Remember, due to the fact that Russia still has and uses en ELF transmitter , everybody is still exposed to ELF radio waves. But as you said, people have a "negative NIMBY" effect when something they perceive as useful is involved.
In this cases, I have a good Litmus test before getting involved in a discussion:" If an emitter is dangerous at a distance of 1 meter, how much will it be harmful at 2 meters?"
.......mmmm, let's see. Ever heard about "maunders minimum"? If you do not actively research a way to control fusion inside the sun, which is a bit proposterous, you fall back on the luddite position, i.e. let's burn less fuel etc. these things are good per se, but they go against Occam's razor, in that we did not have a petroleum aconomy in the centuries of the last millennium in which we had wild climate swings.
Before this turns into a "I hate these pseudoscientific quacks" rant, remember why we came to deploy thousands of nukes:
1. the US left the chemical -biological weapons field very quickly, and developed a doctrine by which, if attacked with these weapons, would have responded with a nuclear strike (deterrence);
2. they were dirt cheap vs. the alternative, building a proportionate conventional army, so they left money for other things, included, I must say, aids to poor countries.
From your post, I presume you are not American, same as I.But I find your "Kerry vs Bush" rant slighly amusing, if offtopic; do you mean that Kerry should do just the opposite of Bush, or that he should be allowed to do everything Bush did on the ground that he is not Bush?
THat's all well and good in a "contained" environment, i.e. brown water operations next to the diesel sub bases and/or chokepoints. In blue water ops, when a carrier group averages 20+ knots for extended periods, if not continously, it is a different ball game.
Even with the new classes of submarines, you would end up using diesel subs as intelligent mines; almost stationary in relation to the target, which must practically run over them to do itself harm.
Isaac Asimov, the man who most analysed the conundrum of robots construction and programming, did go in the field of thinking computers. As far as I recall, in his book the computers, having freed man from want and aggression, realised that they had begotten a beast and by mutual agreement they all ceased to function at the same time.
"Then we can make a place called Moon Base Alpha. Then we can also use it to our advantage by letting it explode, turning the entire moon into one use spaceship.:)"
....Buddy, there's only the two of us beyond their thirties here, otherwise they'd have modded you "Funny".
"So put the storage facilities in the middle of national parks you want to protect. No one wants to build house there, and the stream of tourists is reduced to those who can overcome irrational fears enough to be within a few hundred miles of some rocks that are slightly more radioactive than the rocks they are hiking on.
This is slighly OT, but that's what happens in military training areas. No one wants to risk being run over by a tank, and Voilà! wildlife has a place to call home.
"When it's calm over Denmark *and* demand is high they import power. When it's very windy and demand is low they actually export power."
....and, pray, where do they export this power? You see, demand peaks in the early morning in the working day, stays high during working hours, tapers off later, and goes to the minimum (AKA "Baseline") during the night.
Their immediate neighbours are in the same time zone, so have the same consumption profile; they are not interested in covering baseline demand with wind power, because they do not know if it's available one week through the next; when it is peak demand in their countries, it is peak demand in Denmark as well, so there should be precious little production for export.
Actually, they probably claim that they use wind as baseline, but that's creative accounting; let me explain the economics of this.
Since the 15% of internal demand they get from wind power is A LOT, they must provide, either internally or through a third country, for a stand-by energy producing facility accounting for the same amount of production. It is probable that a third country, for example Germany, is involved. Now, how much will that electricity cost? Lo and behold, a lot more than the amount they would pay if they used the additional source 24/7.Google "national grid" for info about how demand affects pricing in the electricity market.
I fully expect that this standby sources would be the same as everywhere else, i.e. gas-fired, or coal stations. So, in the end they simply "externalized" the problem for a fee. Think "kyoto agreement".
for every 100 windmills that goes up, someone has to build a backup generator. economically it may make sense or not. but I suspect that also the environmental advantages are not what they seem, unless, of course, you "dump" the problem part on someone else
...But all the renewed debate about nuclear energy has come about because of the raging of the "global Warming" debate, so it all goes so very unscientific in a second.
there already are technologies that allow for residual exposure similar to background radiation: the politics of the debate do not allow for a solution, because each side has an axe to grind.
