You're still making the mistake of thinking that bureaucracy and government are synonyms. First off, you don't have just one government. You probably have at least three, each with its own bureaucracy. And of course, different branches of a government can have their own bureaucracies. Every corporation has a bureaucracy. Most sizable non-profit organizations do as well.
Bureaucracy is just an inevitable aspect of how Humans organize themselves when more than a hundred or so people have to cooperate.
Supercapacitors could be even better, since they have a nearly 100% efficiency. Of course, that technology is still fairly novel, but with superior efficiency and no moving parts, they could beat flywheels all to hell as far as automobiles go.
Anyone else thinking "spacecraft"? As I understand it, there's not much moisture in space. This graphene-oxide paper might not be a suitable hull material, but it could be very useful for internal structure.
Apparently you're not very familiar with our good friend "steel".
I kid, I kid. Obviously steel's vulnerability to water takes place on a vastly different scale of time and affect.
Still, it does suggest that if this graphene-oxide paper is sufficiently advantageous in some domain (as you say, probably NOT aerojets and automocars), then means could be found to protect it from moisture. Right of the top of my head, the idea of spacecraft comes to mind. I wonder how much moisture makes it up to a low-earth-orbit? I would think that none would, but that seems like the kind of assumption that could be disastrously wrong.
I'm not discounting the possibility that there are a couple of questionable characters. I think we've seen the result of what appears to be a change in the selection process for the worse... or, a failure of the peer process within the Astronaut Office to handle their own problems. I know that's how it used to work. And I know that it did work.
It's strange that you would write four entire paragraphs DISPUTING the notion that there are any questionable characters among NASA's astronauts (based on your ever so scientific anecdotal evidence)... and then immediately nullify those paragraphs by acknowledging that the article is most likely correct, that there probably HAVE been a few astronauts retarded enough to get into the shuttle while drunk and a few surgeons sufficiently hamstrung by the NASA administration to LET them, and so on.
I bet you're also the kind of guy who is incapable of believing anything negative about the politicians he voted for.
The power to decide who does and does not get a driver's license is held by a bureau -- right? So it's a bureaucracy -- rule by bureaus. You've lost sight of the actual meaning of the word. Bureaucracy is when administration is handled by bureaus.
If you got to the DMV without having any problems or excessive paperwork and whatnot, the experience wont linger in your mind. You wont be left with recurring nightmares of forms and small-minded clerks with rubber stamps. You wont have any impression of the bureaucracy whatsoever. It's only when it fails that you actually form associations with it -- bad ones in this case. But it was still a bureaucracy -- it's just that it was one that was operating properly.
Can you consider the existence of E. coli without thinking of infections, food poisoning, and food that is contaminated with fecal matter? Unless you're a biologist, probably not. Nevertheless, several pounds of E. coli live inside you right now, helping to keep your digestive system in order. They don't cease to be E. coli just because they're not pissing you off. You just don't notice them, so you never have a chance to develop positive associations with them.
As I said, the latter pair of definitions stem from peoples impressions of bureaucracies. You probably deal with a dozen or more bureaucracies every day, without ever having a problem. They're like the arteries in your brain -- you only become aware of them when something goes hideously wrong with their functioning, or when you want to interact with them in a way that's outside of their normal function.
I'd like to think it's warranted by its casual blasphemy towards a major world religion. Believe me, if the signature box could hold a streaming webcam view of the museum of heresy, it'd be there. Although I do like the plasma blaster thing. It gives me a great idea for a line of transformers toys marketed towards fundamentalist children.
Hey, think about who's passing these laws: ugly-ass dodecagenarians -- the very people who should be the most ashamed of their flabby, liver-spotted old hides. They don't want any competition from a bunch of slinky twenty-year-olds going around without clothes. You think that the average senator wants his wrinkled little finger puppet to be compared to the swinging Bologna of a guy who hasn't passed the half-century mark yet? What about the golfball-in-a-sandwich baggy that a woman of Hillary Clinton's age has attached to her chest?
No, the only way that our elderly politicians will be able to retain their shabby dignity is if they're allowed to keep the bodies of attractive young folk safely hidden away, out of the public eye.
Don't worry, I distrust authorities. But I distrust REAL authorities with REAL power -- like religions, the government, etc. I don't distrust the ESRB, because they have no power over me, and aren't asking me to trust them in the first place, or even to give them any money. All they do is put little letters on boxes for me to ignore.
You seem to be confused about what bureaucracy is -- in particular, you've got it mixed up with government. Bureaucracy is simply administration by bureaus -- it's how every single large organization on Earth is administered. Large organizations simply can't exist or accomplish anything without a functional bureaucracy. Corporations and nation states didn't even exist before the development of the modern bureaucracy.
It is odd that you seem to aspire to the level of social awareness of a hungry dog. Call me crazy, but I've always hoped that humans can do better -- like making rational choices about who to trust and distrust, rather than distrusting everything and everyone until they bribe me with enough doggy biscuits to be their obedient slave.
