There is nothing wrong with PWRs. Uranium-235 is not that expensive if you use decent separation technology. Why do you think even small nation states like North Korea can do it now? Plus the process they use, gas centrifuges, is neither the theoretically cheapest separation process to use, nor the cheapest technically available process to use. The US is testing the Australian SILEX laser separation process right now.
Thorium research is fine. But it is mostly useful for countries like India which don't have a lot of native uranium resources.
I take it this way. The uranium will eventually decay into something unusable. So its use it or lose it. I say use it.
As for the rest it is mostly bullshit: - A geothermal power plant will use water to operate as well. The water is not lost. It just heats up and gets turned into steam. In both cases. - Fuel transport issues aren't important in the case of nuclear since a small amount will produce a lot of energy. - Environmental contamination issues. The uranium was dug up from the ground to begin with. The nuclear burning residue is harder to process for disposal but it isn't theoretically impossible. It is just not active, nor funded, research right now. Oh and solar PV panels aren't exactly easy to recycle either. Plus semiconductor manufacturing traditionally used solvents so they used to dump acid into the river. That seems, to me, a lot worse than turning it into steam.
were already building hydropower capacity to store the excess from the so-called "baseload" nuclear
Because it was more energy efficient to do it than having to throttle them up and down all the time.
An expansion of nuclear energy is likely to spread militarism
Bunk. Belgium and Switzerland have nuclear reactors. How many wars has Switzerland been in the last several hundred years? As for Belgium is mostly remember it being invaded rather than them invading anyone. What you are saying is similar to the adage that people can't make war without having steel so why not confiscate pots and pans to prevent people shooting each other. Its bunk.
How do you get backers for new nuclear power plants when massive cost overruns are the rule rather than the exception
If they were subsidized up the wazoo with guaranteed energy prices for 20-30 years after installation like wind is you can bet they would be installing them right now. If the US could build a nation wide railroad system with similar promises why do you think a couple dozen nuclear power plants would be any different?
Its bullshit. The French vary their reactor power output from 30% to 100% capacity and they can vary output by 5% per minute. Nuclear does not have any problem coping with load demands from daytime to nighttime. How did you think the French handled the loads to begin with when over half of their production was nuclear?
The problem is having power on demand. I want to turn on the heating *now* now wait until the wind blows of the sun shines. If I could wait until the sun shined I wouldn't need heating to begin with. Duh.
If you compare old coal power plants built 30 years ago to new gas power plant construction sure. The same is not true if you used the same technology on both.
A lot of this talk about nuclear power plants or even coal powered power plants being inflexible is nonsense. They are run continuously because this is more energy efficient. However there is nothing stopping you from burning less coal. In France it is common to partially off nuclear power plants during the night:
In France, however, nuclear power plants use load following. French PWRs use "grey" control rods, in order to replace chemical shim, without introducing a large perturbation of the power distribution. These plants have the capability to make power changes between 30% and 100% of rated power, with a slope of 5% of rated power per minute. Their licensing permits them to respond very quickly to the grid requirements.
I know all about that. But there is another thing I know about. Vaporware campaigns. Microsoft is most adept at using this. IMO Apple does it all the time as well. It is just they are more subtle at it. Notice how you always know which product they are working on before its released. The actual design specs are only known like a quarter before the product is released so the competition doesn't get a handle on your product.
Well some people doing their PhD do some research their supervisor thinks is important and get funding that way. Other people propose their own research. It is not easy for the research proposal to get accepted though. It was bloody hard. In my case it took 1 year to convince him while I was working on his research ideas in the meantime. As for Graduate school not being well suited to work on long term projects... Google's founders developed their prototype and Map-Reduce algorithm back then AFAIK. But then again they never actually got their PhDs so.
What will eventually happen is the market in that country, in this case the US, will stop being able to afford those products. We are quite familiar with that here in Europe. This place is a collection of failed empires. Once you switch from an economy that focuses on production to one focused on consumption... the so called 'evolved economies' by misguided economists... the end result is disaster. The truth is you have just become a decadent society that is on the brink of ruin.
