, in which case we'll supply the data forthwith. But don't worry, we'll still have to maintain we really don't.
I wonder if Snowden is going to prove this guy a liar like everyone else.
The problem is, what do we replace it with? Right now, coal, oil, and natural gas are the only viable alternatives. All the places to put dams are already used, and we know how much they damage the local ecosystems. Windmills kill thousands of birds and bats every year. Solar would require destroying millions of acres of wilderness. Fusion has been 5 years away for the past 50 years. For the next 10 years I see nuclear and natural gas. At least we can cut down on the carbon dioxide, soot, and heavy metals going into the air. I'm hoping that energy storage from something like cyrogenic air storage will help, but I see it as at least 10 years away.
What causes the meltdown is actually the waste products of the reaction. The waste products are radiologically and thermally hot. If not cooled they cause the fuel rods to melt. The molten mass will go downwards absorbing more material until the heat output is less than can be absorbed by the surrounding environment.
Fukushima's containment vessel could (and did) contain the molten core... but not the hydrogen explosions that also occurred inside the reactor chamber because of the total coolant loss.
My language should imply that nuclear reactors are safe against the foreseen failure modes. At Fukushima Daiichi, it was not expected that all of the coolant systems would fail at once and that repairs would be hampered by the tsunami damage.
The hydrogen explosion could not happen in the reactor chamber. What happens is that the reactor overheats, the zircornium reacts with the water. The oxygen atom is ripped away from the water to form zircronium oxide. The left over hydrogen cannot explode inside the reactor vessel because the oxygen is gone. So it leaks out and is eventually ignited.
Question for everyone: does anyone know if Fukushima has the US style concrete containment buildings? The explosions I saw on tv were clearly of an industrial type building, not the 6 foot reinforced concrete I'd expect of a containment building.
As for failures, one definite failure mode that was overlooked was for the grid power and the backup generators to be wiped out by the same event. That's called a common mode failure, and is one of the definite problems of nuclear power plants. Heck, of any system.
I don't know why the molten salt reactor was not pursued, but it was not because of the lack of the ability to produce nuclear weapons. As well as producing Pu239, power reactors produce lots of Pu238, Pu240, and Pu241. These guys are harmless in a nuclear reactor, but are a big problem in weapons. They tend to set the weapon off prematurely, which is usually a bad idea. These isotopes almost killed the original plutonium bomb until they learned to lessen the neutron exposure. If you want to produce weapons grade plutonium, you use a research reactor where the U238 can be exposed to neutrons for only a short period of time.