That's very true! I didn't even consider the cost of eating out. There can be a significant savings for sure. Plus, admit it: You don't go to the place that sells healthy sammiches, you go down to McDonalds and buy 5 $1 items and hog out. Working from home all but eliminates that.
I've been telecommuting on and off for 15-20 years and have found it has numerous benefits for myself, the employer and my own business.
First the diet issue. When I'm at home I found that I eat healthy food because I actually make a meal at lunch, consequently over the years, I have become quite a good cook.
Avoiding traffic has made me extremely productive as my output is generally higher than when I commute simply because the "slog" of driving isn't there and my brain is permitted a slow start for creative problem solving.
I did find that I would get stir crazy when it went on for too long and I missed the interaction I could get with colleagues and peers so I do both now and use the office to interact with colleagues.
An interesting blog, thank you for your perspective.
I think this guy planning to suicide tells us a lot about ourselves as a society and how we treat aging. What is old anyway? Is there some magic line you cross and then you are old. If that's the case I think that age is 19. If you are over 19 years old, you are old because the whole thing is relative anyway.
What does it say about us? Inevitably we will get old so, surely, it's in our own interests to treat old people well.
I think if you don't give notice then it raises red flags for your new employer. You could tell your new employer you'll start in two weeks, then tell your current employer to eff off, and then take two weeks for yourself (unpaid). But industries are so small that why would you want to burn bridges?
Because some employers are, well, shit employers and it's not about burning bridges but your personal mental health. Simply not saying anything is a good way of not giving them any more of your energy.
It's unlikely that you'll get asked why you didn't give any notice at your last employer but if you are, simply saying that you weren't treated well there and you wanted to avoid a confrontation to spend you energy on something more positive, was a better way for you to leave. You will have the added benefit of not ruminating about the past and be able to focus on your new role much better than if you had to deal with such a confrontation.
Because it's unsuitable to contain Nuclear waste. Chlorine 55 from airborne nuclear tests have been found inside the groundwater at Yucca. That means it takes less than 50 years for water to seep through the mountain. There are other reasons, seismic activity, the inability to protect pu-239 canisters from groundwater penetration and of course that it doesn't meet the DOE own original design criteria for a waste disposal site.
By blaming NIMBYS you deny finding an actual pragmatic solution like the Swiss have, using a granite mountain instead of pumice, following research from the CSIRO that radionuclides are contained in crystaline structures preventing them from entering groundwater. It doesn't help pointing fingers and is kind of a morally superior way of saying "Not In My Generation" and casually offsetting these problems to another generation, like a carbon problem was put onto ours.
Besides NIMBY concerns have been generally ruled out of these sorts of discussions by legislative processes. I think that the burden is on our generation to come up with realistic solutions to these issues as future generation my not have the resources to deal with them.
Unfortunately we are not know for being frugal with resources...
I never asserted that it was harmless..... I am sure i have read more recent ones, including more recent work on threshold models that involved nuclear plant workers.
Not saying that you did, just presenting the info I have. If you have access to more recent studies let me know what they are so I can check them out.
Actually, the vast majority of the radiation from the reactor was contained and most of the material is still inside. I don't know about you, but that tells me that the containment system did it's job pretty well given the circumstances.
A microgram of ingested pu-239 is fatal. It's irrelevant how much escaped since it is an analogue of iron and in the ocean iron is readily taken up by biological processes and will end up in the foodchain. As for doing its job it failed exactly as predicted when it remained unpowered in a SCRAM condition and according to the design flaws in its design basis that dictacted its operational characteristics. In laymans terms, TEPCO is criminally negligent for taking a risk (via nonfeasence) that would mean the Reactor could ever be unpowered.
But reactors that were licensed 40 years ago are being re-licensed for another 20 years and from what I hear there is little reason why those reactors couldn't go on for another 20 years after that.
Embrittlement of the pressure vessel dictates the lifespan of the reactor. This is the primary limitation to the net energy return of a Nuclear Reactor.
There's also the matter of reactors being far more predictable than so called 'renewables'.
Also irrelevant as the reliability of baseload power is a function of the grid, not the energetic source. Even so Reactors have notorious availability issues mainly becuase they were rushed to their current day outputs without proper development processes, which I think was mentioned in the article in passing.
As I recall (and have mentioned on/. more than a few times) the "'waste' problem" in the US simply did not exist before a certain US president decided on dubious "non proliferation" grounds to halt and ban any further reprocessing research.
Sept. 25, 1976 speech in San Diego, Jimmy Carter raised concerns about proliferation and promised that he would stop Barnwell until it was"needed" and safe, and only ever allow it to operate if it were on a multi-national basis.
President Ford initiated a secret study to set a nonproliferation policy. Ford's statement was finally presented in a campaign speech at Portsmouth, Ohio, just five days before the 1976 election. He said that control of nuclear proliferation had to take precedence over commercial and national economic interests. He called for a delay of up to three years in starting the Barnwell reprocessing plant. Some argue that it was Ford who actually stopped reprocessing, not Carter.
On April 7, 1977, President Jimmy Carter announced that the United States would defer indefinitely the reprocessing of spent nuclear reactor fuel. He stated that after extensive examination of the issues, he had reached the conclusion that this action was necessary to reduce the serious threat of nuclear weapons proliferation, and that by setting this example, the U. S. would encourage other nations to follow its lead.
President Carter's Executive Order also announced that the U. S. would sponsor an international examination of alternative fuel cycles, seeking to identify approaches which would allow nuclear power to continue without adding to the risk of nuclear proliferation. In early 1982, President Reagan rescinded the Carter policy, allowed programmatic (as opposed to case-by-case) approvals for reprocessing of U.S. origin fuel by the Euratom nations and Japan, and even said that reprocessing could again be considered in the U. S.
So Carters policy was rescinded by Reagan just 5 years after it's inception. Any argument and gnashing of teeth about Carters decision has been a moot point for well over 2 decades. Arguments about reprocessing must be carried out on the basis of the merits of the technology which is known to be costly to implement and very hard to run safely.
