Or does it, in fact, keep it in "temporary storage" which was not designed to last more than a few decades?
That's the problem...we aren't burying this stuff like we should be. The reasons for this escape me.
Or does it manufacture fuel for nuclear weapons - by far the most life-threatening nuclear problem of all?
The US considers plutonium to be nuclear waste and just throws it out. Places like France use "breeder" reactors which use the plutonium as fuel and in the end have less of a waste problem.
It's a bit like saying "If an oil tanker spills, the amount of oil sitting on the world's oceans will still be only 0.000...1% of the total mass of the oceans, therefore there's no problem."
So maybe that's the answer to the waste problem...just dump it in the ocean instead of storing it on land. The key is to spread it evenly.
"Leave the strategizing to those of us with planet-sized brains." -Tycho
Suppose there was a serious problem with a few water pumps. How would you shut if off?
A problem with a few water pumps? are you kidding? The amount of redundant failsafes in a modern reactor is almost ridiculous.
I believe the problem russia was also due to a water cooling problem.
If memory serves, the Chernobyl reactor used graphite as coolant, which started on fire when exposed to air. Very bad design.
A terrorist can also take advantage of a nuclear power plant because even a remote shutdown will not totally turn down the plant.
Where are you getting this information anyway? Again, modern nuclear plants have a massive containment chamber as protection from bombs and even airliner crashes. The reason the Russian plant had problems was that it didn't have such a structure and the radioactive material just escaped into the atmosphere after a small explosion damaged the reactor.
The second is pollution. Nuclear waste is terrible because it stays hot for so dam long. How do you get rid of it?
Nuclear waste is a lot less harmless than the naturally occuring uranium in the environment (ever had your house tested for radon?). The industry mines this stuff from the ground, reprocesses it into an inert glass, and buries it again in a more geologically stable location. It sounds more like they are doing us a favor. Heck, a block of granite releases more radiation than a cask of nuclear waste!
Sure coal brings mercury in the water and air but I would rather live with that then nuclear waste build up.
That's absurd! Thousands of people die every year from toxic coal waste (a good amount of which is released into the air, despite a complex filtering system).
No matter what kind of waste facilities that are developed for it, its only a matter of time before they decay. Also do you really trust private waste companies to adequately dispose of the waste?
Also no known strucutre can stay up under ground for tens or even hundreds of thousands of years. WIth in a few centuries will anyone even remember where the sites are? I know one is close to the Columbia river in Oregon and there are signs of leaking which are scaring environmentalists. However no tests confirm its in the river yet but after a few centuries it will be forgoten. Oregon is also on the ring of fire and is prone to earthquakes. that is pretty scare for a long term structure. Chemical waste is alot easy to dispose of.
So what do you think happens to chemical waste anyway? They can't exactly put it back where it came from, like nuclear waste. Physicist Bernard Cohen did some studies a while back and determined that if all of the world's power came from fission, and if all the waste over 100 years were dumped into the ocean (which environmentalists would NEVER allow), the amount of radioactivity in the ocean would not increase by more than 1%. Quite a far-out scenario, but it shows that nuclear waste isn't as dangerous as people make it out to be.
"Leave the strategizing to those of us with planet-sized brains." -Tycho
I've seen some really fantastic fractal art, which someone posted a link to on Slashdot a few days ago. Some are so good that they are indistinguishable from traditional styles except for the unreal precision of it all. Still, I can't wait for the day with code is considered high-art!
"Leave the strategizing to those of us with planet-sized brains." -Tycho
>>I wonder how much energy could be extracted from the pulse... And then there is body heat...
Man, if generating electricity from the human body catches on all of the worlds energy problems could be solved! Of course, to do this we would probably have to dedicate a lot of time each day to making power (maybe even all of our time). We should have dedicated full-body power extracting machines that we can plug into since that's more efficient than converting mechanical energy, as in walking. If it gets to be really boring sitting all day in our power chambers, we can have some kind of virtual-reality setup where we can interact and work with each other as if we were still in the "real" world. We could even have machines to do maintenance on us, and automatically grow more people by recycling the dead. The future looks bright for us, indeed!
"Leave the strategizing to those of us with planet-sized brains." -Tycho
Why would any movie producer release a trailer in this horrible Real format? Even in the downloadable version the audio is weak, the frame rate is low, and artifacts abound. Why not make it a nice, 50MB MPG video with perfect 44.1Khz audio? Using MPG also opens the trailer up to a larger audience and reduces the number of playback problems by freeing people from proprietary software. Everyone complains when trailers are only available in QuickTime, but at least they look nice (often almost DVD quality). The way people are using Real these days is just awful. When trying to promote a movie, producers should aim for quality, not saving bandwidth.
