You are such a fanboy dood, I note with interest that you ignore the point, pick a irrelavant basis to argue with and use that as a justification to call my point fud. I've been polite even though you've call me a fearmonger and your mode of arguement is to try to deride my points as FUD in the same way a southpark character says "look at the silly monkey".
You don't refute that "radon 220 that causes lung cancer, or radium 226 that causes bone cancers", then you casually ignore that xenon, argon or krypton, which decay into deadlier elements with deliterious health effects, are realeased into the environment as standard operating procedure authorised by the NRC. So let me get this clear, you are saying the NRC standard operating proceedures for Nuclear power plants is FUD?
Care to justify why elements such as iodine 131 (thyroid cancer) or cesium 137 (malignant muscle cancer) should be released into the environment under any circumstances?What about strontium 90 (leukemia), americium or our favourite plutonium, care to justify why those elements should be allowed to escape at all? Don't presume that because an radioactive element reaches it's half life it's not radioactive any more. Cesium 137 has a half life of 30 years but is radioactive for 600 years. And let me get this clear, you're saying that these elements, that accumulate in the foodchain, hasn't/isn't/aren't being released into the environment and it's all just FUD - cause if you are dood, it's time for you to look at these things realistically.
More radon is actually released during the mining of uranium than from nuclear power plants, but that release is still low compared to natural release (have you checked your basement for radon, just in case?), and the health risk to workers at uranium mines can be mitigated.
Radium is... As with radon, most radium uncovered in the nuclear power process results from mining, not the operation of the power plant, and so the radium can be fully contained at the mine site.
Well for the record dood, I don't have a basement. But what your saying is it's ok that radon is released from the uranium mining in MY country, where most of it occurs, eh? and the health risk to the workers "can be mitigated", not "has been mitigated" and it's ok that the tailings are "fully contained" in MY country, and that it's ok that it pollutes MY countries water table. Well that's not very nice at all dood, sums up most of your poorly articulated argument.
Still FUD. It's not even true. The 7.4 earthquake happened near Landers, California, more than 200 miles away. It triggered an aftershock of 5.6 centered about 8 miles from the site, an event considered to be of the greatest significance to the site in the past 20 years.
So you're telling me that you are just fine with aftershocks of 5.6 within ten miles of a waste dump that is supposed to be geologically stable for at least 500000 years in a mountain made of pumice and volcanic ash. You're telling me you are just fine and dandy with the fact that the U.S primary plutonium dump is probably geologically active and are comfortable with a 5.6 richter scale shock to it every 20 years. You're saying it's FUD that the DOE's own 1982 Nuclear Waste policy Act reported that the Yucca Mountain's geology is "inappropriate to contain nuclear waste", that the DOE announced in 2005 that the USGS "falsified data on Yucca Mountain" (no doubt under pressure to qualify the facility), that the ingress of chlorine 36 (from atmospheric nuclear testing) in water inside the "waterproof" mountain indicates that it has taken less than 50 years for water to get into the facility and will corrode the containers holding the plutonium. Do you get the point yet, Yucca has failed and it is not even operational yet, and that's before we delve into the logistical challenges of moving 70,000 metric tons of highl
Lockhead Martin also refused to comment on a recent purchase 10 million $5000 toilet seats, 52 million boxes of $1000 dollar tissues, and 19.7 million $10000 dollar hammers.:-P It would be a cruel twist of fate it the project was outsourced to china.
Now I wonder scramjet + non-existant unmanned stealth spy plane, and massive development budget hmmmm.
It's that sort of fearmongering that has kept us burning coal for the past twenty years.
It's that kind of inorance of economics, science and engineering of nuclear power plants that has kept this relic of the cold war going with subsidies from the taxpayer for so long. Lets get something straight here, I have been a long time supporter of IFR to deal with plutonium, but I recognise that even Generation 4 reactors are totally infeasible without significant advances in material sciences.
If current generation reactors are so safe why do they have to be underwritten by the taxpayer and why won't insurance companies insure them. Why? because insurance companies are very good at assessing risk, in fact that is thier business, and even they assess nuclear power plants as too risky. That isn't fearmongering, thats called being pragmatic.
I'd much rather have nuclear waste buried in Yucca Mountain
You mean Yucca Mountain that hasn't received any nuclear waste, you mean Yucca mountain that got the waste dump because Nevada only had one representative to vote on the placement of a waste dump and every other state had two, you mean yucca mountain that has a complex geometry made of pumice instead of granite, you mean yucca mountain that scientists call "NASA before challenger", you mean Yucca mountain that had a earthquake of 7.4 on the Richter scale in the early '90's. Yucca mountain does not nearly have the geological characteristics for a waste dump that has to last at least 500000 years, have a look at the Swiss approach. That's not fearmongering, that's called understanding what a political solution looks like.
than have all the hydrogen sulfide, nitrogen oxides, and carbon oxides floating around in the atmosphere.
Oh, so you'd prefer radon 220 that causes lung cancer, or what about radium 226 that causes bone cancers - it has a quite modest half life of only 1600 years, or thorium which cause birth defects, or what about the benign noble gases like xenon, argon or krypton that decay into something deadly or iodine 131 or ceasium. Did you know that pressurised water reactors are allowed too purge these gasses into the atmosphere 20 times a year as part of normal operations as officially permitted by the NRC or would you prefer to maintain your illusion that the ageing nuclear reactors in the U.S will be a squeaky clean source of electricity for your EV-2. That 's not fearmongering, thats understanding the operational issues.
The French derive most of their electricity from nuclear power, and they haven't had a mutation-causing earth-scorching nuclear catastrophe because they pay attention to safety,
Yeah, like the way they had to cool down av reactor housing with garden sprinklers because the river levels were so low during the heatwave, such forward planning and preparation for an event that can induce a meltdown.
just as we do with our plants in the US.
sure, sure they will go on forever and ever, they don't ever rust or fatigue and will never wear out. Like First Energy "safe" who persuaded the NRC to delay inspection of safety components past the due date only to find that a pressure vessel had corroded through 6 of it's 6 1/2 inch thickness. If you are going to operate these devices safely into thier old age then you have to increase the safety inspections, and that is not profitable for the operator. profit vs safety what a great tradeoff. That is not fearmongering, that is called considering yourself lucky if you were in Toledo on new years day 2002.
