Alvarado said that Microsoft had used its position as the dominant operating system maker to 'require consumers to purchase computers pre-installed with the Vista operating system and to pay additional sums to "downgrade" to the Windows XP operating system.
Because I believe that the USA is flirting with becoming a fascist police state and that most people don't understand how dangerous this really is. If the general public only realized what was possible, they'd see that no government program or benefit or promise of security is worth even the slight risk of allowing this to happen.
It's already happened friend, not fascism but corporatism.
The rest of what you said about the nature of a for-profit enterprise is honestly rather obvious. There is no need to insult my intelligence or my powers of observation.
No insult intended, just being blunt.
I prefer to blame the government officials who hired that corporation for not properly understanding what they were dealing with and whether it was really the best tool for the job. They were the ones who decided that this problem would be solved in this manner. They are the ones who could fire this corporation and set up a governmental department to take care of a task that really should not have an underlying profit motive.
I wish that were the case but were are already beyond that point. Corporations use lobbying and political donations as legal loopholes to control the political process in their favour. Without political support it simply is not possible in America, it is a one way process. If you can cite one or two examples where a corporate entity has been kicked out and replaced by a government entity in America recently I would be very surprised. Dissent used to be the seed of excellence, today freedom is a euphemism for 'you are free to agree' or 'you are free to conform'.
As long as there are incompetent government officials who will continue to hire them when they are not the best tool for the job, there will never be a shortage of corporations like this and failures like this. I'd rather realize that fact and recognize the single source of the problem than try to assign blame to a multitude of secondary results.
I must admit I thought I was going to get a dogmatic rant from you but I see that you have actually made most of the journey to understanding western societies predicament yourself, I commend you. However, the systemic issues I mentioned run a lot deeper than I implied which allow incompetence to become the everyday and mediocrity to become excellence. I travelled the same line of reasoning as you and if you will indulge me, I would like to share with you the conclusions I eventually uncovered.
There are two main issues:
1. Political issues.
Basically the political process is owned by whoever has enough money to pay for their interests. It is this mechanism that is in place that prevents our politicians from doing anything meaningful and prevents our society from moving forward. Issues from the electorate no longer have any voice. This structure, that exists, reduces the selection of your president down to who will be the CEO of America Pty. Ltd. A sad fate for such a great country. The political process must draw it purpose and funding from the electorate. This is the linchpin issue. Proposed solution: Make donations from corporations to political entities illegal.
2. Corporate Governance.
Profit, as we agreed, trumps all. There are CEO's out there who want to make quality decisions for their companies and the community. The issue here is the board of a company is bound by law to make the decision that maximise shareholder value. A Board or a CEO may not want to sack 10,000 workers as opposed to re-training or dump toxic waste opposed to processing but because there is no liability for the externality they are obliged to maximise shareholder value. This forces the community to bear the cost of the externality. Updating the legal system to force industry and corporations to factor those externalities into their costs effectively eliminates the need for government regulati
the military-industrial complex. You talk about a faceless machine with no regard for human life or human dignity, well, there is none on the planet that matches this one.
And why do you think this faceless machine exists?
None of this changes any point I've made, however.
Yes it does.
A for profit company's goal is 4.Profit! That means *every* process run by the company is viewed through the 'what does this do for our bottom line' lens and whether they are prepared to take a risk on a process. All this reveals is that there maybe *other* areas they are prepared to risk process compliance for profit illustrating some systemic issue exists that allows these things to happen.
When you compare this to the way the U.S Navy runs it's Nuclear fleet of Subs and Ships they don't have a obligation to shareholders to produce a profit. They have a budget and they are obliged to spend it in the performance of procedure's to carry out their mandate.
There are some instances where getting the government to run something is totally appropriate, things where you just don't expect to make a profit - you just expect them to be there, functioning. That is when it *is* appropriate to have it run by the government.
I'm sorry but I think I was bending the numbers your way in a not-so-subtle form of sarcasm.
Lack of sleep takes away my ability to understand sarcasm. I should actually go to bed now:-}
I asked why (once you have nuclear) you would continue to use coal, yet you answer with the answer that we use coal, therefore we will always use coal. This makes no sense, If we have nuclear, then coal falls by the wayside, therefore it is not reality in that situation, only currently. You seem to be stuck in a rut on that one.
Fair enough. What I am saying is it is the current situation. The only thing that I can see that will break the dependency deadlock on (today's)Nuclear and Coal is Wind/Solar/Geo-Thermal and Micro Generation and heavy investment in those technologies should begin yesterday.
It's not a rut, per se, but given the above is achieved the *entire* nuclear industry still requires a bottom up re-design to redress the issues that have manifest over it's first generation before any serious deployment of nuclear power plants can occur. At the very minimum we need a geologically stable granite containment facility and an infrastructure plan to contain plutonium before we can even consider new reactor plants.
