60k made up deaths from an environmentalist party coalition site. Reading these numbers is like reading a RIAA estimate for damages from copying a single song. There were 57 direct deaths and even the highly debatable estimate in the UNSCEAR report is way less than that number.
The nuclear industry does put money into a fund to cover accidents. It is just that the amount of damages is limited by legislation, so you do not get frivolous lawsuits or unreasonable lawsuits as happens so commonly in the US of A.
Failure modes? It does not take nuclear power to have a coal dust mine explosion (e.g. Benxihu Colliery, China, 1549 dead). Coal mines usually have natural gas pockets close by as well which increases the risk of mine explosions. Then there is soot causing all sorts of lung disorders. The worst power plant disasters in history were the cascading hydropower plant failures in China some decades ago.
Of course nuclear has risk, but it is still safer than the alternatives.
Well, we have to produce electricity from something. Being against building anything at all is not a solution. Neither is conservation. You cannot power your computer on energy conservation. The power must come from somewhere to begin with. Environmentalists are against usually against coal plants, nuclear plants, hydroelectric plants. Yes hydro. Sometimes the argument is think about the fish which cannot swim upstream, other times it is think of the destroyed sunken ecosystems, other times it is dead plant matter at the bottom causing CO2 and methane emissions. Wind power is noise pollution and dead birds. Geothermal causes earthquakes. Solar pollutes water streams because of the solvents used in silicon manufacturing. So yeah, make sure to keep burning that natural gas.
Wow. A meltdown. Like Three Mile Island? How many people died there? 0? Do you have the faintest idea of how many coal miner deaths there are just in China every year?
I picked Delta III to show that even experienced design teams from major aerospace contractors are no guarantee of success. It is hardly the only example. Both Ariane 5, Ariane 5 ECA first flights were total losses and those are actually pretty reliable rockets in general (unlike Delta III).
Delta II 7925 exploded on launch and was a total loss. There were also a couple of partial failures. The Delta family has been in use for a long time and most bugs were worked out when the rocket was still called Thor. One reason why SpaceX even bothered with Falcon 1 was to work out the bugs in their Merlin engine and other launch systems design prior to making the large rocket. If you read interviews with SpaceX people, they often mentioned that Thor was one of the templates they used for design (e.g. horizontal assembly and vertical launch).
Atlas V is a great rocket, but is not used very often. NASA should have gone for EELVs instead of dumping money into Ares I.
No, RD-180 was designed specifically for the Atlas program. It is based on the RD-170 engine from Energia, but it first flew in Atlas III in like 2000. Also, 20 years is not a long time in the space launch industry. Not that old when you have improved R-7 rockets based on the one that launched Sputnik and Gagarin still in use today.
RS-68 was a pretty new design that used less parts, and an ablative nozzle to decrease costs, which is unlike most engines previous to it. RD-180 is a staged combustion engine of a type which was never manufactured outside of CIS.
The Delta IV and Atlas V first stages and engines are essentially new (RS-68, RD-180). Sure the second stage uses the RL-10 Centaur engine, but there is not that much in common between those rockets and their predecessors. Especially Delta IV.
Most new rocket systems fail on their first launch (e.g. Delta III, Delta IV Heavy, Ariane 5) it is rare that they do not fail on the first launch. SpaceX is doing a lot of testing, but things can still go wrong.
Following a string of failed and canceled NASA projects, there is no Shuttle replacement after its retired. Ariane is not a US rocket, and it cannot presently transport crew. Neither can the Japanese H-IIA rocket.
I would bet it is more reliable than Delta III was. They have done first and second stage tests already, as well as mechanical tests. They will also be doing a hold down test with the full first stage firing. This is all before they even get to launch the thing.
Compare that to Delta III which had so many solids you could only actually test the thing upon the actual flight. Guess which one should be more reliable...
