Ironically, your left nut is probably worth significantly less than even $20,000.
No what's ironic is that while it's my left nut that I would find it hard to give up, my right nut is a solid gold with diamond inlay prosthetic worth a lot more thank $20k.
I for one don't think its awesome and I am sure I am not the only one. What's so awesome about it?
Seeing earth from space. Leaving the atmosphere. If I have to say more, then there's nothing more I can say because you aren't the kind of kid who looked at the stars and imagined being an astronaut. This is the closest thing you can get. It may be the closest thing we get in our lifetimes.
First, it is completely pointless. It is not like suborbital flight generates useful science, or launches satellites or anything. It sole purpose is just idiotic entertainment for the rich.
Gotcha. Nothing done for just fun can be awesome. Nothing you personally experience that isn't useful is by definition not awesome.
You're kidding me, right? Let me know if you are or not, because it would help me understand if I knew that I was just talking to the most boring person ever.
We were able to make real orbital flights in 1961
You sure as fuck couldn't. We're talking about civilians here. The point is not "what is the limit of human capability". We're talking about "What could you, some random non-astronaut, do?" And by that standard, this is an opportunity that has never been seen before. Still exclusive now due to the price, but they're talking relatively short timeframes to reduce that cost by an order of magnitude. Really, you have to completely lack perspective and imagination not to see how this is new.
Now, if we could dock with the ISS, that would be inbcredible! Not in our life time though.
What's so incredible about that? We've had space stations since 1971. It's not like you would get to do any useful science or launch a satellite. The sole purpose would be for a stupid joyride stunt and a little guided tour, idiotic entertainment for idiots. *snark snark snark*
And why the hell would you pay $200k for a suborbital flight for a couple minutes?
I don't get why people keep talking about how it's suborbital, like that means it isn't completely fucking awesome. I'm serious, I just don't get it.
I mean, it's almost as if you're saying that if I gave you a free ticket aboard Spaceship Two, you'd begrudgingly take it while muttering "what's the point?", and then once in space you'd be yawning and saying "Sure we're outside the atmosphere but it's not orbital" while the rest of us are shitting our pants at the incredible experience we're having, seeing earth from space.
Is that the wrong impression? Are you just saying orbital would be cooler, but not actually denying that suborbital, if that's all you could get, would still be fucking sweet? I hope so, because otherwise there's just going to be too big a gap between our thinking to overcome.
But if so, then the answer to "why the hell would you pay $200k for a suborbital flight for a couple minutes?" is simple: Because that's how much it costs, that's how high it gets you, and that's how long it lasts, to do one of the most incredible things you may ever have the chance to do in your life.
For people who can afford $200k for a luxury, of which there are quite a few, this must seem like a great deal. If the price gets down to $20k like they suggest, then I'm going to be scrounging up my savings for the day when I will leave the planet's atmosphere, even if briefly. I know I sure as flying fuck won't be complaining that I'm only 100km above the earth's surface, doing something my father and father's father would have given their left nuts to do.
(Though, they don't say if a deposit is 100% the cost, so it might be more people)
Oh and yeah, it's pretty much the definition of a deposit that it isn't 100% of the cost. Putting down a "deposit" that is 100% of the cost is called "paying in advance". Combine this with the fact that Branson is out to make money and thus probably isn't building extra vehicles for no reason, and I think it's safe to say that $40m in deposits represents a lot more than 200 people.
I don't understand the appeal. OK, so you left Earth's atmosphere for a couple of minutes.
The appeal is seeing the Earth from space. Going to space, even if for just a couple minutes. Of doing something that people born 50 years ago dreamed of doing but had no chance of happening for all but the tiny handful who became astronauts. Of seeing my home planet from a perspective I otherwise would be unable to. I can't even fathom how that is unappealing.
I now have as a goal in my life to see the earth from space. Amazingly, astoundingly, this goal does not look completely unreasonable or unrealistic. In fact, it's beginning to look like there's a good chance I'll be able to do it without doing anything more than setting aside some savings for that purpose. And it's because of people who are trying to do what is practical, rather than shooting for the stars.
Where's my 2001 space station?
Currently non-existent and not likely to exist any time soon and same with a way to get to such a station, were it to exist, that is even in the realm of affordability.
So you can poo-poo reality because it doesn't match your ideal dream, but I for one am pretty damn excited about Virgin Galactic. If commercial space flight continues to advance such that at some point orbital flights are reasonable, then great but I don't think you're going to get there directly, and if it doesn't happen I'll take the next best thing thanks.
That's one of the major plot threads in Robert Rankin's novel, Armageddon: The Musical. The entire purpose of the Earth is to provide TV entertainment for an alien civilization who has been manipulating humans into doing things to please their viewers and have decided to end the series with a huge apocalypse.
LOL. In Vonnegut's Sirens of Titan, the entirety of human history is the result of long-distance alien manipulation aimed at getting us to produce and then deliver a replacement part -- literally a piece of scrap from the floor of a Martian machine shop -- to an alien explorer/messenger whose ship crash-landed on Titan millennia ago. Stonehenge, the Great Wall of China, and other landmarks were actually messages in the alien's language telling it that the replacement part was coming.