Probably my own fault for not having a hatred and irrational distrust of bureaucracies. The assumption that bureaucrats are inherently stupid and incompetent isn't a universal one, or even an obvious one... at least to people who've dealt with reasonable bureaucrats.
Don't worry -- the products of particle accelerators only exist for a few picoseconds. If God is created during a collision event, he will wink out of existence so fast that we'll only become aware of his presence by the shower of Mormonions and PatRobertsonite particles impinging on the detection apparatus.
And they're currently FAR too expensive to put into a production car. At least, anything that isn't a high-priced car. More R&D, like your source of platinum, has to be done in order to make fuel cell vehicles purchasable by 'normal' people.
Certainly. But when we're talking about replacing petroleum, we're talking on the time frame of decades. After all, petroleum is still much cheaper than the alternatives. And dropping a gargantuan carbon tax on gasoline purchases would not go over well, no matter well-intentioned.
Over the time frames that we're discussing, there's no reason to believe that the issues with fuel cells wont be resolved. Catalysts in particular are a subject that is being intensely researched, and with the kinds of computational-chemistry systems that are just now becoming available, a cheaper alternative to platinum may well be discovered sooner rather than later. But it's worth mentioning that biofuels (particularly ethanol) may very well be what ends up being used as the fuel for vehicle fuel cells -- after all, ethanol is vastly more tractable than hydrogen gas, and can be oxidized using nano-structured non-noble metals as catalysts.
If the problem we're trying to solve is CO2 emissions, biofuels solve that problem without any conversion
Unfortunately, most vehicles are powered by gasoline -- and there aren't any biofuel processes that produce an alternative to gasoline. Diesel? Sure -- and there are people already. switching over. I suspect that many bus fleets will be using primarily bio-diesel before the end of the next decade. And we can dilute the gasoline with ethanol to at least some extent. But until all the older cars are replaced by newer ones that can run on E85 or on pure ethanol, we can't really talk about bio-fuels as an immediate solution. Too many people still need gasoline, and we don't have bio-gasoline yet.
Nevertheless, I'd certainly agree that biodiesel's time is nigh. And it's time to start making E85 much more widely available... and to let owners of newer vehicles know that their vehicles are most likely already rated for E85.
I just stumbled upon some references to butanol being a possible direct replacement for gasoline. Now that would be interesting to learn some more about. Any plan that lets us keep existing equipment (ie: old cars) is a plan that has at least a chance of succeeding.
I think the confusion here may stem from nationality -- I understand that in the US, the situation is indeed almost exactly as you describe.
Speaking as a Canadian, I would point out that the next generation of CANDU reactors is being designed right now. They can still breed fuel from thorium and be run on the waste from LWRs, they use vastly less heavy water (one of the biggest costs in building traditional CANDU reactors), they're half the size for the same power output, they have more passive safety features, etc. I mean, that's pretty good -- and that's just one nation's nuclear program. Japan and Europe have new reactors that are significant evolutionary improvements on older pressured water reactors, like the ABWR and EPR. Indian researchers are working on concepts for thorium-cycle reactors right now, among many others (I doubt they're on the verge of retirement either). And pebble bed reactors are already at the prototype stage -- hardly a primitive reactor design.
Of course, if you're referring to the underlying technology -- then sure, they are all based on designs conceived of in the 50s. But that logic, you drive around in technology from the 19th century (I'm making the audacious assumption here that you drive an internal combustion engine vehicle...). Your home is most likely heated using a technology from the paleolithic age. And so on. But when you make enough evolutionary, incremental improvements to a technology, you eventually end up with something that is very advanced compared to the original.
Now, there's no doubt that a very interesting and animated discussion could be had about the politics of nuclear power in America -- but those issues don't detract from the fact that all around the world, new reactors and new reactor designs are being researched and developed.
What about NO? I don't give a crap about this subject.
Yet you keep responding...
In any case, this cop-out is basically an admission that you know science is against you, and that you're only arguing at this point out of some kind of stubborn childishness.
as I don't give a fuck about the hobbies of politicized retards.
That says it all right there. You believe that scientists are "politicized retards". Yet you're more than happy to use computers designed by scientists, and I'll bet you wouldn't turn down medications designed by scientists, or cell phones, or synthetic fabrics, or water filtration plants, or any of the other things you depend on every day that scientists worked their asses off to create for your benefit.
Do you want a simple example of how fucking wrong you are? Plant something (absorbing CO2), let an animal eat it. Do you know what's the next step? Yes, it is SHITTING. Plain, old, shitting on the middle of the forest. It's organic matter, lots of it, with shitloads of little carbon atoms connected to the molecules, and most of them will never be turned to CO2, as they'll just compose a dry piece of FECES standing on the forest's floor. And any CO2 generated by any process that touches this "piece of shit" will be absorbed by plants inside the same ecosystem.
Please, please, read a book sometime.
