We abbolished nuclear plants last year (but they are STILL running). Building a coal plant takes 10 years of planning nad 5 years of construction.
Actually most of these coal projects were planned almost a decade ago after Germany decided for the first time to exit nuclear power in 2000 during the time of Gerhard Schroder.
Germany's coal-fired power plants contributed more than 50% to the nation's electricity demand in the first half of this year as output from natural gas-fired power plants and wind turbines dropped, according to the Fraunhofer Institute.
Germany will produce higher greenhouse-gas emissions in 2013 on top of a 1.5 percent gain last year. German hard coal imports went up 25 percent in the first quarter to 10 million metric tons.
Coal plants are the natural replacement for base power previously provided to Germany by nuclear. Gas powered generators are now economically unfeasible there because of cheap peaking power from solar and wind during the day. EON is closing its unprofitable 430 megawatt gas-fired Malzenice plant in Slovakia in October.
Six coal plants with a combined capacity of 4,536 megawatts are due to start generating in Germany this year - only four coal plants providing 623 megawatts will close this year.
Then you'll be surprised to know that China is now building a 1,750 MWe nuclear reactor that will be the post powerful in the world. The Taishan nuclear plant will have two such Areva EPR units, slated to begin operation in 2014 and 2015.
Moreover, China has 17 nuclear power reactors in operation, 28 under construction, and more about to start construction. Additional reactors are planned, including some of the world's most advanced, to give a four-fold increase in nuclear capacity to at least 58 GWe by 2020, then possibly 200 GWe by 2030, and 400 GWe by 2050. And China's policy is for closed fuel cycle.
I'm not surprised that we are closing the smaller, less efficient, and probably less safe old plants in the US, but it is unfortunate there are only a handful of newer, larger, more safe nuclear plants being built in the West.
Soyuz uses parachutes to fall at 7.2m/s. Then about a 0.5s before landing, six solid-fueld soft landing engines fire to slow the vehicleâ(TM)s descent rate to 1.5 m/s just 0.8m above the ground.
So why are these ultralight helicopters mainly controlled by a person? It seems to me they would be safer if fly-bi-wire with a computer doing most of the work of stability.
For slowly varying magnetic fields (below about 100 kHz) Faraday shielding is ineffective.
Magnetic shields can be made of high magnetic permeability metal alloys (Permalloy and Mu-Metal), which rather in magnetic field lines. But I don't know how much weight they would add.
such propulsion technologies have already been used for moving people in amusement parks, so it is a proven technology so far as moving vehicles is concerned.
Yet here is a doctor advising not to go on an amusement park ride with a linear accelerator if you have a pacemaker.
This is one tricky bit - it has to neatly slide into narrow track of the the stators of the linear motor when it reaches that part of the track at 800 mph.
Elsewhere Musk talks about the pod "banking like a plane" to take the curves, and I'm thinking that it better bank back within a cm of accuracy or the thing is going to blow up when the rotor misses the stator slot!
The Las Vegas Monorail cost $650 million - so yeah, I suspect his numbers are a bit low.
The California HSR spends most money on tracks (44%, $23 billion), followed by rights-of-way (22%, $12 billion), followed by program implementation, systems & electrification, stations and vehicles.
So yes, if you take a big chunk out of the tracks cost, and perhaps can cut a better deal for land with farmers if you go elevated over their land rather than make their tractors drive 30 minutes around a track, that is where the big money can be saved.
The one thing I did not see is what the expected magnetic field levels will be for passengers.
Many folks with implanted medical devices are told to stay away from significant RF and magnetic fields. It is possible that the pod could be magnetically shielded enough, but it would be great if he added that info.
Otherwise, I say scrap the Cali High Speed Rail and build Hyperloop instead!
(The truth is that I bet the Casinos would throw in the first billion to build one from LA to Vegas...they dumped $650 million on the Las Vegas monorail).
So I had an Amiga, and I will agree that AmigaDos was awesome, but the hardware had some flaws that meant it was a dead-end.
