One further note, people think about oil, but we still rely on coal for most of our power generation needs. I see nuclear power as more of a coal or gas electric power plant substitute than anything. Electric or hydrogen fuel cell vehicles are still no way good enough to be an alternative to oil due to density and cost issues. Perhaps the boron hydride compounds will help or someone can devise some other revolutionary way of storing hydrogen, but I am pessimistic regarding having fast technical developments in this area. These vehicles will most likely remain confined to short or medium distance traveling. Thankfully this is just what most people require.
Fuel cell vehicles using hydrocarbon fuels provide a more efficient alternative to regular cars for long distance routes. The hydrocarbon fuels would be synthetic and could be produced using that method or others. For cheap long distance cargo carrying, this could be done via electric railroad.
Yes, there must be some oil replacement. We have still not come up with anything that replaces oil in all its uses. However I believe biowaste-to-oil will be mostly used for high-margin luxury products like in the materials industry, aviation, etc. I do not think it will ever be cheap enough or in sufficient quantity.
Ah the UK. Are those nuclear power plants the weird 1st gen plants based on sodium, instead of light water reactors like everyone else uses? Regarding decommissioning costs, yes, the private industry will not pay for anything if they possibly can. They don't pay for cheap railroad maintenance, why should they want to pay for decommissioning a nuclear power plant? A bunch of scrooges that is what they are.
There a plenty of fusion reactors. It is just that currently the consume more energy than they produce. So you are better off throwing it out of the window.:-)
Yes. This can be done but it is very expensive since you have to get it by filtering minute quantities. Mass production requires different reactor designs.
You can also make nuclear weapons without Plutonium. The Hiroshima bomb was made out of U-235 rich Uranium, not Plutonium. This is cheap and you just need good purifying centrifuges, you don't even need a nuclear plant at all. Some claim Iran is trying this.
Many (maybe most) experts agree that Eisenhower's Atoms for Peace Iniative helped spread nuclear weapons. It was meant to help other nations learn to use nuclear power for civilian purposes, buy many say that it helped train foreign scientist that would go on to develop nuclear weapons. NPR had a really good story on it.
This I doubt. The USA got nuclear weapons and shared this with some Allies during WW2. Namely the UK and France. Russia got the tech by espionage from the USA and some reverse-engineering. China and India got their tech from Russia. North Korea got it from China/Russia and Pakistan got it from China/North Korea. Israel got it from France and Iraq nearly got it from France as well. Iran may be getting some via North Korea/Russia.
The influence of "Atoms for Peace" for present nuclear weapon proliferation is a drop in the bucket.
This I agree with. Lovelock may have a point that that fossil fuel would kill more than nuclear fuel. But just dismissing all of the down sides of nuclear power doesn't help your cause. Instead of arguing that nuclear power is totally safe, the better arguement is that it is safer than fossil fuels.
This is his argument from what I understand. Not that it is 100% safe, by any means, but that it beats the alternatives given the constraints involved.
True, Japan could have nuclear weapons if they wanted to. But there are more non-nuclear weapon owning states which have nuclear power plants. Belgium, Finland, Germany, Spain, Switzerland are just a few.
Convervation is not an infinite well you can get things from. TANSTAAFL. While some simple measures would help conserve more energy, the fact is you still want cheap energy to do several things, like aluminum production or saltwater desalination.
And how do you get the space for cultivating extra plant matter? By destroying some more rainforests? How do you increase production to use less valuable space? Use bioengineering, pesticides and chemical fertilizers?
Wind does not work 24h unless you have efficient secondary electricity storage and transmission. Unfortunately we suck at both of these technologies. Why do you think electric cars never took off?
And wind power is NIMBY too, there are already several "Greens" claiming it harms birds and whatnot. The fact is there is no energy source that doesn't suffer the NIMBY effect.
It is cheap, compared to renewables, even after the decomissioning costs. Don't be surprised that the nuclear power plant operators don't want to pay the decomissioning. No private corporation wants to pay any taxes and all want the most benefits they can get.
Yes. And I would like to see the recomissioning/refurbishing costs of wind turbines as well. If you want whole cycle costs, at least use the same metric on everything you test. Nothing is everlasting.