Before excreting that organic matter, the animal will extract a great deal of the energy from it and exhale the carbon dioxide. Anywhere from 50% to 75% of the carbon will be converted to CO2 in a matter of days. So you're already wrong. The shit contains just a small portion of the original carbon.
Feces don't just sit there forever -- they get consumed by other animals (particularly insects), who release ANOTHER 50-75% within a matter of days. So it's been a week and already 75-94% of the carbon from that plant has been turned into CO2.
Whatever is left gets consumed by bacteria and fungi, which are vastly more efficient than animals. They release 100% of the remaining carbon. This step might take a month or two to complete.
CO2 isn't confined to an ecosystem -- it's a light gas, and disperses into the atmosphere as fast as it's released. Any CO2 released anywhere, by any process whatsoever, is in the atmosphere, period. It doesn't stay in one ecosystem: it's part of the global carbon cycle.
Your confusion may be stemming from the mistaken notion that plants absorb carbon from feces -- they don't. Bacteria break down the feces, metabolize the carbon into CO2 (which flies away into the sky), and releases the nutrients back into the soil -- and those nutrients are what the plant absorbs.
With biofuels you don't have "shitting" and "animals getting more fat" and "leafs falling on the floor" and all other kinds of storage...
Those animals? They eventually die and rot, releasing every last bit of that CO2. And only 10% of what they eat actually gets turned into more animal -- the rest gets used for energy and the carbon is turned into CO2. Then they get eaten and digested themselves, releasing that last 10%. Leaves and shit falling on the forest floor? They get broken down by fungus and bacteria, and release their CO2. Almost every last bit of it gets released as CO2.
of trillions of carbon atoms
There are thousands of trillions of carbon atom in one skin cell. One leaf has over a trillion trillion carbon atoms. You'd know that if you didn't have a paranoid distrust of science, and go around accusing anyone who has the audacity to read a science text of being "politicized"...
With biofuels you will simply transform most carbon atoms to CO2.
Most carbon atoms get converted to CO2 already. That's the ONLY way to extract the energy from biomass, and nature is VERY efficient about salvaging every last bit of
Comparing decomposition and other natural events to burning fuel inside an automobile is STUPID AS HELL.
How exactly are they different in terms of the carbon cycle? Both take the carbon that was in a plant, and release it into the atmosphere, where it can be absorbed by plants again.
Here's a crazy idea: name a reputable biologist who supports your position -- one who states outright that converting agricultural waste and deadwood from forests into ethanol will increase levels of greenhouse gases just as much as using a comparable amount petroleum. Find a biologist who thinks there is a meaningful difference between the CO2 in prairie grass being released by a buffalo's metabolic processes and that same CO2 being released during the combustion of biofuel made from that prairie grass. Find a biologist who criticizes the concept of biofuels on those grounds.
Obviously, biologists who are criticizing biofuels on other grounds don't count... even that's what you'll most likely try to pass off as your evidence. They have to state that extracting energy from biomass has the same affect on atmospheric carbon levels in the long-term as extracting energy from petroleum, something that no one on earth believes... except you, mystifyingly enough.
Biologists universally support the concept of carbon neutrality. The carbon released from the destruction of plants will be offset by further plant-growth, unless you prevent any new plants from growing or use petroleum to grow, harvest, or process the biomass. They support the notion that the amount of carbon in the carbon cycle isn't increased by burning plant matter, because that carbon is ALREADY part of the carbon cycle.
So there's your challenge: find a scientist who supports you.
Think about it though -- if we harvest and process a million tons of switchgrass this year, and release a proportional amount CO2 -- what happens next year when we grow another million tons of switchgrass? That's right; the same amount carbon is reabsorbed (although strictly speaking, you lose some carbon every year to sequestration)... and then released again, etc. Hence the term "CYCLE". I'm not that sure you understand the cycling part (or any other part for that matter), but it's an important concept if you want to contribute meaningfully to discussions about ecology.
The forest is a sequestration itself
Sorry to burst your bubble, but the carbon in living organisms is -- by definition -- NOT sequestered (and "sequestration" is the process, not the end result). It's that kind of silly nonsense that discredits you and demonstrates that you've never studied any biology. Sequestered carbon is carbon that's no longer a part of the carbon cycle. Read that definition again to make sure you really understand it. Petroleum and coal are examples, as is limestone under certain circumstances. But carbon is in plants it is still part of the cycle, and will be back in the atmosphere sooner or later. As long as the amount of biomass on the planet remains relatively constant, atmospheric carbon levels will be unaffected.
So what are you proposing saying then, idiot?
Given that you don't understand basic scientific concepts like carbon-sequestration, or what a cycle is, maybe you should reconsider who call an idiot. Once you graduate from high school, get into college, and take a few science courses, you'll be in a much better position to discuss these things rationally.