By universe of incompatible devices they mean the hardware itself is different (different screen resolution, system memory, camera resolution, accelerometer available, kind of touch screen available) making it hard to develop an application that works on any device. Google can easily fix this by making standard certified hardware platforms. In reality they probably will not bother at all. This also happens with the PC platform and people manage fine.
Android uses Dalvik which is a sort of Java like VM.
Theory is way better than H.263. It may not match current H.264 encoders but is certainly good enough for web streamed video. Check out the clips at wikipedia for example.
Taking as much time as it takes to get things done eh? Where did I hear that before... Oh I remember 3DRealms. Well Blizzard is not getting bankrupt anytime soon since they have the WoW cash cow, but they are known for dropping releases on occasion. Remember Starcraft: Ghost? Or what about Blackthorne?
Was it that hard to release a Starcraft version based on the Warcraft III engine a couple of years afterwards? Why did they have to make a new engine? The mind boggles.
You mean, quite adequate to the task of producing high-fructose corn syrup. The US could produce enough real sugar (sucrose) even if it had to grow sugar beets. But it does not.
How did you get to those wind is 400% cheaper than nuclear numbers? This is even less believable since you are comparing to Generation III nuclear power plants, which are supposed to be a lot cheaper to build than older Generation II plants. Then you compare nuclear with silicon PV. Please elaborate on how you arrived at these numbers.
Oh and do try to read a bit about silicon, in particular silicon PV manufacturing. The only clean thing about it is the resulting panels. The intermediate steps pollute a lot more than most people think. In fact, silicon PV manufacturing has moved to China precisely because there are less environmental standards there. You can just dump chemicals (e.g. sulfuric acid) in the river for all they care. The Chinese are building a lot of nuclear power plants because they need power close to their coastal cities in the south, which are very far away from the coal mines in the north of the country. Most of their generated power is coal.
Coal makes economic sense in countries where coal sources are nearby. This includes the USA, China, India, Australia and some other places. Coal has a low amount of energy per weight and volume, so transport dominates the cost equation if you are far from the source. You want to transport coal by rail or barge. This explains why countries such as France, Japan, without no coal reserves to speak of, favor nuclear power.
Uranium was too cheap since the Soviet Union collapsed and they started diluting their nuclear weapons material to make reactor fuel. That was what killed IFR. If uranium was more expensive, it would have been pursued.
Slashdot Mirror
60k made up deaths from an environmentalist party coalition site. Reading these numbers is like reading a RIAA estimate for damages from copying a single song. There were 57 direct deaths and even the highly debatable estimate in the UNSCEAR report is way less than that number.
The nuclear industry does put money into a fund to cover accidents. It is just that the amount of damages is limited by legislation, so you do not get frivolous lawsuits or unreasonable lawsuits as happens so commonly in the US of A.
Which perfectly explains the impeccable safety record of US Naval nuclear reactors right?
Failure modes? It does not take nuclear power to have a coal dust mine explosion (e.g. Benxihu Colliery, China, 1549 dead). Coal mines usually have natural gas pockets close by as well which increases the risk of mine explosions. Then there is soot causing all sorts of lung disorders. The worst power plant disasters in history were the cascading hydropower plant failures in China some decades ago.
Of course nuclear has risk, but it is still safer than the alternatives.
Well, we have to produce electricity from something. Being against building anything at all is not a solution. Neither is conservation. You cannot power your computer on energy conservation. The power must come from somewhere to begin with. Environmentalists are against usually against coal plants, nuclear plants, hydroelectric plants. Yes hydro. Sometimes the argument is think about the fish which cannot swim upstream, other times it is think of the destroyed sunken ecosystems, other times it is dead plant matter at the bottom causing CO2 and methane emissions. Wind power is noise pollution and dead birds. Geothermal causes earthquakes. Solar pollutes water streams because of the solvents used in silicon manufacturing. So yeah, make sure to keep burning that natural gas.
