it will be about credibility.
That's exactly the problem the nuclear industry has always suffered from. The contamination is very dangerous and invisible, and the only one that can tell us how bad it is are folks with a strong vested interest in downplaying the issue.
Credibility? The nuclear industry has never had a credibility problem. The problem has always been a huge anti-nuclear double standard. People give the same weight to what some actor in Hollywood has to say about nuclear power as what someone who spent 10+ years earning a Ph.D. in nuclear engineering says. I'm pro-nuclear but if you search my recent post history here, I think you'll see I'm not downplaying the seriousness of the current situation. Your error is in assuming that anyone who is pro-nuclear has a "strong vested interest in downplaying the issue". The reality is that most people who are anti-nuclear have a strong vested interest in over-hyping the issue.
As a consequence, no one knows what to think--and so have chosen to believe the worst case scenario.
You think what's going on is the worst-case scenario? Let me tell you about worst-case scenarios. Have you ever heard of Banqiao? It was a Chinese nuclear plant which in 1975 suffered a severe accident. The Chinese covered it up for 30 years and quietly admitted it to the world in 2005. So quietly that most people still haven't heard of it. The toll compared to Chernobyl is just staggering:
26,000 immediate deaths (57 for Chernobyl)
145,000 long-term deaths (4000 cancer deaths for Chernobyl)
11 million people relocated (336,000 people relocated for Chernobyl)
Nearly 6 million homes and buildings made uninhabitable
768 km^2 rendered uninhabitable (489 km^2 exclusion zone for Chernobyl)
Horrific, isn't it? Worse than the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Clearly proof that nuclear power is too dangerous to use, right?
I'm sorry. I lied. Banqiao wasn't a nuclear plant. It was a hydroelectric dam. Everything else I said is true though. In 1975, during a typhoon and torrential rainfall, it filled to over capacity. After several attempts to lower its water level by opening sluice gates, the dam above it burst. The swell of water overwhelmed the Banqiao dam, and it too burst. 700 million tons of water were released, and it precipitated a cascade failure of dams beneath it. In all, 62 dams burst or were deliberately destroyed in attempts to divert water into flood plains, with a total of 15.7 billion tons of water released.
26,000 people lost their lives in the flooding. Over 1 million people were left stranded by the waters, cut off from disaster relief, and had to have food and water airlifted to them for weeks. An estimated 145,000 of them (Chinese govt figures) died of the famine and disease caused by the disaster. Nearly 6 million buildings were destroyed, and 11 million people had to be relocated. When the dam was rebuilt, 768 km^2 was flooded to form the flood catchbasin.
Horrific, isn't it? Worse than the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Clearly proof that hydroelectric power is too dangerous to use, right?
So the worst power-generator accident in history was a hydro plant. The worst-case scenario for hydro is much, much worse than for nuclear. But I'm willing to bet your gut is still telling you that hydro is safe and nuclear is dangerous. See? You have an anti-nuclear bias. Your mind easily accepts something critical of nuclear power, but rejects the exact same evidence when it's critical of hydroelectric power. You are using a double standard.
But Banqiao was a clay dam. Western dams are typically concrete.
Chernobyl was a dangerous and unstable reactor design never used in the West.
It was Chinese. They had shoddy building and operating standar
recycled glass only uses 5% less energy to make than new glass. Compare that to aluminum where the recycled product uses 95% less energy to produce than from virgin materials. If you're looking to have a highly-recyclable product then aluminum is the way to go.
That's the wrong stat to be looking at. Recycled aluminum uses much less energy than producing new aluminum because aluminum production requires huge amounts of energy. So aluminum may only require 5% of its creation energy to recycle, but that's 5% of a huge number. Glass' 95% to recycle is 95% of a small number.
You want to be comparing the raw amount of energy needed to recycle. How many joules for a glass bottle, how many joules for an aluminum can.
Yes, I know all about geothermal. It's my favorite renewable, and long-term I see it as being the predominant one, beating out wind, solar, and hydro. Unfortunately, it has run into the same problem as nuclear - people unable to properly assess the risk of a small chance of a big disaster. In nuclear's case it's a nuclear accident. In geothermal's case, it's earthquakes.
I'd rate you up if I could. I disagree that that way of thinking is logical - it's the same irrational reasoning that makes people buy lottery tickets. A known small loss vs. a minuscule chance of a big payoff. But yes, that is the way most people think.
What I don't get is how you still think contaminating a densely populated landscape is an acceptable way to power our plasma TVs.
Because I know how to compare a distributed risk with a concentrated risk. Renewables like wind and solar aren't able to provide base load yet. Maybe in the future they will be able to, but right now they can't. So replacing this nuclear plant with a renewable is not a viable option.
Instead, it would most likely be replaced by a coal plant (importing gas is difficult). The problem with that is: the pollution those put out is hundreds of times more harmful than nuclear. Coal emissions worldwide are estimated to kill 1 million people every year. That's the equivalent of 250 Chernobyls every year. The U.S. has some of the cleanest coal plants in the world, but it's still estimated that coal emissions kill 30,000 Americans each year. That's more than 7 Chernobyls every year. But because the contamination from that pollution is distributed, there are no evacuations, no land closures, no keep out signs, no media coverage, no hysteria over those deaths.
No thank you. I will take 1 Chernobyl worldwide every ~25 years with the contamination concentrated in a small area everyone can avoid, over 250 Chernobyls every year where the contamination is distributed and unavoidable.
I'm wondering why they can't pump liquid nitrogen in there to cool it down. Didn't they do that at Chernobyl?
Water has a specific heat of 4.187 kJ/kgK and a heat of vaporization of 2,270 kJ/kg.
Liquid nitrogen has a specific heat of 2.042 kJ/kgK and a heat of vaporization of 199.1 kJ/kgK, and a specific heat of 1.04 kJ/kgK when gas.
So putting in 1 kg of water at 20 C and extracting it as steam at 100 C removes (4.187)*80 + 2270 = 2605 kJ of heat energy from the reactor.
Putting in 1 kg of liquid nitrogen at -200 C and extracting it at 100 C removes (2.042)*4 + 199.1 + (1.04)*296 = 515 kJ of heat energy from the reactor.
Per kg, water removes over 5x more heat energy than liquid nitrogen. The only reason to use liquid nitrogen is if you wanted to drop the temperature below the boiling point of water. AFAIK radioactive decay is not influenced by temperature, so there would be no benefit to doing that here.
If I had to guess, the Soviets had to encase an active pile in-situ with concrete. Concrete tends to be very temperature-sensitive when curing - too hot and it'll crack. So they probably used liquid nitrogen to drop the temperature to where the concrete which initially contacted the pile could cure without cracking.