The A1000 was released July 23, 1985. It used a Motorola 68000, which was a completely different processor from the Intel based PCs that had been out since 1981.
The Amiga did not have the open card slot architecture of the PC. Your PC could go from CGA to EGA to VGA. You could put a new sound card in your PC. Not the Amiga.
Moreover there was no serious business software written for the Amiga, and it just never had enough market share to make it.
If AmigaDos was written for Intel / PC platform, the world might be different...
So you think that Bill Gates should hire a private army, over throw the cleptocrates, and employ a non corruptible bureaucracy, to allow the citizens of third world nations to bring themselves out of poverty?
My personal belief is that violence is rarely useful in accomplishing the cultural change required to have a sustained political change to enhance economic freedom.
I have to admit that I don't think anyone fully understands why there have been bubbles of economic freedom showing up in parts of the world, but I suspect greater levels of communication (including recently the Internet) can help people to understand the great value of economic freedom.
The good news is that all-continent African economic growth is expected to be 5% this year.
a lot of freight is already transported by rail. HSR is for people,
More importantly, the US has an incredibly efficient "normal speed" freight rail system, and you can't add passenger HSR into the mix because the two systems are at odds.
There is a reason why the Western World has been able to eradicate malaria and other major diseases - we are crazy rich.
We got crazy rich from defining private property rights and otherwise allowing high levels of economic freedom.
This is why China has been able to bring hundreds of millions of people out of absolute poverty - even their limited moves to formalize private property and allow for some freeing up of the market has allowed for dramatic economic growth.
I think Gates efforts at vaccination is great. However it would be even greater if those countries affected move forward on respecting private property and allowing for economic freedom and let their people get richer, because then they themselves could pay for vaccination efforts without needing Gates' billions, and without crushing poverty the efforts would be more effective with less graft & corruption.
Bill Gates made his money from screwing people over and devastating an industry.
Yeah, because personal computers were so cool before Windows. Too bad we don't have Commodore 64's any more! Oh wait, they had Microsoft Basic in them anyway.
What? Ayn Rand could be wrong? The shock and horror of it!
Um, didn't Dagny Taggart and Hank Reardon cooperate to build the John Galt Line?
Rand's protagonists cooperated all the the time, and of course also provided value to their voluntary customers - what they tried not to do is let their property be controlled or taken involuntarily by government.
Ask yourself, what is the difference between cooperation and theft? Isn't it whether you volunteer to participate?
Indeed, when people cooperate to ensure individual property rights, it enables people to better cooperate to engage in voluntary economic transactions that are mutually beneficial, thus enhancing the wealth of both involved in the transaction (or else they would not have engaged in the voluntary transaction), and therefore the global wealth of all.
When government becomes selfish and wishes to take property from people, then there are problems...
Symbiotica did this before in 2003 by growing tissue from skeletal muscle cells harvested from pre-natal sheep. And they ate the results.
There are two major hurdles with non-violent cultured meat for eating though:
1) Edible meat is a very complex tissue with muscles, fat, blood vessels, etc. and the precise relation of these cell types and their physical placement in the meat affects the taste and texture.
2) Most cell culturing media is not vegetarian - the nutrient baths are generally processed from living animals.
It sounds like this new effort is basically the same thing - culturing myoblasts and feeding them with fetal calf serum.
At the same time, I look forward to these challenges being overcome, and glad to see new funding!
Companies don't create jobs, customers do. Customers are created when companies pay employees a living wage. In the long term, everyone suffers in a mindless race to the bottom.
Entrepreneurs & companies create the innovative ideas that allow customers to benefit from voluntary economic transactions with them. Without that innovation ("I should build a store in this location","I'll make a phone with a touchscreen"), the latent desires of the customer can never be fulfilled.
On the other hand, if companies are forced by government not to pay market wages, basic economics shows that leads to either shortages of jobs (if the price is forced to be too high) or requires some kind of non-economic rationing (if the the price is forced to be too low). This applies to jobs, cars, gasoline, etc.
