Humans programmed the car and humans driving near it had an accident with the vehicle. Either you blame the bad driver or the bad programmer, but a human is to blame. Even if it was some sort of self learning system that self reprogrammed, the initial seed was from a human. But, I guess this is probably not what they meant.
I wonder how much of these poll results are affected by this phenomenon of adult children staying home. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/new...
These things start a parent to think about their options, such as taking Jonny out to a bar and then the military recruiters' office.
The one thing I never see them ask is "Do I want to enslave myself to the collective?", they are always going on about how they think leveraging my productivity will be great for the collective, but they never ask me if I want to in the first place. Seeing as my productivity is mine to give or keep, all this discussion of the ways they want to spend my production is putting the cart before the horse.
The survey was performed by the New Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Michael Bloomberg is notorious for building organizations to support his anti firearm viewpoints. They will target populations with their poll to get the desired result. I don't trust the poll results because I don't trust the motives of Bloomberg.
As for your claim "You can bet that the companies those capitalists work for do not pay their workers a dime more than they deem necessary to maintain a workforce.", they do it all the time to reduce the risk of losing a competent workforce to competitive market pressures. Even if they did not pay more than they had to, it is not a crime or a moral wrong. Your tone implies that it is a moral wrong to pay only what one has to.
As for your claim " Even if a company creates a foundation that gives away money to charity, it is NOT giving shareholders' money away." you are incorrect as all the money in a company belongs to the shareholders after taxes, wages, and debts are paid. That is determined by law.
Regardless of your and other's misinterpretations involving corporations and their activities, remember corporation is a definition evolved from "Co-operative Ownership" where a business venture was created by the invested capital that more than one individual provided, such as a water wheel or wind mill powered grain mill owned by multiple farmers who also milled grain of other farmers for a fee, or multiple sailors who pooled resources to buy a ship for their maritime oriented business (fishing, shipping, passenger commerce, etc.). So, if the multiple owners of a corporation choose to give money to a charity, they do not suddenly stop being capitalists and turn into socialists by giving charity. They retain ownership of their means of production, they just choose to give away some of their capital is all. If the SCOTUS does not strictly interpret such actions as within their strict understanding of economics, it does not change what those actions are. The actions of the owners of the capital deciding to spend their capital however they choose in a non-business manner is not an evolution into a new economic theory. A business's true purpose is to provide profit to the owner, if the owner chooses to reinvest those profits within said business, which is their choice. They could give some away out of love of their heart, they could buy groceries, and they could invest in a different venture to diversify their holdings for any number of reasons. Corporations are entities in the sense of Law only for Taxation purposes. as for moral evaluations of charity not applying, you fail in that argument to dig deeper and realize the people owning the business have their own morals and as owners have all the power to spend into them as they feel the need to.
You present the question of how a capitalist economy runs without regulation. Clarification of regulation needs to occur as you have lumped all government action as regulation under a socialist label which is again a red herring. Government under the democratic/republic form of representation which many nations tried to model from Roman Antiquity is based upon the VOLUNTARY FORMATION of government by the people to serve in protection of the common law agreed upon and funded by the people. Taxation was based on paying the government the expenses it cost to protect the capital owned by the citizens. This tax was typically prorated based upon the amount of production capital (e.g. farmland) a citizen owned that was reasonably expected to be protected by the government. Note that this method of proportional taxation of the citizenry based upon land ownership and also proportional voting was also in the origination of the United States of America. Property outside the government's jurisdiction; outside the country, was not protected by the government's laws and forces and not subject to taxation. Hence it was essentially a business arrangement to provide protection for cost to the business owners, essentially a large mutual private security corporation police force/military force. Calling a government police force/military force paid for and operated in the interest of the business owners to protect their capital is hardly socialist. It is however a form of voluntary self-imposed regulation where the citizens get to determine how the government is used.
Some thoughts on what you just said require addressing for accuracy.
"True capitalists don't pay someone unless they absolutely have to." This is not an accurate statement. There is nothing inherent in capitalism that requires this. Capitalists give to charity, it is called ‘giving to charity’ because it is a gift not a requirement.
"As long as you have concentration of capital, you will have increasing income inequality." Note that concentration of capital = inequality. Thus your statement is very easily paraphrased to logically mean the following: ‘as long as you have inequality, you have increasing inequality.’ which does not logically hold. It is entirely possible to have inequality in a static sense without dynamic growth or decay. This is one of the reasons why people in general do not like stagnant economies due to the reduced rate of making a change.
Capital is economically defined as the produced goods or the non-financial assets used to produce those goods. To claim that income inequality of the kind observed in the US "is how all capitalist systems end up. It's happened in large part because there has been an all-out attack by corporations and government on labor unions. " is a red herring pure and simple. Attacking the labor unions, or not attacking the labor unions by any, either, or all antagonists of labor unions will have no economic scale effect on the inequality observed currently. Inequality is an inherent trait of any system of trade, barter, transfer, or distribution, otherwise the system would not exist. Inequality is the reason for a trade to occur, and continues to exist after the trade occurs because inequality is created with the creation of wealth, not because of some means of trade or distribution. Inequality is the result of creating more than exists elsewhere, or the result of destroying so there is less than exists elsewhere.