And that's just the starting point. MIT recommends the once-through cycle for reactors that takes us to %60 nuclear capacity for the next 50 years - so there will still be coal in the mix. So we are *still* talking PWR like the AP-1000, which itself has some design characteristics that do not re-assure me.
Until then the best we can get out of a nuclear reactor is 40 years - maybe, and it won't even be operating for it's entire lifespan and it will be lucky to operate at it's peak efficiency when it is.
Even fuel reprocessing will require new technologies, and if it were to be powered by a Nuclear reactor I would guess that it's power requirements would be a dedicated 1Gw Reactor which halves it's current energy usage.
On the 2nd point, (your link does not work, I looked it up myself), most of what I see there is political problems as I mentioned in my original reply. Laws are changable, and political agendas change. They closed a 1968 design due to political pressure and a rocket attack, not Physics problems. I'm not buying it.
Apologies for the broken link of the Superpheonix but it would still have had it's inevitable problems at the end of it's 40 year life span. It's not physics issues we are dealing with, but the engineering issues and material sciences issues. Have no doubt, I do believe that the inevitability of a breeder program that converts transuranics to fissile ash should be supported by a proper research program to develop the technology - it just not practical to implement breeders with today's technology. Any breeder program has to be supported by a reactor design that has a similar lifespan to the half-lives of the fissile ash created. Not 40 years, but engineered to last 1000 year so that decommissioning the facility can be matched to the decay of the, what we can now call, waste products. With a stable site and better materials technology to support engineering challenges we can devise how we can extract the energy from that plutonium and convert it to fissile ash (so the time frames for containment are more manageable) using a properly engineered breeder.
Sure, we should maintain the *option* of implementing a nuclear program, but as I've outlined above, the only realistic way to achieve that is a properly developed infrastructure plan that begins with a geologically stable containment facility.
Take 1 days total power out put of the nuclear plant and multiply by.20 (the concrete plant's consumption of total output) and divide that by 18,250 (the operational life time of the nuclear plant in days) and watch your calculator go into negative scientific notation. Calling a nuclear plant a greenhouse producer (considering what it would save) with that trade-off is laughable at best.
Hi - been to busy to respond till now. I think you have made some overly conservative estimates for the energetic expenditure for the constructing and demolishing a nuclear power plant. I include demolition because it is part of the life cycle of the plant. Estimates for this are between 8000000 Gw and 240000000 Gw of energy which is a lot higher than your estimates.
Huh? Is this mandated by law or something? Why would you not use the nuclear power (after scaling up)? This makes no sense.
This is reality. American enrichment is powered by Coal.
Regarding the CFC's: I'll take your word for that, but it is a new one on me. If we would stop our stupid policy of not allowing breeder reactor technology, that would stop that issue,
Well that would be trading one type of toxicity for another, our material sciences technology is not yet advanced enough to support a breeder program and they are fickle beasts to operate. For example the French have well developed reactor technology and the Superphoenix breeder suffered numerous problems before being closed down.
Even an MIT report recommends the once through cycle if an increase in the use of Nuclear power is to be considered.
However at least the Catholic church isn't dismissing the idea's, which is a long way from the outright attacks made by more fundamentalist churches. The thing about this debate is that while fundamental theist's attack science and the theory of evolution using doubt, no counter-argument is made that has any impact on the faith of proponents of Intelligent Design.
Science and Religion are different bodies of knowledge, but not mutually exclusive because both use reason as a tool for different goals. There are scientific people who are religious and religious people who are scientific. Making a science based argument about the ignorance of Intelligent Design to someone who has a predominately religious background make both sides dig their heals in. That's why this debate has become so polarised.
I've found that having an understanding of the doctrine that supports scientific investigation and framing that discussion so that it attacks the underpinnings of Intelligent Design an important tool. Building and demonstrating an understanding of the theocratic aspects of this debate is an important tool to disarming the proponents of Intelligent Design and helping them understand why science is important to their faith.
A scientific argument explaining the shortcomings of Intelligent Design to a religious person really just reveals their ignorance of science and, as such, they feel ignorant of science but it's not important to them.
A theocratic argument explaining the shortcomings of Intelligent Design to a religious person reveals the shortcomings of Intelligent Design when compared to the discoveries made by a study of Evolution.
When confronted with one of these discussions I point out that Intelligent Design limits how far humanity explores nature, or in theocratic terms "the works of God". I go on to point out that there is nothing in the Theory of evolution that attacks Christian beliefs but, in fact, uses science as a tool to uncover the amazing wonder of how nature works, or in theocratic terms "the glory of God".
It's at this point that proponents of Intelligent Design start to join the dots for themselves. The insecurity they feel about Darwin's idea's attacking their belief system give way to the possibility that Intelligent Design could actually be a form of blasphemy, something that is important to a religious person.
