Alberta is the on province in Canada without ANY sales tax. The reason for this is the oil companies pay enough to basically run government on those revenues.
If you don't see a conflict of interest there, you are blind.
I couldn't agree more, however I see the opposite happening in reality.
Nuclear power hasn't been pushed since the 60's and now all the politicians are (in my opinion prematurely) jumping on the "green" bandwagon with solar, wind, etc... and while I think it is important that we keep improving these technologies for the future, the basic fact is that baring some magic wand sort of quantum leap forward in these technologies none of them are capable of meeting our current requirements.
However at the same time, due to the bad image of nuclear, we are stuck using technology that was developed 50 years ago for most of our power needs (or 100 years ago if you count coal and other sources I suppose).
We should be developing the crap out of nuclear and alternatives such as thorium, to make it as efficient, safe, cheap, etc.. as possible, as we will be using it into the foreseeable future.
I did read somewhere that conventional nuclear plants have a reoccurring costs/profits for the company building them, likely for fuel and for maintenance. Whereas the fuel is basically free, and the maintenance non-existent (in some designs) so there may be very little incentive to build them. Doesn't make sense to me, as they would still make money off the power they sell for virtually nothing. Maybe it was alluding to something more nebulous like when something is plentiful to the point of free there is no market at all. If that is the case it is kind of sad. I would hope that the State would build it anyway then for the greater good.
About the only thing I could find as to a problem, is that the molten salt, particularly when heated really hot, is very reactive to materials, in that it corrodes the snot out of them. Engineering an alloy that can stand up to the corrosion for decades seems to be the biggest issue. Still you would think they could fix this with maintenance or redundant rotating systems within the plant.
I guess if they are so much safer, cheaper, etc... why are we not REPLACING aging conventional nuclear plants that are very expensive and are a lot more risky?
However I did some reading. The BIG thing (at least in the USA) seems to be the fuel. It needs to be processed. As no one uses it yet really, no one processes it yet either. Which means you need to build processing facilities with the plant. Which isn't that big a deal technically it seems, but politically is a non-starter. Apparently there are no processing facilities on US soil as no one will take it on due to the regulations, expense, and changing political climate.
Still you would think this is something they State would do anyway right?
You should re-read it then, as no such figures exist in it. I was quoting from memory. I see the actual number was actually 20MW not 80MW, so I actually over estimated by a factor of 4.
As to the ones you mention that are over 1000MW, they are not "currently under construction" but rather "purpose to start" construction in the future, some as distant as 2017. Note that Canada did assessments to for 3 more projects in the 1000+ MW range, that was back in 1977, and they have still not been built.
That said it looks like Korea is the only one really pursuing this technology in any big way. Good for them I suppose. Perhaps they will sell us the technology once they figure it all out.
I did miss the new one in Korea, which was just completed this year in 2011 (my bad), but even still its only 250MW. There are still very very few that exist in the world. Small potatoes and not a key power generation source. With only Korea doing serious projects, it looks for the next several decades that it will not be a big source either (except maybe in Korea).
So when people start talking about power generation and mention stuff like Geothermal and Tidal, realistically while indeed those do "exist", they are in no way really being used in any meaningful way (well I think Iceland has Geothermal, but does anyone else?).
I wasn't arguing safety, by rather your assertion that it was "key". It sounded like you were saying it was a key energy generation technology, which as I hoped to point out, it is not.
I suppose it is certainly key safe one, as it is hard to get hurt by a technology that no one really uses (in production anyway)!:)
People keep bringing up tidal. There are 3 operating tidal generation stations in the WORLD (Canada, France, Russia). The largest one uses the largest tides in the world, located only in Nova Scotia's Bay of Fundy (recently rejected as a wold heritage site I believe), and it generates something like 80MW of power. It was also very expensive to build, as nothing like it had been constructed before.
If you are talking about the type that just uses flow like wind power, good luck generating any kind of real power with that (having to build thousands).
Despite the idea being around for nearly 100 years about using tidal power, only a few sites ever built, all experimental, none big contributors to any power mix.
