What if a reactor explodes in upstate New York because of whatever reason (act of god / terrorism / negligence) and the wind takes the radioactive cloud to NYC.
The only way to make a nuclear reactor explode is to pile tons of TNT around it and set the TNT off.
And not just a few tons either. We're talking fill the building with TNT. Even then, lacking shaped charges, it's extremely unlikely that there would be a radioactive cloud heading to NYC afterwards.
Now the important part: Shutting down the reactors was by far the correct thing to do here because cooling was necessary for the daughter isotopes.
That is, the stuff we've been cooling all this time is the result of decay from before the plant was shut down.
It should perhaps be noted that I'm a former reactor plan operator. I have a clue.
Yes, cooling the daughter isotopes is exactly the issue. You generate fewer of them when you reduce output from commercial levels to self-sustaining levels.
And when you reduce power (but not shutdown completely), the decay products begin to decay down toward the new steady-state level. Which is a LOT less than steady state when you're operating at 90%+.
Every minute that goes by with the reactor operating at a reduced output is another minute you don't have to find an external power source to cool things down. And another minute farther from a core meltdown.
As was, by doing a hard shutdown immediately, the reactor was placed into a position such that the only possible way for a "good" outcome would be for the national electrical grid to stay completely intact during the next few days. There's no way that the battery back-up they had could keep cooling that plant for the next couple days by itself.
Which leaves as your only real option to try to use the reactor's output to maintain cooling while you burn through the decay products for as long as possible. After all, you can always scram the reactor later, if things don't work out.
If nuclear power plants are used to power cities, why can't they power their own cooling?
They do power their own cooling.
Alas, when you shut the plant down, it stops providing power for its own cooling. Which they did here.
Note that the kneejerk response (earthquake, therefore shutdown the reactor!!!!), was, in this case, absolutely the worst thing that could be done. If they'd left the reactor running but begun a slow shutdown (as opposed to a SCRAM), they'd likely have had enough power to keep things under control.
And if it turned out an emergency shutdown was needed, well, that option would still be on the table.
It is probably worth noting also that there's a pretty good chance of lot of reactor plant operations manuals are going to be revised as a result of this little adventure. With an eye toward keeping the reactor operational at lower power output until it absolutely, positively needs to be shutdown right the fuck now!
Them getting rolled in WWII was embarrassing but then, then it took the combined might of how many countries to finally bring the germans down?
They were also rolled rather badly in the Franco-Prussian War in the 19th century.
And others.
Note, for reference, that the reason for the French jokes about WW2 is that the French (plus the British Expedionary Force) was defeated by an Army that was smaller than the French Army and that had fewer tanks, trucks, artillery pieces, and aircraft.
Note that during the susequent invasion of the USSR, the Soviets were also pounded by an Army that was smaller, had fewer tanks and aircraft (can't say that the Soviets had more trucks - we had to ship them hundreds of thousands of trucks in the war).
AS to your question, the answer is three. The USSR, the UK, and the USA. The USSR did most of the dying (and arguably most of the killing), and the USA provided most of the material used by all three.
This is the first time that a Peace Noble Prize Laureate leads a country into a military offensive. It's not good for Obama.
I don't know of anyone who takes Obama seriously as a Nobel Peace Prize winner (it's not like he actually did anything to deserve it), so I doubt that this will have much downside for Obama.
Yes they DO fly in the face of harmonious coexistence. If you are religious, then you must acknowledge that penalties exist for 'non-believers' and others who believe differently.
Umm, no.
Not all religions believe that there are penalties in this life for non-believers or people who believe differently.
It should be noted that when you get down to core beliefs, MOST religions believe that there are penalties for non-believers and such in the afterlife (or next life, if applicable). Admittedly, quite a few people who are far more self righteous than righteous believe that the solution to the penalties in the afterlife (or next life, if applicable) is to impose their beliefs on others in order to "save them".
That, however, is not intrinsic in religious belief, but in that part of human nature that also causes people to pry into their neighbors' private lives....
With benefit of hindsight, the design assumptions were clearly wrong.
So. Given what we know now, is it a correct assumption to pay the extra required, such that at-risk plants be designed to tolerate common-cause failures devolving from a magnitude 9.0 quake and related tsunami?
Using the same logic, we should probably consider making everything safe from a magnitude 10.0 quake, related tsunami, tornado, airplane full of nuclear weapons crashing into the reactor building, and asteroid falling onto it.