Wow. A meltdown. Like Three Mile Island? How many people died there? 0? Do you have the faintest idea of how many coal miner deaths there are just in China every year?
You have to learn the difference between reserves and resources.
I picked Delta III to show that even experienced design teams from major aerospace contractors are no guarantee of success. It is hardly the only example. Both Ariane 5, Ariane 5 ECA first flights were total losses and those are actually pretty reliable rockets in general (unlike Delta III).
Delta II 7925 exploded on launch and was a total loss. There were also a couple of partial failures. The Delta family has been in use for a long time and most bugs were worked out when the rocket was still called Thor. One reason why SpaceX even bothered with Falcon 1 was to work out the bugs in their Merlin engine and other launch systems design prior to making the large rocket. If you read interviews with SpaceX people, they often mentioned that Thor was one of the templates they used for design (e.g. horizontal assembly and vertical launch).
Atlas V is a great rocket, but is not used very often. NASA should have gone for EELVs instead of dumping money into Ares I.
RS-68 was a pretty new design that used less parts, and an ablative nozzle to decrease costs, which is unlike most engines previous to it. RD-180 is a staged combustion engine of a type which was never manufactured outside of CIS.
The Delta IV and Atlas V first stages and engines are essentially new (RS-68, RD-180). Sure the second stage uses the RL-10 Centaur engine, but there is not that much in common between those rockets and their predecessors. Especially Delta IV.
Most new rocket systems fail on their first launch (e.g. Delta III, Delta IV Heavy, Ariane 5) it is rare that they do not fail on the first launch. SpaceX is doing a lot of testing, but things can still go wrong.
Following a string of failed and canceled NASA projects, there is no Shuttle replacement after its retired. Ariane is not a US rocket, and it cannot presently transport crew. Neither can the Japanese H-IIA rocket.
Compare that to Delta III which had so many solids you could only actually test the thing upon the actual flight. Guess which one should be more reliable...
Android uses Dalvik which is a sort of Java like VM.
iPhone does it as well. There are several versions of iPhone OS, even if there have been less hardware platforms per se.
Google "ge sofc" or "siemens sofc". There are plenty of companies working on using SOFC power generation from natural gas.
Theory is way better than H.263. It may not match current H.264 encoders but is certainly good enough for web streamed video. Check out the clips at wikipedia for example.
Taking as much time as it takes to get things done eh? Where did I hear that before... Oh I remember 3DRealms. Well Blizzard is not getting bankrupt anytime soon since they have the WoW cash cow, but they are known for dropping releases on occasion. Remember Starcraft: Ghost? Or what about Blackthorne?
Was it that hard to release a Starcraft version based on the Warcraft III engine a couple of years afterwards? Why did they have to make a new engine? The mind boggles.
I want my sucrose.
No one died at TMI. Geez.
Oh and do try to read a bit about silicon, in particular silicon PV manufacturing. The only clean thing about it is the resulting panels. The intermediate steps pollute a lot more than most people think. In fact, silicon PV manufacturing has moved to China precisely because there are less environmental standards there. You can just dump chemicals (e.g. sulfuric acid) in the river for all they care. The Chinese are building a lot of nuclear power plants because they need power close to their coastal cities in the south, which are very far away from the coal mines in the north of the country. Most of their generated power is coal.
Solar thermal is cheaper than PV anyway.
No one died at TMI.
Coal makes economic sense in countries where coal sources are nearby. This includes the USA, China, India, Australia and some other places. Coal has a low amount of energy per weight and volume, so transport dominates the cost equation if you are far from the source. You want to transport coal by rail or barge. This explains why countries such as France, Japan, without no coal reserves to speak of, favor nuclear power.
Uranium was too cheap since the Soviet Union collapsed and they started diluting their nuclear weapons material to make reactor fuel. That was what killed IFR. If uranium was more expensive, it would have been pursued.
If it was that cheap, the Chinese wouldn't be building nuclear power plants to generate electricity themselves.