Immediately after 9/11, the Bush administraton made it clear that they would "drain the swamp." Iraq is currently being drained through force. Through various means, the drain plug is currently being tugged on in Iran and Syria (and by proxy, Lebanon).
They also said it would take years and years to achieve their goals. They're not going after those directly responsible for 9/11, but rather forcing a change in the political structure of virtually the entire world. This is a phenomenally complex task and is frought with bewildering complications. Regardless of what happens in November '04, this head-on engagement of America's enemies will continue for years after the Bush administration is gone.
A question: is taking on a task that is as uncertain and complex as knocking over Iraq the hallmark of an Administration that is exceptionally foolhardy or brave? The airwaves and blogs are jammed with this debate, however the correct answer will be printed in my great-grandchildren's history texts.
First of all, the design uses 1.3 tonnes of fissile Plutonium. Toshiba's write-up on the IAEA website has an interesting approach to this. "In order to keep strict control over the plutonium used... a large amount of fuel can be confined for a long time in the reactor vessel without refueling." In other words, less frequent transportation of fuel = better safeguards. However their fuel inventory balance shows that the spent fuel has almost as much fissible Pu-239 as the fresh... thus although the fuel stays put for 10 years, when it comes out its still potent (although jazzed up with a lot of fission products, which makes it unlikely to be easily handled by your run-of-the-mill crackpot).
The nuclear safety characteristics are excellent (i.e., negative void reactivity, negative temperature coefficients across the board, complete loss of power + no shutdown predicts sheath temperatures less than 850 degC, etc.). The economics, however, are not so good. According to the doc on the IAEA website, the thermal power is 125 MW. Using a generous conversion efficiency of 35%, that equals 44 MW of electrical power minus a few MW to run the station itself. To compete with the new generation of "big nukes" (i.e., over 700 MW), this station would have to cost between 40 and 80 million dollars (the new plant designs are trying to come in a $1,000,000 per MW).
We'll start fighting wars over water when we moved to the eco-paradise of a fully hydrogen-based economy. Hydrogen fuel cells can be configured to use hydrogen as fuel (which is extracted from water using electricity) or methane-based fuels. If the US southwest currently has hardly enough water to spare for big-flush toilets, can you imagine what will happen when we start running all of our cars with hydrogen pulled from water...? Canada, with the most liquid fresh water on Earth, will be the Saudi Arabia of the 21st century!
Oh, and the "breakthrough" that started this thread seems to me to be a process for converting mechanical energy into electricity. The thermodynamic efficiencies of nuke / coal / gas plants is based on converting heat energy into mechanical energy and then into electricity. From start-to-end, the total efficiency can range from 30% to the high 40%'s. A 1% conversion efficiency won't solve any continental power woes. On super-small scales, however, there might be something there.
The root cause is defined as the event that happened, which if didn't happen would have avoided the incident.
The loss of the 3 Ohio lines appears to be the trigger for the blackout, but not the root cause. Lines trip all the time (a list of the lines that have tripped in Ontario over the past year are listed here... before you flame Ontario, the US list is no better.) Something that happens all the time, by definition, is not the root cause.
Given that lines trip all the time (and the trigger event of the November 9 1965 blackout was also line trips), the system is supposed to be designed to withstand them. In fact, I initially though the August 14th event was a coordinated terrorist attack because I thought the system was designed to make widespread blackouts impossible! (Un)fortunately, I was wrong.
The fundamental issue here is why on August 14 some line trips caused a massive loss of power (61 billion watts). The problem should not have affected anyone other than Cleveland (just as the Ontario line trips mentioned at the IEMO website didn't affect anyone other than those nearby).
The answer to this question will be VERY interesting, and IMHO will be a political bombshell on both sides of the border....
(I walked home on August 14th. For once I'm happy to pay massive property taxes to live within 8 km of the downtown core of Toronto...)
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Come to think of it, dam bursts have killed hundreds of thousands of people too.
15,000 people died in the heat waves in France last summer. If they had air conditioning (which uses electricity), they would have lived.
This shows the *lack* of electricity is more deadly than the *production* of it.
They also said it would take years and years to achieve their goals. They're not going after those directly responsible for 9/11, but rather forcing a change in the political structure of virtually the entire world. This is a phenomenally complex task and is frought with bewildering complications. Regardless of what happens in November '04, this head-on engagement of America's enemies will continue for years after the Bush administration is gone.
A question: is taking on a task that is as uncertain and complex as knocking over Iraq the hallmark of an Administration that is exceptionally foolhardy or brave? The airwaves and blogs are jammed with this debate, however the correct answer will be printed in my great-grandchildren's history texts.
First of all, the design uses 1.3 tonnes of fissile Plutonium. Toshiba's write-up on the IAEA website has an interesting approach to this. "In order to keep strict control over the plutonium used... a large amount of fuel can be confined for a long time in the reactor vessel without refueling." In other words, less frequent transportation of fuel = better safeguards. However their fuel inventory balance shows that the spent fuel has almost as much fissible Pu-239 as the fresh... thus although the fuel stays put for 10 years, when it comes out its still potent (although jazzed up with a lot of fission products, which makes it unlikely to be easily handled by your run-of-the-mill crackpot).
The nuclear safety characteristics are excellent (i.e., negative void reactivity, negative temperature coefficients across the board, complete loss of power + no shutdown predicts sheath temperatures less than 850 degC, etc.). The economics, however, are not so good. According to the doc on the IAEA website, the thermal power is 125 MW. Using a generous conversion efficiency of 35%, that equals 44 MW of electrical power minus a few MW to run the station itself. To compete with the new generation of "big nukes" (i.e., over 700 MW), this station would have to cost between 40 and 80 million dollars (the new plant designs are trying to come in a $1,000,000 per MW).
Oh, and the "breakthrough" that started this thread seems to me to be a process for converting mechanical energy into electricity. The thermodynamic efficiencies of nuke / coal / gas plants is based on converting heat energy into mechanical energy and then into electricity. From start-to-end, the total efficiency can range from 30% to the high 40%'s. A 1% conversion efficiency won't solve any continental power woes. On super-small scales, however, there might be something there.
The root cause is defined as the event that happened, which if didn't happen would have avoided the incident.
The loss of the 3 Ohio lines appears to be the trigger for the blackout, but not the root cause. Lines trip all the time (a list of the lines that have tripped in Ontario over the past year are listed here... before you flame Ontario, the US list is no better.) Something that happens all the time, by definition, is not the root cause.
Given that lines trip all the time (and the trigger event of the November 9 1965 blackout was also line trips), the system is supposed to be designed to withstand them. In fact, I initially though the August 14th event was a coordinated terrorist attack because I thought the system was designed to make widespread blackouts impossible! (Un)fortunately, I was wrong.
The fundamental issue here is why on August 14 some line trips caused a massive loss of power (61 billion watts). The problem should not have affected anyone other than Cleveland (just as the Ontario line trips mentioned at the IEMO website didn't affect anyone other than those nearby).
The answer to this question will be VERY interesting, and IMHO will be a political bombshell on both sides of the border....
(I walked home on August 14th. For once I'm happy to pay massive property taxes to live within 8 km of the downtown core of Toronto...)