I think it's important to frame the debate this way because the Intelligent Design position cleverly deceives religious people into accepting ignorance over education and promotes the notion that science aims to dispel religion. Science and Religion have to co-exist in society if we are to dispel ignorance and fundamentalism.
how much analysis has been done regarding the climate change that would ensue if so much wind (read energy ==> heat) is taken out of the atmosphere?
You are extracting solar energy from the atmosphere.
youre messing with macro air currents, if this ends up affecting the air flow in the upper atmosphere, as no doubt it will if built on such a huge scale, what do you think will happen?
Could be a good thing considering the amount of carbon dioxide we have released by burning coal it might reduce the severity of storms by sinking energy *out* of the atmosphere.
im all for "renewable" energy, the problem is that i dont think enough though has been given to the potential negative impacts that it might cause if used on such a massive scale.
The negative impacts of the existing industries (coal and nuclear in particular) are well documented and simply not sustainable. We can't continue to use coal as much and, realistically, the nuclear industry requires a redesign that will likely take 30-50 years to implement before it is able to produce energy with out the toxic mess the current industry has made. The reality is we have not invested in low externality energy sources like Wind or Solar in a serious enough way to ensure continuity of energy growth. The pressing issue is to control carbon emissions, that is what we know now.
More FUD. Nuclear plants use far less concrete per megawatt capacity than wind turbines,
Some of the points your reference article raises wrt wind power steel and concrete are compelling but I think your claim remains to be seen. First of all your reference compares 1990's vintage wind turbine which negates the fast development cycle for wind power technology and the last 15 years of development. The next consideration is if the installation sites for a wind turbine can be re-used - re-using much of the energetic inputs and how mass production drives efficiencies into the industrial techniques, as wind power is still an emerging technology.
Your reference claims a 60 year life cycle for the nuclear power plants which is unlikely to be attained because Neutron irradiation embrittlement is a significant problem affecting the pressure vessels (and other components) of nuclear reactors, this is a fundamental issue that limits the lifespan of nuclear reactor by introducing failure modes not accounted for in the basis design.
and their lifecycle CO2 emissions are correspondingly smaller (but they're both orders of magnitude below coal, so it's a moot point)
Nowhere on the page you cited was there a reference to the mining, enrichment, decommissioning of plants and containment of spent fuel in the carbon calculations - so you cannot make a strawman argument attacking lifecycle Co2 emmissions of wind by not including these factors into the overall calculations for Nuclear. Furthermore referring to such potent concerns as "FUD" does not make for a honest comparison, especially when we are *only* talking about the carbon emissions and not the overall toxicity of the nuclear fuel cycle.
FUD. US nuclear plants average a capacity factor of >90%.
According to the glossary for the page you cited:
Generator capacity: The maximum output, commonly expressed in megawatts (MW), that generating equipment can supply to system load, adjusted for ambient conditions.
So I re-iterate that the capacity you are referring to does not speak to the actual availability of a plant to produce power at it's capacity.
Interestingly, the figures in themselves are revealing as the peak gains in capacity have been made when the plants are in the peak of the operating life cycle (10% gain in the '80's, 22% gain in the '90's) of the plants. As the plants age and components wear, further outages will affect availability (indicated by an oscillation of peak capacity during the 00's). I expect the capacity to produce power will only mitigate reduced availability by implementing advances in fuel rod and coolant technology. However, this stresses an ageing reactor which is a very risky business and will have an even greater effect on availability of the reactor to produce power - because the entire reactor is off line to repair it.
In comparison to an 800Mw wind installation, the distribution of the generating capacity means an outage doesn't affect overall availability - it only reduces the capacity for the duration of the outages. To be fair the Nuclear industry has made advances in capacity to generate, but I would expect the Wind Power industry to make similar advances as it's industry matures.
Wind power advocates routinely give peak production capacity as if it was actual production capacity, Unlike nuclear power......., which... produce 90% or more of their maximum capacity for the lifetime of the plant,
If you are going to say that I think you also have to look at the availability of the Nuclear plant. If the plant is only available to produce power for %50 percent of it's expected 40 year lifespan then it's actual output is only 45% of it's capacity to produce. So if a Wind installation has a higher availability to produce power then it's more realistic to compare the output of the $TYPEOF plant.
Despite the generous subsidies the Nuclear industry receives, worldwide renewable energy sources produced three times the output and six times the available capacity of Nuclear power *in 2004*. The reality of Wind and Solar is the capacity is much easier to bring to market, is easier to insure and generates a return for investors much sooner than Nuclear.
Also Nuclear is still a greenhouse gas emitter. Concrete is the third biggest greenhouse gas emitter in the world and concrete is the largest input cost in terms of building a Nuclear plant. Enrichment is powered by coal plants (approx 1Gw worth) and the process is also the number one cause of industrial CFC emissions from the U.S. CFC's 20,000 times more potent than Co2 at 1 million pounds, thats 453,592 kilgrams, PER YEAR since the bans began. That is 8 618 255.03 kilograms *since* CFC114 was banned. That's the equivalent of 172,365,100,000 kilograms of carbon dioxide from the enrichment process alone. Then there is also the carbon input from mining and crushing rock (500 ton's of rock per 1 kilo of uranium), decommissioning, containment etc.