Could it be that right wingers have forgotten that the central premise of Reagan's vision was that the cold war is a war that would be won based on having more freedom
Well, freedom and nuke-powered space lasers, but I get your point.:)
Probe designate r_jensen11 appears to be defective. We should pick him up on our next maintenance run for reprogramming. Recommend Regimen 7: "Probe 'em till he'd rather be the probe".
But, they can be blow up.. If one uses a nuclear weapon on them, and the effect would be most devastating.
Radioactive isotopes from 20 or 30 years worth of reactor operation spread across the countryside would kill or cripple most survivors. Far (1000-5000x) worse than the weapon detonated on a average target. The average human lifespan in the widespread fallout areas, (several states contaminated for thousand years), would decrease to twenty years or less.
You're kidding, right? Your biggest concern is having nuclear plants turned into giant 'dirty bombs', in a situation where we're attacked by an enemy willing and capable of hitting us with nuclear bunker-buster ICBMs? You must realize that to get the effect you're talking about you'd have to penetrate all containment structures and underground storage before detonation and have a yield much bigger than some suitcase nuke. And that if lethal fallout is the goal, you can accomplish that with nukes alone. Efficient high-yield devices that don't produce much radioactive fallout are good if you want tactical weapons as they did as the Cold War progressed, but they don't have to be designed that way.
I mean I'm just making sure we're on the same page here -- that we shouldn't build nuclear reactors because in a situation where we're facing nuclear annihilation, those plants might make it somewhat more annihilate-y.
Personally I'd think having the missiles lobbed at us sounds like the bigger problem, and without that the nuclear plant dirty bombs aren't a problem either. So, let's avoid having ICBMs launched at us.
To me, providing an enemy the perfect target by which they can inflict a knock out blow, boarders upon insanity!
Yeah, I think you were already overestimating the damage, but a knock-out blow? Come on. You could hit an extra major population center or two, but you couldn't cripple the country. Especially not its ability to respond militarily (a legacy of the Cold War and why the nuclear weapons became all about strategic targeting).
It helps, btw, if you have vastly less waste that is of a type that is not long-lived, like from breeders.
This insanity is furthur compounded by people avocating widescale use of this technology in a world populated with mentally unstable national leaders!!!
Yes, because you'd have to be mad to bring MAD down upon yourself. Heh, get it? But seriously, there are mentally unstable national leaders, but there are no national leaders who don't want power and don't want to keep it. MAD worked against freaking Stalin, and what did he care if his people died in a nuclear war; what, it's only okay when he kills them by the millions? No, he was unwilling to sacrifice his country and thus his power to ensure that he destroyed ours. Kim Jong Il, that crazy little bastard with delusions of grandeur, he's not going to destroy the only thing that makes him relevant in this universe. That's why he never does anything more than publicity stunts to get aid. The bomb to him means a way to be sure we won't take him out, and even then South Korea or Japan are the implied targets of this saber rattling. Sure he's unstable, but that doesn't mean there's no logic at all behind his actions. The suicide bomber type doesn't usually make it as a leader whether of a brutal dictatorship or terrorist group. MAD still works. We've dealt with his type and worse and we will again.
The idea of an AI that learns from the players sounds great when you're talking about a bot for Multiplayer Shooter 2010 developing tactics and strategies without explicit programming, or an NPC partner in a stealth gaming learning how not to bash their face into walls and then walk off a cliff into lava. Awesome, bring on the learned emergent behavior!
But dialogue? Oh lord no, please don't let the AI's learn how to "converse" from players. Because the last thing I need is to have AIs in games screaming "Shitcock!" or calling me a fag a thousand times in a row with computerized speed and efficiency.
See that is the problem. Centralized systems. The reason why computer technology and the internet has gone exponential is because of its distributed nature and lack of central control.
Computer technology went exponential because we use computers to design computers, so the development of the next generation benefits from the advance of the previous. The reason why the internet has gone exponential is because it's a network, and the network effect is that the utility of the network is proportional to the number of connections, i.e. the number of nodes factorial.
Neither case has anything to do with power generation.
Power plants are generally more efficient the larger they are. That's why it's better to drive an electric vehicle that is supplied by a coal power plant than to drive an ICE -- the tiny engine is less efficient, and more costly to add environmental controls to, than the huge stationary plant. That's why commercial wind farms use the largest possible blades they can legally carry on the roads.
Now I'd be fine with a miniature nuclear reactor in my basement but I'm sure Uncle Sam would not approve.
And if they did, the amount of oversight required to assure the safety of a nuclear reactor in your, your neighbor's, and everyone in your town's basement would make it prohibitively expensive. Nuclear reactors are another case where efficiency scales with size, and not just in terms of the power generation itself, but in terms of the overhead of building a safe and reliable reactor.
If I wanted to be able to produce my own power and get off the grid, then that leaves with wind or solar. I'll go with solar simply because of less moving parts.
Now if everyone did this on on top of every house there would no longer be a need for centralized systems in which allows for greater flexibility of the system.