A list of some scientific studies on the effects of tritium, with references, in case there is any doubt regarding Triated water's effect on living beings.
Tritium is biologically mutagenic *because* it's a low energy emitter. This characteristic makes readily absorbed by surrounding cells. The available evidence from studies conducted journal a list of effects. From those works;
Tritium can be inhaled, ingested, or absorbed through skin. Eating food containing 3H can be even more damaging than drinking 3H bound in water. Consequently, an estimated radiation dose based only on ingestion of tritiated water may underestimate the health effects if the person has also consumed food contaminated with tritium. (Komatsu)
Studies indicate that lower doses of tritium can cause more cell death (Dobson, 1976), mutations (Ito) and chromosome damage (Hori) per dose than higher tritium doses. Tritium can impart damage which is two or more times greater per dose than either x-rays or gamma rays.
(Straume) (Dobson, 1976) There is no evidence of a threshold for damage from 3H exposure; even the smallest amount of tritium can have negative health impacts. (Dobson, 1974) Organically bound tritium (tritium bound in animal or plant tissue) can stay in the body for 10 years or more.
It's often said "of all the elements in nuclear waste tritium is one of the more harmless ones" and while it's more benign than most other radioactive effluents it's toxicity should not be under-estimated.
Tritium can cause mutations, tumors and cell death. (Rytomaa) Tritiated water is associated with significantly decreased weight of brain and genital tract organs in mice (Torok) and can cause irreversible loss of female germ cells in both mice and monkeys even at low concentrations. (Dobson, 1979) (Laskey) Tritium from tritiated water can become incorporated into DNA, the molecular basis of heredity for living organisms. DNA is especially sensitive to radiation. (Hori) A cell's exposure to tritium bound in DNA can be even more toxic than its exposure to tritium in water. (Straume)(Carr)
First, as an isotope of hydrogen (the cell's most ubiquitous element), tritium can be incorporated into essentially all portions of the living machinery; and it is not innocuous -- deaths have occurred in industry from occupational overexposure. R. Lowry Dobson, MD, PhD. (1979)
References;
Komatsu, K and Okumura, Y. Radiation Dose to Mouse Liver Cells from Ingestion of Tritiated Food or Water. Health Physics. 58. 5:625-629. 1990.
Dobson, RL. The Toxicity of Tritium. International Atomic Energy Agency symposium, Vienna: Biological Implications of Radionuclides Released from Nuclear Industries v. 1: 203. 1979.
Hori, TA and Nakai, S. Unusual Dose-Response of Chromosome Aberrations Induced in Human Lymphocytes by Very Low Dose Exposures to Tritium. Mutation Research. 50: 101-110. 1978.
Straume, T and Carsten, AL.Tritium Radiobiology and Relative Biological Effectiveness. Health Physics. 65 (6):657-672; 1993. [This special issue of Health Physics is entirely devoted to Tritium]
Laskey, JW, et al. Some Effects of Lifetime Parental Exposure to Low Levels of Tritium on the F2 Generation. Radiation Research.56:171-179. 1973.
Rytomaa, T, et al. Radiotoxicity of Tritium-Labelled Molecules. International Atomic Energy Agency symposium,Vienna: Biological Implications of Radionuclides Released from Nuclear Industries v. 1: 339. 1979.
And they were lucky they didn't take it, the one that was build was a complete environmental desaster. Showing how much you can trust the guys designing these things...
Really? And where did this "pebble bed reactor disaster" occur, pray tell?
Germany, at the same time Chernobyl happened from my understanding. Both German PBMR reactors cannot be disassembled for decades until radio isotopes transmute to less active elements.
Unless they were permitted to reprocess fuel as well as building breeder reactors, at which point there's be near zero waste to be subsidizing the storage on, and you'd practically eliminate the need to mine and refine pitchblende in order to obtain Uranium from the yellowcake. Win-win.
Except that's not how breeder reactors work. In a ratio of 2:1 of non radioactive elements if you put in 5 kilos of pu-239 at the begining you end up with 15 kilos at refuel time creating a massive issue for storage and completely inappropriate whilst there are no adequate storage facilities (Yukka Mountain is judged by the original engineering criteria of the DOE to be inadequate) to support a "Plutonium Economy".
You are probably thinking of a "Burner" reactor which has the highest burn-up rate of all reactors (~20%) but whose waste product, fissile ash, is extremely radioactive and toxic. Unfortunatley materials technology has not yet caught up to what we need to build these reactors.
The breakdown of U.S energy research and development subsidies reported by the US DOE is roughly 60% for nuclear, 25% to fossil fuels and 15% to sustainable energy sources.
Half a billion dollars worth of subsidies are available for procuring companies (i.e oil companies) proposing "pre-approved" reactor designs, even if they don't build it, and a 1.8 cent per kilowatt hour tax credit if they do.
In addition the 2005 U.S energy bill provided another $13 billion dollars worth of subsidies and revocation of the Public Utilities Holding Company Act (PUHCA, by George.W.Bush), put into law in 1935 to stop a re-occurrence of the 1929 stock market crash. It is this economic mechanism which allows the owners of nuclear power stations to syphon money from ratepayers in the same way utilities companies did in the 1920s.
For anyone whos says this is a problem of the "NIMBYs" (or the ratepayer) protesting the construction, it's not. Constructs in the law governing the location and construction of Nuclear Reactors specifically exclude ratepayer concerns in the consideration for approval. Utilities companies withdraw for their own reasons, usually insurance and liability as, even with the provisions of thePrice Anderson Act Nuclear power plants are too risky to operate.
The reality is if the Nuclear power industry was forced to cover it's own liability and fund itself it would cease to exist.
If that had happened the accident would not have happened.
In other words the moment the facility was operating with any chance of exceeding its design basis it should have been left shut down.
Also, how large a chance is "any chance"? There's always a chance that a large asteroid will crater a nuclear plant, for example.
