If encryption is a "munition" then this is not just a First Amendment issue, the Second Amendment also applies.
Along that same train of thought, anyone besides me remember those Apple commercials touting that the then new PowerMac was considered a weapon? That same law that considers encryption a weapon also controls what kind of computers we can export. That's because computers are weapons too, I guess.
They want to ban "undetectable" plastic guns, and the 3D printers that can create them. Then they tell us we can't even share the design files for the 3D printed guns. Can't have encryption that they cannot break, which I assume is so we can't share these gun designs without them knowing. Or even order a pizza without them knowing.
If Congress were dominated by Democrats, you'd see more action on global warming.
Congress was dominated by Democrats six(?) years ago. I didn't see Congress replace the coal fired plant that heats their buildings with a nuclear power plant then.
Democrats hate nuclear power, their platform document makes only passing reference to it. The Republicans on the other hand have stated plainly in their platform document that they would like to see more nuclear power plants built.
So, why don't we have more nuclear power in the USA? Democrats.
Oh, and I just remembered. Do a search on "nuke free zone California" and have a look. Who's running that state? Democrats.
Also, your mention of the Navy using standard reactor designs and building multiple units is precisely the kind of thing I'm referring to that the federal government should do to reduce costs in deploying nuclear reactors for civilian electric utilities. The fact that the Democrat controlled DOE has not done this is exactly why I believe that the Democrats are not taking global warming seriously.
I believe that we'll see nuclear power grow in the USA when Republicans get into power. Don't believe me? Just wait a couple years and we will likely find out.
Is that really a thing? I find it very hard to believe. My neighbor down the street has had a full complement of solar panels on his roof for years now, and I've never yet seen a wounded ducked flapping around in his courtyard.
Does your neighbor also have a cat?
Many years ago on my parents' farm we had a large ventilation fan in the barn. I found it odd that in front of this fan there would be a bunch of pigeon feathers but no sight of an injured bird. That mystery was solved when I saw a bird hit that fan and one of the many cats on the farm come to collect what was left of the bird.
This I don't believe at all. If it were true, every black car would be surrounded by injured birds.
Birds hit cars of all colors. Also, cats.
Or every black asphalt roof, if we're talking really matte. Sounds like nonsense.
Cats. Also, a roof is never completely black, there's always leaves or dirt, or something to break up the matte black field. Allowing dirt or leaves to gather on a solar panel impairs its ability to produce power and can even damage the cells, so they are kept very clean.
Even if both are true, there's no way in hell that even if we transition to 100% photovoltaic power that accidental bird collisions will account for anything like the billion birds that domestic cats kill every single year. It will be about six orders of magnitude less.
Since solar power is one of the most expensive forms of energy we have I doubt it would ever happen anyway. Solar power is expensive, unreliable, and environmentally disastrous. I don't need the bird killing argument for solar power to fail, it's doing fine failing on its own. The only thing propping it up right now is government subsidy. Without that subsidy solar power would be limited to communication satellites and pocket calculators.
There are enough nuclear isotopes on Earth to last us well beyond the sun going red giant and boiling the oceans away. It's as renewable as wind, sun, wave, and tides are renewable.
As for being carbon free there is nothing that is carbon free. What we do know is that nuclear power releases the least amount of CO2 than any other energy source we have except hydro.
If you can teleport the steam directly from the reactor core to the turbines, indeed, but instead of going into the realms of SF I suggest you look up "thermal fatigue" to find out THE REASON WHY load following is rarely done with thermal power stations. It's often desirable to be able to use the generating unit next week after all.
It is obvious you did not read and understand the wiki I linked to. Brayton cycle turbines use air, not steam, as the working fluid. It is the same cycle used in peaking power natural gas turbines. The difference is that the heat comes from a nuclear reactor instead of burning methane.
Oh dear.
Huh? So I saw some very smart people talk about nuclear energy. Would it be better if I said I learned this from a lecture in a college class on nuclear chemistry? The people giving these talks are people with doctorates in nuclear energy. Some of them are professors in their field and likely gave that same exact presentation in one of their classes. Those that weren't professors are engineers that do real engineering for a living. Would you prefer I invite them to dinner and discuss the topic? Perhaps if I read it in a book it would be more credible?
Right, because I learned something from a professor or professional engineer on a TED Talk then what I learned is nonsense.
USN reactors are not suitable for large-scale power generation on land.
Correct, but they are also miles ahead of anything that wind and solar has been able to do.
