So is the average user going to think that the logo is the app for the game Simon? Artistic brilliance, aye! Should make that playable while computer boots...
You'd probably want the more recent SUPER PRISM design (optimized for betterness; I think it's fewer larger cores for increased efficiency, along with updated calculations of various sorts)... Though that gimmicky name probably doesn't help in convincing people... Too bad we largely stopped doing research on the PRISM based designs in the 90s.
And I suspect thorium/PRISM/etc. have a major hurdle in economics. The US's current fleet of reactors has a ~91% capacity factor (aka fraction of max electricity/year that we're getting). The capacity factor is highly dependent on highly optimized materials science from the past decades. You don't have that for different fuel/coolant setups. Good luck convincing the power company to build the reactor that's going to have 70% capacity factor instead of one with >90%.
I buy some ebooks from B&N. I then break the DRM with good ole Python, and toss the epub files onto my iPod Touch to be read in Stanza. Granted, Stanza was bought by Amazon a few years ago, but no one's forcing me to install any hypothetical updates to the app.*
*Actually there was an update in November to make stanza work with iPads, or something. This resulted in Stanza not working on iOS 4. But that's what jailbreak+Cydia+Installus is for...
Afaik Chinese are mostly copying Russian tech in this regard, just like they do with weapons.
Going by Wiki, this is incorrect. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_reactors#China They've got a bunch under construction that use French tech from the 90s (CPR-1000), and then they have the AP1000 and EPR which are American and European, respectively. Finally a trio of CNP-600 which I'm not sure what they are... So definitely not Russian tech.
The problematic welds I were referring are on the pressure vessel, NOT the containment vessel
As for the containment vessel, the air is not corrosive (any more than regular air) unless you have an accident with the pressure vessel. Even on the timescale of Fukushima, I'm pretty sure corrosion won't be a problem before we have such a facility under control.
It's an improvement over a reinforced concrete containment vessel - it can handle about 2.5 times the internal pressure safely.
Is going to steel containment from reinforced concrete (that doesn't handle pressure as well as steel) a step backwards in your opinion?
I will admit that I thought there was a larger gap between the outer building and the steel containment than this picture indicates.
I'm pretty sure there are no (commercial) graphite moderated reactors in the US. (Wandering slightly from that point: I'm also reasonably happy to leave policing other countries' nuclear policy to IAEA rather than the US...) So I'm not sure that's a great example.
I'm not clear on what the bargain basement containment is that you refer to. But I have my own understanding of the changes, which I'll share... From what I've heard/read/learned, past light water reactors in the US use used a single containment vessel: steel reinforced concrete, which is also the reactor building. Newer ones have a solid steel containment vessel AND a concrete reactor building (with less steel reinforcement maybe?.
Why this is better/adequate? Steel is much better as a secondary pressure vessel (think Fukushima hydrogen pressure -> explosion). Steel also conducts heat much better than concrete, so you get heat out of the containment without transferring mass out of containment. Then you drip water on the outside of steel containment to remove the decay heat building up inside, and this also controls the pressure, too. The concrete reactor building is your plane shield.
That said, manufacturing that giant steel vessel is an added cost that other reactors didn't have. They also made the actual pressure vessel more expensive to fabricate by getting rid of some of the weld seams. (Said seams end up being the most likely candidate of problems after 40 years of reactor operation, though such failure has not occurred in the US... Fukushima maybe? I don't think we know yet.)
(I am a nuclear engineering grad student, but keep in mind curriculum doesn't spend that much time on actual reactor containment design... so I'm not an expert, per se)
Certainly part of it is that I've been wearing hearing aids since I was 3 (23 now...). Started off with analog, and so am used to the constant sound setting. Real-time adjustment sucks for music - and I can't see how it wouldn't?
My previous pair of digitals (phonak Elevas) (I've used phonak for all 5 sets of aids, never been comfortable with the other brands I've tried) were more flexible in how they were programmed... My current ones are Naida V's and take 6 seconds to turn on (compared to 2, previously) thanks to, presumably, a bunch of new "features", none of which I use.
No idea what you mean by losing a sense of distance... A sound 10 feet away is going to be quieter than one two feet away, so why wouldn't constant programs let you distinguish that?
The programming sucks. Real-time adjustment in particular sucks, IMO, and the most recent models use that for the default program, and you can't change that... You can change the other programs, but operation goes like this: Turn hearing aid on. Wait 6 seconds for it to turn on. Change programs to the one that's constant.
Ya, maybe I'd get a better experience if I could tweak the programming myself with my own set of hardware, but that's not how they'll let me do it...