Except home solar simply can't provide sufficient power for everyone, or even most people, and even those who live in places where it is highly economical, even they can't leave the grid entirely. I live in such a place, and while I'm considering getting rooftop solar installed in the next few years, I hold no illusions that this will let me give the finger to the utility company and be "independent".
We will need a common, if not centralized, system.
Arguably if we did go nuclear the incentive for distributed systems and micro-generation would go under. I'd rather since more independent systems in which we become more self reliant.
I'm not necessarily even arguing for a centralized system. I'm arguing that we simply cannot produce all the energy we need via solar or wind power for the foreseeable future. With fission we can. It doesn't necessarily have to be huge centralized reactors, they can be localized small units like the pebble-bed "batteries" you may have heard about on/. before.
Though to really solve the issues with nuclear, like waste management via breeding, you really will need a centralized system to have anything close to sufficient efficiency.
-We have access to plentiful and cheap food today. -We don't die of starvation.
Famines were more common in the past, but still largely isolated incidents. Since the dawn of agriculture, people have frequently had access to plentiful food. It's that very fact that allowed for the diversification of professions and the creation of nation-states.
-We live long enough to get cancer.
If you survived birth and dodged the serious early childhood diseases, and weren't drafted into any wars, then you had a good chance of living a long and healthy life, more than long enough for you to get cancer.
Life expectancy rates are calculated using the probabilistic definition of "expected", meaning simply the average, and are measured from birth. Which means extremely high infant mortality rates like they had before doctors figured out to wash their hands before entering the delivery room and other such medical innovations dragged the average down tremendously.
A "life expectancy" of 30 years does not mean a 40-year-old was an old man with one foot in the grave! As the WP page for life expectancy says: "It is important to note that life expectancy rises sharply in all cases for those who reach puberty. A pre 20th Century individual who lived past the teenage years could expect to live to an age close to the life expectancy of today."
Right, because there are no people that incorporate their farm business, or work for farmers who have incorporated their business. Incorporated businesses are Teh Evil!
Oh come on. You know what he meant. Large Corporations, the multinationals and large scale farm operations. The statement was clearly regarding size and power, not a particular type of tax arrangement.
I'd rather have that every once in awhile, that 100% lean and flavorless every day.
Buffalo and ostrich are both ~98% lean naturally, and fucking delicious imo though that may just be compared to the high-density chemical-soup raised beef steak sitting next to them, not the steaks of yore you're talking about.
Yeah, don't people remember how one of the first questions asked was "If they had been fully aware of the damage to the shuttle, could they have taken refuge on the ISS?" and the answer was "No way, the shuttle didn't have nearly enough fuel to reach the ISS orbit."
True, but nukes only get compared to coal on this basis. I never hear of any accidents involving solar or wind, and certainly no deaths. Apparently some sheep have to move a few feet when they actually put the turbines up.
Wind and solar power are great. But we need a large-scale power plant to satisfy the base load, and wind and solar aren't going to do that any time soon. Nuclear fission is currently the best option for providing the massive amount of energy we need with a minimum of safety and environmental risks.
We should definitely be building more wind farms, and large-scale solar farms too (the kind that use a fluid and a turbine, not photovoltaic panels), too.
Oh hey look it's the link I already posted! Thanks Mr. AC for educating me!
Yes, mining deaths are vastly reduced today in the U.S. but they are still an order of magnitude higher (in terms of rate) in China, and once you go back 40-50 years and more they were in the U.S. too.
The biggest problem with the reactor at Chernobyl is that the design did not include a concrete vault capable of containing the clouds of debris ejected from the event site.
Yeah, exactly. With the simple expedience of a concrete dome, the Chernobyl disaster would have been substantially smaller, like Three Mile Island was, where nobody died in the immediate aftermath. Three Mile Island, which was the worst-case failure scenario -- coolant failure and all control rods locked out of the core. So the core got too hot and melted and fell into the graphite bed beneath, slowing the reaction and ending the threat. Combined with the containment shell, very little contamination was released into the environment. It was a disaster to be sure, but a small one in the grand scheme of industrial accidents. It was a design that took failure into a account and thus minimized the impact. And designs have only gotten better since then.
Honestly, people act like they still think nuclear reactors can blow up like atom bombs. "Oh my god, humanity is not ready for this power!" Yeah, nuclear weapons maybe we weren't ready for, I think fission reactors to light up our homes are within our acceptable risk level given every other human endeavor ever.
I grew up in the coal mining regions of the USA. Care to take a shot at the statistics on "Black Lung" alone?
I thought the AC had balls trying to pull the "nuclear power is more dangerous than coal" gambit on just an average person with common knowledge, but damn... Seriously, I went through terrible schooling, and I know how dangerous mining and in particular coal mining is. I know that "black lung" is not a euphemistic name for the ailment.
"human life doesnt really have much value if its not yours." The war cry of the communist/socialist/environmentalist elitist. Rail against everything. Decry every solution as "inhumane", all the while proposing fantasy ideas that have no merit or foundation in reason.