I meant in relation to the backup generators, that if there is any chance the backup power supply could be affected by the type of natural disaster they were trying to guard against. The reactor itself was able to survive the quake, but the support faciltiies (generators) were not protected or redundant enough against secondary effects of the tsunami.
a) the seawall wasn't high enough
b) The nine backup generators were on the seaward side of the reactor, neatly bunched together where the brunt of the flooding would occur.
Plenty of options existed for mitigating that risk, like additional backup generators on the roof, on an elevated platform or in the hills away from the reactor in an effort to ensure the survivability of a backup electricity source.
The Fukushima reactors were designed to fail in the way that they did. The whole point of encasing that reactor in a lot of concrete was to contain an uncontrolled meltdown.
Except that in an uncontrolled meltdown the radioisotope mass of a reactor core turns concrete into powder, rendering it useles to do the very function you describe.
That negates the conclusion that something must have gone wrong on the human side.
No, actually it just makes it more important that the operators (TEPCO) operate the reactor inside its design basis, which they could not guarantee would occur.
There is a good argument to make here that the design had long been obsolete because Japanese society's tolerance for the risk of meltdowns has gone down greatly over the years. But the design of the reactors and their dependence on active cooling was known for decades.
and that operation of S type facilities containing radio-nuclides must never be without electricity. No one has any tolerance for meltdowns.
That doesn't mean anything went wrong just because there were "reasons". After all, the plant was scheduled to be decommissioned. Why apply costly upgrades to a plant that will be decommissioned shortly? Even when it's life was extended a few years ago, it was still with the understanding that it would be decommissioned after that point.
Because of the risk of, well, this exact situation. Additionally the plant would have to of been operated in a cool down mode for a decade after meaning reloaction of the diesel generators and adding height to the sea wall would have provided protection from cooling pool fires. Any upgrades applied would improve the saftey of the plant during the decommission phase where a risk of spent fuel pu-239 fires were still an ongoing risk for the decade *after* it is shutdown.
In other words the moment the facility was operating with any chance of exceeding its design basis it should have been left shut down.
The most well known mistakes for TEPCO and its regulators were the placement of generators and important electrical conduits on lower elevation areas that were flooded, not decommissioning Fukushima, and some slip ups during the emergency (particularly letting the fuel rod pool for reactor 4 dry out and its fuel rods to overheat). Some of these mistakes were foreseeable. But I think it's foolish to go from these mistakes to the story that malfeasance was responsible.
Indeed, more like an act of nonfeasance, amounting to criminal negligence.
They have fucked over Artists and the IT Industry. Copyright laws that are unequitable, extensible, DRM. WTF makes the Music Companies such a protected species in business anyway? Wasn't capitalism designed to cull business models that were no longer viable?
Seems to me that the existing music business establishment is trying to devise an internet business models that will fuck over music creative types until the end of time.
In 1959 the International Atomic Energy Agency signed and agreement with the World Health Organisation preventing them WHO from researching health consequences emanating from military and civilian atomic activities. It even prevents WHO from issuing warnings to exposed populations.
For those who claim this is a grand conspiracy theory, you can see the difference between theory and practice, within the actual text of the agreement, summed up by this 2004 quote of Dr Michael Fernex formerly of the University of Basel who worked for the WHO;
"Six years ago we tried to have a conference. The proceedings were never published. This is because in this matter the organisations at the UN are subordinate to the IAEA. Since 1986 the WHO did nothing about studying Chernobyl. It's a pity. The interdiction to publish which fell upon the WHO conference came from the IAEA. The IAEA blocked the proceedings; the truth would have been a disaster for the nuclear industry"
This is the history of how the International Atomic Energy Agency has been able to deal with the human health implications of Nuclear disasters by muzzling the science and medicine that can be conducted. For an accident as serious as Chernobyl even the hamstrung report from the World Health Organisation said;
"The international experts have estimated that radiation could cause up to about 4000 eventual deaths among the higher-exposed Chernobyl populations, i.e., emergency workers from 1986-1987, evacuees and residents of the most contaminated areas. This number contains both the known radiation-induced cancer and leukaemia deaths"
Imagine, based on the actual evidence, what the WHO may have been able to uncover had they been allowed to actually reveal the actual truth of the disaster. The Guardian however points out that the IAEA is ignoring the evidence of the volume of deaths occurring as a result of the Chernobyl disaster.The UNICEF report "Human consequences of the Chernobyl nuclear accident" summarised it neatly;
"Life expectancy for men in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine, for example, is some ten years less that Sri Lanka, which is one of the twenty poorest countries in the world and is in the middle of a long drawn out war"
This isn't from any radioactive fallout from the accident though, it's the economic fallout from a collapsed regional economy manifest as suicide and mental illnesses. So because they didn't die from cancer or radio isotopes those numbers don't get included.
Since cancer takes years to incubate, thus premature deaths and birth defects manifest over time. After this generation, the next generation and long after this disaster has passed into lore it will still be well within the toxic half-life of radioactive isotopes such as cesium 137, strontium 90 and plutonium 239.
The genetic abnormalities and diseases caused by this accident are generations away and unlikely to be seen by anyone alive today and direct exposure will occur as long as there is a food chain to absorb these isotopes and people to eat that food. So the occurrence of recessive gene damage that occurs across generations as the likelihood of combining those genes is increased as more people in the population ingest radionuclides via whatever means.
What we will never know is how many pregnancies fail to com to term from this catastrophe, however we are able to count birth defects, now a common occurrence after the Chernobyl disaster. The New York Academy of Sciences report r
Hard. Sometimes viciously. Mother nature has already shown us that dog-eat-dog is the best way to adapt, survive, and even thrive.
Except that it didn't. What the science is showing us is that it was the Bonobo chimps tendancy for co-operation allowed them to rear and protect more young and develop the problem solving abilities that led to tool making and the evolutionary advantage of a larger brain.
It's a shame that you think that way because I always though Americans were at their best when they work with others for mutual benefit. Perhaps you think you are a rock-star technologist and have forgotten that it takes teamwork to create something worthwhile, i.e. co-operation.