You are assuming I want the same *EXACT* reactors that the Navy is using and put them on land. I am not proposing that. I propose we find out what the Navy has done to produce a fleet of reactors, on time and on budget, and operate them safely for decades at a time. We need to then take that knowledge and apply it to reactors that are suited to civilian power.
I am also claiming that since the powers that be in the federal government know, or should know, that the Navy is fully capable of procuring and operating nuclear reactors, doing so on time and on budget, and for decades on end, and not applying this knowledge to civilian power that these same people are not taking the threat of global warming seriously. The people that write the budgets for the Navy to build nuclear powered submarines and aircraft carriers are the same people that write the budgets to build power plants for federal facilities like national parks, veteran hospitals, military bases, the DC power grid, and so on. They see these nuclear power plants getting built and see people living for months on end within feet of them, and do so without any ill effects but they will not build a nuclear power plant to keep the lights on in the White House and Capitol Building.
Instead we see Congress keep one of the dirtiest power plants in the US history operating in DC to heat and light federal buildings. If they want to see CO2 emissions go down then popular phrases come to mind concerning gooses and ganders, pots and kettles, and glass houses.
I am assuming that civilian nuclear power is somehow flawed in its design or implementation. This is true on one or more levels because while the US Navy has built dozens of nuclear reactors in the last 40 years then civilian power sector has built none to few.
I do realize that a large number of current civilian nuclear power plant staff are Navy veterans. Since we've proven the capability of these people to operate a nuclear power plant then I am proposing that the Navy simply produce more of them.
What I am saying is that the federal government has a solution to the global warming problem right under their nose, the US Navy nuclear power plants and crews, but they are not taking advantage of it. Seeing as the federal government does not take advantage of this shows me that they are not taking this problem seriously.
Place the blame wherever you like, Congress or the White House, Republicans or Democrats. Point is that we have many in the government making a lot of noise about the problem but not taking advantage of what I see as an obvious solution to the problem. Nuclear power does not have to be the only solution but by not making nuclear power part of the solution implies that they do not take this problem seriously.
If you have one billion dollars you can build 100MW (rated) of wind power for $150M, get 30-50MW out of it on average (depending on location) and have $850M to spare for energy storage.
Or take the $850 million and invest in natural gas turbines. A mix of wind and natural gas would be as cheap or cheaper than coal and nuclear, would have half the carbon output of coal, and it works day or night and rain or shine.
But it does not tickle the imagination with stories of magic energy from splitting atoms, so we'd better not do it!:'(
But relying on a roughly 50/50 mix of wind and natural gas does not give a nation bragging rights of freeing itself of burning fossil fuels.
I am working on the assumption that nuclear power is prohibitively expensive but it is not. It would be cheaper than coal if the government would issue licenses for new reactors. We know this to be true because we did it before and we know how to do it again. The lack of licenses makes nuclear power unavailable at any price.
Also wind is not without a carbon footprint, it's small but not zero. Nuclear power also has a carbon foot print, smaller than that of wind.
If we had the storage systems that you propose then we could certainly move to a wind powered economy. Until that happens nuclear wins on the basis that it exists. Assuming the day comes that grid storage proves viable then nuclear still wins on carbon output per energy produced.
It pales in comparison to windows and domestic cats because solar power produces less than 1% of utility electricity now. If we cover every roof with solar panels, and create many large solar concentration plants to drive industry, then we are going to see bird populations suffer.
The cost and timelines for safe Nukes is prohibitive.
Really? It seems the US Navy can get a nuclear power plant when they want it and at a "reasonable" price. If you want to call a US Navy nuclear power plant "unsafe" then I know a few sailors that might like to debate you on that.
The only reason this is true for civilian nuclear power is because the US DOE has deemed it so. We can build nuclear power plants on time and on budget, we would just have to scrap the US DOE and put the DOD in charge.
Well, not precisely that. We can keep the DOE around but they'd have to follow the same model the DOD uses in licensing nuclear reactors.
What do you do to follow demand? It's not a square wave, it's a curve. You need little units to fill in the gaps and nuclear doesn't do those well at the moment.
Nothing prevents a nuclear power plant from load following except the current use of steam turbines. Use a Brayton cycle turbine and that problem goes away. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Don't just think in boolean - get real:)
We can have equipment to compensate for the reactive power factor too.
Energy monocultures suck and are usually only promoted by salesfolk and deluded fanboys.
