Don't forget that there were moral issues concerning the use of the scientific advancement gained by the Nazi's, espescially, but not limited to, Nazi medical advances. One may speculate that the means (bad Nazi's that tortured, maimed, killed innocents, and advanced technologically) justifies the ends (using advanced Nazi technology to enrich our own), but in the Kantian sense it's clearly immoral. Americans surely considerred this at the time, and periodically debated it as time progessed. Someone very well may have considerred further developing the Nazi stealth technology, but ultimately rejected the idea due to ethical considerations.
sorta skew from the subject of stealth planes, but along the lines of Nazi's and morality:
IBM & BMW both served the Nazi's. BMW prolly didn't have a choice, but for IBM it was greed driving their interests.
A Chernobyl type accident is simply not possible with modern designs.
Not a Chernobyl type accident I'm talking about, but a Chernobyl SCALE accident, that is, a nuclear accident that is the size and scope of what happened at Chernobyl, and what the cost of such an accident of that scale is.
If you are suggesting an incident of the SCALE of Chernobyl is not possible with designs currently in use, then you are completely wrong. (How well do current designs and safeties stand up to being dismantled, or intentionally set for melt-down, or being blown up?).
You are mistaken. No premise, no subterfuge, I just wanted a figure for the cost of a Chernobyl-scale accident. Another poster was kind enough to give a figure of $200 Billion as the full cost of Chernobyl, and that is good enough for me for the cost of any Chernobyl-scale accident.
Because the added dollar cost of this figure is utterly insignificant.
ahem. $200 BILLION.
Ignorance is of course rampant on the anti-nuke side: ignorance of the specifics of radiation, lack of perspective, the inability to evaluate realistic alternatives, ignorance of the political issues (not technical ones) that dominate the 'waste debate', etc, etc.
well, not sure how this relates to me asking for a figure... but I think I mentioned in another post that one of the problems is that nuclear reactions are complex things, that take smart people with lots of expensive education. Everything involving nuclear power becomes some incomprehensible process for "ignorant readers." Yes, every point will be rationalized against you're probable hunger for "cheap power," but nuclear power has strikes against it because it IS complex, and CAN be VERY VERY dangerous, and can (as in POSSIBLE, has happened before, will happen again) result in VERY VERY expensive collateral costs, and these points cannot be disregarded as ignorant claims of anti-nukers. There are several other options for power, though more expensive in the SHORT TERM, that don't have the complexity, or inherent and invisible danger, that are so simple, and safe, that there is no need to rationalize away these points by calling others ignorant, because they just aren't there.
Thanks for your post. Sometimes, I feel like its me alone against the ridiculous.
Something just occurred to me. A flood, generally speaking, while bad for people in the short term, is great for the environment and good for agriculture in the long term.
If you want to convince people these things can work you need to explain where we'll put them all. Show numbers explaining...
Not really. I could just convince them that it must work because there is no other alternative.
Whose idea was centralized power, anyway? Why not decentralize power to the individual units that need it? If a single home can be built to be off grid, then all homes could be built that way. If, for the next 40 years, all new homes built were required to generate all the power they need, I think that'd get it done.
You missed my point. Not talking about precisely what happened at Chernobyl... but a nuclear accident, any nuclear accident, that had the scale of Chernobyl. Maybe what happened at Chernobyl can't happen again, but other stuff with exactly the same results can happen.
Anyway, I'd like to know what Chernobyl, and any nuclear accident of that scale, might cost, and I'd like this figure taken into account when considering the cost building more nuclear power plants. kthx.
I always said that too... send the waste into the Sun! But its really heavy, so getting to space is really expensive. And if something goes wrong on the way there, its much worse than if we just left it lying around.
Nuclear power is complex. Maintaining a reaction takes experts with decades of education and years of training. Calculate the cost of education into the cost of nuclear power? You should.
Unless "decades of education" was meant to include their high school diploma, I think you're exaggerating. Not that I disagree with your fundamental point; a nuclear plant does pay good money for qualified staff, and that does include paying for some of their training.
You're correct that the level of expertise needed is particular to nuclear power, but it is part of a larger cost associate with staff. No means of power generation is fully automated. Even a system like the one in TFA presumably pays somebody's wages.
