your handle is "Don't make me think." Very apropos. Come on. Do you know how hard it is to get a supercritical reaction? For one, you need a Curie of material. For two, you need a high-energy explosion, usually triggered with a chemical explosive. For three, it has to be shaped/confined right. Paranoia is an irrational fear. What's an ignorant fear called? I am sorry you saw a tragic truck fire. We call those car-becues out here. However, despite your personal experience, compare the simplicity of a burning fuel source with the math, science, and engineering required to make an explosion with a nuclear battery that is little more than a resistor pop. If you are reading Slashdot, then I hope you have the initiative to go read up on the explosive requirements to make a nuclear bomb. Please, I'm begging you to stop running around with your understanding of supercritical reactions to be no more informed than a Hollywood movie.
Actually, the fundamental flaw was the comrade-tards who decided to turn off all the safety systems and use one reactor to power the other's pumps, in an experiment. They tried it before, but the safety systems shut everything down. I think they were running one reactor at about 6%, which apparently is very dangerous. When they disabled their safety systems, then yes, the graphite-tipped control rods combusted with the steam bubble that built up, then they melted and went boom. If they had built a reactor with a positive reactivity coefficient (or was that negative?) that meant reaction speeds went down as heat went up, such as American/French/Canadian designs do, it wouldn't have gone critical. If they had bothered to build what's called a sarcophagus (concrete bunker) around the reactor, then the very small explosion would have not produced a vent of radioactive material. If they had bothered to build an energy-producing reactor, instead of a breeder reactor (Chernobyl was not a power plant, it was a weapons factory), then really, none of this would have been possible. Still, I blame the comrade-tards, and their hatred for the West. This is why Socialism is so bad. It breeds hatred for capitalism and free will, which includes freedom of religion. Please, American Democrats, think about this when you decide whether or not to re-elect a Marxist for a president. Hear the Warning from Soviet Russia! Or, if you prefer, Read it.
What do you mean were? Three Mile Island is running just fine. You can just see it from the airport in Harrisburg, by the way. Puffy, white steam clouds wicking up around the corner of the river, surrounded by green, happy forests... An eagle glides low along the water, snatches a wayward trout from the river, and climbs powerfully upwards. She turns into the thermal column from the reactor, getting a welcome boost to higher altitudes, as she heads further out towards the hills. Off in the distance, cries from her egrets, nestled in their aery, welcome a fresh meal. Atomic reactors are as American as Baseball and Apple Pie. The simple fact that the French and the Canadians and so many other countries have soundly spanked us in our own inventions, means that the environmentalist whackos have perturbed the spirit of this great nation. I say we shave off $100M from the Cash for Klunkers budget, and spend it on these atomic battery researchers. Oh, no, even better. Let's all write letters to our favorite capitalists, and invite them to invest in the research, for the good of mankind, through the ingenuity of our American scientists.
My rhetoric falls apart if this assistant professor Kwon is going back to China in 9 months and taking his research with him.
Can we at all read the article and agree enough to agree that these are radio-isotope thermocouples, not light/heavy water reactors? Incidentally, has anyone bothered to pay for a copy of the journal and read up? The BBC has not provided things like gravimetric energy density or output voltage. So what is this, a button battery that has a half-life of 30 years, and has a glow-in-the-dark feature? Or something like: "I can't find my car keys! Oh wait, I'll just use my Geiger counter." The scie
http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/278826 I think what happened here was that the BBC found the Digital Journal article, got famously sloppy, and reprinted a dumbed down version. I think the Slashdot community needs to do what it can for the astronomy groups in Ireland (North or otherwise). There's been more debate over whether a skit from decades ago was about an Irishman or a Scotsman than discussion of the actual article. Granted, neither article has anything more than several people reporting seeing an explosion in the night sky (apparently while watching Jupiter), but is there any follow-up?
Game FAQs. Finally, my kid can leave me alone while I'm working, and not ask me to hit 1up.com or somesuch so he can find out how to get that last missile pack for Metroid 3. Thanks, good tip there. Not that he can't do it with the *old* internet channel...
I would go so far as to say that the power requirements to bombard the surface like that make it incredibly useless to an engineer. It seems to me, culturally, that the physicists of the world are busy creating the obtuse and no engineers are busy chasing what they have done with applications. I wonder if this technology could be made to construct an invisible jet plane, such as what Wonder Woman flew. So the question I have is (to a chemical / mechanical engineer ) is any of this particle research useful, or is it just fun to read? Superconductors do not seem to be making a dent in my utility bills.