And with the advent of pebble bed reactors, runaway nuclear reactions become physically impossible.
The best till last eh? every nuke fanboy's wet dream eh? A generation 3 Pebble Bed Modular Reactor, with high pressure 900 degree helium gas keeping it nice and cool. Enriched uranium oxycarbide spheres covered in carbon, silic
Because the USA's industrial and residential power demands far outstrip what can be produced from reliable renewable resources without causing substantial environmental damage that the Greens find no more acceptable than nuclear power.
That is a massive assumtion you are making. There is no case to accept the long term storage of nuclear waste and the damage to people by the radation and radioactive isotopes leaked into the environment by nuclear power, plutonium being the very worst one that lasts at least 25000 years. And that dosen't even take into account the disassembly of the existing power plants, also heavily radioactive, at the end of thier lifespan. Where do you propse to store the waste?
Specifically what environmental damage are you refering to from renewable sources, no damage from any renewable source can compare to chernobyl so far, so essentially that statement is completely baseless.
That power demand is increasing, not decreasing, and failure to meet it will, as we saw in California a few years ago, cause brown outs, rotating black outs, and, eventually, deaths in the most vulnerable segments of society.
I think you will find this had more to do with Enron's lust for profit rather than anything to do with a failure to meet demand. You should watch a documentary "Enron:The smartest guys in the room"
That said, the US has a power industry which encourages consumption, not careful use. It should have much more widespread programs for encouraging replacement of energy-inefficient appliances in the residential sector. However such programs are not in the interest of the US power conglomerates, and slavish political devotion to "small government" and "market forces" means programs similar to BC Hydro's Power Smart are rarely implemented in the USA.
Now you are thinking. A comparison of the DOE's reference case by http://www.synapse-energy.com/ (titled "A Responsible Electricity Future") found that simply driving energy efficiency in the US reduces electricity demand by 28%, how many EV1's do you think that would power?
No, there is plenty of alternatives to producing electricity than Nuclear that make much more economic sense, before talking about any other type of sense. This is a question of will to do it.
I guess it depends on when the exhaust from cars is classified as "toxic waste", and of course who has an interest in the batteries being declared "toxic waste".
some "oil company conspiracy"
From memory, the documentary on the EV1 (Who killed the electric car) pointed out it's the oil companies buying patents on battery technology, it's little wonder that it's hard to make breakthroughs in this area when there are patent restrictions preventing innovation.
In our current "economic" model it's not so hard for the big players to influence the development of industry into certain direction by employing a series of incentives and disincentives through lobbying, a subsidy here and a patent here. This has the net effect preventing any development in refining the efficiency of batteries, selection of materials and industrial processes long before the question of recycling efficiency is bought up.
Short of biodiesel, I don't see any way to recycle oil once it has been burnt, and as for plastics what do you think most plastics are made of ? Don't get me wrong I don't think there is anything wrong with oil, just it's grossly in-efficient use, especially as fuel.
What about the EV-1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_EV1 the "leasee's" of these vehicles seemed to be satisfied with them and the batteries were specified to produce a 125 mile range, would it be so hard to have a google version?
If they succeed in NY then it's more than likley they will use the same template of laws for the other states and eventually federally. I wonder if they realise the long term implications or are simply so selfish they are prepared to devise and support the subvertion of the voting process enshrined in law. "America under attack by Corporate terrorists", how about that for a headline.
Of course it follows naturally the existing subversion of the political process and the failure of the two party system through corportate lobbying of candidates, which is the only issue in modern politics. Because until that's fixed nothing else can be.
Of couse, this is one thing that can be prevented from being broken but, to me at least, it looks like Benjamin Franklin is being proven right http://www.usconstitution.net/franklin.html
Well even though you are whitespace challenged;-) I can see you are very enthusiastic about Open Source, and that is a whole lot better than being a troll.
May the source be with you Zeno_Davatz!!!! (and enjoy the book!!)
1. How can you say, that companies and communities do not compete? That is total Bullshit!
Agreed, but that's not what I said. I said Companies compete, communities co-operate.
I say this because by it's very nature the goal of a for profit company is to maximise profits for share holders, and is legally obliged to do so. Co-operation occurs only if it produces profit, in all other cases companies compete to capture market share to produce profit.
The natural goal of an Open source project is to produce something that performs a function, profit is not the sole motivating factor. Gnome and KDE aren't competing to gouge as much profit from the market as possible, the communities that make those collections are trying to make a user interface that works well for thier users. Co-operation between those communities isn't going to be evaluated on the basis of how much profit can be generated, but of what benefits it will bring to the respective projects, same with ubuntu and gentoo. Do you think we will see co-operation between Microsoft and Sun anytime to to bring a better features to thier offerings?
Open source simply hasn't reached a point where competition between communities has happened in a big way. I'm not saying it won't happen, but the question is what would the point be? To build a better Linux kernel? That might happen when it reaches the limit of it's development potential, as I beleive is happening with Blender (not that I'm a blender expert - just an admirer), but thats a question of those communities looking at the Blender and asking questions about making it work better for them.
2. The Old Software development and distribution models do not work anymore...
4. OpenSource tactics can and will be implemented in the Future business world as well.
Well that remains to be seen, the Closed model is dominant and has more lobby groups looking after it's interests. The Open model is still evolving and generally ambivalent towards competition with the closed model, it's just not a motivating factor. Business will look at the open model and ask if they can produce more profits and how it threatens thier own interests, if it's in thier interests they will co-operate.
3...... Sun needs to realize that they must organize them selfs more and more like the Kernel development model is organized.
Sun is a business, Linux is a kernel. Sun will do whatever it has to do to maximise it's profits. The thing you may not be aware of is Sun may have certain legal restrictions that dictate they behave a certain way or "Compliance issues". If it is in thier interests, they will do it - if it doesn't lead them to court.
