Well that's because you have a brain. Most people who are not that bright can also access firearms and they have very little education handling them safely.
I personally have no objection to firearms, I was taught to use them. Before I was allowed to handle them I was taught why they were dangerous, then I was taught how to handle them. Before I was allowed to hunt I was taught to aim, fire, aim and actually hit a target accurately. When I was taught to hunt I was taught how to kill an animal mercifully and what it means to be responsible enough to possess the power to kill someone. Unfortunately, the responsibility has been trivialized.
What I object to is people who have zero education with firearms. People who want to own firearms should have mandatory training on how to use, store and carry them safely *before* they are allowed to own them to gauge their commitment to firearm safety. Actually, it should be taught at school in countries that have a constitutional right to have firearms and I think the Swiss are a country that do this pretty well (IIRC).
People will die in a firearm culture, so people who support it should push politician very hard for firearm education very early in life, which is a very small price to pay for the right to own a firearm. It may sound cold, but if a persons toddler shoots grandma because a firearm wasn't stowed properly, that's on the owner of the firearm. Asking people to take personal responsibility for firearms is a small price to pay for being able to protect the concept of a citizen state and that is the core of the firearms debate. Firearm ownership is a responsibility and a civic duty as protection of the citizen state.
Unfortunately, too many people own firearms who don't see it as a responsibility or a civic duty, it's their power trip or paranoia and not everyone who *can* own a fire arm *should* own a firearm. It's perfectly understandable and reasonable why people want gun control however it is an argument that has to be weighed up against the inherent value of having a well armed militia to make government think twice about pushing their citizens around.
Force equalizers are not just about a woman stopping a rapist, they are also about making despotic rulers think twice about raping populations.
Because killing 2,606 in the WTC should just be forgotten.
No it should not be forgotten, because it was the excuse used to hi jack the U.S Constitution from the American people and initiate a cascade of legislative changes around the western world to protect us from something that wasn't a threat in the first place.
This is a issue of structural democracy and how we've been tricked into thinking that democracy is so fragile that we need to destroy it to stay 'safe'. Islam extremism has always been used as an excuse to take away the freedoms that built western democracies. Nothing's changed except now we have terrorism *and* laws that are make us a police state.
I don't care about being safe, I've never expected that, I expect to be free and now we are neither.
Citation? Hell, citation that plants routinely vent radioactive materials into the environment outside of emergency circumstances!
The regulations were first set out in 1971 by the NRC’s predecessor, the Atomic Energy Commission, as part of the General Design Criteria (GDC) for Nuclear Reactors. The GDC are contained in Appendix A to 10 CFR Part 50 (AEC 1971b).
The limits are contained in Appendix I to 10 CFR Part 50, which the NRC adopted in May 1975, and in 10 CFR 20.1301, which it adopted in 1991.
That's where the 'authorized' ventings are defined. All NPPs vent radio-isotopes into the atmosphere every 2 weeks during normal operations, because they need to. That is a fact of operating the technology.
You're still very close though.
You're missing the point, it's about designing plant facilities to ensure they are available to mitigate accidents during an accident, so that installation only looses a reactor, instead of a reactor, a water pump house, a turbine and the control room. It's not about core damage frequency, it's about what you have when you are facing core damage and you are trying to save the installation.
That would have saved Fukushima.
The problem here is that you're assuming a linear relationship between clean-up costs and reactor power size.
Any citations that it isn't because the work I've read suggests it is.
This is a bit like comparing a 4 stroke 4 cylinder from the '80s to a modern 4 stroke. Sure, there may be broad similarities, but there's also refinements in pretty much every aspect.
No, they are not because you cannot retrofit improvements to a Nuclear reactor, the same way I can install a four valve head where there previously was a 2 valve head, or a turbo charger to improve the volumetric efficiency of an engine. The refinements in the design turn that thick concrete dome into an eggshell, sure it looks the same, but it isn't.
The "refinements' are made to reduce material input costs, specifically, concrete.
being unable to go quite as deep into the research as I'd like
You keep asking me for citations, why? Do you think I am bullshitting you? What does it mean that I provide it? Will you correct your assumptions against this new knowledge or maintain your assuptions in face of the fact?
I've done the research before I post, that is why I know what I am saying. If you don't have a reference to base an opinion on you can be fairly certain that I've already researched the subject so that I can form an opinion. I think this stuff is important enough to get a good grounding in knowing it before talking about it, that's why I express an opinion. The social proof of NPPs that happens at/. is mostly false and not grounded in any fact, it would be advisable not to buy into it because it will make you dogmatically skeptical, which is worse than groupthink.
I'm not saying this in a jerk kind of way, but why don't you just check out some of the citations I've already sent you and see what it says, it's actually pretty interesting stuff.
AP1k might be the only one in production, but it's not the only one approved.
Unless you can provide your own citations you will find that AP1000 is the only one that is approved by law (also very interesting).
Thankful I'm not Australian. Worse than America almost. Maybe they're trying to be like Britain.