I propose a nation powered only by nuclear power only as a thought experiment. While I do believe that a nation could derive all utility power from nuclear reactors I also realize that doing so is not likely practical. I also believe that a nation like the USA could replace all of its coal power plants and most of its natural gas power plants with nuclear, and should. That would mean something like 75% of the electricity would come from nuclear. The rest would come from natural gas, wind, hydro, with small contributions from others. Wind only makes sense in few places, if it needs subsidies to keep going then they need to disappear. Natural gas has properties that makes it nearly ideal for generating electricity and poor for most anything else, use it for that so long as we can.
If you wish to advocate nuclear power it is worth learning about the topic. The website describing waste processing at Harford into MOX fuel and the portions about low level waste that cannot be reprocessed may help you avoid embarrassing mistakes.
I've seen some very interesting TED Talks and other presentations on Youtube over the years and I am convinced that we can reprocess wastes much more efficiently than we have in the past if only the US Department of Energy actually gave a damn about its mandate. The claim that we can reduce waste to nearly nothing is not hyperbole. Reprocessing fuel into MOX is a bad idea, solid fuel reactors are the problem. Using molten salt reactors and continuous reprocessing can eliminate vast quantities of waste, including the waste we've already produced.
The submarine reactor can be built with less safeties because the men running it signed up knowing the risks.
Again, if global warming is such a threat then we can live with the "less safeties" in a Navy nuclear power plant. Besides, when has a US Navy power plant ever melted down? The US Navy has built dozens of them by now, perhaps hundreds over the last 60 years they've been doing this. If it makes you feel better then we can put a concrete dome over them. It's not like we have to build them *EXACTLY* like we do for the submarines but we can use that design as a starting point to deploy a fleet of power plants all over this federation and do so very quickly.
Also, I think you have a point. Build the power plants in submersibles so that they have the cooling they need and if they melt down then they sink to the ocean floor. Just tether them to the shore so they they don't need to move and so they can provide power to the people on land.
The US Navy figured out how to run a nuclear power plant safely. It's the "greenest" energy source we know of. It works now and we've proved it. If the federal government does not have a plan to build reactors like this on every military base then I can only assume that they don't believe their own words on the threat that global warming poses. The people in the military cannot complain about the risks a nuclear power plant on the base poses, as you said they volunteered knowing the risks.
Whatever. Point is that one Los Angeles class submarine can be built for one billion dollars and the power plant within it can produce 30 megawatts or so of power. Therefore I can assume we can build a nuclear power plant, on land, for less than that. How much less? I don't know or care, it could be a penny less and still be a bargain if the global warming alarmists are to be believed.
Sure, let's build nuclear power plants that can use thorium as fuel. That is a great idea. While we figure out the engineering on how to do that the federal government can place an order with General Electric to build a hundred of the same power plants the Navy uses in their submarines. Start by putting them on military bases and have Navy crews man them. While GE is building the reactors, and the Navy trains the crews, we can devote some time and effort into a plan more suited to civilian power.
The fact that every military base is not already powered by a US Navy reactor tells me that the federal government is not taking this global warming threat very seriously.
Birds confuse the shiny panels for water and collide with them thinking they'd get a soft slash instead. They tend to injure themselves and cannot take off again.
When shiny these panels can confuse them in many ways leading them to collide with them, making them think the sun isn't where it should be, and if in large expanses the panels can concentrate the sun and set them on fire. No, I am not confusing them with solar concentrators, the photovoltaic panels can do this too.
A certain kind of photovoltaic is a very dark color and not nearly as reflective, these can also confuse the birds and lead them to collide with them in flight.
Generally birds are not very smart and they will run into a lot of things, like trees. The difference is that a tree has a rough bark, round shape, and a bunch of soft leaves hanging from it, these cushion the blows to the bird. Solar panels and the structures that hold them up are flat, hard, with sharp corners. When a bird hits them they hit hard, and the unnatural coloring only increases the chances of a collision.
I assume this warning is a call to action, so let's act. I hear a lot of talking heads that claim we need an "all of the above" approach to solve this problem but they don't include nuclear power. Then I'd hear nuclear waste, blah blah, Chernobyl, blah blah, Fukushima, blah blah. I thought global warming was the greatest threat we have, so is it?
If these government officials will tell me that global warming is such a threat that drastic measures are needed then I'd think that using nuclear power is a drastic measure. That's assuming all the fear mongering of China Syndrome melt downs are even true, which they are not.
I say put the US Navy in charge of our energy production, they seem to know how to operate nuclear reactors safely. Use the nuclear reactor design from one of those big submarines and build a million of them. Perhaps that's too much, a thousand then. Put a few dozen in every state and hook them to the electric grid. Problem solved, right?