5.Linux is a 21st century role model.
Ok, great. But chefs were doing open source (no pun intended) before software people by sharing recipies and making better meals. Linux took it somewhere else, GPL expressed a legal framework and on it goes. I'm really not sure what you are asking so try to look at the bigger picture.
I don't think we will all be holding hands and singing "koom by yaah", competition is important, but you have to ask - competing for what? profit, userbase, the best code? If all Open source produces is good code that people can use - thats great, but it looks like more than that is happening. I suspect business see tremendous advantages to incorporating Open source into thier business framework but have to navigate through a mire of legal complience to reach that outcome.
Have a look at a book called "Voyage from Yesteryear" by James. P. Hogan, and not just the wikipedia entry, it describes a similar meeting of "organisational systems", a reasonable read and you may appreciate the analogy.
It remains to see who participates and the nature of the co-operation. Sun contributing Java, even for cynical reasons, says more about Open Source as an evolving business model than a fracturing community.
And so what if it fractures anyway, maybe that makes software evolve in a more "natural" way.
Your argument is that not believing that a character in a story (God/bible) is real requires the same level of faith as believing they are real.
Any child over 10 or so can see that for Captain Kirk to be real would require an enormous leap of faith compared to not believing.
it is just as ridiculous in both cases to say that belief/unbelief are totally equivilent demonstrations of faith.
Waitaminute, so you're saying if I take it on faith that baby fur seals CAN be clubbed to death with a foam club does it mean they can't?
Ok, hang on, if I define what I believe in based on what I don't believe in does that mean I don't beleive in what I believe in? Does that mean I'm a abeliever or a afaithiest,, dammit,, you've giving me a headache, I'll try logic...
Ok, if I beleive in god and god exist's then it's ok, if I beleive in god and god does'nt exist then it's ok, if i don't believe in god and god dosen't exist then it's ok but if I don't believe in god and does exist OMG hellfire and damnation.
Under the circumstances I'm gonna have to be a coward here and believe Millitant Atheist's are scared of going to hell, personally I'll take it on faith that Hell does'nt exist, so lets all be ahellist's. Do you think Xenu is a ahellist?
Well, lets' hope so, cause it would be ironic if Jesus was ascientologist.
I was in tears laughing at the end of the "Trapped in the Closet" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trapped_in_the_Closet _(South_Park) episode. I noted with amusment at the end of the southpark episode that the whole thing was written by Jon and Jan Smith. But now I guess they were probably less worried about a litigous Tom Cruise than Scientology getting stuck into them.
It's galling that they have been an effective impediment to raising awareness about a Space Elevator's benefit to mankind, and potentially delaying investment from the European community, but maybe that was their plan all along. Maybe they are too scared to go back into space after what happened to our ethereal souls the last time we were there in alien form.
Frankly they give me the creeps. I can understand, for example, that Islamic doctrine finds images of mohhammed offensive, but quasi-religious attacks on free speech are equally offensive, and no sense of humour means double plus extra creepy.
Scientology, as a religion, demonstrates it is not credible enough to stand up to ridicule, if it could, it would have some credibilty.
My experiences were a severe case of administratium. From what I learned when they bid for work, effectivley, they buy the business from a customer. They would buy a client's IT department on the basis that they could apply "economies of scale" and provide the customer with better returns by operating the IT department.
However, when buying the business they would also buy the management who may have limited experience in IT. Being a manager there means it's hard to get fired which might be ok if there was churn - but these people rarely leave, and why would you? The company benefits are pretty good.
Problem is most of that management does not add value to the business, especially a service business such as this one. I had at least 6 layers of management above me when I worked there just to get to the regional directors. I don't know how many levels of executive were above that.
The most simple analogy I can draw is in the race boat 1 person is rowing and 5 people are yelling "row", when they lose the race they counsel the management and repremand the rower for not performing.
If this were about rationalising the management of the company - I'd rejoice - but I don't think this is what this is about. Management bloat is out of control there and few of those managers realise how challenging technology work is. Consequently the "economy of scale" that should exist are absorbed by layers of people trying to convince the management above them that they are adding value and justifying thier existance with-in the organisation. It's very parasitic and even technical people have to play politics to survive.
Don't expect management to be outsourced anytime soon, competant staff are overworked and work life balance is a joke for those people, mediocrity is encouraged because innovation is difficult for management to understand, which compounds the problem and drives a cycle of diminishing returns within the business. High levels of shareholder returns appear ro be maintained by trying to drive the cost of labour lower and lower, which cannot be maintained in a business as demanding as technology. Risk is out of the question.
The failure is because that management does not recognise that most mature technologists worth thier pay understand how to develop technology that is related to generating profit in a (duuh) technology business. Instead they choose to outsource these "jobs" without recognising thier long-term value and once that competitive advantage is gone it's costly to re-gain. In a service business, capability == profit, it's the bottom line.
Cringley is right. If the same sort of behaviour is happening within the core of the company it's going to take an executive with some very big balls to return the business to sustainable levels of profitability, the alternative is to continue to drive the business into ground, which would be a shame, because without the parasites, politics and the bloat it's a pretty good place to work.
The arrogance just may be in your court! Thinking you know full well Gods position on this - you don't but that does not stop you from spouting nonsense and assuming some imagined morally superior position.
From my understanding there is a large stock of great apes held by pharmaceutical companies infected with AIDS, herpes and other nasty diseases. Since we have already made the "ethical" leap by infecting these 99.9% almost human animals in the first place, perhaps we could actually make their suffering mean something instead of euthanising them? While there could be benefits of studying human disease in 15% human animals, it would beg the question of whether these animals would live long enough to study the diseases that affect the human condition, alas IANAMD.
I just seems ironic that the 85% sheep in human populations have influenced our policy making process so much that it is actually easier to make an animal 15% more human than use 100% human stem cell stock to treat human disease. I just wonder how we would handle an incident where, after transplants start occuring, animal disease makes the jump to human population, Bird flu anybody?
