The high-level waste from commercial power that needs to be interred is a relatively small volume and solid. Dry-cask storage or reprocessing will work in the interim -- it's not going into the environment.
Hubris. An unmanned rocket booster can plop in the ocean one out of 100 landings and still be economical. A car full of people can't crash that often and still be useful.
Should be significantly shorter than a commercial jet flight. Boarding will be 10-15 min at most. Trains will run every 30 minutes if NYC-DC is any guide. You'd have at most a 45-min wait with a 2:00 to 2:15 travel time from LA to SJ, and no taxiing and waiting for a gate on either end.h
Large scale cultivation of marijuana carried the death penalty under US law, even without a proven death involved. Note that this provision has never been tested in court, and might be struck down if anyone is sentenced under it. US courts tend to frown on the death penalty for crime not involving murder.
Actually, alphas pretty bad if they get inside you. Alphas are stopped by skin inside the body, but once they get incorporated into bone or bone marrow, the alpha particles get to interact directly with cancer-prone cells. Bad news.
So eating or breathing in alpha emitters is still not recommended.
Train security: there have been incidents on trains in the US. Rail security is still a bad joke, fortunately.
Outside the US, in Madrid, they x-ray luggage before boarding high-speed trains. But the line moves quickly -- the level of security is comparable to 1980s airlines. No big deal. They're not concerned about hijacking, only about large bombs or guns, since the driver's cab is separate from the rest of the train, and they'd just cut the overhead line power if someone "stole" a train.
Same with the Chunnel trains, where they check passports and x-ray luggage due to border security. Fast, easy, and not stupid compared to airlines.
As far as cars in a pack, it would be very difficult to maintain a following distance of a meter or so in all road conditions without ever hitting. A steel coupler between train cars, does that job wonderfully, without worrying about friction differences on the road, objects on the road, failure of a car ahead causing a rear-ender that cascades through the pack, etc.
BTW - the idea is not to get rid of cars. Just to relegate them to shorter trips, where they can be electric and not lug around a large battery, and where they can take their time recharging.
"Nuclear plant" makes it seem like it's a nuclear power plant. The nuclear power industry in the US has been extremely safe, and subject to extreme safeguards, to the point of unprofitability.
No, Hanford is a former military plutonium production facility, dating from the early 1940s -- things were done hastily at first due to WW2, then without good oversight and often without knowing better. They made a hell of a radioactive mess that will take decades to clean up, assuming we can find a place to put the waste (WIPP in NM needs to open).
If you're on the West Coast and worry about Fukushima, stop worrying, and start worrying about Hanford. If an old tank full of 50 year old radwaste (which is often nitrate-based, and thus also explosive) fails, it will be nasty.
The Coca farmers are often poor peasants -- are you advocating napalming families who are just getting by?
As far as Mussolini, he ended up strung up upside down, hanging from a gas station sign like a trussed turkey. "Hanged and quartered" by his own people. Hope that happens to many world leaders in the near future. Murderers like "Duterte Harry", and "Wannabe Stalin" Lukashenko would be good starts.
In short, you Russian troll, feck off, get MRSA of the scrotum from a FSB-run hooker.
What security? You currently board the 150mph Boston-NYC-DC trains without all that nonsense -- this isn't changing anytime soon. No x-ray, no metal detector, no shoe carnival. Even less need for security if Calexit happens and California withdraws from the endless wars that have been making people hate the US for the past 70 years.
Trains have two major advantages: (1) They can be powered on the fly, from the tracks and/or overhead lines. No need for millions of environmentally nasty batteries which may or may not end up being recycled. (2) Guidance/keeping on the "road"is mechanical and more reliable than a computer in a self-driving car will ever dream of being. Rolling friction of steel-to-steel is also much lower than rubber to concrete.
Also, they tend to be maintained to high standards. All it takes is a part falling off one vehicle to turn a "train" of self-driving cars going bumper-to-bumper at 120mph into a large deadly pileup.
Freight = OK (not great) implementation. For one thing, there's no direct, cross-Hudson freight route within 150 miles of NYC, meaning everything has to be unloaded in NJ and trucked into the city.
Passenger = mediocre, even on dedicated passenger systems.