Oh, where do we get the fuel? I seem to recall that the federal government has a whole pile of nuclear warheads that they aren't using, crack them open and take out the cores. That should keep us going until we can dig up some more.
Any complaints about nuclear power should be moot now, we have a real problem of global warming to handle. Any problems that come up from using nuclear power should be trivial by comparison. Again, if nuclear power is not part of the all-of-the-above then I have to wonder just how much of a threat global warming really poses.
Without some measure of the carbon output this metric is relatively meaningless. Imagine two countries with a goal to reduce their carbon emissions. Both start with nearly all of their electricity from coal.
The first nation replaces half of the coal plants with windmills, hydro electric dams, solar panels, and geothermal. They see their carbon footprint cut in half.
The second nation converts all the coal plants to burn natural gas. They also see their carbon footprint cut in half. At the same time their electricity rates remain the same while the first nation sees their electricity rates nearly double.
Imagine a third nation, they replace their coal plants with nuclear power. They see their electricity rates remain the same, their carbon footprint drop to near zero, and they don't have bird killing windmills and solar panels. By using breeder reactors and fuel reprocessing the amount of nuclear waste produced is the size of a beer can per gigawatt-year.
I see that they were only able to do this by subsidizing wind and solar. Anyone can be carbon free if they have enough money to throw at the problem. Where did this money come from to subsidize the greenwashing? From burning coal I imagine. It's only because of cheap coal that they could afford to do this. What happens when the cheap coal runs out? Unless they plan to build more nuclear power then this is a very temporary victory.
I remember hearing all kinds of kudos for Germany because of their investment in "green" energy but ignoring that they were mining brown coal at incredible rates. Brown coal is exceedingly dirty, and likely wiped out any gains from their wind and solar production. Germany is not alone in this but likely one of the most extreme examples of how going "green" has failed miserably.
Barring some leap in technology for wind and solar to bring down their costs and improving their reliability (both unlikely) we are not going to see any true gains in being "green" without heavy investments in nuclear power. Nuclear power doesn't have to be 100% of the electricity production but it'll likely have to be greater than 50% for a nation to be both "green" and not see energy rates go through the roof. Scotland doesn't get even 20% of their electricity from nuclear now. They have a long way to go.
I recall seeing the timing between stations on a wireless network being a common tactic to secure a network. If a station did not reply within a window defined by the time it would take for light to travel plus the time it would take for a secured device on the network to compute a reply then the packet was discarded. I'm sure that there are other methods to respond to such a packet beyond merely discarding it.
They seemed to make a big deal out of being able to do this with a single access point. Reading further I notice that they use other Wi-Fi devices on the network to compute a location which means that with only a single device on the network the ability to determine the location of that single device is diminished. To assure the location of a device they'd still need multiple access points and/or multiple client devices.
I assume that they take advantage of the MIMO capability of Wi-Fi devices that did not exist only a few years ago. This again is much like having multiple Wi-Fi access points, just treat each input and output antenna as a separate device and compute the location that way.
Perhaps I'm missing something important here but I'm not impressed.
I agree, one could produce a world wide web of many things. We currently have one world wide web of internet sites and it has a name, and that name is the World Wide Web. We often shorten such things in common usage and simply refer to this as the Web.
Many things fly and could be called a flyer. The Wright Brothers made something the flew and they called it Flyer.
There's a lot of things that shuttle things back and forth. NASA built a vehicle that did this and we call it Shuttle.
Perhaps another way to put it is everyone has a mom. When writing about your own mother one might say "my mom made this" or use the word as a title or pseudonym, "Mom made this".
Other countries are acting and changing their policies, for example Germany.
Is that the same Germany that is replacing clean nuclear power with brown coal power? The same Germany that has some of the highest electricity prices in Europe and buys as much power as it can from nuclear powered France?
Even China is beginning to invest heavily into renewable energy.
Yes, the same China that intends to double current nuclear power capacity in two years and then double it again two years later. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
It's mostly the US with a republican dominated congress and their policy of denial that is doing business as usual. And many developing countries won't even think about going environmentally friendly as long as the US doesn't take the lead.
Tell me, what political party is in charge of the executive branch? Are licenses for nuclear reactors issued by Congress or by the executive?
Read the two party platforms and tell me which one gives nuclear power the best chance of growth? Is it the RNC? https://www.gop.com/platform/a...
