Wow, imagine that, one person agrees to exchange private property with another person for some money. Is that not how a free society, a free economy, works?
Oh, but it was a *GUN* they traded? I'm reminded of a cartoon of three frames. First frame, man with a bat and a bloodied dead person at his feet, an observer to this shouts, "Someone needs to stop this madman!" Second frame, man with a knife and a bloodied dead person at his feet, an observer shouts, "Someone needs to stop this madman!" Third frame, man with a gun and a bloodied dead person at his feet, an observer shouts, "Did you see that? We need to ban guns!"
Oh, but guns are only good for murdering people, right? Is that why police officers carry them? Tell me, if we ban the private sale of firearms who will enforce it and how? I know the answer, it will be police officers carrying guns. If the police officers show up to stop people with guns from exchanging them then how is that going to play out, huh? That's right, dead police officers and guns getting into the hands of murderers.
Guns are good for killing people and that is why people want them. Killing is different than murder because there is such as thing in law as "justifiable homicide". This is why police officers carry guns and this is why law abiding citizens need unrestricted access to them.
This summer I'm taking a history course at the local university. We start with the French Revolution. For centuries the people of France were kept in perpetual slavery by kings and nobles. This was largely possible by keeping the people poor, uneducated, and disarmed. Anyone with a sword, bow, or arrow without the permission of the king would be killed on sight by the mercenaries and soldiers under the employ of the king. The king's rule was brought to a very brutal end when the people stormed the armory and took weapons to be used against the king. The people that took over were unfortunately just a brutal as any king, they were able to rule by terror on the rest of France because they now had the weapons. Next week's lectures will be over how Napolean fucked things up.
People are only free if they are just as well armed as the government. That means being able to buy an AR-15 from some guy in a parking lot with cash.
It isn't being done because a small number of US Senators bought votes in their state by authorizing the construction of the site and then later bought more votes by not allowing the radioactive material to actually enter the site.
This way they buy votes building a nuclear waste site here AND there to store the same nuclear waste. They robbed us to make busy work for their buddies.
They also won't allow for the construction of nuclear reactors that can use some of this waste for fuel. Because if they solve this nuclear waste problem by building more nuclear reactors then they cannot keep coming back to the public to demand more money building more nuclear waste holding sites.
Then they take our money to give to their buddies making solar panels and windmills because we need "green" electricity. Because if they solve our energy problems by building nuclear reactors then they can't keep the fear mongering going of rising energy costs to enable them to raise our taxes. They take our money to send to ethanol and wind mill factories in Iowa to buy votes in an early primary state.
These US Senators have been in office for a very long time and have learned how to maximize the collection of taxes to buy votes. They do this by creating problems that they are perfectly capable of solving but by not solving the problem they can keep using the same old tactics to draw money from the citizenry to buy votes from an exceedingly small number of number of politically active voters.
In short it's not getting done because we keep voting these same fuckers into office. No more incumbents and I believe we'd solve a lot of our problems.
Perhaps this is another example on how the artificial minimum wage is putting people out of work. If this robot costs $7/hr and the minimum wage is $15/hr then it would make sense for any property owner to have a handful of these robots and a single security guard in a room watching video screens.
What it also does is further separate people from people. People value human interaction, even if it's just having someone in a uniform smile and nod as they walk past. Companies that put a bunch of robots instead of people to provide security may find themselves driving off customers and not know why. The people that avoid shopping in places guarded by roaming robots might not even realize why they stopped shopping there.
I also dispute the security value they provide since they lack any ability to act on the information they gather. We've seen this already with stationary security cameras. People tried to save on labor costs and claim to provide the same level of security by having more cameras but the cameras never have the resolution of the human eye and the lack of the ability to act immediately provides an escape for thugs. There are numerous cases of security cameras capturing criminal behavior with the people knowing full well they are on camera. They don't care because they know the camera cannot act, the person behind the camera (assuming there is one) will not be able to get on scene in time to catch them as they flee.
I think they'd be better off finding some responsible young adults, give them a bit of training on how to notice bad behavior, write a report, etc. and give them the $7/hr instead of the robot. Judging by the unemployment rates of young adults it should not be difficult to find people willing to do this work. But in many places in the USA this is illegal. So instead we have inferior security robots, unemployed people, shopping centers with robots creeping people out, etc.
As a bonus to having people walking around to keep an eye on things they can actually do stuff that the robot cannot. They can pick up trash, greet people, give directions, etc. In short this robot is the solution to a problem we've created ourselves.
An artificial solution to an artificial problem.
This robot was supposedly inspired by a mass shooting but yet this robot is not armed, it can only alert the armed people to come to the aid of others. This might shorten the time that it takes to alert people but without a person doing the alerting there is no person there. I don't know what the going rate is for armed security but I'd think that is much more valuable than any $7/hr robot. The way things are going it may be possible to get some responsible armed guards for just $7/hr if it wasn't illegal to do so.
"Maybe if the entire US was a gun free zone, it would be as safe as Europe."
I've heard it before, "Europe doesn't have mass shootings like gun loving America". Recent events prove otherwise. No one can claim any more that mass shootings do not happen in "gun free" Europe.
"Gun free zones do work. The proof is in the pudding."
I just realized something after I submitted the parent post. The idea of putting electronic eyes and ears on robots for security can be applied to robots used for other purposes. Slashdot has covered robots used as shopping guides before, just have a video and audio feed from these robots available to the security people at the site. It's a 2 for 1 deal.
Alternatively, put cameras and microphones on the store employees. This will no doubt meet resistance by employees if on all the time so give them the option to turn them on and off as they wish. Train the employees to turn them on if something happens or if they feel threatened. Build the function into the radios they almost always have any way to communicate throughout the site.
The robot costs about $7 an hour to rent and was inspired by the Sandy Hook school shooting after which it was claimed 12 lives could have been saved if officers arrived a minute earlier.
What would have saved them all was to have an armed presence on site. This fiction that we can create a "gun free zone" around anything is what got a lot of people killed. Insane people with guns are attracted to these "gun free zones" because they know they will not be met with armed resistance when they arrive. This gives them plenty of time to kill before an armed resistance does arrive. Given the tendency for these people to commit suicide when they do meet resistance shows they had no intention of coming out alive.
Putting cameras on site to alert the people with guns to come will no doubt reduce the effectiveness of these suicidal murderers but we should be aiming for the means to reduce the threat they pose as much as possible. Cameras can certainly assist in this but what we need are people with the ability to act to be there before the threat arrives. That means arming as many good people as possible so that any armed bad people that arrive will be seriously outnumbered.
It's taken time and many people killed but lawmakers are seeing how "gun free zones" have failed. Sandy Hook is just one example of many. We are seeing the slow repeal of laws that restrict the law abiding from arming themselves against suicidal murderers. The largest hurdle will no doubt be the federal laws that create "gun free zones" because the people that live in DC don't live under the laws they create. Their children go to schools where armed guards protect their children, no gun free zones for them.
This "robocop" is cute but I expect it to be near worthless. If a person is assaulted then they are likely to be heard by other people regardless, people that tend to have cell phones. Gunshots will certainly be heard for quite some distance and alert people to notify police. I don't want the robot to be armed since I can find many problems that can pose. What I want is a public free to defend itself. Cellphones, stationary cameras, and other technologies are certainly helpful in alerting police to come. A robot like this in an already built up area seems pointless to me, put that money towards a security infrastructure instead.
Where I do see something like this robot helpful is in things like festivals and such where an empty field is turned into a crowd of tents and people for a short period. The robots can provide video coverage for a security team and/or police. However in such places the robot might have to deal with uneven ground, steps, etc. requiring more than just the shopping cart wheels like in the pictures. These "robocops" will then have to be much larger, more powerful, and therefore more expensive to remain mobile. Alternatively and perhaps just as effective is to have stationary "robots" with eyes and ears on the crowd for security.
I see that people are recognizing the problem but it seems to me that political correctness is preventing them from forming effective solutions.
