Last year I got stung by a fairly common benign species of jellyfish called a blue bottle in the surf on a hot summer's day swim.
I came up to the surface with the thing about a meter in front of me and immediately tried to escape. The tentacle wrapped around my left arm from my knuckles to the armpit, across the chest and onto the right are and, somehow, on my right left.
The Lifesavers (clubbies) saw the whole thing as I got out of the surf two of them helped me over to the clubhouse and doused me we very hot water. Over the next three hours I had icepacks all over me and a nurse debated whether I would go to hospital as I just hung onto consciousness due to shock. The pain was astounding, my glands were inflated and later it felt like my testicles had been massaged by a hammer. I had welts on my arms for a couple of weeks from the sting. A year later I am still pulling stingers out of my arms which come up as painful little pimple like things that bleed and take about two weeks to heal (I'm looking at three now).
That's "a fairly common benign species of jellyfish".
A prototype is one thing however the issue is existing reactor designs last an inadequate 4-5 decades.
I actually support the development of a reactor that addresses the issue of 70,000 tons of Pu-239 currently stored in reactor sites around America, simply because it's irresponsible for our generation to foist this issue onto later generations.
Unfortunately, because there is no geologically sound Nuclear waste dump in operation it's totally inappropriate to discuss building a new reactor facility until a proper containment facility is available. Yucca mountain is not a suitable site because it is made of pumice and geologically active evidenced by recent aftershocks of 5.6 within ten miles of a repository that is supposed to be geologically stable for at least 500000 years. The DOE's own 1982 Nuclear Waste policy Act reported that the Yucca Mountain's geology is inappropriate to contain nuclear waste, and long term corrosion data on C22 (the material to contain the Pu-239 and mitigate the ingress of water - yet another Yucca problem) is just not available.
We need something made of granite. The only human made structure with the potential to last 10000 years is Mt Rushmore, so it has to be an engineering project of that scale, because the logistical problems of transferring the 70000 odd tons of Pu239 to the "waste repository" (in reality - containment facility) are so involved that you want to get it right the first time and only do it once.
Even doing that will probably take 30 years to complete, but there is more to it than that.
I was a big fan of the Integral Fast Reactor, and in a way I still am. But the reality is 3rd and 4th generation reactors are a pipe dream because our material science is not advanced enough yet to produce a reactor design that will last thousands of years. If you are going to build reactors then do it properly and build a Terra-watt scale nuclear reactor facility the belly of a massive granite mountain with an attached waste facility that chomps up all your remaining plutonium or end all commercial nuclear activity altogether.
Nuclear power is energy intensive *after* the energy has been produced simply because our technology - especially material sciences - are not adequate to produce a Nuclear reactor (preferably a IFR style but safer) that has a life span that matches the geological time frames of the fuel. This exposes to all the issues associated with de-commissioning reactor sites every 4 decades or so. We need a reactor design that lasts at least 1000 years and is a closed loop, i.e. the plutonium goes in and nothing comes out (except electricity and possibly hydrogen). In short the smart thing is for us to do is stop producing toy nuclear reactors, while we still can, and build a dedicated place to store the plutonium (ie a granite mountain) that is also a suitable place to build a Terra-watt scale reactor that satisfies those characteristics, well designed and secured facility resistant to attacks even from orbit.
I don't hide the fact that I don't like the constant failure of the Nuclear Industry. But I'm also being realistic. I realise that the only way out of this mess is a well thought out and designed project because we have no other choice due to the nature of the materials. You have to redesign the entire industry, and it's a long term solution, but a much better legacy for future generations than a long term problem that will last a minimum of 25,000 years.
In the meantime we need to invest heavily in undeveloped, low externality, energy solutions like solar, wind, geo-thermal and micro-generation so there is enough energy *available* to carry out such an infrastructure project properly.
This is why I support reactor research but not commercial nuclear power, because so far the entire nuclear industry has been an unmitigated failure marred by industrial accidents and incompetence. I'm offering a solution path and any honest and realistic examination of the *facts* cannot draw any other conclusion of the Nuclear Industries characteristics to date.
Nuclear generation has a ramp up time to respond to baseload conditions. Baseload power is a function of the grid, not of a single form of generation. Solar Thermal is responsive for baseload and wind is more scaleable than nuclear or coal.
That is so wrong... it is beyond believe.
There are three sentences there, I presume you disagree with "Baseload power is a function of the grid, not of a single form of generation." which answers "Strident hyperbole with regards to the anti-nuclear energy has resulted in the real world build of coal power plants as renewals simply are suitable for baseline power."
Baseload power is the amount you _always_ feed into the grid regardless of demand. it is not a "function" of the grid, except that every "national" grid has a slightly different "base load".
What you say is from the perspective of the power plant, not from the consumer who doesn't care what percentage of peak load, base load is. What they care about is "availability" of electricity, which is generally how the term "baseload" is (incorrectly) used. Maybe I should have pointed that out however I was too tired.
In the context of your statement I understand what you are saying however, the OP means something different as the statement intends to say renewable energy sources are not suitably available for on-demand supply. What I am asserting is that the availability of electricity is a function of the grid that connect various sources to consumers.
First, the safer nuclear reactors are prohibited by the government.
Not an accurate statement. All nuclear reactors are restricted by the government, to the point that building a new one is effectively impossible. And while the government is enforcing these laws, it is because of idiot environmentalists that the situation persists....NIMBY and the... NIMBY but because new plants are subject to environmental restrictions so onerous that they are effectively impossible to build and not operate at a loss.