Because there is a stronger bill of rights in UK and the US, the bill is tested in Australia, then cut down, applied in the US, cut down again and applied to the UK. You can see that pattern of legislation around the western world. If it is not in conflict with the constitution they will attempt to pass it.
we'll have a chance to have a proper think about data retention and what it means, though it's probably too late.
No, it isn't too late and if you are really sincere about doing something just copy the amendments the bill requires into a letter to your local MP. Feel free to copy my work - this is a problem that needs to be fixed and I am happy for anyone to use it.
That being said the law does require the data to be 'encrypted',
Not quite. Section 187BA.a specifies that the data is to be encrypted, then in the compliance section later 187F.2.a it lets the provider off the hook with the whole encryption mechanism if it can't get the system to operate with it.
Encryption is optional in the context of this act and was one of the things I suggested amending to be mandatory with the private key being held by the TIO. I did a detailed analysis of the legislation before it passed and whilst I won't include the letters I wrote to the senate, these are the sections of part one I thought needed to be amended to protect the population from fraud and slashdotters will probably get this immediately:
Criticisms of specific sections in Part one:
187AA.3A,3B remove because it introduces the possibility that any e-commerce business that is not a telecommunications provider can be forced to retain data and bare the cost of limiting their business throughput and capacity for expansion. For business this represents a rising linear cost that increases with additional customers.
187B.2 Needs definition of who a CAC (Communications Access Controller) role answers to, which department, and limits to retention demands
187B.2A change 'may' to 'must'
187B.3.c Remove. Additional requirements from the CAC impose incremental infrastructure and capacity restraints on business coupled with forcing them into I.P cost and approval cycles every time infrastructure upgrades are required as a result of demands from the CAC. The business is forced to write for approval for mandatory upgrades to meet retention requirements demanded by the CAC.
187BA.a Specify an minimum standard for encryption of data. Governmental should mandate minimum encryption standards revised regularly to protect consumers from fraud, organised crime, identity theft, harassment and so on. The same standard should control access to the data from all parties.
187BA.c add allow encrypted access to the data by the entity or person that generated it.
187E.2.b,c service providers must never be exempt from section 187BA when storing entity or personally generated data 187F.2.a add ensure adherence to encryption standards in 187BA; and
187F.2.b add: whilst still complying with 187BA
187F.2.f remove for the same reason as 187B.3.c
187G.1 Law enforcement uses a secured access standard under 187BA.a to access the data
187G.2.d change 'may' to 'must'
187G 4,5 Define a criteria for the ACMA's collection requirements
187K.1.d add: not approve an exemption from 187BA
187KA.4 define the ACMA's relation to policing here
187KA.4.f add: input from the PC and T.O
187KA.5 remove: ACMA considerations have nothing to do with policing for terrorists
187LA Should provide protection from abuse from government employees
187M add: Section 187BA(a)(b),
To clue you all in Section 187AA is the meat of the 80 page bill that defines what is captured. Section 187BA(a)(b) define, weakly, how the population will be protected from fraud. Whilst the single word change of 187B.2A is the critical change required to protect people from harassment. 187G.2.d give ISPs an out for complying with 187BA which further weakens the public's protection - as previously mentioned.
Also, if you are an ISP and the CAC says 'hey - collect this as well' the ISP must create a new project plan, submit it for approval, for which can take an unknown time, then once approved the ISP has a limited time to comply or be fined. The insanity of the compliance process for ISPs is truly breathtaking.
I feel sorry for my country and it's people. I work in IT, I understand how people will be defrauded because I've seen it and now I think it is inevitable that these cases will be more common. Our constitution says Australians are guaranteed 'responsible government' however I see this bill as a very
His concept was partials. A partial of yourself was an instance of yourself *at that time* that could be downloaded to a computers and then conduct problem solving.
On finding the answer the partial would signal the originating consciousness that it had completed and was ready.
At death, you consciousness was available for restoration to either reality or a simulated environment. Which didn't help if your body ended up in some inaccessible place.
I was surprised when one/. poster once posted a link to a government document (in the USA) where CF is actually "defined" and there where examples where plant owners did actually report their CFs per plant to an gov agency.
It falls into their typical fixation on reactor technology, whilst ignoring the peer reviewed science about the negligible energetic return of the entire industry.
My argument always was that e.g. in Germany no power company is using that "metric" as it is not relevant for daily use/planning of power plants.
Your explanation goes into the same direction as the US definition I remember simply was: actual-energy / max-energy-if-run-at100%-fulltime. Not sure if it was adjusted in any way regarding the actual runtime... that document specified a set of variations of CFs.
I can see how they arrive at a 90% figure, however it's about as accurate as saying 'it makes power when it runs'. The utilisation of NPP is woeful compared to other types of generation and my sense of the measurement is that it is a construct that ignores maintenance and a life time calculation of the energetic yield.
Specifically so that they can say that a plant that has only operated for 50% of its available service life can say it has a CF of 90% (even with a poor utilisation) compared to a solar plant that operated for 100% of its service life has a CF of 50%. This way even TMI, which operated for 3 months of it's expected 40-50 year service life can claim a 90% CF.
