This. At risk of feeding the Obamacare troll, Canada hasn't had much change in their healthcare system since going socialized quite a few years ago. For some reason the terrible costs and market distortion from it didn't stop RIM/Blackberry from becoming iconic in the 2000s. So we are to believe that healthcare is the cause of their decline now? That it has nothing to do with hubris, inertia and having their asses kicked by Apple and Android vendors?
Chernobyl was a travesty. The reactors there had no business being in operation. They lacked even a containment vessel, and were of a design (RBMK if I recall correctly, too lazy to look up right now) which had huge fundamental problems, notably use of graphite as a moderator which increased the resulting contamination by at least 10x. The Soviets used them because they were cheap, and provided plenty of plutonium to build weapons. The operators and their higher-ups in 1986 were incredibly stupid, disregarding just about every procedure such as doing an improper shutdown, not waiting to restart the reactor until xenon gas had a chance to dissipate, and finally removing something like 3x the number of control rods permitted by whatever constituted a "safe limit" for Soviet procedures. The result was terribly predictable. No reactor of that sort could ever be built in a western country.
Fukushima should not have been a problem. Number one, the reactors were very old generation 1 (maybe 1.5 if you feel charitable), past their design life and should have been replaced. I'm not aware of any in the US that old still operating, but there might be one or two, and they would not be in major earthquake zones. Second, what moron decided to put critical backup diesel generators where they could be flooded by the tsunami resulting from an earthquake? Incremental cost of properly siting generators for that facility amounts to pocket change. Third, while the images are striking, actual contamination around Fukushima is very small. Radiation levels pretty much everywhere except the damaged buildings are similar to natural levels in some areas where people have lived for thousands of years, iirc southwestern France.
I probably sound like a nuclear shill. I am not. The reactors in use all over the world however, have done a decent job of generating electricity without contributing to global warming. Imo the biggest problem with them is that they were originally designed and built to provide material for nuclear weapons, with power being a useful secondary benefit. There existed at the time designs for inherently safer reactors based on thorium. Those are incapable of runaway and meltdown as happened at the above sites. Nixon killed the thorium reactor program though, for weapons, and to steer pork to a buddy in California. The Chinese and Indians will now take the lead on reactor building.
Bottom line, nuclear power is dangerous. So is every power source that has any possibility of supplying humanity's needs. Wind, solar etc. are useful, but I am very skeptical that any of those will ever provide more than 25% or so, due to their diffuse and intermittent nature. Fossil fuel plants are absolutely the first thing we need to do away with, and only nuclear has a hope within my lifetime of replacing that massive baseload generation capability.
Certainly. Fission occurs at a rate inversely proportional to the half life of the radioisotope. The longer the half life, the less fission is occurring. The most dangerous emitters are generally accepted to be Cesium-137 (emits beta and gamma) and Strontium-90 (beta). Both have half-life in the vicinity of 30 years. Thallium-204 is pretty nasty too, but half-life is under 4 years, so it is gone pretty quickly. Long-lived isotopes release by their nature release far fewer particles. Toxicity is often more a problem than radiation. Plutonium-239, often cited as an extremely scary substance, has half life of about 24000 years. Why would anyone want to expend resources to sequester this, when it is of great value as fuel? That's far worse than spending thousands of dollars on a gasoline can that can last a lifetime, instead of burning it.
If humans are not around to do so, I guess I don't care that much what happens. Nature will adapt as it always does. There are organisms which would enjoy the energy source provided.
Any isotopes with half-life > 100 years or so should be considered fuel rather than waste. Reprocess and use it. In any case the radiation emitted by such materials approaches that of the natural background.
What I find utterly baffling is that research in this field appears to be dead in the USA, Europe and Japan. We seem to be content to watch China, India and a few others design and build the next generation of nuclear reactors. Then we will have the privilege of spending money to decommission our own hopelessly obsolete reactors. We will pay higher rates as the availability and diversity of power sources is reduced. We will endure unreliable swings and reduction of supply. We will pay for electricity generated by the new guys on the block. We will watch as yet more industry moves where there is cheap, reliable power.
