Can't really do co/tri generation with wind/solar, you can with coal - but then you're back to the nasty pollution which is the reason they moved them out of the cities in the first place.
It is done in cities though. I don't know if it's still done in NYC but it used to be. Denmark get more than 50% of it's energy from cogeneration. Copenhagen, Denmark has 8 cogeneration power plants and more than 90% of the homes are heated by them.
As a former nuclear engineer you must also be aware that nuclear material can and is frequently used with virtually no risk to anyone.
I'm not a former nuclear engineer, perhaps you meant you are one. And yes, I know nuclear material is used with little risk. They are used in Nuclear medicine.
I too am scared by unregulated, corner-cutting businesses working with the stuff. But no more afraid of a commercial farmer breeding a potentially lethal or ecologically dangerous super-crop though... and that's legal.
Surprise, surprise. I'm more concerned with, scared of, genetic engineering of crops than I am with nuclear power. I'm not opposed to GE but believe maximum precautions should be taken. Though GE haven't been done long super weeds are already being created.
The nuclear industry exists now, and there have been tremendous strides in the technology and safety. To suggest that we should not encourage an industry that may, with advances such as this article discusses, result in nearly zero net effect on the environment is pretty awesome if you ask me.
I'm not totally opposed to nuclear power or research but I don't want taxpayer money paying for it. If it is subsidized then I want alternative energy sources subsidized just as much. McCain campaigned saying he wanted to give the nuclear power industry billions of dollars, I say if you want to do that then give solar just as much, and wind, and tidal energy research. Otherwise let Wall Street pay for it. The Freemarket think-tank CATO Institute explains "Why conservatives should join the left's campaign against nuclear power." And CATO isn't some environmentalist hippies.
Honestly, nuclear fission is probably the best energy source we could pursue right now. Why, because we can do it now with virtually no waiting and no chance of finding out later that we rushed into something we shouldn't have (like corn ethanol).
I agree about corn ethanol, corn is a poor feedstock for ethanol. Sugarcane is better, but even better is switchgrass. Right now both solar and wind work. A 5 megawatt wind turbine should be able to be erected in less than a month. Erect 20 a month for a year and you'll add 1.2 gigawatts of power in that year. The last nuclea rpower plant to go online in the US was the Watts Bar Nuclear Generating Station. Construction started in 1973 and unit 1 of 2 units was compleated in 1996, it took 23 years. And how much does it generate? It has a generating capacity of 1,167 megawatts. Using wind genies that capacity could be done in one year.
Well, roofing is one of the more dangerous jobs in the USA, if you go installing solar panels on all the roofs in the USA you're bound to get some accidents.
Solar panels don't need to be cited on all roofs, though I'd more roofs with them. SciAm's "A Solar Grand Plan" details how PVs can be cited in the deserts of the Southwest. There'd be few if any roofs to climb.
As for the semiconductors, the main use for a nuclear plant would be control computers - and a single roof's worth of solar panels would be far more silicon than is needed in a nuclear plant.
However neither solar nor wind genies need much concrete and steel whereas nuclear power plants require vast amounts of both. And they are high in embedded energy.
GenIII plant will be something like 1.2GW vs You need a lot of steel/concrete for 300 some odd 198 meter tall towers and 126 meter wide blades.
First off, maybe you typed the first link above wrong, I get "requested URL not found". As for the DailyKos link, I'd like to see where those numbers come from. Footings for wind turbines might take up more space than a nuclear power plant but they can be spread around. With big enough backyard, you can put one in your backyard, which I'd like to do, along with PVs on my roof.
Oh, there's one more thing I keep on forgetting. I read an article I think in SciAm that nuclear power plants need more water than any other type of power plant. Throughout the world aquifers are being depleted faster than they can be recharged. Where is the water need to run nuclear power plants going to come from? However it is, nuclear power would not be profitable and Wall Street would not pay for it if government did not subsidize it.
Most lifecycle analyses in the literature do not include methane production. My guess is that methane production from a dam is far too hard to estimate in a general case.
That's how it should be, to get an accurate idea of how much methane would be produced you'd have to know how much vegetation was in the area that's going to be flooded. It's the dead plant material that's turned into methane. In a desert or other arid location there won't be many plants so there shouldn't be much if any methane produced. If a forest is flooded however there could be a lot of methane produced.
Water vapour production is likewise not included.
Like methane how much water vapour was produced would also depend the location of the dam. If it's in a mountainous area there will be less vapour than if a lot of flat land is flooded. Then the temperature will have a lot do to with it as well.