This happens all the time on slashdot, namely a disclaimer along the lines of (energy, NOT electricity) is almost never included. You horrible poster, you:)
The vast majority of that remaining 9% is the time required for refueling. In general it's a problem of size. A single failure of a fuel rod requires the whole reactor to shut down, and this sort of thing was much more common in the past. The GP didn't explicitly state it, but the improvements are, to a large extent, due to improved materials. I'd imagine it takes a lot less work/time to refuel a small naval reactor. Some commercial reactors are higher than 91%, too... it's an average.
(They didn't teach us much about naval reactors in our courses... Nor have I happened across statistics regarding how much time (per year or whatever) your average nuke sub or nuclear boat spends docked...)
Fukushima has six reactor cores worth of nuclear material (25000 kg of Uranium per core - example is specifically the 1 GW Westinghouse AP1000 reactor), plus the spent fuel. The weapons program testing stuff has largely been moved to Nevada deserts, from what I've heard. It's not the good ole days of putting two hemispheres of HEU (on the order of several inches diameter) together and counting neutrons... there's minimal material of note in Los Alamos. (That's why we have the super computers that were mentioned.)
Yes, I work(ed?) at LANL.
(Point 1 has, IMO, been addressed by the Lab's press release... Not that the media cares.)
I have uses for 5 modes. I need to go back in and get the progs switched around a bit. The intended configuration will be: 1) Default 2) telecoil 3) active background blocking weak 4) active background blocking strong 5) direct audio input only (aka the cables mentioned in another branch of the thread)
In addition these new aids auto detect sound and switch to microphone + direct audio input. (so previously this config was it's own programming slot)
Bluetooth is nowhere near low-power enough. The hearing aids can actually communicate via a lower power (less info of course) wireless method that I don't know much about. Such allows both hearing aids to change modes simultaneously, but that's not a feature I want to be restrained by, and so had my audiologist disable it.
I have wires that plug directly into an add-on boot on my hearing aids. I have zero problem listening to music.
Plus I've played with bluetooth enough to find it to be unreliable way too often.
I would LOVE to track me down a HA engineer at Phonak. I think they're all in Europe though.
Suspend mode would be nice. I sort of can do it, e.g. put the hearing aid in "tele-coil" mode which is used for phone conversations (doesn't use microphone -> won't be any feedback loop = noise). But you can only cycle through the programs in one direction, and there's 5 of them, so that's 5 button presses. A second toggle button like the volume control would be nice (aka back and forward), but apparently they choose a single push button to make it easier for people with limited dexterity.
The batteries are not a problem. I can get around with with just my right ear, and always have extra batteries sitting around (coat pockets, car, backpack, apartment, parent's house, etc). In addition, the zinc-air batteries a a pretty high energy-density battery to begin with. I also got a 4 year supply of batteries along with the hearing aids, so that's nice too. (In the past I've paid about $.50 apiece)
I'm hearing impaired from birth (23 yrs). Just got my newest pair last week (previous pair is 5 years old, but working perfectly).
In several ways, this new pair is an upgrade.... but in one key way, I fucking hate these things. Both the previous and current hearing aids are digital (my previous pairs were analog). With the older pair there is a two second delay between turning the hearing aid on and hearing stuff. The new pair has a minimum of 6 seconds...
So if I need to scratch the inside of my ear quickly, I can do that in a second. Then I wait another 6 before I can hear again. Similarly, if I'm working without hearing aids in (relaxing, comfortable etc) and someone says something to me, I now have to wait almost 10 seconds before I can have them repeat what was said, then reply.
See the problem?
Hearing aid engineers are doing a lot of this work wrong (or for the wrong market, aka old people). Battery life is fine (a bit more than 2 weeks). I don't use the shitty auto-background-blocking programs on the hearing aid, either.
Guess I wasn't logged in when I posted this. Replies to this one will get my attention instead:)
Slashdot Mirror
Nah. I'd forgotten that Simon wasn't square. Sparkfun's DIY version has supplanted my mental image. And indeed, exact same ordering of colors in both.
So is the average user going to think that the logo is the app for the game Simon? Artistic brilliance, aye! Should make that playable while computer boots...
You mean like this? http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/images/?ImageID=4431
You'd probably want the more recent SUPER PRISM design (optimized for betterness; I think it's fewer larger cores for increased efficiency, along with updated calculations of various sorts)... Though that gimmicky name probably doesn't help in convincing people... Too bad we largely stopped doing research on the PRISM based designs in the 90s.
And I suspect thorium/PRISM/etc. have a major hurdle in economics. The US's current fleet of reactors has a ~91% capacity factor (aka fraction of max electricity/year that we're getting). The capacity factor is highly dependent on highly optimized materials science from the past decades. You don't have that for different fuel/coolant setups. Good luck convincing the power company to build the reactor that's going to have 70% capacity factor instead of one with >90%.