It was only later that the Federal government decided to amend the Constitution
No, the State governments changed that.
State governments voted for the amendment, of course. But it must be remembered that it was proposed in Washington, and passed both houses of Congress with suitably large majorities before the States ever got a chance to vote on it.
Note that the really interesting thing about the 16th is not that they allowed an Income Tax, but that they specified that Income Taxes weren't Direct Taxes on individuals (which were, and still are, forbidden by the Constitution, hence the fooforaw about Obamacare).
If the revolutions mantra of "No taxation without representation" is true then why are Green Card holders taxed?
Of course it must be remembered that individual taxes at the Federal level were forbidden in the Constitution by the "no taxation without representation" people.
It was only later that the Federal government decided to amend the Constitution to allow the phrase "no per capita tax" to be translated as "any per capita tax we think we need"...
yet at the same time a substantial number of Americans live below the poverty line.
Note that since the USA defines the poverty line as a fraction of the median income, about the only way to prevent a substantial number of Americans living below the poverty line is to make sure that every American makes exactly the same income every year.
A number of states allow for laws passed by ballot
Which is all well and good, but not really relevant to the United States. Which doesn't refer to the States' governments, but to the Federal government.
Note, of course, that referring to the USA as a Democratic Republic would be perfectly reasonable.
And because it's Sub Saharan Africa, there'll be no talk of No Fly Zones, international intervention will come, if it ever came, through an neighbor invading them, like Ethiopia did to Somalia.
A "No fly zone" isn't practical unless you have the air power to make it so. We don't, really.
The country is landlocked, so we'd have to get permission from one or more of its neighbors to use carrier-based aircraft to enforce a no-fly zone.
There are no convenient airbases in a neighboring country to fly planes out of, for either the USA or any European country.
Net effect: if they want to slaughter each other by the millions, there's not much the West can do about it.
That said, I doubt a no-fly zone would make much difference - I don't think Zimbabwe has enough operational military aircraft (if it has any left at all) to do anything meaningful to suppress a rebellion. What happens in Zimbabwe, one way or another, will be settled with rifles, not airstrikes.
You can't commit treason in time of war if there's no war, just some sort of nebulous police action. That is, you can't if the constitution, that pesky piece of paper, is followed
You might want to reread the Constitution. There is no requirement that a State of War exist in the definition of Treason: "Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort."
The Constitution grants the federal government rights and any not listed are up to the states or "the people" as per the 10th Amendment.
A quibble:
The Constitution grants the Federal Government "powers". "Rights" are held by people, not governments in our system.
But yes, the 10th Amendment restricts the Powers of the Federal government to only those specifically mentioned in the Constitution. The State governments have exclusive access to powers not specifically granted to the Feds. And the People are the only ones with Rights at all.
NASA sending a crew to slowly die on Mars on evening television would probably be the end of the whole US space program.
I would guess that about half the Presidents and most of the Senators of the last 50 years would consider the cost of a one-way Mars mission a small price to pay to be able to defund NASA for good.
One other thing to consider is that while a higher mass requires a higher delta-v to hop from orbit to orbit,
Umm, no.
While a higher mass might require more fuel to hop from orbit to orbit, the deltaV requirements are pretty much defined by the starting orbit and ending orbit, without consideration of the mass involved.
This is not to say such spills are negligible, but I hope the numbers put things into a bit more of a perspective. Newspapers sell (and websites get hit) based on how alarming the story sounds...
It should also be noted, from TFA, that we're talking about the immediate vicinity of the wellhead, rather than a substantial part of the Gulf.
It was expected, by pretty much all the sane people, that the area right around the gusher would getted messed up. What wasn't expected (and what TFA discusses not at all) was that a substantial portion of the Gulf would be messed up.
Even if they couldn't patent it they could still produce the biofuel and continue profiting from it. Hell, if they were doing the research they'd be the experts in the area and thus could sell services to other companies. And if they were the experts in the area that'd also mean they'd most likely still be the first one to start actually monetizing their research.
Yes, and if you waited till someone else did the research, you could still do all that. And it would save you the cost of the research.
And if everyone sits around waiting for someone else to do the research, we're still using gasoline in ten years.
You know, they didn't patent regular gasoline
It should be noted that gasoline wasn't developed as a fuel, but as a cleaning agent. Its use as a nearly universal fuel came well after any patent would have expired in any case.
