Umm, well I'm looking at one of the shipping/storage casks right now. I can't imagine anything that could *burn* that sucker other than a tactical nuclear device. Kinda ironic.
I think a train wreck off of a tall trestle onto sharp granite wouldn't even scratch the damn thing. Oh wait, that was one of the design and testing criteria. Huh, no wonder.
Fast breeders produce more plutonium than they burn. You load in a lot of U-238 along with enough U-235 and Pu-239 to maintain criticality and during the ensuing core life that U-238 breeds into Pu-239/240/241 etc... Plus if you have loaded other fission wastes in there the neutron flux will "burn" them away. Yes, you are left with shorter half-life highly energetic stuff. But it's no worse than what comes out of a core now. And you are reducing the volume and the time it's dangerous by several orders of magnitude. The storage time is on the order of 50 - 100 years.
This technology was out worked completely over thirty years ago. The ONLY reason we aren't doing this is political.
Re:Monsanto and Microsoft (and perspective)
on
Monsanto and PCBs
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· Score: 2
Indeed. When I was involved in the seed industry (mid 90's) Monsanto's stated aim at the outset of their GM campaign was to have over half of all crops grown on the planet from their modified seeds within a decade.
That sounds an awful lot like the infamous "A Windows PC on every desktop."
Monsanto == Microsoft?? A matter of degree maybe.
And if you think desktop software rarely kills, then I think you are being to nice to Microsoft.
No he doesn't. There's not a hint of guilt in anything Aragorn does or says, nor is it apparent that he finds Eowyn attractive in the sense you mean here. It's Eowyn who finds Aragorn attractive, and when he puts off her subtle advances by not responding to them she falls into a depression. Aragorn is sorrowful that he must do this out of his love and commitment to Arwen because he admires and respects Eowyn, and even loves her in strictly Platonic terms, and does not want to cause her any grief. Unfortunately, she sets up a situation where he has no other choice.
I just went back and re-read the applicable chapter(s), and you are spot on correct IMHO.
This is the first of any Christmas/Thanksgiving/New Years/July 4th/Easter I've had off in 14 years. Think about that for a minute. And a majority of those were 13 hour rotating shifts.
Not whining, I chose this career, but it does get old at times.
"The role of government in this country and in fact all countries is not to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, or care for the sick. The role of the government is to empower its citizens to do those things."
Wrong. The role of governemnt is to promote the common defense. Everything else is secondary and window dressing. Use of force and preparation for use of force to intimidate a possible adversary is the single overarching function of a government. Nothing else is possible for your people if you stand a real chance of subjugation at any moment.
Drought does affect hydro. I agree with you there. But your post had the sound of a "day to day" climate effect and for a drought to affect hydro it is many months if not a couple of years in the making.
Yes a significant percentage comes from hydro from BPA, but day to day changes in climate still only affect load. If a long term drought is in progress, it won't matter what the day to day changes are, if there isn't enough hydro to import from WA, there will be a shortage. Even if the day to day climate is most favorable (not to hot to actuate AC and not to cold to suck up cheap natural gas supplies).
California generates nearly all it's power from natural gas or oil fired power plants, a sizeable chunk from coal and nuclear. BTW, all the wind/solar generation in the western US is dwarfed by only one unit of the nuclear plant where I work. The largest solar plant in the world is only 80MW, and it is several times larger than it's next largest rival. Consequently wind farms and solar plants are irrelevant (for the foreseeable future anyway) to this discussion.
"isn't that higher than with traditional long distance wired transmission?
I seem to remember somewhere that only about 75% of power sent over long distance lines comes through......"
Sorry, properly designed 500kV and 1000kV lines are greater than 99% efficient.
Imagine the I2R losses at 75%.... 25% of 5000 AMPS at 500kV would make a LOT of heat.
"Reason? The climate made it diffucult to generate sufficient power."
The climate had very little to do with amount of power generated. Much larger factors were numbers and specific locations (on the grid) of generating stations out of service. I won't get into the reasons for why these plants were out of service except to say the climate had nothing to do with it, profiteering and unscheduled maintenance outages were the major factors. That and having to many plants in one region out of service with limited ability to move power into those areas from elsewhere (NIMBY on transmission lines).
