I seem to notice that there is a lot of FUD and misinformation out there (not just from mdsolar and Beyond Nuclear) regarding nuclear power. This is helped in part because of ignorance by the general public. It's important to understand that there is a wide range of radioactive sources. Most of them are naturally occurring, or occur is such small amounts that they present no health hazard.
Radiation exposure is usually measured in Rem (or mRem). Let's take a look at some common activities and see how they compare.
One chest X ray (8 mRem)
One mammogram (70 mRem)
One X ray of the abdomen (300 mRem)
One renal nuclear medicine procedure (310 mRem)
One CT head scan (3000 mRem)
CAT scan of whole body (5000 mRem)
As you can see, there is a wide variance of radiation sources. Most people in the US receive approximately 300 mRem / year from natural background radiation sources (primarily from radon and sun exposure.) So, how much radiation exposure do you need to cause bodily damage?
There is no agreed-upon level which is considered "safe", however there is relatively clear agreement on thresholds where radiation has noticeable effects on the human body. (NOTE: These are listed in Rem, not mRem)
Changes in blood chemistry (5-10 Rem)
Nausea (50 Rem)
Fatigue (55 Rem)
Vomiting (70 Rem)
Hair loss (75 Rem)
Diarrhea (90 Rem)
Hemorrhage (100 Rem)
Possible death (400 Rem)
Death within 1-2 weeks (1000 Rem)
Damage to central nervous system (2000 Rem)
Death within days (2000 Rem)
But what about cancer? The risk for cancer can be increased by radiation exposure, which resulted in increased mutation rates of cell growth. The EPA estimates that in a group of 10,000 people 2,000 of them will die from cancer. If each person received 1 Rem (not mRem) of non-natural ionizing radiation exposure accumulated over their lifetime, 2,006 people would die from cancer.
So, now that we have an idea of just how bad different levels of radiation exposure are, what about these tritium leaks that have got certain people so upset? The highest reading that these monitoring wells have read was 2.45 microcuries / liter. This translates into roughly 425 mRem / year (assuming it was not diluted). 425 mRem is substantially higher than the current NRC limits, but still much too low to present a health hazard.
When people hear words like "nuclear reactor piping leak" they naturally assume that high-level radioactive particulates are getting out to the environment. The fact is that the incident at Vermont Yankee represents a very small health hazard to the public.
This makes sense when you consider Google and their relentless pursuit of reducing their energy bill.
A lot of people have no idea how much electricity they are consuming, except at the end of the month. Increasing awareness will encourage people to turn off unused lights in their house (and get the instant gratification of seeing the electricity consumption graph go down on their homepage). This serves a dual purpose. Cutting down on consumption will mean a surplus of electricity, which lowers the price. Google gets cheaper electricity, and it also helps the environment.
I don't think Google is particularly interested in selling your electric power consumption data, although they might want to look at large-scale statistical data for their own research.
In case the username wasn't enough, here's some more evidence to suggest that mdsolar might have a bias.
From mdsolar's profile page: http://slashdot.org/~mdsolar/ "Very recently, I've gotten involved in a startup that plans to rent solar photovoltaic systems in the residential market. My guess is this is going to catch on. My homepage is where you can sign up."
There's also various submissions and journal entries going back as far as 2007 denouncing oil and nuclear power and extolling the virtues of renewable energy (particularly solar.)
No, you're probably better off downloading the updates (it's a fairly streamlined process) if you have a fast connection. But the only difference is newer packages, scripts, etc. which are available via the update system.
Although it's fairly easy to control who can and cannot send you a private instant message, chat rooms (AIM chat rooms in particular) provided a tougher problem: How to be able to have a normal conversation with somebody in a public chat room without being flooded with crap?
Simple, right? You just click on their name and hit "ignore" and it's not a problem anymore, right? Well, what if you had to click 10,000 names in an hour? It would be an unreasonable task for somebody as lazy as I am...I found myself spending more time dealing with these bots than actually conversing.
It is said that "Every new feature is the scratching of some developer's personal itch." Well, being a developer (albeit one with marginal skills and even less time) with a personal itch, I thought to myself "There must be a way to automate the filtering of all these messages."
Sure enough, open source to the rescue. My Instant Messaging client software, gaim, provides the ability to include modular plugins to modify the behavior of the software. Eureka, I could write a plugin that would filter out annoying chat messages!
So I sat down, scratched my head, and wrote one for gaim that attempted to filter out annoying messages. After a few revisions, I had something that filtered out ~90% of annoying messages, without any false positives. It was easier than expected, because most messages that we don't want have one or more common characteristics:
Linkified messages whose URLs do not match the linkified text (e.g. Click HERE to see hot girls!)
Multiple messages containing links
Long messages (more than 20 characters) repeated verbatim
So all one need do is check these messages for these characteristics and you've got a pretty good filter. Unfortunately, gaim tends to change its API from version to version, so it is always getting broken. But you are welcome to take a look at it and contribute fixes if you like.
Everybody knows that the majority of people on the internet are not technically inclined (I once spent nearly half and hour explaining FTP to someone.) This is at least partially true for hackers.
Your typical blackhat is just a script-kiddie who enjoys the thrill of the forbidden fruit (anybody ever sneak out of their parent's house late at night?) Breaking and entering into an even marginally secure machine is not worth their time or else is beyond their ability.
The true threats are professional hackers. Competant, motivated, and very careful. Fortunately, they are relatively sparse in the blackhat community.