Maybe there is a reason in nature we haven't encountered yet that made us different from the animals we eat, no matter how much we try to change them (or individually customise in this case). Will the patient be allowed to dine on the rest of the animal and perhaps make sheep skin boots from the skin? or would that be going too far?
Once transplants start occuring then the pandora's box is open and we are on a very slippery slope. Unless handled with great care technology like this exposes us all to enormous risks. We simply throw away foetuses from failed IVF attempts, so why is it so hard for us to make the ethical leap to develop 100% human stem cell derived organ transplant technology using this otherwise wasted human life?
Spot on jim_deane. I think NASA lacks the focus it had in the 1960's. Back then getting to the moon was an advancement for the entire human race, thats why people were excited about what NASA was doing. Not to say that that the things NASA are doing today aren't interesting, it's just they don't capture peoples imagination the way they did.
For example, what if the space shuttles last duty was to assist in the construction of a space elevator? I don't know if that is possible with the space shuttle and could probably be done better with a stack configuration, but I'm just saying what if?
Going back to the moon dosen't seem that exciting either. It's like saying "all this possibility we inspired when we landed on the moon the first time was a fantasy, the best we can give you is more of the same. Still second prize is still pretty good". Where is the advancement? No wonder peoples eye's glaze over when geeks talk about space, they think it will never happen because they were fooled once, they were disapointed.
NASA is like this shining beacon of what is possible when humanity decides, slowly being extinguished and NIAC is like the pilot light.
Now NASA appears as an amorphous blob, trying to make a not really new launch vehicle, maybe go to the moon, doing odd bits of science, some plans for mars, got to look after ISS, have to patch up a shuttle that was a compromise in the first place, infrastructure failing and used for pork barrelling. Because it doesn't excite people, why vote to invest more?
From an outsiders point of view, it looks like NASA, infected with Administratium, whipped by the whims of politicians, subjected to the cynicism and mediocrity of management is a "can do" organisation, after appropriate management approvals. What happened to a goal that captured peoples imaginations? What happened to the engineering focus that was recognised as the capability to achieve those goals? I think the ideas cultivated at NIAC can create those goals.
To be fair, it's not really NASA's fault. They are the political football that tell us there are deeper problems, that the future is too hard to think about right now. Frankly it's unlikely you guys are going to get a president that will say "Not because it's easy, but because it is hard" in the forseeable future. Someone with a vision to industrialise space. But there may be an odd form of hope no country can ignore, humanity's harsh reality,
Carter banned Fast Breeders because the elements mixed (paladium and lithium with plutonium - I think) in a fast breeder effectivley tripled the amount of radioactive material that eventually had to be stored. Clinton shut down IFR because he had a political point to make.
Thorium reactors show some promise too, but IFR looks more attractive because it deals with the waste and mining issues. Engineered better because the isotope is in it's metal form and the coolant is metal, converting more of the transuranics to fissile ash in a closed system.
In a cold war reactor the isotope is ceramic, so using it as an insulator with and water as a coolant was never going to be efficient at producing electricity as anything but a by-product, unless you have a large organisation, about the size of a government, prepared to buy all of the plutonium you produce for the life of the reactor.
I would be interested in an economic analysis that factored the long term storage costs of Pu-239 and uranium mining against the investment in perfecting the "pyroprocessing" process of IFR. The reality, as I've said before, is IFR is the only realistic future for nuclear in the 21st century. Let's be realistic about cold war nuclear power plant design, it's ain't that safe because it doesn't factor the cost to future generations. After 50 or 60 years you will still have to shut the power plant down, as it's just a machine with radioactive components. As for the transuranics passing through their halflives, 25000 years for the first, 100000 odd years for the second, we are talking in geological ages of which us mere mortals struggle to even comprehend, let alone know what life will even look like after that much time.
I see IFR as a step forward for these reasons,
It ends the bulk of uranium mining in our lifetime, and for the forseeable future.
It provides a means to consume the stockpile of transuranic waste that exists - mostly plutonium.
However by employing a breakthrough in technology such as IFR we will have to acknowledge one very significant factor, IFR provides a very real argument for eliminating nuclear weapons, and there not a single politician in the world prepared to give up that sort of power.
Which is the real reason he should have been impeached, apart from the fact that he didn't put a comprehensive disarmament treaty in front of the then drunken russian president and say "sign here". However, as enthused as I am about the possibility of using a space elevator to deal with nuclear waste, if our good friends the chinese keep blowing up satelites then our prospects of being able to build a S.E will continue to diminish. Much more prudent for us to use systems like IFR and deal with it in our own gravity well.
Why is it so difficult to have a pragmatic discussion about nuclear power on slashdot?
Fesible nuclear technology like Integral Fast reactors, a proven and operational concept, and newer Sub critical reactor technology, like thorium based reactors are ignored in these discussions. These are the REAL nuclear alternatives.
It seems to me that these discussions are heavily politicised in favour of the current generation of nuclear plants with no regard to the newer and safer nuclear technologies. Facts ignored, like the gross inefficiencies of the current generation of nuclear reactors, the production of Plutonium as a waste product and the amount of time those waste products are deadly for do nothing to promote an argument in favour of nuclear as an alternative. In particular the Half Life of those isotope's, before it becomes the next deadly element - with an even longer halflife in the millions or billions of years, are treated with a 'head in the sand' attitude that illustrates the ignorance prelavent in these discussions.
Furthermore baseload arguments are used to write off wind and solar technology simply because solutions to these baseload issues, i.e Solar and Wind production of Hydrogen for example, have not been explored.
Attacks on Green groups are made because they make arguments about 'Evil Corporations' (even though corporations are LEGALLY OBLIGED to externalise risk to protect shareholder interest), and while I have no interest in the emotional attachment some green groups have to their arguments, it's at least equivalent to the emotional attachment I see here wrt discussions about current nuclear technology.
Which is to externalise the waste component of nuclear power generation to some other generation and just let them deal with it. How can anyone justify such short term thinking and claim it as a viable solutions to the worlds energy demands.