Manipulating the price signal damages economies and leads to less economic production ("deadweight loss") that hurts everyone in the long run.
It may feel nice to believe that wealth can or should be created out of nothing or by fiat by god or government, but in fact wealth is only created by people being able to voluntarily exchange goods and labor in the market.
Even before there were "jobs" or "money", people were voluntarily trading goods to enhance each other's wealth.
Keep in mind California has a $3 billion solar subsidy, and there is the $18 billion in incentives for clean and renewable energy technologies and energy efficiency improvements from the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act.
Since 1950, renewable energy (solar, hydro power, and geothermal) has received the second-largest subsidy - $171 billion (21%), compared to $121 billion (14%) for natural gas, $104 billion (12%) for coal, and $73 billion (9%) for nuclear power.
The question is what is seen and what is unseen due to the basically Bill of Attainder against Walmart in Washington, DC.
A study shows that a Walmart opening may negatively affect directly competing stores in neighboring zip codes, but that stores not competing directly with Walmart (such as boutiques and restaurants that do not duplicate Walmart's offerings) benefit from a Walmart opening, and this tends to diversify and enrich local retail markets.
Also keep in mind that Walmart shoppers will now have more cash left in their pockets due to lower prices, and will be able to spend that money in the local economy. Enhancing economic efficiency does not destroy economies, it enhances them.
Many of the Walmarts that will not be built in DC were to be anchor tenants of new retail developments to be built to replace run-down or abandoned areas - and now these retail developments are in question, such as the 18.5-acre town center in Ward 7. Moreover, DC residents already go over the border to Maryland and Virginia (where there are Walmarts) to spend $1 billion.
In the poorest areas of Washington, DC, such as southeast DC across the Anacostia river, locals would greatly benefit from Walmart's lower prices and greater variety of foodstuffs and products closer to where they live.
Slashdot Mirror
We abbolished nuclear plants last year (but they are STILL running). Building a coal plant takes 10 years of planning nad 5 years of construction.
Actually most of these coal projects were planned almost a decade ago after Germany decided for the first time to exit nuclear power in 2000 during the time of Gerhard Schroder.
Germany's coal-fired power plants contributed more than 50% to the nation's electricity demand in the first half of this year as output from natural gas-fired power plants and wind turbines dropped, according to the Fraunhofer Institute.
Germany will produce higher greenhouse-gas emissions in 2013 on top of a 1.5 percent gain last year. German hard coal imports went up 25 percent in the first quarter to 10 million metric tons.
Coal plants are the natural replacement for base power previously provided to Germany by nuclear. Gas powered generators are now economically unfeasible there because of cheap peaking power from solar and wind during the day. EON is closing its unprofitable 430 megawatt gas-fired Malzenice plant in Slovakia in October.
Six coal plants with a combined capacity of 4,536 megawatts are due to start generating in Germany this year - only four coal plants providing 623 megawatts will close this year.
Nuclear power's time has past.
Then you'll be surprised to know that China is now building a 1,750 MWe nuclear reactor that will be the post powerful in the world. The Taishan nuclear plant will have two such Areva EPR units, slated to begin operation in 2014 and 2015.
Moreover, China has 17 nuclear power reactors in operation, 28 under construction, and more about to start construction. Additional reactors are planned, including some of the world's most advanced, to give a four-fold increase in nuclear capacity to at least 58 GWe by 2020, then possibly 200 GWe by 2030, and 400 GWe by 2050. And China's policy is for closed fuel cycle.
I'm not surprised that we are closing the smaller, less efficient, and probably less safe old plants in the US, but it is unfortunate there are only a handful of newer, larger, more safe nuclear plants being built in the West.
Egypt: kills hundreds with guns US: whatever
Syria: kills hundreds with chemical weapons US: oh noes!
I am curious if any TSA explosive sensor has ever detected an actual explosive...
Soyuz uses parachutes to fall at 7.2m/s. Then about a 0.5s before landing, six solid-fueld soft landing engines fire to slow the vehicleâ(TM)s descent rate to 1.5 m/s just 0.8m above the ground.