Ownership as determined by law involves determining who has certain rights and duties over the property. So if a regulation set by the government on a piece of capital determines how/when/what/where/and why you may use your capital for production, then effectively the government has in some way enacted ownership over your means of production. Thus, they have enacted socialism in some way.
Back when I was working on an MSEE degree, my professor enlightened me to a simple equation to help compare happiness.
Happiness = (Location) x (Pay) x (entertainment value or pleasantness of what you are doing)
try to normalize all inputs to a scale of 0 to 2, yielding a result ranging from 0 to 8. You will quickly see that any one thing can kill the whole deal (multiplying by 0 tends to do that), and that some things can only compensate for inadequacies to a limited extent. So... in a practical sense, this quantitative answer to such qualitative things as job pay, location, and how much you like what you are doing, might help make the analysis comparison easier. Tweaking this to fit your specific situation makes all the sense in the world. Good Luck!
Often, discussions about nuclear energy tend to run rampant with misinformation and hyperbole. I offer the following points for clarity, context, and thought.
1) Just to be clear: There are NO 80 year old reactors. If Chicago-Pile 1 was still operating, it would turn 70 this year. The oldest currently operating nuclear reactor is the Oyster Creek facility. This reactor came online December 23rd 1969 making it 42 years old curerntly. This is according to Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oyster_Creek_Nuclear_Generating_Station
2) All NRC regulated reactors have maintenance performed on the systems every outage, to the point that much of the facility is newer than the day it turned on. This is due to maintenance and repair activity, as well as upgrades to improve efficiency. The article calls this "midlife refurbishment". The industry does this because it is easier and less costly than a new reactor. The thought process of the industry is that it is easier to tear down and rebuild under the existing license than it is to get approval for a new license. If the industry could feasibly replace a reactor vessel, I would bet they would.
3) ASME Boiler and Pressure Vessel Code Section 3 is a good code. Creep, Fatigue, Corrosion, and many other issues are addressed in this code that the non-nuclear codes for B&PV only tough upon exotic need, and then refer the engineer to the section 3 code. I encourage you to read it.
4) Some reactor operators send material samples to the Advanced Test Reactor at the INL for accelerated radiation age testing. This information is sought by the reactor operators to gain a better understanding for themselves about their own equipment.
5) Reactors are designed for a much longer life than 40 years, but the NRC set the 40 year license to force a mid-life review. Reactors get far better treatment than any car or plane that most people have ever have ridden in. In this context, a 40 year old reactor properly maintained is very possibly not a safety concern.
6) The Davis-Besse RPV head mentioned by the article was a case of criminal conduct in the eyes of some people, and is not considered normal operating behavior by people I have met from the industry. Whatever the facts are, the indictment can be found here. http://www.corporatecrimereporter.com/documents/indictment.pdf
7) Reactors designed to operated under the NRC have a "defense in depth" safety approach. The reactor and facilities are given a design basis accident that is a conservative forecasting of potential accident scenarios.
8) The NRC has a glossary available to you http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/basic-ref/glossary.html note the term "meltdown" is not there. Many people associated with the nuclear field feel that it is a poor term that does not adequately describe a problem's behavior or severity. This is borne out of the use of the term for several reactor failures that all had different designs, behaviors, and severity of failure.
9) New reactor designs offer some stimulating improvements. The Generation 4 reactor effort can be found at http://www.gen-4.org/ currently the US is operating Gen 2 reactors.
IIRC, the reactors were 1000MW *electrical* output. Because of thermal efficiencies of steam generators of around 35%, I believe that means the thermal output of each reactor would have been about 1000/.35 ~= 2800 MW thermal energy.
So, instead of 7% of 1000MW = 70MW, I think you're looking at 7% of 2800 = 196MW.
That's a LOT of heat to get rid of, even if it is a small percentage of the 2800MW full output.
Assuming 30% thermal efficiency (35% seems high for a 1973 reactor, but I am guessing honestly), then the full thermal load would be ~2600 MW. 7% of that would be 183MW. So, you aren't too far off.
Not sure what the water volume of the reactor would be, but if you ever have a hard time falling asleep the NRC has the standards for a BWR/4 reactor (plant #2) at this site
http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/nuregs/staff/sr1433/r3/v1/sr1433r3v1.pdf Note that page 1.1-5 talks about the RTP (Rated Thermal Power) of the heat transfer of the core to the coolant being 2436MW. Admittedly this is a US document but GE (the reactor designer) has usually made a point to support customer upgrades to US-NRC standards.
then you could figure the boil off rate assuming the 7% was unchanging (which it isn't, right off hand I don't recall the reported decay rate of that level). Truth is, 12 days later this won't even be close to 7% thermal load. 12 days later put the amount of Iodine through about 1.5 half lives so there would be much less Iodine left. Obviously other decay product would be on their own schedule. So, one might argue that the measurements show a restart, but if there was one, it is highly likely that it was a small localized one.