In fifty thousand years (or whatever) when the nuclear waste is no longer dangerous, then a reasonable comparison could be made between nuclear accidents and other types of deaths.
That the spent fuel is "hot" for tens of thousands of years is a purely political problem, not a technical one. The obvious technical solution is to reprocess the spent fuel. That will turn it into more fuel, as well as reduce the time the final waste products are dangerous to a hundred years or so. The reason we don't reprocess is because it produces weapons grade plutonium as a side-effect, and because the anti-nuclear lobby loves being able to say nuclear power has a "fifty thousand year" waste problem. Purely political, not technical.
An earthquake 7 times more powerful than the biggest it was built for hit, and all that happened to the reactors that didn't shut down cleanly was a small amount of radioactive noble gases, which decay within minutes. Even if the cores DO melt, they're safely contained in... wait for it... containment chambers!
You've vastly oversimplified what's going on. First of all, it's pretty clear that the first level of containment (the zirco-alloy cladding on the fuel) has failed. There's been radioactive iodine and cesium detected outside the plant, indicating the fuel rods have at least partially melted.
Those two can get outside the primary containment vessel because their primary cooling system is broken. Normally there are two water loops to keep the core cool. The inner water loop is a closed system which carries heat from the core to a heat exchanger. There the heat gets transferred to an outer water loop (ocean water in this case), which does the actual cooling. The inner loop water never leaves the plant, and thus not even the radioactive tritium which gets formed leaves the plant.
When the electrical systems and backups failed, that cooling system ceased to function. The only way they have to cool the core right now is to directly vent the water surrounding the core. Vent the steam, lower the pressure, cool the core. Best case you're releasing radioactive tritium. But since the rods have melted, the water is now in direct contact with the uranium fuel and fission products. That's where the radioactive iodine and cesium come from. Iodine is gaseous (so escapes along with the venting), and cesium is water soluble.
That's where we were at yesterday. It rated a 5 on the INES nuclear safety scale, which was the same as Three Mile Island. Unfortunately, today has had two very, very bad developments.
First, there's reports that the containment vessel for reactor #2 is damaged. No confirmation and no details. For whatever reason TEPCO and the Japanese government are being tight-lipped about it. Second, apparently some of the debris broke through the wall of building 4 and exposed a huge, huge flaw in the system. They have spent fuel rods and unused fuel rods sitting in storage pools outside of containment. The only thing protecting them is the water in the pool, and the building walls surrounding them. Walls which have blown apart in buildings #1 and #3, and have holes in #2 and #4.
Supposedly some of these spent fuel rods in building #4 caught fire (they're still experiencing nuclear decay, so still generating heat; just at a much, much slower rate than in reactors #1-#3 which were shut down recently). The water in the pool is supposed to keep them cool, but with the electricity gone, they suffered the same cooling failure as in reactors #1-#3. It just took a lot longer for the problem to exhibit itself since the amount of heat they were generating was much lower. Anyway, supposedly some of these rods caught fire, which corresponds to the sharp spike in radiation release yesterday. Those radiation readings dropped back down to "normal" again after the fire was put out.
But if those spent fuel rods have boiled off enough water to expose them to the air, then there is nothing stopping them from heating up. They will melt, possibly catch fire, and worst case they will start fissioning again after melting into a slag at the bottom of the pool. And all of this will happen outside of containment. Basically, the situation right now is only slightly better than what we had in Chernobyl - a hot core exposed to the atmosphere with a fire. That's why the situation was upgraded to a 6 on the INES scale today.
If the rods catch fire, it'll basically be the same as Chernobyl again. Maybe a bit smaller since the fuel isn't as hot as in
This doesn't even come close to a worst-case scenario for for solar (broken PV panels?, leaked salt?), or even a coal plant.
The problem is, the worst-case scenario doesn't define the statistical average. By definition it's an outlier. The long-term statistical averages for the other technologies are much, much worse than nuclear. Solar is about 10x deadlier than nuclear in comparison. Roofing is one of the most dangerous jobs in the U.S, with over 100 roofers per year killed from simply falling off. If rooftop solar panels become commonplace, you're probably looking at 100 additional roofer deaths per year from installation and maintenance deaths.
Coal is an absolute carnage in comparison to nucleear. Pollution from coal plants is estimated to kill 30,000 Americans each year. The WHO estimated Chernobyl will cause 4000 long-term cancer deaths, so we have 7.5 Chernobyls happening every year in our country due to our coal plants. But this bothers no one, and instead everyone is all worried about commercial nuclear power (which has never killed anyone in the U.S.).
This is just like planes are safer than cars, yet people fear plane crashes. Or white collar crime causes more economic damage than bank robbery, but sentences for bank robbers are harsher. The concentrated damage gets extra scrutiny, while the distributed damage gets overlooked. It's people's poor risk assessment and management which is killing nuclear.
The only reason the U.S. has a nuclear waste "problem" is because we haven't done anything about it for ~60 years. Imagine 60 years of coal plant emissions, or the waste from 60 years of solar panel construction and dead/obsolete panels. That's the correct comparison. Per year, the U.S. currently generates about 2000 tons of spent fuel ("high level waste" since we refuse to reprocess) per year. That's about enough to fill a single tractor trailer. 20% of our electricity for a year, and it only generates one tractor trailer full of waste. That's a tiny waste problem compared to the alternatives. The reason it costs a lot is because of politics, not engineering. (If it were up to the engineers, they'd say just reprocess the stuff and use it as more fuel.)
Did you read the whole page? The only (levelised) study that shows nuclear to be competitive it the UK study (and only by a relatively small margin). In everything else, nuclear trails on-shore wind.
The Wikipedia entry for U.S. DOE levelized cost lists nuclear at 119, onshore wind at 149.3. However, this is inconsistent with the referenced source which lists 113.9 for nuclear, 97 for onshore wind. The history of the chart on the wikipedia page shows no edits, so likely the DOE revised their report. Note that these are estimated levilized costs for 2016, so there's room to fudge. I'll call this a draw.
The figures in the UK study are consistent with the source. Winner: nuclear.
The Califoria Energy Commission costs listed in Wikipedia does not match the source. If you flip to table 24, you'll see the levelized costs are both $99//MWh for wind and nuclear. However, that is the subsidized cost. Without tax credits, nuclear is $114, wind is $140. Winner: nuclear
The Australian figures for nuclear cite a reference which is not available online. Putting the title of the chart into Google yielded this report. If you scroll down to figure 10-13 (p. 218), wind comes out at roughly 90-210 AU cents/MWh, nuclear 120-200 AU cents/MWH. I'm inclined to call this a draw, but one could argue it's a win for wind.