It has nothing to do with governments or environmentalists. Nuclear industry panel (Westinghouse, General Electric, Bechtel, Sargent & Lundy, Northern States Power and Commonwealth Edison) design recommendations specifically targeted at reducing the opportunities to sabotage a nuclear reactor installation and thus increase safety were too expensive to implement. Some 30 improvements were suggested however the AP-1000 incorporates none of the design changes the industry *itself* recommends be applied to reactor facility design. AP-1000 is a rehash of the Standard Westinghouse Nuclear Utility Power Plant (SNUPPs) examples of which are installed at Wolf Creek and
Callaway, you will note in the picture the uncanny resemblence to the AP-1000 design (and similar capacity).
None of the designs incorporate features to ease the teardown and eventual decommissioning of the facility. For example, Yankee Rowe, was a controlled shutdown of a functioning reactor. It cost half a billion dollars to clean-up and it was only 137 Megawatts, less than a quarter of the size of TMI-2. You have to wait decades to allow the *really* radioactive elements to decay. This is because new and highly radioactive elements are created in the reactor core. It's still not something that has been addressed in an industrially proficient way that makes the sites safe or 'greenfeild'. Considering the 104 reactor sites around America are multi-core the United States will be looking at a conservative estimate of a quarter of a *Trillion* dollars, at todays prices, on reactor decommissioning alone.
That's the real reason these plants aren't being built - they're simply too expensive in the long term.
NIMBY. Stuff the environmentalists into rusty barrels by the river instead and the problem abates.
Responsible Nuclear Advocacy entails understanding why the concerns exist. It's not pro or anti nuclear, it's uncovering the mess of political, legal, financial and legacy nuclear industry propaganda to get to understand what the issues really are. The Nuclear industry is a mess, and our generation has a responsibility to future generations to resolve the issue while we still understand it and have enough resources to deal with it. You blame the NIMBY, the Not In My Back Yard, yet this is an obsolete concept as legal frameworks in the 2005 U.S Energy bill *preclude* the concerns of local ratepayers being considered when considering the placement of Nuclear facilities.
It might surprise you to learn that the Energy act of 2005 also abolished a guardian of the American Economy called the PUCHA, that was put in place to prevent a repeat of the 1929 stock market crash. Yes folks, line up, line up come and get yer pre approved reactor designs for tax discounts you can get even if you do nothing, get ready to sell sell sell your utilities and ratepayers get ready to part with more and more cash.
Think about that next time you criticise environmentalists for a reactor not being implemented and direct it to the oil companies who actually deserve it.
I ask you the same thing I ask all anti-nukes. If it's good enough to put to sea, then why isn't it good enough to be put on land?
Because military reactors have the budget to run to higher safety standards and are an order of magnitude smaller than a commercial power reactor that is run for a profit.
Lowest pollution? I guess little things like Windscale, Tchernobyl, and Fuckushima are removed from that calculation...
Nope. Go ahead and include them. You'll get to about.1% of the emissions of coal power plants with every nuclear disaster. Ever. Including all of the nuclear bomb tests, the two bombs we dropped on Japan, three mile island, and more.
You have completely and utterly mis-represented the entire S.A article. The comparison was between a functioning NPP and CFG of the same capacity. The figures come from the NRC standards for release of radionuclides from an operational reactor. Nuclear power plants release noble gasses roughly every two weeks, which whilst benign when released, decay into deadlier elements, and thats NRC standard operating procedure for all nuclear plants *before* we start talking about unintentional or unauthorised radioactive effluent emmissions, especially disasters.
Fun fact: Coal plants collectively emit more radiation in a year than all those disasters combined have, and that's when you include into the figures the yearly radiation the nuclear plants emit into the environment as well.
Did you actually read the article you linked to? It mentioned nothing about those disasters at all. Here is the clarification printed at the end of the article;
As a general clarification, ounce for ounce, coal ash released from a power plant delivers more radiation than nuclear waste shielded via water or dry cask storage.
Nuclear waste, it's storage and releases into the environment are a problem so staggering that National Geographic describes as"a mythical train that would reach around the Equator and then some" (it's in the first page of ten). Check it out it will give you some idea of the actual size of this problem.
Logic is a wonderful thing and we need more critical thinking and less hyperbole with regards to green energy.
Let's test that.
Strident hyperbole with regards to the anti-nuclear energy has resulted in the real world build of coal power plants as renewals simply are suitable for baseline power.
Nuclear generation has a ramp up time to respond to basload conditions. Baseload power is a function of the grid, not of a single form of generation. Solar Thermal is responsive for baseload and wind is more scaleable than nuclear or coal.
Coal power plants also release far more pollution and for the ignorant they also result in a lot of radiation being released into the air.
It's not radiation that is being released, it's radionuclides that emit radiation, the destinction being that radiation doesn't get into the food chain, radinuclides do. ALL radionuclide release into the environment produces mutagenic responses in metabolisms that in many cases result in some form of cancer. So yeah, it's a problem for the coal industry and the nuclear industry.
Radionuclides from coal plants are also not artificially enriched, so they are less *radioactive*.
Nuclear energy is proven, has the lowest pollution, best carbon footprint of anything we have
The point of nuclear power isn't carbon footprint, it's "Net Energy Return". You can check the science that the nuclear industry itself has spent much time attempting to refute. You will find it's been peer reviewed and constructed using using U.S government standards for industrial process measurement. So until you come up with a better argument, then this one alone is enough to reveal any further investment in commercial nuclear power as pointless as we will leave a radionuclide legacy for future generations the way we were left a carbon legacy by previous generations. We simply have to find a way to do it better than nuclear or coal.