That we should replace the ecosystem with shitloads of biofuel plantation
Who said that? How does using corn husks and stalks -- from corn that we're growing as food anyway -- require destroying ecosystems? How does using the waste from sugarcane plantations (which are already growing sugar NOW) for ethanol production require destroying ecosystem
I think the confusion here is that you're imagining that the carbon contained in any plants which we don't convert to ethanol / burn / eat gets sequestered. It isn't the case. The bulk of it is released as the plants decompose. So that CO2 is going to return the atmosphere anyway -- hence the "cycle". We're inserting ourselves into the cycle so that we can harness some of the energy involved.
Get it NOW? Biofuels release CO2 that would have been released anyway, when the plants got eaten by animals, decomposed by fungi and bacteria, etcetera.
If we ever start scouring the phytoplankton from ocean to serve as a biofuel, then you might have a valid point -- since oceanic biomass does have a tendency to become sequestered. Eutrophic lakes and swamps, sure. But forests and plains don't see much sequestration of carbon.
Seriously, THINK ABOUT THE ISSUE INSTEAD OF JUST DISMISSING WITHOUT SPENDING EVEN FIVE SECONDS CONSIDERING IT.
You see, this is the advantage of having a scientific education -- I've already been through all of this. You, meanwhile, seem to be distinctly ignorant. The fact that you're still babbling about sugar cane says it all; most serious biofuel plans for the US involve growing algae (minimal fertilizer required), switchgrass (minimal fertilizer required), hemp (no fertilizer required), etc, or using the waste products from crops that we already grow as food.
The thing that others do not consider is where it all goes or percentage of total mass or volume. Fanatics do not consider comparing it with background radiation sources such as sand safe enough to be in a childs sandpit.
That's precisely what people don't consider with nuclear though. People dismiss nuclear for reasons that are equally true of coal.
The point about radiation from coal is not and has never been about radiation being a reason to stop using coal power. It's about exposing the concerns about nuclear waste as being pointless fear-mongering. Nuclear waste ultimately just usn't the boogeyman under the bed that so many people make it out to be. If you're not one of those people, then the argument isn't directed at you -- you're already ahead of the curve, so what's the problem?
Unfortuantely that is exactly what a number of nuclear trolls are suggesting - mostly on other forums but some here have done it in the past, and they use that junk science article on ornl to justify it
I've yet to see anyone try to make the backwards inference that nuclear power is t3h evil, so therefore coal --- being more radioactive -- must therefore also be t3h evil. I've only ever seen it used to shut down the trolls who go around whining like spanked children about where nuclear waste will go. Besides, I think that the data which I located would seem to confirm ORNL's premise, if not their methodology.
To get closer to reality - that coal with a suprisingly high heavy metal content (I've never looked at US coal so I'll take it as real figures) contains much larger amounts of sulphur which can cause real pollution problems.
Preaching to the choir again. There are plenty enough problems with coal. And I'm rational enough to acknowledge that coal may still have a future as a part of our energy infrastructure if clean-coal technologies pan out. Given that massive quanitities of coal remaining and the value of exploiting it, I don't doubt that engineers will find a clean coal process that can be commercialized. The offer of higher efficiencies and vastly cleaner emissions is just too tempting.
I suggest that all nuclear advocates should learn a bit about what they are advocating - they'll stop pushing that "quick fix" stupidity for a start once they learn that it takes years to build any thermal plant and then you have the problem that your new plant is going to have to be a prototype of a new technology if it is not going to be a dangerous and expensive 1950's white elephant.
Of course it takes years -- that's why it's so important to invest now. Other than interference from certain varieties of insane ultrahippies and meddling by energy concerns that want to avoid competition, the world's nuclear programs have been highly successfull. The accidents have been few in number, and vastly less harmful than the cumulative effect of what emissions from fossil fuel plants are doing. One of the nice features of nuclear power is that it commands enough respect that people will take safety seriously.
The "coal is nuclear too so let's build nuclear" argument I see as a really silly PR stunt and I'll say something about it every time it crops up.
Haven't you been keeping up? Coal is as nuclear as nuclear. You're just looking at it backwards -- the point is not to say that coal is evil, but to say that nuclear ISN'T evil... or at least no MORE evil than coal in this regard. It's an extremely dramatic counterargument against nuclear-waste fearmongers; they're arguing from an emotional position anyway, so why not point out that there emotions are stupid and wrong? Sometimes they need that kind of cold-water to open them up to the genuinely relevant facts.
Besides, who ever tried to position the uranium-in-coal factoid as some kind of universal advocacy platform for nuclear power?
A normal 500 megawatt coal plant burns around 1.2 million tons of coal a year.
According to the US geological survey, most American coal contains between 1 and 4 PPM Uranium and between 1 and 4 PPM Thorium.
1.2 million tons * (1 PPM uranium + 1 PPM thorium) = 1.2 tons of uranium + 1.2 tons of thorium.
We're discussing nuclear reactors in the 1000 MW range, so double those figures to 2.4 tons of each.