This may seem far fetched, but, as an example, cars in Cuba are all from the 50s. It's not because cubans are "poor", as much as it is because in the absence of new cars, old ones get maintained to last much longer than car manufactures would have you believe cars can survive.
All of those cars from the 1950s in Cuba are nothing more than the frames and bodies of the cars built decades ago. Few if any have their original engines. They certainly don't have the same tires, brakes, or light bulbs. When something wears out it is replaced, like in any modern automobile. What they have learned to do is fashion replacement parts as best they can with whatever materials and tools they have available. The parts that aren't under wear like the frames, body panels, glass, and such, can be maintained for a very long time with little care.
These vehicles are suited to being maintained for so long because the manufacturing capability of even major automakers was relatively primitive by today's standards, and because they were built largely by hand they can be maintained by hand. Anyone that tells me that these old cars last longer than today's cars are, IMHO, fooling themselves. Those 60 year old cars are still being driven because they've been maintained with great care and effort. They keep driving them because they have little choice to do otherwise.
Growing up I'd see neighboring farmers using 40 year old tractors and I thought that those things sure did last a long time. What I didn't learn until later in life was that these tractors were used rarely, usually only for a few weeks during harvest, required a lot of maintenance to run, usually had some major component broken beyond repair. Same for some of the cars and trucks. It took me some time to notice but once I knew what to look for I could see that these old cars and tractors were often parked at the top of a small hill, that way they could be roll started since starters were expensive to repair. Lights rarely worked. Some might not even have a working reverse gear. If a tractor could pull a wagon then it was kept. A car or truck might be kept around if it could carry a person to the feed store and back.
Think about that the next time to see these old cars. Did you actually see that car start on its own or was there a half dozen kids pushing it to get started? Did they ever use a blinker? Did you see the brake lights come on as the car slowed? Were they ever driven at night when they'd need headlights? How many windows were still intact? Were there any mirrors left? Did you see any of them go in reverse? If you answer those questions to yourself then you'll make the same realization that I did about those farmers with their old tractors.
Those old cars in Cuba are piles of chewing gum and baling wire. They are not the same vehicles that they were 60 years ago. They might have the same general shape as a car but they are actually barely functional wrecks. I'm quite certain that there are a handful of cars there that are in what we might call original condition but those are the rarely used show pieces of the wealthy. If actually driven in public it'd be torn apart for spare parts in no time.
If we have cheap, reliable, and plentiful storage then why bother with solar power?
I'm not trying to be flippant here but if storage technology is necessary for solar power to "win" then can solar power ever be viable? There are numerous energy sources available to us that have limitations like solar power that prevent them from becoming a primary energy source that energy storage could solve.
Any power plant that relies on boiling water has the problem of matching demand, or load following. This is inherent to steam systems but we use steam because it is very efficient and cheap. If we mate this with storage systems then we have something that is cheap, efficient, and can load follow. Take your pick on what is heating the water, nuclear, ("clean") coal, or natural gas, we'd get reduced carbon output and lower prices by running the power plant at an optimal level and use storage to even out the load.
Wind is already cheaper then solar and is not nearly as dependent on location but could gain heavily with energy storage. Solar power is great in the American Southwest but in places like Alaska solar power is nearly useless but the wind still blows.
While I can agree that storage is nearly necessary for solar power to be more than a niche power source I find it curious that people fail to grasp what energy storage systems would mean if applied to other energy sources. Wind, nuclear, and natural gas have all played a large part in our energy grid and in the reduction of carbon output. If we find a means to get cheap and reliable energy storage then why bother with expensive and intermittent solar when we can just use more wind, nuclear, and natural gas? This can also apply to other carbon free energy sources like tidal, geothermal, and perhaps others.
In short, I believe that solar has more to lose than gain from cheap storage technologies.
Not only that but think of all the fuel burned too.
Just today I had to park for the day in a parking ramp, I don't typically park this long and so I didn't think much about my habit of parking where I normally park. I know some people will think I got off cheap but that 10' by 20' spot of concrete cost me $9. If I had a self driving car then it would have been cheaper for me to send my car home for the day. Now that's a lot of miles but if it saves me on parking fees, and puts my risk of a much more expensive parking ticket to zero, then it makes sense for me to send my car home.
There are no doubt other costs of sending an unoccupied car on a long distance trek to a "safe" place to park but I would not see them personally. To me the logical choice would be to send my car away and summon it about a half hour before I need it.
There is of course a better solution to all of this, put in enough parking spots and charge a reasonable fee for them. What is "reasonable"? That's difficult to say since pricing on any commodity is based on what people will bear. What happens with self driving cars is this pricing gets complicated. I can imagine someone buying a cornfield on the edge of town, cover it with gravel, and then rent space on it to park. With land like that much cheaper than an equal area downtown the costs to maintain would be quite low. The road to the field might be just a dirt road that meets the city in a residential area but if a bunch of people send their self driving cars to the cornfield every day then that road will suddenly have to carry a lot of traffic.
Self driving cars will make things very interesting.
I knew this would happen, bad mouthing nuclear power based on old designs rather than looking at what people are actually proposing. Some examples:
Heat pollution of waterways in many designs cannot be ignored.
New reactors are air cooled, they just don't heat up waterways.
Pretty much all fuel comes from decommissioned warheads - This won't last forever.
New reactors use thorium as fuel, a fuel that is abundant and worthless for weapons.
The rest of your rant gets into politics that I don't want to bother with right now. New reactors like LFTR do not operate like the old reactors do, so therefore your claims about cost, waste, decommissioning, and "externalities" are meaningless.
The comparison holds because old nuclear reactors use solid fuels while new ones use liquid fuels. They are both nuclear reactors but like the Tesla and the Pinto the way they are built and run is quite different and yet both are called cars.
Old reactors like Chernobyl run on a uranium-plutonium cycle. LFTR runs on a thorium-uranium cycle. Chernobyl used steam turbines while LFTR uses gas turbines. Chernobyl used water as a coolant, LFTR uses molten salts. I could go on. There are so many things that separate LFTR from the early RBMK design used in Chernobyl that there is very little in common between them. It is because of these differences the failure modes are very different, just like how a Tesla will not burst into flames like a Pinto would.
LFTR cannot melt down and explode like a RBMK because there is no water to boil away, or react with metallic zirconium and explode, and so on. A LFTR core cannot melt down because the core is already molten. If it gets too hot and, in a very unlikely case, melts it's containment then it will not keep reacting and melting through the floor. If containment is lost then the reaction stops, there is no "China Syndrome". Since LFTR removes many fission products during normal operation then there is much less risk of built up fission products in the fuel getting spread around in a failure, they cannot build up in the core like in Fukushima. The really bad stuff, iodine and cesium, will be either removed from the core continuously or rendered chemically inert in the fuel salt.
So, yes, LFTR is to RBMK just like how Tesla is to Pinto.
Far too small - nukes are about a lot of heat and big turbines.
I was referring to a talk on small modular reactors, the whole point was to make them small. The idea is that by making them small enough to be mass produced on an assembly line and trucking them to the power plant site the price should be much lower than conventional nuclear and competitive with any other energy source.
Turbines on the 200MW scale are also small enough to move by truck. These were also chosen based on price, they give the most output per dollar. They may not be as efficient as larger turbines but the goal is to reduce capital and operating expense. Since the fuel is thorium and uranium the cost of fuel is a very very small part of the cost of operation, therefore efficiency losses are much less of a concern compared to other fuels.
Also, I am not sure if I got my numbers right but they are in the ballpark. It may have been a 600MW or maybe 150MW reactor. What I am quite sure of is that the proposal had three small modular reactors to drive five COTS steam turbines. This plant has not yet been built but they did a lot of the engineering already. By using common parts where possible they thought they could get a price point so low that it would be an offer that few could refuse.
The laws where I live do not require a blood test for an arrest or conviction, merely the affirmation of a law enforcement officer. Refusing the test is assumed to be an admission of guilt.
