I can't speak for others, but while I think that nuclear power can be safe as a technology, I don't have much faith in the managers of the plants to keep them running safely, or in the politicians needed to get waste safely processed / disposed of, or in independent regulators to help keep things safe and efficient even in spite of hostile management or politicians.
And if you're not a nuclear engineer, nuclear plant manager, or member of the NRC, then your opinion is based on nothing that remotely looks like scientific thought. In other words, it's pretty much the same as a Global Warming Denier, in that you know little or nothing about the subject, but are ready to assert that the experts are idiots.
Note, by the by, that absolute faith in the "experts" is a logical fallacy in itself, as is absolute faith that the "experts" are wrong.
Try learning something about the subject, instead.
And don't pick one side of the debate and use their opinion as the sole source of information on a subject, whether it be global warming, nuclear power, or the value of a good beer in Newfoundland....
I'd probably devise a system where people can at least name that value themselves and pay a premium accordingly.
Free Market healthcare already does that, so why bother creating a new one?
There is always room for experimental medicine
Not if insurance companies (or the Federal government) are paying for them, there's not. Or do you really believe that Medicare pays for experimental treatments?
We also see the same thing when it comes to nuclear power. People who know basically nothing about the subject insist that it MUST be unsafe.
The reason noone is getting upset by the "diamond planet" is because noone really cares all that much - it doesn't affect them in their day-to-day lives. If it actually affected them (face it, very little of the work of modern science has much effect on even other scientists, much less the rest of us), then they'd be just as much up in arms about it as they are about nuclear power or climate change.
That brings up a good point though. If the computer says it's a bad idea, and backs that up with evidence, might it not actually be a bad idea?
Possibly.
On the other hand, I'm alive because my oncologist tried something that had a very good chance of killing me, since I'd reached the point where all the evidence said that I was untreatable.
It worked, she got to present the paper at some medical conference, and now (hopefully) other people who have my little problem (or related little problems) have a better chance than they would've had if my doctor had tried the textbook solution....
It is financed entirely by dedicated taxes and presently has a surplus. There is certainly trouble ahead but in the near to mid term Social Security spending does not contribute to the Federal deficit and cutting Social Security spending will not reduce the Federal deficit.
The money from Social Security taxes are tossed into the General Fund just like all other tax revenue.
And then that money is spent.
Which means, among other things, that if SS taxes don't go to paying SS, they will be spent on other things, thus reducing the total amount of money that needs to be borrowed.
Hence, the deficit reduction implicit in reducing SS outlays.
There are other differences between mining coal and uranium. Coal is usually mined pure so you dig it out and burn it.
Uranium is diluted,
Good point.
If we assume, for the sake of argument, that the price of U3O8 and coal represent the relative difficuly in mining the two substances, we do a quick check, and find that that U3O8 sells for about $10 per pound, and coal for abouit $50 per ton.
Which means that Uranium is about 400 times as difficult to mine as coal, all in all.
Which would suggest that we'd need to remove about 1/25th the material from the ground for the nuclear option as opposed to the coal option.
does it take into account that so MUCH more coal has been used and is being used than nuclear power.
nuclear power accounts for about 1/3 the electricity that coal power does in the USA.
How many more nuclear debacles would there be if every municipality in the US had a nuclear power plant the way there is a coal fired electrical plant now?
See above. It implies about four times as many "debacles". Note that we've only managed ONE "debacle" in the USA over the last half century (TMI).
Would radioactive zones that people had to stay away from become a common every day occurrence?
Unlikely. Note that their are about 1300 coal fly ash dumps in the USA. They collectively contain more uranium than all the nuclear reactors in the USA.
Yeah, because Uran-miners often don't die in mining accidents. They cannot continue to work due to cancer, whose causation cannot be proven to be from the working environment.
No, the difference is that we mine far less uranium than we do coal.
Note that it requires about 10,000 times as much coal as natural uranium (the kind you get out of the ground and then enrich to make nuclear fuel) to produce a given amount of energy.
If we were to replace all electricity production in the USA with nuclear plants, we'd need to mine less than one tenth the uranium to run them all than the coal required for ONE big coal-fired plant.