"In the Gulf War in 1991, the war in Bosnia in 1995 and Kosovo in 1999, Depleted Uranium ammo was used....
And ended up making many many friendly Nato soldiers sick and numerous soldiers died of cancer. Thhis has been the cause of huge outrage in Italy, for example where it has been documented that about 12 soldiers died after having been exposed to the remains of DU ammo."
I am from Italy, and I follow closely military technology as well. In the case of the presumed cases of deaths from DU exposure, nothing conclusive was ascertained (transl: " we don't know").
Remember that we're talking about weapons here, and horrible as it may seem, there's an efficacy case to be made: if using depleted uranium ammo saves X lives at the cost of Y lives, where X>Y......
" Also, the grandparent seems not to realize that the "main isotope" of Urainium is U-238, which is mostly harmless (you'll notice I didn't say "totally harmless")."
"The solution, of course, is fusion power with its essentially waste-free power production."
This is a common misconception. fusion reactor would produce almost the same amount of low-level waste ( irradiated machinery, containment core and building, etc.)
"There's a big push from the nuclear lobby in the UK to build another power plant before renewables get entrenched and any story about reduced risk / improved waste handling will get media attention."
Unfortunately, it takes a lot of real estate to build renewable source on the scale of baseline output of nuclear powerplants (day/night, windy/calm 2300MW, availability 85%).
to give an example, Denmark is one of the leading countries in wind generators, with 3000 megawatts installed capacity. According to the article, it is as much as 15% of the total demand. Imagine what a calm spell would work on their trade balance. And unfortunately, it takes all of 5500 wind turbines to reach that goal.
.... really, it boils down to a matter of "perceived" vs. "average" risk.
The technologies available to dispose nuclear waste, imperfect as they are, render the risk comparable, in terms of damages, to alternatives ways to obtain the same amount of usable energy in comparable quantities.
As you said, you see the same psychology at work in air transport: people that habitually use a car (and drive recklessly, BTW) regard air travel as "dangerous", while statistically just the opposite is true.
Bear in mid that they might have stopped copying, but as any high schooler should know, copying is a mug's game.
And how many western aircrafts know how to do This?
These people are the guys that made latest russian fighters possible.
Mind you, by the time the russians had made up the performance gap in the flight performance, the name of the game had become Electronics .
A b-29 made an emergency landing in an airfield in Russia, and was impounded. bear in mind that, at the time, Russia was not at war with Japan, so there was a faint legal point that made it possible, at least in Stalin's mind. Eventually Russia was able to produce a copy.
see also this: http://www.astronautix.com/craft/dynasoar.htm.
by the time the soviet union was developing the buran, these designs were well known in their basic terms; they might as well have obtained some classified data by the usual avenues.
THe key issue tough, and one that plagues the shuttle as well to this day, is the thermal shock of reentry and the cumbersome combination of tiles that covers the whole surface. in the article, it is stated that this, apart from the sensor tecnhology required, was the major anticipated obstacle to a full development of the Dynasoar military lifting body.
I think what you are saying has merit at the BIG oem shops. Smaller ones, or the ones who cater mostly to small businesses, or private individuals, do not have the time, energy or money to do that.
Besides, there's a definite whiff of problem with that model. If an application that I want to buy REQUIRES new hardware, fine; but I' m not an happy customer, if I have to spend some megabucks to run my ol', faithful spreadsheet that I built in Excel 4.0.
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Remember, due to the fact that Russia still has and uses en ELF transmitter , everybody is still exposed to ELF radio waves. But as you said, people have a "negative NIMBY" effect when something they perceive as useful is involved.
In this cases, I have a good Litmus test before getting involved in a discussion:" If an emitter is dangerous at a distance of 1 meter, how much will it be harmful at 2 meters?"