I'll use two examples with different characteristics to illustrate these. Lake Powell, located near the Arizona, Utah border, was one of the lakes formed when the Colorado River was dammed. It was created when Glen Canyon Dam was constructed. The area is a flat desert. Because it's flat the lake has, er had but more on that later, a big surface area. So a lot of water is allowed to evaporate. However because it's a desert there wasn't much vegetation to produce methane.
Three Gorges Dam in China on the other hand was built in some gorges, it is called Three Gorges Dam for a reason, in the mountains. Those gorges were flooded and the lakes formed don't have much surface area. However the gorges were woodlands, forests. So while there won't as much vapour, that vegetation can produce a lot of methane.
Now for more on Lake Powell the Colorado River really. It used to flow to the Sea of Cortés AKA Gulf of California. By rights negotiated between the US and Mexico Mexico has the right to some of the water from the Colorado. However the river does not reach the gulf any more except when enough water is released from the dams because of the Colorado River Compact agreed to by 7 states. Each state was promised a certain amount of water from the river and most of these states are deserts. Take Nevada. Las Vegas, Nevada is in the middle of the desert and is one of the fastest growing cities in the US. However there's not enough water for people to drink never mind water their grass yards. Another of the states is California. The southern part of the state is also desert yet a lot of farms are located there in the Imperial Valley. Those farms would not exist without water from the river. Overall the water level in the river is dropping and soon there will not be any water. The Upper Basin of the river is in the state of Colorado in the Rockies. Though they get rain they can't "keep" a lot. If you've ever gardened you may know about rain catchment and retaining water. It's easy enough in good locations. For instance using cisterns to hold water. Ancient civilizations were using them in the deserts of the Middle East. Well to use cisterns in Colorado, even if it's only to hold rainwater from your roof, you have to have a permit. And they are hard to get.
given that someone has to build and service a windmill, and that you need a lot of them to replace even a single nuclear power plant, and that working on a high tower is inherently dangerous, which would actually cause more deaths, wind or nuclear ?
Ask those who build their homes Off the Grid and erect their own wind genies how dangerous they are.
Except that there are not any safer viable alternatives.
BS, solar and wind are safer.
More radioactivity has been released into the atmosphere through burning coal than has ever been released by Nuclear means. More deaths have occurred due to Fossil fuels than nuclear energy.
I can imagine, just look at how many die in mining accidents. However uranium mining is also nasty.
No more than 20% of a countries supply can be powered by wind and have a stable grid (frequency fluctuations).
Improving energy storage can help. However increasing the efficiency of power plants can have a big impact. "American Scientist" has an article in the current issue, January-February 2009, about this. "Getting the Most from Energy: Recycling waste heat can keep carbon from going sky high" goes into how inefficient power generation is today in the US. Literally gigawatts of power go up smoke stacks, when a lot of that power can be captured.
That leaves 80% to be made up by Solar, Water and Geothermal.
SciAm had an article, "A Grand Solar Plan" about how solar power can provide 69% of the US's electricity by 2050. That's not enough? The Rocky Mountains alone has enough potential wind power to supply all 48 continuous states with electricity. Several places in NYC are already using geothermal power for heating and cooling. With a properly insulated building though body heat is enough to keep a room warm. Check out the "American Scientist" article linked to above. More than 100 years ago Thomas Edison's ConEd's power plants were more efficient than many plants are today. Not only did the plants produce electricity but they also provided heat to buildings with Combined Heat-power Plants, CHP, today called Cogeneration.
All the manhours in the world won't be worth much when we run out of some critical resource.
I agree with the "waste not want not" however given enough manhours the only critical resource is brain power. Humans can figure how to deal with a shortage. Whether they will or not is another matter.
That's the dumbest fucking policy we've ever come up with and yet another reason that Jimmy Carter ranks up there with worst Presidents we've ever had.
Jimmy Carter was trained in Nuclear powerplant operations, were you? There have been 4, we're on the fifth, presidents of the US since then and not one has restarted reprocessing.
My understanding is that the US does not reprocess waste for political reasons. Basically, it was a condition of some of the disarmament treaties designed to pacify some Russian concerns.
No, that's not why reprocessing was stopped. As president Jimmy Carter called for the halt to reprocessing. And every president since has kept it. A lot of people ridicule Carter because of it however he knew what he was doing. While in the Navy he was trained in nuclear power plant operations, his goal was to serve on a nuclear submarine.
I would love to see every existing plant decommissioned and replaced with something that wasn't hip in the 70's. We need the power, it's cheaper and cleaner than coal and better for the environment.
