You don't have to put in a Uranium blanket to breed new (plutonium) fuel AFAIK. I used to work as a Reactor Physics Engineer, and one of my colleagues studied Nuclear Engineering at Uni. He was quite certain that the uranium blanket was only an optional extra. You're quite right though, the only reason we're not doing it is political. Here in the UK we even had some fast reactors which generated the odd 200MW of electricity at one time. There is still research going on. Some people get to make small critical assemblies in the lab to test fast fission reactor designs. It's all really interesting stuff.
Put the plutonium in a fast reactor and generate electricity while reducing the quantity of plutonium and creating shorter-lived daugter products. So, that's (1) reducing the amount of plutonium (2) getting electricity out of it (3) reducing the waste storage cost.
The problem is getting the screaming hedgemonkies in Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth to let you do it since it impinges on their superstitious beliefs.
Give it a chance, it takes people time to come around to new (alternative things). From what I've heard, people are pretty positive about StarOffice and are impressed that it's available for free.
Remember, there are a lot of people out there who aren't aware even that Word/Excel etc are programs and you can install different ones...believe me, the estate agents I rent through are a case in point.
That may be true, but Visual Basic drones can make a lot of money, and because of the 1990's can make a very good business out of writing VB frontends for Access and SQL Server databases. All that M$ marekting FUD paid off for them. Being able to program isn't all that important when all you have to do is paint a few forms and fire off requests to the database. Despite a Physics degree, 5 years experience as a Nuclear Engineer, Chartered Physicsist status and pretty good C programming skills, my VB drone friend I went to school with has been earning 20-50% more than me over that time. What is really ironic, is that one evening I had to explain to him the Shunting Yard Algorithm because he needed to parse infix expressions. I knew that when I was 14. Sorting algoirthms, what are they? Multiuser systems, the stuff of fiction and legend? $0 per seat licensing for such a system?
Oh well. At least I'm not still stuck in Aberdeen (Scotland). That's where all the dinosaurs live.
Wuss. Built in hex dump? When I was 9 I had a ZX81 and I used to put in a hex dump program off the top of my head when I needed it. Nyeah. And I had mutli-tasking FORTH. Those were the days, boy!
I agree, raves shouldn't be banned. After all, the poor people who subject themselves to hours upon hours of monotonous handbag music are in need of our help, not punishment.
Would you be interested in helping out with this then: libsimd.sourceforge.net ?
It's a bit Mickey-Mouse just now, but I'm planning to put some double-precision stuff in, and may be getting some contributions (SSE2) from someone doing Molecular Dynamics.
This will maybe help in the corporate world where some people still regard anything to do with "Linux" as being ammateurish and worthy of contempt. Hopefully they'll start making a bit of cash, and we'll still be able to use sourceforge for free.
Well, some peopl who did work hard in school have low-paid jobs because the market cannot sustain an unlimited number of well-paid jobs. Also, no one can afford everything all of the time. Have you heard of inflation? Never mind. Go back to the ranch with all your inbred hill-billy brothers and sisters. By the way, Ross Perot isn't president.
I saw a BSOD on an NT4 cashpoint, and I took a photo to prove it (never scanned it in though).
It was an error in C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\KRNL32.DLL or something. Nat West, Burnham-on-Crouch, Essex, UK c.1997/1998?
"Thats about what happened at Chernobyl, you know. They switched off the safety because it was interfering with what they were doing. "
Not quite.
The computers are only for monitoring and displaying temperatures and pressures etc.
Reactor _protection_ is different and handled entirely by passive analogue safety circuits that are completely independent of the monitoring computers. They react in 10e-3 seconds vs. many seconds for the computers.
There are multiple redundant and diverse safety systems, 3 independent methods of ensuring post trip cooling.
Generally, Greenpeace know very little about nuclear power. They can't be bothered to educate themselves about the facts because their political agenda would be rendered null.
At Chernobyl, they vetoed reactor protection. You can not vetoe reactor protection (physically impossible) at a British nuclear power plant.