Or maybe you are just the asshole at work that everybody cannot stand being around, the one who makes it a misery for everyone else at work and doesn't poses the social skills to be able to interact with people in a civil manner, i.e. The bully.
I've got news for you, your way of thinking, interacting and generally getting by in a generally sociopathic way is obselete. The kind man is invincible because he has no enemies and it's the same in business. If this wasn't the case you wouldn't have seen such a radical shift in that attitude of Microsoft as it does business. They know people hate them and only worked with them because they had to.
If you think that that kind of viciousness is a strength then it is little wonder there are so many people living in America below the poverty line. I doubt you feel any empathy for them as your belief system probably make you feel entitled to a job. You'll feel entitled to empathy when you and the company you work for are shown no mercy, torn limb from limb and spat back onto the gutter where you belong because you made so many people hate you.
I was reading somewhere about gas giants exerting so much pressure on hydrogen that it turns into a metal and was wondering if there was some other state to iron if it is under so much pressure and heat that it doesn't melt but ends up in some sort of "super-state". So from what you are explaining Iron is already in a state that is similar to diamond. Now I start to think about the states of the material, wondering if diamond can melt or if Iron can be a gas, it might be a little much for a sunday afternoon with a hangover.
One of my siblings has a Physics degree, so I'll ask next time I see him. Thanks for putting me in the right direction.
why do people ruin it by polishing away it's surface and cutting it into unnatural shapes?
Women. They love shiney. Diamond is ++shiney++, the shiniest of the shiney. I looked up the octahedron, a fascinating shape and, what builds on it - amazing.
I appreciate the explanation, I suppose the area I'm delving into is the subject of some pretty intense research that sounds completely fascinating enough to want to understand more. Thank you.
the justice system can't be perfect because it exists to resolve disputes between imperfect people.
Indeed.
There are a few examples of "perfect" systems that fail miserably, communism is idealistically perfect and yet the now defunct Soviet Union's implementation was riddled with corruption and inequity. Native american Indians lived in a very harmonious society, along came the europeans and took up a plan to wipe them out. Human beings are born completely vulnerable, harmless and innocent but the christian church has declared that everyone is born a sinner.
I think our "modern" notions of idealologies that describe a society, Communism and Capitalism, are both riddled with imperfection that manifests as the corruption that has destroyed them both. Corruption in our society is the thing that makes our idealologies imperfect and as a race we are too niave to accept that we are not as smart as we think we are, that our biggest enemy is human nature. That human nature is born harmless and innocent, but we soon grow out of that and I think that the expression "sinner" just means that we are imperfect. It is that imperfection that causes the corruption in our societies.
If some force has caused the status quo be altered than the justice system is there to examine whether the forces involved are lawful or not and what "punishment" or reparations are required to re-establish that status quo.
Agree. I think what is at issue is what is the status quo? What is required to make it more fair to normal, everyday people whilst powerful people weild such influence.
With more laws being passed with secret or classified clauses we can be sure the status quo is changing into something that is less equal, less fair and more fascist. But how those changes will effect lives of Americans is still too subjective an issue to say anything definitive except that we continue to depend on the good judgement of our public servants and citizenry to take those issues and smooth them over by continuing to work for the good of the people.
Those changes are happening everywhere. I'm dismayed to say that whilst some of the provisions of the patriot act will eventually sunset in the US, they will not inside of Australia. I seems we have quite an active intelligence apparatus here and whilst they probably do a good job in general (though I have no idea what that might be) it doesn't mean I have to like the constant intrusion by the government into my affairs.
Free should mean free and as answerable to our imperfections as a society as we are to the justice system for illegal activity. Undermining freedom in a democracy just means we are undermining democracy. Undermining democracy anywhere means we are undermining it everywhere and I feel that democracies are the minority in the world. No matter how much I try to write and talk to people there are never enough people protecting the fragility of democracy and another imperfection, apathy, will eventually be our undoing.
Personally, I can't share any sympathy for either of the two brothers; their methods have caused more damage to the cause for freedom and the persistance of those values in the Bill of Rights than they can imagine. Their actions make everyone think that a war on terror is a good idea. Besides that, they have left only suffering and grief in their wake and their legacy will stand as that of a public villan.
Absolutely. I have little doubt that this will be used as a staging post by the domestic bad guys to take a few more freedoms away. Personally, I'd rather live with the risk. Governments should be answerable for their lack of ability to act on the information they receive, yet nowadays it seems that incompetance is an excuse to tak
If strangers have the right to "see" me with their eyes as I walk the street and walk in to a store, is it so different if that "seeing" is recorded? Is that REALLY a violation of "privacy" when one is in a public place? I don't see a huge difference nor do I see it as a 'privacy' violation.
I think what the "privacy" crowd wants is a right to "anonymity". And I'm not sure we have a right to "anonymity".
Yes, because it is transient memory, not a digital recording. If the government had done it's job in the first place there wouldn't even have been a bombing. They were warned by Russian intelligence but chose not to follow up on the lead. Since when does incompetence and the government not doing their job protecting the population give them the right to undermine the freedom of the population. If you're telling me that two ameteur bomb makers can travel overseas, get training, buy material, assemble a bomb, plant it and then detonate it with all of the intelligence apparatus we've already got then we all may as well admit that democratic society is a failed experiment.
Is this really about PRIVACY? Or ANONYMITY?
It's about personal freedom, try to keep that in mind. I'd rather live with the risk of being blown to peices because I don't want to live in a police state where I am watched randomly and all it means is the prison no longer has bars and walls.
I'm a long way off being a geologist but is it possible that the pressure on the solid core is so great that it becomes some state anagolous to a carbon diamond - but for Iron, hence an Iron Diamond. It's strange to think of the molten Iron around the solid core as a lubricant for the rest of the crust above and the core below it but maybe that's what it takes to apply that pressure and create that state of Iron Diamond.