Yeah, actually a nuclear plant has a quite high power consumption.
I just checked a german nuclear plant, its yield is 1468MW, but it consumes 66MW so the efficiency of converting thermal energy to electricity is only 35.3% (This is per turbine/block, so a plant with 4 blocks, which is cut from landlines and has to emergency shut down, would need 4 x ~ 70MW emergency power Generation)
When you consider the energetic input from front and back end industrial processes the energetic cost's go even higher. You may be interested in this work on the energetic returns of NPP, this document has been used to advise European parliament has work from universities around the world contributing.
Thanks for being one of the few people here that have enough brains to actually look at this stuff objectively. I share your frustration with these nuclear fanbois, they are only good at moral superiority that they get from social proof - once confronted with fact they have nothing to back up their claims.
Battery tech has barely moved, in 100years due to the realities of chemistry.
Really, how incredibly interesting that that is about how long the oil industry has been going. I'd imagine them saying 'yes, it's only fair that we allow this new invention to threaten our market share rather than license the patent off the inventor and keep it off the market even though it is perfectly legal to do so'.
please put your fucking tin foil hat back on, your talking utter shite without it!
I imagine the extensive research of the patent archives you went to, to validate such an insiteful "opinion".
Wind is not a positively dispatchable power source.
Are you're telling me a 21st Century energy grid can't manage the availability of a source of energy and deliver capacity to where it is required? Is that what you mean?
A wind turbine is not a functional substitute for a nuclear, hydroelectric, gas or coal station, all of which can produce power *when asked to do so*.
Thousands of wind turbines are though. Base load is a function of the grid, not of any one source. A higher installed base of wind increases capacity AND availability.
No one is expecting wind to do that today because it doesn't have enough volume to maintain availability and capacity because the industry is in its infancy.
I expect that from established technologies though.
Photovoltaic ("solar") power may have a role to play, but the laws of our universe completely preclude the possibility of wind power ever being a useful, practical, economic contributor to large national grids; EVER. It's not even a remote possibility.
Why? Are you telling me we can't solve problems and adapt.
Excluding CANDU, which are the only reactors I know of in operation that can operate and be refueled, however the more popular BWR and PWR can't produce power when they are being re-fueled or maintained. So how is that different from wind as a source?
How is asking wind to produce power when the wind is not blowing, not like asking another power source to produce power during it's characteristic outage like being refueled or maintained?
Why is distributing the wind as a source of energy too difficult problem for us to manage? It's an emotive claim? What is the problem that you see?
For solar, that 20% capacity factor is a maximum, not an average. It can be achieved in ideal locations. For reference, Germany's ave solar cf is about 10%, and their best commercal solar farms are at about 13%.
And nuclear is a lot safer and more environmentally friendly than hydro.
I think you are conflating environmental harm with environmental impact. A land slide can block a river and have a large environmental impact. Hydro has a large environmental impact, however it eventually pays its carbon input from the concrete and the environment settles down around it - much the same way it would with a land slide.
A Nuclear Power however, does a lot of environmental harm. Like Hydro a Nuclear plant will eventually pay it's carbon input from the concrete, however continues to pay it as an energetic input cost from mining, processing and enrichment. The fuel enrichment process it is still the largest industrial emitter CFC114 which destroy the phytoplanktons that create the bulk of the atmosphere's oxygen from CO2.
The list goes on, the toxicity of 239 pu, U 238 and other radio-isotopes that, as often claimed are 'not released during normal operation', occur along with other authorized and unauthorized venting of radioactive materials during normal operation. Many of which are highly mutagenic and cancerous. We have seen from the Zombie forests Chernobyl that plutonium in the environment destroys the very basis of life at the level of microbes.
Far from 'Environmentally Friendly', Nuclear power utilizes the most toxic compounds humans have known that when released into the environment kills just about everything. I think 'Environmentally Destructive' would be a more accurate description of it's characteristics. A very slow, destructive and persistent set of consequences that occur over time and will continue to occur long after we are all dead.
I'm sure the fish are the first to protest whenever a hydro dam goes up, and all those waterbirds probably hate having all that extra habitat to live in.
They note that with unobtanium batteries they will be able to take over peak loads too.
What makes you think better battery technology doesn't exist as opposed to being subject to patents owned by those with economic interests in keeping them out of the market?
In the U.S., coal-fired power plants operate at around 60% capacity factor, and nuclear plants at nearly 90% (Source.)
The CF for nuclear is much more complex when compared to other sources. The article he refers to only talks about the Capacity Factor whilst it is operating which is dependent on its 'Availability' and 'Utilization' of the power source over it's life time. If it has a capacity factor of 90% and an availability of 50% over its lifetime, as people like to point out in solar's case, then Nuclear's Total Capacity Factor is only 45%. They mention refueling, but for maintenance I've heard of some terrible availability numbers for Nuclear of around 38%.