Up until December last year I worked as a Reactor Physics Engineer at a nuclear power station in Essex, UK. That summer, the Honeywell 316 (16-bit mini with 16k words of RAM and 160k "hard disk") had just been relegated from its role as primary reactor temperature monitoring computer, to that of secondary. The "new" machines were second-hand PDP11's running RSX11/M and a custom compiled language and libraries called CUTLASS (originally developed by the CEGB).
The Honeywell monitored both reactors, each having several hundred thermocoples. It had a teletype for the console and two green-screen terminals for the reactor operators.
It had no filesystem on the disk. Data was stored directly in disk blocks and numbers were entered in octal. There was a paper tape punch for backup and loading the operating system.
There was a Fortran IV compiler and a shelf full of manuals. The machine was bought and comissioned in 1972 (two years before I was born) and the software (including multi-tasking OS) was partly developed then by one of my former colleagues who retired a few years ago.
Ink ribbons for the teletype were no longer available, so we had a bottle of Quink and surgeons gloves....
Finally, one Friday last summer, sectors started to dissapear from the built-in disk. There was a spare that had been sitting in the store since 1972 but no one knew how to fit it, how to set it up or anything, and bits had been cannibalised over the years.
As far as I know, it still sits in it's wee room dark and quiet.
I never thought I'd ever have to boot a machine by toggling switches to load memory directly, in my life.... but that's the British nuclear industry for you.
Conservative (and lethargic) are understatements.
Slashdot Mirror
...and there are some pretty good reactor modelling codes out there now, like PANTHER, which make life easier. (See AEA Technology)
Aw! Designing new cores is where all the fun is!
:-)
You don't have to put in a Uranium blanket to breed new (plutonium) fuel AFAIK. I used to work as a Reactor Physics Engineer, and one of my colleagues studied Nuclear Engineering at Uni. He was quite certain that the uranium blanket was only an optional extra. You're quite right though, the only reason we're not doing it is political. Here in the UK we even had some fast reactors which generated the odd 200MW of electricity at one time. There is still research going on. Some people get to make small critical assemblies in the lab to test fast fission reactor designs. It's all really interesting stuff.
Oh how things must have changed in the last ten years...
Bloody hell, I hope not or anyone anywhere near it on the ground will be in serious danger of dying very prematurely.
Much better idea:
Put the plutonium in a fast reactor and generate electricity while reducing the quantity of plutonium and creating shorter-lived daugter products. So, that's (1) reducing the amount of plutonium (2) getting electricity out of it (3) reducing the waste storage cost.
The problem is getting the screaming hedgemonkies in Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth to let you do it since it impinges on their superstitious beliefs.
Hey, mod this up!
Give it a chance, it takes people time to come around to new (alternative things). From what I've heard, people are pretty positive about StarOffice and are impressed that it's available for free.
Remember, there are a lot of people out there who aren't aware even that Word/Excel etc are programs and you can install different ones...believe me, the estate agents I rent through are a case in point.
"This gives me 5 hours sleep and a lot of exercise on the dance floor"
...and a lot of passive smoking?
Brilliant! :-)
That may be true, but Visual Basic drones can make a lot of money, and because of the 1990's can make a very good business out of writing VB frontends for Access and SQL Server databases. All that M$ marekting FUD paid off for them. Being able to program isn't all that important when all you have to do is paint a few forms and fire off requests to the database. Despite a Physics degree, 5 years experience as a Nuclear Engineer, Chartered Physicsist status and pretty good C programming skills, my VB drone friend I went to school with has been earning 20-50% more than me over that time. What is really ironic, is that one evening I had to explain to him the Shunting Yard Algorithm because he needed to parse infix expressions. I knew that when I was 14. Sorting algoirthms, what are they? Multiuser systems, the stuff of fiction and legend? $0 per seat licensing for such a system?
Oh well. At least I'm not still stuck in Aberdeen (Scotland). That's where all the dinosaurs live.