I do not know how vigorously these cases are enforced but the way the law reads it is exceedingly easy to convict.
I have to wonder how long it will take for people to synthesize these endocannabinoids for recreational use. I'd be surprised if it has not been done already.
Also, I have to wonder if these tests for plant sourced or synthetic cannabinoids can differentiate them from those produced in the body. This is a common failing of many BAC tests, people with certain diets, medical conditions, or occupations can show a high BAC even though their actual BAC is normal for a sober person. This is because the BAC tests don't look for ethanol but for a certain chemical property that is not unique to ethanol. People that have a high protein diet, or people that were breathing in paint fumes, can fool these tests for ethanol into thinking they've been drinking alcohol earlier.
If we set the level of cannbinoids to zero to show intoxicated driving then the test would have to be able to distinguish between endocannabinoids and non-endocannabinoids. If people are getting high on synthetic endocannabinoids then there would have to be a non-zero level to show intoxication.
The point is that setting the level of anything in the body to show intoxication is a very stupid idea. Endogenous substances that are analogous to controlled substances do exist, because if they didn't then these controlled substances would not likely be controlled substances. Any test for controlled substances must be able to differentiate between the two or there must be some allowable margin for such errors, otherwise there are going to be a lot of false positives. This will likely also lead to numerous court challenges.
I do not know if I can convey just how idiotic it would be to have a zero tolerance law like this.
The biggest hurdle to dropping fossil fuel consumption is going to be sea based shipping and airplanes. Collectively they make up about 20% of energy use. Those are the ones I'm worried about.
What about long haul trucking? Electric vehicles are fine for short commutes but they cannot deliver goods cross country.
I hear people claim that we can electrify trains but I have my doubts. A diesel electric train is very efficient and can run in all kinds of weather that might threaten an electrified track. Also, what are the capital costs and maintenance costs of electrifying a rail road track? A city wide train system can get away with electric tracks because usage is high, track lengths fairly short, which I imagine makes it cost effective compared to diesel. The miles of track that would need to be electrified to make a dent in diesel powered rail is mind boggling.
Then there are farm implements, construction equipment, small engines (chain saws, lawn mowers, weed eaters), recreational vehicles/crafts (ATV, PWC, ETC), and likely more I can't think of right now. Point is that we have a lot of things in this world that run on fossil fuels and it's going to take a lot to replace them all. Electric cars are largely a curiosity, novelty, or luxury and I expect that to be the case for quite some time. There are a lot of things that can take out utility power for a long time for a lot of people. Those that have an electric vehicle tend to also have another that runs on hydrocarbons.
I believe the solution is synthesizing hydrocarbons from nuclear power. We've seen a lot of progress in making this process more efficient and scalable. Electric cars might be a great idea for many but if there is are hurricanes, floods, ice storms, earthquakes, or whatever that can knock out electricity and I expect a lot of people to realize real quick a very real shortcoming of electric vehicles. I can just imagine people using diesel generators to charge up their car in cases like this. I envision people lined up to push their dead electric car up to a generator dropped in by the National Guard because of some natural disaster. We've seen things like this before, the National Guard handing out fuel so people can gas up vehicles and generators. The difference is that a 2 gallon gas can contains a lot of energy and is easily carried by a single person, it's easy to carry fuel to a car but not so easy to carry a car to a charging station.
Synthesized hydrocarbons are a very reasonable means to get a "carbon free" energy storage medium and it does not require any new technologies or infrastructure to work. (I put "carbon free" in quotes because I realize that carbon atoms are used in the process but since the carbon loop is closed there are no additional carbon atoms dug out of the ground.)
Has anyone noticed how many politicians are a bit slow to focus their eyes... as if things like sound are confusing?
I tend to attribute that to their age. I did a quick Google search and I see that the average age of a sitting US senator is 62 years old. People complain about how Congress is full of old rich white guys but then keep voting them into office.
Another thing I noticed is that US senators tend to largely leave office feet first. As in they tend to be in office so long that they die there and must be carried out.
Bernie Sanders is 74 years old. Hilary Clinton is 68 years old, but looks older. Donald Trump is 69 years old. I have to wonder if they are all old enough to beat the record set by Ronald Reagan for oldest POTUS at inauguration. If Bill Clinton is an example of how a POTUS would look and act at 69 years old then I have to wonder about the mental capacity of any of them after a few years in office.
I'm glad that I'm not the only one that sees MADD as a neo-prohibition organization. As much as people claim that breathalyzer tests demonstrate intoxication I thought I'd be able to find plenty of evidence to support this. All I could seem to find is a lot of people giving identical BAC levels and their effects on the body but with no citations. This leads me to believe that if there was a study then it must be very old since these numbers did not seem to change with the age of the articles I found and the numbers are so pervasive that it seems no one has bothered to question them.
What I also found was ample evidence that roadside BAC testing is terribly inaccurate and is so poorly regulated on how it should be tested that people have successfully challenged such testing in courts. This is much like how people challenge speeding tickets by showing the radar speed detectors have been poorly maintained and rarely checked for accuracy. There is very little or no regulation on BAC testing for law enforcement.
I believe that if the charge is for intoxication then test for intoxication. Having the suspect try to touch their nose, balance on one foot, or recite the alphabet on camera seems like a much better test of driving ability than BAC levels. But then MADD lobbied for the laws to be changed that its not intoxication that they are testing for, it's BAC. Which brings me back to what I found before, I've found it difficult to find a study that correlates BAC levels to one's ability to drive.
Personally, I don't care if your BAC is 100%. If you can drive the speed limit, keep in your lane, signal your turns, etc. then bottoms up. Also on a personal note I believe it wasn't drunk driving laws that reduced drunk driving deaths, it was the realization by the public that driving drunk is not funny any more. It's no longer "cute" to have a pint too many and drive home.
Oh, wait, do you know why alcohol and marijuana have an effect on the body? It's because the body is receptive to it's presence. Have you thought about why the body is receptive to these substances? It's because the body produces these same substances on its own.
If you set the level of these substances to zero to meet the legal definition of "intoxicated" then no one is fit to drive.
Just a minute, are you saying that you don't want anyone to drive?
You anti-government types are such hypocrites at times, it's hilarious to me that you're advocating electing a president who will be a tyrant and go against the will of the people to force nuclear power plant production on the states, while simultaneously saying we need to" knock the petty despots in DC down a peg". People like yourself are exactly why government can't get anything done.
I'm actually asking that the current tyrant in the White House get replaced with someone that understands the role the federal government should play in our lives. Also, how am I preventing the government from getting anything done? I didn't vote those fuckers into office. Since I'm not protesting outside their office, or otherwise interfering with their work, I don't see how I keep them from doing the most basic government tasks like approving a budget. They seem to get all tied up in their own bureaucracy on their own without my help.
Also, it's precisely because they can't seem to get things done that I believe that the states should take the federal government down a peg. If the states weren't held hostage by the federal government to do things like funding public schools then their failure to pass a budget would not lead to the firing of teachers. It would also prevent the federal government from telling public schools that they have to let boys use the girls locker room.
It's the voters who don't want nuclear plants, not government. Even the ones who do admit we need nuclear don't want a plant anywhere near them and make no bones about tearing down any elected official who tries.
I just did a search for recent polls on nuclear power and depending on the poll the people that want more nuclear power varies from 51% to 67%. People want nuclear power. Also, should not this be a local matter? Should not a state be able to decide if they want a nuclear power plant? Since Obama is not a fan of nuclear power then the people's desire for more is unmet.
Go back to checking flags for gold fringe.
I have no idea what that means. Why would I be checking flags for anything?
I agree, if we were not subsidizing wind and solar like we are we'd instead be reading about how nuclear power output is expected to double in that same time frame. From TFA:
Worldwide electricity generation from nuclear power will also almost double, from 2.3 trillion kilowatt hours (kWh) in 2012 to 4.5 trillion kWh in 2040. That increase is expected to happen "as concerns about energy security and greenhouse gas emissions support the development of new nuclear generating capacity," the report said.