I'm not sure if that is what you are referring to, however I do know it is typical of the kind of intellectual dis-honesty we see from the nuclear industry's PR machine to 'not mention that bit'. I did a search on nuclear reactor availability and 'utilization' which produced nothing. I'm not saying it isn't there, but it is not as easy to find as 'Capacity Factor'.
The whole 'Capacity Factor' measure used there not only bypasses that the maintenance on some reactor plants can take them offline for years but also fails to point out that the plant becomes a net consumer of electricity to maintain cooling of spent fuel and other things, effectively a negative CF when it is offline.
From my understanding though it goes beyond the refueling cycle, maintenance and, a reactor's availability. It's CF cannot be assessed as simply as other sources because it's it is impacted by its energetic inputs. You have to include and measure energetic inputs such as mining, processing and enriching the ore however you will not have a complete idea of how much energy you have spent on it until after the reactor has been decommissioned, it cools, it is disassembled and, stowed so that the active and activated radio-isotopes don't end up bio-accumulating in the environment.
I think the true measure is Net energy return because it's measuring all of the inputs and outputs. That would be a comparison worth seeing. I think some people can't seem to accept that these losses are a tangible part of the 'Total Lifetime Capacity Factor' of Nuclear energy because they get so fixated on the reactor and none of the supporting technology it requires.
It's great news for Wind power which Investors prefer over Nuclear because wind is a lower risk, more scale-able than nuclear and can have frequent technology improvements over it's life time.
*anyone* who has played a field sport of any kind will tell tell you it's about what the team can do, not what a team of egos can do. All to often you can take a bunch of top athletes and put them in a team and the team dynamic is created by the interactions between them. It's completely different from the environment that makes them the player they are.
The only people who would bet on this crap have never played sport in their life or want to make a killing on knowing the results and gambling on a sure thing. Essentially - what we are seeing.
Above ground caskets are working well. I figure that we'd be digging up anything we bury within a century to reprocess it anyways. Heck, let it sit in a cask for 40 years and so much of the 'hot' stuff has decayed that it should make reprocessing significantly cheaper.
I think I see where you are going with this. If you are going to take a longer term veiw of the Nuclear Industry based on reprocessing and start implementing reactors that implement this technology then you have to accomodate reprocessing facilities, the reactor and the spent fuel products anyway. You have to move it from around the country from the reactor sites to reprocess it.
IFR did this in an integrated way and it is a proven and tested design so I think it realistic to implement provided you have contained adequate facilities. You yeild a significant energetic advantage (from my loose calculation 1.3Tw hours - don't hold me to that though - I haven't checked my math) over the initial 40 year lifespan of the reactor if you can dispose of the reactor core, in situ, i.e you build the reactor in a granite mountain and leave it in place when it is no longer viable. Then double that advantage again because you don't need to mine and enrich for fuel to operate it. Triple the energetic return, if you build it with material technology improvements that allows it to go beyond it's initial lifespan, every 40 years. So it's a real winner for that potential.
That's why I think it makes sense to look ahead and actually start by accommodating the spent fuel facilities, then you can site reprocessing facilities and reactors. The state that hosts it would get a bonanza of industry looking for cheap electricity, because it's easier to move electricity as opposed to moving highly radioactive fuel.
So when evaluating the two if you are going to consider Thorium reactors over something like IFR you have to also factor the energetic inputs of processing the ore ready for the reactor.
So far IFR is the only threat to the coal and oil industry and it's not hard to see the hard lobbying they did of Clinton when he killed it and Bush when he funded it's demolition to well and truely bury it. The American people would never have been beholden to the oil industry for at least 5000 years - based on fuel availability.
Question, do you know what "short half lives" amounts to? It means that the material in question is much more radioactive - but that means it also decays in radioactivity much faster.
Yes I do, but like the issue of the thermal containment, that is not what I am refering to. Thallium has some unusual properties (oh, I checked and it's 208 Thallium not 233. It's a gamma emmitter, not a alpha emmiter like 239 pu - so it's pretty nasty stuff). I'm still trying to wrap my head around it so if you have any facts about it that help to understand better, I'd welcome them.
What I've learnt so far is that it has lots of halflives (more than the 20 or so) and many, many daughter products. Now I'm not sure if the mechanism is spontaneous fission (IIRC) that does this (like DU) but because it is a gamma emmitter it would be a heck of a lot harder to deal with than plutonium. I'm not sure but I think it has something to do with the properties of the metal being more like alluminium than like lead (i.e. the properties of the metal).
Don't take that as a criticism of Thorium reactor technology though, it's got good anti-proliferation characteristics however I think if you are going to advocate the technology you really have to have a salient and realistic look at the whole fuel cycle and how you manage it especially if you want to avoid the mistakes of the old technology.
I probably have a ways to go with Thorium salt technology however from my understanding so far, I'd go with IFR because you don't loose energy (i.e joules) mining and processing the fuel as with Thorium and, IFR deals with 238 pu by yielding the energetic investment.
Slashdot Mirror
Well that's because you have a brain. Most people who are not that bright can also access firearms and they have very little education handling them safely.