I think it's actually a statist argument, which I've realized there are a lot more of on the left than I thought. The apparent motivation may vary slightly, but the mentality is all about not thinking anything new is good enough and not wanting to actually change. So they blow any problem with the new thing out of proportion and fragrantly ignoring the massive problems with the status quo.
It's the same kind who when talking about Hybrids suddenly remember that steel and plastic and so forth don't magically appear in auto factories. Or suddenly give a flying shit about a few birds being killed when windows kill many orders of magnitude more.
Hell, real socialists are at least about trying to use state power to accomplish things that are better if not ideal. The ideal is always what the statist says they want, but nothing realistic ever lives up to the ideal, so better not do anything.
Frankly, I don't see much difference between the liberal and conservative viewpoints that lead to statism. Both are unrealistic, both involve a rosy-eyed and largely ignorant view of the past, and are about fear of change. I want to liken the logic to the people who don't want to vaccinate their children out of complete and abject ignorance of what life was like when smallpox was running rampant, but if they were instead trying to keep vaccines from ever being deployed in the first place.
When confronted with logic or even a touch of rational debate, lefties put on their super hero masks and start talking about "the value of life".
Well, if it makes you feel any better, if I accepted a one-dimensional view of politics I'd have to call myself a lefty but I find the rational arguments for nuclear power very compelling. But hey. That's why I don't.
btw the statement quoted above is a lie. You are a liar, antirelic. Including the catastrophes in the accounting is precisely what nuclear proponents don't do (didn't you get the memo?) because of the obvious. Luckily for you and them, as it turns out, human life doesn't really have much value if its not yours.
You're a liar, Mr. AC, or just an ignorant retard, because you apparently have no clue how many people die mining coal. Not so many per year in a country like the U.S. (compared to how many in modern times for nuclear), but still thousands per year in China, which is how things were not that long ago even in the 1st World. Have more people died mining coal than have died as a result of nuclear power, even counting those killed intentionally by atomic bombs? Yes.
But yes, those human lives don't have much value since you had no clue they existed.
If you only count accidents, then the total deaths from nuclear power is less than a single year of coal mining in China, or just a few years of mining in the U.S. in the period when the nuclear disasters occurred. In the year Three Mile Island occured, the second worst accident ever, more people died mining in the U.S. than died from the incident. Yes that includes long-term health effects, which coal mining isn't very good for either if you didn't know.
It's not the greatest comparison ever, since ultimately what matters is modern safety standards in the country in question (the U.S. in this case). It is a true comparison though. And you'd still be very hard-pressed and hard-tarded to suggest that nuclear power is more dangerous than coal power today.
Remember when our last President thought it would be a great idea to replace Social Security with individual investment accounts?
Remember the people who were championing it? Maybe not the same people as those running the nuke plants, but they wore similar clothes and have similar titles. Is it really that surprising they'd think this way?
It has less polution, but the polution is still radioactive.
I have shocking news for you: Your granite counter top is radioactive! OH NOES.
It has less change of a meltdown, but if that meltdown occurs, and it will, it's no difference from chernobyle, except this one wil be bigger.
Yeah. Because it's not like the Chernobyl disaster had anything to do with the design of the reactor (ignoring that even with that horrible design it took ridiculous amounts of human stupidity to make it happen since I'm assuming that's what you're assuming will always happen). It's not like you can design a reactor so that it can't meltdown, or can't meltdown in such a way that it explodes and blows its containment. It's not like the next and only other major nuclear accident was far smaller than Chernobyl. And it's not like we learned anything from that with regards to reactor design... For example self-regulating designs where the reactor getting too hot means the reaction will slow down. Nope, that doesn't exist.
No, no matter what, meltdowns are inevitable, and will be bigger than previous ones, because... why, again?
We really are not ready for this kind of power as mankind. Once we find a solution for the radioactive waste we will be.
Solution: Re-use it until it is no longer useful as a radioactive fuel of any kind, meaning it is no longer particularly radioactive and thus not a particular danger. Then stick it in the ground without having to worry about security or stability since it's neither useful nor particularly dangerous. Yes the half-life will be really long, but half-life is inversely proportional to radioactivity which is entirely the point.
So, I guess we're ready! Bring on the nuclear reactors!
Till that time... there is always the sun.
Yeah we're a long way from producing all our energy from the sun (directly anyway). I'm all for more of it, including solar-powered microwave satellites. Oh but wait, surely there's no way to design one such that it doesn't fry people on the ground in a swatch of destruction!
Still a shame someone flagged me as flamebait instead of discussing our different views. Cause flamebait i Was not.
Indeed that was an unfair mod, and they were almost certainly using it as a surrogate for "-1, uninformed paranoia" which doesn't exist for good reason.
Slashdot Mirror
Ironically, your left nut is probably worth significantly less than even $20,000.
No what's ironic is that while it's my left nut that I would find it hard to give up, my right nut is a solid gold with diamond inlay prosthetic worth a lot more thank $20k.
I for one don't think its awesome and I am sure I am not the only one. What's so awesome about it?