The final chart on wiki is unreferenced, does not state where the data supposedly came from, and does not describe what factors and assumptions went into the calculations. My guess is the source is German, but my German is not good enough to be searching through their publications. However, it is pretty well known that Germany has a strong anti-nuclear bias, having banned it in their country.
Overall, I'd say the sources in the Wikipedia entry more strongly support the conclusion that nuclear is cheaper than or about the same as wind.
To bring in the car analogy, you don't need to be a racing expert to know it's a bad idea to ride around with stunting teen driver whose confidence exceeds reality, anymore than you need a degree in nuclear physics to know that those who claim everything is absolutely safe and nothing bad can ever happen are probably being similarly reckless.
This is actually a really good analogy, except you have it backwards. If you look at the historical safety record, nuclear is the safest power generating technology we've developed. So the correct analogy would be: Declining to ride with the young driver who says he's safe and has an almost spotless driving record, but being concerned because he's a teen and seems to be bragging about his safety. And choosing instead to ride with the older driver because "we've always ridden with him", who has been in countless accidents and regularly mows down pedestrians, but never brags about his safety.
The support for nuclear isn't based on some blind faith in the technology as you're assuming. It's based on numerical comparative analysis of how nuclear and the other options have performed in real-world use. No technology is perfectly safe, but nuclear is safer than the alternatives, and a helluva lot safer than coal and oil which comprise the bulk of worldwide power generation at present.
I don't know if there are some safe nuclear plants. I don't know if we can reliably make safe nuclear plants. What I do know is that the same people keep repeatedly telling us that "nuclear power is safe" and then we keep having major failures which prove it isn't.
These major failures you keep hearing about are "major" only due to much higher level of caution with which we treat nuclear power, and the high level of press coverage it receives. It's the same reason people are hyper-sensitive to plane crashes, even though cars are nearly 10x more dangerous.
If you think nuclear power is too dangerous to use, then you should immediately stop doing the following activities:
- Using hot water (2x as dangerous as nuclear power)
- Climbing ladders (4x as dangerous as nuclear power)
- Sleeping on a bed (5x as dangerous as nuclear power)
- Taking a bath (15x as dangerous as nuclear power)
- Riding the train (20x as dangerous as nuclear power)
- Riding a car (1250x as dangerous as nuclear power)
I don't need to understand the engineering issues to understand that there is no way to trust the pro-nuclear lobby to actually deal with those issues. Fission based power (and yes; you are right fusion is a different case) needs to be severely limited until we are sure that the people proposing it are much much more trustworthy.
I weep for the future of humanity. People like you are going to damn us to continue using coal, whose emissions kill an estimated 100,000 people worldwide every year. All because you're irrationally afraid of a technology which has killed just a few thousand people in ~60 years.
I realize that Slashdot is pro-nuclear, and hell, even I'm pro-nuclear. But please don't embarrass yourself or this site by referring to the ongoing disaster at Fukushima Daiichi as a plant "having some problems".
The problem is a "nuclear disaster" is a dozen people being irradiated so that statistically their lifespan will be shortened a few months or years. A "disaster" of any other type is hundreds of people or more being killed. They use the same word, but describe totally different situations. Coal plant emissions are estimated to kill some 100,000 people each year and people shrug at the smoke billowing out of the smokestacks. Yet everyone is wringing their hands over something which has not, and still probably will not kill anyone, and calling it a disaster.
Just because the amount of radiation is the same (or less) it doesn't mean its the same type. The scanners concentrate that radiation at one frequency, not over a broad spectrum. That frequency is absorbed not by the whole body, but by the first few millimeters of flest. That means that bit of flesh is getting thousands of times higher levels of exposure then that of the whole body mass exposure of back ground radiation.
This came up in a discussion I was having with someone about this technology. The backscatter scanners use alpha particles. Alpha particles only penetrate about 0.045 mm into skin. That's not enough to penetrate past the epidermis, which is about 0.05-0.1 mm at its thinnest (the eyelids). In most cases it's not even going to penetrate the outermost cells of the epidermis (most of which are already dead).
My question was, don't the cells in the epidermis die and slough off in a few days to weeks, to be replaced by new cells from underneath? If so, the "bit of flesh" that is getting "thousands of times higher levels of exposure" is destined to die soon anyways, and being zapped by alpha particles isn't going to change that appreciably.
In contrast, UV light (the kind you get just walking out in sunlight) can penetrate several mm into the skin. Damage from UV can be in cells which will continue living inside you for months or years. I am against these scanners for privacy reasons. But unless I'm misunderstanding something about the physics and biology of what's going on, it seems like a stroll out in the sun would be more dangerous than these scanners.
One thing about wind power. In the event of an earthquake, a terrorist attack, a greedy company cutting corners like BP, incompetence or human error nobody needs to worry about the breeze getting out.
This is the "flying is dangerous because I saw a plane crash on TV" fallacy. When you're comparing how dangerous something is, you cannot look at just a subset of its operation (e.g "in the event of an earthquake, terrorist attack" or "the incident I saw on the news"). You have to look at the totality of its operational risks.
The stats are, commercial nuclear power generation in the U.S. has had zero fatalities in ~60 years of operation, and is currently generating nearly 20% of our electricity. Commercial wind power in the U.S. has had at least 13 deaths since 1970, and has never produced more than 1% of our electricity. All of those are maintenance deaths, but these people are still dead. It doesn't matter that it happened because of an earthquake, or a terrorist attack, or they slipped off a ladder. They're still dead. The only difference is those wind-related deaths never made national news because they didn't have the sensationalism of an earthquake, a terrorist attack, or a catchy phrase like "nuclear meltdown" associated with them.
In terms of deaths per unit of energy generated, statistically worldwide, nuclear is the safest form of power generation man has invented. And yes, that includes the high-end estimate of cancer deaths due to Chernobyl.
I posted part of this already, but it's buried near the bottom due to the GP being downrated. Every time there's a nuclear accident, the anti-nuclear people come out in droves yelling about the "dangers" of nuclear power. If you want to talk about perspective, danger, and opportunity costs, here's the low-down:
There have been zero deaths in the U.S. associated with commercial nuclear power generation despite it producing nearly 20% of our electricity. Wind has already killed at least 13 people in the U.S. despite producing less than 1% of our electricity. All of these have been maintenance workers (the only non-maintenance death was a skydiver in Germany who flew into a turbine). So the quip about a wind turbine at sea collapsing is beside the point since that wouldn't have stopped any of these deaths. In fact I suspect it would have caused more deaths since transferring from a boat rocking in ocean swells to a stationary platform isn't exactly the safest thing to do.