A study by Stanford university collated 8000 wind records worldwide and found a potential global wind power resource of 72 Terrawatts - that's 40 times the entire world consumption in 2000. We only need to tap 20% of that to satisfy world energy needs. As far as the political will to connect that capacity to the grid, what is dishonest is politicians yielding to the coal lobby not to connect that *available capacity* to the grid - which is why a claim of 25% capacity, for wind, can be made.
Now this is the first time I've advocated for wind power, I just think that for a country like America, that is so blessed with HUGE amounts of wind and Solar resources, it's an absolute no-brainer.
Body parts, famous authors, historic events positions in the Karma Sutra, we name our servers after something to make them easier to remember. *NEWSFLASH* that's why the servers allow you to name them and don't automatically assign a name from a unique id.
Hey Fred we seem to be having a problem on a2faf98 I can't seem to mount/fucknuckle from c4f61f03 but it works fine from ac9989fb.
My next naming scheme for servers is, um, erh, I know, slashdot users who come up with the most interesting naming scheme for servers. So none of my servers will be called MrKaos.
Now while this is a workable plan it is _also_ pie-in-the-sky as we can't even get our collective butts to agree on how to get a primary established off planet.
We can't even get our collective butts not to use plastic shopping bags. I fear our society is to vapid for such a proposal, unfortunately.
There, fixed it for you. Yes, old reactor designs are a dead end.
Wow, someone other than me is saying this.
They are prone to a risk of melt-down (though that risk has been, mostly, successfully managed for the past 30 years; yes, Three Mile Island was a problem, but, keep in mind that even with the TMI incident, the safety features of that reactor design prevented an escape of radiation when the melt-down did occur),
they only extract a miniscule amount of the potential energy available in the fuel, and they create waste that "would have to be kept under armed guard forever".
True, current reactors extract around 0.3% of the energy from the fuel.
Nuclear physicists and engineers have continued to do R&D for the past 30 years,
Also true, unfortunately material science haven't caught up with the design.
We have, right now, a Nuclear Waste problem, because of those previous generations of dead-end reactor designs, that must be dealt with.
No, argument there.
Putting the stuff into storage for 100000 years is not really a solution.
Actually it's the beginning of any serious advocacy for the Nuclear industry. 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.
This first step is to have a facility *available* and *capable* of doing that exact thing. Without it, it's not possible to move the nuclear industry forward.
The only real solution to the nuclear waste problem is to further process it to make the waste 'safe' and short lived. Now, I do not really know if the design proposed in this article is "the solution" or not. Maybe it is. There was also a solution proposed in the 1990s, called the Integral Fast Reactor, which was essentially melt-down proof
IFR is interesting but it suffers from some pretty serious shortcomings. Sodium Coolant==Not Good. The Forty year life makes this especially serious as ingress of air/moisture into the system makes the reactor could make for a pretty serious explosion. Finally the theoretical passive safety feature of IFR's are appealing, but breeders are a fickle beast with finer margins of safety, and less time to react to problems. An accident at a Fast reactor with sodium coolant would be more serious than TMI or Chernobyl, with deadlier isotopes.
The reason I mention the Integral Fast Reactor, is that is an example of a new design which I've studied more about than this new fission-fusion hybrid in the article, which demonstrates that the old arguments don't *necessarily* apply to new designs. Every proposal must be studied and evaluated on it's own merits - you can't just make a sweeping statement that Nuclear power is a dead end.
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 produ
Nuclear power is a dead end. No new nuclear plants have been built in 25 years because: no company will insure one; no investors want to take the risk (sometimes the free market IS right); if the company that built one had to pay to dispose of it after its useful life it would cost more that the value of the energy it produced
Actually, Mr AC has summed it up quite appropriately. Maybe the first part is a troll but the rest should be modded 'informative' - because it's actually true.
you did not count about the decommissioning costs of the plant and storage of long term radioactive material", whose cost is included in ALL studies about nuclear power
Where?
As far as I know the only reactor to have been decommissioned was Yankee Rowe, a 167 Mw reactor, and that cost almost half a billion dollars and the fuel rods are still on site. If those costs scale to the size of the reactor core then you are looking at roughly half a trillion dollars in decommissioning the existing 104 reactor facilities - at todays prices.
Wouldn't it be wise not put all of our eggs in one basket, so to speak, and rather than investing the lions share of energy research funding into Nuclear/Oil and Coal, start investing more money into Solar/Wind Geothermal? I do think we have to continue to develop reactor technology, but frankly, reactor designs proposed today still have the primary flaw that all reactors have - a forty year lifespan.