So, lame question, but if I'm libertarian in my views, but I don't like drugs, think they rot the brain, lead to a life of crime or teen pregnancy, am I still a libertarian? I mean, can I personally be against several things that are currently illegal? What about a law against adultery, as there is none? I need some schooling here.
Remember all the crackpots in Brewster's Millions? I think Bill is searching for a way to spend his billions frivolously, by changing the temperature of the earth's atmosphere. He may also hate Al Gore's insinuation that humans were responsible (not sun spots) for any measurable (note the NASA disclaimer about their forecast) human impact on the earth's climate, enough to actually do it in the first place.
Bill Gates needs to be stopped. I can just see the sky, covered with white letters... Global Blue Screen of Death.
And the union laborers would love to bid on all the construction costs. I wonder what a carbon nanotube welder would get paid per hour. Much less an aluminum welder.
You're right. All that hydrogen, we're back to the whole 'smores topic again. Plus, don't most balloons leak? I can see the sign in front of the base of this thing: No smoking within 50 miles of the building.
Well, there's one keyboard I'd never want to touch. Crumbs, chocolate, and sticky white goo everywhere. Say, doesn't helium liquify at some temperature? Aren't the winds absolutely insane at different atmospheric strata? This whole idea smacks of a fan of Christo's art installments. Art project, not science. And if it was made of marshmallows, I hope someone eventually would light it on fire and makes that cool, purple-blue flame.
On top of that, won't this whole idea fail if lanced by a micro-meteorite? At least the space elevator fantasy had self-repairing capability. I can just imagine the NASA classifieds: wanted, balloon envelope repairman. Must not be afraid of heights, any heights. Significant mobility required, as well as excellent dexterity in a space suit. Additional work responsibilities include balloon sculpting for parties and special events, stunt work, and wearing large costumes.
>Nope. It's the cost thingy. It costs big bucks to build a nuclear plant. As a result the power is expensive.
Excuse me, but the cost of nuclear power, even with the annualized construction, operation, mining, and supply management averages at or slightly less than coal (not clean coal). Here's a lovely article to add to the mix: Nuclear Cost Per Kilowatt Hour
That sounds like a Democrat president, alright: use fees, tariffs, fines, and the courts to prevent profitable businesses from succeeding, as suited to the minority agenda amalgam which is the Democrat party.
If his "I'll help our auto companies re-tool" sentence blew by anyone, that would be the auto-industry buy-out, which, surprisingly, they used to get people to buy cars with 0% interest rates. No R&D money that I saw. I still say there's a non-Socialist way to bring about innovation, but we've elected Socialists, so the innovation will not happen in the USA for sure.
The bird thing is pure truth. I read up on it at an information center at a park outside of Twentynine Palms, which isn't too far from a reasonably large wind farm in California. Something like 30,000 birds a year for that state, many of them raptors. None of them geese, I'll bet. Those California birds, huh? Bunch of thrill-seekers, trying to thread the needle down a steep canyon, with whirling blades of death at every turn. So typical. No sense of safety or responsibility.
Has anyone done calculations on the energy cost of this carbon capture? What is the overall impact to the energy efficiency of the plant? The idea that it is captured to be added to soda pop just distributes the problem elsewhere. I don't know about you, but that CO2 is going to come out of me in the form of a gas, one way or another. I can't really consume it. It might be cheaper for the teeth-rotting industries to harvest CO2 this way, but they can't account for a noticeable quantity of CO2 removal.
Gosh, how to do you manage to go into work every morning without feeling guilty? Or... do you feel bad about buying things at the store? There's "crime" in every item for sale in the stores: trucks, cargo ships, and railroads. I dunno. Maybe you're Amish with internet access. Even those fine automobiles from Tesla Motors are running on grid electricity, which is what percentage fossil-fuel-based?
Not hazardous? With the notable exception that the 5.2 tons of Uranium per 1000MW per year coal plant goes up into the air.
Clean coal is as much a failure during the Obama administration as it was during Bush Jr.'s re-election campaign.
I'm glad we have a Nobel Prize (in something useful like Physics) laureate for our DOE leadership, but he's not being very cost-conscious. I think Charles Phillips needs to talk to Dr. Chu about cost versus benefit.
Nuclear plants, unburdened by government incentives, will recover their initial investment in 18 months. I think the only thing that big and better than that is a Las Vegas casino.