(it's largest footprint comes from the concrete used in it's construction) and could be far cheaper if it wasn't severely over-regulated.
So what are you suggesting? Reduce the the ratio of containment volume to thermal power so it is below the design of the AP-1000 which is below that of today's operating PWRs. Further increase risk of containment over-pressurization and failure in event of a severe accident, as if Fukushima never happened?
Over Regulated? The Nuclear Industry *ITSELF* suggested a list of 30 improvements to reactor design which it couldn't afford to implement in the standardised design. It's simply too expensive and Wall street is interested in cost effective solutions like wind and solar that don't require artificial legislative constructs like the Price-Anderson act so they can be insured.
Thorium reactors are also starting to get planned for production and deserve a good look (and if fact a proof of concept plant was built in the past).
So we trade Plutonium-239 for Thallium-208 another gamma emmiter - very nasty stuff to deal with - very hard to deal with and still no idea what to do with the 70,000 tons of pu-239 we have.
Thorium reactors have the green advantages of nuclear reactors and should be included.
It's time to get real about getting green and put the likes of Greenpeace out to pasture. They have done far more harm to the environment than just about anyone short of the Koch brothers.
Except Nuclear reactors have no green advantage. Groupthink is a cancer, no matter the group, no matter the think. It's a result of the very social proof your signature rallies against but comments like this quite clearly demonstrate you have become a victim to. With respect, I would seriously consider synthesising new opinions based on real information and reasoning.
Seems like a good way for google to intimidate people into using the google+ network, which I may have considered, until now.
I was only just reading about pump.io the other day and it seemed like a more open way to do facebork and grople+ services. This seems like a better way for social network users to own their own networks and it be about them rather than the social media sites.
Perhaps this might the type of thing tech users could use to make closed social networks function together a little better. Things like this from google really signal that the dawn of the social network is over and that the time has come for opening it up to a new way, Social Network V2.0?
This is just one more reason these dumpfkofen have an economy worse than the US.
Dummkopfen, sie dummkopf!
(Yes, I'm quite sure I used the wrong second-person pronoun. Y'know, Germany, English used to have more than one of those, too, but we got rid of the extras 'cause they're STUPID! Get with the program, already.)
You're actually using the wrong plural as well, it should be Dummköpfe.
I'm sure we can all appreciate the irony of a German grammar Nazi.
Great mutlitracking software, simple enough and straightforward if you know your way around other DAW environments like Pro-Tools or Cubase, keyboard shortcuts can be easily customized.
I'm sorry, but Ardour is not "great". I believe in Linux and OSS, but if you need to make a living in music or sound, you are not going to be using Ardour. The music production community is always open to new technologies, and if Ardour were anything like a professional-quality application, it would be used.
I think that you raise a valid point about the 'commercial' user and Ardour, however I think the artistic decisions override this. I used to be a Logic user and I find that Pro-tools produced music is too sterile, formulaic and doesn't excite me sonically. I use Ardour to record several projects for a variety of acoustic control decisions. Admittedly we only produce our own music.
But we still have a ways to go before Linux can be used for DAW production. You can get it done, but it's not nearly optimal.
At least once a year, a take a run at the latest incarnation of Ardour. If you're a database programmer and want to play like Jonathan Coulton in your spare time, then fine. You can make Ardour work the same way you can use a folding camping shovel to dig a foundation. But if you want to dig a lot of foundations, you're going to want to invest in a back-hoe. And there is no Linux back-hoe for music.
It's not really 'all-about-Ardour' but the JACK Audio Connection Kit that enables all the audio applications to interact and is a very powerful paradigm. I only looked at Ardour because a Pro-tools set-up was way outside of our budget and, yes, it was very difficult, but like any tool, you get used to it's warts and we have been using it since 2003. It is an artistic decision that has paid back dividends in terms of what we were trying to parallel in our live performances. Live recording and production of the live stems with Ardour seems to be it's strong point to me. We've found that Ardour is very stable when we record, but was more difficult to get it stable for production. I like the back hoe analogy, however I think Ardour/Jack is more like an Open cut mining digger, powerful but difficult to control without specialist knowledge. I think the onus for making the system perform is on the producer with Ardour and if you don't know how to do that then it's best to stick with ProTools or Logic.
Maybe it's mundane but we were using 16 inputs to record with Ardour cost-effectively in 2004, so much in the same way the old Analogue producers knew their kit I've also found that Ardour really pushes our knowledge of the digital process for recording. Well beyond the argument of 'compression crushed music' with Ardour our recordings handle transients and many other sonic aspects of the production process with a level of control that seems more integrated than commercial tools can offer. I can't be sure though as I've really invested a lot of time into Ardour/Jack.
So originally what was a budget based decision revealed capability in Ardour/Jack that attracted us artistically. Even so $25-70K has been spent on the Linux based set-up which we recently broke into two machines record/production and as muso's we are as comfortable talking to you about the relationship between filesystem I/O performance and high performance Linux kernels in our live recording rigs as we are talking about the sonic effect of the metals used in the transformers in our guitar amps, the resonance tuning used in the drum kits, headroom in the desk pre-amps, why we use particular mikes and so on.