How is sharing a train car worse or better than sharing a restaurant dining room, sharing a beach, sharing a workplace? Also, having taken the metro and commuter train in San Diego, San Diegans are on average better behaved and less drunk than many Europeans.
The only problem is if your target market is the US, and you need FCC approval to sell your services there. Of course, there are 6.7 billion other people to market to, so maybe the US is really irrelevant.
Clear option is to get up a firm in India, have it buy the US company run it as a subsidiary. Voila! No more US company to regulate.
Have the main Indian company do the launch, FCC and FAA can go fly a kite if the Indian authorities approve.
that was true 20 years ago nothing new... I remember announcements on Network SouthEast like "at Basingstoke, the train will divide". Using the old 3rd rail coaches with the slam doors too.
All problems that can be solved by Calexit... (1) A terrorist attack against a train itself is unlikely (why not just attack the tracks?), but will be even less likely in an independent California that's neutral and not involved in wars that make people hate the US. (2) California pays more money to DC than it gets back. An independent California would have much more money to play with without subsidizing parasitic states. (3) Assuming an independent California, they'd still have to deal with state bureaucracy, but the Federal layer goes away, simplifying things quite a bit.
Not really. Not if both end stations have electric cars for rent that only need a battery range of 40 to 50 miles. You're not lugging around as much heavy battery, you don't need to manufacture and recycle batteries as much, no need for fast charging infrastructure either. Rail plus electric cars is a beautiful combination.
And you can get up, walk around, take a piss, buy food on the train. Even chat with other passengers. In a car, you're stuck in your little glass and steel isolation bubble till you stop.
Nope. Metal to metal friction is much lower than tire on asphalt. Also, it's much easier to feed a train running on metal rails with electric power than a car on a road. No environmentally vile batteries required. Rail is still a good tech, despite how badly it's implemented in most of the US.
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The high-level waste from commercial power that needs to be interred is a relatively small volume and solid. Dry-cask storage or reprocessing will work in the interim -- it's not going into the environment.
Hubris. An unmanned rocket booster can plop in the ocean one out of 100 landings and still be economical. A car full of people can't crash that often and still be useful.
Should be significantly shorter than a commercial jet flight. Boarding will be 10-15 min at most. Trains will run every 30 minutes if NYC-DC is any guide. You'd have at most a 45-min wait with a 2:00 to 2:15 travel time from LA to SJ, and no taxiing and waiting for a gate on either end.h
Marijuana = safer than aspirin.
Large scale cultivation of marijuana carried the death penalty under US law, even without a proven death involved. Note that this provision has never been tested in court, and might be struck down if anyone is sentenced under it. US courts tend to frown on the death penalty for crime not involving murder.
Actually, alphas pretty bad if they get inside you. Alphas are stopped by skin inside the body, but once they get incorporated into bone or bone marrow, the alpha particles get to interact directly with cancer-prone cells. Bad news.
So eating or breathing in alpha emitters is still not recommended.
Train security: there have been incidents on trains in the US. Rail security is still a bad joke, fortunately.
Outside the US, in Madrid, they x-ray luggage before boarding high-speed trains. But the line moves quickly -- the level of security is comparable to 1980s airlines. No big deal. They're not concerned about hijacking, only about large bombs or guns, since the driver's cab is separate from the rest of the train, and they'd just cut the overhead line power if someone "stole" a train.
Same with the Chunnel trains, where they check passports and x-ray luggage due to border security. Fast, easy, and not stupid compared to airlines.
As far as cars in a pack, it would be very difficult to maintain a following distance of a meter or so in all road conditions without ever hitting. A steel coupler between train cars, does that job wonderfully, without worrying about friction differences on the road, objects on the road, failure of a car ahead causing a rear-ender that cascades through the pack, etc.
BTW - the idea is not to get rid of cars. Just to relegate them to shorter trips, where they can be electric and not lug around a large battery, and where they can take their time recharging.
Your post smells of tech hubris.
EDIT: There is actually a commercial nuclear oower plant on the Hanford site, but that isn't the problem.
"Nuclear plant" makes it seem like it's a nuclear power plant. The nuclear power industry in the US has been extremely safe, and subject to extreme safeguards, to the point of unprofitability.
No, Hanford is a former military plutonium production facility, dating from the early 1940s -- things were done hastily at first due to WW2, then without good oversight and often without knowing better. They made a hell of a radioactive mess that will take decades to clean up, assuming we can find a place to put the waste (WIPP in NM needs to open).