"Leave the strategizing to those of us with planet-sized brains." -Tycho
It's rather dificult to install Windows on any Mac
Actually, I have more working installations of Windows on my Macintosh than I do on my AMD box. I always find it amusing how it much easier it is to install Windows under emulation than on native hardware.
"Leave the strategizing to those of us with planet-sized brains." -Tycho
QuickTime isn't a file format - it's a entire media archetecture. The file formats for QuickTime content are well documented, and you can indeed write software to generate them; it is the playback technology that has real substance (video/sound, vector animation, panoramas, 3D, user interaction, scripting, etc). Read up!
"Leave the strategizing to those of us with planet-sized brains." -Tycho
What we could really use is a program that simulates all of the atoms and quantum particles in the universe. We could view not only past eclipses, but any other point in history. A hardware version could be used as a mass-storage device since one could retrieve any document ever made by anyone. Too bad I'm stuck with an ATA/66 controller.:(
"Leave the strategizing to those of use with planet-sized brains." -Tycho
This technology is fairly impressive, but I think that it should be extended to serve as a more general solution to blindness. For example, have the affected person wear a video camera on their head [helmet cam?]. The blind person could carry a higher resolution "pad" with maybe 640x480 pins representing the image from the camera. People could use their hands to "see" whatever the camera is pointing at. I might suggest a hands free device, such as one which can be strapped to a person's back, but I don't think there are proper nerves there to sense a high-resolution image.
"Leave the strategizing to those of use with planet-sized brains." -Tycho
How can you say this wouldn't be "weapons-grade hot"? I have a 3 foot fresnel lens that can melt *granite* on a sunny day. That's only 9 square feet... Now, imagine a lens covering several acres (not to mention that this is unfiltered sunlight) - you could project a beam capable of burning through nearly anything on Earth! We should probably make a point of grabbing some extra sunblock this year.
"Leave the strategizing to those of use with planet-sized brains." -Tycho
My biggest gripe with gaming on a portable is the LCD technolgy in these machines. Those displays can't refresh any faster than about 30-50 hz. Even desktop LCDs have that limitation. It really makes FPS and RTS games a headache to play when there is a lot of full-screen animation. The best LAN-party form factor that I've seen is the iMac with built-in CRT. The only problem, again, is lack of a good graphics card... o_O
"Leave the strategizing to those of use with planet-sized brains." -Tycho
Slashdot Mirror
Or does it, in fact, keep it in "temporary storage" which was not designed to last more than a few decades?
That's the problem...we aren't burying this stuff like we should be. The reasons for this escape me.
Or does it manufacture fuel for nuclear weapons - by far the most life-threatening nuclear problem of all?
The US considers plutonium to be nuclear waste and just throws it out. Places like France use "breeder" reactors which use the plutonium as fuel and in the end have less of a waste problem.
It's a bit like saying "If an oil tanker spills, the amount of oil sitting on the world's oceans will still be only 0.000...1% of the total mass of the oceans, therefore there's no problem."
So maybe that's the answer to the waste problem...just dump it in the ocean instead of storing it on land. The key is to spread it evenly.
"Leave the strategizing to those of us with planet-sized brains." -Tycho
Suppose there was a serious problem with a few water pumps. How would you shut if off?
A problem with a few water pumps? are you kidding? The amount of redundant failsafes in a modern reactor is almost ridiculous.
I believe the problem russia was also due to a water cooling problem.
If memory serves, the Chernobyl reactor used graphite as coolant, which started on fire when exposed to air. Very bad design.
A terrorist can also take advantage of a nuclear power plant because even a remote shutdown will not totally turn down the plant.
Where are you getting this information anyway? Again, modern nuclear plants have a massive containment chamber as protection from bombs and even airliner crashes. The reason the Russian plant had problems was that it didn't have such a structure and the radioactive material just escaped into the atmosphere after a small explosion damaged the reactor.
The second is pollution. Nuclear waste is terrible because it stays hot for so dam long. How do you get rid of it?
Nuclear waste is a lot less harmless than the naturally occuring uranium in the environment (ever had your house tested for radon?). The industry mines this stuff from the ground, reprocesses it into an inert glass, and buries it again in a more geologically stable location. It sounds more like they are doing us a favor. Heck, a block of granite releases more radiation than a cask of nuclear waste!
Sure coal brings mercury in the water and air but I would rather live with that then nuclear waste build up.
That's absurd! Thousands of people die every year from toxic coal waste (a good amount of which is released into the air, despite a complex filtering system).
No matter what kind of waste facilities that are developed for it, its only a matter of time before they decay. Also do you really trust private waste companies to adequately dispose of the waste?