Nuclear energy, now generating about 20 percent of our electricity through 104 power plants, must be expanded. No new nuclear generating plants have been licensed and constructed for thirty years. We call for timely processing of new reactor applications currently pending at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
The federal governmentâ(TM)s failure to address the storage and disposal of spent nuclear fuel has left huge bills for States and taxpayers. Our country needs a more proactive approach to managing spent nuclear fuel, including through developing advanced reprocessing technologies.
That means an all-of-the-above approach to developing America's many energy resources, including wind, solar, biofuels, geothermal, hydropower, nuclear, oil, clean coal, and natural gas.
Wow, of the entire Democrat platform document nuclear energy gets a mention in one sentence. I did however see a lot of mention of preventing nuclear proliferation. No mention of building new reactors that I could see. They did seem concerned about the amount of nuclear weapon material and the desire to destroy it. Tell me, what methods would those be besides using that material as fuel in a nuclear reactor? Would not the desire to destroy nuclear weapons coincide with expanded nuclear energy? Then why be silent on using this material as fuel? I can only conclude it is because they have no intent to see this nuclear material as fuel. They will likely down blend it with natural uranium and bury it in steel drums somewhere in the desert. Which is fine I suppose. When the Republicans get into power at some future date then it can be dug back up.
The Republicans have a majority in both houses but a 54% majority in the Senate allows for all kinds of methods to hold up bills. A lack of a sympathetic POTUS means vetoes and lots of them.
Democrats held both houses of the 111th Congress and the White House, why didn't we see a nuclear power renaissance then?
99% of scientists believe that global warming is real and we have 99% of politicians handing out subsidies to companies in their districts to build windmills that produce no power, solar panel factories that produce no solar panels, and build a nuclear waste site that cannot contain any waste.
Yet still you wonder why people are not buying into the global warming scare?
If global warming is a problem then we'd have another Jimmy Carter in the White House that lowers the thermostat, puts up solar panels, and wears a sweater indoors to keep warm. Instead we have a guy that takes a vacation to Hawaii, getting there by a jet plane, at least once a year. If global warming is a problem then I expect the politicians to act like it, and POTUS is not alone in his hypocrisy.
If global warming is a problem then I'd expect the federal government to be handing out nuclear power plant permits as fast as the applications come in. We should be building a new nuclear power plant once every month. Since we are not then I am not convinced that the politicians believe that global warming is a problem. If they don't see it as a problem then why should I?
After my previous reply I thought of a much simpler counter example.
I'm visiting my brother one day on my way home from campus (I'm in college and commute) when his sons come home from school. They complain about being hungry while my brother is out of the room. I see a bowl of fruit on the counter and I know my brother would not object to them eating a half of a banana before supper. I offer the kids bananas to hold them off until supper. They refuse.
My conclusion, they were not really hungry but thought that their uncle might give them candy.
I see a report from the IPCC saying we must reduce our carbon output or else. A large number of people propose to the UN that we can build nuclear power plants to address this problem of carbon output. The UN rejects this because nuclear reactors can be used to make bombs. Engineers and scientists show it is impossible to make bombs from these new reactors. The UN says that then we'd have a problem with nuclear waste. These people show that not only do they not produce waste they'd destroy the waste from previous reactors. The UN still doesn't like the idea of nuclear reactors.
My conclusion, global warming is not a problem but they thought an ignorant public might submit to their demands.
The UN is in my eyes no different than some kids telling their uncle they are hungry hoping to get some candy.
Slashdot Mirror
If encryption is a "munition" then this is not just a First Amendment issue, the Second Amendment also applies.
Along that same train of thought, anyone besides me remember those Apple commercials touting that the then new PowerMac was considered a weapon? That same law that considers encryption a weapon also controls what kind of computers we can export. That's because computers are weapons too, I guess.
They want to ban "undetectable" plastic guns, and the 3D printers that can create them. Then they tell us we can't even share the design files for the 3D printed guns. Can't have encryption that they cannot break, which I assume is so we can't share these gun designs without them knowing. Or even order a pizza without them knowing.
What are these people so afraid of?
Perhaps they fear us "peasants" might revolt.
If Congress were dominated by Democrats, you'd see more action on global warming.
Congress was dominated by Democrats six(?) years ago. I didn't see Congress replace the coal fired plant that heats their buildings with a nuclear power plant then.
Democrats hate nuclear power, their platform document makes only passing reference to it. The Republicans on the other hand have stated plainly in their platform document that they would like to see more nuclear power plants built.
So, why don't we have more nuclear power in the USA? Democrats.
Oh, and I just remembered. Do a search on "nuke free zone California" and have a look. Who's running that state? Democrats.