Not that our leaders know any better though. I think they all plan to run away with their fortune and relocate to some other country if things turn bad. Notice the rise of people with dual citizenships lately. It is starting to get embarrassing.
In some cases those jobs make sense. Just because you work in a bank or the finance sector it doesn't mean you aren't doing a technical job. Banks have websites and servers and things like that. In some cases they need analytics too. The problem IMO is the overinflated importance banks and similar companies give themselves. A lot of what they do could be replaced by an online service with no front end personnel wasn't if for regulation. A lot of the people in that sector are utterly redundant. Eventually it will implode IMO. It fulfills a necessary taskset but its business methods are obsolete.
In fact it should have imploded already. But money talks man.
But anecdotal evidence is the best kind, so I'll just add that when I was in graduate school the stipend was sufficient to live a reasonable life. Not plush, not with a new car every year and a three bedroom house, but sufficient to meet my needs and most of my wants.
Not anymore. At least here in Europe where I'm at it is dire. I did not get into a graduate student program just for the money. For me it was a chance to work on something I thought was important. But if you can't even survive while working on it what's the point? I'm at the point where I am starting to get results and may even start my own business out of it (hah) someday. Had I not worked for a long time before enrolling I would have quit by now. The market is not interested in long term projects.
Slashdot Mirror
No. See? The law about headlines doesn't work.
Plus lots of solvents to etch the cells and tons of energy to produce to melt silicon into ingots.
There is nothing wrong with PWRs. Uranium-235 is not that expensive if you use decent separation technology. Why do you think even small nation states like North Korea can do it now? Plus the process they use, gas centrifuges, is neither the theoretically cheapest separation process to use, nor the cheapest technically available process to use. The US is testing the Australian SILEX laser separation process right now.
Thorium research is fine. But it is mostly useful for countries like India which don't have a lot of native uranium resources.
I take it this way. The uranium will eventually decay into something unusable. So its use it or lose it. I say use it.
As for the rest it is mostly bullshit:
- A geothermal power plant will use water to operate as well. The water is not lost. It just heats up and gets turned into steam. In both cases.
- Fuel transport issues aren't important in the case of nuclear since a small amount will produce a lot of energy.
- Environmental contamination issues. The uranium was dug up from the ground to begin with. The nuclear burning residue is harder to process for disposal but it isn't theoretically impossible. It is just not active, nor funded, research right now. Oh and solar PV panels aren't exactly easy to recycle either. Plus semiconductor manufacturing traditionally used solvents so they used to dump acid into the river. That seems, to me, a lot worse than turning it into steam.
Because it costs a lot and batteries don't last for a long time. The average power plant has a lifetime of decades. Not years or months.
Nuclear cannot be varied
Bunk. Read the rest of this thread.
it cannot meet demand by itself either
Bunk.
were already building hydropower capacity to store the excess from the so-called "baseload" nuclear
Because it was more energy efficient to do it than having to throttle them up and down all the time.
An expansion of nuclear energy is likely to spread militarism
Bunk. Belgium and Switzerland have nuclear reactors. How many wars has Switzerland been in the last several hundred years? As for Belgium is mostly remember it being invaded rather than them invading anyone. What you are saying is similar to the adage that people can't make war without having steel so why not confiscate pots and pans to prevent people shooting each other. Its bunk.
How do you get backers for new nuclear power plants when massive cost overruns are the rule rather than the exception
If they were subsidized up the wazoo with guaranteed energy prices for 20-30 years after installation like wind is you can bet they would be installing them right now. If the US could build a nation wide railroad system with similar promises why do you think a couple dozen nuclear power plants would be any different?
Its bullshit. The French vary their reactor power output from 30% to 100% capacity and they can vary output by 5% per minute. Nuclear does not have any problem coping with load demands from daytime to nighttime. How did you think the French handled the loads to begin with when over half of their production was nuclear?