Also no known strucutre can stay up under ground for tens or even hundreds of thousands of years. WIth in a few centuries will anyone even remember where the sites are? I know one is close to the Columbia river in Oregon and there are signs of leaking which are scaring environmentalists. However no tests confirm its in the river yet but after a few centuries it will be forgoten. Oregon is also on the ring of fire and is prone to earthquakes. that is pretty scare for a long term structure. Chemical waste is alot easy to dispose of.
So what do you think happens to chemical waste anyway? They can't exactly put it back where it came from, like nuclear waste. Physicist Bernard Cohen did some studies a while back and determined that if all of the world's power came from fission, and if all the waste over 100 years were dumped into the ocean (which environmentalists would NEVER allow), the amount of radioactivity in the ocean would not increase by more than 1%. Quite a far-out scenario, but it shows that nuclear waste isn't as dangerous as people make it out to be.
"Leave the strategizing to those of us with planet-sized brains." -Tycho
I've seen some really fantastic fractal art, which someone posted a link to on Slashdot a few days ago. Some are so good that they are indistinguishable from traditional styles except for the unreal precision of it all. Still, I can't wait for the day with code is considered high-art!
"Leave the strategizing to those of us with planet-sized brains." -Tycho
>>I wonder how much energy could be extracted from the pulse... And then there is body heat... Man, if generating electricity from the human body catches on all of the worlds energy problems could be solved! Of course, to do this we would probably have to dedicate a lot of time each day to making power (maybe even all of our time). We should have dedicated full-body power extracting machines that we can plug into since that's more efficient than converting mechanical energy, as in walking. If it gets to be really boring sitting all day in our power chambers, we can have some kind of virtual-reality setup where we can interact and work with each other as if we were still in the "real" world. We could even have machines to do maintenance on us, and automatically grow more people by recycling the dead. The future looks bright for us, indeed!
"Leave the strategizing to those of us with planet-sized brains." -Tycho
Why would any movie producer release a trailer in this horrible Real format? Even in the downloadable version the audio is weak, the frame rate is low, and artifacts abound. Why not make it a nice, 50MB MPG video with perfect 44.1Khz audio? Using MPG also opens the trailer up to a larger audience and reduces the number of playback problems by freeing people from proprietary software. Everyone complains when trailers are only available in QuickTime, but at least they look nice (often almost DVD quality). The way people are using Real these days is just awful. When trying to promote a movie, producers should aim for quality, not saving bandwidth.
"Leave the strategizing to those of us with planet-sized brains." -Tycho
It's rather dificult to install Windows on any Mac
Actually, I have more working installations of Windows on my Macintosh than I do on my AMD box. I always find it amusing how it much easier it is to install Windows under emulation than on native hardware.
"Leave the strategizing to those of us with planet-sized brains." -Tycho
QuickTime isn't a file format - it's a entire media archetecture. The file formats for QuickTime content are well documented, and you can indeed write software to generate them; it is the playback technology that has real substance (video/sound, vector animation, panoramas, 3D, user interaction, scripting, etc). Read up!
"Leave the strategizing to those of us with planet-sized brains." -Tycho
What we could really use is a program that simulates all of the atoms and quantum particles in the universe. We could view not only past eclipses, but any other point in history. A hardware version could be used as a mass-storage device since one could retrieve any document ever made by anyone. Too bad I'm stuck with an ATA/66 controller. :(
"Leave the strategizing to those of use with planet-sized brains." -Tycho
This technology is fairly impressive, but I think that it should be extended to serve as a more general solution to blindness. For example, have the affected person wear a video camera on their head [helmet cam?]. The blind person could carry a higher resolution "pad" with maybe 640x480 pins representing the image from the camera. People could use their hands to "see" whatever the camera is pointing at. I might suggest a hands free device, such as one which can be strapped to a person's back, but I don't think there are proper nerves there to sense a high-resolution image.
"Leave the strategizing to those of use with planet-sized brains." -Tycho
How can you say this wouldn't be "weapons-grade hot"? I have a 3 foot fresnel lens that can melt *granite* on a sunny day. That's only 9 square feet... Now, imagine a lens covering several acres (not to mention that this is unfiltered sunlight) - you could project a beam capable of burning through nearly anything on Earth! We should probably make a point of grabbing some extra sunblock this year.
"Leave the strategizing to those of use with planet-sized brains." -Tycho
I'm still waiting for the Columbine High-School Quake mod.
"Leave the strategizing to those of use with planet-sized brains." -Tycho
My biggest gripe with gaming on a portable is the LCD technolgy in these machines. Those displays can't refresh any faster than about 30-50 hz. Even desktop LCDs have that limitation. It really makes FPS and RTS games a headache to play when there is a lot of full-screen animation. The best LAN-party form factor that I've seen is the iMac with built-in CRT. The only problem, again, is lack of a good graphics card... o_O
"Leave the strategizing to those of use with planet-sized brains." -Tycho