Solar has a huge problem in that roofing is one of the most dangerous jobs in the U.S.. If you're imagining every house in the U.S. with solar panels mounted on the roof, you should expect probably about 100 more roofer deaths per year from installing and maintaining them. In terms of direct deaths (i.e. excluding mining and pollution), hydro actually turns out to be the most dangerous power source worldwide due to deaths from dam failures.
Over it's 50+ year history worldwide, in terms of deaths per unit of energy generated, nuclear power is the safest form of power generation man has ever invented. Yes that includes Chernobyl (a reactor design not used outside of the former USSR). If you accept the high estimate of number of expected cancer deaths from Chernobyl, it's about 4x safer than wind (the safest green technology). If you accept the low estimate, it's 125x safer than wind.
How about pollution? What most people don't realize about nuclear is that it's an incredibly concentrated power source. How much spent fuel (high-level nuclear waste, like we're trying to bury in Nevada) do you think would be produced to power a typical U.S. home for 30 years? A bit less than 10 kg, about a half liter's worth. To power the same home with solar, you'd need about 30-50 square meters of panels, and the panels have an expected lifespan of about 25-30 years. One small water bottle's worth of waste, vs 30-50 square meters of solar panels. Nuclear in the U.S. generates about 20% of our electricity, and produces ~2000 tons of spent fuel a year. That's about enough to fill one tractor trailer. One tractor trailer-full of high-level waste to provide 1/5th of the entire country's electricity for an entire year. And it's not spewed into the atmosphere like coal, it's not spread all over towns and the countryside like solar or wind. It's neatly contained in concentrated form within the nuclear plant. And all this is not even factoring in the waste reduction that can be achieved with reprocessing.
How about compared to wind? The Fukushima Dai-ichi plant which is the cause of the problem today has an overall generating capacity of 3596 MW. How big a wind farm would you need to replace it? The largest wind farm in the U.S. is Roscoe Wind Farm. 781.5 MW peak capacity, 627 turbines, covering 400 km^2. Note however that that's peak capacity - how much electricity the farm generates under ideal conditions if each turbine is running at maximum power and efficiency. In practice, the average power generation from wind farms has been about 20%-25% of peak. Be generous and go with the high 25%. So 627 turbines and 400 km^2 gives you 195.4 MW of power on average. To replace Fuku
Now let's see... how many anti-nuclear hippies died from doing too much LSD or ketamine or whatever it is they do? Probably thousands.
No need to resort to ad hominem. Even an objective comparison of safety supports nuclear over green technologies.
There have been zero deaths in the U.S. associated with commercial nuclear power generation. Wind has already killed at least 13 people in the U.S. Solar has a huge problem in that roofing is one of the most dangerous jobs in the U.S. If you're imagining every house in the U.S. with solar panels mounted on the roof, you should expect probably about 100 more roofer deaths per year from installing and maintaining them. In terms of direct deaths (i.e. excluding mining and pollution), hydro actually turns out to be the most dangerous power source worldwide due to deaths from dam failures.
Over it's 50+ year history worldwide, in terms of deaths per amount of energy generated, nuclear power is the safest form of power generation man has ever invented. Yes that includes Chernobyl (a reactor design not used outside of the former USSR). If you accept the high estimate of number of expected cancer deaths from Chernobyl, it's about 4x safer than wind (the safest green technology). If you accept the low estimate, it's 125x safer than wind.
Could you Americans please stop trying to force us other in the world to accept your fascist corporations wishes?
Please continue to live in your corporate govern country that you believe is the worlds greatest democracy but STOP trying to force us other to obey your corporate overlords.
If you were as much in control of your government as you seem to think we are of ours, then this wouldn't be a problem. You'd just tell your government "no", and they'd tell the U.S. "no."
That you don't have faith in your own government to resist the U.S. is an admission that you have as little control over your government as we have over ours. That's the real problem here. GovernmentS working for the good of whomever will give them kickbacks/campaign funds, instead of for the good of the people.
The funny thing is, Samsung makes some of these parts.
Why do you think the Galaxy Tab was not priced to beat the iPad. Samsung makes money whether you buy a Tab or an iPad. They're certainly not going to start a price war with Apple.
The US market is very peculiar, so you might be spot on there, but over here in the EU where there is competition, SMS are in most cases free, even though they do as you point out actually cost quite a bit to service, the competition here is just so fierce you can't charge anything meaningful for them.
It wasn't initially because of competition. The U.S. had an extensive analog cell phone system before other countries, so it was actually Europe and Asia which had the first major rollouts of digital cell phones. Back then, they didn't know how popular SMS was going to be. Since it cost the carriers practically nothing to provide, they just added the letters 'SMS' to the feature list of the phone and thought nothing of it. Consequently, when it became hugely popular, they couldn't really retroactively increases prices on them.
The carriers in the U.S. got to see what features were popular in Europe and Asia, and charged for the most popular ones (ringtones also had high demand). It's not unusual to see this sort of thing in a new market. The market price for new features is primarily based on demand, not cost to produce. So even though SMS costs the carriers virtually nothing, the demand was high enough to sustain the $0.10 per text price.
That said, in a properly functioning market, competition should have quickly dropped that price to something much closer to how much it cost to provide the service. But with only 6 (4 now) major carriers, it was pretty easy to establish an unspoken agreement not to kill their cash cow. It's still collusion, but apparently not of the type which warrants anti-trust action. Since you need spectrum to compete in the cell phone market, the smaller, local carriers couldn't really make a dent in the major carriers' userbase. So they usually ended up just adopting the outrageous SMS pricing. i.e. Even if one of Verizon's smaller competitors let you text for free, it would only affect Verizon's sales in a small regional market. So there was little pressure on the big carriers to lower the prices.
No, we won't see proper tablets, Android or otherwise, for $250-$350 by the end of the year. There might be some laughable attempts, but nothing that really competes with an iPad or a compelling Android tablet.
Dude, drop by a Barnes and Noble and take a look at the Nook Color. $250 retail (was on sale at $199 last week). 7" 1024x768 IPS display (absolutely beautiful, and so bright I run it at about 30% most of the time), capacitive touchscreen, 800 MHz, 512 MB main memory, 8 GB built-in storage, microSDHC to 32 GB, just under 1 lb. You have to root it (it's virtually impossible to brick) and it's missing Android 2.x buttons (3.0 won't need em). But once you've rooted you have a tablet which beats most of the $400 and some of the $500 devices out there. It doesn't have GPS, a camera, and mic, but it would cost a manufacturer only a few dollars to add those. I'm skeptical of a full-featured tablet (with dual core) hitting $250 by end of the year, but $350 I think is almost a certainty.
