I tried to find any anti-nuclear spin (no pun intended) there, but couldn't find any.
The fact that your spin-detector can't sense anything from the summary is indicative of greater problems.
But I digress. Let's begin with the title.
Another Crumbling Reactor Springs a Tritium Leak
Of the seven words in that title, three are designed to create a perception of the situation that is far worse than reality.
"Another": indicating more than one, or the latest in a series, or a connection to a greater ongoing situation. This is a spin word because it gives the impression that tritium leaks are special events that deserve special attention. This is not true. Reactors have been known for a very long time to create tritium and leak it, sometimes deliberately. CANDU reactors release tritium into the surrounding environment as a consequence of their design. They are allowed to do this because such leaks are not dangerous.
"Crumbling": indicating an advanced state of disrepair and decrepitude, a state of 'going to pieces', extreme unsoundness in structure or the inability to support it's own weight. This is a spin word because only a technical, literal definition of "crumbling" can apply to the reactor in question, the same definition that can be applied to anything, because everything not being created is in a state of entropic decay.
"Springs": indicating a sudden or forceful event. This is a spin word because it gives a false picture of what is plausibly taking place. Many reactors leak tritium as it diffuses through concrete and steel or in their cooling water. Any sudden or forceful leak of tritium would most likely be accompanied by a sudden and forceful leak of super-heated steam, which obviously hasn't happened.
Onto the summary.
"The decrepit nuclear reactor Vermont Yankee has sprung a radioactive leak similar to those at other poorly run reactors in Illinois (Braidwood, Byron and Dresden), Arizona (Palo Verde), and New York (Indian Point).
"Decrepit", "sprung" and "poorly run" are all loaded words. They make unsupported judgments about the reactor in question. The supposed problem is then also attributed to a number of other reactors the reader may or may not know about. This sentence assumes a problem and is constructed to make it appear to be widespread.
The use of the words "radioactive leak" is also spin, since anything radioactive escaping from anywhere can be counted. Dropping an ionizing smoke detector on the ground could be described as a "radioactive leak".
Greenpeace noted 3 years ago that radioactive tritium leaks even threaten Champagne from France.
This is spin, but it relies on the reader taking Greenpeace to be in a position of authority to make such judgments.
Tritium and its decay product helium 3 are incredibly valuable and there is currently a shortage of helium 3.
This is the only non-spin sentence in the summary. It may or may not be factually correct, I don't know, but it's stated as a fact and does not contain any loaded language I can see.
What, besides shutting down leaky old nuclear plants, could be done to better control release of tritium into the environment?"
The spin here is the loaded question which implies that the current release of tritium into the environment is a problem worthy of attention and further control.
So, yeah, there's the anti-nuclear spin. Lots of loaded words, ill-defined terms, misleading wording and an appeal to authority thrown in to boot.
People starve today not because there isn't enough food to go around, but because of politics. The world lines up cargo planes full of food aid to avert a humanitarian disaster and they idle on the tarmac while the 'leaders' of the starving people claim there isn't a problem and say the aid is unwelcome.
Even at seven or eight years old I knew that was a truly stupid idea.
It really isn't. Deep ocean trenches are very cold and very low in oxygen. A mild-steel barrel will last a very long time on the bottom and will become encased in the sediment that constantly falls at that depth and pulled into the earths crust, because it's in a subduction trench.
I'm not saying it's the best way of disposing of waste, but it's not "truly stupid".
Also, if they were disposing of low-level nuclear waste "safe disposal" is synonymous with "sprinkling it on your cornflakes in the morning". Low level waste is literally less radioactive than your smoke detectors or radium watch dials, and is often not radioactive at all.
The healthcare systems and the relative health of virtually every developed nation on the planet show that people will make healthy lifestyle choices even when healthcare is provided at no cost to them. Do you think living with chronic disease is not bearing the cost of the choices that led to it?
Paint still adds weight. Remember the Space Shuttle's external fuel tank used to be white, but they stopped painting it because they could save weight.