When we've had enough of all that, we'll spend money to license their designs since we made a point of making "intellectual property" central to our international agreements. Those countries will be more than happy to throw our IP regime regime right back in our collective face.
The NIMBYs, the willfully ignorant, and a few well-meaning critics have "won" in the West, and so thoroughly that even building research reactors has become impossible. The above will be their "prize".
Apple killed off Flash? Funny, I can watch Flash videos on my MacBook Pro quite easily. On my iPhone, no. Not supported. There do appear to be other phones which support Flash however, and since Apple do not have that 90%+ share of smartphone market, how can they be said to have killed it off? In any case, demanding that a company support some specific feature in some specific product should not be written into law. The market should take care of that.
The true message of this article should be quite different: All nuclear power must be abandoned this instant, forever, because, well, umm, if all the millisieverts were put together and given to a baby, it might get radiation sickness.
You are probably thinking of the reactor vessel, rather than the containment vessel. The reactor vessels are all currently made by Japan Steel Works as they appear to be the only provider capable of manufacturing the 230 mm steel required for the job.
Vaguely related subject – I wish we could get a LFTR built to evaluate.
Humble suggestion: Decay the proceeds of political contributions depending on time in office. For example, an outsider running for office gets 100% of the contribution. First term incumbent gets %75, remainder to public finance. Decay to 50%, 25%, etc. per term. Thus it gets expensive to keep the fossils in office.
That seems a fair, though perhaps somewhat generous, estimate for the ratio of signal to noise here. "News for nerds" has become just another giant Red vs. Blue flamefest. Might as well just turn my attention to my wife's cat pictures on FB.
But will they be competitive relative to oil and gas, which receive major subsidies today, both directly via the tax code, and also in the form of unregulated and untaxed dumping of waste CO2 into the atmosphere? The playing field is far from level. That also contrasts to the nuclear industry where waste products are massively regulated, and replacement of obsolete plant, as well as new construction all but impossible, because radiation is scary, while CO2 is boring.
From what I have read, Truman was willing to endure quite a bit of rudeness from MacArthur, but the general's talk of attacking China was threatening to split the coalition, and he had to dump the guy.
Presumably meant to be funny, and I did chuckle, but MacArthur did indeed want to go on and topple the Chinese government. In 1950 it had been only a year and change since the Communists had routed the Nationalists, so their hold was still somewhat tenuous. That was what got him sacked.
It never was a war. The term used was "police action" if I remember my history correctly. No declaration in Congress, which was the beginning of the new normal where the President has usurped war powers. That appears to be the way Congress prefers, so half of them can point fingers of blame for either the result of the conflict if it goes badly, or at the war power usurpation if it goes well. The other half then either blame the finger-pointers as unpatriotic, or bask in the success.
Can't lose. Watch those campaign contributions roll in! Aka, "PROFIT!" in/. meme-speak.
This is only true if one is assuming that stellar output remains at a level conducive to fossil fuel production. Most projections suggest that the sun's increasing heat over time will render the earth barren and uninhabitable long before hydrogen fusion ceases, and such heating would likely also release the stored energy in hydrocarbons. So the sun gets the last figurative laugh.
Hopefully you're trying to be funny, and failing. All energy in this solar system except the, relatively speaking, small amounts that derive from sources such as nuclear fission of heavy elements in planetary cores, comes from the sun. If one decides that solar energy is not "renewable" based on the stellar lifetime, then fossil fuel cannot be regarded as "renewable" either, as it is stored solar energy.
The NoKos are indeed somewhat dangerous, yes, and could do much damage if they went to war. However, I doubt their leadership are really suicidal, and that is the certain result of actual aggression.
Slashdot Mirror
This. At risk of feeding the Obamacare troll, Canada hasn't had much change in their healthcare system since going socialized quite a few years ago. For some reason the terrible costs and market distortion from it didn't stop RIM/Blackberry from becoming iconic in the 2000s. So we are to believe that healthcare is the cause of their decline now? That it has nothing to do with hubris, inertia and having their asses kicked by Apple and Android vendors?