What is actually happening here is developers develop for a console. The console's technology by its standardization will be 5+ years old. You then port said game to a PC using not only current technology, but technology that was quite a bit better even 5+ years ago. A combination of the fact of designing for the lowest common denominator, along with controls being ported from a simplistic controller, and doing so as an afterthought, and you get a game that is a steaming pile of crap. Now add a healthy dose of crippling DRM to totally destroy what little marketing value you had left. Now act surprised when you charge 70$ for the title in store for a mature PC market, and they turn out in droves to not buy it. Likely much of the "pirating" are people downloading it to see what a POS it is before deciding to spend their hard earned cash on your steaming pile of garbage. Now say you are getting out of "PC development" due to piracy. Sorry, you moved to console development a long time ago at the expense of PC development. If you want your argument to hold any water, develop the PC version first and port it to consoles, otherwise shut the hell up. Piracy's fault indeed.
When 1% controls the outcome it is pointless to discuss.
Think about it, the 1% who own everything, who are greedy, are the ones driving growth at all costs. This is how they make money. Do you think they are going to make the paid for corrupt governments cut growth a politically viable alternative? Look at the debt crisis in the USA (and think about really how long it has been going on), and their inability to do anything about it. That is the political masters, financial masters saying, do as you're told, or I'll find someone who will!
I'm not sure what the wealth distribution in China is like, but I am gonna guess it isn't great. I'll also guess that they are not willing to go back to pre-1950 agri-based economy because of what the western world has done with all its growth.
Good luck with all that. I'll probably drink myself into the grave before the end times anyway.
All you have to do is restrict China's growth to levels about 50 years ago. That should be no problem, I mean they won't care that much. Then the USA will have no problem reducing its growth during the worst recession since the great depression.
After that, the rest of the world is easy!
Regardless of if you believe or not, politically it is impossible to do anything about it. Likely by the time it becomes so bad that the it is politically viable, it will be too late anyway, so why worry about it. Enjoy the good times while you can!:)
Sorry about being a debbie downer, but it is true.
Considering the goons they seem to hire to beat down the occupy hippy students, I'm surprised the techs the hire are able to mash out a paragraph on a keyboard, let alone break crypto.
Besides, they are probably too busy playing Madden 12.
As perhaps the last decade has taught anything, having a bunch of high tech tanks and planes mean fsck all when you are fighting a gorilla against a non-state. It likes those new expensive F35 fighter jets. The jets we have beat the pants off everyone, are we going to sell them our old ones so we can beat those too?
The current technology employed would pretty much level any normal sized state easily enough.
That leaves the big guys (Russia and China basically), and the gimp (North Korea). If NK could even detect it, there isn't much they could do about it (apart from leveling Soul, which would happen immediately after anyway).
If this is about Iran, they are no more advanced than Iraq was (at least in conventional warfare).
to be fair the USA also had infantry fired tactical nuclear weapons...
You could put anything into it that fits the payload, be it nukes to a bag of tomatoes.
Anyway if I were another country that had been at odds with the US, I would be ticked. Particularly with the whole, disarmament thing, and no space weapons thing, and hostile actions thing.
Big difference between becoming a nuclear power and having ICBM capability. Even the USA back in the day had nukes long before being able to create the ICBM delivery system.
Just look at North Korea and their failures. Making an ICBM isn't easy by any stretch. Actually it was only a few years ago that Iran got caught trying to fake its failed rocket experiments with bad photoshoping... If they are 10 years from nuclear, they are an additional 20 for ICBM technology. It is after all, rocket science...:)
Slashdot Mirror
Also 3G and 3GS refers to the 3G network, not the 3rd generation iPhone.
Alberta is the on province in Canada without ANY sales tax. The reason for this is the oil companies pay enough to basically run government on those revenues.
If you don't see a conflict of interest there, you are blind.
You may have a hard time making a passenger plane take off with solar panels or powering a 30,000hp engine on a container ship.
There are many things solar can do, but some just are not feasible.
Until the prices go down. Simple. Making something cost triple is only a profit if you can sell at that price.
I couldn't agree more, however I see the opposite happening in reality.
Nuclear power hasn't been pushed since the 60's and now all the politicians are (in my opinion prematurely) jumping on the "green" bandwagon with solar, wind, etc... and while I think it is important that we keep improving these technologies for the future, the basic fact is that baring some magic wand sort of quantum leap forward in these technologies none of them are capable of meeting our current requirements.