I don't know - I'm just putting it out there and it's probably already been thought of, so maybe there are some geologists out there that can clue me in.
Thank you for such an insightful response. Most of your points are reasonable and agreeable - so I will start with the one that I don't quite understand;
Justice is never denied, it's just misunderstood from time to time.
I say justice is denied because apart from the justice system being imperfect by design, there are those powerful enough to deny their opponents justice. This may take the form of a corporate entity versus a person or a community or a set of vested interests that are being maintained. America does do justice well in an individual way but systemically it could better on a day to day basis.
Having had a few days to see how things pan out I suspect the visibility of this case will now ensure that it is done by the book and my position on the scapegoat has changed. I think the radicalisation of the older brother made him have a 'you won't take me alive attitude' that the younger sibling doesn't share.
Personally I am a great admirer of the Bill of Rights American citizens have established and think it should be used in my own country.
A suspect is not known to be guilty, only circumstantially involved in some way that draws attention the the possibility of guilty involvement, hence the meaning of suspect.
A scape goat does not know they are guilty until they are told that they are guilty. This way any justification to support whatever laws are required to comfort and protect the population from the bad people can be made without some pesky excuse like "innocent until proven guilty". Consequently the best way to prevent a "suspect" from "proving" their "innocence" is to kill them as to avoid and such inconveniences.
Only the outcome will point to the source motivation as, like the slow boiled frog, your freedom and democracy is progressively turned into a parody of itself while the bulk of the population are herded and corralled into body scanners everytime they leave or enter a building. We have to face it that we will never know the truth of these things whether they are a ill-prepared government or an adgenda being executed.
It's probably incompetance, but that's a good reason to get rid of some more freedom. Meanwhile access to guns and explosives to cause such devestation goes on and the original meaning behind having those guns, to have a government fearful of its population in case of despotism, is lost.
If you want to have freedom and democracy then there is some risk that you will die from someone using a weapon. Yet there are those who will complain and not accept the cost of their complacency that addresses the source of motivation for terrorism.
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That's very true! I didn't even consider the cost of eating out. There can be a significant savings for sure. Plus, admit it: You don't go to the place that sells healthy sammiches, you go down to McDonalds and buy 5 $1 items and hog out. Working from home all but eliminates that.
I've been telecommuting on and off for 15-20 years and have found it has numerous benefits for myself, the employer and my own business.
First the diet issue. When I'm at home I found that I eat healthy food because I actually make a meal at lunch, consequently over the years, I have become quite a good cook.
Avoiding traffic has made me extremely productive as my output is generally higher than when I commute simply because the "slog" of driving isn't there and my brain is permitted a slow start for creative problem solving.
I did find that I would get stir crazy when it went on for too long and I missed the interaction I could get with colleagues and peers so I do both now and use the office to interact with colleagues.
An interesting blog, thank you for your perspective.
What does it say about us? Inevitably we will get old so, surely, it's in our own interests to treat old people well.
Why? Because it is controversial? Some one needs to talk about it. This is the core problem now. Everyone is afraid to offend someone.
Political Correctness can be so fucking offensive.
I think if you don't give notice then it raises red flags for your new employer. You could tell your new employer you'll start in two weeks, then tell your current employer to eff off, and then take two weeks for yourself (unpaid). But industries are so small that why would you want to burn bridges?
Because some employers are, well, shit employers and it's not about burning bridges but your personal mental health. Simply not saying anything is a good way of not giving them any more of your energy.
It's unlikely that you'll get asked why you didn't give any notice at your last employer but if you are, simply saying that you weren't treated well there and you wanted to avoid a confrontation to spend you energy on something more positive, was a better way for you to leave. You will have the added benefit of not ruminating about the past and be able to focus on your new role much better than if you had to deal with such a confrontation.
Because it's unsuitable to contain Nuclear waste. Chlorine 55 from airborne nuclear tests have been found inside the groundwater at Yucca. That means it takes less than 50 years for water to seep through the mountain. There are other reasons, seismic activity, the inability to protect pu-239 canisters from groundwater penetration and of course that it doesn't meet the DOE own original design criteria for a waste disposal site.
By blaming NIMBYS you deny finding an actual pragmatic solution like the Swiss have, using a granite mountain instead of pumice, following research from the CSIRO that radionuclides are contained in crystaline structures preventing them from entering groundwater. It doesn't help pointing fingers and is kind of a morally superior way of saying "Not In My Generation" and casually offsetting these problems to another generation, like a carbon problem was put onto ours.
Besides NIMBY concerns have been generally ruled out of these sorts of discussions by legislative processes. I think that the burden is on our generation to come up with realistic solutions to these issues as future generation my not have the resources to deal with them.
Unfortunately we are not know for being frugal with resources...
I never asserted that it was harmless. .... I am sure i have read more recent ones, including more recent work on threshold models that involved nuclear plant workers.
Not saying that you did, just presenting the info I have. If you have access to more recent studies let me know what they are so I can check them out.
A microgram of ingested pu-239 is fatal. It's irrelevant how much escaped since it is an analogue of iron and in the ocean iron is readily taken up by biological processes and will end up in the foodchain. As for doing its job it failed exactly as predicted when it remained unpowered in a SCRAM condition and according to the design flaws in its design basis that dictacted its operational characteristics. In laymans terms, TEPCO is criminally negligent for taking a risk (via nonfeasence) that would mean the Reactor could ever be unpowered.
Embrittlement of the pressure vessel dictates the lifespan of the reactor. This is the primary limitation to the net energy return of a Nuclear Reactor.
Also irrelevant as the reliability of baseload power is a function of the grid, not the energetic source. Even so Reactors have notorious availability issues mainly becuase they were rushed to their current day outputs without proper development processes, which I think was mentioned in the article in passing.
Sept. 25, 1976 speech in San Diego, Jimmy Carter raised concerns about proliferation and promised that he would stop Barnwell until it was"needed" and safe, and only ever allow it to operate if it were on a multi-national basis.