Ardour inspired us to be educated about our production process from the instrument all the way to the final mastering stage.
It's very inexpensive compared to ProTools and it's much more robust and even refined.
Thanks, I'll check it out. Out of curiosity what sort of music do you produce?
First, I have a bad stomach infection right now and I took it out on you - that was wrong and I apologize for swearing and it was probably a bit harsh calling you naive too. I should not post when I have exceptionally low patience from being sick and bored. I'll re-visit this post in a couple of days when I am able to formulate a more civilized response.
I take it you have an opinion on the matter? Mind sharing it? As I understand it, they're trying to get nuclear weapons and they haven't succeeded yet. So the "if" applies. Nothing "naive" about that.
Perhaps after you explain the rest of your statement, I don't have time to excoriate you today.
Unlike Israel, if Iran gets nukes, then that's going to be big incentive for a bunch of other countries to get them, including Turkey, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. It also provides a channel for getting nukes to South America, should the military cooperation between Venezuela and Iran still be in effect.
Iran is happy to let the US continue to deal with their enemies, it's saving them money anyway and taking the heat off them. So while all you see is enemies and threats you will always be manipulated by your own fear. The US is doing Iran a *favor*, unlike Israel who continues to shit on US interests and the say "clean that up...bitch"
The court needs to understand that proper encryption is similar to those little ink filled theft prevention tags to clothes
I've always thought of encryption as the evolution of the envelope used to snail mail a letter.
That would be encryption with the keys available to everyone. After all, anyone can open an envelope. Hence the reference to a theft prevention device that destroys the intended target, or a safe that potentially cannot be opened in a reasonable amount of time.
That's what I mean by evolution, anyone can't open it.
If you don't understand Business, then you are a limited programmer. Programming taught me business and understanding business processes is how a programmer markets themselves to a business. If you aren't smart enough to understand business, you have no business in in IT.
Or, put another way, the court cannot perceive how it is the same as an extortion ring.
No, the court hasn't perceived it from the perspective of a citizen issue where the motivations are to commit a criminal act, such as fraud against citizens. They are currently blind to unlawful uses of what they consider to be legitimate access rights. The court has to be educated as to why this is a bad thing (tm).
It's hard to get real data about these issues, as there is a ridiculous amount of fearmongering in the media.
Unfortunately the Japanese government will not allow a free exchange of data and information. Tepco's incompetance in this matter is supreme, especially in the matter of not securing the plants backup power supply to mitigate basis design issues in the 'S' Class facilities of the plant. This nonfeasence was entirley avoidable and contemptable.
Actual real hard data, and the science in place to measure and publish results would at least allow us to deal with reality. I don't like the fearmongering, but in absence of real data we are left with nothing else but extrapolation based on the amount of material in the plant. I doubt the real news is any better.
For example, there are plenty of articles talking about the spread of radiation in the Pacific Ocean from Fukushima to other countries, but a simple dilution argument shows that any claim of danger from that effect is nonsense
If only it was that simple. Dilution is not what is in effect here, it's the opposite, bio-concentration. I know that seems counter-intuitive but that is the nature of the materials because radioactive elements accumulate in the food chain like some other dangerous chemicals like Poly Chloride Biphenyls. However radioactive isotopes also analogue a variety of elements that living creatures need to survive. Compounding this further they are emmiters of alpha, beta and, gamma radiation at various energetic levels.
So, pu-239 presents to the metabolism as a micro-nutrient. In Plutonium's case it presents as Iron to a metabolism. In the ocean a *lack* of iron is what stops metabolic processes, so Iron is readily absorbed ergo Plutonium is readily absorbed. So a small sea creature absorbs the plutonium and it gets eaten by steadily larger creatures, like a fish and then it's in the human food chain. Considering the size and variety of the human food chain, this is inevitable more than once.
This is the main reason to arrest the flow of Fukushima cooling water into the ocean, as plutonium is only one of the elements that it contains that has this property - but I'll follow with this single radioisotope as an example.
A single micro gram of plutonium is a fatal dose to a human being when ingested. As more isotopes are released into the environment the likelihood of exposure increases. The amount of time it takes to move through the food chain introduces a random amount of time before eventually ingested - by an actual person. From there a gestation time passes, like the flu is approximately 7 days, cancer is approximately 6 years. So even if someone ingests something immediately from Fukushima you still have a 6 year wait before you notice aything wrong.
Depending on the radionuclide, there are different cancers, radon 220 that causes lung cancer, or radium 226 that causes bone cancers, strontium 90, americium, iodine 131, cesium 137, the list goes on. The exposure vectors are many and varied. What has protected us is the likelihood of encountering one was low. Everyday this continues the possibility increases.
For airborne fallout, say just like TMI, the jetstream was the perfect carrier to the west coast of the US ensuring good coverage of land based produce. A cow eats radioactive grass, accumulates, say, strontium 90 in the milk, the milk is made into chocolate and you eat it in one of those multi-colored candy covered chocolate treats you so enjoy. Do you enjoy sushi? You can be exposed one or multiple times and after you die cremation makes the radioisotope airborne fallout amd decay allows it back into the watertable.
Locally produced food is another issue, and yes, the possibility for concerning contamination exists. Supposedly, food is tested in Japan, and the limits are stricter than in the US. Converting that into the probability that you will eat something that exc
I just visited japan and took the Safecast everywhere I went.
Obviously you were concerned enough to measure if there was any imminent danger, however, it is much harder to detect something you ingest.