Actually, I did mean to include the hs diploma, and... I was also exaggerating. Sry, I often speak in hyperbole to make the point easier to see. I believe groups with barely a 6th grade education could probably maintain a wind farm.
Compare "the worst that can happen" in nuclear power to the same with solar, wind, geothermal, or hydroelectric power. This alone should be enough to deter us from nuclear power, because no matter what, mistakes are always made and the unexpected occurs.
"Worst that could happen" for a hydro dam is a major flood. I'd call that unlikely, assuming the engineers and construction team did their jobs right. But then, I'd say the same about nuclear.
I'd agree that nuclear is dangerous, but disagree that the danger should deter us from using it at all. Like all technology that can go awry, caution must be used, safeguards put in place.
I'd suggest reading up on passive safety mechanisms in nuclear power. Look up "pebble bed reactors", which have the means to make the fuel fly apart if it gets too hot, halting the chain reaction. There is never a total absence of risk, but the risk can be made small enough for our purposes. The question is not: is it perfect? - the question is: is it worth it?
If the choice came down to a mix of passive power collection, coupled with either nuclear or coal, which would you pick? Assuming we could not meet all our energy needs with alternative energy alone and we needed one or the other.
How dangerous does something have to be to deter you? btw, I'm not suggesting we dismantle all the 110 or so US plants and replace them with alternatives. I'm merely trying to stave off the flood blindly screaming for cheap nuclear power (no, you are not included in this flood, but they like you). My point is that one way has serious risk to human (and other) life (even if risk is reduced to tiny), and is complex, takes serious intellectual capital to pull off, and only appears cheap because much of the R&D was paid for by war/preparation for war; and another way that will eventually be crazy cheap, is so simple children play with working models, and the risk does not involve decades to centuries to clean up if something unfortunate occurs. A dam breaking and flooding a populated valley is small potatoes compared to a melt-down or a terrorist group stealing the bad stuff and doing stuff with that stuff. A flood is over within days to weeks, and (hopefully) the damage is repaired within a few years. I don't think is nuclear power is ever worth what happened at Chernobyl, and I understand that the plant was flawed in ways new reactors are not, however... a mad nuclear scientist, I bet, could still get a pebble reactor to hurt or terrorize lots of people, while a mad windmillist... is just funny.
Currently, the only method of cleaning a nuclear accident is to package and store all the radiated stuff underground. Did you see the article recently about the irradiated mud wasps? That is seriously messed up.
But wind is crazy dangerous. It can bury cities in sand, obliterate houses, knock down bridges and blow planes right out of the sky. And there is the lingering issue of what to do with all the spent wind. We should first solve the problems with wind before trying to harness such a volitile energy source. At least a nuclear reaction is reasonably predictable, and we can just bury and forget about the waste./sarcasm
Agreed. Nuke proponents always use the "its cheaper" card. But is it, really?
What was the cost of developing nuclear power. Just because we already paid for it doesn't mean it wasn't expensive. How many cumulative years of education does it take for a nuclear power plant to be designed, built and maintained? Why is this cost always ignored? What is the possible cost of something going terribly wrong? Another ignored cost is insurance... surely accident insurance for a nuclear plant is much higher than for a wind farm (an entire wind farm catching on fire and getting knocked over onto a bunch of solid gold Rolls Royces will undoubtedly cost astronomically less than a single nuclear reactor fully melting down).
What is exactly the cost of a Chernobyl scale accident? Unless the possibility of such an event is reduced to zero, we should really define this figure, and be prepared to spend it if the need arises.
Nuclear power is the only option for affordable and ecologically responsible power
The only reason nuclear power is cheap is the bajillions the governments poured into researching the best way to make fuel for bombs. If a tenth of that had been spent researching solar power, then solar power would be cheap.
Nuclear waste, btw, really isn't all that eco-friendly. The waste is only one problem, and today this particular problem is not solved, but the solution has been postponed. Maybe someday we will be able to safely turn nuclear waste into car tires or something. Or maybe we'll never come up with a better idea than burying it. No one can say. But we are guarunteed that the cost of wind power plants and solar plants will get cheaper. Its an economic fact. But only if we embrace and develop and use the technology. This is how nuclear power got cheap (ignoring the expensive educations needed for nuclear engineers... those costs only go up over time).