The only possible climate interactions would be contributing to overheating transmission lines with consequent "sag", and higher temps would reduce typical steam plant outputs by up to 2%.
Climate changes affect the load, not the generation. Your lunar genreation plant would maybe have a nice predictable output, but you would have still have had the same problems with rolling blackouts because of climate effects on load requirements.
Nothing you ever say will convince me that dumping toxic waste in a hole is a good solution. Or that the people who dump it have never made a mistake or shortcut which has affected peoples' health.
Another anti-nuke with an open mind.
Whatever. I've wasted enough time and bandwidth on this.
If you work in the 32nd story of a 38 story building, you do indeed have no need for this, if your landlord provides reliable electric service. If your service is so unreliable or poor quality that you are seriously thinking about buying one of these, you need to move or pressure the landlord to fix his electric distribution problem.
If you live there, then I submit you have no need for a backup power supply. An UPS maybe, but not a generator.
"Don't always get dumped in the proper place" Do you have data to support this? If not it's just more FUD.
And putting toxic waste into a hole (a deep hole) is indeed a good solution, if you have made reasonable attemps to reduce the volume and toxicity, if you use some common sense about the disposal site, and if you make every effort to limit access.
The people you so easily demonize about waste disposal also have children and grandchildren. Why would you think they care less about their own descendents than you care about yours?
You (and you are not alone by any means) make statements that have the implicit underlying assumption that people who make these decisions or design disposal containers or systems, haven't done any research or homework, they've simply "flipped a coin" to decide. I assure you this is not the case. It is HARD to get a LLRW disposal site licenced in this country. The reason is not science, it's FUD and NIMBY and political manuevering.
Also, did you ever think that maybe future generations might find a valuable use for this waste? We may not have the technology to make use of it, but I think our descendents may.
I was simply replying back to his sarcastic giberish with yet more sarcastic giberish. If you you want to have a serious discussion I am amenable. Check my profile, I have some experience in the field.
And by the way, Georgia Tech's Neely Reactor facility is not a power plant. It's a 5MW research reactor. 5MW isn't nearly enough to do any real power production. Check for yourself.
And as for your comment about waste going to dining halls, is that an attempt at humor regarding the poor quality of food there? You must understand any facility has to have a license from the NRC to handle, store and dispose of radioactive material. Disposal to a dining facility (or a schoolyard) isn't going to happen.
Yep you are right. Must have dumped a few barrels into the yard of the school you went to. Since you obviously have a only a couple of brain cells left.
Who said anything about jury rigged? This can be done in a durable, tough, and cosmetically apealing way quite easily.
Also, if you route your conduit properly, you interface with your existing power utility box with a transfer switch for selected circuits (although 1kW should be quite enough for a standard U.S. household - don't know about other countries).
And your concern about machinery room environmental conditions, while valid , isn't a real problem since a business would front the cash for proper HVAC systems anyway. If they don't, they're too cheap to be buying this unit anyway.
If the canister was simply priced by the weight of the raw materials of it's construction, that would in no way repay the cost of the research and development of the canister, the method to safely encapsulate the H2, and of course testing, testing, testing and certification for whatever government agency would concern itself. All this could easily be multiples of the simple cost of the raw materials - even it's weight in gold.
And all of that ignores the cost of mining, refining, and manufacturing the canister itself.
Ever hear of a new invention called an extension cord?
You put your generator outside (roof for example), and run the power cord inside the building. Power cord and the penetrations through walls for it are orders of magnitude cheaper than ventilation ducting.
I'm hoping they can get this thing luanched. If there really is ice on Charon, and it's actually water ice, that would make a lot of neat stuff (read manned missions) possible way out there.
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Umm, well I'm looking at one of the shipping/storage casks right now. I can't imagine anything that could *burn* that sucker other than a tactical nuclear device. Kinda ironic.
I think a train wreck off of a tall trestle onto sharp granite wouldn't even scratch the damn thing. Oh wait, that was one of the design and testing criteria. Huh, no wonder.