The problem is having power on demand. I want to turn on the heating *now* now wait until the wind blows of the sun shines. If I could wait until the sun shined I wouldn't need heating to begin with. Duh.
The German Green Party may expound a lot of nonsense but Merkel isn't in the Green Party. She is in the CDU right-winged conservative party.
If you compare old coal power plants built 30 years ago to new gas power plant construction sure. The same is not true if you used the same technology on both.
A lot of this talk about nuclear power plants or even coal powered power plants being inflexible is nonsense. They are run continuously because this is more energy efficient. However there is nothing stopping you from burning less coal. In France it is common to partially off nuclear power plants during the night:
In France, however, nuclear power plants use load following. French PWRs use "grey" control rods, in order to replace chemical shim, without introducing a large perturbation of the power distribution. These plants have the capability to make power changes between 30% and 100% of rated power, with a slope of 5% of rated power per minute. Their licensing permits them to respond very quickly to the grid requirements.
If you don't do it properly your VS project will start failing because of bad hard paths all over the projects. Its not as trivial as you say.
But yeah Java is too verbose.
Why is it recomended you don't uninstall plugins you no longer want to use? Does it have to be that unstable?
Dependencies I bet.
So since when did Visual Studio get decent refactoring support out of the box?
'Modern' coding using Design Patterns I guess. Too much cruft in code like that.
C++ can do it too. Read about HP Project Dynamo.
There are multiple versions of Eclipse bundles some which which come with all relevant plugins installed.
Lua is one.
I know all about that. But there is another thing I know about. Vaporware campaigns. Microsoft is most adept at using this. IMO Apple does it all the time as well. It is just they are more subtle at it. Notice how you always know which product they are working on before its released. The actual design specs are only known like a quarter before the product is released so the competition doesn't get a handle on your product.
Well some people doing their PhD do some research their supervisor thinks is important and get funding that way. Other people propose their own research. It is not easy for the research proposal to get accepted though. It was bloody hard. In my case it took 1 year to convince him while I was working on his research ideas in the meantime. As for Graduate school not being well suited to work on long term projects... Google's founders developed their prototype and Map-Reduce algorithm back then AFAIK. But then again they never actually got their PhDs so.
Just read a GAO report. They are usually pretty solid.
Yeah and the sad thing is its true man.
Next time she should just say 'boffin'.
What will eventually happen is the market in that country, in this case the US, will stop being able to afford those products. We are quite familiar with that here in Europe. This place is a collection of failed empires. Once you switch from an economy that focuses on production to one focused on consumption... the so called 'evolved economies' by misguided economists... the end result is disaster. The truth is you have just become a decadent society that is on the brink of ruin.
Not that our leaders know any better though. I think they all plan to run away with their fortune and relocate to some other country if things turn bad. Notice the rise of people with dual citizenships lately. It is starting to get embarrassing.
In some cases those jobs make sense. Just because you work in a bank or the finance sector it doesn't mean you aren't doing a technical job. Banks have websites and servers and things like that. In some cases they need analytics too. The problem IMO is the overinflated importance banks and similar companies give themselves. A lot of what they do could be replaced by an online service with no front end personnel wasn't if for regulation. A lot of the people in that sector are utterly redundant. Eventually it will implode IMO. It fulfills a necessary taskset but its business methods are obsolete.
In fact it should have imploded already. But money talks man.
But anecdotal evidence is the best kind, so I'll just add that when I was in graduate school the stipend was sufficient to live a reasonable life. Not plush, not with a new car every year and a three bedroom house, but sufficient to meet my needs and most of my wants.
Not anymore. At least here in Europe where I'm at it is dire. I did not get into a graduate student program just for the money. For me it was a chance to work on something I thought was important. But if you can't even survive while working on it what's the point? I'm at the point where I am starting to get results and may even start my own business out of it (hah) someday. Had I not worked for a long time before enrolling I would have quit by now. The market is not interested in long term projects.