No, the only ecologically responsible choice is just about anything but nuclear. And "affordable" is always a relative term. What made nuclear power affordable can be applied to any new energy technology. Take your pick, and pour equal resources into developing it and costs will look better for most of the alternatives because they're all much simpler, easier to understand, and will be to build and maintain.
Nuclear power is complex. Maintaining a reaction takes experts with decades of education and years of training. Calculate the cost of education into the cost of nuclear power? You should.
Compare "the worst that can happen" in nuclear power to the same with solar, wind, geothermal, or hydroelectric power. This alone should be enough to deter us from nuclear power, because no matter what, mistakes are always made and the unexpected occurs. Currently, the only method of cleaning a nuclear accident is to package and store all the radiated stuff underground. Did you see the article recently about the irradiated mud wasps? That is seriously messed up.
Before sending astronauts into space, every conceivable scenario is considered and plans are made for the just in case. Nuclear proponents never seem to want to finish solving the problems before plunging headlong into them.
Nuclear power isn't perfect. It does have serious problems. These problems need to be definatively solved before the concept as a whole is a valid solution to the energy crisis we face. Cheap power now is NOT worth the deadly problems it WILL bring. Solve the waste problem, solve the security problems, solve the what-if problems, THEN build your nuke plants. In the meantime, we can schlep our way through the problems of other truely clean energy alternatives and not sweat so much when tge mistakes are made. So power is a little more expensive, but the risk of a wind turbine taking out an entire region for generations is non-existant.
Didn't see any pointing out this technicality... but if it really hit him first before striking the ground, then he was struck by a meteor, not a meteorite...
the express card slot is slightly less worthless... I can think of only a single purpose for it (that is not duplicated by the firewire port, firewire does nearly everything for expansion purposes), a 3G card
eSATA is the other big one. It's faster than FireWire (even FW800) and on OS X supports SMART monitoring so you can get warnings before your drive fails.
Hmm. You've sent me down thought trails, and I just heard some news, and I've altered my opinion a little. Now I'm convinced the express card slot is entirely superfluous.
I just realized that 3G cards can connect through usb (duh) and there is zero advantage to expresscard over usb specific to 3G connectivity or network speed (speeds will never approach the limit of either).
eSATA is great for its purpose. If you want to make a case that Apple should include an eSATA port, fine. But its ridiculous to argue (and I'm not saying you are) that Apple should include the expresscard slot just so it can have eSATA, when there really is no other specific purpose for the slot (that can't be duplicated).
Firewire does everything expresscard can do (which isn't saying much). Firewire and USB do everything expresscard can do twice. If you need 3MBps bandwidth from your laptop and you have the sick raid to connect it to, then you need the expresscard eSATA connector. If you're just connecting it to a drive-in-a-box, you won't realize any significant real world performance difference from firewire. The reason is that a high speed single drive (that mere mortals can get their hands on) won't saturate the eSATA or the fw800 theoretical bandwidth limits.
yeah, I dig eSATA. I'd like an eSATA port on my laptop. I'd be annoyed if I needed it and had to get a card adapter for it.
Frankly, I never saw the reason for eSATA when SATA itself seems to be an ok connector. And if eSATA is so good... can't we just use that instead of SATA? One protocol, one connector, dammit.
but... anyhoo... the opinion flip flop here is really... that since discovering the SD Card slot can boot OS X off a properly formated SD card with a system installed... I don't know how I survived without it before.
SD card slot is worthless. Waste of space. Superfluous. That's what USB is for... every SD Card device is also a usb device. Apple, wtf? The express card slot is slightly less worthless... I can think of only a single purpose for it (that is not duplicated by the firewire port, firewire does nearly everything for expansion purposes), a 3G card. Steve Jobs needs to get back to work and fire some overanxious idiots ("and it has TWO corkscrews! In case you need to open TWO bottles of wine!")