Reflective coatings have very little utility against high powered lasers. The best mirrors we have only reflect 90% of the light that hits them (these are pampered telescope mirrors mind you) and 10% of 1mw is still 100,000 watts. Any polishing will be distorted and any reflective coating will be baked off in a very short period of time. Such coatings might give the rocket an extra second or two, but no more, and even less if more powerful lasers are used.
Nothing, in theory. Just like there's nothing in theory that says the rocket can't have a zillion other systems designed to defeat this laser. In practice, however, the answer is weight. A rocket's weight is around 80-90% fuel with payload being from 2-5%. A small increase in payload weight leads to a great increase in the rocket's size and fuel load.
A rocket designer ends up having to make a series of compromises between the strength of the rocket itself, the payload and the range. If you want to protect your rocket you're going to have to give up payload, give up range or increase rocket size, all of which make them less useful as weapons.
Anything that takes power out of the hands of game designers and puts in into the hands of executives will do very ugly things to games. Not only will crowdsourcing increase executive meddling but they'll have a ream of expensive bullshit to back up their own personal bullshit. Since they paid some knob to get them that ream of bullshit they're damn-well not going to ignore it. Every project will start to resemble game of the year X because that's what the crowd is infatuated with at that time.
2) Steam plant, using the heat byproduct of the arrays.
The efficiency of heat engines is governed by the temperature difference between the hot and cold side. Coal and nuclear plants typically have a hot side at around 600 degrees Celsius and newer designs are pushing that higher for greater efficiency. Common glass stats to soften at around 550 degrees Celsius and solar cells start to lose efficiency even at 50C.
The solar array and concentrator would have to maintain a temperature well below 600C just to avoid melting, so any heat engine run from their waste heat would be inefficient.
This is, of course, just the same problem solar has had all along: It's just not efficient enough to compete with other power sources. Coupling inefficient heat engines to inefficient solar arrays only increases the extracted-energy density of the land, not efficiency.
By co-locating and combining the technologies, you get a near 100% output cycle, assuming you don't get the magic trifecta of no sun, no wind, and insufficient IR through clouds to kill any heat input to the steam system on a regular basis.
That trifecta would only require no wind and nightfall, so it would probably happen quite a lot. The low energy density of the IR radiating from the upper atmosphere makes collecting it inefficient. Coupling widnfarms to even out production also has the problem of transmission loss.
Wind, solar, geothermal and hydro are all good supplements where they work, but there's really no substitute for traditional power plants. There are really only two choices for power production today: coal and nuclear. It's either one or the other.
What this really needs is one of those spring-wound generating mechanisms like the freeplay radio. Then you'd have a printer that *really* used no external power and you could walk away from it while its printing
Of course, that would increase the size a bit, but (much like scraping out the waffle on Vietnam jungle boots) you can't have everything, am I right?
The way to stop this is to discourage the only two parties that profit from this: the thieves and the scrap dealers.
1) Discouraging thieves: A theft of copper needs to be planned. At very least, the thief needs a saw and must acquire this in advance. This fact means harsher penalties are unlikely to effectively discourage theft, as people who plan to break the law very rarely plan on getting caught. Harsher penalties will simply cause them to run faster, fight harder or fight more violently when caught. So, the theft cannot be prevents by simple changes to the penalty. The reward for the theft must then be targeted. Making it difficult for a person to sell copper (or other metal) at will and/or anonymously will discourage copper theft, as most thieves are not looking to identify themselves or wait for a profit.
2) Discouraging dealers: Dealers have more to lose for disobeying the law. They have an established place inside the system and loss of that place (eg: revocation of business license) is a penalty far beyond any personal penalty the owner of the dealership itself may face (eg: jail time). The dealers of scrap metal are also the enablers of scrap metal theft. Without them, the thief has no place to sell his take. The solution to scrap metal theft therefore must involve the scrap metal dealers and, because they are invested in the system, scrap metal dealers can be relied upon (to one degree or another) to willfully comply with this solution.