The waste from a 1000 MW nuclear plant tops out at around 30 tons, of which only around 5% is waste; the other 95% of it can be reprocessed using technology and fuel-cycles from '50s. That leaves a staggering 1.5 tons of assorted radioactive waste. The US is one of the only nations where the government considers it a good idea to try and dispose of the entire 30 tons... most other nations either reprocess it already, or are storing their waste until they DO have reprocessing facilities available.
...
Now, no one here is actually suggesting that coal power is going to irradiate people, at least not any more than we already are on account of normal background radiation. The point is simply that fear of the radioactive waste from nuclear power plants is beyond stupid -- it's nothing but the result of paranoia and fear-mongering. With coal power, that radioactive waste is so diffuse that no one gives a flying shit. If nuclear plants incinerated a little bit of their waste every day, they would be no more dangerous, and there would be no menacing-looking barrels for people to point at when they need something to demonize.
It got more bizzare with the bit about burning nuclear fuel - a bit of a hint there that coal is more radioactive than nuclear fuel perhaps or is it an even more bizzare fantasy?
Coal, unfortunately, is heavily laden with radioactive isotopes (as are many things that have to be mined). The effective dose of radiation from a 1000 MW coal plant is 30 times higher than that from a 1000 MW nuclear plant... and they release 5 times more uranium in their ash (which goes into the air that we... you know, breathe) than a comparable nuclear plant produces in convenient little barrels... as well as hundreds of times more thorium. Incidentally, both of those elements are highly toxic, and their toxicity is actually much more of a danger than their radioactivity when it's in our air.
If nuclear plants simply INCINERATED their waste, they would be WAY ahead of even the cleanest coal plants as far as radiation and toxic emissions are concerned. And of course, that's not even getting INTO the mercury that coal plants spew out. Naturally, no one intends to incinerate nuclear waste; the point is simply that nuclear waste is a concern only to stupid people with too much free time and too little common sense.
Here's a reference that you might find helpful (including a very good list of further sources).
Commercial nuclear power is unfortuantely still stuck in the 1950s
All kinds of new power cycles are being researched all the time. Third generation reactors are online in a number of countries. France already gets over 75% of its power from nuclear plants, and reprocesses 30% of the waste (making them the most energy-independent of all western nations). Japan gets 30% of its electricity from nuclear power, and has advanced reactor designs in place and more under construction.
Of course, there have been setbacks, and there will inevitably be more of them. But I'd like to think that we're not so cowardly and meek as a species that a few setbacks will stop us from exploring such a promising set of technologies.
...perhaps accelerate thorium...
You're preaching to the choir on that one. World thorium reserves are vast -- even more so than uranium, which is quite abundant itself. Of course, with reprocessing and the technology to implement a variety of fuel cycles, we can happily use both, breed fuel from unenriched materials (like all that depleted uranium that the US has sitting around), reuse the waste until there's nothing left but harmless low-level stuff, etc.
Wind and solar are nice, but there needs to be a stable backbone -- and nuclear offers that in spades. We've got enough nuclear technology RIGHT NOW to keep the lights on, and with the research happening right now we can make sure that the next generation of plants are so clean and safe that our grandchildren will wonder why we ever screwed around with fossil fuel plants at all. It would be nice if we could save the oil and coal for things that don't have alternatives yet, like making plastics. The petrochemical industry still doesn't have a whole lot of alternative feedstocks yet.
Slashdot Mirror
Bureaucracy is just an inevitable aspect of how Humans organize themselves when more than a hundred or so people have to cooperate.
Supercapacitors could be even better, since they have a nearly 100% efficiency. Of course, that technology is still fairly novel, but with superior efficiency and no moving parts, they could beat flywheels all to hell as far as automobiles go.
Anyone else thinking "spacecraft"? As I understand it, there's not much moisture in space. This graphene-oxide paper might not be a suitable hull material, but it could be very useful for internal structure.
I kid, I kid. Obviously steel's vulnerability to water takes place on a vastly different scale of time and affect.
Still, it does suggest that if this graphene-oxide paper is sufficiently advantageous in some domain (as you say, probably NOT aerojets and automocars), then means could be found to protect it from moisture. Right of the top of my head, the idea of spacecraft comes to mind. I wonder how much moisture makes it up to a low-earth-orbit? I would think that none would, but that seems like the kind of assumption that could be disastrously wrong.
I bet you're also the kind of guy who is incapable of believing anything negative about the politicians he voted for.
If you got to the DMV without having any problems or excessive paperwork and whatnot, the experience wont linger in your mind. You wont be left with recurring nightmares of forms and small-minded clerks with rubber stamps. You wont have any impression of the bureaucracy whatsoever. It's only when it fails that you actually form associations with it -- bad ones in this case. But it was still a bureaucracy -- it's just that it was one that was operating properly.
Can you consider the existence of E. coli without thinking of infections, food poisoning, and food that is contaminated with fecal matter? Unless you're a biologist, probably not. Nevertheless, several pounds of E. coli live inside you right now, helping to keep your digestive system in order. They don't cease to be E. coli just because they're not pissing you off. You just don't notice them, so you never have a chance to develop positive associations with them.
