Can the collective European electorates [which have a history of colonialism etc.] really have anything to offer the citizens of a successful 228 year old constitionally based republic?
Yes, because they've been through the cycle -- we're only just starting it.
Like the former gang member who had his own brush with death, straightened up, got a job, and is starting a family, telling a young teen in the neighborhood to stay away from the gangs.
Probably will have about the same success rate, unfortunately.
I felt the urge to paw through the whole thing and put together a highly-abbreviated version:
Do you think the federal government should be doing more to prevent or restrict the outsourcing of technical jobs to foreign countries? If so, what?
Kerry: use tax incentives
Bush: people should be educated more
Do you think the federal government should have a role in expanding broadband usage? If so, what sort of role?
Kerry: govt can't do it, but can encourage:
- tax incentives
- make more spectrum avail. for wireless services
- R&D investments
Bush: specific goal to have univ. access to broadband by 2007
- don't tax b'band access
- reduce regulations
- "promote two promising technologies" -- b'band through power lines, wireless
How do you feel about tax credits for companies investing in research and development?
Kerry: it's good
Bush: it's good
What is your position on taxing Internet sales and service?
Kerry: it's bad
Bush: no answer
What is your position on unauthorized online file-sharing?
Kerry: it's bad. we need to enforce copyright laws. fortunately new
technologies and business models are helping
Bush: no answer
What is your position on COPA (Child Online Protection Act)?
Kerry: we must "make the internet safer for children by protecting them
from harmful material in a manner that is consistent with the First
Amendment"
Bush: no answer
Should the federal government be doing more to stop and prevent spam, viruses, and worms? If so, what?
Kerry: "Absolutely." Especially viruses/worms.
Bush: no answer
How do you feel about the SPY Act and other antispyware legislation introduced in Congress last month?
Kerry: May be needed, but would prefer combo of better enforcement of existing laws and more
private-sector efforts (e.g. more-secure OS's, browsers)
Bush: no answer
Do you think the federal Wiretap Act should be updated in the wake of the recent federal ruling that e-mail stored on a provider's server is not protected by this act?
Kerry: yes
Bush: no answer
That's it. Now I have to do a "lameness filter" workaround: asdf asdf asdf ajj;l asduiui sadfu asdfkhj werjh asd weruusda suds asdf asdf asdf ajj;l asduiui sadfu asdfkhj werjh asd weruusda suds
asdfasdf asdfasdf asdfasd asdf wrth wrht ad sfty ag adrgerg rth zdfg adrg erg asdrgrdg
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
hggk drgrth dgjtyj nygbs tukuy sdsd tyj srtgser srthsrth arur u7hr wtgwe gewgr sdthsrh rsthsfg wergewrg wrtyerty zdfgwer g 76u356y5 dsfgdrger ergerg rthsrth rth fsth tj sfhf sdbbves ardt serg rdtyrty sdgerg errtuyertyrety sergwseg rtyertyr wegwg rtyertyerty tfyiyfuiyu stgwrtgwrgw dfuerterty tynteyn k8 b qevevr ergesvd rsrsrstgfgdgdhht shgshshsg srtiudfgergiuy erguysefjghw drgriufguy fghuihbfguf guyerguyegjk ergjkherghjkrkhjerg fsgkhjrtkhjrgejhef gfuhgfuherguyeruergjkhefvjhehjk fgjhegrjghwghjw efjhgfehgw
All of Bush's decisions are so utterly driven by what will win votes for the Republican party, Rove has to be the one with the central influence. He's the one who helped Bush into politics in the first place, after all. He even had a series of experts in Texas state govt. literally give private tutoring sessions to GWB to get him ready to be a candidate for Governor of that state. Before that, Bush was utterly clueless about government.
Cheney surely has a lot of influence, and probably total control of major tasks (e.g. Iraq), but I think Rove has the trump cards.
This is because they poll only landline phones,...