It's believable that the GPS system got disrupted, but it's hard to believe that this somehow forced them to land.
Before this particular topic was posted on/., the only news I'd seen of this "event" was the US Military spokesman saying (more or less) "What? We didn't have a plane forced down where/when they're saying we did. We didn't even have a plane there to be forced down."
Also, this is old news - the event happened in March.
As opposed to politics and religion, new evidence = character assassinate those who presented the evidence.
Haven't read all that much history of science, have you? Yes, scientists are just as prone to character assassination of people who disagree with them as anyone else.
And my mother-in-law spent about $3K for her hearing aid, got something that basically hid in her ear, and used replaceable batteries.
Don't know what my dad's cost, but he a notorious tightwad, so I doubt it was $3K, and his also fit into his ear and used replaceable batteries.
Sounds like your dad made a bad choice in hearing aids.
It should also be pointed out that getting a standard American plug into a 220V socket is the next best thing to impossible. It certainly wasn't done without some work on your dad's part....
the Soyuz, which has been phenomenally reliable up to the point of this accident.
Let's see.
Soyuz had two loss-of-crew accidents over 110 flights.
Shuttle had two loss-of-crew accidents over 135 flights.
Looks to me like it's been no more reliable than Shuttle, all in all.
Now, if you want to count the unmanned version of Soyuz, you get 134 flights (still one fewer than Shuttle), and at least SIX failures.
Depending on how you count failures, of course. It's hard to argue that ramming MIR doesn't count as a failure (2). Or failure to reach orbit (1). Or failure to dock (3). Several other failures to dock I didn't count as failures because they eventually succeeded....
So, where's the "phenomenally reliable"? Manned versions have a slightly higher failure rate than Shuttle, unmanned versions a much higher failure rate than Shuttle.
You're still confused. Pu-241 is about 14% of the Pu in a reactor. So while that 14% will have decayed into highly radioactive crap in a couple decades, the remaining 86% won't.
Which means that ~93% of the Pu will still be Pu in a couple decades, and ~7% will be something else.
Note also that "the older the reactor, the more Pu-241" is not quite correct. Half-life is 14 years, so after about a couple decades, it'll be decaying to whatever about as fast as it's being deposited.
You're going to drive x miles AND set up a post office box to save a buck or two on sales tax? You Californians are crazier than I thought. And I thought you were batshit insane to begin with.
I'm not from California.
If I were, I'd set up an amazon account using my parents' address, a credit card billed to their address, and then have everything shipped to my wife as a "gift".
It should, however, be noted that there are places in San Diego where Mexico is within throwing distance. Shouldn't be too hard to get a PO Box there, if you lived in the right place.
It's great to see a big corporation not being completely profit driven and screwing people over
What? You think Amazon is going to eat those CA sales taxes? Won't happen, the Californios will pay them (or not, if they're close enough to another State to get a PO Box in any other State. Or even use a false address, and have their books delivered to a friend next door as gifts).
A sales tax has officially and legally been levied against Amazon. If they try to change the law to make that tax no longer apply, I'd call that an attempt to "dodge" the tax.
So, if New York were to pass a law requiring all residents of California pay New York income taxes, then Californians would be dodging that tax by trying to get that law overturned?
The Supremes have already ruled that you don't have to do Sales Taxes in any State you don't have a physical presence. Making a State Law that says you do is unconstitutional.
Note that the thing CA should have done is require the subsidiaries to pay Sales taxes. Which would have been legal (and probably is already being done), but they wouldn't get anywhere near as much money that way....
Well, note that they stopped pushing their referendum.
Which, unfortunately for California isn't the same as "there will be no referendum", since the private citizens of California might dislike the increase in prices also.
Note also that the legislature in California is trying to repass the law requiring Amazon to charge sales taxes to CA residents as "a matter of urgency" (I think that's the term they use), which cannot be overturned with a referendum.
but only if they'd repeal those pesky income and property taxes.
Never happen. They'll just add the sales taxes on top of the other taxes.