Well it's certainly not normal! Oh wait...
(disclaimer: I had to look it up :( )
Slashdot ate my 'less than' symbol. The update mean iOS 3 devices couldn't run Stanza.
In my case, I think I'm safe...
I buy some ebooks from B&N. I then break the DRM with good ole Python, and toss the epub files onto my iPod Touch to be read in Stanza. Granted, Stanza was bought by Amazon a few years ago, but no one's forcing me to install any hypothetical updates to the app.*
*Actually there was an update in November to make stanza work with iPads, or something. This resulted in Stanza not working on iOS 4. But that's what jailbreak+Cydia+Installus is for...
How about an Immortal-based mech (i.e. from StarCraft 2)? That was last year's winner... see this vid: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrhlYsF2uTU
Afaik Chinese are mostly copying Russian tech in this regard, just like they do with weapons.
Going by Wiki, this is incorrect.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_reactors#China
They've got a bunch under construction that use French tech from the 90s (CPR-1000), and then they have the AP1000 and EPR which are American and European, respectively. Finally a trio of CNP-600 which I'm not sure what they are... So definitely not Russian tech.
Thanks for piquing my curiosity, though :)
2. The day before the Fukushima accident, the NRC granted a 20 year extension to the US Vermont Yankee plant of the exact same design
This decade is going to see a lot of nuclear plants, that built during the 70s, reaching their designed end of life.
Other issues aside... Vermont doesn't have history of tsunamis + earthquakes.
The problematic welds I were referring are on the pressure vessel, NOT the containment vessel
As for the containment vessel, the air is not corrosive (any more than regular air) unless you have an accident with the pressure vessel. Even on the timescale of Fukushima, I'm pretty sure corrosion won't be a problem before we have such a facility under control.
It's an improvement over a reinforced concrete containment vessel - it can handle about 2.5 times the internal pressure safely.
Is going to steel containment from reinforced concrete (that doesn't handle pressure as well as steel) a step backwards in your opinion?
I will admit that I thought there was a larger gap between the outer building and the steel containment than this picture indicates.
We do this for uranium, too.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_mining#In-situ_leaching
I guess at least we don't cause earthquakes with this and the ground was already radioactive? =-x
I'm pretty sure there are no (commercial) graphite moderated reactors in the US. (Wandering slightly from that point: I'm also reasonably happy to leave policing other countries' nuclear policy to IAEA rather than the US...) So I'm not sure that's a great example.
I'm not clear on what the bargain basement containment is that you refer to. But I have my own understanding of the changes, which I'll share... From what I've heard/read/learned, past light water reactors in the US use used a single containment vessel: steel reinforced concrete, which is also the reactor building. Newer ones have a solid steel containment vessel AND a concrete reactor building (with less steel reinforcement maybe?.
Why this is better/adequate? Steel is much better as a secondary pressure vessel (think Fukushima hydrogen pressure -> explosion). Steel also conducts heat much better than concrete, so you get heat out of the containment without transferring mass out of containment. Then you drip water on the outside of steel containment to remove the decay heat building up inside, and this also controls the pressure, too. The concrete reactor building is your plane shield.
That said, manufacturing that giant steel vessel is an added cost that other reactors didn't have. They also made the actual pressure vessel more expensive to fabricate by getting rid of some of the weld seams. (Said seams end up being the most likely candidate of problems after 40 years of reactor operation, though such failure has not occurred in the US... Fukushima maybe? I don't think we know yet.)
(I am a nuclear engineering grad student, but keep in mind curriculum doesn't spend that much time on actual reactor containment design... so I'm not an expert, per se)
I'm pretty sure we spent most of 8 years calling our own (US) president a monkey in political banter.
I do in fact have a mental image of his ranting being like a crazy monkey.
I raced in the last race, actually (UMichigan).
Was just saying that Nuon's teams aren't underdogs by any definition I can think of (prior to getting 2nd in 2009). :)
What? You mean yay for your high-tech equipped team that competes with lesser-tech equipped teams?
Certainly part of it is that I've been wearing hearing aids since I was 3 (23 now...). Started off with analog, and so am used to the constant sound setting. Real-time adjustment sucks for music - and I can't see how it wouldn't?
My previous pair of digitals (phonak Elevas) (I've used phonak for all 5 sets of aids, never been comfortable with the other brands I've tried) were more flexible in how they were programmed... My current ones are Naida V's and take 6 seconds to turn on (compared to 2, previously) thanks to, presumably, a bunch of new "features", none of which I use.