There's another group too, *totally* unaccounted for by the polls: Americans living overseas. Here's a couple of factoids:
- There are currently about 5 million Americans of voting age living abroad. Their opinons are not showing up in any of the polls, but they can still vote absentee. And they are likely to vote in much higher numbers this time.
- Americans with passports are supporting Kerry 3-to-1 (don't remember the reference; may have been mentioned on NPR).
I got the first point from this site a few days ago. The front page keeps changing, so here's the text:
I have it on good authority that overseas voters are registering in huge numbers this time, maybe double or triple 2000. I was told that the number of people who showed up at the Democratic party caucus in England earlier this year was 10 times what it was in 2000, ditto in other countries. Americans overseas vote in the state they last lived in, even if that was decades ago. There are about 7 million overseas Americans and probably about 5 million are over 18. In Florida, it was the overseas absentee ballots that swung the election. I believe that something like 8% are military, but the rest are students, teachers, artists, government workers, business executives, spouses of foreign nationals, missionaries, retirees, and more. What is significant here is that these people represent a lot of votes and are not included in any of the polls. Nobody knows if they are largely Democrats or Republicans, but their votes could be one of the big surprises of this election. if anyone has any actual data (as opposed to speculation) on this group, I'd be interested.
Both candidates are not qualified to run the government equally but differently.
I really think you are mistaken. The only thing that they do equally bad but differently is talking off-the-cuff. Bush is bad because of his Alzhiemer's-onset-like speech impediments; Kerry is bad because he rambles too much. Of course, Bush has the benefit of a campaign mastermind (Karl Rove) coaching him to keep his sentences short and simple. Kerry still has to learn this. If he can really start talking in a more soundbyte-able manner, they'll be back to even on this front.
But based on all the evidence I've seen on Bush's record (White House and otherwise) and Kerry's (Senate and otherwise), Kerry is clearly a leader. Bush is a figurehead who can follow directions, with maybe a little volition involved.
...they are concerned with the mother's rights. They are also concerned with the child's rights. That's the whole thing.
Yes, that's the real crux of this issue, isn't it: we have a conflict between fundamental rights of the mother and the fundamental rights of the unborn child.
I have a suggestion:
1. Recognize that the human fetus has full rights to health and life.
2. Recognize further that the mother has an additional right -- let's call it a "veto" right, over the life of the fetus, up to the point where it could reasonably survive on its own. Up until that point, it is making demands on the mother's body, and if those demands are somehow unreasonable, the mother must be able to take action. And I don't think anyone can be considered qualified to decide if the demands are reasonable or not except the mother herself.
For example, no one would tell a woman she can't do anything about an ectopic pregnancy (where the fetus is growing in the fallopian tube). But it's far less defensible to "do something" if the baby is the "wrong" sex. Really, there's a whole continuum of problems (or percieved problems) that could happen, and who is to say where the cutoff point is between one that must be dealt with vs. one that must simply be left alone? Only the mother can have that right.
Of course, I guess this boils down to the status quo, but I think it's a useful way to think about it. It's not saying the fetus doesn't have rights, and it also renders the whole "when does life begin" debate moot. It just recognizes the reality of the situation and grants the mother an additional right in order to deal with that reality.
I think the pro-life movement is really wasting its energy. Trying to pass laws to cram a narrow viewpoint down everyone's throats is just about the least productive way to go about achieving their goal. They're trying to change culture, and you can't do that by fiat -- that's a really naive (and unintelligent) approach. Plus, when you push hard against people, they will tend to push back, even if somewhat irrationally. The movement should take a more embracing approach: accept the two points above as the reality, and simply work to convince women to decide not to abort. Not through antagonistic means (putting shocking pictures in public, protesting/blockading/bombing clinics, etc.), but by simply advising in an intelligent manner. People are reasonable if you talk to them reasonably.
...you might remember another Asian economy that was steamrolling us...[Japan]
A lot of good points. I'd just point out one problem with the comparison, and that's relative population size: The U.S. is something like 2-3x Japan's population. China is 5x the U.S. population. Granted, a huge portion of those are poor and uneducated, and will remain so for quite some time; so knock it down to the same 2-3x factor.