President Ford initiated a secret study to set a nonproliferation policy. Ford's statement was finally presented in a campaign speech at Portsmouth, Ohio, just five days before the 1976 election. He said that control of nuclear proliferation had to take precedence over commercial and national economic interests. He called for a delay of up to three years in starting the Barnwell reprocessing plant. Some argue that it was Ford who actually stopped reprocessing, not Carter.
On April 7, 1977, President Jimmy Carter announced that the United States would defer indefinitely the reprocessing of spent nuclear reactor fuel. He stated that after extensive examination of the issues, he had reached the conclusion that this action was necessary to reduce the serious threat of nuclear weapons proliferation, and that by setting this example, the U. S. would encourage other nations to follow its lead.
President Carter's Executive Order also announced that the U. S. would sponsor an international examination of alternative fuel cycles, seeking to identify approaches which would allow nuclear power to continue without adding to the risk of nuclear proliferation. In early 1982, President Reagan rescinded the Carter policy, allowed programmatic (as opposed to case-by-case) approvals for reprocessing of U.S. origin fuel by the Euratom nations and Japan, and even said that reprocessing could again be considered in the U. S.
So Carters policy was rescinded by Reagan just 5 years after it's inception. Any argument and gnashing of teeth about Carters decision has been a moot point for well over 2 decades. Arguments about reprocessing must be carried out on the basis of the merits of the technology which is known to be costly to implement and very hard to run safely.
A list of some scientific studies on the effects of tritium, with references, in case there is any doubt regarding Triated water's effect on living beings.
Tritium is biologically mutagenic *because* it's a low energy emitter. This characteristic makes readily absorbed by surrounding cells. The available evidence from studies conducted journal a list of effects. From those works;
Tritium can be inhaled, ingested, or absorbed through skin. Eating food containing 3H can be even more damaging than drinking 3H bound in water. Consequently, an estimated radiation dose based only on ingestion of tritiated water may underestimate the health effects if the person has also consumed food contaminated with tritium. (Komatsu)
Studies indicate that lower doses of tritium can cause more cell death (Dobson, 1976), mutations (Ito) and chromosome damage (Hori) per dose than higher tritium doses. Tritium can impart damage which is two or more times greater per dose than either x-rays or gamma rays.
(Straume) (Dobson, 1976) There is no evidence of a threshold for damage from 3H exposure; even the smallest amount of tritium can have negative health impacts. (Dobson, 1974) Organically bound tritium (tritium bound in animal or plant tissue) can stay in the body for 10 years or more.
It's often said "of all the elements in nuclear waste tritium is one of the more harmless ones" and while it's more benign than most other radioactive effluents it's toxicity should not be under-estimated.
Tritium can cause mutations, tumors and cell death. (Rytomaa) Tritiated water is associated with significantly decreased weight of brain and genital tract organs in mice (Torok) and can cause irreversible loss of female germ cells in both mice and monkeys even at low concentrations. (Dobson, 1979) (Laskey) Tritium from tritiated water can become incorporated into DNA, the molecular basis of heredity for living organisms. DNA is especially sensitive to radiation. (Hori) A cell's exposure to tritium bound in DNA can be even more toxic than its exposure to tritium in water. (Straume)(Carr)
First, as an isotope of hydrogen (the cell's most ubiquitous element), tritium can be incorporated into essentially all portions of the living machinery; and it is not innocuous -- deaths have occurred in industry from occupational overexposure. R. Lowry Dobson, MD, PhD. (1979)
References;
And they were lucky they didn't take it, the one that was build was a complete environmental desaster. Showing how much you can trust the guys designing these things...
Really? And where did this "pebble bed reactor disaster" occur, pray tell?
Germany, at the same time Chernobyl happened from my understanding. Both German PBMR reactors cannot be disassembled for decades until radio isotopes transmute to less active elements.
Unless they were permitted to reprocess fuel as well as building breeder reactors, at which point there's be near zero waste to be subsidizing the storage on, and you'd practically eliminate the need to mine and refine pitchblende in order to obtain Uranium from the yellowcake. Win-win.
Except that's not how breeder reactors work. In a ratio of 2:1 of non radioactive elements if you put in 5 kilos of pu-239 at the begining you end up with 15 kilos at refuel time creating a massive issue for storage and completely inappropriate whilst there are no adequate storage facilities (Yukka Mountain is judged by the original engineering criteria of the DOE to be inadequate) to support a "Plutonium Economy".
You are probably thinking of a "Burner" reactor which has the highest burn-up rate of all reactors (~20%) but whose waste product, fissile ash, is extremely radioactive and toxic. Unfortunatley materials technology has not yet caught up to what we need to build these reactors.
The breakdown of U.S energy research and development subsidies reported by the US DOE is roughly 60% for nuclear, 25% to fossil fuels and 15% to sustainable energy sources.
Half a billion dollars worth of subsidies are available for procuring companies (i.e oil companies) proposing "pre-approved" reactor designs, even if they don't build it, and a 1.8 cent per kilowatt hour tax credit if they do.
In addition the 2005 U.S energy bill provided another $13 billion dollars worth of subsidies and revocation of the Public Utilities Holding Company Act (PUHCA, by George.W.Bush), put into law in 1935 to stop a re-occurrence of the 1929 stock market crash. It is this economic mechanism which allows the owners of nuclear power stations to syphon money from ratepayers in the same way utilities companies did in the 1920s.
For anyone whos says this is a problem of the "NIMBYs" (or the ratepayer) protesting the construction, it's not. Constructs in the law governing the location and construction of Nuclear Reactors specifically exclude ratepayer concerns in the consideration for approval. Utilities companies withdraw for their own reasons, usually insurance and liability as, even with the provisions of thePrice Anderson Act Nuclear power plants are too risky to operate.
The reality is if the Nuclear power industry was forced to cover it's own liability and fund itself it would cease to exist.
And that's exactly what happened.
If that had happened the accident would not have happened.
In other words the moment the facility was operating with any chance of exceeding its design basis it should have been left shut down.