My point was that people on slashdot have been saying since before the iPad came out that there would be cheaper, better specced Android tablets, pretty much every month they were "just around the corner".
I picked up a new Nook Color for $199 last week. I had to root it and hack the volume buttons to act as the back/menu buttons, but it makes a helluva Android tablet. Screen is as good as an iPad's (just smaller), and the 800 MHz CPU overclocks easily. It's missing GPS, a mic, and camera, but those are relatively cheap electronic components. So a quality tablet can definitely be built for less than $200.
IMHO the first batch of Android tablets were overpriced because they were taking advantage of being first to market (after Apple of course). Heck, I remember holding one of the first retail notebook computers in my hands (the manufacturer was local so I dropped by to take a look). A 386SX/16 MHz with 7" mono LCD for the low, low price of $3800, when you could buy a 16 MHz 386SX desktop system for $1000-$1500. Now that everyone has gotten models into the store, expect the competition to heat up and the prices to drop.
Actually, the top 10 countries with the highest IE6 usage are non-english... and they didn't think of approaching IE6-users in their own language?
Actually, I think this is more a failing of the open source community and the Mozilla foundation to spread Firefox to non-English non-European users. I know in South Korea IE6 was so ubiquitous that entire companies and banks built their systems around it. It was a huge hassle when Vista shipped with IE7 and broke many of those systems. If Firefox had been pitched as well there as it was here, IE6 would never have become the hegemony there that it became, and everyone (Microsoft, Mozilla, Opera, etc) would be having an easier time getting those people to switch from IE6.
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Credibility? The nuclear industry has never had a credibility problem. The problem has always been a huge anti-nuclear double standard. People give the same weight to what some actor in Hollywood has to say about nuclear power as what someone who spent 10+ years earning a Ph.D. in nuclear engineering says. I'm pro-nuclear but if you search my recent post history here, I think you'll see I'm not downplaying the seriousness of the current situation. Your error is in assuming that anyone who is pro-nuclear has a "strong vested interest in downplaying the issue". The reality is that most people who are anti-nuclear have a strong vested interest in over-hyping the issue.
You think what's going on is the worst-case scenario? Let me tell you about worst-case scenarios. Have you ever heard of Banqiao? It was a Chinese nuclear plant which in 1975 suffered a severe accident. The Chinese covered it up for 30 years and quietly admitted it to the world in 2005. So quietly that most people still haven't heard of it. The toll compared to Chernobyl is just staggering:
26,000 immediate deaths (57 for Chernobyl)
145,000 long-term deaths (4000 cancer deaths for Chernobyl)
11 million people relocated (336,000 people relocated for Chernobyl)
Nearly 6 million homes and buildings made uninhabitable
768 km^2 rendered uninhabitable (489 km^2 exclusion zone for Chernobyl)
Horrific, isn't it? Worse than the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Clearly proof that nuclear power is too dangerous to use, right?
I'm sorry. I lied. Banqiao wasn't a nuclear plant. It was a hydroelectric dam . Everything else I said is true though. In 1975, during a typhoon and torrential rainfall, it filled to over capacity. After several attempts to lower its water level by opening sluice gates, the dam above it burst. The swell of water overwhelmed the Banqiao dam, and it too burst. 700 million tons of water were released, and it precipitated a cascade failure of dams beneath it. In all, 62 dams burst or were deliberately destroyed in attempts to divert water into flood plains, with a total of 15.7 billion tons of water released.
26,000 people lost their lives in the flooding. Over 1 million people were left stranded by the waters, cut off from disaster relief, and had to have food and water airlifted to them for weeks. An estimated 145,000 of them (Chinese govt figures) died of the famine and disease caused by the disaster. Nearly 6 million buildings were destroyed, and 11 million people had to be relocated. When the dam was rebuilt, 768 km^2 was flooded to form the flood catchbasin.
Horrific, isn't it? Worse than the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Clearly proof that hydroelectric power is too dangerous to use, right?
So the worst power-generator accident in history was a hydro plant. The worst-case scenario for hydro is much, much worse than for nuclear. But I'm willing to bet your gut is still telling you that hydro is safe and nuclear is dangerous. See? You have an anti-nuclear bias. Your mind easily accepts something critical of nuclear power, but rejects the exact same evidence when it's critical of hydroelectric power. You are using a double standard.
But Banqiao was a clay dam. Western dams are typically concrete.
Chernobyl was a dangerous and unstable reactor design never used in the West.
It was Chinese. They had shoddy building and operating standar
That's the wrong stat to be looking at. Recycled aluminum uses much less energy than producing new aluminum because aluminum production requires huge amounts of energy. So aluminum may only require 5% of its creation energy to recycle, but that's 5% of a huge number. Glass' 95% to recycle is 95% of a small number.
You want to be comparing the raw amount of energy needed to recycle. How many joules for a glass bottle, how many joules for an aluminum can.
Yes, I know all about geothermal. It's my favorite renewable, and long-term I see it as being the predominant one, beating out wind, solar, and hydro. Unfortunately, it has run into the same problem as nuclear - people unable to properly assess the risk of a small chance of a big disaster. In nuclear's case it's a nuclear accident. In geothermal's case, it's earthquakes.
I'd rate you up if I could. I disagree that that way of thinking is logical - it's the same irrational reasoning that makes people buy lottery tickets. A known small loss vs. a minuscule chance of a big payoff. But yes, that is the way most people think.
Because I know how to compare a distributed risk with a concentrated risk. Renewables like wind and solar aren't able to provide base load yet. Maybe in the future they will be able to, but right now they can't. So replacing this nuclear plant with a renewable is not a viable option.
Instead, it would most likely be replaced by a coal plant (importing gas is difficult). The problem with that is: the pollution those put out is hundreds of times more harmful than nuclear. Coal emissions worldwide are estimated to kill 1 million people every year. That's the equivalent of 250 Chernobyls every year. The U.S. has some of the cleanest coal plants in the world, but it's still estimated that coal emissions kill 30,000 Americans each year. That's more than 7 Chernobyls every year. But because the contamination from that pollution is distributed, there are no evacuations, no land closures, no keep out signs, no media coverage, no hysteria over those deaths.
No thank you. I will take 1 Chernobyl worldwide every ~25 years with the contamination concentrated in a small area everyone can avoid, over 250 Chernobyls every year where the contamination is distributed and unavoidable.
Water has a specific heat of 4.187 kJ/kgK and a heat of vaporization of 2,270 kJ/kg.