Erm, no. Phoenix is a demonstrator vehicle for technologies to be used in Hopper. Hopper AFAIK is supposed to be rail launched from Kourou and is a near-SSTO. It will use a 2nd stage to place satellites at their final orbit. Then it lands on a conventional airstrip, for e.g., at Ascension Island. It is supposed to be fully automatic and unmanned AFAIK.
This is being done by a division of EADS and is funded by sources from the German government. The concept is very similar to that of the Sanger Silverbird from WW2 IMO. I mean, it is rail launched HTHL and the vehicle is meant to skip in the atmosphere. Hence the name Hopper I guess. The Germans have been fascinated with similar winged RLVs for quite some time.
Anyway, the French are working on their own RLV as well. The designs I have seen are of a VTHL TSTO, some are biamese, others not quite, but both stages are supposed to fly back to an airstrip. Design work on reusable engines is being done now between the French and the Russians. Search for information about Volga rocket engine.
Things are still in a state of flux. Depending on how the respective demonstrator vehicles prove themselves, political will and financial resources, either the Hopper, some other TSTO RLV or even a simpler TSTO VTVL with a reusable 1st stage could win. Or several of these. Or the whole thing could go sour, the experimental vehicles are abject failures for e.g., and an Ariane 5 derived expendable could be *the* vehicle selected for 2020.
Plenty of other Windows drawing apps behave like that. It's how they deal with the huge number of tools in the palette.
I quote from the Interface Hall of Shame: Toolbar buttons are intended to provide single click access to frequently used menu items.
So why put a menu in a menu replacement?
Also remember that it was originally a Mac app, and Adobe initially had to win those users over to the Windows version, so maintaining interface consistency across platforms was arguably more important to them than respecting inadequate Windows customs.
And I could say the GIMP is maintaining UI consistency with the Linux version. Yet this Mac user wants a GIMP that behaves like a real Mac app. So why cannot I, as a Windows user, expect Photoshop for Windows to behave like a real Windows app?
Yeah, shame that brush preview is all stuff that DPaint had in the 80's. But the truth is, even Photoshop doesn't have it like DPaint had. I can't find it anyway. All you get is a poor 2D outline facsimile of the brush. DPaint showed you the actual brush, in live color.
And where is the onion skinning and proper animation support in Photoshop like DPaint IV had over 10 years ago?
It is not intuitive ok, quite far from it. No other app in Microsoft Windows behaves like that. Browsers, Office, zero. Buttons != Menus.
At least the menus on each window you people complain about on GIMP are actually always visible and you do not need to guess what action you need to do to get to them.
Slashdot Mirror
Fuel cell vehicles using hydrocarbon fuels provide a more efficient alternative to regular cars for long distance routes. The hydrocarbon fuels would be synthetic and could be produced using that method or others. For cheap long distance cargo carrying, this could be done via electric railroad.
Yes, there must be some oil replacement. We have still not come up with anything that replaces oil in all its uses. However I believe biowaste-to-oil will be mostly used for high-margin luxury products like in the materials industry, aviation, etc. I do not think it will ever be cheap enough or in sufficient quantity.
Ah the UK. Are those nuclear power plants the weird 1st gen plants based on sodium, instead of light water reactors like everyone else uses? Regarding decommissioning costs, yes, the private industry will not pay for anything if they possibly can. They don't pay for cheap railroad maintenance, why should they want to pay for decommissioning a nuclear power plant? A bunch of scrooges that is what they are.
Seems interesting. But they still use space, albeith desert and plenty of salt water. Algae need water.
There a plenty of fusion reactors. It is just that currently the consume more energy than they produce. So you are better off throwing it out of the window. :-)
You can also make nuclear weapons without Plutonium. The Hiroshima bomb was made out of U-235 rich Uranium, not Plutonium. This is cheap and you just need good purifying centrifuges, you don't even need a nuclear plant at all. Some claim Iran is trying this.