Radiation is everywhere. Unless you can identify the source as the Fukushima disaster, it might be perfectly normal. Even if the source is Fukushima, at low levels, at some point you have to stop worrying about it and realize that plenty of other places on Earth have higher naturally occurring background radiation
The issues is not radiation emitted, it's the radionuclides emitting them. People get hung up on radiation but it's radionuclides that behave as micronutrients in the food chain that are dangerous. They are absorbed by the metabolism and continue to be energetic within the body. This is what triggers the cancers some years later.
Using my Safecast Onyx (hi Safecast folks!) I measure ~0.32 uSv/h in Dublin, next to a granite wall (granite is everywhere around here, and naturally radioactive). The article speaks of of 0.484 uSv/h, not much higher than that. On an airplane at cruising altitude I get about 2.0uSv/h. At home I might see 0.08uSv/h, and in the middle of the street somewhere around 0.15uSv/h. *
Even if you measured everything you ate or drank it is unlikely that you would have found anything. What you would need is a device to measure the probability of ingesting stronium 90, or ceasium 131, or plutonium - 239. It's like comparing the probabilty for survival from a crash in that aircraft by measuring the difference encountered by sitting next to an emergency door.
at some point you have to stop worrying about it and realize that plenty of other places on Earth have higher naturally occurring background radiation.
That's great but it's more likely that Japan now has very high concentration of radionuclides in very specific places in the ocean or land or sea, some of that area will be producing food. The likelihood of encountering in the food chain is now higher than the initial accident because the radionuclides have propagated further up the foodchain so if you ate food in Japan the likelihood of ingesting it has increased. The longer you stay there the more you will increase your chances of a permanent dose in your body, the more times you get one of those means the probability of some sort of cancer increases. A big problem for the locals, but not really a worry for you.
So your safecast was probably as effective as an umbrella in a hailstorm. It may have protected you from some minor danger however if the big one has your number on it, you will never know.
Slashdot Mirror
Last year I got stung by a fairly common benign species of jellyfish called a blue bottle in the surf on a hot summer's day swim.
I came up to the surface with the thing about a meter in front of me and immediately tried to escape. The tentacle wrapped around my left arm from my knuckles to the armpit, across the chest and onto the right are and, somehow, on my right left.
The Lifesavers (clubbies) saw the whole thing as I got out of the surf two of them helped me over to the clubhouse and doused me we very hot water. Over the next three hours I had icepacks all over me and a nurse debated whether I would go to hospital as I just hung onto consciousness due to shock. The pain was astounding, my glands were inflated and later it felt like my testicles had been massaged by a hammer. I had welts on my arms for a couple of weeks from the sting. A year later I am still pulling stingers out of my arms which come up as painful little pimple like things that bleed and take about two weeks to heal (I'm looking at three now).
That's "a fairly common benign species of jellyfish".
SEX Crime! sex CRIME!
that it will also make people kill kittens, kick puppies and generally abuse cute critters.
A prototype is one thing however the issue is existing reactor designs last an inadequate 4-5 decades.
I actually support the development of a reactor that addresses the issue of 70,000 tons of Pu-239 currently stored in reactor sites around America, simply because it's irresponsible for our generation to foist this issue onto later generations.
Unfortunately, because there is no geologically sound Nuclear waste dump in operation it's totally inappropriate to discuss building a new reactor facility until a proper containment facility is available. Yucca mountain is not a suitable site because it is made of pumice and geologically active evidenced by recent aftershocks of 5.6 within ten miles of a repository that is supposed to be geologically stable for at least 500000 years. The DOE's own 1982 Nuclear Waste policy Act reported that the Yucca Mountain's geology is inappropriate to contain nuclear waste, and long term corrosion data on C22 (the material to contain the Pu-239 and mitigate the ingress of water - yet another Yucca problem) is just not available.
We need something made of granite. The only human made structure with the potential to last 10000 years is Mt Rushmore, so it has to be an engineering project of that scale, because the logistical problems of transferring the 70000 odd tons of Pu239 to the "waste repository" (in reality - containment facility) are so involved that you want to get it right the first time and only do it once.
Even doing that will probably take 30 years to complete, but there is more to it than that.
I was a big fan of the Integral Fast Reactor, and in a way I still am. But the reality is 3rd and 4th generation reactors are a pipe dream because our material science is not advanced enough yet to produce a reactor design that will last thousands of years. If you are going to build reactors then do it properly and build a Terra-watt scale nuclear reactor facility the belly of a massive granite mountain with an attached waste facility that chomps up all your remaining plutonium or end all commercial nuclear activity altogether.
Nuclear power is energy intensive *after* the energy has been produced simply because our technology - especially material sciences - are not adequate to produce a Nuclear reactor (preferably a IFR style but safer) that has a life span that matches the geological time frames of the fuel. This exposes to all the issues associated with de-commissioning reactor sites every 4 decades or so. We need a reactor design that lasts at least 1000 years and is a closed loop, i.e. the plutonium goes in and nothing comes out (except electricity and possibly hydrogen). In short the smart thing is for us to do is stop producing toy nuclear reactors, while we still can, and build a dedicated place to store the plutonium (ie a granite mountain) that is also a suitable place to build a Terra-watt scale reactor that satisfies those characteristics, well designed and secured facility resistant to attacks even from orbit.