Chernobyl was a travesty. The reactors there had no business being in operation. They lacked even a containment vessel, and were of a design (RBMK if I recall correctly, too lazy to look up right now) which had huge fundamental problems, notably use of graphite as a moderator which increased the resulting contamination by at least 10x. The Soviets used them because they were cheap, and provided plenty of plutonium to build weapons. The operators and their higher-ups in 1986 were incredibly stupid, disregarding just about every procedure such as doing an improper shutdown, not waiting to restart the reactor until xenon gas had a chance to dissipate, and finally removing something like 3x the number of control rods permitted by whatever constituted a "safe limit" for Soviet procedures. The result was terribly predictable. No reactor of that sort could ever be built in a western country.
Fukushima should not have been a problem. Number one, the reactors were very old generation 1 (maybe 1.5 if you feel charitable), past their design life and should have been replaced. I'm not aware of any in the US that old still operating, but there might be one or two, and they would not be in major earthquake zones. Second, what moron decided to put critical backup diesel generators where they could be flooded by the tsunami resulting from an earthquake? Incremental cost of properly siting generators for that facility amounts to pocket change. Third, while the images are striking, actual contamination around Fukushima is very small. Radiation levels pretty much everywhere except the damaged buildings are similar to natural levels in some areas where people have lived for thousands of years, iirc southwestern France.
I probably sound like a nuclear shill. I am not. The reactors in use all over the world however, have done a decent job of generating electricity without contributing to global warming. Imo the biggest problem with them is that they were originally designed and built to provide material for nuclear weapons, with power being a useful secondary benefit. There existed at the time designs for inherently safer reactors based on thorium. Those are incapable of runaway and meltdown as happened at the above sites. Nixon killed the thorium reactor program though, for weapons, and to steer pork to a buddy in California. The Chinese and Indians will now take the lead on reactor building.
Bottom line, nuclear power is dangerous. So is every power source that has any possibility of supplying humanity's needs. Wind, solar etc. are useful, but I am very skeptical that any of those will ever provide more than 25% or so, due to their diffuse and intermittent nature. Fossil fuel plants are absolutely the first thing we need to do away with, and only nuclear has a hope within my lifetime of replacing that massive baseload generation capability.
Certainly. Fission occurs at a rate inversely proportional to the half life of the radioisotope. The longer the half life, the less fission is occurring. The most dangerous emitters are generally accepted to be Cesium-137 (emits beta and gamma) and Strontium-90 (beta). Both have half-life in the vicinity of 30 years. Thallium-204 is pretty nasty too, but half-life is under 4 years, so it is gone pretty quickly. Long-lived isotopes release by their nature release far fewer particles. Toxicity is often more a problem than radiation. Plutonium-239, often cited as an extremely scary substance, has half life of about 24000 years. Why would anyone want to expend resources to sequester this, when it is of great value as fuel? That's far worse than spending thousands of dollars on a gasoline can that can last a lifetime, instead of burning it.
If humans are not around to do so, I guess I don't care that much what happens. Nature will adapt as it always does. There are organisms which would enjoy the energy source provided.
Any isotopes with half-life > 100 years or so should be considered fuel rather than waste. Reprocess and use it. In any case the radiation emitted by such materials approaches that of the natural background.
What I find utterly baffling is that research in this field appears to be dead in the USA, Europe and Japan. We seem to be content to watch China, India and a few others design and build the next generation of nuclear reactors. Then we will have the privilege of spending money to decommission our own hopelessly obsolete reactors. We will pay higher rates as the availability and diversity of power sources is reduced. We will endure unreliable swings and reduction of supply. We will pay for electricity generated by the new guys on the block. We will watch as yet more industry moves where there is cheap, reliable power.
When we've had enough of all that, we'll spend money to license their designs since we made a point of making "intellectual property" central to our international agreements. Those countries will be more than happy to throw our IP regime regime right back in our collective face.