Collateral damage by that driver would be terrible, however, if that sort of driver were to perish, then the death would be akin to those who slam on the brakes for a small group of geese that crowded into a cloverleaf onramp: it's us or the animals, you idiot! In New York, the traffic is so bad, I doubt slamming on the brakes is even a meaningful phrase anymore. Boston, on the other hand, that's just a way to pick a fight with the guy behind you.
I generally hope that no tweenbot perishes, for the sake of mankind. I met an older guy from Japan who told me about this R&D facility where he worked, and he said he once left the facility to go to the manufacturing site. He went into a warehouse full of robots, all standing there, just like in the Will Smith iRobot movie. I asked him why they had made so many robots. He didn't know. He said his company just did that. It's research, not business, at this phase.
If this college student decides to make 100 of these robots, and distributes them across Washington Park, I think that would be the real experiment. One is small and helpless. 1000? 10,000? One is an experiment. One hundred is a project. Ten thousand is an invasion. I hope this student gets herself an A+. At a minimum, she's got some site traffic records!
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your handle is "Don't make me think." Very apropos. Come on. Do you know how hard it is to get a supercritical reaction? For one, you need a Curie of material. For two, you need a high-energy explosion, usually triggered with a chemical explosive. For three, it has to be shaped/confined right. Paranoia is an irrational fear. What's an ignorant fear called? I am sorry you saw a tragic truck fire. We call those car-becues out here. However, despite your personal experience, compare the simplicity of a burning fuel source with the math, science, and engineering required to make an explosion with a nuclear battery that is little more than a resistor pop. If you are reading Slashdot, then I hope you have the initiative to go read up on the explosive requirements to make a nuclear bomb. Please, I'm begging you to stop running around with your understanding of supercritical reactions to be no more informed than a Hollywood movie.
Actually, the fundamental flaw was the comrade-tards who decided to turn off all the safety systems and use one reactor to power the other's pumps, in an experiment. They tried it before, but the safety systems shut everything down. I think they were running one reactor at about 6%, which apparently is very dangerous. When they disabled their safety systems, then yes, the graphite-tipped control rods combusted with the steam bubble that built up, then they melted and went boom. If they had built a reactor with a positive reactivity coefficient (or was that negative?) that meant reaction speeds went down as heat went up, such as American/French/Canadian designs do, it wouldn't have gone critical. If they had bothered to build what's called a sarcophagus (concrete bunker) around the reactor, then the very small explosion would have not produced a vent of radioactive material. If they had bothered to build an energy-producing reactor, instead of a breeder reactor (Chernobyl was not a power plant, it was a weapons factory), then really, none of this would have been possible. Still, I blame the comrade-tards, and their hatred for the West. This is why Socialism is so bad. It breeds hatred for capitalism and free will, which includes freedom of religion. Please, American Democrats, think about this when you decide whether or not to re-elect a Marxist for a president. Hear the Warning from Soviet Russia! Or, if you prefer, Read it.
My rhetoric falls apart if this assistant professor Kwon is going back to China in 9 months and taking his research with him.
Can we at all read the article and agree enough to agree that these are radio-isotope thermocouples, not light/heavy water reactors? Incidentally, has anyone bothered to pay for a copy of the journal and read up? The BBC has not provided things like gravimetric energy density or output voltage. So what is this, a button battery that has a half-life of 30 years, and has a glow-in-the-dark feature? Or something like: "I can't find my car keys! Oh wait, I'll just use my Geiger counter." The scie
Well, yes there is: http://www.mail-archive.com/meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com/msg77530.html So, a meteorite, or if you read the BBC papers, a "space rock." Let's at least pretend we care about the news, not being our usual, fitful selves.
I thought the guy paid $10 (assuming USD here, sorry), so isn't that 1000 wii points?
Game FAQs. Finally, my kid can leave me alone while I'm working, and not ask me to hit 1up.com or somesuch so he can find out how to get that last missile pack for Metroid 3. Thanks, good tip there. Not that he can't do it with the *old* internet channel...
And to take this line a step further: electrically conductive and useful for fiber optics, perhaps? Talk about signal density.
I would go so far as to say that the power requirements to bombard the surface like that make it incredibly useless to an engineer. It seems to me, culturally, that the physicists of the world are busy creating the obtuse and no engineers are busy chasing what they have done with applications. I wonder if this technology could be made to construct an invisible jet plane, such as what Wonder Woman flew. So the question I have is (to a chemical / mechanical engineer ) is any of this particle research useful, or is it just fun to read? Superconductors do not seem to be making a dent in my utility bills.
So... you're saying that plankton joined some sort of suicide cult?