As I said, the latter pair of definitions stem from peoples impressions of bureaucracies. You probably deal with a dozen or more bureaucracies every day, without ever having a problem. They're like the arteries in your brain -- you only become aware of them when something goes hideously wrong with their functioning, or when you want to interact with them in a way that's outside of their normal function.
I'd like to think it's warranted by its casual blasphemy towards a major world religion. Believe me, if the signature box could hold a streaming webcam view of the museum of heresy, it'd be there. Although I do like the plasma blaster thing. It gives me a great idea for a line of transformers toys marketed towards fundamentalist children.
120 year olds.
Have you no shame, sir? Good lord, that's the most painful thing I've heard since that bit about you and dead people.
No, the only way that our elderly politicians will be able to retain their shabby dignity is if they're allowed to keep the bodies of attractive young folk safely hidden away, out of the public eye.
You seem to be confused about what bureaucracy is -- in particular, you've got it mixed up with government. Bureaucracy is simply administration by bureaus -- it's how every single large organization on Earth is administered. Large organizations simply can't exist or accomplish anything without a functional bureaucracy. Corporations and nation states didn't even exist before the development of the modern bureaucracy.
It is odd that you seem to aspire to the level of social awareness of a hungry dog. Call me crazy, but I've always hoped that humans can do better -- like making rational choices about who to trust and distrust, rather than distrusting everything and everyone until they bribe me with enough doggy biscuits to be their obedient slave.
See what I mean about hatred and irrational distrust?
Probably my own fault for not having a hatred and irrational distrust of bureaucracies. The assumption that bureaucrats are inherently stupid and incompetent isn't a universal one, or even an obvious one... at least to people who've dealt with reasonable bureaucrats.
How exactly are they broken, in your estimation?
Enjoy getting argyria from your over-priced placebo.
Don't worry -- the products of particle accelerators only exist for a few picoseconds. If God is created during a collision event, he will wink out of existence so fast that we'll only become aware of his presence by the shower of Mormonions and PatRobertsonite particles impinging on the detection apparatus.
Over the time frames that we're discussing, there's no reason to believe that the issues with fuel cells wont be resolved. Catalysts in particular are a subject that is being intensely researched, and with the kinds of computational-chemistry systems that are just now becoming available, a cheaper alternative to platinum may well be discovered sooner rather than later. But it's worth mentioning that biofuels (particularly ethanol) may very well be what ends up being used as the fuel for vehicle fuel cells -- after all, ethanol is vastly more tractable than hydrogen gas, and can be oxidized using nano-structured non-noble metals as catalysts.
Unfortunately, most vehicles are powered by gasoline -- and there aren't any biofuel processes that produce an alternative to gasoline. Diesel? Sure -- and there are people already. switching over. I suspect that many bus fleets will be using primarily bio-diesel before the end of the next decade. And we can dilute the gasoline with ethanol to at least some extent. But until all the older cars are replaced by newer ones that can run on E85 or on pure ethanol, we can't really talk about bio-fuels as an immediate solution. Too many people still need gasoline, and we don't have bio-gasoline yet.Nevertheless, I'd certainly agree that biodiesel's time is nigh. And it's time to start making E85 much more widely available ... and to let owners of newer vehicles know that their vehicles are most likely already rated for E85.
I just stumbled upon some references to butanol being a possible direct replacement for gasoline. Now that would be interesting to learn some more about. Any plan that lets us keep existing equipment (ie: old cars) is a plan that has at least a chance of succeeding.
Speaking as a Canadian, I would point out that the next generation of CANDU reactors is being designed right now. They can still breed fuel from thorium and be run on the waste from LWRs, they use vastly less heavy water (one of the biggest costs in building traditional CANDU reactors), they're half the size for the same power output, they have more passive safety features, etc. I mean, that's pretty good -- and that's just one nation's nuclear program. Japan and Europe have new reactors that are significant evolutionary improvements on older pressured water reactors, like the ABWR and EPR. Indian researchers are working on concepts for thorium-cycle reactors right now, among many others (I doubt they're on the verge of retirement either). And pebble bed reactors are already at the prototype stage -- hardly a primitive reactor design.
Of course, if you're referring to the underlying technology -- then sure, they are all based on designs conceived of in the 50s. But that logic, you drive around in technology from the 19th century (I'm making the audacious assumption here that you drive an internal combustion engine vehicle...). Your home is most likely heated using a technology from the paleolithic age. And so on. But when you make enough evolutionary, incremental improvements to a technology, you eventually end up with something that is very advanced compared to the original.
Now, there's no doubt that a very interesting and animated discussion could be had about the politics of nuclear power in America -- but those issues don't detract from the fact that all around the world, new reactors and new reactor designs are being researched and developed.
Yet you keep responding...
In any case, this cop-out is basically an admission that you know science is against you, and that you're only arguing at this point out of some kind of stubborn childishness.