So why are these ultralight helicopters mainly controlled by a person? It seems to me they would be safer if fly-bi-wire with a computer doing most of the work of stability.
For slowly varying magnetic fields (below about 100 kHz) Faraday shielding is ineffective.
Magnetic shields can be made of high magnetic permeability metal alloys (Permalloy and Mu-Metal), which rather in magnetic field lines. But I don't know how much weight they would add.
I suspect 90% of people who die "accidentally while cleaning their gun" actually committed suicide but the family does not want to admit it.
such propulsion technologies have already been used for moving people in amusement parks, so it is a proven technology so far as moving vehicles is concerned.
Yet here is a doctor advising not to go on an amusement park ride with a linear accelerator if you have a pacemaker.
This is one tricky bit - it has to neatly slide into narrow track of the the stators of the linear motor when it reaches that part of the track at 800 mph.
Elsewhere Musk talks about the pod "banking like a plane" to take the curves, and I'm thinking that it better bank back within a cm of accuracy or the thing is going to blow up when the rotor misses the stator slot!
The Las Vegas Monorail cost $650 million - so yeah, I suspect his numbers are a bit low.
The California HSR spends most money on tracks (44%, $23 billion), followed by rights-of-way (22%, $12 billion), followed by program implementation, systems & electrification, stations and vehicles.
So yes, if you take a big chunk out of the tracks cost, and perhaps can cut a better deal for land with farmers if you go elevated over their land rather than make their tractors drive 30 minutes around a track, that is where the big money can be saved.
The one thing I did not see is what the expected magnetic field levels will be for passengers.
Many folks with implanted medical devices are told to stay away from significant RF and magnetic fields. It is possible that the pod could be magnetically shielded enough, but it would be great if he added that info.
Otherwise, I say scrap the Cali High Speed Rail and build Hyperloop instead!
(The truth is that I bet the Casinos would throw in the first billion to build one from LA to Vegas...they dumped $650 million on the Las Vegas monorail).
So I had an Amiga, and I will agree that AmigaDos was awesome, but the hardware had some flaws that meant it was a dead-end.
The A1000 was released July 23, 1985. It used a Motorola 68000, which was a completely different processor from the Intel based PCs that had been out since 1981.
The Amiga did not have the open card slot architecture of the PC. Your PC could go from CGA to EGA to VGA. You could put a new sound card in your PC. Not the Amiga.
Moreover there was no serious business software written for the Amiga, and it just never had enough market share to make it.
If AmigaDos was written for Intel / PC platform, the world might be different...
So you think that Bill Gates should hire a private army, over throw the cleptocrates, and employ a non corruptible bureaucracy, to allow the citizens of third world nations to bring themselves out of poverty?
My personal belief is that violence is rarely useful in accomplishing the cultural change required to have a sustained political change to enhance economic freedom.
I have to admit that I don't think anyone fully understands why there have been bubbles of economic freedom showing up in parts of the world, but I suspect greater levels of communication (including recently the Internet) can help people to understand the great value of economic freedom.
The good news is that all-continent African economic growth is expected to be 5% this year.
a lot of freight is already transported by rail. HSR is for people,
More importantly, the US has an incredibly efficient "normal speed" freight rail system, and you can't add passenger HSR into the mix because the two systems are at odds.
There were many better operating systems at the time Windows came into power and I'm sure you know that.
Really? On affordable microcomputers? Name one!
There is a reason why the Western World has been able to eradicate malaria and other major diseases - we are crazy rich.
We got crazy rich from defining private property rights and otherwise allowing high levels of economic freedom.
This is why China has been able to bring hundreds of millions of people out of absolute poverty - even their limited moves to formalize private property and allow for some freeing up of the market has allowed for dramatic economic growth.
I think Gates efforts at vaccination is great. However it would be even greater if those countries affected move forward on respecting private property and allowing for economic freedom and let their people get richer, because then they themselves could pay for vaccination efforts without needing Gates' billions, and without crushing poverty the efforts would be more effective with less graft & corruption.