Seeing earth from space. Leaving the atmosphere. If I have to say more, then there's nothing more I can say because you aren't the kind of kid who looked at the stars and imagined being an astronaut. This is the closest thing you can get. It may be the closest thing we get in our lifetimes.
First, it is completely pointless. It is not like suborbital flight generates useful science, or launches satellites or anything. It sole purpose is just idiotic entertainment for the rich.
Gotcha. Nothing done for just fun can be awesome. Nothing you personally experience that isn't useful is by definition not awesome.
You're kidding me, right? Let me know if you are or not, because it would help me understand if I knew that I was just talking to the most boring person ever.
We were able to make real orbital flights in 1961
You sure as fuck couldn't. We're talking about civilians here. The point is not "what is the limit of human capability". We're talking about "What could you, some random non-astronaut, do?" And by that standard, this is an opportunity that has never been seen before. Still exclusive now due to the price, but they're talking relatively short timeframes to reduce that cost by an order of magnitude. Really, you have to completely lack perspective and imagination not to see how this is new.
Now, if we could dock with the ISS, that would be inbcredible! Not in our life time though.
What's so incredible about that? We've had space stations since 1971. It's not like you would get to do any useful science or launch a satellite. The sole purpose would be for a stupid joyride stunt and a little guided tour, idiotic entertainment for idiots. *snark snark snark*
And why the hell would you pay $200k for a suborbital flight for a couple minutes?
I don't get why people keep talking about how it's suborbital, like that means it isn't completely fucking awesome. I'm serious, I just don't get it.
I mean, it's almost as if you're saying that if I gave you a free ticket aboard Spaceship Two, you'd begrudgingly take it while muttering "what's the point?", and then once in space you'd be yawning and saying "Sure we're outside the atmosphere but it's not orbital" while the rest of us are shitting our pants at the incredible experience we're having, seeing earth from space.
Is that the wrong impression? Are you just saying orbital would be cooler, but not actually denying that suborbital, if that's all you could get, would still be fucking sweet? I hope so, because otherwise there's just going to be too big a gap between our thinking to overcome.
But if so, then the answer to "why the hell would you pay $200k for a suborbital flight for a couple minutes?" is simple: Because that's how much it costs, that's how high it gets you, and that's how long it lasts, to do one of the most incredible things you may ever have the chance to do in your life.
For people who can afford $200k for a luxury, of which there are quite a few, this must seem like a great deal. If the price gets down to $20k like they suggest, then I'm going to be scrounging up my savings for the day when I will leave the planet's atmosphere, even if briefly. I know I sure as flying fuck won't be complaining that I'm only 100km above the earth's surface, doing something my father and father's father would have given their left nuts to do.
(Though, they don't say if a deposit is 100% the cost, so it might be more people)
Oh and yeah, it's pretty much the definition of a deposit that it isn't 100% of the cost. Putting down a "deposit" that is 100% of the cost is called "paying in advance". Combine this with the fact that Branson is out to make money and thus probably isn't building extra vehicles for no reason, and I think it's safe to say that $40m in deposits represents a lot more than 200 people.
I don't understand the appeal. OK, so you left Earth's atmosphere for a couple of minutes.
The appeal is seeing the Earth from space. Going to space, even if for just a couple minutes. Of doing something that people born 50 years ago dreamed of doing but had no chance of happening for all but the tiny handful who became astronauts. Of seeing my home planet from a perspective I otherwise would be unable to. I can't even fathom how that is unappealing.
I now have as a goal in my life to see the earth from space. Amazingly, astoundingly, this goal does not look completely unreasonable or unrealistic. In fact, it's beginning to look like there's a good chance I'll be able to do it without doing anything more than setting aside some savings for that purpose. And it's because of people who are trying to do what is practical, rather than shooting for the stars.
Where's my 2001 space station?
Currently non-existent and not likely to exist any time soon and same with a way to get to such a station, were it to exist, that is even in the realm of affordability.
So you can poo-poo reality because it doesn't match your ideal dream, but I for one am pretty damn excited about Virgin Galactic. If commercial space flight continues to advance such that at some point orbital flights are reasonable, then great but I don't think you're going to get there directly, and if it doesn't happen I'll take the next best thing thanks.
That's one of the major plot threads in Robert Rankin's novel, Armageddon: The Musical. The entire purpose of the Earth is to provide TV entertainment for an alien civilization who has been manipulating humans into doing things to please their viewers and have decided to end the series with a huge apocalypse.
LOL. In Vonnegut's Sirens of Titan, the entirety of human history is the result of long-distance alien manipulation aimed at getting us to produce and then deliver a replacement part -- literally a piece of scrap from the floor of a Martian machine shop -- to an alien explorer/messenger whose ship crash-landed on Titan millennia ago. Stonehenge, the Great Wall of China, and other landmarks were actually messages in the alien's language telling it that the replacement part was coming.
Could it be that right wingers have forgotten that the central premise of Reagan's vision was that the cold war is a war that would be won based on having more freedom
Well, freedom and nuke-powered space lasers, but I get your point. :)
you can say people are bad at somethings, but everyone has to admit we're really good at killing other stuff
Or we'll kill them.