That says it all right there. You believe that scientists are "politicized retards". Yet you're more than happy to use computers designed by scientists, and I'll bet you wouldn't turn down medications designed by scientists, or cell phones, or synthetic fabrics, or water filtration plants, or any of the other things you depend on every day that scientists worked their asses off to create for your benefit.
Please, please, read a book sometime.
Your confusion may be stemming from the mistaken notion that plants absorb carbon from feces -- they don't. Bacteria break down the feces, metabolize the carbon into CO2 (which flies away into the sky), and releases the nutrients back into the soil -- and those nutrients are what the plant absorbs.
Those animals? They eventually die and rot, releasing every last bit of that CO2. And only 10% of what they eat actually gets turned into more animal -- the rest gets used for energy and the carbon is turned into CO2. Then they get eaten and digested themselves, releasing that last 10%. Leaves and shit falling on the forest floor? They get broken down by fungus and bacteria, and release their CO2. Almost every last bit of it gets released as CO2.
There are thousands of trillions of carbon atom in one skin cell. One leaf has over a trillion trillion carbon atoms. You'd know that if you didn't have a paranoid distrust of science, and go around accusing anyone who has the audacity to read a science text of being "politicized"...
Most carbon atoms get converted to CO2 already. That's the ONLY way to extract the energy from biomass, and nature is VERY efficient about salvaging every last bit of
How exactly are they different in terms of the carbon cycle? Both take the carbon that was in a plant, and release it into the atmosphere, where it can be absorbed by plants again.
Here's a crazy idea: name a reputable biologist who supports your position -- one who states outright that converting agricultural waste and deadwood from forests into ethanol will increase levels of greenhouse gases just as much as using a comparable amount petroleum. Find a biologist who thinks there is a meaningful difference between the CO2 in prairie grass being released by a buffalo's metabolic processes and that same CO2 being released during the combustion of biofuel made from that prairie grass. Find a biologist who criticizes the concept of biofuels on those grounds.
Obviously, biologists who are criticizing biofuels on other grounds don't count... even that's what you'll most likely try to pass off as your evidence. They have to state that extracting energy from biomass has the same affect on atmospheric carbon levels in the long-term as extracting energy from petroleum, something that no one on earth believes ... except you, mystifyingly enough.
Biologists universally support the concept of carbon neutrality. The carbon released from the destruction of plants will be offset by further plant-growth, unless you prevent any new plants from growing or use petroleum to grow, harvest, or process the biomass. They support the notion that the amount of carbon in the carbon cycle isn't increased by burning plant matter, because that carbon is ALREADY part of the carbon cycle.
So there's your challenge: find a scientist who supports you.
Think about it though -- if we harvest and process a million tons of switchgrass this year, and release a proportional amount CO2 -- what happens next year when we grow another million tons of switchgrass? That's right; the same amount carbon is reabsorbed (although strictly speaking, you lose some carbon every year to sequestration) ... and then released again, etc. Hence the term "CYCLE". I'm not that sure you understand the cycling part (or any other part for that matter), but it's an important concept if you want to contribute meaningfully to discussions about ecology.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but the carbon in living organisms is -- by definition -- NOT sequestered (and "sequestration" is the process, not the end result). It's that kind of silly nonsense that discredits you and demonstrates that you've never studied any biology. Sequestered carbon is carbon that's no longer a part of the carbon cycle. Read that definition again to make sure you really understand it. Petroleum and coal are examples, as is limestone under certain circumstances. But carbon is in plants it is still part of the cycle, and will be back in the atmosphere sooner or later. As long as the amount of biomass on the planet remains relatively constant, atmospheric carbon levels will be unaffected.
Given that you don't understand basic scientific concepts like carbon-sequestration, or what a cycle is, maybe you should reconsider who call an idiot. Once you graduate from high school, get into college, and take a few science courses, you'll be in a much better position to discuss these things rationally.
Who said that? How does using corn husks and stalks -- from corn that we're growing as food anyway -- require destroying ecosystems? How does using the waste from sugarcane plantations (which are already growing sugar NOW) for ethanol production require destroying ecosystem
Get it NOW? Biofuels release CO2 that would have been released anyway, when the plants got eaten by animals, decomposed by fungi and bacteria, etcetera.
If we ever start scouring the phytoplankton from ocean to serve as a biofuel, then you might have a valid point -- since oceanic biomass does have a tendency to become sequestered. Eutrophic lakes and swamps, sure. But forests and plains don't see much sequestration of carbon.
You see, this is the advantage of having a scientific education -- I've already been through all of this. You, meanwhile, seem to be distinctly ignorant. The fact that you're still babbling about sugar cane says it all; most serious biofuel plans for the US involve growing algae (minimal fertilizer required), switchgrass (minimal fertilizer required), hemp (no fertilizer required), etc, or using the waste products from crops that we already grow as food.That's precisely what people don't consider with nuclear though. People dismiss nuclear for reasons that are equally true of coal.