Avoid.
Who the hell would want to copy a Michael Jackson CD, let alone buy it?
Wuss. Built in hex dump? When I was 9 I had a ZX81 and I used to put in a hex dump program off the top of my head when I needed it. Nyeah. And I had mutli-tasking FORTH. Those were the days, boy!
BSD eh? Doesn't a lot of Hotmail still run on FreeBSD? Could have something to do with it.
Wow. I'd never heard of that until now :-)
:->
I take it that it made as much impact as Microchannel Architecture?
Was that 286 protected mode by any chance?
I agree, raves shouldn't be banned. After all, the poor people who subject themselves to hours upon hours of monotonous handbag music are in need of our help, not punishment.
I'm saving mine up to make a solar water heater and possibly electricity generator.
Would you be interested in helping out with this then: libsimd.sourceforge.net ?
It's a bit Mickey-Mouse just now, but I'm planning to put some double-precision stuff in, and may be getting some contributions (SSE2) from someone doing Molecular Dynamics.
This will maybe help in the corporate world where some people still regard anything to do with "Linux" as being ammateurish and worthy of contempt. Hopefully they'll start making a bit of cash, and we'll still be able to use sourceforge for free.
I'll see your 6502 and raise you a Z80!
Well, some peopl who did work hard in school have low-paid jobs because the market cannot sustain an unlimited number of well-paid jobs. Also, no one can afford everything all of the time. Have you heard of inflation? Never mind. Go back to the ranch with all your inbred hill-billy brothers and sisters. By the way, Ross Perot isn't president.
I saw a BSOD on an NT4 cashpoint, and I took a photo to prove it (never scanned it in though).
It was an error in C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\KRNL32.DLL or something. Nat West, Burnham-on-Crouch, Essex, UK c.1997/1998?
"Thats about what happened at Chernobyl, you know. They switched off the safety because it was interfering with what they were doing. "
Not quite.
The computers are only for monitoring and displaying temperatures and pressures etc.
Reactor _protection_ is different and handled entirely by passive analogue safety circuits that are completely independent of the monitoring computers. They react in 10e-3 seconds vs. many seconds for the computers.
There are multiple redundant and diverse safety systems, 3 independent methods of ensuring post trip cooling.
Generally, Greenpeace know very little about nuclear power. They can't be bothered to educate themselves about the facts because their political agenda would be rendered null.
At Chernobyl, they vetoed reactor protection. You can not vetoe reactor protection (physically impossible) at a British nuclear power plant.
Up until December last year I worked as a Reactor Physics Engineer at a nuclear power station in Essex, UK. That summer, the Honeywell 316 (16-bit mini with 16k words of RAM and 160k "hard disk") had just been relegated from its role as primary reactor temperature monitoring computer, to that of secondary. The "new" machines were second-hand PDP11's running RSX11/M and a custom compiled language and libraries called CUTLASS (originally developed by the CEGB).
The Honeywell monitored both reactors, each having several hundred thermocoples. It had a teletype for the console and two green-screen terminals for the reactor operators.
It had no filesystem on the disk. Data was stored directly in disk blocks and numbers were entered in octal. There was a paper tape punch for backup and loading the operating system.
There was a Fortran IV compiler and a shelf full of manuals. The machine was bought and comissioned in 1972 (two years before I was born) and the software (including multi-tasking OS) was partly developed then by one of my former colleagues who retired a few years ago.
Ink ribbons for the teletype were no longer available, so we had a bottle of Quink and surgeons gloves....
Finally, one Friday last summer, sectors started to dissapear from the built-in disk. There was a spare that had been sitting in the store since 1972 but no one knew how to fit it, how to set it up or anything, and bits had been cannibalised over the years.
As far as I know, it still sits in it's wee room dark and quiet.
I never thought I'd ever have to boot a machine by toggling switches to load memory directly, in my life.... but that's the British nuclear industry for you.
Conservative (and lethargic) are understatements.