Nuclear power only seems cheap. If all subsidies for nuclear power were eliminated nuclear power would not be profitable. Now that's not to say coal doesn't get subsidies, it does.
that's something I've been thinking about, the costs/hazards of wind power, at least environmentally. I don't think solar will be a problem, but if there was a massive implementation of wind farms, what kind of impact would that have on the environment.
Other than a decrease in wind speed what hazards are these? Wind turbines, genies, can actually help some. Say I am a farmer, I can use a little bit of my land to cite wind genies. The concrete pads don't take up much space. If I own them I can sell the electricity produced to the power company. Another route, though I'm not sure I think it's actually done more often is that farmers lease the land to the power company and is paid a percentage for the power generated. This way the farmer doesn't have any out of pocket expenses and doesn't have to pay to maintain the genies. Because of the income I'm not pressured to farm as much of the land, I can leave some of in a natural state, er as close as it can get.
What we need is a mainstream movie and miniseries about the hazards of coal; perhaps going through the life of a Chinese coal miner?
We have plenty of coal mining disasters here in the US, if people have been paying attention they know mining alone is dangerous. Wasn't it a year or two ago that some miners were trapped in a cave-in in the west?
Oh, and point out the cost/hazards of solar and wind while you're at it.
What are those hazards that nuclear power does not have? Solar uses a lot of semiconductors, the same semiconductors needed for nuclear power control systems. Wind turbines need steel and concrete, however nuclear power plants need much more of both.
Now if this fission/fusion works IRL feasibly well in an economic sense it might be used to reduce the amount of waste already generated.
It's not directly related but the current issue of "American Scientist", January-February 2009, has an article on recapturing wasted energy. "Getting the Most from Energy: Recycling waste heat can keep carbon from going sky high" talks about how current power generation is inefficient. Thomas Edison's ConEd was more efficient than many of today's power plants. Being located in NYC the steam used to turn the turbines was able to be used to heat buildings in the neighborhoods around the plants. Combined heat-and-power, CHP or today called Cogeneration, plants were more efficient. However when power plants were moved or built away from population centers the steam couldn't be used for heating, or in some cases cooling. Regulations discouraged this as well.
Nobody I know of will take them for recycling, and I refuse to store garbage.
Well as I said, the room is largely unused, though I hope to set up a darkroom in it.
Most all cleaning agents are incredibly toxic or they won't work.
I don't use most cleaning agents. Generally I use baking soda, borax, citrus fruits, hydrogen peroxide bleach, and vinegar. And they work fine. For dishes and laundry I use organic cleaners. The one thing I use that is dangerous is Diatomaceous earth.
If it were the title of a class, like "Math for Non-Science Majors" (Amusing that's the actually the course title and not just what people call it), or the title of say the "Math Department" then it would be capitalized. Here's it's just a subject in a list, so it shouldn't be.
Though this is true in the US I have seen "Maths" used, capitalized and with an "s" by the British.
Dams also require vast amounts of concrete which uses Portland cement as the main ingredient. Portland cement is made by heating limestone to 1450C in a kiln which requires a lot of energy. Along with the concrete dams also require a lot of steel which like concrete requires a lot of heat.
All true but doing full lifecycle calculations the CO2 emissions from Hydro are about as low any competing technology, though nuclear gives it a run from for its money in the right circumstances. (Rich Uranium ores and centrifugal enrichment).
See (Donnes et al International Journal LifeCycle Analayis 10 (1) 10 - 23 (2005)) which calculates 5 gram CO2 per KWhr for centrifuge enrichment powering a PWR.
Do those lifecycle analysis also factor in water vapor? Water vapor is more potent as a greenhouse gas than CO2. With the greater surface area of lakes behind dams, more water is allowed to evaporate. Then there's the methane, which is more than 20 tymes more potent than CO2, generated. How is it generated? As the water of the lake behind the dam raises it submerges organic matter such as trees. As the submerged vegetation decomposes it generates methane. See "Do Hydroelectric Dams Cause Global Warming?". It says, a little snippet, "dams increase the amount of plant matter that decompose in anaerobic condtions and produce methane which is 21 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide."
" 6.2.2 Aeration of dams and troughs"
Aeration may also be used to enhance water quality in dams or troughs. Dissolved oxygen (DO) is essential to aquatic organisms in a dam. In waters with low oxygen levels, the production of 'swamp gases' such as hydrogen sulphide and methane is likely to occur, and phosphorus is more rapidly released from decomposing sediments. Increased phosphorus concentrations in water favour the growth of algae, including toxic blue-green species. In most dams, the decomposition of dead plants and animals uses up oxygen more rapidly than it can be absorbed from the atmosphere. Similarly, if the circulation of water in the dam is not complete, a layer of poorly-oxygenated (water) will develop at the bottom and noxious gases may be produced at depth."