Also, your mention of the Navy using standard reactor designs and building multiple units is precisely the kind of thing I'm referring to that the federal government should do to reduce costs in deploying nuclear reactors for civilian electric utilities. The fact that the Democrat controlled DOE has not done this is exactly why I believe that the Democrats are not taking global warming seriously.
I believe that we'll see nuclear power grow in the USA when Republicans get into power. Don't believe me? Just wait a couple years and we will likely find out.
Holy shit. Your hate for this country overflows. If you don't like it here then leave. I hear there's plenty of room in Cuba.
Is that really a thing? I find it very hard to believe. My neighbor down the street has had a full complement of solar panels on his roof for years now, and I've never yet seen a wounded ducked flapping around in his courtyard.
Does your neighbor also have a cat?
Many years ago on my parents' farm we had a large ventilation fan in the barn. I found it odd that in front of this fan there would be a bunch of pigeon feathers but no sight of an injured bird. That mystery was solved when I saw a bird hit that fan and one of the many cats on the farm come to collect what was left of the bird.
This I don't believe at all. If it were true, every black car would be surrounded by injured birds.
Birds hit cars of all colors. Also, cats.
Or every black asphalt roof, if we're talking really matte. Sounds like nonsense.
Cats. Also, a roof is never completely black, there's always leaves or dirt, or something to break up the matte black field. Allowing dirt or leaves to gather on a solar panel impairs its ability to produce power and can even damage the cells, so they are kept very clean.
Even if both are true, there's no way in hell that even if we transition to 100% photovoltaic power that accidental bird collisions will account for anything like the billion birds that domestic cats kill every single year. It will be about six orders of magnitude less.
Since solar power is one of the most expensive forms of energy we have I doubt it would ever happen anyway. Solar power is expensive, unreliable, and environmentally disastrous. I don't need the bird killing argument for solar power to fail, it's doing fine failing on its own. The only thing propping it up right now is government subsidy. Without that subsidy solar power would be limited to communication satellites and pocket calculators.
Have you actually fended off any sort of loss of freedumb with those arms, or is it all part of some macho, manly fantasy that you live your life in?
I am a US Army veteran so, yes I did protect your freedom with those arms. I am now going to make use of my freedom of expression... Go fuck yourself.
There are enough nuclear isotopes on Earth to last us well beyond the sun going red giant and boiling the oceans away. It's as renewable as wind, sun, wave, and tides are renewable.
As for being carbon free there is nothing that is carbon free. What we do know is that nuclear power releases the least amount of CO2 than any other energy source we have except hydro.
If you can teleport the steam directly from the reactor core to the turbines, indeed, but instead of going into the realms of SF I suggest you look up "thermal fatigue" to find out THE REASON WHY load following is rarely done with thermal power stations. It's often desirable to be able to use the generating unit next week after all.
It is obvious you did not read and understand the wiki I linked to. Brayton cycle turbines use air, not steam, as the working fluid. It is the same cycle used in peaking power natural gas turbines. The difference is that the heat comes from a nuclear reactor instead of burning methane.
Oh dear.
Huh? So I saw some very smart people talk about nuclear energy. Would it be better if I said I learned this from a lecture in a college class on nuclear chemistry? The people giving these talks are people with doctorates in nuclear energy. Some of them are professors in their field and likely gave that same exact presentation in one of their classes. Those that weren't professors are engineers that do real engineering for a living. Would you prefer I invite them to dinner and discuss the topic? Perhaps if I read it in a book it would be more credible?
Right, because I learned something from a professor or professional engineer on a TED Talk then what I learned is nonsense.
Go soak your head.
USN reactors are not suitable for large-scale power generation on land.
Correct, but they are also miles ahead of anything that wind and solar has been able to do.
You are assuming I want the same *EXACT* reactors that the Navy is using and put them on land. I am not proposing that. I propose we find out what the Navy has done to produce a fleet of reactors, on time and on budget, and operate them safely for decades at a time. We need to then take that knowledge and apply it to reactors that are suited to civilian power.
I am also claiming that since the powers that be in the federal government know, or should know, that the Navy is fully capable of procuring and operating nuclear reactors, doing so on time and on budget, and for decades on end, and not applying this knowledge to civilian power that these same people are not taking the threat of global warming seriously. The people that write the budgets for the Navy to build nuclear powered submarines and aircraft carriers are the same people that write the budgets to build power plants for federal facilities like national parks, veteran hospitals, military bases, the DC power grid, and so on. They see these nuclear power plants getting built and see people living for months on end within feet of them, and do so without any ill effects but they will not build a nuclear power plant to keep the lights on in the White House and Capitol Building.