"Virtually all of the projected net expansion in the world's installed nuclear capacity occurs in the developing world, led by China's addition of 139 gigawatts of nuclear capacity from 2012 to 2040," the report stated.
If my math is correct that means China plans to build a new 1GW nuclear power plant every ten weeks until 2040. The USA should be able to do the same. I recall from doing the math some time ago that if the USA wants to replace all the coal and aging nuclear power plants at the rate they should be retired we'd have to build nuclear power at twice that rate, one nuclear power plant per month, and do so indefinitely. By the time we've built enough nuclear to replace all the coal we'd have to start building new nuclear plants to replace the one's that have reached their operational life span during that time.
I fully expect to see the USA build nuclear power at such a rate but to do so we'll need a Republican in the White House or a few more Democrats to realize that a national energy policy needs more than sunbeams and wishful thinking. Another way to make this happen is getting a few states to realize that they don't need federal permission to license a nuclear power plant within their borders. The federal government is a construct of the states, it has only the authority the states grant it. If the states decide that the federal government cannot have a monopoly on nuclear energy then whatever the numbskulls in DC say is meaningless.
I do hope that we see states stand up to DC not just so we can have a logical energy policy but also just to knock the petty despots in DC down a peg. We've seen this happen with marijuana legalization so this is not without precedent.
The power plants I've toured typically have multiple boilers and turbines under one roof. A partially completed plant is likely capable of producing power so long as there is at least one boiler and one turbine.
I recall one power plant had two boilers, only one operating as the other was quite old and kept only as a last resort backup. I recall it had four turbines and room for one more. Three turbines produced electricity while the fourth produced chilled water for the site. A portion of the steam was diverted to provide heat. The technicians there explained they had the ability to divert steam pretty much as they wished so that they can start and stop any turbine as they wished, add and remove turbines while operating, and throttle the boilers as necessary. It was not stated explicitly but it was implied that they'd be able to add and remove boilers as well. I suspect that this would be much more involved as the boilers are much larger and have many more points of contact with the building than the turbines.
I saw a talk from someone proposing a nuclear power plant with three modular reactors and five turbines on site. I don't recall the sizes of each but it was something like 200MW turbines and 300MW reactors. 200MW x 5 turbines means 1GW of turbine capacity, 300MW x 3 reactors means 900MW capacity. Even if they failed to complete the site as planned then so long as they had a single reactor and a single turbine they'd be able to produce 200MW of electricity. Add another turbine and output goes to 300MW. Add another reactor, now 400MW. Add another turbine, now 600MW. And so on and so on. Assuming a large enough site then they could keep going but soon economics and safety factors sets in and few people are willing to build any power plant with more than 1GW of capacity on a single site.
Also, you claim that we've hit a hard limit on the price of coal and natural gas but I'm not so sure. While i agree that we've gone about as far as we can go with efficiency gains I have to wonder if we cannot make natural gas cheaper.
I also believe that we are close to hitting the limits on wind and solar as well, if we have not already. I have been following the development of PV solar for some time now and while we see many claims of more efficient PV cells they rarely or never make it to market because of cost. The efficiency gain is worthless if they cost so much that they'd never pay for themselves. These high efficiency panels may find uses in space applications since launching mass to orbit and beyond is exceedingly expensive but the math favors heavier and cheaper PV panels as space launches get cheaper.
What I've seen as a trend in PV development is a focus on making them cheaper rather than more efficient. They'll give up as much as 1/2 of the power output per area if it means making them 1/4 the price. They'll just make up the difference in volume.
I believe the distinction between "terrestrial grade" and "space grade" PV cells will blur in time as space flight costs go down and consistency of production improves.
Oh, and windmills are windmills. I don't see a whole lot of gains there either. The best we'll see is an improvement in price due to volume. People have been experimenting with windmills for centuries now, I don't expect to see big gains here.
I agree, we should move away from fossil fuels. I just believe the path is nuclear power.
Anyone that says we shouldn't build nuclear power plants because of Chernobyl and Fukushima should realize that they are saying we shouldn't build the next Tesla because the Ford Pinto was a death trap. We haven't built nuclear power plants like those for 40 years, this is doubly so for Chernobyl because that was built from stolen plans, with a known flaw, by people that didn't give a shit. We have new designs that simply cannot melt down.
Solar power is worthless, it costs too much and provides power only when the sun shines. Wind is cheap but unreliable, I think it has a place in our mix of power sources but a small part of the mix. A large part, as much as 80%, should be nuclear.
One reason why we keep using these old nuclear power plants is because we need the power and the current regulatory environment effectively bars new construction. If we want to retire these old nuclear power plants then we need new ones to replace them. Replacing them with wind and solar is somewhere between exceedingly expensive and physically impossible.
You probably waste more money in gas by carrying the spare tire and jack all the time than by calling someone when needed, you just don't realize it. And you might be able to call a friend or family instead.
It may be true that I'd save more money by removing my spare and having to call for a service truck once in a great while but in both of the cases I had to use my spare I was exceedingly glad I had that spare. In first case I was on my way to the local VA clinic for an appointment, rescheduling a missed appointment is exceedingly difficult. Had I missed it would be highly probable that I would not have been able to make it up for weeks or months.
As for calling family for help I have done that. My brother lives nearby and he has a (beat up) truck that I borrow on occasion. It's certainly nice to have a brother with a spare vehicle in town but how many people are so lucky? Also, I cannot rely on him to drop everything and come to my aid. When I have vehicle problems I want the issue resolved quickly, which often means fixing them myself. That means I carry a spare tire, a fire extinguisher, a first aid kit, a blanket, bottles of water, one of those all-in-one inflator/battery-jumper/light/radio/inverter things, jumper cables, and other emergency items. The room they take in my vehicle is pretty minimal even though the number of items is long. Having such items has made my life much safer and more comfortable.
What other things could I take out of my truck to save on gas? Should I leave my fire extinguisher at home too? I have back seats I rarely use, should I unbolt those and leave them home? At what point does this reach the absurd?
Its a simple way to reduce pollution, it doesn't require any money investment or new technology, just some commitment.
Of all the weight in my vehicle I doubt that removing such a small fraction that is the spare tire I'd save enough money to make up for it. Unless you can show some real world data on how much fuel can be saved then I have to doubt the fuel savings would even be noticeable.
I know its hard to take actions that inconvenience our lives or makes us spend more money than we could, but at the same time people worry about global warming, lung cancer, etc. We need to change while we can.
If we are going to talk about doing something that can save us from global warming then I say we need nuclear power. If the government is going to do something meaningful about global warming then I think they should start with issuing licenses to build nuclear power plants instead of encouraging people to leave their spare tires at home. It seems to me that the government keeps asking people to be inconvenienced when the government can't be inconvenienced with actually doing something meaningful in a big way and let people build nuclear power plants.
We should be building nuclear power plants at a rate of one per month in the USA. There are something like 100 nuclear reactors in the USA now and they provide about 20% of our electricity. By building one gigawatt nuclear power plant per month it would still take years to replace all the fossil fuel generation we have now, perhaps decades. Since getting even a single reactor built is such a problem right now getting them built at a rate of one per month would be miraculous but it is also a rate we'd have to maintain indefinitely to replace nuclear power plants once they've reached the end of their operable life span.
But no, instead of doing something meaningful like building nuclear power plants we have some suggestions that do very little like leaving spare tires home, turning down thermostats, getting low flush toilets, CFL lights, and a bunch of other nonsense. If we had nuclear power then we could turn the thermostats to the max, open the windows, and see no addition to our CO2 output.
Much of what people suggest to save energy is just nibbling at the edges of the problem. To ta
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Wow, imagine that, one person agrees to exchange private property with another person for some money. Is that not how a free society, a free economy, works?