I don't hide the fact that I don't like the constant failure of the Nuclear Industry. But I'm also being realistic. I realise that the only way out of this mess is a well thought out and designed project because we have no other choice due to the nature of the materials. You have to redesign the entire industry, and it's a long term solution, but a much better legacy for future generations than a long term problem that will last a minimum of 25,000 years.
In the meantime we need to invest heavily in undeveloped, low externality, energy solutions like solar, wind, geo-thermal and micro-generation so there is enough energy *available* to carry out such an infrastructure project properly.
This is why I support reactor research but not commercial nuclear power, because so far the entire nuclear industry has been an unmitigated failure marred by industrial accidents and incompetence. I'm offering a solution path and any honest and realistic examination of the *facts* cannot draw any other conclusion of the Nuclear Industries characteristics to date.
Nuclear generation has a ramp up time to respond to baseload conditions. Baseload power is a function of the grid, not of a single form of generation. Solar Thermal is responsive for baseload and wind is more scaleable than nuclear or coal.
There are three sentences there, I presume you disagree with "Baseload power is a function of the grid, not of a single form of generation." which answers "Strident hyperbole with regards to the anti-nuclear energy has resulted in the real world build of coal power plants as renewals simply are suitable for baseline power."
What you say is from the perspective of the power plant, not from the consumer who doesn't care what percentage of peak load, base load is. What they care about is "availability" of electricity, which is generally how the term "baseload" is (incorrectly) used. Maybe I should have pointed that out however I was too tired.
In the context of your statement I understand what you are saying however, the OP means something different as the statement intends to say renewable energy sources are not suitably available for on-demand supply. What I am asserting is that the availability of electricity is a function of the grid that connect various sources to consumers.
It has nothing to do with governments or environmentalists. Nuclear industry panel (Westinghouse, General Electric, Bechtel, Sargent & Lundy, Northern States Power and Commonwealth Edison) design recommendations specifically targeted at reducing the opportunities to sabotage a nuclear reactor installation and thus increase safety were too expensive to implement. Some 30 improvements were suggested however the AP-1000 incorporates none of the design changes the industry *itself* recommends be applied to reactor facility design. AP-1000 is a rehash of the Standard Westinghouse Nuclear Utility Power Plant (SNUPPs) examples of which are installed at Wolf Creek and Callaway, you will note in the picture the uncanny resemblence to the AP-1000 design (and similar capacity).
None of the designs incorporate features to ease the teardown and eventual decommissioning of the facility. For example, Yankee Rowe, was a controlled shutdown of a functioning reactor. It cost half a billion dollars to clean-up and it was only 137 Megawatts, less than a quarter of the size of TMI-2. You have to wait decades to allow the *really* radioactive elements to decay. This is because new and highly radioactive elements are created in the reactor core. It's still not something that has been addressed in an industrially proficient way that makes the sites safe or 'greenfeild'. Considering the 104 reactor sites around America are multi-core the United States will be looking at a conservative estimate of a quarter of a *Trillion* dollars, at todays prices, on reactor decommissioning alone.
That's the real reason these plants aren't being built - they're simply too expensive in the long term.
Responsible Nuclear Advocacy entails understanding why the concerns exist. It's not pro or anti nuclear, it's uncovering the mess of political, legal, financial and legacy nuclear industry propaganda to get to understand what the issues really are. The Nuclear industry is a mess, and our generation has a responsibility to future generations to resolve the issue while we still understand it and have enough resources to deal with it. You blame the NIMBY, the Not In My Back Yard, yet this is an obsolete concept as legal frameworks in the 2005 U.S Energy bill *preclude* the concerns of local ratepayers being considered when considering the placement of Nuclear facilities.
It might surprise you to learn that the Energy act of 2005 also abolished a guardian of the American Economy called the PUCHA, that was put in place to prevent a repeat of the 1929 stock market crash. Yes folks, line up, line up come and get yer pre approved reactor designs for tax discounts you can get even if you do nothing, get ready to sell sell sell your utilities and ratepayers get ready to part with more and more cash.
Think about that next time you criticise environmentalists for a reactor not being implemented and direct it to the oil companies who actually deserve it.
Actually, with IFR, we have a materials technology problem.
Because military reactors have the budget to run to higher safety standards and are an order of magnitude smaller than a commercial power reactor that is run for a profit.
I think that's what you are getting at.
You have completely and utterly mis-represented the entire S.A article. The comparison was between a functioning NPP and CFG of the same capacity. The figures come from the NRC standards for release of radionuclides from an operational reactor. Nuclear power plants release noble gasses roughly every two weeks, which whilst benign when released, decay into deadlier elements, and thats NRC standard operating procedure for all nuclear plants *before* we start talking about unintentional or unauthorised radioactive effluent emmissions, especially disasters.
Did you actually read the article you linked to? It mentioned nothing about those disasters at all. Here is the clarification printed at the end of the article;
As a general clarification, ounce for ounce, coal ash released from a power plant delivers more radiation than nuclear waste shielded via water or dry cask storage.
Nuclear waste, it's storage and releases into the environment are a problem so staggering that National Geographic describes as "a mythical train that would reach around the Equator and then some" (it's in the first page of ten). Check it out it will give you some idea of the actual size of this problem.
However, Cherenkov radiation is blue.
Let's test that.
Nuclear generation has a ramp up time to respond to basload conditions. Baseload power is a function of the grid, not of a single form of generation. Solar Thermal is responsive for baseload and wind is more scaleable than nuclear or coal.