Bill Gates made his money from screwing people over and devastating an industry.
Yeah, because personal computers were so cool before Windows. Too bad we don't have Commodore 64's any more! Oh wait, they had Microsoft Basic in them anyway.
What? Ayn Rand could be wrong? The shock and horror of it!
Um, didn't Dagny Taggart and Hank Reardon cooperate to build the John Galt Line?
Rand's protagonists cooperated all the the time, and of course also provided value to their voluntary customers - what they tried not to do is let their property be controlled or taken involuntarily by government.
Ask yourself, what is the difference between cooperation and theft? Isn't it whether you volunteer to participate?
Go watch the movie!
Does it also hold for capitalism?
Indeed, when people cooperate to ensure individual property rights, it enables people to better cooperate to engage in voluntary economic transactions that are mutually beneficial, thus enhancing the wealth of both involved in the transaction (or else they would not have engaged in the voluntary transaction), and therefore the global wealth of all.
When government becomes selfish and wishes to take property from people, then there are problems...
Symbiotica did this before in 2003 by growing tissue from skeletal muscle cells harvested from pre-natal sheep. And they ate the results.
There are two major hurdles with non-violent cultured meat for eating though:
1) Edible meat is a very complex tissue with muscles, fat, blood vessels, etc. and the precise relation of these cell types and their physical placement in the meat affects the taste and texture.
2) Most cell culturing media is not vegetarian - the nutrient baths are generally processed from living animals.
It sounds like this new effort is basically the same thing - culturing myoblasts and feeding them with fetal calf serum.
At the same time, I look forward to these challenges being overcome, and glad to see new funding!
Companies don't create jobs, customers do. Customers are created when companies pay employees a living wage. In the long term, everyone suffers in a mindless race to the bottom.
Entrepreneurs & companies create the innovative ideas that allow customers to benefit from voluntary economic transactions with them. Without that innovation ("I should build a store in this location","I'll make a phone with a touchscreen"), the latent desires of the customer can never be fulfilled.
On the other hand, if companies are forced by government not to pay market wages, basic economics shows that leads to either shortages of jobs (if the price is forced to be too high) or requires some kind of non-economic rationing (if the the price is forced to be too low). This applies to jobs, cars, gasoline, etc.
Manipulating the price signal damages economies and leads to less economic production ("deadweight loss") that hurts everyone in the long run.
It may feel nice to believe that wealth can or should be created out of nothing or by fiat by god or government, but in fact wealth is only created by people being able to voluntarily exchange goods and labor in the market.
Even before there were "jobs" or "money", people were voluntarily trading goods to enhance each other's wealth.
Keep in mind California has a $3 billion solar subsidy, and there is the $18 billion in incentives for clean and renewable energy technologies and energy efficiency improvements from the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act.
You may want to look at a historical perspective on US energy subsidies.
The question is what is seen and what is unseen due to the basically Bill of Attainder against Walmart in Washington, DC.
A study shows that a Walmart opening may negatively affect directly competing stores in neighboring zip codes, but that stores not competing directly with Walmart (such as boutiques and restaurants that do not duplicate Walmart's offerings) benefit from a Walmart opening, and this tends to diversify and enrich local retail markets.
Also keep in mind that Walmart shoppers will now have more cash left in their pockets due to lower prices, and will be able to spend that money in the local economy. Enhancing economic efficiency does not destroy economies, it enhances them.
Many of the Walmarts that will not be built in DC were to be anchor tenants of new retail developments to be built to replace run-down or abandoned areas - and now these retail developments are in question, such as the 18.5-acre town center in Ward 7. Moreover, DC residents already go over the border to Maryland and Virginia (where there are Walmarts) to spend $1 billion.
In the poorest areas of Washington, DC, such as southeast DC across the Anacostia river, locals would greatly benefit from Walmart's lower prices and greater variety of foodstuffs and products closer to where they live.