Commander Xygzymmr,
Probe designate r_jensen11 appears to be defective. We should pick him up on our next maintenance run for reprogramming. Recommend Regimen 7: "Probe 'em till he'd rather be the probe".
- Engineer Morpsyx
But, they can be blow up.. If one uses a nuclear weapon on them, and the effect would be most devastating.
Radioactive isotopes from 20 or 30 years worth of reactor operation spread across the countryside would kill or cripple most survivors. Far (1000-5000x) worse than the weapon detonated on a average target. The average human lifespan in the widespread fallout areas, (several states contaminated for thousand years), would decrease to twenty years or less.
You're kidding, right? Your biggest concern is having nuclear plants turned into giant 'dirty bombs', in a situation where we're attacked by an enemy willing and capable of hitting us with nuclear bunker-buster ICBMs? You must realize that to get the effect you're talking about you'd have to penetrate all containment structures and underground storage before detonation and have a yield much bigger than some suitcase nuke. And that if lethal fallout is the goal, you can accomplish that with nukes alone. Efficient high-yield devices that don't produce much radioactive fallout are good if you want tactical weapons as they did as the Cold War progressed, but they don't have to be designed that way.
I mean I'm just making sure we're on the same page here -- that we shouldn't build nuclear reactors because in a situation where we're facing nuclear annihilation, those plants might make it somewhat more annihilate-y.
Personally I'd think having the missiles lobbed at us sounds like the bigger problem, and without that the nuclear plant dirty bombs aren't a problem either. So, let's avoid having ICBMs launched at us.
To me, providing an enemy the perfect target by which they can inflict a knock out blow, boarders upon insanity!
Yeah, I think you were already overestimating the damage, but a knock-out blow? Come on. You could hit an extra major population center or two, but you couldn't cripple the country. Especially not its ability to respond militarily (a legacy of the Cold War and why the nuclear weapons became all about strategic targeting).
It helps, btw, if you have vastly less waste that is of a type that is not long-lived, like from breeders.
This insanity is furthur compounded by people avocating widescale use of this technology in a world populated with mentally unstable national leaders!!!
Yes, because you'd have to be mad to bring MAD down upon yourself. Heh, get it? But seriously, there are mentally unstable national leaders, but there are no national leaders who don't want power and don't want to keep it. MAD worked against freaking Stalin, and what did he care if his people died in a nuclear war; what, it's only okay when he kills them by the millions? No, he was unwilling to sacrifice his country and thus his power to ensure that he destroyed ours. Kim Jong Il, that crazy little bastard with delusions of grandeur, he's not going to destroy the only thing that makes him relevant in this universe. That's why he never does anything more than publicity stunts to get aid. The bomb to him means a way to be sure we won't take him out, and even then South Korea or Japan are the implied targets of this saber rattling. Sure he's unstable, but that doesn't mean there's no logic at all behind his actions. The suicide bomber type doesn't usually make it as a leader whether of a brutal dictatorship or terrorist group. MAD still works. We've dealt with his type and worse and we will again.
I'm not sure what's worse... that you could write that without collapsing, or that I could actually hear it in a perfect valley girl voice.
Worse I think is that I want to ask this Terminator-watching valley girl out.
emacs = Emulate Mac Software.
Uh... in that case, all I can say to the Emacs team is "Yer doin it wrong!"
The idea of an AI that learns from the players sounds great when you're talking about a bot for Multiplayer Shooter 2010 developing tactics and strategies without explicit programming, or an NPC partner in a stealth gaming learning how not to bash their face into walls and then walk off a cliff into lava. Awesome, bring on the learned emergent behavior!
But dialogue? Oh lord no, please don't let the AI's learn how to "converse" from players. Because the last thing I need is to have AIs in games screaming "Shitcock!" or calling me a fag a thousand times in a row with computerized speed and efficiency.
See that is the problem. Centralized systems. The reason why computer technology and the internet has gone exponential is because of its distributed nature and lack of central control.
Computer technology went exponential because we use computers to design computers, so the development of the next generation benefits from the advance of the previous. The reason why the internet has gone exponential is because it's a network, and the network effect is that the utility of the network is proportional to the number of connections, i.e. the number of nodes factorial.
Neither case has anything to do with power generation.
Power plants are generally more efficient the larger they are. That's why it's better to drive an electric vehicle that is supplied by a coal power plant than to drive an ICE -- the tiny engine is less efficient, and more costly to add environmental controls to, than the huge stationary plant. That's why commercial wind farms use the largest possible blades they can legally carry on the roads.
Now I'd be fine with a miniature nuclear reactor in my basement but I'm sure Uncle Sam would not approve.
And if they did, the amount of oversight required to assure the safety of a nuclear reactor in your, your neighbor's, and everyone in your town's basement would make it prohibitively expensive. Nuclear reactors are another case where efficiency scales with size, and not just in terms of the power generation itself, but in terms of the overhead of building a safe and reliable reactor.
If I wanted to be able to produce my own power and get off the grid, then that leaves with wind or solar. I'll go with solar simply because of less moving parts.