I personally have no objection to firearms, I was taught to use them. Before I was allowed to handle them I was taught why they were dangerous, then I was taught how to handle them. Before I was allowed to hunt I was taught to aim, fire, aim and actually hit a target accurately. When I was taught to hunt I was taught how to kill an animal mercifully and what it means to be responsible enough to possess the power to kill someone. Unfortunately, the responsibility has been trivialized.
What I object to is people who have zero education with firearms. People who want to own firearms should have mandatory training on how to use, store and carry them safely *before* they are allowed to own them to gauge their commitment to firearm safety. Actually, it should be taught at school in countries that have a constitutional right to have firearms and I think the Swiss are a country that do this pretty well (IIRC).
People will die in a firearm culture, so people who support it should push politician very hard for firearm education very early in life, which is a very small price to pay for the right to own a firearm. It may sound cold, but if a persons toddler shoots grandma because a firearm wasn't stowed properly, that's on the owner of the firearm. Asking people to take personal responsibility for firearms is a small price to pay for being able to protect the concept of a citizen state and that is the core of the firearms debate. Firearm ownership is a responsibility and a civic duty as protection of the citizen state.
Unfortunately, too many people own firearms who don't see it as a responsibility or a civic duty, it's their power trip or paranoia and not everyone who *can* own a fire arm *should* own a firearm. It's perfectly understandable and reasonable why people want gun control however it is an argument that has to be weighed up against the inherent value of having a well armed militia to make government think twice about pushing their citizens around.
Force equalizers are not just about a woman stopping a rapist, they are also about making despotic rulers think twice about raping populations.
Because killing 2,606 in the WTC should just be forgotten.
No it should not be forgotten, because it was the excuse used to hi jack the U.S Constitution from the American people and initiate a cascade of legislative changes around the western world to protect us from something that wasn't a threat in the first place.
This is a issue of structural democracy and how we've been tricked into thinking that democracy is so fragile that we need to destroy it to stay 'safe'. Islam extremism has always been used as an excuse to take away the freedoms that built western democracies. Nothing's changed except now we have terrorism *and* laws that are make us a police state.
I don't care about being safe, I've never expected that, I expect to be free and now we are neither.
You said:"radioactive effluents"? You do realize that nuclear reactors don't release any radioactivity under normal operating conditions? Major releases are on the order of once a decade or more, and that's with our aging GenII reactors, world wide. GenIII would be a lot safer.
The regulations were first set out in 1971 by the NRC’s predecessor, the Atomic Energy Commission, as part of the General Design Criteria (GDC) for Nuclear Reactors. The GDC are contained in Appendix A to 10 CFR Part 50 (AEC 1971b).
The limits are contained in Appendix I to 10 CFR Part 50, which the NRC adopted in May 1975, and in 10 CFR 20.1301, which it adopted in 1991.
That's where the 'authorized' ventings are defined. All NPPs vent radio-isotopes into the atmosphere every 2 weeks during normal operations, because they need to. That is a fact of operating the technology.
You're missing the point, it's about designing plant facilities to ensure they are available to mitigate accidents during an accident, so that installation only looses a reactor, instead of a reactor, a water pump house, a turbine and the control room. It's not about core damage frequency, it's about what you have when you are facing core damage and you are trying to save the installation.
That would have saved Fukushima.
Any citations that it isn't because the work I've read suggests it is.
No, they are not because you cannot retrofit improvements to a Nuclear reactor, the same way I can install a four valve head where there previously was a 2 valve head, or a turbo charger to improve the volumetric efficiency of an engine. The refinements in the design turn that thick concrete dome into an eggshell, sure it looks the same, but it isn't.
The "refinements' are made to reduce material input costs, specifically, concrete.
You keep asking me for citations, why? Do you think I am bullshitting you? What does it mean that I provide it? Will you correct your assumptions against this new knowledge or maintain your assuptions in face of the fact?
I've done the research before I post, that is why I know what I am saying. If you don't have a reference to base an opinion on you can be fairly certain that I've already researched the subject so that I can form an opinion. I think this stuff is important enough to get a good grounding in knowing it before talking about it, that's why I express an opinion. The social proof of NPPs that happens at /. is mostly false and not grounded in any fact, it would be advisable not to buy into it because it will make you dogmatically skeptical, which is worse than groupthink.
I'm not saying this in a jerk kind of way, but why don't you just check out some of the citations I've already sent you and see what it says, it's actually pretty interesting stuff.
Unless you can provide your own citations you will find that AP1000 is the only one that is approved by law (also very interesting).
Good luck with your studies
Thankful I'm not Australian. Worse than America almost. Maybe they're trying to be like Britain.
Because there is a stronger bill of rights in UK and the US, the bill is tested in Australia, then cut down, applied in the US, cut down again and applied to the UK. You can see that pattern of legislation around the western world. If it is not in conflict with the constitution they will attempt to pass it.
we'll have a chance to have a proper think about data retention and what it means, though it's probably too late.
No, it isn't too late and if you are really sincere about doing something just copy the amendments the bill requires into a letter to your local MP. Feel free to copy my work - this is a problem that needs to be fixed and I am happy for anyone to use it.