Slashdot Mirror
I seem to notice that there is a lot of FUD and misinformation out there (not just from mdsolar and Beyond Nuclear) regarding nuclear power. This is helped in part because of ignorance by the general public. It's important to understand that there is a wide range of radioactive sources. Most of them are naturally occurring, or occur is such small amounts that they present no health hazard.
Radiation exposure is usually measured in Rem (or mRem). Let's take a look at some common activities and see how they compare.
One chest X ray (8 mRem)
One mammogram (70 mRem)
One X ray of the abdomen (300 mRem)
One renal nuclear medicine procedure (310 mRem)
One CT head scan (3000 mRem)
CAT scan of whole body (5000 mRem)
As you can see, there is a wide variance of radiation sources. Most people in the US receive approximately 300 mRem / year from natural background radiation sources (primarily from radon and sun exposure.) So, how much radiation exposure do you need to cause bodily damage?
There is no agreed-upon level which is considered "safe", however there is relatively clear agreement on thresholds where radiation has noticeable effects on the human body. (NOTE: These are listed in Rem, not mRem)
Changes in blood chemistry (5-10 Rem)
Nausea (50 Rem)
Fatigue (55 Rem)
Vomiting (70 Rem)
Hair loss (75 Rem)
Diarrhea (90 Rem)
Hemorrhage (100 Rem)
Possible death (400 Rem)
Death within 1-2 weeks (1000 Rem)
Damage to central nervous system (2000 Rem)
Death within days (2000 Rem)
But what about cancer? The risk for cancer can be increased by radiation exposure, which resulted in increased mutation rates of cell growth. The EPA estimates that in a group of 10,000 people 2,000 of them will die from cancer. If each person received 1 Rem (not mRem) of non-natural ionizing radiation exposure accumulated over their lifetime, 2,006 people would die from cancer.
So, now that we have an idea of just how bad different levels of radiation exposure are, what about these tritium leaks that have got certain people so upset? The highest reading that these monitoring wells have read was 2.45 microcuries / liter. This translates into roughly 425 mRem / year (assuming it was not diluted). 425 mRem is substantially higher than the current NRC limits, but still much too low to present a health hazard.
When people hear words like "nuclear reactor piping leak" they naturally assume that high-level radioactive particulates are getting out to the environment. The fact is that the incident at Vermont Yankee represents a very small health hazard to the public.
This makes sense when you consider Google and their relentless pursuit of reducing their energy bill.
A lot of people have no idea how much electricity they are consuming, except at the end of the month. Increasing awareness will encourage people to turn off unused lights in their house (and get the instant gratification of seeing the electricity consumption graph go down on their homepage). This serves a dual purpose. Cutting down on consumption will mean a surplus of electricity, which lowers the price. Google gets cheaper electricity, and it also helps the environment.
I don't think Google is particularly interested in selling your electric power consumption data, although they might want to look at large-scale statistical data for their own research.
Where did you hear that?
According to the National Assessment of Education Progress Texas was doing just fine.
4th Grade Math: 242 (National Average: 237)
4th Grade Reading: 219 (National Average: 217)
8th Grade Math: 281 (National Average: 278)
8th Grade Reading: 258 (National Average: 260)
In case the username wasn't enough, here's some more evidence to suggest that mdsolar might have a bias.
From mdsolar's profile page:
http://slashdot.org/~mdsolar/
"Very recently, I've gotten involved in a startup that plans to rent solar photovoltaic systems in the residential market. My guess is this is going to catch on. My homepage is where you can sign up."
There's also various submissions and journal entries going back as far as 2007 denouncing oil and nuclear power and extolling the virtues of renewable energy (particularly solar.)
No, you're probably better off downloading the updates (it's a fairly streamlined process) if you have a fast connection. But the only difference is newer packages, scripts, etc. which are available via the update system.
Simple, right? You just click on their name and hit "ignore" and it's not a problem anymore, right? Well, what if you had to click 10,000 names in an hour? It would be an unreasonable task for somebody as lazy as I am...I found myself spending more time dealing with these bots than actually conversing.
It is said that "Every new feature is the scratching of some developer's personal itch." Well, being a developer (albeit one with marginal skills and even less time) with a personal itch, I thought to myself "There must be a way to automate the filtering of all these messages."
Sure enough, open source to the rescue. My Instant Messaging client software, gaim, provides the ability to include modular plugins to modify the behavior of the software. Eureka, I could write a plugin that would filter out annoying chat messages!
So I sat down, scratched my head, and wrote one for gaim that attempted to filter out annoying messages. After a few revisions, I had something that filtered out ~90% of annoying messages, without any false positives. It was easier than expected, because most messages that we don't want have one or more common characteristics:
Linkified messages whose URLs do not match the linkified text (e.g. Click HERE to see hot girls!)
Multiple messages containing links
Long messages (more than 20 characters) repeated verbatim
So all one need do is check these messages for these characteristics and you've got a pretty good filter. Unfortunately, gaim tends to change its API from version to version, so it is always getting broken. But you are welcome to take a look at it and contribute fixes if you like.
SovBob
Everybody knows that the majority of people on the internet are not technically inclined (I once spent nearly half and hour explaining FTP to someone.) This is at least partially true for hackers.
Your typical blackhat is just a script-kiddie who enjoys the thrill of the forbidden fruit (anybody ever sneak out of their parent's house late at night?) Breaking and entering into an even marginally secure machine is not worth their time or else is beyond their ability.
The true threats are professional hackers. Competant, motivated, and very careful. Fortunately, they are relatively sparse in the blackhat community.