So, lame question, but if I'm libertarian in my views, but I don't like drugs, think they rot the brain, lead to a life of crime or teen pregnancy, am I still a libertarian? I mean, can I personally be against several things that are currently illegal? What about a law against adultery, as there is none? I need some schooling here.
Bill Gates needs to be stopped. I can just see the sky, covered with white letters... Global Blue Screen of Death.
And the union laborers would love to bid on all the construction costs. I wonder what a carbon nanotube welder would get paid per hour. Much less an aluminum welder.
You're right. All that hydrogen, we're back to the whole 'smores topic again. Plus, don't most balloons leak? I can see the sign in front of the base of this thing: No smoking within 50 miles of the building.
Well, there's one keyboard I'd never want to touch. Crumbs, chocolate, and sticky white goo everywhere. Say, doesn't helium liquify at some temperature? Aren't the winds absolutely insane at different atmospheric strata? This whole idea smacks of a fan of Christo's art installments. Art project, not science. And if it was made of marshmallows, I hope someone eventually would light it on fire and makes that cool, purple-blue flame.
On top of that, won't this whole idea fail if lanced by a micro-meteorite? At least the space elevator fantasy had self-repairing capability. I can just imagine the NASA classifieds: wanted, balloon envelope repairman. Must not be afraid of heights, any heights. Significant mobility required, as well as excellent dexterity in a space suit. Additional work responsibilities include balloon sculpting for parties and special events, stunt work, and wearing large costumes.
>Nope. It's the cost thingy. It costs big bucks to build a nuclear plant. As a result the power is expensive.
Excuse me, but the cost of nuclear power, even with the annualized construction, operation, mining, and supply management averages at or slightly less than coal (not clean coal). Here's a lovely article to add to the mix: Nuclear Cost Per Kilowatt Hour
If his "I'll help our auto companies re-tool" sentence blew by anyone, that would be the auto-industry buy-out, which, surprisingly, they used to get people to buy cars with 0% interest rates. No R&D money that I saw. I still say there's a non-Socialist way to bring about innovation, but we've elected Socialists, so the innovation will not happen in the USA for sure.
The bird thing is pure truth. I read up on it at an information center at a park outside of Twentynine Palms, which isn't too far from a reasonably large wind farm in California. Something like 30,000 birds a year for that state, many of them raptors. None of them geese, I'll bet. Those California birds, huh? Bunch of thrill-seekers, trying to thread the needle down a steep canyon, with whirling blades of death at every turn. So typical. No sense of safety or responsibility.
How hard is Step 2? And don't you mean the fly ash, not the mining tailings?
Has anyone done calculations on the energy cost of this carbon capture? What is the overall impact to the energy efficiency of the plant? The idea that it is captured to be added to soda pop just distributes the problem elsewhere. I don't know about you, but that CO2 is going to come out of me in the form of a gas, one way or another. I can't really consume it. It might be cheaper for the teeth-rotting industries to harvest CO2 this way, but they can't account for a noticeable quantity of CO2 removal.
Was this a veiled reference to the utility of depleted uranium in bullets?
Gosh, how to do you manage to go into work every morning without feeling guilty? Or... do you feel bad about buying things at the store? There's "crime" in every item for sale in the stores: trucks, cargo ships, and railroads. I dunno. Maybe you're Amish with internet access. Even those fine automobiles from Tesla Motors are running on grid electricity, which is what percentage fossil-fuel-based?
Clean coal is as much a failure during the Obama administration as it was during Bush Jr.'s re-election campaign.
I'm glad we have a Nobel Prize (in something useful like Physics) laureate for our DOE leadership, but he's not being very cost-conscious. I think Charles Phillips needs to talk to Dr. Chu about cost versus benefit.
Nuclear plants, unburdened by government incentives, will recover their initial investment in 18 months. I think the only thing that big and better than that is a Las Vegas casino.
I generally hope that no tweenbot perishes, for the sake of mankind. I met an older guy from Japan who told me about this R&D facility where he worked, and he said he once left the facility to go to the manufacturing site. He went into a warehouse full of robots, all standing there, just like in the Will Smith iRobot movie. I asked him why they had made so many robots. He didn't know. He said his company just did that. It's research, not business, at this phase.
If this college student decides to make 100 of these robots, and distributes them across Washington Park, I think that would be the real experiment. One is small and helpless. 1000? 10,000? One is an experiment. One hundred is a project. Ten thousand is an invasion. I hope this student gets herself an A+. At a minimum, she's got some site traffic records!