Fast breeders produce more plutonium than they burn. You load in a lot of U-238 along with enough U-235 and Pu-239 to maintain criticality and during the ensuing core life that U-238 breeds into Pu-239/240/241 etc... Plus if you have loaded other fission wastes in there the neutron flux will "burn" them away. Yes, you are left with shorter half-life highly energetic stuff. But it's no worse than what comes out of a core now. And you are reducing the volume and the time it's dangerous by several orders of magnitude. The storage time is on the order of 50 - 100 years.
This technology was out worked completely over thirty years ago. The ONLY reason we aren't doing this is political.
Indeed. When I was involved in the seed industry (mid 90's) Monsanto's stated aim at the outset of their GM campaign was to have over half of all crops grown on the planet from their modified seeds within a decade.
That sounds an awful lot like the infamous "A Windows PC on every desktop."
Monsanto == Microsoft?? A matter of degree maybe.
And if you think desktop software rarely kills, then I think you are being to nice to Microsoft.
Killing directly?. Obviously no. Indirect effects? Probably.
No he doesn't. There's not a hint of guilt in anything Aragorn does or says, nor is it apparent that he finds Eowyn attractive in the sense you mean here. It's Eowyn who finds Aragorn attractive, and when he puts off her subtle advances by not responding to them she falls into a depression. Aragorn is sorrowful that he must do this out of his love and commitment to Arwen because he admires and respects Eowyn, and even loves her in strictly Platonic terms, and does not want to cause her any grief. Unfortunately, she sets up a situation where he has no other choice.
I just went back and re-read the applicable chapter(s), and you are spot on correct IMHO.
Check my profile.
This is the first of any Christmas/Thanksgiving/New Years/July 4th/Easter I've had off in 14 years. Think about that for a minute. And a majority of those were 13 hour rotating shifts.
Not whining, I chose this career, but it does get old at times.
"The role of government in this country and in fact all countries is not to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, or care for the sick. The role of the government is to empower its citizens to do those things."
Wrong. The role of governemnt is to promote the common defense. Everything else is secondary and window dressing. Use of force and preparation for use of force to intimidate a possible adversary is the single overarching function of a government. Nothing else is possible for your people if you stand a real chance of subjugation at any moment.
Alex Trebek is Canadian?
That's it.... nuke the place.
Damn, I really wish I had a mod point for you!!
Drought does affect hydro. I agree with you there. But your post had the sound of a "day to day" climate effect and for a drought to affect hydro it is many months if not a couple of years in the making.
Yes a significant percentage comes from hydro from BPA, but day to day changes in climate still only affect load. If a long term drought is in progress, it won't matter what the day to day changes are, if there isn't enough hydro to import from WA, there will be a shortage. Even if the day to day climate is most favorable (not to hot to actuate AC and not to cold to suck up cheap natural gas supplies).
California generates nearly all it's power from natural gas or oil fired power plants, a sizeable chunk from coal and nuclear. BTW, all the wind/solar generation in the western US is dwarfed by only one unit of the nuclear plant where I work. The largest solar plant in the world is only 80MW, and it is several times larger than it's next largest rival. Consequently wind farms and solar plants are irrelevant (for the foreseeable future anyway) to this discussion.
"isn't that higher than with traditional long distance wired transmission?
I seem to remember somewhere that only about 75% of power sent over long distance lines comes through......"
Sorry, properly designed 500kV and 1000kV lines are greater than 99% efficient.
Imagine the I2R losses at 75%.... 25% of 5000 AMPS at 500kV would make a LOT of heat.
"Reason? The climate made it diffucult to generate sufficient power."
The climate had very little to do with amount of power generated. Much larger factors were numbers and specific locations (on the grid) of generating stations out of service. I won't get into the reasons for why these plants were out of service except to say the climate had nothing to do with it, profiteering and unscheduled maintenance outages were the major factors. That and having to many plants in one region out of service with limited ability to move power into those areas from elsewhere (NIMBY on transmission lines).
The only possible climate interactions would be contributing to overheating transmission lines with consequent "sag", and higher temps would reduce typical steam plant outputs by up to 2%.