The physical laws do not lie or change, but I and others have been known to make errors in measurements and observations.
aside from this speculation of what went on based on the measurements they claim to have made.....
I find all this discusion about oceanic releases interesting since there are 5 USSR nuclear subs (3 of which had 2 reactors each), 2 US subs (with one 5SW reactor each) and one of the original 3 cores of the Lenin nuclear ice breaker all sunk in the ocean. Many of these 11 sunken reactors are in the Atlantic some up north nearer Russia, partially spent fuel and all.
then there is the release made by coal plants which according to this article is quite significant.
http://www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/rev26-34/text/colmain.html
It makes an interesting point that the coal plants in the world release more uranium in their wastes than "...dozens of nuclear reactor fuel loadings...".
I respect the need for environmental controls, but I get annoyed by much of the 'sky is falling' 'the world is ending' mentality that seems to underlie much of popular news on this issue in general. Much of the science can be measured and thought about rationally. I appreciate the intention of this thread to actually put numbers to their discussion.
Personally, I am a PE in 2 states, but not in NC. General knowledge about how states run their rules is that a person has to make a claim that they are a PE before they can be found in violation. Most states take their cues from the NSPE/NCEES bodies. I believe that is probably the case here.
Reviewing North Carolina Law 89C23 which tells you that you aren't supposed to "practice" engineering without a license, along with 89C3 which gives the definitions of the terms used like "practice" you will find that a person has to make the claim to be a "professional engineer" {see section (6)a of 89C3} for their activities to be construed to be the "practice of engineering".
Laws are written this way to point out that while most anyone can technically fill a job title of "engineer" if they have the smarts at your local company making widgets, you are not allowed to provide "engineering services" to the public. What that usually means is that you are not allowed to design things that affect public safety. You are however fully within the law to work as an engineer for IBM, Caterpillar, Boeing, etc. Usually even if a company has engineering services, few engineers are actually licensed, they just work under the direct supervision of the license engineer who takes ultimate responsibility for the design.
With this in mind, unless David N. Cox made the claim that he was a licensed engineer or was providing engineering services, he and others like him are within the letter and spirit of the law. I read nowhere in the article that he made the claim he was an engineer, nor sealed/stamped the report/calculation/designs he provided as part of his petition. Unless he made the claims or sealed/stamped the articles associated with his petition and the article simply failed to state that, I believe Mr. Cox is probably innocent of the allegations made against him.
huh, only 78 posts, and the web video on the page played. I remember when the page would have crumbled under the slashdot effect for such a topic as this.
Well I am happy to hear this hurdle has been overcome for the making of the movies.
Well, if you do spend time in Fall City, when kayaking or canoeing, go upstream and put in on the Snoqualmie river at the turbine house just past the base of the falls. It is a nice half day float, but don't bother going much downstream of Fall City as the river gets really slow to almost being stagnant and winds around forever before you get to Tolt River Park at Carnation.
Having been there, Fall City probably needs an AA program more than it needs a internet addiction program
There are fundamental engineering differences in how the reaction is propagated in the RBMK Chernobyl rector vs the Three Mile Island(TMI) Pressurized Water Reactor (PWR) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pressurized_water_reactor#Moderator)
The US National Reactor Testing Station which is now the Idaho National Lab performed the Loss of Fluid Tests (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fuel_response_to_reactor_accidents#LOFT) to better understand what a loss of coolant accident would mean (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_of_coolant_accident). Understanding that the loss of water which acts as both coolant and moderator for fast neutrons means the reaction cannot continue in a PWR reactor. The prevention of a Chernobyl like accident in the TMI reactor is far beyond 'Luck' as it was designed into the PWR from years of testing that occurred. The intent was to achieve what is known as 'Passive nuclear safety" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_nuclear_safety) which is a driving fundamental engineering for all modern reactors.
The Chernobyl reactor did not benefit from this fundamental engineering in the reactor design, and to top it off, it was revealed that they were performing a very risky and unwise test of testing an untested emergency core cooling system (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster#Planning_the_test_of_the_safety_device) with many unconfirmed assumptions of turbine momentum and pump power being made used as excuses to perform the test on a full scale power reactor instead of in a lab reactor or modeling prior to accident with safety contingencies set up to prevent excursions. This combined with the low power level in the reactor and the impatience to approach such a condition properly, they added water and MANUALLY REMOVED THE CONTROL RODS to increase power in a xenon neutron poisoning situation, set them up for the catastrophe. The RBMK reactor was taken far from its normal mode of operation for this accident to occur, even with its less then modernly acceptable design and construction.
Such testing activities here in the US are probably criminal, someone from the NRC or with that knowledge would have to confirm that though.
Libel statements about shift workers at TMI DO NOT CONTRIBUTE to ANY good analysis and lessons learned for the Nuclear Industry.