So without aeration not only could more greenhouse gases be produced but water quality could go down. Wildlife downstream from dam could suffer. See also the "Three Gorges Dam an 'environmental catastrophe'" in China.
I couldn't convince a teacher that the primary colors that they taught us in school are incorrect (Red, Blue, Yellow). But there are 2 sets of primary colors depending if they are pigments which absorb light (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow) or admit light (Red, Green, Blue).
Can you explain this to me? I've never heard that certain pigments admit light. What is this all about?
Yes, admit light. You see that in photography, here's an example [it's a doc]: "lens speed - The relative capacity of a lens to admit light. The speed of a lens is related to the size of its maximum aperture or smallest f-stop number."
Grammar isn't taught in English class, its taught in Latin class. Frankly, I don't think I've ever met anyone who didn't take Latin that knew the difference between who and whom... except old people. And most of them probably learned Latin in church.
Though it was a long tyme ago and I don't recall a lot of it, grammar was taught when I took English.
Other's have said it and you may too, so I'll it say now. The way I spell time as "tyme" is correct. In high school I loved taking the "Oxford English Dictionary", OED, off the shelf in the school library and read it. I came across that spelling, which is an Old English spelling, and loved it. The next tyme I used the spelling in English my teacher marked it wrong, so I dragged her down to the library and showed her the spelling. After that she started checking the OED herself when she came across a spelling I used that she didn't know. I've used it since.
I'll start using the term Gibibyte (GiB) when ram manufacturers do. Until then, I will consider that GB=1024**3 is a legitimate measure in the eyes of a very significant portion of the tech industry
I recently replaced my harddisk drive and while the packaging said "320 GB" when I look at the info window it says 297.77 GB.
It sounds to me like you had also demonstrated your own ignorance of the culture you were exposed to. In a day where kids are bringing bombs and guns to school because they got one too many swirlies, you can safely assume a teacher to feel threatened and scared when a kid is packing the Anarchist's Cookbook in his backpack. If you were a little less ignorant, you might have left it at home where your privacy is more or less assured.
This may of been a long tyme ago. In high school about 30 years ago I had a teacher like that. Fortunately I also had a chemistry teacher who let some of us do our own experiments.
Wow, that's a long ways from what I experienced. My high school chemistry instructor actually flipped through the Anarchist's Cookbook looking for things that we could safely experiment with in the lab. It's sad that my experience is much more the exception than the rule.
My chemistry teacher in high school was like yours. We didn't have the "Arachist Cookbook" but a friend and I went through the encyclopedias in the school library and one said how nitroglycerin was made. At that tyme the teacher allowed some of us to do our own experiments in the lab. So we went into the lab during lunch and started making our own. We figured the teacher must of known what we did but he didn't let on. He didn't care much so long as no damage was done and we were learning something. I learned more in high school chemistry than I learned when I took chemistry in college, then again most of that we had already had in high school.
I've been in the classes of many experts and it was quite clear they were experts but they were incapable of passing along that information in an understandable manner. I've been in other classes where the students would ask questions that were far afield of the teacher's area of expertise and the teacher be able to skillfully deal with those questions.
That can go both ways. I'm seen teachers who when asked a question about the subject they were taking would try to get off of it. There are others who were expert in their field then started teaching. One of my favorite professors I had for calc, physics, and programming. He was offered jobs in industry and research but wanted to teach. After getting his degrees, Masters in Math and Physics, he went to Ghana to teach for 2 years with the Peace Corp. At the college where I had him he set up the college's computer systems on campus. He was tough but good. There were 3 professors who taught calc and we'd tell new students that if you wanted a good grade to take one of the other profs but if you wanted to know calc take him. An "A" with one of the profs was a "B" with another and a "C" with him.
Slashdot Mirror
Can't really do co/tri generation with wind/solar, you can with coal - but then you're back to the nasty pollution which is the reason they moved them out of the cities in the first place.
It is done in cities though. I don't know if it's still done in NYC but it used to be. Denmark get more than 50% of it's energy from cogeneration. Copenhagen, Denmark has 8 cogeneration power plants and more than 90% of the homes are heated by them.
Falcon
As a former nuclear engineer you must also be aware that nuclear material can and is frequently used with virtually no risk to anyone.