Even if, as I see it, nuclear is a longer term option, until we have better materials technology available to create a reactor with a minimum 1000 year life span any serious Nuclear advocacy should consist of lobbying for construction of a geologically stable containment facility, in granite, that could also house such a reactor and reprocessing facility. The choice of site should be based on solid engineering and scientific principals, not because a representative for Nevada didn't show up for the vote.
A pragmatic assessment of Nuclear Power would recognise that it can only be realistic as a longer term option that will *require* the support of Solar/Wind/Geothermal energy sources if we are to maintain continuity of our energy growth. Simply put, previous generations of politicians were short sighted. Coal and Oil borrow energy resources from the past and Nuclear borrows resources from the future (to handle radioactive element containment). Solar/Wind/Geothermal are the only sources of energy that are available in the present and do not place a burden, or hidden tax, on future generations. Isn't it time we examine our energetic requirements to drive efficiency into the grid and start to live within our energetic means?
The experts have been over dirty bombs upside down and backwards. Their conclusion is the same conclusion that occurs to anyone with even a modicum of nuclear knowledge: Dirty bombs don't work.
It depends on what you mean by "Dirty bombs don't work", I saw some computer simulations on TV of a dirty bomb let off in a city that rendered areas uninhabitable for decades (a study of terrorism strikes on a city prior to the Olympics). Even Wikipedia cites studies that suggest that a complete cleanup of external surfaces in an urban area to current decontamination limits may not be technically feasible.
With that in mind, the motivations of an attack would have to be evaluated, it may not be killing people. For example an overt attack on an area might kill less people than a covert attack on a water source - where one is designed to cause obvious disruption and another is designed to cause as many people as possible to ingest radioactive elements.
The Center for Defense Information also suggests that the evacuation alone, from a Dirty Bomb, would be enough to cause significant injuries, and says With urban areas especially difficult to decontaminate after a radiological attack, any abandonment could be permanent, potentially costing trillions of dollars.
So maybe 'Dirty bombs' don't work to kill people en-mass, they may work perfectly well to cause economic damage, panic, disruption and render areas unusable, and since we haven't seen one deployed to it's full effect, it maybe premature to say 'Dirty bombs don't work'. You can't blame people for not having a modicum of nuclear knowledge, anymore than anyone can blame you for not know about something you have no interest in - but you know is dangerous when used as a weapon.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, she wanted Windows but she got Windows.
It's already happened friend, not fascism but corporatism.
No insult intended, just being blunt.
I wish that were the case but were are already beyond that point. Corporations use lobbying and political donations as legal loopholes to control the political process in their favour. Without political support it simply is not possible in America, it is a one way process. If you can cite one or two examples where a corporate entity has been kicked out and replaced by a government entity in America recently I would be very surprised. Dissent used to be the seed of excellence, today freedom is a euphemism for 'you are free to agree' or 'you are free to conform'.
I must admit I thought I was going to get a dogmatic rant from you but I see that you have actually made most of the journey to understanding western societies predicament yourself, I commend you. However, the systemic issues I mentioned run a lot deeper than I implied which allow incompetence to become the everyday and mediocrity to become excellence. I travelled the same line of reasoning as you and if you will indulge me, I would like to share with you the conclusions I eventually uncovered. There are two main issues:
1. Political issues.Basically the political process is owned by whoever has enough money to pay for their interests. It is this mechanism that is in place that prevents our politicians from doing anything meaningful and prevents our society from moving forward. Issues from the electorate no longer have any voice. This structure, that exists, reduces the selection of your president down to who will be the CEO of America Pty. Ltd. A sad fate for such a great country. The political process must draw it purpose and funding from the electorate. This is the linchpin issue. Proposed solution: Make donations from corporations to political entities illegal.
2. Corporate Governance.Profit, as we agreed, trumps all. There are CEO's out there who want to make quality decisions for their companies and the community. The issue here is the board of a company is bound by law to make the decision that maximise shareholder value. A Board or a CEO may not want to sack 10,000 workers as opposed to re-training or dump toxic waste opposed to processing but because there is no liability for the externality they are obliged to maximise shareholder value. This forces the community to bear the cost of the externality. Updating the legal system to force industry and corporations to factor those externalities into their costs effectively eliminates the need for government regulati
ZZZZZZZZZZZ it's so interesting ZZZZZZ it's so l33+ zzzzzzzzzzzzz
Isn't that 5 cat's cable?
And why do you think this faceless machine exists?
Yes it does.
A for profit company's goal is 4.Profit! That means *every* process run by the company is viewed through the 'what does this do for our bottom line' lens and whether they are prepared to take a risk on a process. All this reveals is that there maybe *other* areas they are prepared to risk process compliance for profit illustrating some systemic issue exists that allows these things to happen.
When you compare this to the way the U.S Navy runs it's Nuclear fleet of Subs and Ships they don't have a obligation to shareholders to produce a profit. They have a budget and they are obliged to spend it in the performance of procedure's to carry out their mandate.