Liquid nitrogen has a specific heat of 2.042 kJ/kgK and a heat of vaporization of 199.1 kJ/kgK, and a specific heat of 1.04 kJ/kgK when gas.
So putting in 1 kg of water at 20 C and extracting it as steam at 100 C removes (4.187)*80 + 2270 = 2605 kJ of heat energy from the reactor.
Putting in 1 kg of liquid nitrogen at -200 C and extracting it at 100 C removes (2.042)*4 + 199.1 + (1.04)*296 = 515 kJ of heat energy from the reactor.
Per kg, water removes over 5x more heat energy than liquid nitrogen. The only reason to use liquid nitrogen is if you wanted to drop the temperature below the boiling point of water. AFAIK radioactive decay is not influenced by temperature, so there would be no benefit to doing that here.
If I had to guess, the Soviets had to encase an active pile in-situ with concrete. Concrete tends to be very temperature-sensitive when curing - too hot and it'll crack. So they probably used liquid nitrogen to drop the temperature to where the concrete which initially contacted the pile could cure without cracking.
That the spent fuel is "hot" for tens of thousands of years is a purely political problem, not a technical one. The obvious technical solution is to reprocess the spent fuel. That will turn it into more fuel, as well as reduce the time the final waste products are dangerous to a hundred years or so. The reason we don't reprocess is because it produces weapons grade plutonium as a side-effect, and because the anti-nuclear lobby loves being able to say nuclear power has a "fifty thousand year" waste problem. Purely political, not technical.
That said, as I've outlined in my post below, the situation right now is very, very dangerous.
You've vastly oversimplified what's going on. First of all, it's pretty clear that the first level of containment (the zirco-alloy cladding on the fuel) has failed. There's been radioactive iodine and cesium detected outside the plant, indicating the fuel rods have at least partially melted.
Those two can get outside the primary containment vessel because their primary cooling system is broken. Normally there are two water loops to keep the core cool. The inner water loop is a closed system which carries heat from the core to a heat exchanger. There the heat gets transferred to an outer water loop (ocean water in this case), which does the actual cooling. The inner loop water never leaves the plant, and thus not even the radioactive tritium which gets formed leaves the plant.
When the electrical systems and backups failed, that cooling system ceased to function. The only way they have to cool the core right now is to directly vent the water surrounding the core. Vent the steam, lower the pressure, cool the core. Best case you're releasing radioactive tritium. But since the rods have melted, the water is now in direct contact with the uranium fuel and fission products. That's where the radioactive iodine and cesium come from. Iodine is gaseous (so escapes along with the venting), and cesium is water soluble.
That's where we were at yesterday. It rated a 5 on the INES nuclear safety scale, which was the same as Three Mile Island. Unfortunately, today has had two very, very bad developments.
First, there's reports that the containment vessel for reactor #2 is damaged. No confirmation and no details. For whatever reason TEPCO and the Japanese government are being tight-lipped about it. Second, apparently some of the debris broke through the wall of building 4 and exposed a huge, huge flaw in the system. They have spent fuel rods and unused fuel rods sitting in storage pools outside of containment. The only thing protecting them is the water in the pool, and the building walls surrounding them. Walls which have blown apart in buildings #1 and #3, and have holes in #2 and #4.
Supposedly some of these spent fuel rods in building #4 caught fire (they're still experiencing nuclear decay, so still generating heat; just at a much, much slower rate than in reactors #1-#3 which were shut down recently). The water in the pool is supposed to keep them cool, but with the electricity gone, they suffered the same cooling failure as in reactors #1-#3. It just took a lot longer for the problem to exhibit itself since the amount of heat they were generating was much lower. Anyway, supposedly some of these rods caught fire, which corresponds to the sharp spike in radiation release yesterday. Those radiation readings dropped back down to "normal" again after the fire was put out.
But if those spent fuel rods have boiled off enough water to expose them to the air, then there is nothing stopping them from heating up. They will melt, possibly catch fire, and worst case they will start fissioning again after melting into a slag at the bottom of the pool. And all of this will happen outside of containment. Basically, the situation right now is only slightly better than what we had in Chernobyl - a hot core exposed to the atmosphere with a fire. That's why the situation was upgraded to a 6 on the INES scale today.
If the rods catch fire, it'll basically be the same as Chernobyl again. Maybe a bit smaller since the fuel isn't as hot as in
You shoud've seen their link to the story last night:
"Six injured in another nuclear blast"
The problem is, the worst-case scenario doesn't define the statistical average. By definition it's an outlier. The long-term statistical averages for the other technologies are much, much worse than nuclear. Solar is about 10x deadlier than nuclear in comparison. Roofing is one of the most dangerous jobs in the U.S, with over 100 roofers per year killed from simply falling off. If rooftop solar panels become commonplace, you're probably looking at 100 additional roofer deaths per year from installation and maintenance deaths.
Coal is an absolute carnage in comparison to nucleear. Pollution from coal plants is estimated to kill 30,000 Americans each year. The WHO estimated Chernobyl will cause 4000 long-term cancer deaths, so we have 7.5 Chernobyls happening every year in our country due to our coal plants. But this bothers no one, and instead everyone is all worried about commercial nuclear power (which has never killed anyone in the U.S.).
This is just like planes are safer than cars, yet people fear plane crashes. Or white collar crime causes more economic damage than bank robbery, but sentences for bank robbers are harsher. The concentrated damage gets extra scrutiny, while the distributed damage gets overlooked. It's people's poor risk assessment and management which is killing nuclear.
The only reason the U.S. has a nuclear waste "problem" is because we haven't done anything about it for ~60 years. Imagine 60 years of coal plant emissions, or the waste from 60 years of solar panel construction and dead/obsolete panels. That's the correct comparison. Per year, the U.S. currently generates about 2000 tons of spent fuel ("high level waste" since we refuse to reprocess) per year. That's about enough to fill a single tractor trailer. 20% of our electricity for a year, and it only generates one tractor trailer full of waste. That's a tiny waste problem compared to the alternatives. The reason it costs a lot is because of politics, not engineering. (If it were up to the engineers, they'd say just reprocess the stuff and use it as more fuel.)
The Wikipedia entry for U.S. DOE levelized cost lists nuclear at 119, onshore wind at 149.3. However, this is inconsistent with the referenced source which lists 113.9 for nuclear, 97 for onshore wind. The history of the chart on the wikipedia page shows no edits, so likely the DOE revised their report. Note that these are estimated levilized costs for 2016, so there's room to fudge. I'll call this a draw.
The figures in the UK study are consistent with the source. Winner: nuclear.