Instead we see Congress keep one of the dirtiest power plants in the US history operating in DC to heat and light federal buildings. If they want to see CO2 emissions go down then popular phrases come to mind concerning gooses and ganders, pots and kettles, and glass houses.
I am assuming that civilian nuclear power is somehow flawed in its design or implementation. This is true on one or more levels because while the US Navy has built dozens of nuclear reactors in the last 40 years then civilian power sector has built none to few.
I do realize that a large number of current civilian nuclear power plant staff are Navy veterans. Since we've proven the capability of these people to operate a nuclear power plant then I am proposing that the Navy simply produce more of them.
What I am saying is that the federal government has a solution to the global warming problem right under their nose, the US Navy nuclear power plants and crews, but they are not taking advantage of it. Seeing as the federal government does not take advantage of this shows me that they are not taking this problem seriously.
Place the blame wherever you like, Congress or the White House, Republicans or Democrats. Point is that we have many in the government making a lot of noise about the problem but not taking advantage of what I see as an obvious solution to the problem. Nuclear power does not have to be the only solution but by not making nuclear power part of the solution implies that they do not take this problem seriously.
If you have one billion dollars you can build 100MW (rated) of wind power for $150M, get 30-50MW out of it on average (depending on location) and have $850M to spare for energy storage.
Or take the $850 million and invest in natural gas turbines. A mix of wind and natural gas would be as cheap or cheaper than coal and nuclear, would have half the carbon output of coal, and it works day or night and rain or shine.
But it does not tickle the imagination with stories of magic energy from splitting atoms, so we'd better not do it! :'(
But relying on a roughly 50/50 mix of wind and natural gas does not give a nation bragging rights of freeing itself of burning fossil fuels.
I am working on the assumption that nuclear power is prohibitively expensive but it is not. It would be cheaper than coal if the government would issue licenses for new reactors. We know this to be true because we did it before and we know how to do it again. The lack of licenses makes nuclear power unavailable at any price.
Also wind is not without a carbon footprint, it's small but not zero. Nuclear power also has a carbon foot print, smaller than that of wind.
If we had the storage systems that you propose then we could certainly move to a wind powered economy. Until that happens nuclear wins on the basis that it exists. Assuming the day comes that grid storage proves viable then nuclear still wins on carbon output per energy produced.
It pales in comparison to windows and domestic cats because solar power produces less than 1% of utility electricity now. If we cover every roof with solar panels, and create many large solar concentration plants to drive industry, then we are going to see bird populations suffer.
I know what you meant. I was aiming for some engineering humor.
The cost and timelines for safe Nukes is prohibitive .
Really? It seems the US Navy can get a nuclear power plant when they want it and at a "reasonable" price. If you want to call a US Navy nuclear power plant "unsafe" then I know a few sailors that might like to debate you on that.
The only reason this is true for civilian nuclear power is because the US DOE has deemed it so. We can build nuclear power plants on time and on budget, we would just have to scrap the US DOE and put the DOD in charge.
Well, not precisely that. We can keep the DOE around but they'd have to follow the same model the DOD uses in licensing nuclear reactors.
What do you do to follow demand? It's not a square wave, it's a curve. You need little units to fill in the gaps and nuclear doesn't do those well at the moment.
Nothing prevents a nuclear power plant from load following except the current use of steam turbines. Use a Brayton cycle turbine and that problem goes away.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Don't just think in boolean - get real :)
We can have equipment to compensate for the reactive power factor too.
Energy monocultures suck and are usually only promoted by salesfolk and deluded fanboys.
I propose a nation powered only by nuclear power only as a thought experiment. While I do believe that a nation could derive all utility power from nuclear reactors I also realize that doing so is not likely practical. I also believe that a nation like the USA could replace all of its coal power plants and most of its natural gas power plants with nuclear, and should. That would mean something like 75% of the electricity would come from nuclear. The rest would come from natural gas, wind, hydro, with small contributions from others. Wind only makes sense in few places, if it needs subsidies to keep going then they need to disappear. Natural gas has properties that makes it nearly ideal for generating electricity and poor for most anything else, use it for that so long as we can.
If you wish to advocate nuclear power it is worth learning about the topic. The website describing waste processing at Harford into MOX fuel and the portions about low level waste that cannot be reprocessed may help you avoid embarrassing mistakes.