There are some instances where getting the government to run something is totally appropriate, things where you just don't expect to make a profit - you just expect them to be there, functioning. That is when it *is* appropriate to have it run by the government.
Lack of sleep takes away my ability to understand sarcasm. I should actually go to bed now :-}
Fair enough. What I am saying is it is the current situation. The only thing that I can see that will break the dependency deadlock on (today's)Nuclear and Coal is Wind/Solar/Geo-Thermal and Micro Generation and heavy investment in those technologies should begin yesterday.
It's not a rut, per se, but given the above is achieved the *entire* nuclear industry still requires a bottom up re-design to redress the issues that have manifest over it's first generation before any serious deployment of nuclear power plants can occur. At the very minimum we need a geologically stable granite containment facility and an infrastructure plan to contain plutonium before we can even consider new reactor plants.
And that's just the starting point. MIT recommends the once-through cycle for reactors that takes us to %60 nuclear capacity for the next 50 years - so there will still be coal in the mix. So we are *still* talking PWR like the AP-1000, which itself has some design characteristics that do not re-assure me. Until then the best we can get out of a nuclear reactor is 40 years - maybe, and it won't even be operating for it's entire lifespan and it will be lucky to operate at it's peak efficiency when it is.
Even fuel reprocessing will require new technologies, and if it were to be powered by a Nuclear reactor I would guess that it's power requirements would be a dedicated 1Gw Reactor which halves it's current energy usage.
Apologies for the broken link of the Superpheonix but it would still have had it's inevitable problems at the end of it's 40 year life span. It's not physics issues we are dealing with, but the engineering issues and material sciences issues. Have no doubt, I do believe that the inevitability of a breeder program that converts transuranics to fissile ash should be supported by a proper research program to develop the technology - it just not practical to implement breeders with today's technology. Any breeder program has to be supported by a reactor design that has a similar lifespan to the half-lives of the fissile ash created. Not 40 years, but engineered to last 1000 year so that decommissioning the facility can be matched to the decay of the, what we can now call, waste products. With a stable site and better materials technology to support engineering challenges we can devise how we can extract the energy from that plutonium and convert it to fissile ash (so the time frames for containment are more manageable) using a properly engineered breeder.
Sure, we should maintain the *option* of implementing a nuclear program, but as I've outlined above, the only realistic way to achieve that is a properly developed infrastructure plan that begins with a geologically stable containment facility.
Hi - been to busy to respond till now. I think you have made some overly conservative estimates for the energetic expenditure for the constructing and demolishing a nuclear power plant. I include demolition because it is part of the life cycle of the plant. Estimates for this are between 8000000 Gw and 240000000 Gw of energy which is a lot higher than your estimates.
This is reality. American enrichment is powered by Coal.
Well that would be trading one type of toxicity for another, our material sciences technology is not yet advanced enough to support a breeder program and they are fickle beasts to operate. For example the French have well developed reactor technology and the Superphoenix breeder suffered numerous problems before being closed down.
Even an MIT report recommends the once through cycle if an increase in the use of Nuclear power is to be considered.
A very thoughtful comment.
I think it's funny that this fortune appeared after your post:
When God endowed human beings with brains, He did not intend to guarantee them.
Maybe God has a sense of humour, or it could have just been a coincidence.
I should have been clearer. I meant studying both bodies of knowledge is not mutually exclusive.
However at least the Catholic church isn't dismissing the idea's, which is a long way from the outright attacks made by more fundamentalist churches. The thing about this debate is that while fundamental theist's attack science and the theory of evolution using doubt, no counter-argument is made that has any impact on the faith of proponents of Intelligent Design.
Science and Religion are different bodies of knowledge, but not mutually exclusive because both use reason as a tool for different goals. There are scientific people who are religious and religious people who are scientific. Making a science based argument about the ignorance of Intelligent Design to someone who has a predominately religious background make both sides dig their heals in. That's why this debate has become so polarised.
I've found that having an understanding of the doctrine that supports scientific investigation and framing that discussion so that it attacks the underpinnings of Intelligent Design an important tool. Building and demonstrating an understanding of the theocratic aspects of this debate is an important tool to disarming the proponents of Intelligent Design and helping them understand why science is important to their faith.
A scientific argument explaining the shortcomings of Intelligent Design to a religious person really just reveals their ignorance of science and, as such, they feel ignorant of science but it's not important to them.
A theocratic argument explaining the shortcomings of Intelligent Design to a religious person reveals the shortcomings of Intelligent Design when compared to the discoveries made by a study of Evolution.
When confronted with one of these discussions I point out that Intelligent Design limits how far humanity explores nature, or in theocratic terms "the works of God". I go on to point out that there is nothing in the Theory of evolution that attacks Christian beliefs but, in fact, uses science as a tool to uncover the amazing wonder of how nature works, or in theocratic terms "the glory of God".