Also, how large a chance is "any chance"? There's always a chance that a large asteroid will crater a nuclear plant, for example.
I meant in relation to the backup generators, that if there is any chance the backup power supply could be affected by the type of natural disaster they were trying to guard against. The reactor itself was able to survive the quake, but the support faciltiies (generators) were not protected or redundant enough against secondary effects of the tsunami.
a) the seawall wasn't high enough
b) The nine backup generators were on the seaward side of the reactor, neatly bunched together where the brunt of the flooding would occur.
Plenty of options existed for mitigating that risk, like additional backup generators on the roof, on an elevated platform or in the hills away from the reactor in an effort to ensure the survivability of a backup electricity source.
The Fukushima reactors were designed to fail in the way that they did. The whole point of encasing that reactor in a lot of concrete was to contain an uncontrolled meltdown.
Except that in an uncontrolled meltdown the radioisotope mass of a reactor core turns concrete into powder, rendering it useles to do the very function you describe.
That negates the conclusion that something must have gone wrong on the human side.
No, actually it just makes it more important that the operators (TEPCO) operate the reactor inside its design basis, which they could not guarantee would occur.
There is a good argument to make here that the design had long been obsolete because Japanese society's tolerance for the risk of meltdowns has gone down greatly over the years. But the design of the reactors and their dependence on active cooling was known for decades.
and that operation of S type facilities containing radio-nuclides must never be without electricity. No one has any tolerance for meltdowns.
That doesn't mean anything went wrong just because there were "reasons". After all, the plant was scheduled to be decommissioned. Why apply costly upgrades to a plant that will be decommissioned shortly? Even when it's life was extended a few years ago, it was still with the understanding that it would be decommissioned after that point.
Because of the risk of, well, this exact situation. Additionally the plant would have to of been operated in a cool down mode for a decade after meaning reloaction of the diesel generators and adding height to the sea wall would have provided protection from cooling pool fires. Any upgrades applied would improve the saftey of the plant during the decommission phase where a risk of spent fuel pu-239 fires were still an ongoing risk for the decade *after* it is shutdown.
In other words the moment the facility was operating with any chance of exceeding its design basis it should have been left shut down.
The most well known mistakes for TEPCO and its regulators were the placement of generators and important electrical conduits on lower elevation areas that were flooded, not decommissioning Fukushima, and some slip ups during the emergency (particularly letting the fuel rod pool for reactor 4 dry out and its fuel rods to overheat). Some of these mistakes were foreseeable. But I think it's foolish to go from these mistakes to the story that malfeasance was responsible.
Indeed, more like an act of nonfeasance, amounting to criminal negligence.
Seems to me that the existing music business establishment is trying to devise an internet business models that will fuck over music creative types until the end of time.
For those who claim this is a grand conspiracy theory, you can see the difference between theory and practice, within the actual text of the agreement, summed up by this 2004 quote of Dr Michael Fernex formerly of the University of Basel who worked for the WHO;
"Six years ago we tried to have a conference. The proceedings were never published. This is because in this matter the organisations at the UN are subordinate to the IAEA. Since 1986 the WHO did nothing about studying Chernobyl. It's a pity. The interdiction to publish which fell upon the WHO conference came from the IAEA. The IAEA blocked the proceedings; the truth would have been a disaster for the nuclear industry"
This is the history of how the International Atomic Energy Agency has been able to deal with the human health implications of Nuclear disasters by muzzling the science and medicine that can be conducted. For an accident as serious as Chernobyl even the hamstrung report from the World Health Organisation said;
"The international experts have estimated that radiation could cause up to about 4000 eventual deaths among the higher-exposed Chernobyl populations, i.e., emergency workers from 1986-1987, evacuees and residents of the most contaminated areas. This number contains both the known radiation-induced cancer and leukaemia deaths"
Imagine, based on the actual evidence, what the WHO may have been able to uncover had they been allowed to actually reveal the actual truth of the disaster. The Guardian however points out that the IAEA is ignoring the evidence of the volume of deaths occurring as a result of the Chernobyl disaster.The UNICEF report "Human consequences of the Chernobyl nuclear accident" summarised it neatly;
"Life expectancy for men in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine, for example, is some ten years less that Sri Lanka, which is one of the twenty poorest countries in the world and is in the middle of a long drawn out war"
This isn't from any radioactive fallout from the accident though, it's the economic fallout from a collapsed regional economy manifest as suicide and mental illnesses. So because they didn't die from cancer or radio isotopes those numbers don't get included.
Since cancer takes years to incubate, thus premature deaths and birth defects manifest over time. After this generation, the next generation and long after this disaster has passed into lore it will still be well within the toxic half-life of radioactive isotopes such as cesium 137, strontium 90 and plutonium 239.
The genetic abnormalities and diseases caused by this accident are generations away and unlikely to be seen by anyone alive today and direct exposure will occur as long as there is a food chain to absorb these isotopes and people to eat that food. So the occurrence of recessive gene damage that occurs across generations as the likelihood of combining those genes is increased as more people in the population ingest radionuclides via whatever means.
What we will never know is how many pregnancies fail to com to term from this catastrophe, however we are able to count birth defects, now a common occurrence after the Chernobyl disaster. The New York Academy of Sciences report r
I sense something.. a joke I have not heard since... a few days ago...
Like millions nerds all went "uuuurrrrrrhhhhhh", and were suddenly silenced.
Who'd have thought that Battlestar Galactica could have been so prophetic! Fracking frackheads.
Hard. Sometimes viciously. Mother nature has already shown us that dog-eat-dog is the best way to adapt, survive, and even thrive.
Except that it didn't. What the science is showing us is that it was the Bonobo chimps tendancy for co-operation allowed them to rear and protect more young and develop the problem solving abilities that led to tool making and the evolutionary advantage of a larger brain.
It's a shame that you think that way because I always though Americans were at their best when they work with others for mutual benefit. Perhaps you think you are a rock-star technologist and have forgotten that it takes teamwork to create something worthwhile, i.e. co-operation.