I'm not a former nuclear engineer, perhaps you meant you are one. And yes, I know nuclear material is used with little risk. They are used in Nuclear medicine.
I too am scared by unregulated, corner-cutting businesses working with the stuff. But no more afraid of a commercial farmer breeding a potentially lethal or ecologically dangerous super-crop though... and that's legal.
Surprise, surprise. I'm more concerned with, scared of, genetic engineering of crops than I am with nuclear power. I'm not opposed to GE but believe maximum precautions should be taken. Though GE haven't been done long super weeds are already being created.
The nuclear industry exists now, and there have been tremendous strides in the technology and safety. To suggest that we should not encourage an industry that may, with advances such as this article discusses, result in nearly zero net effect on the environment is pretty awesome if you ask me.
I'm not totally opposed to nuclear power or research but I don't want taxpayer money paying for it. If it is subsidized then I want alternative energy sources subsidized just as much. McCain campaigned saying he wanted to give the nuclear power industry billions of dollars, I say if you want to do that then give solar just as much, and wind, and tidal energy research. Otherwise let Wall Street pay for it. The Freemarket think-tank CATO Institute explains "Why conservatives should join the left's campaign against nuclear power." And CATO isn't some environmentalist hippies.
Honestly, nuclear fission is probably the best energy source we could pursue right now. Why, because we can do it now with virtually no waiting and no chance of finding out later that we rushed into something we shouldn't have (like corn ethanol).
I agree about corn ethanol, corn is a poor feedstock for ethanol. Sugarcane is better, but even better is switchgrass. Right now both solar and wind work. A 5 megawatt wind turbine should be able to be erected in less than a month. Erect 20 a month for a year and you'll add 1.2 gigawatts of power in that year. The last nuclea rpower plant to go online in the US was the Watts Bar Nuclear Generating Station. Construction started in 1973 and unit 1 of 2 units was compleated in 1996, it took 23 years. And how much does it generate? It has a generating capacity of 1,167 megawatts. Using wind genies that capacity could be done in one year.
Falcon
I think I remember that; but I don't remember it being a coal mine
'
It was coal, "".
Well, roofing is one of the more dangerous jobs in the USA, if you go installing solar panels on all the roofs in the USA you're bound to get some accidents.
Solar panels don't need to be cited on all roofs, though I'd more roofs with them. SciAm's "A Solar Grand Plan" details how PVs can be cited in the deserts of the Southwest. There'd be few if any roofs to climb.
As for the semiconductors, the main use for a nuclear plant would be control computers - and a single roof's worth of solar panels would be far more silicon than is needed in a nuclear plant.
However neither solar nor wind genies need much concrete and steel whereas nuclear power plants require vast amounts of both. And they are high in embedded energy.
GenIII plant will be something like 1.2GW vs You need a lot of steel/concrete for 300 some odd 198 meter tall towers and 126 meter wide blades.
First off, maybe you typed the first link above wrong, I get "requested URL not found". As for the DailyKos link, I'd like to see where those numbers come from. Footings for wind turbines might take up more space than a nuclear power plant but they can be spread around. With big enough backyard, you can put one in your backyard, which I'd like to do, along with PVs on my roof.
Oh, there's one more thing I keep on forgetting. I read an article I think in SciAm that nuclear power plants need more water than any other type of power plant. Throughout the world aquifers are being depleted faster than they can be recharged. Where is the water need to run nuclear power plants going to come from? However it is, nuclear power would not be profitable and Wall Street would not pay for it if government did not subsidize it.
Falcon
Most lifecycle analyses in the literature do not include methane production. My guess is that methane production from a dam is far too hard to estimate in a general case.
That's how it should be, to get an accurate idea of how much methane would be produced you'd have to know how much vegetation was in the area that's going to be flooded. It's the dead plant material that's turned into methane. In a desert or other arid location there won't be many plants so there shouldn't be much if any methane produced. If a forest is flooded however there could be a lot of methane produced.
Water vapour production is likewise not included.
Like methane how much water vapour was produced would also depend the location of the dam. If it's in a mountainous area there will be less vapour than if a lot of flat land is flooded. Then the temperature will have a lot do to with it as well.
I'll use two examples with different characteristics to illustrate these. Lake Powell, located near the Arizona, Utah border, was one of the lakes formed when the Colorado River was dammed. It was created when Glen Canyon Dam was constructed. The area is a flat desert. Because it's flat the lake has, er had but more on that later, a big surface area. So a lot of water is allowed to evaporate. However because it's a desert there wasn't much vegetation to produce methane.