Given the above, a solution likely to decrease scrap metal theft is to require dealers to take clear photographs of everyone who sells metal (trivial, given today's technology), require government ID to be photocopied for all scrap metal sales (also trivial) and require scrap metal dealers to hold payment on scrap metal sales for thirty days or more (again, trivial). This identifies the thief (by photograph at least) and delays the reward, discouraging thieves.
They're not only wondering where the water goes, but how long it takes to get there and where it goes after that.
If they all come out at once then we know the routes they all took about the same route, or the routes they took were all more or less direct. If they emerge over years or even decades then we know some are becoming trapped, only to be released later. What if a duck washes up in India, twelve years after it was released in Greenland?
They're interested in knowing *everything* that could happen to these ducks after they're released. Furthermore, data from this experiment could confirm or falsify other oceanographic theories, all for $200 worth of rubber ducks.
Why would we automate the driving of vehicles when there is a serious unemployment problem?
The economy will see no lost jobs. Saving the cost of "busdriver" jobs will allow for the creation of other jobs elsewhere. The money normally spent on drivers will go toward increasing demand for other goods or services. That increased demand will create more jobs, and because inefficiency was removed the jobs that replace "busdriver" jobs will be more numerous and better paying. So, if unemployment is a problem, making bus drivers obsolete is a good choice.
What does putting hundreds of thousands of expensive magnets in the road systems do to solve the problem of oil depletion?
For one, making buses cheaper (no driver) will allow more public transport, and by that, less people will have to rely on public vehicles. If normal suburban roads can double as LRT 'tracks' suburbs just became screamingly efficient.
What we need is a system of advanced high speed railways
Well, this system will allow normal roads to double as light rail, which is not quite 'crisscrossing North America', but making city transportation more efficient is a good first step.
The ability to efficiently store excess energy would allow nuclear plants to run at full power all the time. The hydrogen system would provide peaking power and the nuclear plant would recharge the hydrogen system when demand dips below its current output.
What right does the government have to demand a citizen undergo RELIGIOUS counseling
None, but that's not what parent said.
He said the defendant's lawyer should have made sure he went to AA, even half-heatedly as a means of bolstering his client's defense. I'm sure any other alcohol treatment program would have sufficed, but the parent happened to use AA.
Mr.Orwell! A telephone call for Mr.Orwell.... Maybe something like this.
Loudspeaker: Paging Mr.Orwell. Mr.Orwell to the nearest white courtesy phone. Orwell: Hmmm... Ok.... Um... there's a sign here that says 'Courtesy Phone', but the phone is black. Loudspeaker: No, the courtesy phone is white. Orwell: No, it's black. Loudspeaker: It's white. Orwell: It's black. It's the same color as my suit and watchband. Loudspeaker: I don't know how you could be so mistaken. It's clearly white. Orwell: How can you not know your black courtesy phones are black? Loudspeaker: It's white. Orwell: It's black. Loudspeaker: Paging the nearest Civil Protection Team. Civil Protection Team to the nearest white courtesy phone.
The only flaw in that cunning plan is that the best terrain for wind power is open, flat country where the wind blows constantly while the best terrain for pumped storage is rocky, mountainous areas where the earth forms natural basins.
There are few places in the world where terrain suitable for both wind and pumped storage occurs close together.
Most wind power stations will have to rely on gas-turbine backups, which is to say building a wind power station means building both a wind power station and a gas-turbine power station.
If industrialization has taught us anything it's that people are the most expensive part of any system. Hideously expensive machines can and do pay for themselves if the replace enough people. Extra protective equipment for people pays for itself by preventing injuries. The preservation of 'knowledge resources' - people - is well worth almost any amount of money.
Slashdot Mirror
I tried to find any anti-nuclear spin (no pun intended) there, but couldn't find any.
The fact that your spin-detector can't sense anything from the summary is indicative of greater problems.
But I digress. Let's begin with the title.
Another Crumbling Reactor Springs a Tritium Leak
Of the seven words in that title, three are designed to create a perception of the situation that is far worse than reality.