No idea what you mean by losing a sense of distance... A sound 10 feet away is going to be quieter than one two feet away, so why wouldn't constant programs let you distinguish that?
The programming sucks. Real-time adjustment in particular sucks, IMO, and the most recent models use that for the default program, and you can't change that... You can change the other programs, but operation goes like this: Turn hearing aid on. Wait 6 seconds for it to turn on. Change programs to the one that's constant.
Ya, maybe I'd get a better experience if I could tweak the programming myself with my own set of hardware, but that's not how they'll let me do it...
This happens all the time on slashdot, namely a disclaimer along the lines of (energy, NOT electricity) is almost never included. You horrible poster, you :)
The vast majority of that remaining 9% is the time required for refueling. In general it's a problem of size. A single failure of a fuel rod requires the whole reactor to shut down, and this sort of thing was much more common in the past. The GP didn't explicitly state it, but the improvements are, to a large extent, due to improved materials. I'd imagine it takes a lot less work/time to refuel a small naval reactor. Some commercial reactors are higher than 91%, too... it's an average.
(They didn't teach us much about naval reactors in our courses... Nor have I happened across statistics regarding how much time (per year or whatever) your average nuke sub or nuclear boat spends docked...)
Haha. No. (At point 2)
Fukushima has six reactor cores worth of nuclear material (25000 kg of Uranium per core - example is specifically the 1 GW Westinghouse AP1000 reactor), plus the spent fuel. The weapons program testing stuff has largely been moved to Nevada deserts, from what I've heard. It's not the good ole days of putting two hemispheres of HEU (on the order of several inches diameter) together and counting neutrons... there's minimal material of note in Los Alamos. (That's why we have the super computers that were mentioned.)
Yes, I work(ed?) at LANL.
(Point 1 has, IMO, been addressed by the Lab's press release... Not that the media cares.)
I have uses for 5 modes. I need to go back in and get the progs switched around a bit. The intended configuration will be:
1) Default 2) telecoil 3) active background blocking weak 4) active background blocking strong 5) direct audio input only (aka the cables mentioned in another branch of the thread)
In addition these new aids auto detect sound and switch to microphone + direct audio input. (so previously this config was it's own programming slot)
Bluetooth is nowhere near low-power enough. The hearing aids can actually communicate via a lower power (less info of course) wireless method that I don't know much about. Such allows both hearing aids to change modes simultaneously, but that's not a feature I want to be restrained by, and so had my audiologist disable it.
I have wires that plug directly into an add-on boot on my hearing aids. I have zero problem listening to music.
Plus I've played with bluetooth enough to find it to be unreliable way too often.
I combined bluetooth and the wires into a 2-of-a-kind setup that you can see here:
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~erelson/BluetoothHeadphones.html
I enjoy discussing my observations regarding my hearing aids experience :)
I would LOVE to track me down a HA engineer at Phonak. I think they're all in Europe though.
Suspend mode would be nice. I sort of can do it, e.g. put the hearing aid in "tele-coil" mode which is used for phone conversations (doesn't use microphone -> won't be any feedback loop = noise). But you can only cycle through the programs in one direction, and there's 5 of them, so that's 5 button presses. A second toggle button like the volume control would be nice (aka back and forward), but apparently they choose a single push button to make it easier for people with limited dexterity.
The batteries are not a problem. I can get around with with just my right ear, and always have extra batteries sitting around (coat pockets, car, backpack, apartment, parent's house, etc). In addition, the zinc-air batteries a a pretty high energy-density battery to begin with. I also got a 4 year supply of batteries along with the hearing aids, so that's nice too. (In the past I've paid about $.50 apiece)
I'm hearing impaired from birth (23 yrs). Just got my newest pair last week (previous pair is 5 years old, but working perfectly).
In several ways, this new pair is an upgrade.... but in one key way, I fucking hate these things. Both the previous and current hearing aids are digital (my previous pairs were analog). With the older pair there is a two second delay between turning the hearing aid on and hearing stuff. The new pair has a minimum of 6 seconds...
So if I need to scratch the inside of my ear quickly, I can do that in a second. Then I wait another 6 before I can hear again. Similarly, if I'm working without hearing aids in (relaxing, comfortable etc) and someone says something to me, I now have to wait almost 10 seconds before I can have them repeat what was said, then reply.
See the problem?
Hearing aid engineers are doing a lot of this work wrong (or for the wrong market, aka old people). Battery life is fine (a bit more than 2 weeks). I don't use the shitty auto-background-blocking programs on the hearing aid, either.
Guess I wasn't logged in when I posted this. Replies to this one will get my attention instead :)