Oh, but it was a *GUN* they traded? I'm reminded of a cartoon of three frames. First frame, man with a bat and a bloodied dead person at his feet, an observer to this shouts, "Someone needs to stop this madman!" Second frame, man with a knife and a bloodied dead person at his feet, an observer shouts, "Someone needs to stop this madman!" Third frame, man with a gun and a bloodied dead person at his feet, an observer shouts, "Did you see that? We need to ban guns!"
Oh, but guns are only good for murdering people, right? Is that why police officers carry them? Tell me, if we ban the private sale of firearms who will enforce it and how? I know the answer, it will be police officers carrying guns. If the police officers show up to stop people with guns from exchanging them then how is that going to play out, huh? That's right, dead police officers and guns getting into the hands of murderers.
Guns are good for killing people and that is why people want them. Killing is different than murder because there is such as thing in law as "justifiable homicide". This is why police officers carry guns and this is why law abiding citizens need unrestricted access to them.
This summer I'm taking a history course at the local university. We start with the French Revolution. For centuries the people of France were kept in perpetual slavery by kings and nobles. This was largely possible by keeping the people poor, uneducated, and disarmed. Anyone with a sword, bow, or arrow without the permission of the king would be killed on sight by the mercenaries and soldiers under the employ of the king. The king's rule was brought to a very brutal end when the people stormed the armory and took weapons to be used against the king. The people that took over were unfortunately just a brutal as any king, they were able to rule by terror on the rest of France because they now had the weapons. Next week's lectures will be over how Napolean fucked things up.
People are only free if they are just as well armed as the government. That means being able to buy an AR-15 from some guy in a parking lot with cash.
It isn't being done because a small number of US Senators bought votes in their state by authorizing the construction of the site and then later bought more votes by not allowing the radioactive material to actually enter the site.
This way they buy votes building a nuclear waste site here AND there to store the same nuclear waste. They robbed us to make busy work for their buddies.
They also won't allow for the construction of nuclear reactors that can use some of this waste for fuel. Because if they solve this nuclear waste problem by building more nuclear reactors then they cannot keep coming back to the public to demand more money building more nuclear waste holding sites.
Then they take our money to give to their buddies making solar panels and windmills because we need "green" electricity. Because if they solve our energy problems by building nuclear reactors then they can't keep the fear mongering going of rising energy costs to enable them to raise our taxes. They take our money to send to ethanol and wind mill factories in Iowa to buy votes in an early primary state.
These US Senators have been in office for a very long time and have learned how to maximize the collection of taxes to buy votes. They do this by creating problems that they are perfectly capable of solving but by not solving the problem they can keep using the same old tactics to draw money from the citizenry to buy votes from an exceedingly small number of number of politically active voters.
In short it's not getting done because we keep voting these same fuckers into office. No more incumbents and I believe we'd solve a lot of our problems.
Interesting. I have not heard of any deaths. Do you have their names? The stated causes of their deaths? The date of their deaths?
Also, the US sailors that had their thyroids removed, do you have their names, dates of their surgeries, or anything about them really?
Anyone that died in this cleanup effort should be recognized for their sacrifice. The least we could do is know their names.
Perhaps this is another example on how the artificial minimum wage is putting people out of work. If this robot costs $7/hr and the minimum wage is $15/hr then it would make sense for any property owner to have a handful of these robots and a single security guard in a room watching video screens.
What it also does is further separate people from people. People value human interaction, even if it's just having someone in a uniform smile and nod as they walk past. Companies that put a bunch of robots instead of people to provide security may find themselves driving off customers and not know why. The people that avoid shopping in places guarded by roaming robots might not even realize why they stopped shopping there.
I also dispute the security value they provide since they lack any ability to act on the information they gather. We've seen this already with stationary security cameras. People tried to save on labor costs and claim to provide the same level of security by having more cameras but the cameras never have the resolution of the human eye and the lack of the ability to act immediately provides an escape for thugs. There are numerous cases of security cameras capturing criminal behavior with the people knowing full well they are on camera. They don't care because they know the camera cannot act, the person behind the camera (assuming there is one) will not be able to get on scene in time to catch them as they flee.
I think they'd be better off finding some responsible young adults, give them a bit of training on how to notice bad behavior, write a report, etc. and give them the $7/hr instead of the robot. Judging by the unemployment rates of young adults it should not be difficult to find people willing to do this work. But in many places in the USA this is illegal. So instead we have inferior security robots, unemployed people, shopping centers with robots creeping people out, etc.
As a bonus to having people walking around to keep an eye on things they can actually do stuff that the robot cannot. They can pick up trash, greet people, give directions, etc. In short this robot is the solution to a problem we've created ourselves.
An artificial solution to an artificial problem.
This robot was supposedly inspired by a mass shooting but yet this robot is not armed, it can only alert the armed people to come to the aid of others. This might shorten the time that it takes to alert people but without a person doing the alerting there is no person there. I don't know what the going rate is for armed security but I'd think that is much more valuable than any $7/hr robot. The way things are going it may be possible to get some responsible armed guards for just $7/hr if it wasn't illegal to do so.
Liar.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
"Maybe if the entire US was a gun free zone, it would be as safe as Europe."
I've heard it before, "Europe doesn't have mass shootings like gun loving America". Recent events prove otherwise. No one can claim any more that mass shootings do not happen in "gun free" Europe.
"Gun free zones do work. The proof is in the pudding."
What is the color of the sky in your world?
I just realized something after I submitted the parent post. The idea of putting electronic eyes and ears on robots for security can be applied to robots used for other purposes. Slashdot has covered robots used as shopping guides before, just have a video and audio feed from these robots available to the security people at the site. It's a 2 for 1 deal.
Alternatively, put cameras and microphones on the store employees. This will no doubt meet resistance by employees if on all the time so give them the option to turn them on and off as they wish. Train the employees to turn them on if something happens or if they feel threatened. Build the function into the radios they almost always have any way to communicate throughout the site.
Arming the employees might not hurt either.
The robot costs about $7 an hour to rent and was inspired by the Sandy Hook school shooting after which it was claimed 12 lives could have been saved if officers arrived a minute earlier.
What would have saved them all was to have an armed presence on site. This fiction that we can create a "gun free zone" around anything is what got a lot of people killed. Insane people with guns are attracted to these "gun free zones" because they know they will not be met with armed resistance when they arrive. This gives them plenty of time to kill before an armed resistance does arrive. Given the tendency for these people to commit suicide when they do meet resistance shows they had no intention of coming out alive.
Putting cameras on site to alert the people with guns to come will no doubt reduce the effectiveness of these suicidal murderers but we should be aiming for the means to reduce the threat they pose as much as possible. Cameras can certainly assist in this but what we need are people with the ability to act to be there before the threat arrives. That means arming as many good people as possible so that any armed bad people that arrive will be seriously outnumbered.
It's taken time and many people killed but lawmakers are seeing how "gun free zones" have failed. Sandy Hook is just one example of many. We are seeing the slow repeal of laws that restrict the law abiding from arming themselves against suicidal murderers. The largest hurdle will no doubt be the federal laws that create "gun free zones" because the people that live in DC don't live under the laws they create. Their children go to schools where armed guards protect their children, no gun free zones for them.
This "robocop" is cute but I expect it to be near worthless. If a person is assaulted then they are likely to be heard by other people regardless, people that tend to have cell phones. Gunshots will certainly be heard for quite some distance and alert people to notify police. I don't want the robot to be armed since I can find many problems that can pose. What I want is a public free to defend itself. Cellphones, stationary cameras, and other technologies are certainly helpful in alerting police to come. A robot like this in an already built up area seems pointless to me, put that money towards a security infrastructure instead.
Where I do see something like this robot helpful is in things like festivals and such where an empty field is turned into a crowd of tents and people for a short period. The robots can provide video coverage for a security team and/or police. However in such places the robot might have to deal with uneven ground, steps, etc. requiring more than just the shopping cart wheels like in the pictures. These "robocops" will then have to be much larger, more powerful, and therefore more expensive to remain mobile. Alternatively and perhaps just as effective is to have stationary "robots" with eyes and ears on the crowd for security.