Now if everyone did this on on top of every house there would no longer be a need for centralized systems in which allows for greater flexibility of the system.
Except home solar simply can't provide sufficient power for everyone, or even most people, and even those who live in places where it is highly economical, even they can't leave the grid entirely. I live in such a place, and while I'm considering getting rooftop solar installed in the next few years, I hold no illusions that this will let me give the finger to the utility company and be "independent".
We will need a common, if not centralized, system.
Arguably if we did go nuclear the incentive for distributed systems and micro-generation would go under. I'd rather since more independent systems in which we become more self reliant.
I'm not necessarily even arguing for a centralized system. I'm arguing that we simply cannot produce all the energy we need via solar or wind power for the foreseeable future. With fission we can. It doesn't necessarily have to be huge centralized reactors, they can be localized small units like the pebble-bed "batteries" you may have heard about on /. before.
Though to really solve the issues with nuclear, like waste management via breeding, you really will need a centralized system to have anything close to sufficient efficiency.
-We have access to plentiful and cheap food today.
-We don't die of starvation.
Famines were more common in the past, but still largely isolated incidents. Since the dawn of agriculture, people have frequently had access to plentiful food. It's that very fact that allowed for the diversification of professions and the creation of nation-states.
-We live long enough to get cancer.
If you survived birth and dodged the serious early childhood diseases, and weren't drafted into any wars, then you had a good chance of living a long and healthy life, more than long enough for you to get cancer.
Life expectancy rates are calculated using the probabilistic definition of "expected", meaning simply the average, and are measured from birth. Which means extremely high infant mortality rates like they had before doctors figured out to wash their hands before entering the delivery room and other such medical innovations dragged the average down tremendously.
A "life expectancy" of 30 years does not mean a 40-year-old was an old man with one foot in the grave! As the WP page for life expectancy says: "It is important to note that life expectancy rises sharply in all cases for those who reach puberty. A pre 20th Century individual who lived past the teenage years could expect to live to an age close to the life expectancy of today."
Right, because there are no people that incorporate their farm business, or work for farmers who have incorporated their business. Incorporated businesses are Teh Evil!
Oh come on. You know what he meant. Large Corporations, the multinationals and large scale farm operations. The statement was clearly regarding size and power, not a particular type of tax arrangement.
I'd rather have that every once in awhile, that 100% lean and flavorless every day.
Buffalo and ostrich are both ~98% lean naturally, and fucking delicious imo though that may just be compared to the high-density chemical-soup raised beef steak sitting next to them, not the steaks of yore you're talking about.
Yeah, don't people remember how one of the first questions asked was "If they had been fully aware of the damage to the shuttle, could they have taken refuge on the ISS?" and the answer was "No way, the shuttle didn't have nearly enough fuel to reach the ISS orbit."
True, but nukes only get compared to coal on this basis. I never hear of any accidents involving solar or wind, and certainly no deaths.
Apparently some sheep have to move a few feet when they actually put the turbines up.
Wind and solar power are great. But we need a large-scale power plant to satisfy the base load, and wind and solar aren't going to do that any time soon. Nuclear fission is currently the best option for providing the massive amount of energy we need with a minimum of safety and environmental risks.
We should definitely be building more wind farms, and large-scale solar farms too (the kind that use a fluid and a turbine, not photovoltaic panels), too.
Oh hey look it's the link I already posted! Thanks Mr. AC for educating me!
Yes, mining deaths are vastly reduced today in the U.S. but they are still an order of magnitude higher (in terms of rate) in China, and once you go back 40-50 years and more they were in the U.S. too.
Compared to how many for nuclear power?
Point?
The biggest problem with the reactor at Chernobyl is that the design did not include a concrete vault capable of containing the clouds of debris ejected from the event site.
Yeah, exactly. With the simple expedience of a concrete dome, the Chernobyl disaster would have been substantially smaller, like Three Mile Island was, where nobody died in the immediate aftermath. Three Mile Island, which was the worst-case failure scenario -- coolant failure and all control rods locked out of the core. So the core got too hot and melted and fell into the graphite bed beneath, slowing the reaction and ending the threat. Combined with the containment shell, very little contamination was released into the environment. It was a disaster to be sure, but a small one in the grand scheme of industrial accidents. It was a design that took failure into a account and thus minimized the impact. And designs have only gotten better since then.
Honestly, people act like they still think nuclear reactors can blow up like atom bombs. "Oh my god, humanity is not ready for this power!" Yeah, nuclear weapons maybe we weren't ready for, I think fission reactors to light up our homes are within our acceptable risk level given every other human endeavor ever.
I grew up in the coal mining regions of the USA. Care to take a shot at the statistics on "Black Lung" alone?
I thought the AC had balls trying to pull the "nuclear power is more dangerous than coal" gambit on just an average person with common knowledge, but damn... Seriously, I went through terrible schooling, and I know how dangerous mining and in particular coal mining is. I know that "black lung" is not a euphemistic name for the ailment.