That being said the law does require the data to be 'encrypted',
Not quite. Section 187BA.a specifies that the data is to be encrypted, then in the compliance section later 187F.2.a it lets the provider off the hook with the whole encryption mechanism if it can't get the system to operate with it.
Encryption is optional in the context of this act and was one of the things I suggested amending to be mandatory with the private key being held by the TIO. I did a detailed analysis of the legislation before it passed and whilst I won't include the letters I wrote to the senate, these are the sections of part one I thought needed to be amended to protect the population from fraud and slashdotters will probably get this immediately:
Criticisms of specific sections in Part one:
187AA.3A,3B remove because it introduces the possibility that any e-commerce business that is not a telecommunications provider can be forced to retain data and bare the cost of limiting their business throughput and capacity for expansion. For business this represents a rising linear cost that increases with additional customers.
187B.2 Needs definition of who a CAC (Communications Access Controller) role answers to, which department, and limits to retention demands
187B.2A change 'may' to 'must'
187B.3.c Remove. Additional requirements from the CAC impose incremental infrastructure and capacity restraints on business coupled with forcing them into I.P cost and approval cycles every time infrastructure upgrades are required as a result of demands from the CAC. The business is forced to write for approval for mandatory upgrades to meet retention requirements demanded by the CAC.
187BA.a Specify an minimum standard for encryption of data. Governmental should mandate minimum encryption standards revised regularly to protect consumers from fraud, organised crime, identity theft, harassment and so on. The same standard should control access to the data from all parties.
187BA.c add allow encrypted access to the data by the entity or person that generated it.
187E.2.b,c service providers must never be exempt from section 187BA when storing entity or personally generated data 187F.2.a add ensure adherence to encryption standards in 187BA; and
187F.2.b add: whilst still complying with 187BA
187F.2.f remove for the same reason as 187B.3.c
187G.1 Law enforcement uses a secured access standard under 187BA.a to access the data
187G.2.d change 'may' to 'must'
187G 4,5 Define a criteria for the ACMA's collection requirements
187K.1.d add: not approve an exemption from 187BA
187KA.4 define the ACMA's relation to policing here
187KA.4.f add: input from the PC and T.O
187KA.5 remove: ACMA considerations have nothing to do with policing for terrorists
187LA Should provide protection from abuse from government employees
187M add: Section 187BA(a)(b),
To clue you all in Section 187AA is the meat of the 80 page bill that defines what is captured. Section 187BA(a)(b) define, weakly, how the population will be protected from fraud. Whilst the single word change of 187B.2A is the critical change required to protect people from harassment. 187G.2.d give ISPs an out for complying with 187BA which further weakens the public's protection - as previously mentioned.
Also, if you are an ISP and the CAC says 'hey - collect this as well' the ISP must create a new project plan, submit it for approval, for which can take an unknown time, then once approved the ISP has a limited time to comply or be fined. The insanity of the compliance process for ISPs is truly breathtaking.
I feel sorry for my country and it's people. I work in IT, I understand how people will be defrauded because I've seen it and now I think it is inevitable that these cases will be more common. Our constitution says Australians are guaranteed 'responsible government' however I see this bill as a very
Except that it did and the owner of the consciousness was a very rich person experimenting with other people until it was right.
Some very interesting scenarios there.
I'll be looking forward to reading the one you have here - thanks for that.
On finding the answer the partial would signal the originating consciousness that it had completed and was ready.
At death, you consciousness was available for restoration to either reality or a simulated environment. Which didn't help if your body ended up in some inaccessible place.
My opinion aubout CF is: it is a useless metric.
Indeed, almost a misleading one.
I was surprised when one /. poster once posted a link to a government document (in the USA) where CF is actually "defined" and there where examples where plant owners did actually report their CFs per plant to an gov agency.
It falls into their typical fixation on reactor technology, whilst ignoring the peer reviewed science about the negligible energetic return of the entire industry.
My argument always was that e.g. in Germany no power company is using that "metric" as it is not relevant for daily use/planning of power plants.
Your explanation goes into the same direction as the US definition I remember simply was: actual-energy / max-energy-if-run-at100%-fulltime. Not sure if it was adjusted in any way regarding the actual runtime ... that document specified a set of variations of CFs.
I can see how they arrive at a 90% figure, however it's about as accurate as saying 'it makes power when it runs'. The utilisation of NPP is woeful compared to other types of generation and my sense of the measurement is that it is a construct that ignores maintenance and a life time calculation of the energetic yield.
Specifically so that they can say that a plant that has only operated for 50% of its available service life can say it has a CF of 90% (even with a poor utilisation) compared to a solar plant that operated for 100% of its service life has a CF of 50%. This way even TMI, which operated for 3 months of it's expected 40-50 year service life can claim a 90% CF.
Yeah, actually a nuclear plant has a quite high power consumption.