Guess what: most people say:"Half"
.......mmmm, let's see. Ever heard about "maunders minimum"? If you do not actively research a way to control fusion inside the sun, which is a bit proposterous, you fall back on the luddite position, i.e. let's burn less fuel etc. these things are good per se, but they go against Occam's razor, in that we did not have a petroleum aconomy in the centuries of the last millennium in which we had wild climate swings.
Before this turns into a "I hate these pseudoscientific quacks" rant, remember why we came to deploy thousands of nukes:
1. the US left the chemical -biological weapons field very quickly, and developed a doctrine by which, if attacked with these weapons, would have responded with a nuclear strike (deterrence);
2. they were dirt cheap vs. the alternative, building a proportionate conventional army, so they left money for other things, included, I must say, aids to poor countries.
From your post, I presume you are not American, same as I.But I find your "Kerry vs Bush" rant slighly amusing, if offtopic; do you mean that Kerry should do just the opposite of Bush, or that he should be allowed to do everything Bush did on the ground that he is not Bush?
THat's all well and good in a "contained" environment, i.e. brown water operations next to the diesel sub bases and/or chokepoints. In blue water ops, when a carrier group averages 20+ knots for extended periods, if not continously, it is a different ball game.
Even with the new classes of submarines, you would end up using diesel subs as intelligent mines; almost stationary in relation to the target, which must practically run over them to do itself harm.
........two subs with a "speed" screw or a "quiet" screw?
Isaac Asimov, the man who most analysed the conundrum of robots construction and programming, did go in the field of thinking computers.
As far as I recall, in his book the computers, having freed man from want and aggression, realised that they had begotten a beast and by mutual agreement they all ceased to function at the same time.
Your most-used password is: 1-2-3-4-5, right?
Only the very shallow minded do not judge by appearance.
...luckily, at the time I bought the book from the TV series. My son has read it in a couiple of days, he was in a trance.
"Then we can make a place called Moon Base Alpha. Then we can also use it to our advantage by letting it explode, turning the entire moon into one use spaceship. :)"
....Buddy, there's only the two of us beyond their thirties here, otherwise they'd have modded you "Funny".
"So put the storage facilities in the middle of national parks you want to protect. No one wants to build house there, and the stream of tourists is reduced to those who can overcome irrational fears enough to be within a few hundred miles of some rocks that are slightly more radioactive than the rocks they are hiking on.
This is slighly OT, but that's what happens in military training areas. No one wants to risk being run over by a tank, and Voilà! wildlife has a place to call home.
"What scares people about flying is their total lack of control and the likelihood of surviving any kind of accident involving aircraft."
Exactly. but:
(not being scared)is different than(being safe)
"When it's calm over Denmark *and* demand is high they import power. When it's very windy and demand is low they actually export power."
....and, pray, where do they export this power? You see, demand peaks in the early morning in the working day, stays high during working hours, tapers off later, and goes to the minimum (AKA "Baseline") during the night.
Their immediate neighbours are in the same time zone, so have the same consumption profile; they are not interested in covering baseline demand with wind power, because they do not know if it's available one week through the next; when it is peak demand in their countries, it is peak demand in Denmark as well, so there should be precious little production for export.
Actually, they probably claim that they use wind as baseline, but that's creative accounting; let me explain the economics of this.
Since the 15% of internal demand they get from wind power is A LOT, they must provide, either internally or through a third country, for a stand-by energy producing facility accounting for the same amount of production. It is probable that a third country, for example Germany, is involved. Now, how much will that electricity cost? Lo and behold, a lot more than the amount they would pay if they used the additional source 24/7.Google "national grid" for info about how demand affects pricing in the electricity market.
I fully expect that this standby sources would be the same as everywhere else, i.e. gas-fired, or coal stations. So, in the end they simply "externalized" the problem for a fee. Think "kyoto agreement".
for every 100 windmills that goes up, someone has to build a backup generator. economically it may make sense or not. but I suspect that also the environmental advantages are not what they seem, unless, of course, you "dump" the problem part on someone else
...But all the renewed debate about nuclear energy has come about because of the raging of the "global Warming" debate, so it all goes so very unscientific in a second.
there already are technologies that allow for residual exposure similar to background radiation: the politics of the debate do not allow for a solution, because each side has an axe to grind.