I wonder how many of you in favour of nuclear power are prepared to put your own money into building a new concrete bunker over Chernobyl or your time lobbying your politicians into supporting contributions to same? How can anyone be expected to take nuclear seriously when the current mess still hasn't been cleaned up properly.
Until a realistic look at newer nuclear technology that has better inherrent saftey is conducted, Chernobyl scale events should be expected to occur every few decades, and there is no way this can be considered 'Viable' or 'Environmentally Friendly'.
Seems to me there is a plethora of complex machine systems controling our lives right now, while we worry about what will replace plastic shopping bags.
Ban or no ban nanotechnologies will come to pass because the military will have a use for them boys and girls. And I doubt the three laws of robotics will be coded into machines that are designed for the military, it will obey one law - FOLLOW ORDERS.
Now is the right time to be talking about the ethics of nano and genetic engineering considering IT'S THE TWENTY FIRST CENTURY so debating such issues and establishing a framework for behaviour wrt developing this technology is timely.
The article pointed out that the development of such technology would probably be done by the private sector. What concerns me is that without ANY framework private industry will do what it always does and externalise all risk for us poor hapless members of the public to pay for, deal with or die by. Spell Bhopal anybody?
If nano-tech is self replicating, then does this imply that it will evolve without human interference? If that is the case then the first accident with nano-technology that allows it into our biosphere maybe the last. I doubt we have a backup of our planets library of DNA, and as it is obvious (today) that our global economy is built on a flawed premise (i.e consumption vs sustainability) coupled with our existing record of self harm, it's not unreasonable to be pessemistic about the consequences.
Nanotechnology is inevitable, cause we need it, we also need genetic engineering, but we also need a good understanding of the technology before we damage ourselves irrepairably. A ban on research won't help but what about a ban on commercial implementation?
With the pace of technology it is likely that such an encounter will be sudden. Some smart genetic engineer will figure our how to make a nano-assembler out of a bacteria, and !!!BANG!!! we will have nanotech ready or not. From that point progress will be quick.
I'd like to bet on the Human instinct to survive such an encounter, but as we have changed the state of what is 'Fit' to evolve in a Darwinian sense it's more likely that our continued evolution will depend on humans conceptualising threats before they come to be. Evolution gave us the upper hand several times before we changed the rules, I doubt we would have much of chance with a new player who is able to change the rules the same way we decide whether a cow will be a steak or a leather jacket.
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You are such a fanboy dood, I note with interest that you ignore the point, pick a irrelavant basis to argue with and use that as a justification to call my point fud. I've been polite even though you've call me a fearmonger and your mode of arguement is to try to deride my points as FUD in the same way a southpark character says "look at the silly monkey".
You don't refute that "radon 220 that causes lung cancer, or radium 226 that causes bone cancers", then you casually ignore that xenon, argon or krypton, which decay into deadlier elements with deliterious health effects, are realeased into the environment as standard operating procedure authorised by the NRC. So let me get this clear, you are saying the NRC standard operating proceedures for Nuclear power plants is FUD?
Care to justify why elements such as iodine 131 (thyroid cancer) or cesium 137 (malignant muscle cancer) should be released into the environment under any circumstances?What about strontium 90 (leukemia), americium or our favourite plutonium, care to justify why those elements should be allowed to escape at all? Don't presume that because an radioactive element reaches it's half life it's not radioactive any more. Cesium 137 has a half life of 30 years but is radioactive for 600 years. And let me get this clear, you're saying that these elements, that accumulate in the foodchain, hasn't/isn't/aren't being released into the environment and it's all just FUD - cause if you are dood, it's time for you to look at these things realistically.
Well for the record dood, I don't have a basement. But what your saying is it's ok that radon is released from the uranium mining in MY country, where most of it occurs, eh? and the health risk to the workers "can be mitigated", not "has been mitigated" and it's ok that the tailings are "fully contained" in MY country, and that it's ok that it pollutes MY countries water table. Well that's not very nice at all dood, sums up most of your poorly articulated argument.
So you're telling me that you are just fine with aftershocks of 5.6 within ten miles of a waste dump that is supposed to be geologically stable for at least 500000 years in a mountain made of pumice and volcanic ash. You're telling me you are just fine and dandy with the fact that the U.S primary plutonium dump is probably geologically active and are comfortable with a 5.6 richter scale shock to it every 20 years. You're saying it's FUD that the DOE's own 1982 Nuclear Waste policy Act reported that the Yucca Mountain's geology is "inappropriate to contain nuclear waste", that the DOE announced in 2005 that the USGS "falsified data on Yucca Mountain" (no doubt under pressure to qualify the facility), that the ingress of chlorine 36 (from atmospheric nuclear testing) in water inside the "waterproof" mountain indicates that it has taken less than 50 years for water to get into the facility and will corrode the containers holding the plutonium. Do you get the point yet, Yucca has failed and it is not even operational yet, and that's before we delve into the logistical challenges of moving 70,000 metric tons of highl
Now I wonder scramjet + non-existant unmanned stealth spy plane, and massive development budget hmmmm.
It's that kind of inorance of economics, science and engineering of nuclear power plants that has kept this relic of the cold war going with subsidies from the taxpayer for so long. Lets get something straight here, I have been a long time supporter of IFR to deal with plutonium, but I recognise that even Generation 4 reactors are totally infeasible without significant advances in material sciences.
If current generation reactors are so safe why do they have to be underwritten by the taxpayer and why won't insurance companies insure them. Why? because insurance companies are very good at assessing risk, in fact that is thier business, and even they assess nuclear power plants as too risky. That isn't fearmongering, thats called being pragmatic.
You mean Yucca Mountain that hasn't received any nuclear waste, you mean Yucca mountain that got the waste dump because Nevada only had one representative to vote on the placement of a waste dump and every other state had two, you mean yucca mountain that has a complex geometry made of pumice instead of granite, you mean yucca mountain that scientists call "NASA before challenger", you mean Yucca mountain that had a earthquake of 7.4 on the Richter scale in the early '90's. Yucca mountain does not nearly have the geological characteristics for a waste dump that has to last at least 500000 years, have a look at the Swiss approach. That's not fearmongering, that's called understanding what a political solution looks like.