However at the same time, due to the bad image of nuclear, we are stuck using technology that was developed 50 years ago for most of our power needs (or 100 years ago if you count coal and other sources I suppose).
We should be developing the crap out of nuclear and alternatives such as thorium, to make it as efficient, safe, cheap, etc.. as possible, as we will be using it into the foreseeable future.
I did read somewhere that conventional nuclear plants have a reoccurring costs/profits for the company building them, likely for fuel and for maintenance. Whereas the fuel is basically free, and the maintenance non-existent (in some designs) so there may be very little incentive to build them. Doesn't make sense to me, as they would still make money off the power they sell for virtually nothing. Maybe it was alluding to something more nebulous like when something is plentiful to the point of free there is no market at all. If that is the case it is kind of sad. I would hope that the State would build it anyway then for the greater good.
About the only thing I could find as to a problem, is that the molten salt, particularly when heated really hot, is very reactive to materials, in that it corrodes the snot out of them. Engineering an alloy that can stand up to the corrosion for decades seems to be the biggest issue. Still you would think they could fix this with maintenance or redundant rotating systems within the plant.
I guess if they are so much safer, cheaper, etc... why are we not REPLACING aging conventional nuclear plants that are very expensive and are a lot more risky?
However I did some reading. The BIG thing (at least in the USA) seems to be the fuel. It needs to be processed. As no one uses it yet really, no one processes it yet either. Which means you need to build processing facilities with the plant. Which isn't that big a deal technically it seems, but politically is a non-starter. Apparently there are no processing facilities on US soil as no one will take it on due to the regulations, expense, and changing political climate.
Still you would think this is something they State would do anyway right?
You should re-read it then, as no such figures exist in it. I was quoting from memory. I see the actual number was actually 20MW not 80MW, so I actually over estimated by a factor of 4.
As to the ones you mention that are over 1000MW, they are not "currently under construction" but rather "purpose to start" construction in the future, some as distant as 2017. Note that Canada did assessments to for 3 more projects in the 1000+ MW range, that was back in 1977, and they have still not been built.
That said it looks like Korea is the only one really pursuing this technology in any big way. Good for them I suppose. Perhaps they will sell us the technology once they figure it all out.
I did miss the new one in Korea, which was just completed this year in 2011 (my bad), but even still its only 250MW. There are still very very few that exist in the world. Small potatoes and not a key power generation source. With only Korea doing serious projects, it looks for the next several decades that it will not be a big source either (except maybe in Korea).
So when people start talking about power generation and mention stuff like Geothermal and Tidal, realistically while indeed those do "exist", they are in no way really being used in any meaningful way (well I think Iceland has Geothermal, but does anyone else?).
I wasn't arguing safety, by rather your assertion that it was "key". It sounded like you were saying it was a key energy generation technology, which as I hoped to point out, it is not.
I suppose it is certainly key safe one, as it is hard to get hurt by a technology that no one really uses (in production anyway)! :)
Not to mention the screams of the invisible martians we run over using our SUV sized rover... "Hello? Please stop! You're killing us!"
My question is: Why haven't they already? Why isn't everyone building tons of these? What is wrong with it?
People keep bringing up tidal. There are 3 operating tidal generation stations in the WORLD (Canada, France, Russia). The largest one uses the largest tides in the world, located only in Nova Scotia's Bay of Fundy (recently rejected as a wold heritage site I believe), and it generates something like 80MW of power. It was also very expensive to build, as nothing like it had been constructed before.
So no, tidal really isn't a key one.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tidal_power
If you are talking about the type that just uses flow like wind power, good luck generating any kind of real power with that (having to build thousands).
Despite the idea being around for nearly 100 years about using tidal power, only a few sites ever built, all experimental, none big contributors to any power mix.