The Califoria Energy Commission costs listed in Wikipedia does not match the source. If you flip to table 24, you'll see the levelized costs are both $99//MWh for wind and nuclear. However, that is the subsidized cost. Without tax credits, nuclear is $114, wind is $140. Winner: nuclear
The Australian figures for nuclear cite a reference which is not available online. Putting the title of the chart into Google yielded this report. If you scroll down to figure 10-13 (p. 218), wind comes out at roughly 90-210 AU cents/MWh, nuclear 120-200 AU cents/MWH. I'm inclined to call this a draw, but one could argue it's a win for wind.
The final chart on wiki is unreferenced, does not state where the data supposedly came from, and does not describe what factors and assumptions went into the calculations. My guess is the source is German, but my German is not good enough to be searching through their publications. However, it is pretty well known that Germany has a strong anti-nuclear bias, having banned it in their country.
Overall, I'd say the sources in the Wikipedia entry more strongly support the conclusion that nuclear is cheaper than or about the same as wind.
This is actually a really good analogy, except you have it backwards. If you look at the historical safety record, nuclear is the safest power generating technology we've developed. So the correct analogy would be: Declining to ride with the young driver who says he's safe and has an almost spotless driving record, but being concerned because he's a teen and seems to be bragging about his safety. And choosing instead to ride with the older driver because "we've always ridden with him", who has been in countless accidents and regularly mows down pedestrians, but never brags about his safety.
The support for nuclear isn't based on some blind faith in the technology as you're assuming. It's based on numerical comparative analysis of how nuclear and the other options have performed in real-world use. No technology is perfectly safe, but nuclear is safer than the alternatives, and a helluva lot safer than coal and oil which comprise the bulk of worldwide power generation at present.
Nuclear is the safest power generation technology man has invented. Safer than coal, safer than oil, safer than hydro, safer than solar, and safer than wind. In the U.S. in particular, wind power has killed more people (13+) than nuclear despite supplying only a tiny fraction of the power that nuclear does.
These major failures you keep hearing about are "major" only due to much higher level of caution with which we treat nuclear power, and the high level of press coverage it receives. It's the same reason people are hyper-sensitive to plane crashes, even though cars are nearly 10x more dangerous.
If you think nuclear power is too dangerous to use, then you should immediately stop doing the following activities:
- Using hot water (2x as dangerous as nuclear power)
- Climbing ladders (4x as dangerous as nuclear power)
- Sleeping on a bed (5x as dangerous as nuclear power)
- Taking a bath (15x as dangerous as nuclear power)
- Riding the train (20x as dangerous as nuclear power)
- Riding a car (1250x as dangerous as nuclear power)
I weep for the future of humanity. People like you are going to damn us to continue using coal, whose emissions kill an estimated 100,000 people worldwide every year. All because you're irrationally afraid of a technology which has killed just a few thousand people in ~60 years.
The problem is a "nuclear disaster" is a dozen people being irradiated so that statistically their lifespan will be shortened a few months or years. A "disaster" of any other type is hundreds of people or more being killed. They use the same word, but describe totally different situations. Coal plant emissions are estimated to kill some 100,000 people each year and people shrug at the smoke billowing out of the smokestacks. Yet everyone is wringing their hands over something which has not, and still probably will not kill anyone, and calling it a disaster.
This came up in a discussion I was having with someone about this technology. The backscatter scanners use alpha particles. Alpha particles only penetrate about 0.045 mm into skin. That's not enough to penetrate past the epidermis, which is about 0.05-0.1 mm at its thinnest (the eyelids). In most cases it's not even going to penetrate the outermost cells of the epidermis (most of which are already dead).
My question was, don't the cells in the epidermis die and slough off in a few days to weeks, to be replaced by new cells from underneath? If so, the "bit of flesh" that is getting "thousands of times higher levels of exposure" is destined to die soon anyways, and being zapped by alpha particles isn't going to change that appreciably.
In contrast, UV light (the kind you get just walking out in sunlight) can penetrate several mm into the skin. Damage from UV can be in cells which will continue living inside you for months or years. I am against these scanners for privacy reasons. But unless I'm misunderstanding something about the physics and biology of what's going on, it seems like a stroll out in the sun would be more dangerous than these scanners.
This is the "flying is dangerous because I saw a plane crash on TV" fallacy. When you're comparing how dangerous something is, you cannot look at just a subset of its operation (e.g "in the event of an earthquake, terrorist attack" or "the incident I saw on the news"). You have to look at the totality of its operational risks.
The stats are, commercial nuclear power generation in the U.S. has had zero fatalities in ~60 years of operation, and is currently generating nearly 20% of our electricity. Commercial wind power in the U.S. has had at least 13 deaths since 1970, and has never produced more than 1% of our electricity. All of those are maintenance deaths, but these people are still dead. It doesn't matter that it happened because of an earthquake, or a terrorist attack, or they slipped off a ladder. They're still dead. The only difference is those wind-related deaths never made national news because they didn't have the sensationalism of an earthquake, a terrorist attack, or a catchy phrase like "nuclear meltdown" associated with them.
In terms of deaths per unit of energy generated, statistically worldwide, nuclear is the safest form of power generation man has invented. And yes, that includes the high-end estimate of cancer deaths due to Chernobyl.
I posted part of this already, but it's buried near the bottom due to the GP being downrated. Every time there's a nuclear accident, the anti-nuclear people come out in droves yelling about the "dangers" of nuclear power. If you want to talk about perspective, danger, and opportunity costs, here's the low-down:
There have been zero deaths in the U.S. associated with commercial nuclear power generation despite it producing nearly 20% of our electricity. Wind has already killed at least 13 people in the U.S. despite producing less than 1% of our electricity. All of these have been maintenance workers (the only non-maintenance death was a skydiver in Germany who flew into a turbine). So the quip about a wind turbine at sea collapsing is beside the point since that wouldn't have stopped any of these deaths. In fact I suspect it would have caused more deaths since transferring from a boat rocking in ocean swells to a stationary platform isn't exactly the safest thing to do.
Solar has a huge problem in that roofing is one of the most dangerous jobs in the U.S.. If you're imagining every house in the U.S. with solar panels mounted on the roof, you should expect probably about 100 more roofer deaths per year from installing and maintaining them. In terms of direct deaths (i.e. excluding mining and pollution), hydro actually turns out to be the most dangerous power source worldwide due to deaths from dam failures.