Three Gorges Dam in China on the other hand was built in some gorges, it is called Three Gorges Dam for a reason, in the mountains. Those gorges were flooded and the lakes formed don't have much surface area. However the gorges were woodlands, forests. So while there won't as much vapour, that vegetation can produce a lot of methane.
Now for more on Lake Powell the Colorado River really. It used to flow to the Sea of Cortés AKA Gulf of California. By rights negotiated between the US and Mexico Mexico has the right to some of the water from the Colorado. However the river does not reach the gulf any more except when enough water is released from the dams because of the Colorado River Compact agreed to by 7 states. Each state was promised a certain amount of water from the river and most of these states are deserts. Take Nevada. Las Vegas, Nevada is in the middle of the desert and is one of the fastest growing cities in the US. However there's not enough water for people to drink never mind water their grass yards. Another of the states is California. The southern part of the state is also desert yet a lot of farms are located there in the Imperial Valley. Those farms would not exist without water from the river. Overall the water level in the river is dropping and soon there will not be any water. The Upper Basin of the river is in the state of Colorado in the Rockies. Though they get rain they can't "keep" a lot. If you've ever gardened you may know about rain catchment and retaining water. It's easy enough in good locations. For instance using cisterns to hold water. Ancient civilizations were using them in the deserts of the Middle East. Well to use cisterns in Colorado, even if it's only to hold rainwater from your roof, you have to have a permit. And they are hard to get.
Falcon
given that someone has to build and service a windmill, and that you need a lot of them to replace even a single nuclear power plant, and that working on a high tower is inherently dangerous, which would actually cause more deaths, wind or nuclear ?
Ask those who build their homes Off the Grid and erect their own wind genies how dangerous they are.
Falcon
Except that there are not any safer viable alternatives.
BS, solar and wind are safer.
More radioactivity has been released into the atmosphere through burning coal than has ever been released by Nuclear means. More deaths have occurred due to Fossil fuels than nuclear energy.
I can imagine, just look at how many die in mining accidents. However uranium mining is also nasty.
No more than 20% of a countries supply can be powered by wind and have a stable grid (frequency fluctuations).
Improving energy storage can help. However increasing the efficiency of power plants can have a big impact. "American Scientist" has an article in the current issue, January-February 2009, about this. "Getting the Most from Energy: Recycling waste heat can keep carbon from going sky high" goes into how inefficient power generation is today in the US. Literally gigawatts of power go up smoke stacks, when a lot of that power can be captured.
That leaves 80% to be made up by Solar, Water and Geothermal.
SciAm had an article, "A Grand Solar Plan" about how solar power can provide 69% of the US's electricity by 2050. That's not enough? The Rocky Mountains alone has enough potential wind power to supply all 48 continuous states with electricity. Several places in NYC are already using geothermal power for heating and cooling. With a properly insulated building though body heat is enough to keep a room warm. Check out the "American Scientist" article linked to above. More than 100 years ago Thomas Edison's ConEd's power plants were more efficient than many plants are today. Not only did the plants produce electricity but they also provided heat to buildings with Combined Heat-power Plants, CHP, today called Cogeneration.
Falcon
My University does it on campus, kinda amusing the US can't. Go Canada? (home of candu reactors)
"reprocessing of used power reactor fuel is not currently practiced in Canada"
Falcon
All the manhours in the world won't be worth much when we run out of some critical resource.
I agree with the "waste not want not" however given enough manhours the only critical resource is brain power. Humans can figure how to deal with a shortage. Whether they will or not is another matter.
Falcon
That's the dumbest fucking policy we've ever come up with and yet another reason that Jimmy Carter ranks up there with worst Presidents we've ever had.
Jimmy Carter was trained in Nuclear powerplant operations, were you? There have been 4, we're on the fifth, presidents of the US since then and not one has restarted reprocessing.
Falcon
My understanding is that the US does not reprocess waste for political reasons. Basically, it was a condition of some of the disarmament treaties designed to pacify some Russian concerns.
No, that's not why reprocessing was stopped. As president Jimmy Carter called for the halt to reprocessing. And every president since has kept it. A lot of people ridicule Carter because of it however he knew what he was doing. While in the Navy he was trained in nuclear power plant operations, his goal was to serve on a nuclear submarine.
Falcon
I would love to see every existing plant decommissioned and replaced with something that wasn't hip in the 70's. We need the power, it's cheaper and cleaner than coal and better for the environment.