As for the main topic's discussion of the accidental disclosure of various nuclear facility locations, most of them were probably unclassified anyway, and knowing where something might be (as stuff gets moved and the disclosed locations can change) is not even most of the battle. Physical security at these sights is probably set up on a military as opposed to a police scale, and organized with support from local military assets. The federal government may have the Department of Energy manage nuclear materials for the Department of Defense, but the Department of Defense still owns the materials. As for civilian locations, the guard forces are still fairly military like in nature, with well planned protocols for various events. This accidental disclosure probably does not increase risk in any significant way.
What he did could very possibly be considered assault, or in today's climate of legalities a bio-terrorist attack. I believe the only reason nobody go up and kicked his ass is because of who he is, which is probably the only reason why he has not been arrested by DHS. They arrest other people for mailing unidentified powders as a joke now!
Making a point about how lame some parts of the world can be with diseases doesn't cut the mustard for this kind of stunt, anyone here at slashdot pulling this off would probably be arrested.
It definitely has it's nice points. With the three day weekend every other week, usage of vacation time is more efficient. It gives a weekday during which you can run business hour errands , and if a project is in an emergency, you can squeeze in some extra time to complete things. It is also a nice thing for me as a parent to use the time to go on a lunch date with my wife while the kid is at daycare. Since I consult, I see several schedules, and I like the 9x80s better than most. 4x10's seem too long some days and the regular 8 hour day schedule lacks the nice 3 day weekend.
I hope this schedule works out for you, as everybody's life is different, but I suspect you will find it a nice change.
At my first exposure to the 9x80's schedule the company split into two shifts with half of the company having one Friday off, and the other half having the other. While this may complicate holiday with vacations sometimes, having Fridays with only half the people there made for a more peaceful and productive Friday. But not all companies will split like that.
Michael Palin will make an excellent vice presidential candidate. Awesome.
Sadly no, but think of the possibilities! Debates with fish slapping! Gilliam really could run though, boy, what a ticket that could be. Python for President!
You can google 'tech worker shortage myth' and find various sites that point out the fallacy of the claim that there is a real shortage. You can see loads of undercurrent disgruntlement among engineers and scientists regarding conditions and compensation. But the situation only get worse. You see loads of major companies getting out the litigious steamroller to protect IP too. (Now in full rant mode) How are all of these items related? How is Management Scum?
Let me explain...
IP laws are tweaked to favor the established business over the guy in the garage. So, the guy in the garage can't afford to make the patent profitable on his own anymore after the daunting 10k to 25k$ investment alone to protect it. SO.. he gets a job. Now his new employer want the fledgling inventor to sign IP over on anything developed, SO, what is the point of busting your ass on a friday night for something that your employer is likely to take?? But now the employer wants any and all work you do for them to be innovative as well, and even if you do develop IP for your employer they give you no reward!! The best I have heard from current developers is a patent plaque, an awards dinner, and 200$. Notice no sharing of royalties. The honest bonuses for this is for the Management. To top that off, when some BA degreed marketer who could pass a freshman science course promises a flying car that runs on water, you get your ass chewed for not delivering, let alone falling behind a ridiculously accelerated schedule for an optimistic budget at best! Now.....
Who in their right mind works for all that shit? These kids see their parents who really believe in the coolness of science come home dis-enchanted every day, burnt out on their dream job from hell.
The management team manages the situation of keeping the wages and compensation down by advertizing that they are'nt getting what they want, which is smart cheap inventors willing to sign over profitable IP for mediocre wages. That is the real world translation of 'Tech worker shortage' which is why H1-B Visas tech workers from India in the late 90's and early 00's were brought over on starting wages below the new grad hiring salary.
No, I dont have a solution other than a letter campaign to state legislatures and congress to bring IP laws to make feasible invention for the little guy again.
Sorry, I do not intend hurt any feelings, but the vicious cycle looks roughly as I described above.
I have seen in my career that ABET accreditation means the difference between getting and not getting jobs on a regular basis. ABET.org lists the colleges the accredit, Check there for your schools of interest. Note that your choice might also affect your graduate school options, which might be or might not be somthing you care about.
Yes, our stopping of all commercial reprocessing by Carter has prevented North Korea, Pakistan, and South Africa from succeeding or coming very close in their efforts to proliferate nuclear weapons. And our continued non participation to this day somehow has an effect on Mr. Khan's network of proliferation that is suspected by some to still be active.
And somehow, I am to believe that nuclear is simply evil and not to be considered for any power use what so ever. That somehow, the remaining fissionable material has little energy to offer? That the new transmuted fissionable elements are also of little energy value? And, that the industry should be forbidden to continue because it is imperfect.
Some days I feel the absolute refusal to consider nuclear power warrants the description where if we use the Prometheus analogy where Prometheus brought humanity nuclear power, after the first accident, humanity didn't wait for the gods to torture him, humanity cast the poor bastard out on their own. Simply because they got burned by bad nuclear fire magic in a couple accidents. This refusal to allow an option with so much potential to even be allowed to be used seems so emotionally illogical.