I wonder if a somewhat better comparison would be back at the dawn of the industrial age -- the fledgling U.S. vs. England, early-to-mid 1800's. The British Empire had made all sorts of advances in manufacturing (textiles, etc.), but the U.S. leapfrogged them, leveraging the known technology. And the U.S. had maybe 2-3x England's population at the time (I'd need to check on that, but suffice to say it was significantly more).
This isn't quite a response to your post, but somehow I have the urge to post it.
I have a hopeful couple of factoids:
- There are currently about 5 million Americans of voting age living abroad. Their opinons are not showing up in any of the polls, but they can still vote absentee. And they are likely to vote in much higher numbers this time. (this is from here; see direct quote below since the text may move off the page.)
- Americans with passports are supporting Kerry 3-to-1 (don't remember the reference; may have been mentioned on NPR).
You do the math.:)
I have it on good authority that overseas voters are registering in huge numbers this time, maybe double or triple 2000. I was told that the number of people who showed up at the Democratic party caucus in England earlier this year was 10 times what it was in 2000, ditto in other countries. Americans overseas vote in the state they last lived in, even if that was decades ago. There are about 7 million overseas Americans and probably about 5 million are over 18. In Florida, it was the overseas absentee ballots that swung the election. I believe that something like 8% are military, but the rest are students, teachers, artists, government workers, business executives, spouses of foreign nationals, missionaries, retirees, and more. What is significant here is that these people represent a lot of votes and are not included in any of the polls. Nobody knows if they are largely Democrats or Republicans, but their votes could be one of the big surprises of this election. if anyone has any actual data (as opposed to speculation) on this group, I'd be interested.
He broke every promise from Last election, too. He promised to cut government spending, but has vastly accelerated it, even before 9/11. He promised to reform education and got the Dems to go along with NCLB, but then refused to fund it. He promised to bring credibility to the White House, but instead transplanted Clinton's personal life into dishonest economics (like unemployment staying constant while the overall number of jobs drops, or lying about the cost of Medicare prescription drugs) and dishonest foreign intelligence. He denounced nation building (in Kosovo), but launched a war with no other purpose than destroying a nation so we could rebuild it to suit our purposes.
Credibility, education, and the size of government, restraint in military adventurism. Those were probably the biggest themes of his "compassionate conservative" campaign--and he has delivered on not a single one of them.
Bush never promised you personally would be satisfied. The fact that you're not has little bearing on whether he kept his campaign promises.
Your lack of thought now shows through. In your mind, you are twisting what he said into a statement of his own "satisfaction", rather than the objective facts he is actually laying out.
Or do you mean that you yourself are personally satisfied with broken campaign promises, and that somehow means that the promises were actually kept?
Either way, there are some serious flaws in your thinking. Pretty typical.
Hmm. I've just taken a long look at the article, and I haven't
found any mention of accounting for the mass of the
solar wind. There are numerous mentions of the "interplanetary
media", but every mention seems to be in the context of "non-graviational"
effects -- i.e. resistance due to the i.m., not the gravity due to the
sphere of i.m. around the sun.
Since the sphere of solar-wind particles that is "under" the craft would grow in size as the craft got further from the sun, its influence would not decrease as the square of the distance, as it does for the sun itself (and planets etc.). Furthermore, since the solar-wind particles themselves would be decelerating due to the sun's gravity, the density would not decrease as 1/r^2. If the density decrease was nearer to 1/r, the deceleration it would impart would be constant.
Though it seems strange for this to have not been accounted for -- can anyone point to anything that does account for it?
I wonder if the mass of the solar wind has been properly accounted for?
The sphere of this material that is "under" the pioneer craft will increase with the crafts' increasing distance from the Sun, so the effective mass will be increasing -- perhaps enough to counter the increasing distance, thereby giving a roughly constant deceleration.
"...this was the `most important election ever!' ?
Honestly, I really have never heard this before -- at least in any way credible enough for me to remember it. And certainly not from so many places, so consistently.