Nuclear power only seems cheap. If all subsidies for nuclear power were eliminated nuclear power would not be profitable. Now that's not to say coal doesn't get subsidies, it does.
Falcon
that's something I've been thinking about, the costs/hazards of wind power, at least environmentally. I don't think solar will be a problem, but if there was a massive implementation of wind farms, what kind of impact would that have on the environment.
Other than a decrease in wind speed what hazards are these? Wind turbines, genies, can actually help some. Say I am a farmer, I can use a little bit of my land to cite wind genies. The concrete pads don't take up much space. If I own them I can sell the electricity produced to the power company. Another route, though I'm not sure I think it's actually done more often is that farmers lease the land to the power company and is paid a percentage for the power generated. This way the farmer doesn't have any out of pocket expenses and doesn't have to pay to maintain the genies. Because of the income I'm not pressured to farm as much of the land, I can leave some of in a natural state, er as close as it can get.
Falcon
What we need is a mainstream movie and miniseries about the hazards of coal; perhaps going through the life of a Chinese coal miner?
We have plenty of coal mining disasters here in the US, if people have been paying attention they know mining alone is dangerous. Wasn't it a year or two ago that some miners were trapped in a cave-in in the west?
Oh, and point out the cost/hazards of solar and wind while you're at it.
What are those hazards that nuclear power does not have? Solar uses a lot of semiconductors, the same semiconductors needed for nuclear power control systems. Wind turbines need steel and concrete, however nuclear power plants need much more of both.
Now if this fission/fusion works IRL feasibly well in an economic sense it might be used to reduce the amount of waste already generated.
It's not directly related but the current issue of "American Scientist", January-February 2009, has an article on recapturing wasted energy. "Getting the Most from Energy: Recycling waste heat can keep carbon from going sky high" talks about how current power generation is inefficient. Thomas Edison's ConEd was more efficient than many of today's power plants. Being located in NYC the steam used to turn the turbines was able to be used to heat buildings in the neighborhoods around the plants. Combined heat-and-power, CHP or today called Cogeneration, plants were more efficient. However when power plants were moved or built away from population centers the steam couldn't be used for heating, or in some cases cooling. Regulations discouraged this as well.
Falcon
Nobody I know of will take them for recycling, and I refuse to store garbage.
Well as I said, the room is largely unused, though I hope to set up a darkroom in it.
Most all cleaning agents are incredibly toxic or they won't work.
I don't use most cleaning agents. Generally I use baking soda, borax, citrus fruits, hydrogen peroxide bleach, and vinegar. And they work fine. For dishes and laundry I use organic cleaners. The one thing I use that is dangerous is Diatomaceous earth.
Falcon
If it were the title of a class, like "Math for Non-Science Majors" (Amusing that's the actually the course title and not just what people call it), or the title of say the "Math Department" then it would be capitalized. Here's it's just a subject in a list, so it shouldn't be.
Though this is true in the US I have seen "Maths" used, capitalized and with an "s" by the British.
Falcon
Dams also require vast amounts of concrete which uses Portland cement as the main ingredient. Portland cement is made by heating limestone to 1450C in a kiln which requires a lot of energy. Along with the concrete dams also require a lot of steel which like concrete requires a lot of heat.
All true but doing full lifecycle calculations the CO2 emissions from Hydro are about as low any competing technology, though nuclear gives it a run from for its money in the right circumstances. (Rich Uranium ores and centrifugal enrichment).
See (Donnes et al International Journal LifeCycle Analayis 10 (1) 10 - 23 (2005)) which calculates 5 gram CO2 per KWhr for centrifuge enrichment powering a PWR.
Do those lifecycle analysis also factor in water vapor? Water vapor is more potent as a greenhouse gas than CO2. With the greater surface area of lakes behind dams, more water is allowed to evaporate. Then there's the methane, which is more than 20 tymes more potent than CO2, generated. How is it generated? As the water of the lake behind the dam raises it submerges organic matter such as trees. As the submerged vegetation decomposes it generates methane. See "Do Hydroelectric Dams Cause Global Warming?". It says, a little snippet, "dams increase the amount of plant matter that decompose in anaerobic condtions and produce methane which is 21 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide."
From the The Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry in New Zealand:
" 6.2.2 Aeration of dams and troughs"
Aeration may also be used to enhance water quality in dams or troughs. Dissolved oxygen (DO) is essential to aquatic organisms in a dam. In waters with low oxygen levels, the production of 'swamp gases' such as hydrogen sulphide and methane is likely to occur, and phosphorus is more rapidly released from decomposing sediments. Increased phosphorus concentrations in water favour the growth of algae, including toxic blue-green species. In most dams, the decomposition of dead plants and animals uses up oxygen more rapidly than it can be absorbed from the atmosphere. Similarly, if the circulation of water in the dam is not complete, a layer of poorly-oxygenated (water) will develop at the bottom and noxious gases may be produced at depth."