Internet more likely to function in an emergency as that is what it was designed to do
Yeah. As long as that emergency doesn't include a power outage, because the Internet will be fine, but your access to it will be nil, as your cable modem, or Fios router, needs power, and even if you have your own power you can't power your provider's nearby switch.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't forget that there were moral issues concerning the use of the scientific advancement gained by the Nazi's, espescially, but not limited to, Nazi medical advances. One may speculate that the means (bad Nazi's that tortured, maimed, killed innocents, and advanced technologically) justifies the ends (using advanced Nazi technology to enrich our own), but in the Kantian sense it's clearly immoral. Americans surely considerred this at the time, and periodically debated it as time progessed. Someone very well may have considerred further developing the Nazi stealth technology, but ultimately rejected the idea due to ethical considerations. sorta skew from the subject of stealth planes, but along the lines of Nazi's and morality: IBM & BMW both served the Nazi's. BMW prolly didn't have a choice, but for IBM it was greed driving their interests.
Just because liars post doesn't mean their posts are lies.
Details of the exploit will be presented next month...
My remote iPhone exploit is a Canadian supermodel.
Thanks for your post. I'm adopting it verbatim as my response to the GP. ;-)
A Chernobyl type accident is simply not possible with modern designs.
Not a Chernobyl type accident I'm talking about, but a Chernobyl SCALE accident, that is, a nuclear accident that is the size and scope of what happened at Chernobyl, and what the cost of such an accident of that scale is.
If you are suggesting an incident of the SCALE of Chernobyl is not possible with designs currently in use, then you are completely wrong. (How well do current designs and safeties stand up to being dismantled, or intentionally set for melt-down, or being blown up?).
Because the added dollar cost of this figure is utterly insignificant.
ahem. $200 BILLION.
Ignorance is of course rampant on the anti-nuke side: ignorance of the specifics of radiation, lack of perspective, the inability to evaluate realistic alternatives, ignorance of the political issues (not technical ones) that dominate the 'waste debate', etc, etc.
well, not sure how this relates to me asking for a figure... but I think I mentioned in another post that one of the problems is that nuclear reactions are complex things, that take smart people with lots of expensive education. Everything involving nuclear power becomes some incomprehensible process for "ignorant readers." Yes, every point will be rationalized against you're probable hunger for "cheap power," but nuclear power has strikes against it because it IS complex, and CAN be VERY VERY dangerous, and can (as in POSSIBLE, has happened before, will happen again) result in VERY VERY expensive collateral costs, and these points cannot be disregarded as ignorant claims of anti-nukers. There are several other options for power, though more expensive in the SHORT TERM, that don't have the complexity, or inherent and invisible danger, that are so simple, and safe, that there is no need to rationalize away these points by calling others ignorant, because they just aren't there.
Something just occurred to me. A flood, generally speaking, while bad for people in the short term, is great for the environment and good for agriculture in the long term.
Great idea! And if we run out of whales we can just burn harp seals, Florida panthers, pandas, polar bears, manatees and bald eagles!
If you want to convince people these things can work you need to explain where we'll put them all. Show numbers explaining ...
Not really. I could just convince them that it must work because there is no other alternative.
Whose idea was centralized power, anyway? Why not decentralize power to the individual units that need it? If a single home can be built to be off grid, then all homes could be built that way. If, for the next 40 years, all new homes built were required to generate all the power they need, I think that'd get it done.
take a look at this
Anyway, I'd like to know what Chernobyl, and any nuclear accident of that scale, might cost, and I'd like this figure taken into account when considering the cost building more nuclear power plants. kthx.
Send it off into space. Plenty of space in space.
I always said that too... send the waste into the Sun! But its really heavy, so getting to space is really expensive. And if something goes wrong on the way there, its much worse than if we just left it lying around.
Nuclear power is complex. Maintaining a reaction takes experts with decades of education and years of training. Calculate the cost of education into the cost of nuclear power? You should.
Unless "decades of education" was meant to include their high school diploma, I think you're exaggerating. Not that I disagree with your fundamental point; a nuclear plant does pay good money for qualified staff, and that does include paying for some of their training.
You're correct that the level of expertise needed is particular to nuclear power, but it is part of a larger cost associate with staff. No means of power generation is fully automated. Even a system like the one in TFA presumably pays somebody's wages.
Actually, I did mean to include the hs diploma, and ... I was also exaggerating. Sry, I often speak in hyperbole to make the point easier to see. I believe groups with barely a 6th grade education could probably maintain a wind farm.