There's another one: Castle in the Sky (that's the english re-release name, anyways) by Miyazaki.
Check out the walking robots in the trailers -- they look very similar to the guard/caretaker bots in the Miyazaki film. Also the blimp-warships, and the overall look/feel.
I've only seen the TV trailers, but I get the distinct impression that the Miyazaki film "Castle in the Sky" served as the inspiration for the visuals. Not only in the blimp-battleships, but also those walking robots -- with the rope-like arms and the uneven eyes.
I definitely need to see this movie, if nothing else than to check for more similarities.:)
...the only reason "classical" music has a reputation as being high quality is because nobody plays the crap...
I taking a musicology class once (hey, my girlfriend was taking it!). At one point, the instructor demonstrated this point quite effectively -- by playing a sample of a piece written by Mozart's grandson (or some such relation).
OK...interlacing is the process of cutting out every other line in each frame, right? So if you just combined 2 frames, wouldn't you remove the interlace?
Yes, but can end up looking wierd. Interlacing was an old cheap trick to get effectively 60fps instead of the "real" 30fps -- each "half-frame" was captured at a different point in time from it's sibling half. This does actually make for smoother motion, as you're getting twice as many samples -- and its one of the reasons you can kind of "tell" then you're looking at stuff shot on video vs. stuff shot on film. Anyways, if you "deinterlace" and then freeze a frame you can get a "blurriness" where an object has comb-like edges to the left and right.
...will there be coverage of Non-US elections as well?
I hope so. For example, Putin's political outlook may have changed markedly as a result of the last weeks' terrorism in Russia. I'd bet quite a few/.ers would have interesting things to say about that.
Doesn't need to go up on the main page, as it would probably only interest a minority of/.ers, but that's kind of the point of having a separate section, isn't it?
This way I can unselect the Politics section (already done!) and hope that much of the politics will stay in its own section.
Exactly.
But I'm happy for the opposite reason: now I can make my political posts somewhere without fear of getting modded off-topic! And moderators can make such off-topic judgements more easily, now that the excuse of of there being nowhere else to post such things is eliminated.
what happens if you replaced the helium with oxygen while pebbles are hot.
Very good point. I had misread the description such that I thought the silicon-carbide cotaing was containing the entire pebble, not just the fuel nodules inside. Perhaps doing so isn't practical (maybe a Si-C shell that big would crack due to thermal expansion), or economical.
I doubt that the graphite would explode if suddenly brought into contact with air -- note that Chernobly exploded due to the water coolant, not the graphite itself. The graphite burn just kept the plume of hot air going, helping to spread the dust more, and preventing anyone from getting near it.
A graphite fire by itself wouldn't be as much of an environmental problem as Chernobyl either, as the actual nuclear fuel would remain contained in the bb-sized silicon-carbide sphereules, which ought to withstand such a thing. They might get scattered around the immediate area, and be annoying to clean up, but nothing like Chernobyl's dust.
Although I just thought of this: if the graphite burned *slowly*, such that all the uranium/Si-C nuggets remained in the pile, they would fall to the bottom of the pile and accumulate -- much closer together than intended. This might cause a criticality problem?!?
Though on the subject of waste disposal, it seems like burying it should be pretty satisfactory. The Si-C coatings would prevent any nuclear material from being leached out by goundwater, so you wouldn't have to bury it *so* deep, nor would you have to be so choosy about the site. The only danger is that someonone would try to dig it up in order to harvest the (weaopons-grade) material inside the Si-C nuggets.
Re:Nuclear energy works!
on
China Goes Nuclear
·
· Score: 3, Informative
"Burying it is perfectly safe"
You gotta be kidding.
You should take a look a the links.
From pbmr.com:
The PBMR will generate about 19 tons of spent fuel pebbles per annum, of which less than one ton is depleted uranium. The spent fuel is much easier to store than fuel rods from Pressurized Water Reactors, because the silicon carbide coating around the fuel particles will keep the radioactive decay products isolated for approximately a million years. This is longer than the activity of any of the radioactive products, including plutonium.