Not that solar isnt bad, but it sure isn't the only option. Solar itself has all of the associated industrial hazards that such semi-conductor processes have. Not to attack Solar, but simply to point out that it is with its own unique hazards and flaws.
I personally believe that nuclear power probably had one of the worst introductions of a new technology into the public arena with its initial introduction to the world as a weapon, and then later with various government related obfuscations of research experiments and processes gone bad. To this day people will say that the ambulance that responded to the SL-1 accident had to be buried because it became radioactive from carrying the men away. The truth being that the ambulance is the Blackfoot County Fairground Ambulance in Idaho, last I heard.
Slashdot Mirror
Humans programmed the car and humans driving near it had an accident with the vehicle. Either you blame the bad driver or the bad programmer, but a human is to blame. Even if it was some sort of self learning system that self reprogrammed, the initial seed was from a human. But, I guess this is probably not what they meant.
I wonder how much of these poll results are affected by this phenomenon of adult children staying home. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/new... These things start a parent to think about their options, such as taking Jonny out to a bar and then the military recruiters' office.
The one thing I never see them ask is "Do I want to enslave myself to the collective?", they are always going on about how they think leveraging my productivity will be great for the collective, but they never ask me if I want to in the first place. Seeing as my productivity is mine to give or keep, all this discussion of the ways they want to spend my production is putting the cart before the horse.
The survey was performed by the New Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Michael Bloomberg is notorious for building organizations to support his anti firearm viewpoints. They will target populations with their poll to get the desired result. I don't trust the poll results because I don't trust the motives of Bloomberg.
As for your claim " Even if a company creates a foundation that gives away money to charity, it is NOT giving shareholders' money away." you are incorrect as all the money in a company belongs to the shareholders after taxes, wages, and debts are paid. That is determined by law. Regardless of your and other's misinterpretations involving corporations and their activities, remember corporation is a definition evolved from "Co-operative Ownership" where a business venture was created by the invested capital that more than one individual provided, such as a water wheel or wind mill powered grain mill owned by multiple farmers who also milled grain of other farmers for a fee, or multiple sailors who pooled resources to buy a ship for their maritime oriented business (fishing, shipping, passenger commerce, etc.). So, if the multiple owners of a corporation choose to give money to a charity, they do not suddenly stop being capitalists and turn into socialists by giving charity. They retain ownership of their means of production, they just choose to give away some of their capital is all. If the SCOTUS does not strictly interpret such actions as within their strict understanding of economics, it does not change what those actions are. The actions of the owners of the capital deciding to spend their capital however they choose in a non-business manner is not an evolution into a new economic theory. A business's true purpose is to provide profit to the owner, if the owner chooses to reinvest those profits within said business, which is their choice. They could give some away out of love of their heart, they could buy groceries, and they could invest in a different venture to diversify their holdings for any number of reasons. Corporations are entities in the sense of Law only for Taxation purposes. as for moral evaluations of charity not applying, you fail in that argument to dig deeper and realize the people owning the business have their own morals and as owners have all the power to spend into them as they feel the need to.
You present the question of how a capitalist economy runs without regulation. Clarification of regulation needs to occur as you have lumped all government action as regulation under a socialist label which is again a red herring. Government under the democratic/republic form of representation which many nations tried to model from Roman Antiquity is based upon the VOLUNTARY FORMATION of government by the people to serve in protection of the common law agreed upon and funded by the people. Taxation was based on paying the government the expenses it cost to protect the capital owned by the citizens. This tax was typically prorated based upon the amount of production capital (e.g. farmland) a citizen owned that was reasonably expected to be protected by the government. Note that this method of proportional taxation of the citizenry based upon land ownership and also proportional voting was also in the origination of the United States of America. Property outside the government's jurisdiction; outside the country, was not protected by the government's laws and forces and not subject to taxation. Hence it was essentially a business arrangement to provide protection for cost to the business owners, essentially a large mutual private security corporation police force/military force. Calling a government police force/military force paid for and operated in the interest of the business owners to protect their capital is hardly socialist. It is however a form of voluntary self-imposed regulation where the citizens get to determine how the government is used.
"True capitalists don't pay someone unless they absolutely have to." This is not an accurate statement. There is nothing inherent in capitalism that requires this. Capitalists give to charity, it is called ‘giving to charity’ because it is a gift not a requirement.
"As long as you have concentration of capital, you will have increasing income inequality." Note that concentration of capital = inequality. Thus your statement is very easily paraphrased to logically mean the following: ‘as long as you have inequality, you have increasing inequality.’ which does not logically hold. It is entirely possible to have inequality in a static sense without dynamic growth or decay. This is one of the reasons why people in general do not like stagnant economies due to the reduced rate of making a change.