And in a few years, they'll try to set things up so you have to pay sales taxes in both your state of residence and the state you bought something in. They won't succeed for a while, but they'll keep at it till they do.
However, half the plutonium will be very radioactive, very intrusive radioactive decay elements in a decade or so.
Umm, no.
Plutonium has a half-life of 24000 years or so. In two decades, about 0.05% of it will have decayed into...U-235, which has a half-life of 250,000 years (so not very radioactive at all).
It wasn't until I started living on my own that I realized it wasn't normal to have a year's stock of canned foods that no one ever eats in the pantry.
I gather you're not a mormon, then? They're required to keep a year's supply of (relatively) non-perishable food on hand, as I recall.
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And if you're not a nuclear engineer, nuclear plant manager, or member of the NRC, then your opinion is based on nothing that remotely looks like scientific thought. In other words, it's pretty much the same as a Global Warming Denier, in that you know little or nothing about the subject, but are ready to assert that the experts are idiots.
Note, by the by, that absolute faith in the "experts" is a logical fallacy in itself, as is absolute faith that the "experts" are wrong.
Try learning something about the subject, instead.
And don't pick one side of the debate and use their opinion as the sole source of information on a subject, whether it be global warming, nuclear power, or the value of a good beer in Newfoundland....
Free Market healthcare already does that, so why bother creating a new one?
Not if insurance companies (or the Federal government) are paying for them, there's not. Or do you really believe that Medicare pays for experimental treatments?
We also see the same thing when it comes to nuclear power. People who know basically nothing about the subject insist that it MUST be unsafe.
The reason noone is getting upset by the "diamond planet" is because noone really cares all that much - it doesn't affect them in their day-to-day lives. If it actually affected them (face it, very little of the work of modern science has much effect on even other scientists, much less the rest of us), then they'd be just as much up in arms about it as they are about nuclear power or climate change.
Possibly.
On the other hand, I'm alive because my oncologist tried something that had a very good chance of killing me, since I'd reached the point where all the evidence said that I was untreatable.
It worked, she got to present the paper at some medical conference, and now (hopefully) other people who have my little problem (or related little problems) have a better chance than they would've had if my doctor had tried the textbook solution....
The money from Social Security taxes are tossed into the General Fund just like all other tax revenue.
And then that money is spent.
Which means, among other things, that if SS taxes don't go to paying SS, they will be spent on other things, thus reducing the total amount of money that needs to be borrowed.
Hence, the deficit reduction implicit in reducing SS outlays.
Good point.
If we assume, for the sake of argument, that the price of U3O8 and coal represent the relative difficuly in mining the two substances, we do a quick check, and find that that U3O8 sells for about $10 per pound, and coal for abouit $50 per ton.
Which means that Uranium is about 400 times as difficult to mine as coal, all in all.
Which would suggest that we'd need to remove about 1/25th the material from the ground for the nuclear option as opposed to the coal option.
nuclear power accounts for about 1/3 the electricity that coal power does in the USA.
See above. It implies about four times as many "debacles". Note that we've only managed ONE "debacle" in the USA over the last half century (TMI).
Unlikely. Note that their are about 1300 coal fly ash dumps in the USA. They collectively contain more uranium than all the nuclear reactors in the USA.
No, the difference is that we mine far less uranium than we do coal.
Note that it requires about 10,000 times as much coal as natural uranium (the kind you get out of the ground and then enrich to make nuclear fuel) to produce a given amount of energy.
If we were to replace all electricity production in the USA with nuclear plants, we'd need to mine less than one tenth the uranium to run them all than the coal required for ONE big coal-fired plant.
I don't see an inconsistency.
The first number is deaths per year.
The second number is deaths per terawatt-hr.
Before this particular topic was posted on /., the only news I'd seen of this "event" was the US Military spokesman saying (more or less) "What? We didn't have a plane forced down where/when they're saying we did. We didn't even have a plane there to be forced down."
Also, this is old news - the event happened in March.
Haven't read all that much history of science, have you? Yes, scientists are just as prone to character assassination of people who disagree with them as anyone else.
Years and years in (collectively) Germany, France, UK, Austria, Italy.