It's not radiation that is being released, it's radionuclides that emit radiation, the destinction being that radiation doesn't get into the food chain, radinuclides do. ALL radionuclide release into the environment produces mutagenic responses in metabolisms that in many cases result in some form of cancer. So yeah, it's a problem for the coal industry and the nuclear industry.
Radionuclides from coal plants are also not artificially enriched, so they are less *radioactive*.
The point of nuclear power isn't carbon footprint, it's "Net Energy Return". You can check the science that the nuclear industry itself has spent much time attempting to refute. You will find it's been peer reviewed and constructed using using U.S government standards for industrial process measurement. So until you come up with a better argument, then this one alone is enough to reveal any further investment in commercial nuclear power as pointless as we will leave a radionuclide legacy for future generations the way we were left a carbon legacy by previous generations. We simply have to find a way to do it better than nuclear or coal.
So what are you suggesting? Reduce the the ratio of containment volume to thermal power so it is below the design of the AP-1000 which is below that of today's operating PWRs. Further increase risk of containment over-pressurization and failure in event of a severe accident, as if Fukushima never happened?
Over Regulated? The Nuclear Industry *ITSELF* suggested a list of 30 improvements to reactor design which it couldn't afford to implement in the standardised design. It's simply too expensive and Wall street is interested in cost effective solutions like wind and solar that don't require artificial legislative constructs like the Price-Anderson act so they can be insured.
So we trade Plutonium-239 for Thallium-208 another gamma emmiter - very nasty stuff to deal with - very hard to deal with and still no idea what to do with the 70,000 tons of pu-239 we have.
Except Nuclear reactors have no green advantage. Groupthink is a cancer, no matter the group, no matter the think. It's a result of the very social proof your signature rallies against but comments like this quite clearly demonstrate you have become a victim to. With respect, I would seriously consider synthesising new opinions based on real information and reasoning.
Ooops, I meant to add some links for two pump.io clients ;
http://dianara.nongnu.org/ and http://impeller.e43.eu/
Disclaimer: I have nothing to do with the project whatso ever, I just read about it and it seemed like a good idea - enjoy
Seems like a good way for google to intimidate people into using the google+ network, which I may have considered, until now.
I was only just reading about pump.io the other day and it seemed like a more open way to do facebork and grople+ services. This seems like a better way for social network users to own their own networks and it be about them rather than the social media sites.
Perhaps this might the type of thing tech users could use to make closed social networks function together a little better. Things like this from google really signal that the dawn of the social network is over and that the time has come for opening it up to a new way, Social Network V2.0?
I'm sure we can all appreciate the irony of a German grammar Nazi.
I think that you raise a valid point about the 'commercial' user and Ardour, however I think the artistic decisions override this. I used to be a Logic user and I find that Pro-tools produced music is too sterile, formulaic and doesn't excite me sonically. I use Ardour to record several projects for a variety of acoustic control decisions. Admittedly we only produce our own music.
It's not really 'all-about-Ardour' but the JACK Audio Connection Kit that enables all the audio applications to interact and is a very powerful paradigm. I only looked at Ardour because a Pro-tools set-up was way outside of our budget and, yes, it was very difficult, but like any tool, you get used to it's warts and we have been using it since 2003. It is an artistic decision that has paid back dividends in terms of what we were trying to parallel in our live performances. Live recording and production of the live stems with Ardour seems to be it's strong point to me. We've found that Ardour is very stable when we record, but was more difficult to get it stable for production. I like the back hoe analogy, however I think Ardour/Jack is more like an Open cut mining digger, powerful but difficult to control without specialist knowledge. I think the onus for making the system perform is on the producer with Ardour and if you don't know how to do that then it's best to stick with ProTools or Logic.
Maybe it's mundane but we were using 16 inputs to record with Ardour cost-effectively in 2004, so much in the same way the old Analogue producers knew their kit I've also found that Ardour really pushes our knowledge of the digital process for recording. Well beyond the argument of 'compression crushed music' with Ardour our recordings handle transients and many other sonic aspects of the production process with a level of control that seems more integrated than commercial tools can offer. I can't be sure though as I've really invested a lot of time into Ardour/Jack.
So originally what was a budget based decision revealed capability in Ardour/Jack that attracted us artistically. Even so $25-70K has been spent on the Linux based set-up which we recently broke into two machines record/production and as muso's we are as comfortable talking to you about the relationship between filesystem I/O performance and high performance Linux kernels in our live recording rigs as we are talking about the sonic effect of the metals used in the transformers in our guitar amps, the resonance tuning used in the drum kits, headroom in the desk pre-amps, why we use particular mikes and so on.
Ardour inspired us to be educated about our production process from the instrument all the way to the final mastering stage.
Thanks, I'll check it out. Out of curiosity what sort of music do you produce?
All this time travel stuff gives me a head ache!
A fine example of leadership without empathy.
First, I have a bad stomach infection right now and I took it out on you - that was wrong and I apologize for swearing and it was probably a bit harsh calling you naive too. I should not post when I have exceptionally low patience from being sick and bored. I'll re-visit this post in a couple of days when I am able to formulate a more civilized response.
"if Iran gets nukes" - you are so fucking naive.
I take it you have an opinion on the matter? Mind sharing it? As I understand it, they're trying to get nuclear weapons and they haven't succeeded yet. So the "if" applies. Nothing "naive" about that.
Perhaps after you explain the rest of your statement, I don't have time to excoriate you today.
Unlike Israel, if Iran gets nukes, then that's going to be big incentive for a bunch of other countries to get them, including Turkey, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. It also provides a channel for getting nukes to South America, should the military cooperation between Venezuela and Iran still be in effect.