Capital is economically defined as the produced goods or the non-financial assets used to produce those goods. To claim that income inequality of the kind observed in the US "is how all capitalist systems end up. It's happened in large part because there has been an all-out attack by corporations and government on labor unions. " is a red herring pure and simple. Attacking the labor unions, or not attacking the labor unions by any, either, or all antagonists of labor unions will have no economic scale effect on the inequality observed currently. Inequality is an inherent trait of any system of trade, barter, transfer, or distribution, otherwise the system would not exist. Inequality is the reason for a trade to occur, and continues to exist after the trade occurs because inequality is created with the creation of wealth, not because of some means of trade or distribution. Inequality is the result of creating more than exists elsewhere, or the result of destroying so there is less than exists elsewhere.
Ownership as determined by law involves determining who has certain rights and duties over the property. So if a regulation set by the government on a piece of capital determines how/when/what/where/and why you may use your capital for production, then effectively the government has in some way enacted ownership over your means of production. Thus, they have enacted socialism in some way.
Happiness = (Location) x (Pay) x (entertainment value or pleasantness of what you are doing)
try to normalize all inputs to a scale of 0 to 2, yielding a result ranging from 0 to 8. You will quickly see that any one thing can kill the whole deal (multiplying by 0 tends to do that), and that some things can only compensate for inadequacies to a limited extent. So... in a practical sense, this quantitative answer to such qualitative things as job pay, location, and how much you like what you are doing, might help make the analysis comparison easier. Tweaking this to fit your specific situation makes all the sense in the world. Good Luck!
1) Just to be clear: There are NO 80 year old reactors. If Chicago-Pile 1 was still operating, it would turn 70 this year. The oldest currently operating nuclear reactor is the Oyster Creek facility. This reactor came online December 23rd 1969 making it 42 years old curerntly. This is according to Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oyster_Creek_Nuclear_Generating_Station
2) All NRC regulated reactors have maintenance performed on the systems every outage, to the point that much of the facility is newer than the day it turned on. This is due to maintenance and repair activity, as well as upgrades to improve efficiency. The article calls this "midlife refurbishment". The industry does this because it is easier and less costly than a new reactor. The thought process of the industry is that it is easier to tear down and rebuild under the existing license than it is to get approval for a new license. If the industry could feasibly replace a reactor vessel, I would bet they would.
3) ASME Boiler and Pressure Vessel Code Section 3 is a good code. Creep, Fatigue, Corrosion, and many other issues are addressed in this code that the non-nuclear codes for B&PV only tough upon exotic need, and then refer the engineer to the section 3 code. I encourage you to read it.
4) Some reactor operators send material samples to the Advanced Test Reactor at the INL for accelerated radiation age testing. This information is sought by the reactor operators to gain a better understanding for themselves about their own equipment.
5) Reactors are designed for a much longer life than 40 years, but the NRC set the 40 year license to force a mid-life review. Reactors get far better treatment than any car or plane that most people have ever have ridden in. In this context, a 40 year old reactor properly maintained is very possibly not a safety concern.
6) The Davis-Besse RPV head mentioned by the article was a case of criminal conduct in the eyes of some people, and is not considered normal operating behavior by people I have met from the industry. Whatever the facts are, the indictment can be found here. http://www.corporatecrimereporter.com/documents/indictment.pdf
7) Reactors designed to operated under the NRC have a "defense in depth" safety approach. The reactor and facilities are given a design basis accident that is a conservative forecasting of potential accident scenarios.
8) The NRC has a glossary available to you http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/basic-ref/glossary.html note the term "meltdown" is not there. Many people associated with the nuclear field feel that it is a poor term that does not adequately describe a problem's behavior or severity. This is borne out of the use of the term for several reactor failures that all had different designs, behaviors, and severity of failure.
9) New reactor designs offer some stimulating improvements. The Generation 4 reactor effort can be found at http://www.gen-4.org/ currently the US is operating Gen 2 reactors.
"The decay heat, which is 7% of 1000 MW"
IIRC, the reactors were 1000MW *electrical* output. Because of thermal efficiencies of steam generators of around 35%, I believe that means the thermal output of each reactor would have been about 1000/.35 ~= 2800 MW thermal energy.
So, instead of 7% of 1000MW = 70MW, I think you're looking at 7% of 2800 = 196MW.
That's a LOT of heat to get rid of, even if it is a small percentage of the 2800MW full output.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_Nuclear_Power_Plant shows the plant #2 at 784MW for electrical power out.
Assuming 30% thermal efficiency (35% seems high for a 1973 reactor, but I am guessing honestly), then the full thermal load would be ~2600 MW. 7% of that would be 183MW. So, you aren't too far off.
Not sure what the water volume of the reactor would be, but if you ever have a hard time falling asleep the NRC has the standards for a BWR/4 reactor (plant #2) at this site http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/nuregs/staff/sr1433/r3/v1/sr1433r3v1.pdf Note that page 1.1-5 talks about the RTP (Rated Thermal Power) of the heat transfer of the core to the coolant being 2436MW. Admittedly this is a US document but GE (the reactor designer) has usually made a point to support customer upgrades to US-NRC standards.
then you could figure the boil off rate assuming the 7% was unchanging (which it isn't, right off hand I don't recall the reported decay rate of that level). Truth is, 12 days later this won't even be close to 7% thermal load. 12 days later put the amount of Iodine through about 1.5 half lives so there would be much less Iodine left. Obviously other decay product would be on their own schedule. So, one might argue that the measurements show a restart, but if there was one, it is highly likely that it was a small localized one.