Which are, admittedly, high-end areas in Europe, as opposed to former Soviet-bloc Europe.
And my mother-in-law spent about $3K for her hearing aid, got something that basically hid in her ear, and used replaceable batteries.
Don't know what my dad's cost, but he a notorious tightwad, so I doubt it was $3K, and his also fit into his ear and used replaceable batteries.
Sounds like your dad made a bad choice in hearing aids.
It should also be pointed out that getting a standard American plug into a 220V socket is the next best thing to impossible. It certainly wasn't done without some work on your dad's part....
Is this going to turn out to be like the data retention laws, which managed to metamorphose into rules mandating destruction of data?
Let's see.
Soyuz had two loss-of-crew accidents over 110 flights.
Shuttle had two loss-of-crew accidents over 135 flights.
Looks to me like it's been no more reliable than Shuttle, all in all.
Now, if you want to count the unmanned version of Soyuz, you get 134 flights (still one fewer than Shuttle), and at least SIX failures.
Depending on how you count failures, of course. It's hard to argue that ramming MIR doesn't count as a failure (2). Or failure to reach orbit (1). Or failure to dock (3). Several other failures to dock I didn't count as failures because they eventually succeeded....
So, where's the "phenomenally reliable"? Manned versions have a slightly higher failure rate than Shuttle, unmanned versions a much higher failure rate than Shuttle.
You're still confused. Pu-241 is about 14% of the Pu in a reactor. So while that 14% will have decayed into highly radioactive crap in a couple decades, the remaining 86% won't.
Which means that ~93% of the Pu will still be Pu in a couple decades, and ~7% will be something else.
Note also that "the older the reactor, the more Pu-241" is not quite correct. Half-life is 14 years, so after about a couple decades, it'll be decaying to whatever about as fast as it's being deposited.
So, if Nokia (for example) sells things over the internet to a Californian, then Nokia (a Finnish company) should collect sales taxes for California?
Contrariwise, should Californian companies be required to collect local taxes for, say, the UK? Ukraine? Nepal?
If not, why not?
I'm not from California.
If I were, I'd set up an amazon account using my parents' address, a credit card billed to their address, and then have everything shipped to my wife as a "gift".
It should, however, be noted that there are places in San Diego where Mexico is within throwing distance. Shouldn't be too hard to get a PO Box there, if you lived in the right place.
"They" would be the first local government that (a) really, really wants the extra money, and (b) thinks they can get away with it.
Plus of course all the other governments that will copycat them.
Alas, Amazon has now opened the floodgates for every other State to demand that they collect sales taxes....
What? You think Amazon is going to eat those CA sales taxes? Won't happen, the Californios will pay them (or not, if they're close enough to another State to get a PO Box in any other State. Or even use a false address, and have their books delivered to a friend next door as gifts).
So, if New York were to pass a law requiring all residents of California pay New York income taxes, then Californians would be dodging that tax by trying to get that law overturned?
The Supremes have already ruled that you don't have to do Sales Taxes in any State you don't have a physical presence. Making a State Law that says you do is unconstitutional.
Note that the thing CA should have done is require the subsidiaries to pay Sales taxes. Which would have been legal (and probably is already being done), but they wouldn't get anywhere near as much money that way....
Well, note that they stopped pushing their referendum.
Which, unfortunately for California isn't the same as "there will be no referendum", since the private citizens of California might dislike the increase in prices also.
Note also that the legislature in California is trying to repass the law requiring Amazon to charge sales taxes to CA residents as "a matter of urgency" (I think that's the term they use), which cannot be overturned with a referendum.
Never happen. They'll just add the sales taxes on top of the other taxes.
And in a few years, they'll try to set things up so you have to pay sales taxes in both your state of residence and the state you bought something in. They won't succeed for a while, but they'll keep at it till they do.
Umm, no.
Plutonium has a half-life of 24000 years or so. In two decades, about 0.05% of it will have decayed into...U-235, which has a half-life of 250,000 years (so not very radioactive at all).
I gather you're not a mormon, then? They're required to keep a year's supply of (relatively) non-perishable food on hand, as I recall.