Oh, so you'd prefer radon 220 that causes lung cancer, or what about radium 226 that causes bone cancers - it has a quite modest half life of only 1600 years, or thorium which cause birth defects, or what about the benign noble gases like xenon, argon or krypton that decay into something deadly or iodine 131 or ceasium. Did you know that pressurised water reactors are allowed too purge these gasses into the atmosphere 20 times a year as part of normal operations as officially permitted by the NRC or would you prefer to maintain your illusion that the ageing nuclear reactors in the U.S will be a squeaky clean source of electricity for your EV-2. That 's not fearmongering, thats understanding the operational issues.
Yeah, like the way they had to cool down av reactor housing with garden sprinklers because the river levels were so low during the heatwave, such forward planning and preparation for an event that can induce a meltdown.
sure, sure they will go on forever and ever, they don't ever rust or fatigue and will never wear out. Like First Energy "safe" who persuaded the NRC to delay inspection of safety components past the due date only to find that a pressure vessel had corroded through 6 of it's 6 1/2 inch thickness. If you are going to operate these devices safely into thier old age then you have to increase the safety inspections, and that is not profitable for the operator. profit vs safety what a great tradeoff. That is not fearmongering, that is called considering yourself lucky if you were in Toledo on new years day 2002.
The best till last eh? every nuke fanboy's wet dream eh? A generation 3 Pebble Bed Modular Reactor, with high pressure 900 degree helium gas keeping it nice and cool. Enriched uranium oxycarbide spheres covered in carbon, silic
Specifically what environmental damage are you refering to from renewable sources, no damage from any renewable source can compare to chernobyl so far, so essentially that statement is completely baseless.
I think you will find this had more to do with Enron's lust for profit rather than anything to do with a failure to meet demand. You should watch a documentary "Enron:The smartest guys in the room" Now you are thinking. A comparison of the DOE's reference case by http://www.synapse-energy.com/ (titled "A Responsible Electricity Future") found that simply driving energy efficiency in the US reduces electricity demand by 28%, how many EV1's do you think that would power?No, there is plenty of alternatives to producing electricity than Nuclear that make much more economic sense, before talking about any other type of sense. This is a question of will to do it.
Complain to Cisco. They supplied the technorogy
I wonder if they can they access slashdot in china.
In our current "economic" model it's not so hard for the big players to influence the development of industry into certain direction by employing a series of incentives and disincentives through lobbying, a subsidy here and a patent here. This has the net effect preventing any development in refining the efficiency of batteries, selection of materials and industrial processes long before the question of recycling efficiency is bought up.
Short of biodiesel, I don't see any way to recycle oil once it has been burnt, and as for plastics what do you think most plastics are made of ? Don't get me wrong I don't think there is anything wrong with oil, just it's grossly in-efficient use, especially as fuel.
http://www.google.com.au/search?q=ev1&start=0&ie=u tf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en- US:official
Seems to me the oil companies are just making sure we keep using oil and make sure no competing infrastructure exists to provide vehicles with energy.
Of course it follows naturally the existing subversion of the political process and the failure of the two party system through corportate lobbying of candidates, which is the only issue in modern politics. Because until that's fixed nothing else can be.
Of couse, this is one thing that can be prevented from being broken but, to me at least, it looks like Benjamin Franklin is being proven right http://www.usconstitution.net/franklin.html
May the source be with you Zeno_Davatz!!!! (and enjoy the book!!)
1. How can you say, that companies and communities do not compete? That is total Bullshit!
Agreed, but that's not what I said. I said Companies compete, communities co-operate.
I say this because by it's very nature the goal of a for profit company is to maximise profits for share holders, and is legally obliged to do so. Co-operation occurs only if it produces profit, in all other cases companies compete to capture market share to produce profit.
The natural goal of an Open source project is to produce something that performs a function, profit is not the sole motivating factor. Gnome and KDE aren't competing to gouge as much profit from the market as possible, the communities that make those collections are trying to make a user interface that works well for thier users. Co-operation between those communities isn't going to be evaluated on the basis of how much profit can be generated, but of what benefits it will bring to the respective projects, same with ubuntu and gentoo. Do you think we will see co-operation between Microsoft and Sun anytime to to bring a better features to thier offerings?
Open source simply hasn't reached a point where competition between communities has happened in a big way. I'm not saying it won't happen, but the question is what would the point be? To build a better Linux kernel? That might happen when it reaches the limit of it's development potential, as I beleive is happening with Blender (not that I'm a blender expert - just an admirer), but thats a question of those communities looking at the Blender and asking questions about making it work better for them.
2. The Old Software development and distribution models do not work anymore...
4. OpenSource tactics can and will be implemented in the Future business world as well.
Well that remains to be seen, the Closed model is dominant and has more lobby groups looking after it's interests. The Open model is still evolving and generally ambivalent towards competition with the closed model, it's just not a motivating factor. Business will look at the open model and ask if they can produce more profits and how it threatens thier own interests, if it's in thier interests they will co-operate.
3. ..... Sun needs to realize that they must organize them selfs more and more like the Kernel development model is organized.
Sun is a business, Linux is a kernel. Sun will do whatever it has to do to maximise it's profits. The thing you may not be aware of is Sun may have certain legal restrictions that dictate they behave a certain way or "Compliance issues". If it is in thier interests, they will do it - if it doesn't lead them to court.
5.Linux is a 21st century role model.
Ok, great. But chefs were doing open source (no pun intended) before software people by sharing recipies and making better meals. Linux took it somewhere else, GPL expressed a legal framework and on it goes. I'm really not sure what you are asking so try to look at the bigger picture.