The physical laws do not lie or change, but I and others have been known to make errors in measurements and observations.
aside from this speculation of what went on based on the measurements they claim to have made.....
I find all this discusion about oceanic releases interesting since there are 5 USSR nuclear subs (3 of which had 2 reactors each), 2 US subs (with one 5SW reactor each) and one of the original 3 cores of the Lenin nuclear ice breaker all sunk in the ocean. Many of these 11 sunken reactors are in the Atlantic some up north nearer Russia, partially spent fuel and all.
Due to the US Department Of Defense plutonium breeding activities at the Hanford Nuclear Facilities many millions of curies were released into the Columbia River by primary coolant water used in the reactors there. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanford_Site http://toxipedia.org/display/wanmec/River+Releases%2C+Columbia+River
then there is the release made by coal plants which according to this article is quite significant. http://www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/rev26-34/text/colmain.html It makes an interesting point that the coal plants in the world release more uranium in their wastes than "...dozens of nuclear reactor fuel loadings...".
I respect the need for environmental controls, but I get annoyed by much of the 'sky is falling' 'the world is ending' mentality that seems to underlie much of popular news on this issue in general. Much of the science can be measured and thought about rationally. I appreciate the intention of this thread to actually put numbers to their discussion.
Reviewing North Carolina Law 89C23 which tells you that you aren't supposed to "practice" engineering without a license, along with 89C3 which gives the definitions of the terms used like "practice" you will find that a person has to make the claim to be a "professional engineer" {see section (6)a of 89C3} for their activities to be construed to be the "practice of engineering".
Laws are written this way to point out that while most anyone can technically fill a job title of "engineer" if they have the smarts at your local company making widgets, you are not allowed to provide "engineering services" to the public. What that usually means is that you are not allowed to design things that affect public safety. You are however fully within the law to work as an engineer for IBM, Caterpillar, Boeing, etc. Usually even if a company has engineering services, few engineers are actually licensed, they just work under the direct supervision of the license engineer who takes ultimate responsibility for the design.
With this in mind, unless David N. Cox made the claim that he was a licensed engineer or was providing engineering services, he and others like him are within the letter and spirit of the law. I read nowhere in the article that he made the claim he was an engineer, nor sealed/stamped the report/calculation/designs he provided as part of his petition. Unless he made the claims or sealed/stamped the articles associated with his petition and the article simply failed to state that, I believe Mr. Cox is probably innocent of the allegations made against him.
The chapter of the North Carolina Law relevant to this is found at this web location. http://www.ncga.state.nc.us/gascripts/Statutes/StatutesTOC.pl?Chapter=0089C
The NC engineering board will tell, but I am going to guess that they will rule in favor or Mr. Cox.
huh, only 78 posts, and the web video on the page played. I remember when the page would have crumbled under the slashdot effect for such a topic as this. Well I am happy to hear this hurdle has been overcome for the making of the movies.
I just figure that this sort of thing would bring up some people's need for speed in an expensive way.
Having been there, Fall City probably needs an AA program more than it needs a internet addiction program
The US National Reactor Testing Station which is now the Idaho National Lab performed the Loss of Fluid Tests (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fuel_response_to_reactor_accidents#LOFT) to better understand what a loss of coolant accident would mean (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_of_coolant_accident). Understanding that the loss of water which acts as both coolant and moderator for fast neutrons means the reaction cannot continue in a PWR reactor. The prevention of a Chernobyl like accident in the TMI reactor is far beyond 'Luck' as it was designed into the PWR from years of testing that occurred. The intent was to achieve what is known as 'Passive nuclear safety" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_nuclear_safety) which is a driving fundamental engineering for all modern reactors.
The Chernobyl reactor did not benefit from this fundamental engineering in the reactor design, and to top it off, it was revealed that they were performing a very risky and unwise test of testing an untested emergency core cooling system (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster#Planning_the_test_of_the_safety_device) with many unconfirmed assumptions of turbine momentum and pump power being made used as excuses to perform the test on a full scale power reactor instead of in a lab reactor or modeling prior to accident with safety contingencies set up to prevent excursions. This combined with the low power level in the reactor and the impatience to approach such a condition properly, they added water and MANUALLY REMOVED THE CONTROL RODS to increase power in a xenon neutron poisoning situation, set them up for the catastrophe. The RBMK reactor was taken far from its normal mode of operation for this accident to occur, even with its less then modernly acceptable design and construction.
Such testing activities here in the US are probably criminal, someone from the NRC or with that knowledge would have to confirm that though.
Libel statements about shift workers at TMI DO NOT CONTRIBUTE to ANY good analysis and lessons learned for the Nuclear Industry.