I just checked a german nuclear plant, its yield is 1468MW, but it consumes 66MW so the efficiency of converting thermal energy to electricity is only 35.3% (This is per turbine/block, so a plant with 4 blocks, which is cut from landlines and has to emergency shut down, would need 4 x ~ 70MW emergency power Generation)
When you consider the energetic input from front and back end industrial processes the energetic cost's go even higher. You may be interested in this work on the energetic returns of NPP, this document has been used to advise European parliament has work from universities around the world contributing.
Thanks for being one of the few people here that have enough brains to actually look at this stuff objectively. I share your frustration with these nuclear fanbois, they are only good at moral superiority that they get from social proof - once confronted with fact they have nothing to back up their claims.
Battery tech has barely moved, in 100years due to the realities of chemistry.
Really, how incredibly interesting that that is about how long the oil industry has been going. I'd imagine them saying 'yes, it's only fair that we allow this new invention to threaten our market share rather than license the patent off the inventor and keep it off the market even though it is perfectly legal to do so'.
please put your fucking tin foil hat back on, your talking utter shite without it!
I imagine the extensive research of the patent archives you went to, to validate such an insiteful "opinion".
Reactors are planned when to shut down to refuel.
DUUUUUH - captain fucking obvious. So do they plan LERs and ASPs? Fucking moron AC.
The wind just fucking stops, unless you have found a way to control the wind (your brain farts don't count!)
The wind is always blowing somewhere, even in your empty skull. Go back - re-read my post and figure out why what you have said is just stupid.
Wind is not a positively dispatchable power source.
Are you're telling me a 21st Century energy grid can't manage the availability of a source of energy and deliver capacity to where it is required? Is that what you mean?
A wind turbine is not a functional substitute for a nuclear, hydroelectric, gas or coal station, all of which can produce power *when asked to do so*.
Thousands of wind turbines are though. Base load is a function of the grid, not of any one source. A higher installed base of wind increases capacity AND availability.
No one is expecting wind to do that today because it doesn't have enough volume to maintain availability and capacity because the industry is in its infancy.
I expect that from established technologies though.
Photovoltaic ("solar") power may have a role to play, but the laws of our universe completely preclude the possibility of wind power ever being a useful, practical, economic contributor to large national grids; EVER. It's not even a remote possibility.
Why? Are you telling me we can't solve problems and adapt.
Excluding CANDU, which are the only reactors I know of in operation that can operate and be refueled, however the more popular BWR and PWR can't produce power when they are being re-fueled or maintained. So how is that different from wind as a source? How is asking wind to produce power when the wind is not blowing, not like asking another power source to produce power during it's characteristic outage like being refueled or maintained?
Why is distributing the wind as a source of energy too difficult problem for us to manage? It's an emotive claim? What is the problem that you see?
Were, sigh. Stupid voice input.
Which one are you using?
Whoosh!
For solar, that 20% capacity factor is a maximum, not an average. It can be achieved in ideal locations. For reference, Germany's ave solar cf is about 10%, and their best commercal solar farms are at about 13%.
From little things, big things grow.
And nuclear is a lot safer and more environmentally friendly than hydro.
I think you are conflating environmental harm with environmental impact. A land slide can block a river and have a large environmental impact. Hydro has a large environmental impact, however it eventually pays its carbon input from the concrete and the environment settles down around it - much the same way it would with a land slide.
A Nuclear Power however, does a lot of environmental harm. Like Hydro a Nuclear plant will eventually pay it's carbon input from the concrete, however continues to pay it as an energetic input cost from mining, processing and enrichment. The fuel enrichment process it is still the largest industrial emitter CFC114 which destroy the phytoplanktons that create the bulk of the atmosphere's oxygen from CO2.
The list goes on, the toxicity of 239 pu, U 238 and other radio-isotopes that, as often claimed are 'not released during normal operation', occur along with other authorized and unauthorized venting of radioactive materials during normal operation. Many of which are highly mutagenic and cancerous. We have seen from the Zombie forests Chernobyl that plutonium in the environment destroys the very basis of life at the level of microbes.
Far from 'Environmentally Friendly', Nuclear power utilizes the most toxic compounds humans have known that when released into the environment kills just about everything. I think 'Environmentally Destructive' would be a more accurate description of it's characteristics. A very slow, destructive and persistent set of consequences that occur over time and will continue to occur long after we are all dead.
I'm sure the fish are the first to protest whenever a hydro dam goes up, and all those waterbirds probably hate having all that extra habitat to live in.
I think that the way solar and wind technology improves couples it well with IT. I suspect it will bring a lot of technology projects into existence.
They note that with unobtanium batteries they will be able to take over peak loads too.
What makes you think better battery technology doesn't exist as opposed to being subject to patents owned by those with economic interests in keeping them out of the market?
Shays are great because they have three vertical cylinders (on one side of the locomotive!) connected to a gear drive.
Doesn't that make it a Three-Shay? Does a Two-Shay have less talk?
In the U.S., coal-fired power plants operate at around 60% capacity factor, and nuclear plants at nearly 90% (Source.)