The NIMBYs, the willfully ignorant, and a few well-meaning critics have "won" in the West, and so thoroughly that even building research reactors has become impossible. The above will be their "prize".
Apple killed off Flash? Funny, I can watch Flash videos on my MacBook Pro quite easily. On my iPhone, no. Not supported. There do appear to be other phones which support Flash however, and since Apple do not have that 90%+ share of smartphone market, how can they be said to have killed it off? In any case, demanding that a company support some specific feature in some specific product should not be written into law. The market should take care of that.
Indeed. Maybe we could call them Lanthanides, instead.
Are you on Facebook by chance?
Lost the /satire tag...
The true message of this article should be quite different: All nuclear power must be abandoned this instant, forever, because, well, umm, if all the millisieverts were put together and given to a baby, it might get radiation sickness.
Won't somebody think of the children?
And for those who are mentally challenged: .
You are probably thinking of the reactor vessel, rather than the containment vessel. The reactor vessels are all currently made by Japan Steel Works as they appear to be the only provider capable of manufacturing the 230 mm steel required for the job.
Vaguely related subject – I wish we could get a LFTR built to evaluate.
I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
Humble suggestion: Decay the proceeds of political contributions depending on time in office. For example, an outsider running for office gets 100% of the contribution. First term incumbent gets %75, remainder to public finance. Decay to 50%, 25%, etc. per term. Thus it gets expensive to keep the fossils in office.
That seems a fair, though perhaps somewhat generous, estimate for the ratio of signal to noise here. "News for nerds" has become just another giant Red vs. Blue flamefest. Might as well just turn my attention to my wife's cat pictures on FB.
But will they be competitive relative to oil and gas, which receive major subsidies today, both directly via the tax code, and also in the form of unregulated and untaxed dumping of waste CO2 into the atmosphere? The playing field is far from level. That also contrasts to the nuclear industry where waste products are massively regulated, and replacement of obsolete plant, as well as new construction all but impossible, because radiation is scary, while CO2 is boring.
I am so looking forward to re-release of Blazing Saddles in 4DX. BEANS!
From what I have read, Truman was willing to endure quite a bit of rudeness from MacArthur, but the general's talk of attacking China was threatening to split the coalition, and he had to dump the guy.
Presumably meant to be funny, and I did chuckle, but MacArthur did indeed want to go on and topple the Chinese government. In 1950 it had been only a year and change since the Communists had routed the Nationalists, so their hold was still somewhat tenuous. That was what got him sacked.
It never was a war. The term used was "police action" if I remember my history correctly. No declaration in Congress, which was the beginning of the new normal where the President has usurped war powers. That appears to be the way Congress prefers, so half of them can point fingers of blame for either the result of the conflict if it goes badly, or at the war power usurpation if it goes well. The other half then either blame the finger-pointers as unpatriotic, or bask in the success.
Can't lose. Watch those campaign contributions roll in! Aka, "PROFIT!" in /. meme-speak.
This is only true if one is assuming that stellar output remains at a level conducive to fossil fuel production. Most projections suggest that the sun's increasing heat over time will render the earth barren and uninhabitable long before hydrogen fusion ceases, and such heating would likely also release the stored energy in hydrocarbons. So the sun gets the last figurative laugh.
But I like my salted, deep-fried dairy proteins! They seem to be renewable too, going by what I see in the stores and restaurants every day.
Hopefully you're trying to be funny, and failing. All energy in this solar system except the, relatively speaking, small amounts that derive from sources such as nuclear fission of heavy elements in planetary cores, comes from the sun. If one decides that solar energy is not "renewable" based on the stellar lifetime, then fossil fuel cannot be regarded as "renewable" either, as it is stored solar energy.
Sadly, owning .orgy is likely as close as anyone on /. will ever get to one in meatspace (yes, pun intended).
Where's my $500?
The NoKos are indeed somewhat dangerous, yes, and could do much damage if they went to war. However, I doubt their leadership are really suicidal, and that is the certain result of actual aggression.