"Another": indicating more than one, or the latest in a series, or a connection to a greater ongoing situation. This is a spin word because it gives the impression that tritium leaks are special events that deserve special attention. This is not true. Reactors have been known for a very long time to create tritium and leak it, sometimes deliberately. CANDU reactors release tritium into the surrounding environment as a consequence of their design. They are allowed to do this because such leaks are not dangerous.
"Crumbling": indicating an advanced state of disrepair and decrepitude, a state of 'going to pieces', extreme unsoundness in structure or the inability to support it's own weight. This is a spin word because only a technical, literal definition of "crumbling" can apply to the reactor in question, the same definition that can be applied to anything, because everything not being created is in a state of entropic decay.
"Springs": indicating a sudden or forceful event. This is a spin word because it gives a false picture of what is plausibly taking place. Many reactors leak tritium as it diffuses through concrete and steel or in their cooling water. Any sudden or forceful leak of tritium would most likely be accompanied by a sudden and forceful leak of super-heated steam, which obviously hasn't happened.
Onto the summary.
"The decrepit nuclear reactor Vermont Yankee has sprung a radioactive leak similar to those at other poorly run reactors in Illinois (Braidwood, Byron and Dresden), Arizona (Palo Verde), and New York (Indian Point).
"Decrepit", "sprung" and "poorly run" are all loaded words. They make unsupported judgments about the reactor in question. The supposed problem is then also attributed to a number of other reactors the reader may or may not know about. This sentence assumes a problem and is constructed to make it appear to be widespread.
The use of the words "radioactive leak" is also spin, since anything radioactive escaping from anywhere can be counted. Dropping an ionizing smoke detector on the ground could be described as a "radioactive leak".
Greenpeace noted 3 years ago that radioactive tritium leaks even threaten Champagne from France.
This is spin, but it relies on the reader taking Greenpeace to be in a position of authority to make such judgments.
Tritium and its decay product helium 3 are incredibly valuable and there is currently a shortage of helium 3.
This is the only non-spin sentence in the summary. It may or may not be factually correct, I don't know, but it's stated as a fact and does not contain any loaded language I can see.
What, besides shutting down leaky old nuclear plants, could be done to better control release of tritium into the environment?"
The spin here is the loaded question which implies that the current release of tritium into the environment is a problem worthy of attention and further control.
So, yeah, there's the anti-nuclear spin. Lots of loaded words, ill-defined terms, misleading wording and an appeal to authority thrown in to boot.
People starve today not because there isn't enough food to go around, but because of politics. The world lines up cargo planes full of food aid to avert a humanitarian disaster and they idle on the tarmac while the 'leaders' of the starving people claim there isn't a problem and say the aid is unwelcome.
If Halo's so damn easy you should breeze right through it with no trouble whatsoever and no skills or tactics required.
This was, in fact, my experience with Halo and Crysis. Parent must suck at games.
Even at seven or eight years old I knew that was a truly stupid idea.
It really isn't. Deep ocean trenches are very cold and very low in oxygen. A mild-steel barrel will last a very long time on the bottom and will become encased in the sediment that constantly falls at that depth and pulled into the earths crust, because it's in a subduction trench.
I'm not saying it's the best way of disposing of waste, but it's not "truly stupid".
Also, if they were disposing of low-level nuclear waste "safe disposal" is synonymous with "sprinkling it on your cornflakes in the morning". Low level waste is literally less radioactive than your smoke detectors or radium watch dials, and is often not radioactive at all.
The healthcare systems and the relative health of virtually every developed nation on the planet show that people will make healthy lifestyle choices even when healthcare is provided at no cost to them. Do you think living with chronic disease is not bearing the cost of the choices that led to it?
Paint still adds weight. Remember the Space Shuttle's external fuel tank used to be white, but they stopped painting it because they could save weight.
Reflective coatings have very little utility against high powered lasers. The best mirrors we have only reflect 90% of the light that hits them (these are pampered telescope mirrors mind you) and 10% of 1mw is still 100,000 watts. Any polishing will be distorted and any reflective coating will be baked off in a very short period of time. Such coatings might give the rocket an extra second or two, but no more, and even less if more powerful lasers are used.