The PBMR system has been designed to deal with nuclear waste efficiently and safely. There will be enough room for the spent fuel to be stored in dry storage tanks within the PBMR building. All the spent fuel that the PBMR generates during its 40-year life will be stored on site. This means that no spent fuel will have to be removed from the site. After the plant has been shut down, the spent fuel will be safely stored on site for another 40 years before being sent to a final repository, where the following factors will ensure safe storage:
Firstly, the fission products are encased in a layer of silicon carbide. This layer forms a protective shell around the fission products, and prevents environmental contamination.
Secondly, the fuel has been packed in a graphite sphere. Graphite is an inherently stable material. This means that the spheres will not break or disintegrate, and thus the configuration of the spent fuel will not change.
Finally, the density of spent fuel in each sphere is so minimal that the repository can be packed as efficiently as possible.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, because they've been through the cycle -- we're only just starting it.
Like the former gang member who had his own brush with death, straightened up, got a job, and is starting a family, telling a young teen in the neighborhood to stay away from the gangs.
Probably will have about the same success rate, unfortunately.
Do you think the federal government should be doing more to prevent or restrict the outsourcing of technical jobs to foreign countries? If so, what?
Do you think the federal government should have a role in expanding broadband usage? If so, what sort of role? How do you feel about tax credits for companies investing in research and development? What is your position on taxing Internet sales and service? What is your position on unauthorized online file-sharing? What is your position on COPA (Child Online Protection Act)? Should the federal government be doing more to stop and prevent spam, viruses, and worms? If so, what? How do you feel about the SPY Act and other antispyware legislation introduced in Congress last month? Do you think the federal Wiretap Act should be updated in the wake of the recent federal ruling that e-mail stored on a provider's server is not protected by this act? That's it. Now I have to do a "lameness filter" workaround: asdf asdf asdf ajj;l asduiui sadfu asdfkhj werjh asd weruusda suds asdf asdf asdf ajj;l asduiui sadfu asdfkhj werjh asd weruusda suds asdfasdf asdfasdf asdfasd asdf wrth wrht ad sfty ag adrgerg rth zdfg adrg erg asdrgrdg xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx hggk drgrth dgjtyj nygbs tukuy sdsd tyj srtgser srthsrth arur u7hr wtgwe gewgr sdthsrh rsthsfg wergewrg wrtyerty zdfgwer g 76u356y5 dsfgdrger ergerg rthsrth rth fsth tj sfhf sdbbves ardt serg rdtyrty sdgerg errtuyertyrety sergwseg rtyertyr wegwg rtyertyerty tfyiyfuiyu stgwrtgwrgw dfuerterty tynteyn k8 b qevevr ergesvd rsrsrstgfgdgdhht shgshshsg srtiudfgergiuy erguysefjghw drgriufguy fghuihbfguf guyerguyegjk ergjkherghjkrkhjerg fsgkhjrtkhjrgejhef gfuhgfuherguyeruergjkhefvjhehjk fgjhegrjghwghjw efjhgfehgwI feel sick.
Don't discount Karl Rove.
All of Bush's decisions are so utterly driven by what will win votes for the Republican party, Rove has to be the one with the central influence. He's the one who helped Bush into politics in the first place, after all. He even had a series of experts in Texas state govt. literally give private tutoring sessions to GWB to get him ready to be a candidate for Governor of that state. Before that, Bush was utterly clueless about government.
Cheney surely has a lot of influence, and probably total control of major tasks (e.g. Iraq), but I think Rove has the trump cards.
There's another group too, *totally* unaccounted for by the polls: Americans living overseas. Here's a couple of factoids:
I got the first point from this site a few days ago. The front page keeps changing, so here's the text:I really think you are mistaken. The only thing that they do equally bad but differently is talking off-the-cuff. Bush is bad because of his Alzhiemer's-onset-like speech impediments; Kerry is bad because he rambles too much. Of course, Bush has the benefit of a campaign mastermind (Karl Rove) coaching him to keep his sentences short and simple. Kerry still has to learn this. If he can really start talking in a more soundbyte-able manner, they'll be back to even on this front.