It's at this point that proponents of Intelligent Design start to join the dots for themselves. The insecurity they feel about Darwin's idea's attacking their belief system give way to the possibility that Intelligent Design could actually be a form of blasphemy, something that is important to a religious person.
I think it's important to frame the debate this way because the Intelligent Design position cleverly deceives religious people into accepting ignorance over education and promotes the notion that science aims to dispel religion. Science and Religion have to co-exist in society if we are to dispel ignorance and fundamentalism.
Those Mafia is getting outrageous!!!
You are extracting solar energy from the atmosphere.
Could be a good thing considering the amount of carbon dioxide we have released by burning coal it might reduce the severity of storms by sinking energy *out* of the atmosphere.
The negative impacts of the existing industries (coal and nuclear in particular) are well documented and simply not sustainable. We can't continue to use coal as much and, realistically, the nuclear industry requires a redesign that will likely take 30-50 years to implement before it is able to produce energy with out the toxic mess the current industry has made. The reality is we have not invested in low externality energy sources like Wind or Solar in a serious enough way to ensure continuity of energy growth. The pressing issue is to control carbon emissions, that is what we know now.
Some of the points your reference article raises wrt wind power steel and concrete are compelling but I think your claim remains to be seen. First of all your reference compares 1990's vintage wind turbine which negates the fast development cycle for wind power technology and the last 15 years of development. The next consideration is if the installation sites for a wind turbine can be re-used - re-using much of the energetic inputs and how mass production drives efficiencies into the industrial techniques, as wind power is still an emerging technology.
Your reference claims a 60 year life cycle for the nuclear power plants which is unlikely to be attained because Neutron irradiation embrittlement is a significant problem affecting the pressure vessels (and other components) of nuclear reactors, this is a fundamental issue that limits the lifespan of nuclear reactor by introducing failure modes not accounted for in the basis design.
Nowhere on the page you cited was there a reference to the mining, enrichment, decommissioning of plants and containment of spent fuel in the carbon calculations - so you cannot make a strawman argument attacking lifecycle Co2 emmissions of wind by not including these factors into the overall calculations for Nuclear. Furthermore referring to such potent concerns as "FUD" does not make for a honest comparison, especially when we are *only* talking about the carbon emissions and not the overall toxicity of the nuclear fuel cycle.
According to the glossary for the page you cited: Generator capacity: The maximum output, commonly expressed in megawatts (MW), that generating equipment can supply to system load, adjusted for ambient conditions. So I re-iterate that the capacity you are referring to does not speak to the actual availability of a plant to produce power at it's capacity.
Interestingly, the figures in themselves are revealing as the peak gains in capacity have been made when the plants are in the peak of the operating life cycle (10% gain in the '80's, 22% gain in the '90's) of the plants. As the plants age and components wear, further outages will affect availability (indicated by an oscillation of peak capacity during the 00's). I expect the capacity to produce power will only mitigate reduced availability by implementing advances in fuel rod and coolant technology. However, this stresses an ageing reactor which is a very risky business and will have an even greater effect on availability of the reactor to produce power - because the entire reactor is off line to repair it.
In comparison to an 800Mw wind installation, the distribution of the generating capacity means an outage doesn't affect overall availability - it only reduces the capacity for the duration of the outages. To be fair the Nuclear industry has made advances in capacity to generate, but I would expect the Wind Power industry to make similar advances as it's industry matures.
If you are going to say that I think you also have to look at the availability of the Nuclear plant. If the plant is only available to produce power for %50 percent of it's expected 40 year lifespan then it's actual output is only 45% of it's capacity to produce. So if a Wind installation has a higher availability to produce power then it's more realistic to compare the output of the $TYPEOF plant.
Despite the generous subsidies the Nuclear industry receives, worldwide renewable energy sources produced three times the output and six times the available capacity of Nuclear power *in 2004*. The reality of Wind and Solar is the capacity is much easier to bring to market, is easier to insure and generates a return for investors much sooner than Nuclear.
Also Nuclear is still a greenhouse gas emitter. Concrete is the third biggest greenhouse gas emitter in the world and concrete is the largest input cost in terms of building a Nuclear plant. Enrichment is powered by coal plants (approx 1Gw worth) and the process is also the number one cause of industrial CFC emissions from the U.S. CFC's 20,000 times more potent than Co2 at 1 million pounds, thats 453,592 kilgrams, PER YEAR since the bans began. That is 8 618 255.03 kilograms *since* CFC114 was banned. That's the equivalent of 172,365,100,000 kilograms of carbon dioxide from the enrichment process alone. Then there is also the carbon input from mining and crushing rock (500 ton's of rock per 1 kilo of uranium), decommissioning, containment etc.
A study by Stanford university collated 8000 wind records worldwide and found a potential global wind power resource of 72 Terrawatts - that's 40 times the entire world consumption in 2000. We only need to tap 20% of that to satisfy world energy needs. As far as the political will to connect that capacity to the grid, what is dishonest is politicians yielding to the coal lobby not to connect that *available capacity* to the grid - which is why a claim of 25% capacity, for wind, can be made.