I don't think we will all be holding hands and singing "koom by yaah", competition is important, but you have to ask - competing for what? profit, userbase, the best code? If all Open source produces is good code that people can use - thats great, but it looks like more than that is happening. I suspect business see tremendous advantages to incorporating Open source into thier business framework but have to navigate through a mire of legal complience to reach that outcome. Have a look at a book called "Voyage from Yesteryear" by James. P. Hogan, and not just the wikipedia entry, it describes a similar meeting of "organisational systems", a reasonable read and you may appreciate the analogy.
It remains to see who participates and the nature of the co-operation. Sun contributing Java, even for cynical reasons, says more about Open Source as an evolving business model than a fracturing community.
And so what if it fractures anyway, maybe that makes software evolve in a more "natural" way.
Waitaminute, so you're saying if I take it on faith that baby fur seals CAN be clubbed to death with a foam club does it mean they can't?
Ok, hang on, if I define what I believe in based on what I don't believe in does that mean I don't beleive in what I believe in? Does that mean I'm a abeliever or a afaithiest,, dammit,, you've giving me a headache, I'll try logic...
Ok, if I beleive in god and god exist's then it's ok, if I beleive in god and god does'nt exist then it's ok, if i don't believe in god and god dosen't exist then it's ok but if I don't believe in god and does exist OMG hellfire and damnation.
Under the circumstances I'm gonna have to be a coward here and believe Millitant Atheist's are scared of going to hell, personally I'll take it on faith that Hell does'nt exist, so lets all be ahellist's. Do you think Xenu is a ahellist?
Well, lets' hope so, cause it would be ironic if Jesus was ascientologist.
It's galling that they have been an effective impediment to raising awareness about a Space Elevator's benefit to mankind, and potentially delaying investment from the European community, but maybe that was their plan all along. Maybe they are too scared to go back into space after what happened to our ethereal souls the last time we were there in alien form.
Frankly they give me the creeps. I can understand, for example, that Islamic doctrine finds images of mohhammed offensive, but quasi-religious attacks on free speech are equally offensive, and no sense of humour means double plus extra creepy.
Scientology, as a religion, demonstrates it is not credible enough to stand up to ridicule, if it could, it would have some credibilty.
However, when buying the business they would also buy the management who may have limited experience in IT. Being a manager there means it's hard to get fired which might be ok if there was churn - but these people rarely leave, and why would you? The company benefits are pretty good.
Problem is most of that management does not add value to the business, especially a service business such as this one. I had at least 6 layers of management above me when I worked there just to get to the regional directors. I don't know how many levels of executive were above that.
The most simple analogy I can draw is in the race boat 1 person is rowing and 5 people are yelling "row", when they lose the race they counsel the management and repremand the rower for not performing.
If this were about rationalising the management of the company - I'd rejoice - but I don't think this is what this is about. Management bloat is out of control there and few of those managers realise how challenging technology work is. Consequently the "economy of scale" that should exist are absorbed by layers of people trying to convince the management above them that they are adding value and justifying thier existance with-in the organisation. It's very parasitic and even technical people have to play politics to survive.
Don't expect management to be outsourced anytime soon, competant staff are overworked and work life balance is a joke for those people, mediocrity is encouraged because innovation is difficult for management to understand, which compounds the problem and drives a cycle of diminishing returns within the business. High levels of shareholder returns appear ro be maintained by trying to drive the cost of labour lower and lower, which cannot be maintained in a business as demanding as technology. Risk is out of the question.
The failure is because that management does not recognise that most mature technologists worth thier pay understand how to develop technology that is related to generating profit in a (duuh) technology business. Instead they choose to outsource these "jobs" without recognising thier long-term value and once that competitive advantage is gone it's costly to re-gain. In a service business, capability == profit, it's the bottom line.
Cringley is right. If the same sort of behaviour is happening within the core of the company it's going to take an executive with some very big balls to return the business to sustainable levels of profitability, the alternative is to continue to drive the business into ground, which would be a shame, because without the parasites, politics and the bloat it's a pretty good place to work.
I just seems ironic that the 85% sheep in human populations have influenced our policy making process so much that it is actually easier to make an animal 15% more human than use 100% human stem cell stock to treat human disease. I just wonder how we would handle an incident where, after transplants start occuring, animal disease makes the jump to human population, Bird flu anybody?
Maybe there is a reason in nature we haven't encountered yet that made us different from the animals we eat, no matter how much we try to change them (or individually customise in this case). Will the patient be allowed to dine on the rest of the animal and perhaps make sheep skin boots from the skin? or would that be going too far?
Once transplants start occuring then the pandora's box is open and we are on a very slippery slope. Unless handled with great care technology like this exposes us all to enormous risks. We simply throw away foetuses from failed IVF attempts, so why is it so hard for us to make the ethical leap to develop 100% human stem cell derived organ transplant technology using this otherwise wasted human life?
For example, what if the space shuttles last duty was to assist in the construction of a space elevator? I don't know if that is possible with the space shuttle and could probably be done better with a stack configuration, but I'm just saying what if?
Going back to the moon dosen't seem that exciting either. It's like saying "all this possibility we inspired when we landed on the moon the first time was a fantasy, the best we can give you is more of the same. Still second prize is still pretty good". Where is the advancement? No wonder peoples eye's glaze over when geeks talk about space, they think it will never happen because they were fooled once, they were disapointed.
NASA is like this shining beacon of what is possible when humanity decides, slowly being extinguished and NIAC is like the pilot light.
Now NASA appears as an amorphous blob, trying to make a not really new launch vehicle, maybe go to the moon, doing odd bits of science, some plans for mars, got to look after ISS, have to patch up a shuttle that was a compromise in the first place, infrastructure failing and used for pork barrelling. Because it doesn't excite people, why vote to invest more?
From an outsiders point of view, it looks like NASA, infected with Administratium, whipped by the whims of politicians, subjected to the cynicism and mediocrity of management is a "can do" organisation, after appropriate management approvals. What happened to a goal that captured peoples imaginations? What happened to the engineering focus that was recognised as the capability to achieve those goals? I think the ideas cultivated at NIAC can create those goals.