If you got that from that particular XKCD, you didn't understand it.
DeltaV to reach LEO is on the order of 10000 m/s.
From LEO, it takes about 6000 m/s more deltaV to land on the moon.
In terms of mass ratios, using an Isp 450 fuel-oxidizer combo (LH2-LO2), it requires about 9.25 tons of fuel to put a ton into LEO from the ground
It requires about 3.8 tons of fuel to put a ton on the moon from LEO.
Or 35 tons of fuel to put a ton on the moon from Earth.
Note, of course, that the ton you are putting somewhere in the above examples includes the rocket engines, fuel tanks, that sort of thing.
Note, by the way, that if you can get your lunar injection stage and lander down to 1000 Kg, then a Falcon 1 can put it into LEO for less than $11 million.
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It is just as likely that the Democrats will cut the space budget for the new vehicle.
More likely, in fact, since they've done that already.
Try not to let your political prejudices affect everything in your life.
The only way to make a nuclear reactor explode is to pile tons of TNT around it and set the TNT off.
And not just a few tons either. We're talking fill the building with TNT. Even then, lacking shaped charges, it's extremely unlikely that there would be a radioactive cloud heading to NYC afterwards.
Umm,. because immigration control is FEDERAL law, not State law.
Utah has no more power to grant amnesty to illegal immigrants than they do to select new US Supreme Court Justices.
Odd that you use "modern" in the context of Soyuz, when both the spacecraft and the booster are 40-year old designs.
It should perhaps be noted that I'm a former reactor plan operator. I have a clue.
Yes, cooling the daughter isotopes is exactly the issue. You generate fewer of them when you reduce output from commercial levels to self-sustaining levels.
And when you reduce power (but not shutdown completely), the decay products begin to decay down toward the new steady-state level. Which is a LOT less than steady state when you're operating at 90%+.
Every minute that goes by with the reactor operating at a reduced output is another minute you don't have to find an external power source to cool things down. And another minute farther from a core meltdown.
As was, by doing a hard shutdown immediately, the reactor was placed into a position such that the only possible way for a "good" outcome would be for the national electrical grid to stay completely intact during the next few days. There's no way that the battery back-up they had could keep cooling that plant for the next couple days by itself.
Which leaves as your only real option to try to use the reactor's output to maintain cooling while you burn through the decay products for as long as possible. After all, you can always scram the reactor later, if things don't work out.
They do power their own cooling.
Alas, when you shut the plant down, it stops providing power for its own cooling. Which they did here.
Note that the kneejerk response (earthquake, therefore shutdown the reactor!!!!), was, in this case, absolutely the worst thing that could be done. If they'd left the reactor running but begun a slow shutdown (as opposed to a SCRAM), they'd likely have had enough power to keep things under control.
And if it turned out an emergency shutdown was needed, well, that option would still be on the table.
It is probably worth noting also that there's a pretty good chance of lot of reactor plant operations manuals are going to be revised as a result of this little adventure. With an eye toward keeping the reactor operational at lower power output until it absolutely, positively needs to be shutdown right the fuck now!
origin (noun)
originate (verb form of origin)
Origination (noun form of originate)
Next up: originationate (verb form of origination)....
They were also rolled rather badly in the Franco-Prussian War in the 19th century.
And others.
Note, for reference, that the reason for the French jokes about WW2 is that the French (plus the British Expedionary Force) was defeated by an Army that was smaller than the French Army and that had fewer tanks, trucks, artillery pieces, and aircraft.
Note that during the susequent invasion of the USSR, the Soviets were also pounded by an Army that was smaller, had fewer tanks and aircraft (can't say that the Soviets had more trucks - we had to ship them hundreds of thousands of trucks in the war).
AS to your question, the answer is three. The USSR, the UK, and the USA. The USSR did most of the dying (and arguably most of the killing), and the USA provided most of the material used by all three.
I don't know of anyone who takes Obama seriously as a Nobel Peace Prize winner (it's not like he actually did anything to deserve it), so I doubt that this will have much downside for Obama.
That was Mussolini.
Umm, no.
Not all religions believe that there are penalties in this life for non-believers or people who believe differently.
It should be noted that when you get down to core beliefs, MOST religions believe that there are penalties for non-believers and such in the afterlife (or next life, if applicable). Admittedly, quite a few people who are far more self righteous than righteous believe that the solution to the penalties in the afterlife (or next life, if applicable) is to impose their beliefs on others in order to "save them".