"human life doesnt really have much value if its not yours." The war cry of the communist/socialist/environmentalist elitist. Rail against everything. Decry every solution as "inhumane", all the while proposing fantasy ideas that have no merit or foundation in reason.
I think it's actually a statist argument, which I've realized there are a lot more of on the left than I thought. The apparent motivation may vary slightly, but the mentality is all about not thinking anything new is good enough and not wanting to actually change. So they blow any problem with the new thing out of proportion and fragrantly ignoring the massive problems with the status quo.
It's the same kind who when talking about Hybrids suddenly remember that steel and plastic and so forth don't magically appear in auto factories. Or suddenly give a flying shit about a few birds being killed when windows kill many orders of magnitude more.
Hell, real socialists are at least about trying to use state power to accomplish things that are better if not ideal. The ideal is always what the statist says they want, but nothing realistic ever lives up to the ideal, so better not do anything.
Frankly, I don't see much difference between the liberal and conservative viewpoints that lead to statism. Both are unrealistic, both involve a rosy-eyed and largely ignorant view of the past, and are about fear of change. I want to liken the logic to the people who don't want to vaccinate their children out of complete and abject ignorance of what life was like when smallpox was running rampant, but if they were instead trying to keep vaccines from ever being deployed in the first place.
When confronted with logic or even a touch of rational debate, lefties put on their super hero masks and start talking about "the value of life".
Well, if it makes you feel any better, if I accepted a one-dimensional view of politics I'd have to call myself a lefty but I find the rational arguments for nuclear power very compelling. But hey. That's why I don't.
btw the statement quoted above is a lie. You are a liar, antirelic. Including the catastrophes in the accounting is precisely what nuclear proponents don't do (didn't you get the memo?) because of the obvious. Luckily for you and them, as it turns out, human life doesn't really have much value if its not yours.
You're a liar, Mr. AC, or just an ignorant retard, because you apparently have no clue how many people die mining coal. Not so many per year in a country like the U.S. (compared to how many in modern times for nuclear), but still thousands per year in China, which is how things were not that long ago even in the 1st World. Have more people died mining coal than have died as a result of nuclear power, even counting those killed intentionally by atomic bombs? Yes.
But yes, those human lives don't have much value since you had no clue they existed.
If you only count accidents, then the total deaths from nuclear power is less than a single year of coal mining in China, or just a few years of mining in the U.S. in the period when the nuclear disasters occurred. In the year Three Mile Island occured, the second worst accident ever, more people died mining in the U.S. than died from the incident. Yes that includes long-term health effects, which coal mining isn't very good for either if you didn't know.
It's not the greatest comparison ever, since ultimately what matters is modern safety standards in the country in question (the U.S. in this case). It is a true comparison though. And you'd still be very hard-pressed and hard-tarded to suggest that nuclear power is more dangerous than coal power today.
What idiot came up with *that* idea?
Remember when our last President thought it would be a great idea to replace Social Security with individual investment accounts?
Remember the people who were championing it? Maybe not the same people as those running the nuke plants, but they wore similar clothes and have similar titles. Is it really that surprising they'd think this way?
It has less polution, but the polution is still radioactive.
I have shocking news for you: Your granite counter top is radioactive! OH NOES.
It has less change of a meltdown, but if that meltdown occurs, and it will, it's no difference from chernobyle, except this one wil be bigger.
Yeah. Because it's not like the Chernobyl disaster had anything to do with the design of the reactor (ignoring that even with that horrible design it took ridiculous amounts of human stupidity to make it happen since I'm assuming that's what you're assuming will always happen). It's not like you can design a reactor so that it can't meltdown, or can't meltdown in such a way that it explodes and blows its containment. It's not like the next and only other major nuclear accident was far smaller than Chernobyl. And it's not like we learned anything from that with regards to reactor design... For example self-regulating designs where the reactor getting too hot means the reaction will slow down. Nope, that doesn't exist.
No, no matter what, meltdowns are inevitable, and will be bigger than previous ones, because... why, again?
We really are not ready for this kind of power as mankind. Once we find a solution for the radioactive waste we will be.
Solution: Re-use it until it is no longer useful as a radioactive fuel of any kind, meaning it is no longer particularly radioactive and thus not a particular danger. Then stick it in the ground without having to worry about security or stability since it's neither useful nor particularly dangerous. Yes the half-life will be really long, but half-life is inversely proportional to radioactivity which is entirely the point.
So, I guess we're ready! Bring on the nuclear reactors!
Till that time... there is always the sun.
Yeah we're a long way from producing all our energy from the sun (directly anyway). I'm all for more of it, including solar-powered microwave satellites. Oh but wait, surely there's no way to design one such that it doesn't fry people on the ground in a swatch of destruction!
Still a shame someone flagged me as flamebait instead of discussing our different views. Cause flamebait i Was not.
Indeed that was an unfair mod, and they were almost certainly using it as a surrogate for "-1, uninformed paranoia" which doesn't exist for good reason.
This is just as bad as fork and knife manufacturers who fail to keep fat, dumb people from eating too much.
But they make their products pointy expressly to discourage people from using them!