To be fair, it's not really NASA's fault. They are the political football that tell us there are deeper problems, that the future is too hard to think about right now. Frankly it's unlikely you guys are going to get a president that will say "Not because it's easy, but because it is hard" in the forseeable future. Someone with a vision to industrialise space. But there may be an odd form of hope no country can ignore, humanity's harsh reality,
"Get off this rock or die here"
Carter banned Fast Breeders because the elements mixed (paladium and lithium with plutonium - I think) in a fast breeder effectivley tripled the amount of radioactive material that eventually had to be stored. Clinton shut down IFR because he had a political point to make.
In a cold war reactor the isotope is ceramic, so using it as an insulator with and water as a coolant was never going to be efficient at producing electricity as anything but a by-product, unless you have a large organisation, about the size of a government, prepared to buy all of the plutonium you produce for the life of the reactor.
I would be interested in an economic analysis that factored the long term storage costs of Pu-239 and uranium mining against the investment in perfecting the "pyroprocessing" process of IFR. The reality, as I've said before, is IFR is the only realistic future for nuclear in the 21st century. Let's be realistic about cold war nuclear power plant design, it's ain't that safe because it doesn't factor the cost to future generations. After 50 or 60 years you will still have to shut the power plant down, as it's just a machine with radioactive components. As for the transuranics passing through their halflives, 25000 years for the first, 100000 odd years for the second, we are talking in geological ages of which us mere mortals struggle to even comprehend, let alone know what life will even look like after that much time.
I see IFR as a step forward for these reasons,
It ends the bulk of uranium mining in our lifetime, and for the forseeable future.
It provides a means to consume the stockpile of transuranic waste that exists - mostly plutonium.
However by employing a breakthrough in technology such as IFR we will have to acknowledge one very significant factor, IFR provides a very real argument for eliminating nuclear weapons, and there not a single politician in the world prepared to give up that sort of power.
And that is what IFR is up against.
Which is the real reason he should have been impeached, apart from the fact that he didn't put a comprehensive disarmament treaty in front of the then drunken russian president and say "sign here". However, as enthused as I am about the possibility of using a space elevator to deal with nuclear waste, if our good friends the chinese keep blowing up satelites then our prospects of being able to build a S.E will continue to diminish. Much more prudent for us to use systems like IFR and deal with it in our own gravity well.
Fesible nuclear technology like Integral Fast reactors, a proven and operational concept, and newer Sub critical reactor technology, like thorium based reactors are ignored in these discussions. These are the REAL nuclear alternatives.
It seems to me that these discussions are heavily politicised in favour of the current generation of nuclear plants with no regard to the newer and safer nuclear technologies. Facts ignored, like the gross inefficiencies of the current generation of nuclear reactors, the production of Plutonium as a waste product and the amount of time those waste products are deadly for do nothing to promote an argument in favour of nuclear as an alternative. In particular the Half Life of those isotope's, before it becomes the next deadly element - with an even longer halflife in the millions or billions of years, are treated with a 'head in the sand' attitude that illustrates the ignorance prelavent in these discussions.
Furthermore baseload arguments are used to write off wind and solar technology simply because solutions to these baseload issues, i.e Solar and Wind production of Hydrogen for example, have not been explored.
Attacks on Green groups are made because they make arguments about 'Evil Corporations' (even though corporations are LEGALLY OBLIGED to externalise risk to protect shareholder interest), and while I have no interest in the emotional attachment some green groups have to their arguments, it's at least equivalent to the emotional attachment I see here wrt discussions about current nuclear technology.
Which is to externalise the waste component of nuclear power generation to some other generation and just let them deal with it. How can anyone justify such short term thinking and claim it as a viable solutions to the worlds energy demands.
I wonder how many of you in favour of nuclear power are prepared to put your own money into building a new concrete bunker over Chernobyl or your time lobbying your politicians into supporting contributions to same? How can anyone be expected to take nuclear seriously when the current mess still hasn't been cleaned up properly.
Until a realistic look at newer nuclear technology that has better inherrent saftey is conducted, Chernobyl scale events should be expected to occur every few decades, and there is no way this can be considered 'Viable' or 'Environmentally Friendly'.
Ban or no ban nanotechnologies will come to pass because the military will have a use for them boys and girls. And I doubt the three laws of robotics will be coded into machines that are designed for the military, it will obey one law - FOLLOW ORDERS.
Now is the right time to be talking about the ethics of nano and genetic engineering considering IT'S THE TWENTY FIRST CENTURY so debating such issues and establishing a framework for behaviour wrt developing this technology is timely.
The article pointed out that the development of such technology would probably be done by the private sector. What concerns me is that without ANY framework private industry will do what it always does and externalise all risk for us poor hapless members of the public to pay for, deal with or die by. Spell Bhopal anybody?
If nano-tech is self replicating, then does this imply that it will evolve without human interference? If that is the case then the first accident with nano-technology that allows it into our biosphere maybe the last. I doubt we have a backup of our planets library of DNA, and as it is obvious (today) that our global economy is built on a flawed premise (i.e consumption vs sustainability) coupled with our existing record of self harm, it's not unreasonable to be pessemistic about the consequences.
Nanotechnology is inevitable, cause we need it, we also need genetic engineering, but we also need a good understanding of the technology before we damage ourselves irrepairably. A ban on research won't help but what about a ban on commercial implementation?
With the pace of technology it is likely that such an encounter will be sudden. Some smart genetic engineer will figure our how to make a nano-assembler out of a bacteria, and !!!BANG!!! we will have nanotech ready or not. From that point progress will be quick.
I'd like to bet on the Human instinct to survive such an encounter, but as we have changed the state of what is 'Fit' to evolve in a Darwinian sense it's more likely that our continued evolution will depend on humans conceptualising threats before they come to be. Evolution gave us the upper hand several times before we changed the rules, I doubt we would have much of chance with a new player who is able to change the rules the same way we decide whether a cow will be a steak or a leather jacket.
The IFR reactor that sciam was talking about was in operation for 11 years before being decomissioned. google Integral Fast Reactor.