I see that people are recognizing the problem but it seems to me that political correctness is preventing them from forming effective solutions.
This may seem far fetched, but, as an example, cars in Cuba are all from the 50s. It's not because cubans are "poor", as much as it is because in the absence of new cars, old ones get maintained to last much longer than car manufactures would have you believe cars can survive.
All of those cars from the 1950s in Cuba are nothing more than the frames and bodies of the cars built decades ago. Few if any have their original engines. They certainly don't have the same tires, brakes, or light bulbs. When something wears out it is replaced, like in any modern automobile. What they have learned to do is fashion replacement parts as best they can with whatever materials and tools they have available. The parts that aren't under wear like the frames, body panels, glass, and such, can be maintained for a very long time with little care.
These vehicles are suited to being maintained for so long because the manufacturing capability of even major automakers was relatively primitive by today's standards, and because they were built largely by hand they can be maintained by hand. Anyone that tells me that these old cars last longer than today's cars are, IMHO, fooling themselves. Those 60 year old cars are still being driven because they've been maintained with great care and effort. They keep driving them because they have little choice to do otherwise.
Growing up I'd see neighboring farmers using 40 year old tractors and I thought that those things sure did last a long time. What I didn't learn until later in life was that these tractors were used rarely, usually only for a few weeks during harvest, required a lot of maintenance to run, usually had some major component broken beyond repair. Same for some of the cars and trucks. It took me some time to notice but once I knew what to look for I could see that these old cars and tractors were often parked at the top of a small hill, that way they could be roll started since starters were expensive to repair. Lights rarely worked. Some might not even have a working reverse gear. If a tractor could pull a wagon then it was kept. A car or truck might be kept around if it could carry a person to the feed store and back.
Think about that the next time to see these old cars. Did you actually see that car start on its own or was there a half dozen kids pushing it to get started? Did they ever use a blinker? Did you see the brake lights come on as the car slowed? Were they ever driven at night when they'd need headlights? How many windows were still intact? Were there any mirrors left? Did you see any of them go in reverse? If you answer those questions to yourself then you'll make the same realization that I did about those farmers with their old tractors.
Those old cars in Cuba are piles of chewing gum and baling wire. They are not the same vehicles that they were 60 years ago. They might have the same general shape as a car but they are actually barely functional wrecks. I'm quite certain that there are a handful of cars there that are in what we might call original condition but those are the rarely used show pieces of the wealthy. If actually driven in public it'd be torn apart for spare parts in no time.
If we have cheap, reliable, and plentiful storage then why bother with solar power?
I'm not trying to be flippant here but if storage technology is necessary for solar power to "win" then can solar power ever be viable? There are numerous energy sources available to us that have limitations like solar power that prevent them from becoming a primary energy source that energy storage could solve.
Any power plant that relies on boiling water has the problem of matching demand, or load following. This is inherent to steam systems but we use steam because it is very efficient and cheap. If we mate this with storage systems then we have something that is cheap, efficient, and can load follow. Take your pick on what is heating the water, nuclear, ("clean") coal, or natural gas, we'd get reduced carbon output and lower prices by running the power plant at an optimal level and use storage to even out the load.
Wind is already cheaper then solar and is not nearly as dependent on location but could gain heavily with energy storage. Solar power is great in the American Southwest but in places like Alaska solar power is nearly useless but the wind still blows.
While I can agree that storage is nearly necessary for solar power to be more than a niche power source I find it curious that people fail to grasp what energy storage systems would mean if applied to other energy sources. Wind, nuclear, and natural gas have all played a large part in our energy grid and in the reduction of carbon output. If we find a means to get cheap and reliable energy storage then why bother with expensive and intermittent solar when we can just use more wind, nuclear, and natural gas? This can also apply to other carbon free energy sources like tidal, geothermal, and perhaps others.
In short, I believe that solar has more to lose than gain from cheap storage technologies.
Not only that but think of all the fuel burned too.
Just today I had to park for the day in a parking ramp, I don't typically park this long and so I didn't think much about my habit of parking where I normally park. I know some people will think I got off cheap but that 10' by 20' spot of concrete cost me $9. If I had a self driving car then it would have been cheaper for me to send my car home for the day. Now that's a lot of miles but if it saves me on parking fees, and puts my risk of a much more expensive parking ticket to zero, then it makes sense for me to send my car home.
There are no doubt other costs of sending an unoccupied car on a long distance trek to a "safe" place to park but I would not see them personally. To me the logical choice would be to send my car away and summon it about a half hour before I need it.
There is of course a better solution to all of this, put in enough parking spots and charge a reasonable fee for them. What is "reasonable"? That's difficult to say since pricing on any commodity is based on what people will bear. What happens with self driving cars is this pricing gets complicated. I can imagine someone buying a cornfield on the edge of town, cover it with gravel, and then rent space on it to park. With land like that much cheaper than an equal area downtown the costs to maintain would be quite low. The road to the field might be just a dirt road that meets the city in a residential area but if a bunch of people send their self driving cars to the cornfield every day then that road will suddenly have to carry a lot of traffic.
Self driving cars will make things very interesting.
I knew this would happen, bad mouthing nuclear power based on old designs rather than looking at what people are actually proposing. Some examples:
Heat pollution of waterways in many designs cannot be ignored.
New reactors are air cooled, they just don't heat up waterways.
Pretty much all fuel comes from decommissioned warheads - This won't last forever.
New reactors use thorium as fuel, a fuel that is abundant and worthless for weapons.
The rest of your rant gets into politics that I don't want to bother with right now. New reactors like LFTR do not operate like the old reactors do, so therefore your claims about cost, waste, decommissioning, and "externalities" are meaningless.
The comparison holds because old nuclear reactors use solid fuels while new ones use liquid fuels. They are both nuclear reactors but like the Tesla and the Pinto the way they are built and run is quite different and yet both are called cars.
Old reactors like Chernobyl run on a uranium-plutonium cycle. LFTR runs on a thorium-uranium cycle. Chernobyl used steam turbines while LFTR uses gas turbines. Chernobyl used water as a coolant, LFTR uses molten salts. I could go on. There are so many things that separate LFTR from the early RBMK design used in Chernobyl that there is very little in common between them. It is because of these differences the failure modes are very different, just like how a Tesla will not burst into flames like a Pinto would.
LFTR cannot melt down and explode like a RBMK because there is no water to boil away, or react with metallic zirconium and explode, and so on. A LFTR core cannot melt down because the core is already molten. If it gets too hot and, in a very unlikely case, melts it's containment then it will not keep reacting and melting through the floor. If containment is lost then the reaction stops, there is no "China Syndrome". Since LFTR removes many fission products during normal operation then there is much less risk of built up fission products in the fuel getting spread around in a failure, they cannot build up in the core like in Fukushima. The really bad stuff, iodine and cesium, will be either removed from the core continuously or rendered chemically inert in the fuel salt.
So, yes, LFTR is to RBMK just like how Tesla is to Pinto.
Far too small - nukes are about a lot of heat and big turbines.
I was referring to a talk on small modular reactors, the whole point was to make them small. The idea is that by making them small enough to be mass produced on an assembly line and trucking them to the power plant site the price should be much lower than conventional nuclear and competitive with any other energy source.
Turbines on the 200MW scale are also small enough to move by truck. These were also chosen based on price, they give the most output per dollar. They may not be as efficient as larger turbines but the goal is to reduce capital and operating expense. Since the fuel is thorium and uranium the cost of fuel is a very very small part of the cost of operation, therefore efficiency losses are much less of a concern compared to other fuels.
Also, I am not sure if I got my numbers right but they are in the ballpark. It may have been a 600MW or maybe 150MW reactor. What I am quite sure of is that the proposal had three small modular reactors to drive five COTS steam turbines. This plant has not yet been built but they did a lot of the engineering already. By using common parts where possible they thought they could get a price point so low that it would be an offer that few could refuse.