"In the Gulf War in 1991, the war in Bosnia in 1995 and Kosovo in 1999, Depleted Uranium ammo was used....
And ended up making many many friendly Nato soldiers sick and numerous soldiers died of cancer. Thhis has been the cause of huge outrage in Italy, for example where it has been documented that about 12 soldiers died after having been exposed to the remains of DU ammo."
I am from Italy, and I follow closely military technology as well. In the case of the presumed cases of deaths from DU exposure, nothing conclusive was ascertained (transl: " we don't know").
Remember that we're talking about weapons here, and horrible as it may seem, there's an efficacy case to be made: if using depleted uranium ammo saves X lives at the cost of Y lives, where X>Y......
" Also, the grandparent seems not to realize that the "main isotope" of Urainium is U-238, which is mostly harmless (you'll notice I didn't say "totally harmless")."
;-)
......Like humans?
"The solution, of course, is fusion power with its essentially waste-free power production."
This is a common misconception. fusion reactor would produce almost the same amount of low-level waste ( irradiated machinery, containment core and building, etc.)
"There's a big push from the nuclear lobby in the UK to build another power plant before renewables get entrenched and any story about reduced risk / improved waste handling will get media attention."
Unfortunately, it takes a lot of real estate to build renewable source on the scale of baseline output of nuclear powerplants (day/night, windy/calm 2300MW, availability 85%).
to give an example, Denmark is one of the leading countries in wind generators, with 3000 megawatts installed capacity.
According to the article, it is as much as 15% of the total demand. Imagine what a calm spell would work on their trade balance. And unfortunately, it takes all of 5500 wind turbines to reach that goal.
On the other hand, one single nuclear site can easily reach 1500 MW.
.... really, it boils down to a matter of "perceived" vs. "average" risk.
.
The technologies available to dispose nuclear waste, imperfect as they are, render the risk comparable, in terms of damages, to alternatives ways to obtain the same amount of usable energy in comparable quantities.
the point is that the human being is incapable to assess low probability events
As you said, you see the same psychology at work in air transport: people that habitually use a car (and drive recklessly, BTW) regard air travel as "dangerous", while statistically just the opposite is true.
[...]"The folks who spend $500+ on cards must have more disposable income than I, or less brains than my boss."
............or both.
......Aaaaaaah, dunno.
Bear in mid that they might have stopped copying, but as any high schooler should know, copying is a mug's game.
And how many western aircrafts know how to do This?
These people are the guys that made latest russian fighters possible.
Mind you, by the time the russians had made up the performance gap in the flight performance, the name of the game had become Electronics .
it happened in the Pacific, in 1944-45.
A b-29 made an emergency landing in an airfield in Russia, and was impounded. bear in mind that, at the time, Russia was not at war with Japan, so there was a faint legal point that made it possible, at least in Stalin's mind. Eventually Russia was able to produce a copy.
how very true. do not despair, tough,because some of the technology is used in the west as of now http://www.spacetoday.org/Rockets/BoeingSeaLaunch. html.
....to the fifties and sixties, when the US was building prototype lifting bodies, primarily for the military aspect: http://www.astronautix.com/project/nasgbody.htm.
see also this: http://www.astronautix.com/craft/dynasoar.htm.
by the time the soviet union was developing the buran, these designs were well known in their basic terms; they might as well have obtained some classified data by the usual avenues.
THe key issue tough, and one that plagues the shuttle as well to this day, is the thermal shock of reentry and the cumbersome combination of tiles that covers the whole surface. in the article, it is stated that this, apart from the sensor tecnhology required, was the major anticipated obstacle to a full development of the Dynasoar military lifting body.
I think what you are saying has merit at the BIG oem shops. Smaller ones, or the ones who cater mostly to small businesses, or private individuals, do not have the time, energy or money to do that.
Besides, there's a definite whiff of problem with that model. If an application that I want to buy REQUIRES new hardware, fine; but I' m not an happy customer, if I have to spend some megabucks to run my ol', faithful spreadsheet that I built in Excel 4.0.