The CF for nuclear is much more complex when compared to other sources. The article he refers to only talks about the Capacity Factor whilst it is operating which is dependent on its 'Availability' and 'Utilization' of the power source over it's life time. If it has a capacity factor of 90% and an availability of 50% over its lifetime, as people like to point out in solar's case, then Nuclear's Total Capacity Factor is only 45%. They mention refueling, but for maintenance I've heard of some terrible availability numbers for Nuclear of around 38%.
I'm not sure if that is what you are referring to, however I do know it is typical of the kind of intellectual dis-honesty we see from the nuclear industry's PR machine to 'not mention that bit'. I did a search on nuclear reactor availability and 'utilization' which produced nothing. I'm not saying it isn't there, but it is not as easy to find as 'Capacity Factor'.
The whole 'Capacity Factor' measure used there not only bypasses that the maintenance on some reactor plants can take them offline for years but also fails to point out that the plant becomes a net consumer of electricity to maintain cooling of spent fuel and other things, effectively a negative CF when it is offline.
From my understanding though it goes beyond the refueling cycle, maintenance and, a reactor's availability. It's CF cannot be assessed as simply as other sources because it's it is impacted by its energetic inputs. You have to include and measure energetic inputs such as mining, processing and enriching the ore however you will not have a complete idea of how much energy you have spent on it until after the reactor has been decommissioned, it cools, it is disassembled and, stowed so that the active and activated radio-isotopes don't end up bio-accumulating in the environment.
I think the true measure is Net energy return because it's measuring all of the inputs and outputs. That would be a comparison worth seeing. I think some people can't seem to accept that these losses are a tangible part of the 'Total Lifetime Capacity Factor' of Nuclear energy because they get so fixated on the reactor and none of the supporting technology it requires.
It's great news for Wind power which Investors prefer over Nuclear because wind is a lower risk, more scale-able than nuclear and can have frequent technology improvements over it's life time.
this is the one they faked, we haven't really been to mars yet.
your sig is hilarious - I almost spat my drink all over my monitor.
*anyone* who has played a field sport of any kind will tell tell you it's about what the team can do, not what a team of egos can do. All to often you can take a bunch of top athletes and put them in a team and the team dynamic is created by the interactions between them. It's completely different from the environment that makes them the player they are.
The only people who would bet on this crap have never played sport in their life or want to make a killing on knowing the results and gambling on a sure thing. Essentially - what we are seeing.
I think I see where you are going with this. If you are going to take a longer term veiw of the Nuclear Industry based on reprocessing and start implementing reactors that implement this technology then you have to accomodate reprocessing facilities, the reactor and the spent fuel products anyway. You have to move it from around the country from the reactor sites to reprocess it.
IFR did this in an integrated way and it is a proven and tested design so I think it realistic to implement provided you have contained adequate facilities. You yeild a significant energetic advantage (from my loose calculation 1.3Tw hours - don't hold me to that though - I haven't checked my math) over the initial 40 year lifespan of the reactor if you can dispose of the reactor core, in situ, i.e you build the reactor in a granite mountain and leave it in place when it is no longer viable. Then double that advantage again because you don't need to mine and enrich for fuel to operate it. Triple the energetic return, if you build it with material technology improvements that allows it to go beyond it's initial lifespan, every 40 years. So it's a real winner for that potential.
That's why I think it makes sense to look ahead and actually start by accommodating the spent fuel facilities, then you can site reprocessing facilities and reactors. The state that hosts it would get a bonanza of industry looking for cheap electricity, because it's easier to move electricity as opposed to moving highly radioactive fuel. So when evaluating the two if you are going to consider Thorium reactors over something like IFR you have to also factor the energetic inputs of processing the ore ready for the reactor.
So far IFR is the only threat to the coal and oil industry and it's not hard to see the hard lobbying they did of Clinton when he killed it and Bush when he funded it's demolition to well and truely bury it. The American people would never have been beholden to the oil industry for at least 5000 years - based on fuel availability.
Yes I do, but like the issue of the thermal containment, that is not what I am refering to. Thallium has some unusual properties (oh, I checked and it's 208 Thallium not 233. It's a gamma emmitter, not a alpha emmiter like 239 pu - so it's pretty nasty stuff). I'm still trying to wrap my head around it so if you have any facts about it that help to understand better, I'd welcome them.
What I've learnt so far is that it has lots of halflives (more than the 20 or so) and many, many daughter products. Now I'm not sure if the mechanism is spontaneous fission (IIRC) that does this (like DU) but because it is a gamma emmitter it would be a heck of a lot harder to deal with than plutonium. I'm not sure but I think it has something to do with the properties of the metal being more like alluminium than like lead (i.e. the properties of the metal).
Don't take that as a criticism of Thorium reactor technology though, it's got good anti-proliferation characteristics however I think if you are going to advocate the technology you really have to have a salient and realistic look at the whole fuel cycle and how you manage it especially if you want to avoid the mistakes of the old technology.
I probably have a ways to go with Thorium salt technology however from my understanding so far, I'd go with IFR because you don't loose energy (i.e joules) mining and processing the fuel as with Thorium and, IFR deals with 238 pu by yielding the energetic investment.