Iran is happy to let the US continue to deal with their enemies, it's saving them money anyway and taking the heat off them. So while all you see is enemies and threats you will always be manipulated by your own fear. The US is doing Iran a *favor*, unlike Israel who continues to shit on US interests and the say "clean that up...bitch"
"if Iran gets nukes" - you are so fucking naive.
The court needs to understand that proper encryption is similar to those little ink filled theft prevention tags to clothes
I've always thought of encryption as the evolution of the envelope used to snail mail a letter.
That would be encryption with the keys available to everyone. After all, anyone can open an envelope. Hence the reference to a theft prevention device that destroys the intended target, or a safe that potentially cannot be opened in a reasonable amount of time.
That's what I mean by evolution, anyone can't open it.
If you don't understand Business, then you are a limited programmer. Programming taught me business and understanding business processes is how a programmer markets themselves to a business. If you aren't smart enough to understand business, you have no business in in IT.
The court needs to understand that proper encryption is similar to those little ink filled theft prevention tags to clothes
I've always thought of encryption as the evolution of the envelope used to snail mail a letter.
Or, put another way, the court cannot perceive how it is the same as an extortion ring.
No, the court hasn't perceived it from the perspective of a citizen issue where the motivations are to commit a criminal act, such as fraud against citizens. They are currently blind to unlawful uses of what they consider to be legitimate access rights. The court has to be educated as to why this is a bad thing (tm).
Unfortunately the Japanese government will not allow a free exchange of data and information. Tepco's incompetance in this matter is supreme, especially in the matter of not securing the plants backup power supply to mitigate basis design issues in the 'S' Class facilities of the plant. This nonfeasence was entirley avoidable and contemptable.
Actual real hard data, and the science in place to measure and publish results would at least allow us to deal with reality. I don't like the fearmongering, but in absence of real data we are left with nothing else but extrapolation based on the amount of material in the plant. I doubt the real news is any better.
If only it was that simple. Dilution is not what is in effect here, it's the opposite, bio-concentration. I know that seems counter-intuitive but that is the nature of the materials because radioactive elements accumulate in the food chain like some other dangerous chemicals like Poly Chloride Biphenyls. However radioactive isotopes also analogue a variety of elements that living creatures need to survive. Compounding this further they are emmiters of alpha, beta and, gamma radiation at various energetic levels.
So, pu-239 presents to the metabolism as a micro-nutrient. In Plutonium's case it presents as Iron to a metabolism. In the ocean a *lack* of iron is what stops metabolic processes, so Iron is readily absorbed ergo Plutonium is readily absorbed. So a small sea creature absorbs the plutonium and it gets eaten by steadily larger creatures, like a fish and then it's in the human food chain. Considering the size and variety of the human food chain, this is inevitable more than once.
This is the main reason to arrest the flow of Fukushima cooling water into the ocean, as plutonium is only one of the elements that it contains that has this property - but I'll follow with this single radioisotope as an example.
A single micro gram of plutonium is a fatal dose to a human being when ingested. As more isotopes are released into the environment the likelihood of exposure increases. The amount of time it takes to move through the food chain introduces a random amount of time before eventually ingested - by an actual person. From there a gestation time passes, like the flu is approximately 7 days, cancer is approximately 6 years. So even if someone ingests something immediately from Fukushima you still have a 6 year wait before you notice aything wrong.
Depending on the radionuclide, there are different cancers, radon 220 that causes lung cancer, or radium 226 that causes bone cancers, strontium 90, americium, iodine 131, cesium 137, the list goes on. The exposure vectors are many and varied. What has protected us is the likelihood of encountering one was low. Everyday this continues the possibility increases.
For airborne fallout, say just like TMI, the jetstream was the perfect carrier to the west coast of the US ensuring good coverage of land based produce. A cow eats radioactive grass, accumulates, say, strontium 90 in the milk, the milk is made into chocolate and you eat it in one of those multi-colored candy covered chocolate treats you so enjoy. Do you enjoy sushi? You can be exposed one or multiple times and after you die cremation makes the radioisotope airborne fallout amd decay allows it back into the watertable.
Obviously you were concerned enough to measure if there was any imminent danger, however, it is much harder to detect something you ingest.
The issues is not radiation emitted, it's the radionuclides emitting them. People get hung up on radiation but it's radionuclides that behave as micronutrients in the food chain that are dangerous. They are absorbed by the metabolism and continue to be energetic within the body. This is what triggers the cancers some years later.
Even if you measured everything you ate or drank it is unlikely that you would have found anything. What you would need is a device to measure the probability of ingesting stronium 90, or ceasium 131, or plutonium - 239. It's like comparing the probabilty for survival from a crash in that aircraft by measuring the difference encountered by sitting next to an emergency door.
That's great but it's more likely that Japan now has very high concentration of radionuclides in very specific places in the ocean or land or sea, some of that area will be producing food. The likelihood of encountering in the food chain is now higher than the initial accident because the radionuclides have propagated further up the foodchain so if you ate food in Japan the likelihood of ingesting it has increased. The longer you stay there the more you will increase your chances of a permanent dose in your body, the more times you get one of those means the probability of some sort of cancer increases. A big problem for the locals, but not really a worry for you.
So your safecast was probably as effective as an umbrella in a hailstorm. It may have protected you from some minor danger however if the big one has your number on it, you will never know.