So without aeration not only could more greenhouse gases be produced but water quality could go down. Wildlife downstream from dam could suffer. See also the "Three Gorges Dam an 'environmental catastrophe'" in China.
I couldn't convince a teacher that the primary colors that they taught us in school are incorrect (Red, Blue, Yellow). But there are 2 sets of primary colors depending if they are pigments which absorb light (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow) or admit light (Red, Green, Blue).
Can you explain this to me? I've never heard that certain pigments admit light. What is this all about?
Yes, admit light. You see that in photography, here's an example [it's a doc]:
"lens speed - The relative capacity of a lens to admit light. The speed of a lens is related to the size of its maximum aperture or smallest f-stop number."
Falcon
None of "Advanced", "Math", or "Science" should be capitalized.
Actually in some places, I think it is is England, "Math" or "Maths" is capitalized. I don't know about the others.
Falcon
Grammar isn't taught in English class, its taught in Latin class. Frankly, I don't think I've ever met anyone who didn't take Latin that knew the difference between who and whom... except old people. And most of them probably learned Latin in church.
Though it was a long tyme ago and I don't recall a lot of it, grammar was taught when I took English.
Other's have said it and you may too, so I'll it say now. The way I spell time as "tyme" is correct. In high school I loved taking the "Oxford English Dictionary", OED, off the shelf in the school library and read it. I came across that spelling, which is an Old English spelling, and loved it. The next tyme I used the spelling in English my teacher marked it wrong, so I dragged her down to the library and showed her the spelling. After that she started checking the OED herself when she came across a spelling I used that she didn't know. I've used it since.
Falcon
I'll start using the term Gibibyte (GiB) when ram manufacturers do. Until then, I will consider that GB=1024**3 is a legitimate measure in the eyes of a very significant portion of the tech industry
I recently replaced my harddisk drive and while the packaging said "320 GB" when I look at the info window it says 297.77 GB.
Falcon
It sounds to me like you had also demonstrated your own ignorance of the culture you were exposed to. In a day where kids are bringing bombs and guns to school because they got one too many swirlies, you can safely assume a teacher to feel threatened and scared when a kid is packing the Anarchist's Cookbook in his backpack. If you were a little less ignorant, you might have left it at home where your privacy is more or less assured.
This may of been a long tyme ago. In high school about 30 years ago I had a teacher like that. Fortunately I also had a chemistry teacher who let some of us do our own experiments.
Falcon
Wow, that's a long ways from what I experienced. My high school chemistry instructor actually flipped through the Anarchist's Cookbook looking for things that we could safely experiment with in the lab. It's sad that my experience is much more the exception than the rule.
My chemistry teacher in high school was like yours. We didn't have the "Arachist Cookbook" but a friend and I went through the encyclopedias in the school library and one said how nitroglycerin was made. At that tyme the teacher allowed some of us to do our own experiments in the lab. So we went into the lab during lunch and started making our own. We figured the teacher must of known what we did but he didn't let on. He didn't care much so long as no damage was done and we were learning something. I learned more in high school chemistry than I learned when I took chemistry in college, then again most of that we had already had in high school.
Falcon
I've been in the classes of many experts and it was quite clear they were experts but they were incapable of passing along that information in an understandable manner. I've been in other classes where the students would ask questions that were far afield of the teacher's area of expertise and the teacher be able to skillfully deal with those questions.
That can go both ways. I'm seen teachers who when asked a question about the subject they were taking would try to get off of it. There are others who were expert in their field then started teaching. One of my favorite professors I had for calc, physics, and programming. He was offered jobs in industry and research but wanted to teach. After getting his degrees, Masters in Math and Physics, he went to Ghana to teach for 2 years with the Peace Corp. At the college where I had him he set up the college's computer systems on campus. He was tough but good. There were 3 professors who taught calc and we'd tell new students that if you wanted a good grade to take one of the other profs but if you wanted to know calc take him. An "A" with one of the profs was a "B" with another and a "C" with him.
Falcon
You did the opposite of Jaime Escalante?
Falcon
I've bought clothes from a varity of places; Old Navy and Gap
Apparently the company that owns the Gap and Old Navy are the same, and it also owns the Banana Republic, Gap Inc.
Falcon