Compare "the worst that can happen" in nuclear power to the same with solar, wind, geothermal, or hydroelectric power. This alone should be enough to deter us from nuclear power, because no matter what, mistakes are always made and the unexpected occurs.
"Worst that could happen" for a hydro dam is a major flood. I'd call that unlikely, assuming the engineers and construction team did their jobs right. But then, I'd say the same about nuclear.
I'd agree that nuclear is dangerous, but disagree that the danger should deter us from using it at all. Like all technology that can go awry, caution must be used, safeguards put in place.
I'd suggest reading up on passive safety mechanisms in nuclear power. Look up "pebble bed reactors", which have the means to make the fuel fly apart if it gets too hot, halting the chain reaction. There is never a total absence of risk, but the risk can be made small enough for our purposes. The question is not: is it perfect? - the question is: is it worth it?
If the choice came down to a mix of passive power collection, coupled with either nuclear or coal, which would you pick? Assuming we could not meet all our energy needs with alternative energy alone and we needed one or the other.
How dangerous does something have to be to deter you? btw, I'm not suggesting we dismantle all the 110 or so US plants and replace them with alternatives. I'm merely trying to stave off the flood blindly screaming for cheap nuclear power (no, you are not included in this flood, but they like you). My point is that one way has serious risk to human (and other) life (even if risk is reduced to tiny), and is complex, takes serious intellectual capital to pull off, and only appears cheap because much of the R&D was paid for by war/preparation for war; and another way that will eventually be crazy cheap, is so simple children play with working models, and the risk does not involve decades to centuries to clean up if something unfortunate occurs. A dam breaking and flooding a populated valley is small potatoes compared to a melt-down or a terrorist group stealing the bad stuff and doing stuff with that stuff. A flood is over within days to weeks, and (hopefully) the damage is repaired within a few years. I don't think is nuclear power is ever worth what happened at Chernobyl, and I understand that the plant was flawed in ways new reactors are not, however... a mad nuclear scientist, I bet, could still get a pebble reactor to hurt or terrorize lots of people, while a mad windmillist... is just funny.
Currently, the only method of cleaning a nuclear accident is to package and store all the radiated stuff underground. Did you see the article recently about the irradiated mud wasps? That is seriously messed up.
Didn't see the article. Got a link?
But wind is crazy dangerous. It can bury cities in sand, obliterate houses, knock down bridges and blow planes right out of the sky. And there is the lingering issue of what to do with all the spent wind. We should first solve the problems with wind before trying to harness such a volitile energy source. At least a nuclear reaction is reasonably predictable, and we can just bury and forget about the waste. /sarcasm
What was the cost of developing nuclear power. Just because we already paid for it doesn't mean it wasn't expensive. How many cumulative years of education does it take for a nuclear power plant to be designed, built and maintained? Why is this cost always ignored? What is the possible cost of something going terribly wrong? Another ignored cost is insurance... surely accident insurance for a nuclear plant is much higher than for a wind farm (an entire wind farm catching on fire and getting knocked over onto a bunch of solid gold Rolls Royces will undoubtedly cost astronomically less than a single nuclear reactor fully melting down).
What is exactly the cost of a Chernobyl scale accident? Unless the possibility of such an event is reduced to zero, we should really define this figure, and be prepared to spend it if the need arises.
Nuclear power is the only option for affordable and ecologically responsible power
The only reason nuclear power is cheap is the bajillions the governments poured into researching the best way to make fuel for bombs. If a tenth of that had been spent researching solar power, then solar power would be cheap.
Nuclear waste, btw, really isn't all that eco-friendly. The waste is only one problem, and today this particular problem is not solved, but the solution has been postponed. Maybe someday we will be able to safely turn nuclear waste into car tires or something. Or maybe we'll never come up with a better idea than burying it. No one can say. But we are guarunteed that the cost of wind power plants and solar plants will get cheaper. Its an economic fact. But only if we embrace and develop and use the technology. This is how nuclear power got cheap (ignoring the expensive educations needed for nuclear engineers... those costs only go up over time).
No, the only ecologically responsible choice is just about anything but nuclear. And "affordable" is always a relative term. What made nuclear power affordable can be applied to any new energy technology. Take your pick, and pour equal resources into developing it and costs will look better for most of the alternatives because they're all much simpler, easier to understand, and will be to build and maintain.