Or maybe you are just the asshole at work that everybody cannot stand being around, the one who makes it a misery for everyone else at work and doesn't poses the social skills to be able to interact with people in a civil manner, i.e. The bully.
I've got news for you, your way of thinking, interacting and generally getting by in a generally sociopathic way is obselete. The kind man is invincible because he has no enemies and it's the same in business. If this wasn't the case you wouldn't have seen such a radical shift in that attitude of Microsoft as it does business. They know people hate them and only worked with them because they had to.
If you think that that kind of viciousness is a strength then it is little wonder there are so many people living in America below the poverty line. I doubt you feel any empathy for them as your belief system probably make you feel entitled to a job. You'll feel entitled to empathy when you and the company you work for are shown no mercy, torn limb from limb and spat back onto the gutter where you belong because you made so many people hate you.
Viciousness is the advantage of a fool.
SUCK MY BALLS MICROSOFT, but I'm really tired and it could have said something about Youtube as well.
One of my siblings has a Physics degree, so I'll ask next time I see him. Thanks for putting me in the right direction.
Women. They love shiney. Diamond is ++shiney++, the shiniest of the shiney. I looked up the octahedron, a fascinating shape and, what builds on it - amazing.
I appreciate the explanation, I suppose the area I'm delving into is the subject of some pretty intense research that sounds completely fascinating enough to want to understand more. Thank you.
Australia.
Indeed.
I think our "modern" notions of idealologies that describe a society, Communism and Capitalism, are both riddled with imperfection that manifests as the corruption that has destroyed them both. Corruption in our society is the thing that makes our idealologies imperfect and as a race we are too niave to accept that we are not as smart as we think we are, that our biggest enemy is human nature. That human nature is born harmless and innocent, but we soon grow out of that and I think that the expression "sinner" just means that we are imperfect. It is that imperfection that causes the corruption in our societies.
Agree. I think what is at issue is what is the status quo? What is required to make it more fair to normal, everyday people whilst powerful people weild such influence.
Those changes are happening everywhere. I'm dismayed to say that whilst some of the provisions of the patriot act will eventually sunset in the US, they will not inside of Australia. I seems we have quite an active intelligence apparatus here and whilst they probably do a good job in general (though I have no idea what that might be) it doesn't mean I have to like the constant intrusion by the government into my affairs.
Free should mean free and as answerable to our imperfections as a society as we are to the justice system for illegal activity. Undermining freedom in a democracy just means we are undermining democracy. Undermining democracy anywhere means we are undermining it everywhere and I feel that democracies are the minority in the world. No matter how much I try to write and talk to people there are never enough people protecting the fragility of democracy and another imperfection, apathy, will eventually be our undoing.
Absolutely. I have little doubt that this will be used as a staging post by the domestic bad guys to take a few more freedoms away. Personally, I'd rather live with the risk. Governments should be answerable for their lack of ability to act on the information they receive, yet nowadays it seems that incompetance is an excuse to tak
If strangers have the right to "see" me with their eyes as I walk the street and walk in to a store, is it so different if that "seeing" is recorded? Is that REALLY a violation of "privacy" when one is in a public place? I don't see a huge difference nor do I see it as a 'privacy' violation.
I think what the "privacy" crowd wants is a right to "anonymity". And I'm not sure we have a right to "anonymity".
Yes, because it is transient memory, not a digital recording. If the government had done it's job in the first place there wouldn't even have been a bombing. They were warned by Russian intelligence but chose not to follow up on the lead. Since when does incompetence and the government not doing their job protecting the population give them the right to undermine the freedom of the population. If you're telling me that two ameteur bomb makers can travel overseas, get training, buy material, assemble a bomb, plant it and then detonate it with all of the intelligence apparatus we've already got then we all may as well admit that democratic society is a failed experiment.
Is this really about PRIVACY? Or ANONYMITY?
It's about personal freedom, try to keep that in mind. I'd rather live with the risk of being blown to peices because I don't want to live in a police state where I am watched randomly and all it means is the prison no longer has bars and walls.
I don't know - I'm just putting it out there and it's probably already been thought of, so maybe there are some geologists out there that can clue me in.
I say justice is denied because apart from the justice system being imperfect by design, there are those powerful enough to deny their opponents justice. This may take the form of a corporate entity versus a person or a community or a set of vested interests that are being maintained. America does do justice well in an individual way but systemically it could better on a day to day basis.
Having had a few days to see how things pan out I suspect the visibility of this case will now ensure that it is done by the book and my position on the scapegoat has changed. I think the radicalisation of the older brother made him have a 'you won't take me alive attitude' that the younger sibling doesn't share.
Personally I am a great admirer of the Bill of Rights American citizens have established and think it should be used in my own country.
I'm certainly grateful for your rationality.
A suspect is not known to be guilty, only circumstantially involved in some way that draws attention the the possibility of guilty involvement, hence the meaning of suspect.
A scape goat does not know they are guilty until they are told that they are guilty. This way any justification to support whatever laws are required to comfort and protect the population from the bad people can be made without some pesky excuse like "innocent until proven guilty". Consequently the best way to prevent a "suspect" from "proving" their "innocence" is to kill them as to avoid and such inconveniences.
Only the outcome will point to the source motivation as, like the slow boiled frog, your freedom and democracy is progressively turned into a parody of itself while the bulk of the population are herded and corralled into body scanners everytime they leave or enter a building. We have to face it that we will never know the truth of these things whether they are a ill-prepared government or an adgenda being executed.
It's probably incompetance, but that's a good reason to get rid of some more freedom. Meanwhile access to guns and explosives to cause such devestation goes on and the original meaning behind having those guns, to have a government fearful of its population in case of despotism, is lost.
If you want to have freedom and democracy then there is some risk that you will die from someone using a weapon. Yet there are those who will complain and not accept the cost of their complacency that addresses the source of motivation for terrorism.
Yet again, the people are denied Justice.