That, however, is not intrinsic in religious belief, but in that part of human nature that also causes people to pry into their neighbors' private lives....
Using the same logic, we should probably consider making everything safe from a magnitude 10.0 quake, related tsunami, tornado, airplane full of nuclear weapons crashing into the reactor building, and asteroid falling onto it.
All at the same time.
State governments voted for the amendment, of course. But it must be remembered that it was proposed in Washington, and passed both houses of Congress with suitably large majorities before the States ever got a chance to vote on it.
Note that the really interesting thing about the 16th is not that they allowed an Income Tax, but that they specified that Income Taxes weren't Direct Taxes on individuals (which were, and still are, forbidden by the Constitution, hence the fooforaw about Obamacare).
A remarkable bit of sophistry, really....
Of course it must be remembered that individual taxes at the Federal level were forbidden in the Constitution by the "no taxation without representation" people.
It was only later that the Federal government decided to amend the Constitution to allow the phrase "no per capita tax" to be translated as "any per capita tax we think we need"...
Note that since the USA defines the poverty line as a fraction of the median income, about the only way to prevent a substantial number of Americans living below the poverty line is to make sure that every American makes exactly the same income every year.
Which is all well and good, but not really relevant to the United States. Which doesn't refer to the States' governments, but to the Federal government.
Note, of course, that referring to the USA as a Democratic Republic would be perfectly reasonable.
I do it quite easily. I pick up a standard D6, roll it, and pick rock on 1-2, paper on 3-4, scissors on 5-6.
A "No fly zone" isn't practical unless you have the air power to make it so. We don't, really.
The country is landlocked, so we'd have to get permission from one or more of its neighbors to use carrier-based aircraft to enforce a no-fly zone.
There are no convenient airbases in a neighboring country to fly planes out of, for either the USA or any European country.
Net effect: if they want to slaughter each other by the millions, there's not much the West can do about it.
That said, I doubt a no-fly zone would make much difference - I don't think Zimbabwe has enough operational military aircraft (if it has any left at all) to do anything meaningful to suppress a rebellion. What happens in Zimbabwe, one way or another, will be settled with rifles, not airstrikes.
You might want to reread the Constitution. There is no requirement that a State of War exist in the definition of Treason: "Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort."
Note that "or". It's important.
A quibble:
The Constitution grants the Federal Government "powers". "Rights" are held by people, not governments in our system.
But yes, the 10th Amendment restricts the Powers of the Federal government to only those specifically mentioned in the Constitution. The State governments have exclusive access to powers not specifically granted to the Feds. And the People are the only ones with Rights at all.
I would guess that about half the Presidents and most of the Senators of the last 50 years would consider the cost of a one-way Mars mission a small price to pay to be able to defund NASA for good.
Umm, no.
While a higher mass might require more fuel to hop from orbit to orbit, the deltaV requirements are pretty much defined by the starting orbit and ending orbit, without consideration of the mass involved.
It should also be noted, from TFA, that we're talking about the immediate vicinity of the wellhead, rather than a substantial part of the Gulf.
It was expected, by pretty much all the sane people, that the area right around the gusher would getted messed up. What wasn't expected (and what TFA discusses not at all) was that a substantial portion of the Gulf would be messed up.
Yes, and if you waited till someone else did the research, you could still do all that. And it would save you the cost of the research.
And if everyone sits around waiting for someone else to do the research, we're still using gasoline in ten years.
It should be noted that gasoline wasn't developed as a fuel, but as a cleaning agent. Its use as a nearly universal fuel came well after any patent would have expired in any case.
If you got that from that particular XKCD, you didn't understand it.
DeltaV to reach LEO is on the order of 10000 m/s.
From LEO, it takes about 6000 m/s more deltaV to land on the moon.
In terms of mass ratios, using an Isp 450 fuel-oxidizer combo (LH2-LO2), it requires about 9.25 tons of fuel to put a ton into LEO from the ground
It requires about 3.8 tons of fuel to put a ton on the moon from LEO.
Or 35 tons of fuel to put a ton on the moon from Earth.
Note, of course, that the ton you are putting somewhere in the above examples includes the rocket engines, fuel tanks, that sort of thing.
Note, by the way, that if you can get your lunar injection stage and lander down to 1000 Kg, then a Falcon 1 can put it into LEO for less than $11 million.