As for the main topic's discussion of the accidental disclosure of various nuclear facility locations, most of them were probably unclassified anyway, and knowing where something might be (as stuff gets moved and the disclosed locations can change) is not even most of the battle. Physical security at these sights is probably set up on a military as opposed to a police scale, and organized with support from local military assets. The federal government may have the Department of Energy manage nuclear materials for the Department of Defense, but the Department of Defense still owns the materials. As for civilian locations, the guard forces are still fairly military like in nature, with well planned protocols for various events. This accidental disclosure probably does not increase risk in any significant way.
Darkhelmet: "There's only one man who would dare give me the raspberry: Lone Star!"
Isn't that what committees and legislative bodies do?
Making a point about how lame some parts of the world can be with diseases doesn't cut the mustard for this kind of stunt, anyone here at slashdot pulling this off would probably be arrested.
I hope this schedule works out for you, as everybody's life is different, but I suspect you will find it a nice change.
At my first exposure to the 9x80's schedule the company split into two shifts with half of the company having one Friday off, and the other half having the other. While this may complicate holiday with vacations sometimes, having Fridays with only half the people there made for a more peaceful and productive Friday. But not all companies will split like that.
They had nominated Michael Palin instead!
Michael Palin will make an excellent vice presidential candidate. Awesome.
Sadly no, but think of the possibilities! Debates with fish slapping! Gilliam really could run though, boy, what a ticket that could be. Python for President!
You can google 'tech worker shortage myth' and find various sites that point out the fallacy of the claim that there is a real shortage. You can see loads of undercurrent disgruntlement among engineers and scientists regarding conditions and compensation. But the situation only get worse. You see loads of major companies getting out the litigious steamroller to protect IP too. (Now in full rant mode) How are all of these items related? How is Management Scum?
Let me explain...
IP laws are tweaked to favor the established business over the guy in the garage. So, the guy in the garage can't afford to make the patent profitable on his own anymore after the daunting 10k to 25k$ investment alone to protect it. SO.. he gets a job. Now his new employer want the fledgling inventor to sign IP over on anything developed, SO, what is the point of busting your ass on a friday night for something that your employer is likely to take?? But now the employer wants any and all work you do for them to be innovative as well, and even if you do develop IP for your employer they give you no reward!! The best I have heard from current developers is a patent plaque, an awards dinner, and 200$. Notice no sharing of royalties. The honest bonuses for this is for the Management. To top that off, when some BA degreed marketer who could pass a freshman science course promises a flying car that runs on water, you get your ass chewed for not delivering, let alone falling behind a ridiculously accelerated schedule for an optimistic budget at best! Now .....
Who in their right mind works for all that shit? These kids see their parents who really believe in the coolness of science come home dis-enchanted every day, burnt out on their dream job from hell.
The management team manages the situation of keeping the wages and compensation down by advertizing that they are'nt getting what they want, which is smart cheap inventors willing to sign over profitable IP for mediocre wages. That is the real world translation of 'Tech worker shortage' which is why H1-B Visas tech workers from India in the late 90's and early 00's were brought over on starting wages below the new grad hiring salary.
No, I dont have a solution other than a letter campaign to state legislatures and congress to bring IP laws to make feasible invention for the little guy again.
Sorry, I do not intend hurt any feelings, but the vicious cycle looks roughly as I described above.
I have seen in my career that ABET accreditation means the difference between getting and not getting jobs on a regular basis. ABET.org lists the colleges the accredit, Check there for your schools of interest. Note that your choice might also affect your graduate school options, which might be or might not be somthing you care about.
the evident similarities to a group I gamed with back in '02 are disturbing. This phenomena is more wide spread than I thought.
And somehow, I am to believe that nuclear is simply evil and not to be considered for any power use what so ever. That somehow, the remaining fissionable material has little energy to offer? That the new transmuted fissionable elements are also of little energy value? And, that the industry should be forbidden to continue because it is imperfect.
Some days I feel the absolute refusal to consider nuclear power warrants the description where if we use the Prometheus analogy where Prometheus brought humanity nuclear power, after the first accident, humanity didn't wait for the gods to torture him, humanity cast the poor bastard out on their own. Simply because they got burned by bad nuclear fire magic in a couple accidents. This refusal to allow an option with so much potential to even be allowed to be used seems so emotionally illogical.
Not that solar isnt bad, but it sure isn't the only option. Solar itself has all of the associated industrial hazards that such semi-conductor processes have. Not to attack Solar, but simply to point out that it is with its own unique hazards and flaws.
I personally believe that nuclear power probably had one of the worst introductions of a new technology into the public arena with its initial introduction to the world as a weapon, and then later with various government related obfuscations of research experiments and processes gone bad. To this day people will say that the ambulance that responded to the SL-1 accident had to be buried because it became radioactive from carrying the men away. The truth being that the ambulance is the Blackfoot County Fairground Ambulance in Idaho, last I heard.
Hmmmm, we can recycle used nuclear fuel, try recycling used coal.