Now this is the first time I've advocated for wind power, I just think that for a country like America, that is so blessed with HUGE amounts of wind and Solar resources, it's an absolute no-brainer.
Body parts, famous authors, historic events positions in the Karma Sutra, we name our servers after something to make them easier to remember. *NEWSFLASH* that's why the servers allow you to name them and don't automatically assign a name from a unique id.
Hey Fred we seem to be having a problem on a2faf98 I can't seem to mount /fucknuckle from c4f61f03 but it works fine from ac9989fb.
My next naming scheme for servers is, um, erh, I know, slashdot users who come up with the most interesting naming scheme for servers. So none of my servers will be called MrKaos.
Q. Why do we name servers? A. Because we can.We can't even get our collective butts not to use plastic shopping bags. I fear our society is to vapid for such a proposal, unfortunately.
But English is hard to pronounce with an English accent.
Privatize the profits and Socialize the losses.
Wow, someone other than me is saying this.
No, a fluke saved the day. I think instarx summed it up nicely
True, current reactors extract around 0.3% of the energy from the fuel.
Also true, unfortunately material science haven't caught up with the design.
No, argument there.
Actually it's the beginning of any serious advocacy for the Nuclear industry. 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.
This first step is to have a facility *available* and *capable* of doing that exact thing. Without it, it's not possible to move the nuclear industry forward.
IFR is interesting but it suffers from some pretty serious shortcomings. Sodium Coolant==Not Good. The Forty year life makes this especially serious as ingress of air/moisture into the system makes the reactor could make for a pretty serious explosion. Finally the theoretical passive safety feature of IFR's are appealing, but breeders are a fickle beast with finer margins of safety, and less time to react to problems. An accident at a Fast reactor with sodium coolant would be more serious than TMI or Chernobyl, with deadlier isotopes.
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 produ
Actually, Mr AC has summed it up quite appropriately. Maybe the first part is a troll but the rest should be modded 'informative' - because it's actually true.
Where?
As far as I know the only reactor to have been decommissioned was Yankee Rowe, a 167 Mw reactor, and that cost almost half a billion dollars and the fuel rods are still on site. If those costs scale to the size of the reactor core then you are looking at roughly half a trillion dollars in decommissioning the existing 104 reactor facilities - at todays prices.
Wouldn't it be wise not put all of our eggs in one basket, so to speak, and rather than investing the lions share of energy research funding into Nuclear/Oil and Coal, start investing more money into Solar/Wind Geothermal? I do think we have to continue to develop reactor technology, but frankly, reactor designs proposed today still have the primary flaw that all reactors have - a forty year lifespan.
Even if, as I see it, nuclear is a longer term option, until we have better materials technology available to create a reactor with a minimum 1000 year life span any serious Nuclear advocacy should consist of lobbying for construction of a geologically stable containment facility, in granite, that could also house such a reactor and reprocessing facility. The choice of site should be based on solid engineering and scientific principals, not because a representative for Nevada didn't show up for the vote.
A pragmatic assessment of Nuclear Power would recognise that it can only be realistic as a longer term option that will *require* the support of Solar/Wind/Geothermal energy sources if we are to maintain continuity of our energy growth. Simply put, previous generations of politicians were short sighted. Coal and Oil borrow energy resources from the past and Nuclear borrows resources from the future (to handle radioactive element containment). Solar/Wind/Geothermal are the only sources of energy that are available in the present and do not place a burden, or hidden tax, on future generations. Isn't it time we examine our energetic requirements to drive efficiency into the grid and start to live within our energetic means?
It depends on what you mean by "Dirty bombs don't work", I saw some computer simulations on TV of a dirty bomb let off in a city that rendered areas uninhabitable for decades (a study of terrorism strikes on a city prior to the Olympics). Even Wikipedia cites studies that suggest that a complete cleanup of external surfaces in an urban area to current decontamination limits may not be technically feasible.
With that in mind, the motivations of an attack would have to be evaluated, it may not be killing people. For example an overt attack on an area might kill less people than a covert attack on a water source - where one is designed to cause obvious disruption and another is designed to cause as many people as possible to ingest radioactive elements.
The Center for Defense Information also suggests that the evacuation alone, from a Dirty Bomb, would be enough to cause significant injuries, and says With urban areas especially difficult to decontaminate after a radiological attack, any abandonment could be permanent, potentially costing trillions of dollars.
So maybe 'Dirty bombs' don't work to kill people en-mass, they may work perfectly well to cause economic damage, panic, disruption and render areas unusable, and since we haven't seen one deployed to it's full effect, it maybe premature to say 'Dirty bombs don't work'. You can't blame people for not having a modicum of nuclear knowledge, anymore than anyone can blame you for not know about something you have no interest in - but you know is dangerous when used as a weapon.
at my house