What is actually happening here is developers develop for a console. The console's technology by its standardization will be 5+ years old. You then port said game to a PC using not only current technology, but technology that was quite a bit better even 5+ years ago. A combination of the fact of designing for the lowest common denominator, along with controls being ported from a simplistic controller, and doing so as an afterthought, and you get a game that is a steaming pile of crap. Now add a healthy dose of crippling DRM to totally destroy what little marketing value you had left. Now act surprised when you charge 70$ for the title in store for a mature PC market, and they turn out in droves to not buy it. Likely much of the "pirating" are people downloading it to see what a POS it is before deciding to spend their hard earned cash on your steaming pile of garbage. Now say you are getting out of "PC development" due to piracy. Sorry, you moved to console development a long time ago at the expense of PC development. If you want your argument to hold any water, develop the PC version first and port it to consoles, otherwise shut the hell up. Piracy's fault indeed.
I wish I could say I am going to lose money the next several years, please give me 400 million to tie me over!
I was under the impression that anti-matter came from dilithium crystals, not dark matter.
Now red matter apparently makes black holes, which I guess are kinda dark.
Anyway none of this makes any sense to me. I think we need some new TV show that has this sort of information in it.
I mean if the hydrospanner ain't broke, don't fix it.
When 1% controls the outcome it is pointless to discuss.
Think about it, the 1% who own everything, who are greedy, are the ones driving growth at all costs. This is how they make money. Do you think they are going to make the paid for corrupt governments cut growth a politically viable alternative? Look at the debt crisis in the USA (and think about really how long it has been going on), and their inability to do anything about it. That is the political masters, financial masters saying, do as you're told, or I'll find someone who will!
I'm not sure what the wealth distribution in China is like, but I am gonna guess it isn't great. I'll also guess that they are not willing to go back to pre-1950 agri-based economy because of what the western world has done with all its growth.
Good luck with all that. I'll probably drink myself into the grave before the end times anyway.
All you have to do is restrict China's growth to levels about 50 years ago. That should be no problem, I mean they won't care that much. Then the USA will have no problem reducing its growth during the worst recession since the great depression.
After that, the rest of the world is easy!
Regardless of if you believe or not, politically it is impossible to do anything about it. Likely by the time it becomes so bad that the it is politically viable, it will be too late anyway, so why worry about it. Enjoy the good times while you can! :)
Sorry about being a debbie downer, but it is true.
This just in off the wire:
Greedy Americans don't want to share!
More at 11.
Considering the goons they seem to hire to beat down the occupy hippy students, I'm surprised the techs the hire are able to mash out a paragraph on a keyboard, let alone break crypto.
Besides, they are probably too busy playing Madden 12.
It can totally kick Spirit and Opportunity's ass. I mean its bigger and nuclear powered! No contest!
Who is the target.
As perhaps the last decade has taught anything, having a bunch of high tech tanks and planes mean fsck all when you are fighting a gorilla against a non-state. It likes those new expensive F35 fighter jets. The jets we have beat the pants off everyone, are we going to sell them our old ones so we can beat those too?
The current technology employed would pretty much level any normal sized state easily enough.
That leaves the big guys (Russia and China basically), and the gimp (North Korea). If NK could even detect it, there isn't much they could do about it (apart from leveling Soul, which would happen immediately after anyway).
If this is about Iran, they are no more advanced than Iraq was (at least in conventional warfare).
Exactly, the whole mineshaft gap thing.
Star Wars (which was a joke) was another example of this. The Soviets moving missiles into Cuba was another.
On a fair playing field, everyone dies, so no one does. When someone has the advantage however, some people start calculating acceptable casualties...
to be fair the USA also had infantry fired tactical nuclear weapons...
You could put anything into it that fits the payload, be it nukes to a bag of tomatoes.
Anyway if I were another country that had been at odds with the US, I would be ticked. Particularly with the whole, disarmament thing, and no space weapons thing, and hostile actions thing.
This looks like a mineshaft gap to me.
Big difference between becoming a nuclear power and having ICBM capability. Even the USA back in the day had nukes long before being able to create the ICBM delivery system.
Just look at North Korea and their failures. Making an ICBM isn't easy by any stretch. Actually it was only a few years ago that Iran got caught trying to fake its failed rocket experiments with bad photoshoping... If they are 10 years from nuclear, they are an additional 20 for ICBM technology. It is after all, rocket science... :)
Saw one only like a week ago that was the "stickiest", and a robot who used it to climb walls like a gecko.