The laws where I live do not require a blood test for an arrest or conviction, merely the affirmation of a law enforcement officer. Refusing the test is assumed to be an admission of guilt.
I do not know how vigorously these cases are enforced but the way the law reads it is exceedingly easy to convict.
I have to wonder how long it will take for people to synthesize these endocannabinoids for recreational use. I'd be surprised if it has not been done already.
Also, I have to wonder if these tests for plant sourced or synthetic cannabinoids can differentiate them from those produced in the body. This is a common failing of many BAC tests, people with certain diets, medical conditions, or occupations can show a high BAC even though their actual BAC is normal for a sober person. This is because the BAC tests don't look for ethanol but for a certain chemical property that is not unique to ethanol. People that have a high protein diet, or people that were breathing in paint fumes, can fool these tests for ethanol into thinking they've been drinking alcohol earlier.
If we set the level of cannbinoids to zero to show intoxicated driving then the test would have to be able to distinguish between endocannabinoids and non-endocannabinoids. If people are getting high on synthetic endocannabinoids then there would have to be a non-zero level to show intoxication.
The point is that setting the level of anything in the body to show intoxication is a very stupid idea. Endogenous substances that are analogous to controlled substances do exist, because if they didn't then these controlled substances would not likely be controlled substances. Any test for controlled substances must be able to differentiate between the two or there must be some allowable margin for such errors, otherwise there are going to be a lot of false positives. This will likely also lead to numerous court challenges.
I do not know if I can convey just how idiotic it would be to have a zero tolerance law like this.
The biggest hurdle to dropping fossil fuel consumption is going to be sea based shipping and airplanes. Collectively they make up about 20% of energy use. Those are the ones I'm worried about.
What about long haul trucking? Electric vehicles are fine for short commutes but they cannot deliver goods cross country.
I hear people claim that we can electrify trains but I have my doubts. A diesel electric train is very efficient and can run in all kinds of weather that might threaten an electrified track. Also, what are the capital costs and maintenance costs of electrifying a rail road track? A city wide train system can get away with electric tracks because usage is high, track lengths fairly short, which I imagine makes it cost effective compared to diesel. The miles of track that would need to be electrified to make a dent in diesel powered rail is mind boggling.
Then there are farm implements, construction equipment, small engines (chain saws, lawn mowers, weed eaters), recreational vehicles/crafts (ATV, PWC, ETC), and likely more I can't think of right now. Point is that we have a lot of things in this world that run on fossil fuels and it's going to take a lot to replace them all. Electric cars are largely a curiosity, novelty, or luxury and I expect that to be the case for quite some time. There are a lot of things that can take out utility power for a long time for a lot of people. Those that have an electric vehicle tend to also have another that runs on hydrocarbons.
I believe the solution is synthesizing hydrocarbons from nuclear power. We've seen a lot of progress in making this process more efficient and scalable. Electric cars might be a great idea for many but if there is are hurricanes, floods, ice storms, earthquakes, or whatever that can knock out electricity and I expect a lot of people to realize real quick a very real shortcoming of electric vehicles. I can just imagine people using diesel generators to charge up their car in cases like this. I envision people lined up to push their dead electric car up to a generator dropped in by the National Guard because of some natural disaster. We've seen things like this before, the National Guard handing out fuel so people can gas up vehicles and generators. The difference is that a 2 gallon gas can contains a lot of energy and is easily carried by a single person, it's easy to carry fuel to a car but not so easy to carry a car to a charging station.
Synthesized hydrocarbons are a very reasonable means to get a "carbon free" energy storage medium and it does not require any new technologies or infrastructure to work. (I put "carbon free" in quotes because I realize that carbon atoms are used in the process but since the carbon loop is closed there are no additional carbon atoms dug out of the ground.)
Has anyone noticed how many politicians are a bit slow to focus their eyes... as if things like sound are confusing?
I tend to attribute that to their age. I did a quick Google search and I see that the average age of a sitting US senator is 62 years old. People complain about how Congress is full of old rich white guys but then keep voting them into office.
Another thing I noticed is that US senators tend to largely leave office feet first. As in they tend to be in office so long that they die there and must be carried out.
Bernie Sanders is 74 years old. Hilary Clinton is 68 years old, but looks older. Donald Trump is 69 years old. I have to wonder if they are all old enough to beat the record set by Ronald Reagan for oldest POTUS at inauguration. If Bill Clinton is an example of how a POTUS would look and act at 69 years old then I have to wonder about the mental capacity of any of them after a few years in office.
I'm glad that I'm not the only one that sees MADD as a neo-prohibition organization. As much as people claim that breathalyzer tests demonstrate intoxication I thought I'd be able to find plenty of evidence to support this. All I could seem to find is a lot of people giving identical BAC levels and their effects on the body but with no citations. This leads me to believe that if there was a study then it must be very old since these numbers did not seem to change with the age of the articles I found and the numbers are so pervasive that it seems no one has bothered to question them.
What I also found was ample evidence that roadside BAC testing is terribly inaccurate and is so poorly regulated on how it should be tested that people have successfully challenged such testing in courts. This is much like how people challenge speeding tickets by showing the radar speed detectors have been poorly maintained and rarely checked for accuracy. There is very little or no regulation on BAC testing for law enforcement.
I believe that if the charge is for intoxication then test for intoxication. Having the suspect try to touch their nose, balance on one foot, or recite the alphabet on camera seems like a much better test of driving ability than BAC levels. But then MADD lobbied for the laws to be changed that its not intoxication that they are testing for, it's BAC. Which brings me back to what I found before, I've found it difficult to find a study that correlates BAC levels to one's ability to drive.
Personally, I don't care if your BAC is 100%. If you can drive the speed limit, keep in your lane, signal your turns, etc. then bottoms up. Also on a personal note I believe it wasn't drunk driving laws that reduced drunk driving deaths, it was the realization by the public that driving drunk is not funny any more. It's no longer "cute" to have a pint too many and drive home.
Right, and let's do the same for alcohol.
Oh, wait, do you know why alcohol and marijuana have an effect on the body? It's because the body is receptive to it's presence. Have you thought about why the body is receptive to these substances? It's because the body produces these same substances on its own.
If you set the level of these substances to zero to meet the legal definition of "intoxicated" then no one is fit to drive.
Just a minute, are you saying that you don't want anyone to drive?
You anti-government types are such hypocrites at times, it's hilarious to me that you're advocating electing a president who will be a tyrant and go against the will of the people to force nuclear power plant production on the states, while simultaneously saying we need to" knock the petty despots in DC down a peg". People like yourself are exactly why government can't get anything done.
I'm actually asking that the current tyrant in the White House get replaced with someone that understands the role the federal government should play in our lives. Also, how am I preventing the government from getting anything done? I didn't vote those fuckers into office. Since I'm not protesting outside their office, or otherwise interfering with their work, I don't see how I keep them from doing the most basic government tasks like approving a budget. They seem to get all tied up in their own bureaucracy on their own without my help.
Also, it's precisely because they can't seem to get things done that I believe that the states should take the federal government down a peg. If the states weren't held hostage by the federal government to do things like funding public schools then their failure to pass a budget would not lead to the firing of teachers. It would also prevent the federal government from telling public schools that they have to let boys use the girls locker room.
It's the voters who don't want nuclear plants, not government. Even the ones who do admit we need nuclear don't want a plant anywhere near them and make no bones about tearing down any elected official who tries.
I just did a search for recent polls on nuclear power and depending on the poll the people that want more nuclear power varies from 51% to 67%. People want nuclear power. Also, should not this be a local matter? Should not a state be able to decide if they want a nuclear power plant? Since Obama is not a fan of nuclear power then the people's desire for more is unmet.
Go back to checking flags for gold fringe.
I have no idea what that means. Why would I be checking flags for anything?