Nothing, in theory. Just like there's nothing in theory that says the rocket can't have a zillion other systems designed to defeat this laser. In practice, however, the answer is weight. A rocket's weight is around 80-90% fuel with payload being from 2-5%. A small increase in payload weight leads to a great increase in the rocket's size and fuel load.
A rocket designer ends up having to make a series of compromises between the strength of the rocket itself, the payload and the range. If you want to protect your rocket you're going to have to give up payload, give up range or increase rocket size, all of which make them less useful as weapons.
Which is generally isn't above the clouds in the stratosphere.
In Soviet Russia, Malaysia fires you!
Anything that takes power out of the hands of game designers and puts in into the hands of executives will do very ugly things to games. Not only will crowdsourcing increase executive meddling but they'll have a ream of expensive bullshit to back up their own personal bullshit. Since they paid some knob to get them that ream of bullshit they're damn-well not going to ignore it. Every project will start to resemble game of the year X because that's what the crowd is infatuated with at that time.
If not, at least they would bring a new meaning to the "Miss Universe" contest.
Mod parent up.
People who intend to commit suicide tend to talk about it. It means they need help, please try and get them to it/it to them.
2) Steam plant, using the heat byproduct of the arrays.
The efficiency of heat engines is governed by the temperature difference between the hot and cold side. Coal and nuclear plants typically have a hot side at around 600 degrees Celsius and newer designs are pushing that higher for greater efficiency. Common glass stats to soften at around 550 degrees Celsius and solar cells start to lose efficiency even at 50C.
The solar array and concentrator would have to maintain a temperature well below 600C just to avoid melting, so any heat engine run from their waste heat would be inefficient.
This is, of course, just the same problem solar has had all along: It's just not efficient enough to compete with other power sources. Coupling inefficient heat engines to inefficient solar arrays only increases the extracted-energy density of the land, not efficiency.
By co-locating and combining the technologies, you get a near 100% output cycle, assuming you don't get the magic trifecta of no sun, no wind, and insufficient IR through clouds to kill any heat input to the steam system on a regular basis.
That trifecta would only require no wind and nightfall, so it would probably happen quite a lot. The low energy density of the IR radiating from the upper atmosphere makes collecting it inefficient. Coupling widnfarms to even out production also has the problem of transmission loss.
Wind, solar, geothermal and hydro are all good supplements where they work, but there's really no substitute for traditional power plants. There are really only two choices for power production today: coal and nuclear. It's either one or the other.
What this really needs is one of those spring-wound generating mechanisms like the freeplay radio. Then you'd have a printer that *really* used no external power and you could walk away from it while its printing
Of course, that would increase the size a bit, but (much like scraping out the waffle on Vietnam jungle boots) you can't have everything, am I right?
Congratulations, you've discovered Freudian reaction formation.
The way to stop this is to discourage the only two parties that profit from this: the thieves and the scrap dealers.
1) Discouraging thieves: A theft of copper needs to be planned. At very least, the thief needs a saw and must acquire this in advance. This fact means harsher penalties are unlikely to effectively discourage theft, as people who plan to break the law very rarely plan on getting caught. Harsher penalties will simply cause them to run faster, fight harder or fight more violently when caught. So, the theft cannot be prevents by simple changes to the penalty. The reward for the theft must then be targeted. Making it difficult for a person to sell copper (or other metal) at will and/or anonymously will discourage copper theft, as most thieves are not looking to identify themselves or wait for a profit.
2) Discouraging dealers: Dealers have more to lose for disobeying the law. They have an established place inside the system and loss of that place (eg: revocation of business license) is a penalty far beyond any personal penalty the owner of the dealership itself may face (eg: jail time). The dealers of scrap metal are also the enablers of scrap metal theft. Without them, the thief has no place to sell his take. The solution to scrap metal theft therefore must involve the scrap metal dealers and, because they are invested in the system, scrap metal dealers can be relied upon (to one degree or another) to willfully comply with this solution.