But based on all the evidence I've seen on Bush's record (White House and otherwise) and Kerry's (Senate and otherwise), Kerry is clearly a leader. Bush is a figurehead who can follow directions, with maybe a little volition involved.
Granted, that wasn't a legislative item, but it's one of his accomplishments in his career as a Senator.
(sorry about the semi-subscription Salon link -- just sit through the commercial; I promise it'll be worth it).
Yes, that's the real crux of this issue, isn't it: we have a conflict between fundamental rights of the mother and the fundamental rights of the unborn child.
I have a suggestion:
Of course, I guess this boils down to the status quo, but I think it's a useful way to think about it. It's not saying the fetus doesn't have rights, and it also renders the whole "when does life begin" debate moot. It just recognizes the reality of the situation and grants the mother an additional right in order to deal with that reality.I think the pro-life movement is really wasting its energy. Trying to pass laws to cram a narrow viewpoint down everyone's throats is just about the least productive way to go about achieving their goal. They're trying to change culture, and you can't do that by fiat -- that's a really naive (and unintelligent) approach. Plus, when you push hard against people, they will tend to push back, even if somewhat irrationally. The movement should take a more embracing approach: accept the two points above as the reality, and simply work to convince women to decide not to abort. Not through antagonistic means (putting shocking pictures in public, protesting/blockading/bombing clinics, etc.), but by simply advising in an intelligent manner. People are reasonable if you talk to them reasonably.
A lot of good points. I'd just point out one problem with the comparison, and that's relative population size: The U.S. is something like 2-3x Japan's population. China is 5x the U.S. population. Granted, a huge portion of those are poor and uneducated, and will remain so for quite some time; so knock it down to the same 2-3x factor.
I wonder if a somewhat better comparison would be back at the dawn of the industrial age -- the fledgling U.S. vs. England, early-to-mid 1800's. The British Empire had made all sorts of advances in manufacturing (textiles, etc.), but the U.S. leapfrogged them, leveraging the known technology. And the U.S. had maybe 2-3x England's population at the time (I'd need to check on that, but suffice to say it was significantly more).
Damn. Thanks. :)
I have a hopeful couple of factoids:
- There are currently about 5 million Americans of voting age living abroad. Their opinons are not showing up in any of the polls, but they can still vote absentee. And they are likely to vote in much higher numbers this time. (this is from here; see direct quote below since the text may move off the page.)
- Americans with passports are supporting Kerry 3-to-1 (don't remember the reference; may have been mentioned on NPR).
You do the math. :)
Your lack of thought now shows through. In your mind, you are twisting what he said into a statement of his own "satisfaction", rather than the objective facts he is actually laying out.
Or do you mean that you yourself are personally satisfied with broken campaign promises, and that somehow means that the promises were actually kept?
Either way, there are some serious flaws in your thinking. Pretty typical.
Hmm. I've just taken a long look at the article, and I haven't found any mention of accounting for the mass of the solar wind. There are numerous mentions of the "interplanetary media", but every mention seems to be in the context of "non-graviational" effects -- i.e. resistance due to the i.m., not the gravity due to the sphere of i.m. around the sun.
Since the sphere of solar-wind particles that is "under" the craft would grow in size as the craft got further from the sun, its influence would not decrease as the square of the distance, as it does for the sun itself (and planets etc.). Furthermore, since the solar-wind particles themselves would be decelerating due to the sun's gravity, the density would not decrease as 1/r^2. If the density decrease was nearer to 1/r, the deceleration it would impart would be constant.
Though it seems strange for this to have not been accounted for -- can anyone point to anything that does account for it?
The sphere of this material that is "under" the pioneer craft will increase with the crafts' increasing distance from the Sun, so the effective mass will be increasing -- perhaps enough to counter the increasing distance, thereby giving a roughly constant deceleration.