If you're on the West Coast and worry about Fukushima, stop worrying, and start worrying about Hanford. If an old tank full of 50 year old radwaste (which is often nitrate-based, and thus also explosive) fails, it will be nasty.
The Coca farmers are often poor peasants -- are you advocating napalming families who are just getting by?
As far as Mussolini, he ended up strung up upside down, hanging from a gas station sign like a trussed turkey. "Hanged and quartered" by his own people. Hope that happens to many world leaders in the near future. Murderers like "Duterte Harry", and "Wannabe Stalin" Lukashenko would be good starts.
In short, you Russian troll, feck off, get MRSA of the scrotum from a FSB-run hooker.
The fist of the biggest bully in the world reaches worldwide.
What security? You currently board the 150mph Boston-NYC-DC trains without all that nonsense -- this isn't changing anytime soon. No x-ray, no metal detector, no shoe carnival. Even less need for security if Calexit happens and California withdraws from the endless wars that have been making people hate the US for the past 70 years.
Trains have two major advantages:
(1) They can be powered on the fly, from the tracks and/or overhead lines. No need for millions of environmentally nasty batteries which may or may not end up being recycled.
(2) Guidance/keeping on the "road"is mechanical and more reliable than a computer in a self-driving car will ever dream of being. Rolling friction of steel-to-steel is also much lower than rubber to concrete.
Also, they tend to be maintained to high standards. All it takes is a part falling off one vehicle to turn a "train" of self-driving cars going bumper-to-bumper at 120mph into a large deadly pileup.
Agreed 100% about the US.
Someone should start air-dropping portable EMP devices and jammers to dissidents in China.
"Rolling resistance" is a measure of tire-on-road + bearing, gear, etc friction. Same thang, different name.
Freight = OK (not great) implementation. For one thing, there's no direct, cross-Hudson freight route within 150 miles of NYC, meaning everything has to be unloaded in NJ and trucked into the city.
Passenger = mediocre, even on dedicated passenger systems.
How is sharing a train car worse or better than sharing a restaurant dining room, sharing a beach, sharing a workplace? Also, having taken the metro and commuter train in San Diego, San Diegans are on average better behaved and less drunk than many Europeans.
d) Surfliner has a cafe car. f) like massive scareport delays never happen
Yep.
The only problem is if your target market is the US, and you need FCC approval to sell your services there. Of course, there are 6.7 billion other people to market to, so maybe the US is really irrelevant.
Clear option is to get up a firm in India, have it buy the US company run it as a subsidiary. Voila! No more US company to regulate. Have the main Indian company do the launch, FCC and FAA can go fly a kite if the Indian authorities approve.
that was true 20 years ago nothing new ... I remember announcements on Network SouthEast like "at Basingstoke, the train will divide". Using the old 3rd rail coaches with the slam doors too.
Nuclear and/or solar desalination using Israeli or Chinese tech. Assuming Oregon, Washington, and Nevada don't join the movement.
All problems that can be solved by Calexit...
(1) A terrorist attack against a train itself is unlikely (why not just attack the tracks?), but will be even less likely in an independent California that's neutral and not involved in wars that make people hate the US.
(2) California pays more money to DC than it gets back. An independent California would have much more money to play with without subsidizing parasitic states.
(3) Assuming an independent California, they'd still have to deal with state bureaucracy, but the Federal layer goes away, simplifying things quite a bit.
Funny, ever heard of Japan and South Korea. High speed rail, properly built, works just fine in seismic zones.
Not really. Not if both end stations have electric cars for rent that only need a battery range of 40 to 50 miles. You're not lugging around as much heavy battery, you don't need to manufacture and recycle batteries as much, no need for fast charging infrastructure either. Rail plus electric cars is a beautiful combination. And you can get up, walk around, take a piss, buy food on the train. Even chat with other passengers. In a car, you're stuck in your little glass and steel isolation bubble till you stop.
Nope. Metal to metal friction is much lower than tire on asphalt. Also, it's much easier to feed a train running on metal rails with electric power than a car on a road. No environmentally vile batteries required. Rail is still a good tech, despite how badly it's implemented in most of the US.
Might as well not fragment time zones further.