I agree, if we were not subsidizing wind and solar like we are we'd instead be reading about how nuclear power output is expected to double in that same time frame. From TFA:
Worldwide electricity generation from nuclear power will also almost double, from 2.3 trillion kilowatt hours (kWh) in 2012 to 4.5 trillion kWh in 2040. That increase is expected to happen "as concerns about energy security and greenhouse gas emissions support the development of new nuclear generating capacity," the report said.
"Virtually all of the projected net expansion in the world's installed nuclear capacity occurs in the developing world, led by China's addition of 139 gigawatts of nuclear capacity from 2012 to 2040," the report stated.
If my math is correct that means China plans to build a new 1GW nuclear power plant every ten weeks until 2040. The USA should be able to do the same. I recall from doing the math some time ago that if the USA wants to replace all the coal and aging nuclear power plants at the rate they should be retired we'd have to build nuclear power at twice that rate, one nuclear power plant per month, and do so indefinitely. By the time we've built enough nuclear to replace all the coal we'd have to start building new nuclear plants to replace the one's that have reached their operational life span during that time.
I fully expect to see the USA build nuclear power at such a rate but to do so we'll need a Republican in the White House or a few more Democrats to realize that a national energy policy needs more than sunbeams and wishful thinking. Another way to make this happen is getting a few states to realize that they don't need federal permission to license a nuclear power plant within their borders. The federal government is a construct of the states, it has only the authority the states grant it. If the states decide that the federal government cannot have a monopoly on nuclear energy then whatever the numbskulls in DC say is meaningless.
I do hope that we see states stand up to DC not just so we can have a logical energy policy but also just to knock the petty despots in DC down a peg. We've seen this happen with marijuana legalization so this is not without precedent.
The power plants I've toured typically have multiple boilers and turbines under one roof. A partially completed plant is likely capable of producing power so long as there is at least one boiler and one turbine.
I recall one power plant had two boilers, only one operating as the other was quite old and kept only as a last resort backup. I recall it had four turbines and room for one more. Three turbines produced electricity while the fourth produced chilled water for the site. A portion of the steam was diverted to provide heat. The technicians there explained they had the ability to divert steam pretty much as they wished so that they can start and stop any turbine as they wished, add and remove turbines while operating, and throttle the boilers as necessary. It was not stated explicitly but it was implied that they'd be able to add and remove boilers as well. I suspect that this would be much more involved as the boilers are much larger and have many more points of contact with the building than the turbines.
I saw a talk from someone proposing a nuclear power plant with three modular reactors and five turbines on site. I don't recall the sizes of each but it was something like 200MW turbines and 300MW reactors. 200MW x 5 turbines means 1GW of turbine capacity, 300MW x 3 reactors means 900MW capacity. Even if they failed to complete the site as planned then so long as they had a single reactor and a single turbine they'd be able to produce 200MW of electricity. Add another turbine and output goes to 300MW. Add another reactor, now 400MW. Add another turbine, now 600MW. And so on and so on. Assuming a large enough site then they could keep going but soon economics and safety factors sets in and few people are willing to build any power plant with more than 1GW of capacity on a single site.
Also, you claim that we've hit a hard limit on the price of coal and natural gas but I'm not so sure. While i agree that we've gone about as far as we can go with efficiency gains I have to wonder if we cannot make natural gas cheaper.
I also believe that we are close to hitting the limits on wind and solar as well, if we have not already. I have been following the development of PV solar for some time now and while we see many claims of more efficient PV cells they rarely or never make it to market because of cost. The efficiency gain is worthless if they cost so much that they'd never pay for themselves. These high efficiency panels may find uses in space applications since launching mass to orbit and beyond is exceedingly expensive but the math favors heavier and cheaper PV panels as space launches get cheaper.
What I've seen as a trend in PV development is a focus on making them cheaper rather than more efficient. They'll give up as much as 1/2 of the power output per area if it means making them 1/4 the price. They'll just make up the difference in volume.
I believe the distinction between "terrestrial grade" and "space grade" PV cells will blur in time as space flight costs go down and consistency of production improves.
Oh, and windmills are windmills. I don't see a whole lot of gains there either. The best we'll see is an improvement in price due to volume. People have been experimenting with windmills for centuries now, I don't expect to see big gains here.
I agree, we should move away from fossil fuels. I just believe the path is nuclear power.
Anyone that says we shouldn't build nuclear power plants because of Chernobyl and Fukushima should realize that they are saying we shouldn't build the next Tesla because the Ford Pinto was a death trap. We haven't built nuclear power plants like those for 40 years, this is doubly so for Chernobyl because that was built from stolen plans, with a known flaw, by people that didn't give a shit. We have new designs that simply cannot melt down.
Solar power is worthless, it costs too much and provides power only when the sun shines. Wind is cheap but unreliable, I think it has a place in our mix of power sources but a small part of the mix. A large part, as much as 80%, should be nuclear.
One reason why we keep using these old nuclear power plants is because we need the power and the current regulatory environment effectively bars new construction. If we want to retire these old nuclear power plants then we need new ones to replace them. Replacing them with wind and solar is somewhere between exceedingly expensive and physically impossible.
You probably waste more money in gas by carrying the spare tire and jack all the time than by calling someone when needed, you just don't realize it. And you might be able to call a friend or family instead.
It may be true that I'd save more money by removing my spare and having to call for a service truck once in a great while but in both of the cases I had to use my spare I was exceedingly glad I had that spare. In first case I was on my way to the local VA clinic for an appointment, rescheduling a missed appointment is exceedingly difficult. Had I missed it would be highly probable that I would not have been able to make it up for weeks or months.
As for calling family for help I have done that. My brother lives nearby and he has a (beat up) truck that I borrow on occasion. It's certainly nice to have a brother with a spare vehicle in town but how many people are so lucky? Also, I cannot rely on him to drop everything and come to my aid. When I have vehicle problems I want the issue resolved quickly, which often means fixing them myself. That means I carry a spare tire, a fire extinguisher, a first aid kit, a blanket, bottles of water, one of those all-in-one inflator/battery-jumper/light/radio/inverter things, jumper cables, and other emergency items. The room they take in my vehicle is pretty minimal even though the number of items is long. Having such items has made my life much safer and more comfortable.
What other things could I take out of my truck to save on gas? Should I leave my fire extinguisher at home too? I have back seats I rarely use, should I unbolt those and leave them home? At what point does this reach the absurd?
Its a simple way to reduce pollution, it doesn't require any money investment or new technology, just some commitment.
Of all the weight in my vehicle I doubt that removing such a small fraction that is the spare tire I'd save enough money to make up for it. Unless you can show some real world data on how much fuel can be saved then I have to doubt the fuel savings would even be noticeable.
I know its hard to take actions that inconvenience our lives or makes us spend more money than we could, but at the same time people worry about global warming, lung cancer, etc. We need to change while we can.
If we are going to talk about doing something that can save us from global warming then I say we need nuclear power. If the government is going to do something meaningful about global warming then I think they should start with issuing licenses to build nuclear power plants instead of encouraging people to leave their spare tires at home. It seems to me that the government keeps asking people to be inconvenienced when the government can't be inconvenienced with actually doing something meaningful in a big way and let people build nuclear power plants.
We should be building nuclear power plants at a rate of one per month in the USA. There are something like 100 nuclear reactors in the USA now and they provide about 20% of our electricity. By building one gigawatt nuclear power plant per month it would still take years to replace all the fossil fuel generation we have now, perhaps decades. Since getting even a single reactor built is such a problem right now getting them built at a rate of one per month would be miraculous but it is also a rate we'd have to maintain indefinitely to replace nuclear power plants once they've reached the end of their operable life span.
But no, instead of doing something meaningful like building nuclear power plants we have some suggestions that do very little like leaving spare tires home, turning down thermostats, getting low flush toilets, CFL lights, and a bunch of other nonsense. If we had nuclear power then we could turn the thermostats to the max, open the windows, and see no addition to our CO2 output.
Much of what people suggest to save energy is just nibbling at the edges of the problem. To ta