Climate changes affect the load, not the generation. Your lunar genreation plant would maybe have a nice predictable output, but you would have still have had the same problems with rolling blackouts because of climate effects on load requirements.
Nothing you ever say will convince me that dumping toxic waste in a hole is a good solution. Or that the people who dump it have never made a mistake or shortcut which has affected peoples' health.
Another anti-nuke with an open mind.
Whatever. I've wasted enough time and bandwidth on this.
If you work in the 32nd story of a 38 story building, you do indeed have no need for this, if your landlord provides reliable electric service. If your service is so unreliable or poor quality that you are seriously thinking about buying one of these, you need to move or pressure the landlord to fix his electric distribution problem.
If you live there, then I submit you have no need for a backup power supply. An UPS maybe, but not a generator.
"Don't always get dumped in the proper place" Do you have data to support this? If not it's just more FUD.
And putting toxic waste into a hole (a deep hole) is indeed a good solution, if you have made reasonable attemps to reduce the volume and toxicity, if you use some common sense about the disposal site, and if you make every effort to limit access.
The people you so easily demonize about waste disposal also have children and grandchildren. Why would you think they care less about their own descendents than you care about yours?
You (and you are not alone by any means) make statements that have the implicit underlying assumption that people who make these decisions or design disposal containers or systems, haven't done any research or homework, they've simply "flipped a coin" to decide. I assure you this is not the case. It is HARD to get a LLRW disposal site licenced in this country. The reason is not science, it's FUD and NIMBY and political manuevering.
Also, did you ever think that maybe future generations might find a valuable use for this waste? We may not have the technology to make use of it, but I think our descendents may.
I was simply replying back to his sarcastic giberish with yet more sarcastic giberish. If you you want to have a serious discussion I am amenable. Check my profile, I have some experience in the field.
And by the way, Georgia Tech's Neely Reactor facility is not a power plant. It's a 5MW research reactor. 5MW isn't nearly enough to do any real power production. Check for yourself.
And as for your comment about waste going to dining halls, is that an attempt at humor regarding the poor quality of food there? You must understand any facility has to have a license from the NRC to handle, store and dispose of radioactive material. Disposal to a dining facility (or a schoolyard) isn't going to happen.
Yep you are right. Must have dumped a few barrels into the yard of the school you went to. Since you obviously have a only a couple of brain cells left.
Troll.
Who said anything about jury rigged? This can be done in a durable, tough, and cosmetically apealing way quite easily.
Also, if you route your conduit properly, you interface with your existing power utility box with a transfer switch for selected circuits (although 1kW should be quite enough for a standard U.S. household - don't know about other countries).
And your concern about machinery room environmental conditions, while valid , isn't a real problem since a business would front the cash for proper HVAC systems anyway. If they don't, they're too cheap to be buying this unit anyway.
I think you are comparing apples to oranges.
If the canister was simply priced by the weight of the raw materials of it's construction, that would in no way repay the cost of the research and development of the canister, the method to safely encapsulate the H2, and of course testing, testing, testing and certification for whatever government agency would concern itself. All this could easily be multiples of the simple cost of the raw materials - even it's weight in gold.
And all of that ignores the cost of mining, refining, and manufacturing the canister itself.
Ever hear of a new invention called an extension cord?
You put your generator outside (roof for example), and run the power cord inside the building. Power cord and the penetrations through walls for it are orders of magnitude cheaper than ventilation ducting.
Damn I wish I had a mod point for you. That was excellent ranting of the first order.
I've read that in some Siberian towns it's a serious crime to shut off a public vehicle's engine unless it's in a warmed garage facility.
You are right of course for the near term. And I agree with you about Mars.
But what about when we want to get into the van Oort cloud? We'll need water to make cheap rocket fuel as well as for life support systems.....
Just watch out for the klingons......
I think the article mentioned a 2006 launch with an arrival of 2016.
I'm hoping they can get this thing luanched. If there really is ice on Charon, and it's actually water ice, that would make a lot of neat stuff (read manned missions) possible way out there.