Nuclear power is complex. Maintaining a reaction takes experts with decades of education and years of training. Calculate the cost of education into the cost of nuclear power? You should.
Compare "the worst that can happen" in nuclear power to the same with solar, wind, geothermal, or hydroelectric power. This alone should be enough to deter us from nuclear power, because no matter what, mistakes are always made and the unexpected occurs. Currently, the only method of cleaning a nuclear accident is to package and store all the radiated stuff underground. Did you see the article recently about the irradiated mud wasps? That is seriously messed up.
Before sending astronauts into space, every conceivable scenario is considered and plans are made for the just in case. Nuclear proponents never seem to want to finish solving the problems before plunging headlong into them.
Nuclear power isn't perfect. It does have serious problems. These problems need to be definatively solved before the concept as a whole is a valid solution to the energy crisis we face. Cheap power now is NOT worth the deadly problems it WILL bring. Solve the waste problem, solve the security problems, solve the what-if problems, THEN build your nuke plants. In the meantime, we can schlep our way through the problems of other truely clean energy alternatives and not sweat so much when tge mistakes are made. So power is a little more expensive, but the risk of a wind turbine taking out an entire region for generations is non-existant.
Didn't see any pointing out this technicality... but if it really hit him first before striking the ground, then he was struck by a meteor, not a meteorite...
nerves transmit their electro-chemical signals sometimes as fast as 100m/s, but I think its always at least 1 m/s
the express card slot is slightly less worthless... I can think of only a single purpose for it (that is not duplicated by the firewire port, firewire does nearly everything for expansion purposes), a 3G card
eSATA is the other big one. It's faster than FireWire (even FW800) and on OS X supports SMART monitoring so you can get warnings before your drive fails.
Hmm. You've sent me down thought trails, and I just heard some news, and I've altered my opinion a little. Now I'm convinced the express card slot is entirely superfluous.
I just realized that 3G cards can connect through usb (duh) and there is zero advantage to expresscard over usb specific to 3G connectivity or network speed (speeds will never approach the limit of either).
eSATA is great for its purpose. If you want to make a case that Apple should include an eSATA port, fine. But its ridiculous to argue (and I'm not saying you are) that Apple should include the expresscard slot just so it can have eSATA, when there really is no other specific purpose for the slot (that can't be duplicated).
Firewire does everything expresscard can do (which isn't saying much). Firewire and USB do everything expresscard can do twice. If you need 3MBps bandwidth from your laptop and you have the sick raid to connect it to, then you need the expresscard eSATA connector. If you're just connecting it to a drive-in-a-box, you won't realize any significant real world performance difference from firewire. The reason is that a high speed single drive (that mere mortals can get their hands on) won't saturate the eSATA or the fw800 theoretical bandwidth limits.
yeah, I dig eSATA. I'd like an eSATA port on my laptop. I'd be annoyed if I needed it and had to get a card adapter for it.
Frankly, I never saw the reason for eSATA when SATA itself seems to be an ok connector. And if eSATA is so good... can't we just use that instead of SATA? One protocol, one connector, dammit.
but... anyhoo... the opinion flip flop here is really ... that since discovering the SD Card slot can boot OS X off a properly formated SD card with a system installed... I don't know how I survived without it before.
SD card slot is worthless. Waste of space. Superfluous. That's what USB is for... every SD Card device is also a usb device. Apple, wtf? The express card slot is slightly less worthless... I can think of only a single purpose for it (that is not duplicated by the firewire port, firewire does nearly everything for expansion purposes), a 3G card. Steve Jobs needs to get back to work and fire some overanxious idiots ("and it has TWO corkscrews! In case you need to open TWO bottles of wine!")
the FFMPEG people
not people, giants!
Why don't they just motion to deny the defense due process? Followed up by a motion to bar the defense from aquittal? This lawyer stuff is easy.
Best idea so far (next to doing nothing). /me rushes through a patent on the phone jack plugin lightbulb
Internet more likely to function in an emergency as that is what it was designed to do
Yeah. As long as that emergency doesn't include a power outage, because the Internet will be fine, but your access to it will be nil, as your cable modem, or Fios router, needs power, and even if you have your own power you can't power your provider's nearby switch.