Given the above, a solution likely to decrease scrap metal theft is to require dealers to take clear photographs of everyone who sells metal (trivial, given today's technology), require government ID to be photocopied for all scrap metal sales (also trivial) and require scrap metal dealers to hold payment on scrap metal sales for thirty days or more (again, trivial). This identifies the thief (by photograph at least) and delays the reward, discouraging thieves.
They're not only wondering where the water goes, but how long it takes to get there and where it goes after that.
If they all come out at once then we know the routes they all took about the same route, or the routes they took were all more or less direct. If they emerge over years or even decades then we know some are becoming trapped, only to be released later. What if a duck washes up in India, twelve years after it was released in Greenland?
They're interested in knowing *everything* that could happen to these ducks after they're released. Furthermore, data from this experiment could confirm or falsify other oceanographic theories, all for $200 worth of rubber ducks.
Should read: "less people will have to rely on private vehicles"
Why would we automate the driving of vehicles when there is a serious unemployment problem?
The economy will see no lost jobs. Saving the cost of "busdriver" jobs will allow for the creation of other jobs elsewhere. The money normally spent on drivers will go toward increasing demand for other goods or services. That increased demand will create more jobs, and because inefficiency was removed the jobs that replace "busdriver" jobs will be more numerous and better paying. So, if unemployment is a problem, making bus drivers obsolete is a good choice.
What does putting hundreds of thousands of expensive magnets in the road systems do to solve the problem of oil depletion?
For one, making buses cheaper (no driver) will allow more public transport, and by that, less people will have to rely on public vehicles. If normal suburban roads can double as LRT 'tracks' suburbs just became screamingly efficient.
What we need is a system of advanced high speed railways
Well, this system will allow normal roads to double as light rail, which is not quite 'crisscrossing North America', but making city transportation more efficient is a good first step.
This would be a big win for nuclear too.
The ability to efficiently store excess energy would allow nuclear plants to run at full power all the time. The hydrogen system would provide peaking power and the nuclear plant would recharge the hydrogen system when demand dips below its current output.
What right does the government have to demand a citizen undergo RELIGIOUS counseling
None, but that's not what parent said.
He said the defendant's lawyer should have made sure he went to AA, even half-heatedly as a means of bolstering his client's defense. I'm sure any other alcohol treatment program would have sufficed, but the parent happened to use AA.
That's a pretty neat exhibi$ #_(%#^3 NO CARRIER
Mr.Orwell! A telephone call for Mr.Orwell ....
Maybe something like this.
Loudspeaker: Paging Mr.Orwell. Mr.Orwell to the nearest white courtesy phone.
Orwell: Hmmm... Ok.... Um... there's a sign here that says 'Courtesy Phone', but the phone is black.
Loudspeaker: No, the courtesy phone is white.
Orwell: No, it's black.
Loudspeaker: It's white.
Orwell: It's black. It's the same color as my suit and watchband.
Loudspeaker: I don't know how you could be so mistaken. It's clearly white.
Orwell: How can you not know your black courtesy phones are black?
Loudspeaker: It's white.
Orwell: It's black.
Loudspeaker: Paging the nearest Civil Protection Team. Civil Protection Team to the nearest white courtesy phone.
The only flaw in that cunning plan is that the best terrain for wind power is open, flat country where the wind blows constantly while the best terrain for pumped storage is rocky, mountainous areas where the earth forms natural basins.
There are few places in the world where terrain suitable for both wind and pumped storage occurs close together.
Most wind power stations will have to rely on gas-turbine backups, which is to say building a wind power station means building both a wind power station and a gas-turbine power station.
Umm...go nuclear?
If industrialization has taught us anything it's that people are the most expensive part of any system. Hideously expensive machines can and do pay for themselves if the replace enough people. Extra protective equipment for people pays for itself by preventing injuries. The preservation of 'knowledge resources' - people - is well worth almost any amount of money.