Over it's 50+ year history worldwide, in terms of deaths per unit of energy generated, nuclear power is the safest form of power generation man has ever invented. Yes that includes Chernobyl (a reactor design not used outside of the former USSR). If you accept the high estimate of number of expected cancer deaths from Chernobyl, it's about 4x safer than wind (the safest green technology). If you accept the low estimate, it's 125x safer than wind.
How about pollution? What most people don't realize about nuclear is that it's an incredibly concentrated power source. How much spent fuel (high-level nuclear waste, like we're trying to bury in Nevada) do you think would be produced to power a typical U.S. home for 30 years? A bit less than 10 kg, about a half liter's worth. To power the same home with solar, you'd need about 30-50 square meters of panels, and the panels have an expected lifespan of about 25-30 years. One small water bottle's worth of waste, vs 30-50 square meters of solar panels. Nuclear in the U.S. generates about 20% of our electricity, and produces ~2000 tons of spent fuel a year. That's about enough to fill one tractor trailer. One tractor trailer-full of high-level waste to provide 1/5th of the entire country's electricity for an entire year. And it's not spewed into the atmosphere like coal, it's not spread all over towns and the countryside like solar or wind. It's neatly contained in concentrated form within the nuclear plant. And all this is not even factoring in the waste reduction that can be achieved with reprocessing.
How about compared to wind? The Fukushima Dai-ichi plant which is the cause of the problem today has an overall generating capacity of 3596 MW. How big a wind farm would you need to replace it? The largest wind farm in the U.S. is Roscoe Wind Farm. 781.5 MW peak capacity, 627 turbines, covering 400 km^2. Note however that that's peak capacity - how much electricity the farm generates under ideal conditions if each turbine is running at maximum power and efficiency. In practice, the average power generation from wind farms has been about 20%-25% of peak. Be generous and go with the high 25%. So 627 turbines and 400 km^2 gives you 195.4 MW of power on average. To replace Fuku
No need to resort to ad hominem. Even an objective comparison of safety supports nuclear over green technologies.
There have been zero deaths in the U.S. associated with commercial nuclear power generation. Wind has already killed at least 13 people in the U.S. Solar has a huge problem in that roofing is one of the most dangerous jobs in the U.S. If you're imagining every house in the U.S. with solar panels mounted on the roof, you should expect probably about 100 more roofer deaths per year from installing and maintaining them. In terms of direct deaths (i.e. excluding mining and pollution), hydro actually turns out to be the most dangerous power source worldwide due to deaths from dam failures.
Over it's 50+ year history worldwide, in terms of deaths per amount of energy generated, nuclear power is the safest form of power generation man has ever invented. Yes that includes Chernobyl (a reactor design not used outside of the former USSR). If you accept the high estimate of number of expected cancer deaths from Chernobyl, it's about 4x safer than wind (the safest green technology). If you accept the low estimate, it's 125x safer than wind.
If you were as much in control of your government as you seem to think we are of ours, then this wouldn't be a problem. You'd just tell your government "no", and they'd tell the U.S. "no."
That you don't have faith in your own government to resist the U.S. is an admission that you have as little control over your government as we have over ours. That's the real problem here. GovernmentS working for the good of whomever will give them kickbacks/campaign funds, instead of for the good of the people.
Why do you think the Galaxy Tab was not priced to beat the iPad. Samsung makes money whether you buy a Tab or an iPad. They're certainly not going to start a price war with Apple.
It wasn't initially because of competition. The U.S. had an extensive analog cell phone system before other countries, so it was actually Europe and Asia which had the first major rollouts of digital cell phones. Back then, they didn't know how popular SMS was going to be. Since it cost the carriers practically nothing to provide, they just added the letters 'SMS' to the feature list of the phone and thought nothing of it. Consequently, when it became hugely popular, they couldn't really retroactively increases prices on them.
The carriers in the U.S. got to see what features were popular in Europe and Asia, and charged for the most popular ones (ringtones also had high demand). It's not unusual to see this sort of thing in a new market. The market price for new features is primarily based on demand, not cost to produce. So even though SMS costs the carriers virtually nothing, the demand was high enough to sustain the $0.10 per text price.
That said, in a properly functioning market, competition should have quickly dropped that price to something much closer to how much it cost to provide the service. But with only 6 (4 now) major carriers, it was pretty easy to establish an unspoken agreement not to kill their cash cow. It's still collusion, but apparently not of the type which warrants anti-trust action. Since you need spectrum to compete in the cell phone market, the smaller, local carriers couldn't really make a dent in the major carriers' userbase. So they usually ended up just adopting the outrageous SMS pricing. i.e. Even if one of Verizon's smaller competitors let you text for free, it would only affect Verizon's sales in a small regional market. So there was little pressure on the big carriers to lower the prices.
Dude, drop by a Barnes and Noble and take a look at the Nook Color. $250 retail (was on sale at $199 last week). 7" 1024x768 IPS display (absolutely beautiful, and so bright I run it at about 30% most of the time), capacitive touchscreen, 800 MHz, 512 MB main memory, 8 GB built-in storage, microSDHC to 32 GB, just under 1 lb. You have to root it (it's virtually impossible to brick) and it's missing Android 2.x buttons (3.0 won't need em). But once you've rooted you have a tablet which beats most of the $400 and some of the $500 devices out there. It doesn't have GPS, a camera, and mic, but it would cost a manufacturer only a few dollars to add those. I'm skeptical of a full-featured tablet (with dual core) hitting $250 by end of the year, but $350 I think is almost a certainty.
I picked up a new Nook Color for $199 last week. I had to root it and hack the volume buttons to act as the back/menu buttons, but it makes a helluva Android tablet. Screen is as good as an iPad's (just smaller), and the 800 MHz CPU overclocks easily. It's missing GPS, a mic, and camera, but those are relatively cheap electronic components. So a quality tablet can definitely be built for less than $200.
IMHO the first batch of Android tablets were overpriced because they were taking advantage of being first to market (after Apple of course). Heck, I remember holding one of the first retail notebook computers in my hands (the manufacturer was local so I dropped by to take a look). A 386SX/16 MHz with 7" mono LCD for the low, low price of $3800, when you could buy a 16 MHz 386SX desktop system for $1000-$1500. Now that everyone has gotten models into the store, expect the competition to heat up and the prices to drop.
Actually, I think this is more a failing of the open source community and the Mozilla foundation to spread Firefox to non-English non-European users. I know in South Korea IE6 was so ubiquitous that entire companies and banks built their systems around it. It was a huge hassle when Vista shipped with IE7 and broke many of those systems. If Firefox had been pitched as well there as it was here, IE6 would never have become the hegemony there that it became, and everyone (Microsoft, Mozilla, Opera, etc) would be having an easier time getting those people to switch from IE6.