Honestly, I really have never heard this before -- at least in any way credible enough for me to remember it. And certainly not from so many places, so consistently.
There's another one: Castle in the Sky (that's the english re-release name, anyways) by Miyazaki. Check out the walking robots in the trailers -- they look very similar to the guard/caretaker bots in the Miyazaki film. Also the blimp-warships, and the overall look/feel.
I definitely need to see this movie, if nothing else than to check for more similarities. :)
I taking a musicology class once (hey, my girlfriend was taking it!). At one point, the instructor demonstrated this point quite effectively -- by playing a sample of a piece written by Mozart's grandson (or some such relation).
<...shudder...>
Yes, but can end up looking wierd. Interlacing was an old cheap trick to get effectively 60fps instead of the "real" 30fps -- each "half-frame" was captured at a different point in time from it's sibling half. This does actually make for smoother motion, as you're getting twice as many samples -- and its one of the reasons you can kind of "tell" then you're looking at stuff shot on video vs. stuff shot on film. Anyways, if you "deinterlace" and then freeze a frame you can get a "blurriness" where an object has comb-like edges to the left and right.
I hope so. For example, Putin's political outlook may have changed markedly as a result of the last weeks' terrorism in Russia. I'd bet quite a few /.ers would have interesting things to say about that.
Doesn't need to go up on the main page, as it would probably only interest a minority of /.ers, but that's kind of the point of having a separate section, isn't it?
Exactly.
But I'm happy for the opposite reason: now I can make my political posts somewhere without fear of getting modded off-topic! And moderators can make such off-topic judgements more easily, now that the excuse of of there being nowhere else to post such things is eliminated.
...
2 of those aren't 'political'
Which goes to show what a crying need for this new section there has been all along.
(Well, for the last 3-1/2 years anyways)
Very good point. I had misread the description such that I thought the silicon-carbide cotaing was containing the entire pebble, not just the fuel nodules inside. Perhaps doing so isn't practical (maybe a Si-C shell that big would crack due to thermal expansion), or economical.
I doubt that the graphite would explode if suddenly brought into contact with air -- note that Chernobly exploded due to the water coolant, not the graphite itself. The graphite burn just kept the plume of hot air going, helping to spread the dust more, and preventing anyone from getting near it.
A graphite fire by itself wouldn't be as much of an environmental problem as Chernobyl either, as the actual nuclear fuel would remain contained in the bb-sized silicon-carbide sphereules, which ought to withstand such a thing. They might get scattered around the immediate area, and be annoying to clean up, but nothing like Chernobyl's dust.
Although I just thought of this: if the graphite burned *slowly*, such that all the uranium/Si-C nuggets remained in the pile, they would fall to the bottom of the pile and accumulate -- much closer together than intended. This might cause a criticality problem?!?
Though on the subject of waste disposal, it seems like burying it should be pretty satisfactory. The Si-C coatings would prevent any nuclear material from being leached out by goundwater, so you wouldn't have to bury it *so* deep, nor would you have to be so choosy about the site. The only danger is that someonone would try to dig it up in order to harvest the (weaopons-grade) material inside the Si-C nuggets.
You gotta be kidding.
You should take a look a the links. From pbmr.com: The PBMR will generate about 19 tons of spent fuel pebbles per annum, of which less than one ton is depleted uranium. The spent fuel is much easier to store than fuel rods from Pressurized Water Reactors, because the silicon carbide coating around the fuel particles will keep the radioactive decay products isolated for approximately a million years. This is longer than the activity of any of the radioactive products, including plutonium.
The PBMR system has been designed to deal with nuclear waste efficiently and safely. There will be enough room for the spent fuel to be stored in dry storage tanks within the PBMR building. All the spent fuel that the PBMR generates during its 40-year life will be stored on site. This means that no spent fuel will have to be removed from the site. After the plant has been shut down, the spent fuel will be safely stored on site for another 40 years before being sent to a final repository, where the following factors will ensure safe storage:
Don't worry, I'm sure the president's Tort Reform efforts in his next term will take care of that...