The point about radiation from coal is not and has never been about radiation being a reason to stop using coal power. It's about exposing the concerns about nuclear waste as being pointless fear-mongering. Nuclear waste ultimately just usn't the boogeyman under the bed that so many people make it out to be. If you're not one of those people, then the argument isn't directed at you -- you're already ahead of the curve, so what's the problem?
I've yet to see anyone try to make the backwards inference that nuclear power is t3h evil, so therefore coal --- being more radioactive -- must therefore also be t3h evil. I've only ever seen it used to shut down the trolls who go around whining like spanked children about where nuclear waste will go. Besides, I think that the data which I located would seem to confirm ORNL's premise, if not their methodology.
Preaching to the choir again. There are plenty enough problems with coal. And I'm rational enough to acknowledge that coal may still have a future as a part of our energy infrastructure if clean-coal technologies pan out. Given that massive quanitities of coal remaining and the value of exploiting it, I don't doubt that engineers will find a clean coal process that can be commercialized. The offer of higher efficiencies and vastly cleaner emissions is just too tempting.
Of course it takes years -- that's why it's so important to invest now. Other than interference from certain varieties of insane ultrahippies and meddling by energy concerns that want to avoid competition, the world's nuclear programs have been highly successfull. The accidents have been few in number, and vastly less harmful than the cumulative effect of what emissions from fossil fuel plants are doing. One of the nice features of nuclear power is that it commands enough respect that people will take safety seriously.
Haven't you been keeping up? Coal is as nuclear as nuclear. You're just looking at it backwards -- the point is not to say that coal is evil, but to say that nuclear ISN'T evil... or at least no MORE evil than coal in this regard. It's an extremely dramatic counterargument against nuclear-waste fearmongers; they're arguing from an emotional position anyway, so why not point out that there emotions are stupid and wrong? Sometimes they need that kind of cold-water to open them up to the genuinely relevant facts.
Besides, who ever tried to position the uranium-in-coal factoid as some kind of universal advocacy platform for nuclear power?
A normal 500 megawatt coal plant burns around 1.2 million tons of coal a year.
According to the US geological survey, most American coal contains between 1 and 4 PPM Uranium and between 1 and 4 PPM Thorium.
1.2 million tons * (1 PPM uranium + 1 PPM thorium) = 1.2 tons of uranium + 1.2 tons of thorium.
We're discussing nuclear reactors in the 1000 MW range, so double those figures to 2.4 tons of each.
The waste from a 1000 MW nuclear plant tops out at around 30 tons, of which only around 5% is waste; the other 95% of it can be reprocessed using technology and fuel-cycles from '50s. That leaves a staggering 1.5 tons of assorted radioactive waste. The US is one of the only nations where the government considers it a good idea to try and dispose of the entire 30 tons... most other nations either reprocess it already, or are storing their waste until they DO have reprocessing facilities available.
Now, no one here is actually suggesting that coal power is going to irradiate people, at least not any more than we already are on account of normal background radiation. The point is simply that fear of the radioactive waste from nuclear power plants is beyond stupid -- it's nothing but the result of paranoia and fear-mongering. With coal power, that radioactive waste is so diffuse that no one gives a flying shit. If nuclear plants incinerated a little bit of their waste every day, they would be no more dangerous, and there would be no menacing-looking barrels for people to point at when they need something to demonize.
If nuclear plants simply INCINERATED their waste, they would be WAY ahead of even the cleanest coal plants as far as radiation and toxic emissions are concerned. And of course, that's not even getting INTO the mercury that coal plants spew out. Naturally, no one intends to incinerate nuclear waste; the point is simply that nuclear waste is a concern only to stupid people with too much free time and too little common sense.
Here's a reference that you might find helpful (including a very good list of further sources).
http://www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/rev26-34/text/ colmain.html
All kinds of new power cycles are being researched all the time. Third generation reactors are online in a number of countries. France already gets over 75% of its power from nuclear plants, and reprocesses 30% of the waste (making them the most energy-independent of all western nations). Japan gets 30% of its electricity from nuclear power, and has advanced reactor designs in place and more under construction.Of course, there have been setbacks, and there will inevitably be more of them. But I'd like to think that we're not so cowardly and meek as a species that a few setbacks will stop us from exploring such a promising set of technologies.
You're preaching to the choir on that one. World thorium reserves are vast -- even more so than uranium, which is quite abundant itself. Of course, with reprocessing and the technology to implement a variety of fuel cycles, we can happily use both, breed fuel from unenriched materials (like all that depleted uranium that the US has sitting around), reuse the waste until there's nothing left but harmless low-level stuff, etc.Wind and solar are nice, but there needs to be a stable backbone -- and nuclear offers that in spades. We've got enough nuclear technology RIGHT NOW to keep the lights on, and with the research happening right now we can make sure that the next generation of plants are so clean and safe that our grandchildren will wonder why we ever screwed around with fossil fuel plants at all. It would be nice if we could save the oil and coal for things that don't have alternatives yet, like making plastics. The petrochemical industry still doesn't have a whole lot of alternative feedstocks yet.