This I doubt. The USA got nuclear weapons and shared this with some Allies during WW2. Namely the UK and France. Russia got the tech by espionage from the USA and some reverse-engineering. China and India got their tech from Russia. North Korea got it from China/Russia and Pakistan got it from China/North Korea. Israel got it from France and Iraq nearly got it from France as well. Iran may be getting some via North Korea/Russia.
The influence of "Atoms for Peace" for present nuclear weapon proliferation is a drop in the bucket. This I agree with. Lovelock may have a point that that fossil fuel would kill more than nuclear fuel. But just dismissing all of the down sides of nuclear power doesn't help your cause. Instead of arguing that nuclear power is totally safe, the better arguement is that it is safer than fossil fuels.
This is his argument from what I understand. Not that it is 100% safe, by any means, but that it beats the alternatives given the constraints involved.
True, Japan could have nuclear weapons if they wanted to. But there are more non-nuclear weapon owning states which have nuclear power plants. Belgium, Finland, Germany, Spain, Switzerland are just a few.
Prior to WWII? Then what were all those steam trains from the XIXth century running on? Wind power?
He just keeps on piling up fallacy on fallacy. A very poor response.
Convervation is not an infinite well you can get things from. TANSTAAFL. While some simple measures would help conserve more energy, the fact is you still want cheap energy to do several things, like aluminum production or saltwater desalination.
And how do you get the space for cultivating extra plant matter? By destroying some more rainforests? How do you increase production to use less valuable space? Use bioengineering, pesticides and chemical fertilizers?
And wind power is NIMBY too, there are already several "Greens" claiming it harms birds and whatnot. The fact is there is no energy source that doesn't suffer the NIMBY effect.
It is cheap, compared to renewables, even after the decomissioning costs. Don't be surprised that the nuclear power plant operators don't want to pay the decomissioning. No private corporation wants to pay any taxes and all want the most benefits they can get.
Not if you use LOX/LH2 rockets and get the LOX/LH2 by cracking water... with nuclear plants.
Yes. And I would like to see the recomissioning/refurbishing costs of wind turbines as well. If you want whole cycle costs, at least use the same metric on everything you test. Nothing is everlasting.
Here is a good article about Phoenix and Hopper.
Since they are paying, nice to use the flag for publicity. :-)
This is being done by a division of EADS and is funded by sources from the German government. The concept is very similar to that of the Sanger Silverbird from WW2 IMO. I mean, it is rail launched HTHL and the vehicle is meant to skip in the atmosphere. Hence the name Hopper I guess. The Germans have been fascinated with similar winged RLVs for quite some time.
Anyway, the French are working on their own RLV as well. The designs I have seen are of a VTHL TSTO, some are biamese, others not quite, but both stages are supposed to fly back to an airstrip. Design work on reusable engines is being done now between the French and the Russians. Search for information about Volga rocket engine.
Things are still in a state of flux. Depending on how the respective demonstrator vehicles prove themselves, political will and financial resources, either the Hopper, some other TSTO RLV or even a simpler TSTO VTVL with a reusable 1st stage could win. Or several of these. Or the whole thing could go sour, the experimental vehicles are abject failures for e.g., and an Ariane 5 derived expendable could be *the* vehicle selected for 2020.
Time will tell.
I quote from the Interface Hall of Shame:
Toolbar buttons are intended to provide single click access to frequently used menu items.
So why put a menu in a menu replacement?
Also remember that it was originally a Mac app, and Adobe initially had to win those users over to the Windows version, so maintaining interface consistency across platforms was arguably more important to them than respecting inadequate Windows customs.
And I could say the GIMP is maintaining UI consistency with the Linux version. Yet this Mac user wants a GIMP that behaves like a real Mac app. So why cannot I, as a Windows user, expect Photoshop for Windows to behave like a real Windows app?
Some people have a really poor sense of irony...
And where is the onion skinning and proper animation support in Photoshop like DPaint IV had over 10 years ago?
Why not put the load and save actions in a menu in the load toolbar button and use SHIFT + L to toggle the save action too?
Real intuitive. So I need to press SHIFT + G to get the PAINT BUCKET tool?
At least the menus on each window you people complain about on GIMP are actually always visible and you do not need to guess what action you need to do to get to them.