I've seen some very interesting TED Talks and other presentations on Youtube over the years and I am convinced that we can reprocess wastes much more efficiently than we have in the past if only the US Department of Energy actually gave a damn about its mandate. The claim that we can reduce waste to nearly nothing is not hyperbole. Reprocessing fuel into MOX is a bad idea, solid fuel reactors are the problem. Using molten salt reactors and continuous reprocessing can eliminate vast quantities of waste, including the waste we've already produced.
The submarine reactor can be built with less safeties because the men running it signed up knowing the risks.
Again, if global warming is such a threat then we can live with the "less safeties" in a Navy nuclear power plant. Besides, when has a US Navy power plant ever melted down? The US Navy has built dozens of them by now, perhaps hundreds over the last 60 years they've been doing this. If it makes you feel better then we can put a concrete dome over them. It's not like we have to build them *EXACTLY* like we do for the submarines but we can use that design as a starting point to deploy a fleet of power plants all over this federation and do so very quickly.
Also, I think you have a point. Build the power plants in submersibles so that they have the cooling they need and if they melt down then they sink to the ocean floor. Just tether them to the shore so they they don't need to move and so they can provide power to the people on land.
The US Navy figured out how to run a nuclear power plant safely. It's the "greenest" energy source we know of. It works now and we've proved it. If the federal government does not have a plan to build reactors like this on every military base then I can only assume that they don't believe their own words on the threat that global warming poses. The people in the military cannot complain about the risks a nuclear power plant on the base poses, as you said they volunteered knowing the risks.
Whatever. Point is that one Los Angeles class submarine can be built for one billion dollars and the power plant within it can produce 30 megawatts or so of power. Therefore I can assume we can build a nuclear power plant, on land, for less than that. How much less? I don't know or care, it could be a penny less and still be a bargain if the global warming alarmists are to be believed.
Sure, let's build nuclear power plants that can use thorium as fuel. That is a great idea. While we figure out the engineering on how to do that the federal government can place an order with General Electric to build a hundred of the same power plants the Navy uses in their submarines. Start by putting them on military bases and have Navy crews man them. While GE is building the reactors, and the Navy trains the crews, we can devote some time and effort into a plan more suited to civilian power.
The fact that every military base is not already powered by a US Navy reactor tells me that the federal government is not taking this global warming threat very seriously.
Birds confuse the shiny panels for water and collide with them thinking they'd get a soft slash instead. They tend to injure themselves and cannot take off again.
When shiny these panels can confuse them in many ways leading them to collide with them, making them think the sun isn't where it should be, and if in large expanses the panels can concentrate the sun and set them on fire. No, I am not confusing them with solar concentrators, the photovoltaic panels can do this too.
A certain kind of photovoltaic is a very dark color and not nearly as reflective, these can also confuse the birds and lead them to collide with them in flight.
Generally birds are not very smart and they will run into a lot of things, like trees. The difference is that a tree has a rough bark, round shape, and a bunch of soft leaves hanging from it, these cushion the blows to the bird. Solar panels and the structures that hold them up are flat, hard, with sharp corners. When a bird hits them they hit hard, and the unnatural coloring only increases the chances of a collision.
I assume this warning is a call to action, so let's act. I hear a lot of talking heads that claim we need an "all of the above" approach to solve this problem but they don't include nuclear power. Then I'd hear nuclear waste, blah blah, Chernobyl, blah blah, Fukushima, blah blah. I thought global warming was the greatest threat we have, so is it?
If these government officials will tell me that global warming is such a threat that drastic measures are needed then I'd think that using nuclear power is a drastic measure. That's assuming all the fear mongering of China Syndrome melt downs are even true, which they are not.
I say put the US Navy in charge of our energy production, they seem to know how to operate nuclear reactors safely. Use the nuclear reactor design from one of those big submarines and build a million of them. Perhaps that's too much, a thousand then. Put a few dozen in every state and hook them to the electric grid. Problem solved, right?
Oh, where do we get the fuel? I seem to recall that the federal government has a whole pile of nuclear warheads that they aren't using, crack them open and take out the cores. That should keep us going until we can dig up some more.
Any complaints about nuclear power should be moot now, we have a real problem of global warming to handle. Any problems that come up from using nuclear power should be trivial by comparison. Again, if nuclear power is not part of the all-of-the-above then I have to wonder just how much of a threat global warming really poses.
Without some measure of the carbon output this metric is relatively meaningless. Imagine two countries with a goal to reduce their carbon emissions. Both start with nearly all of their electricity from coal.
The first nation replaces half of the coal plants with windmills, hydro electric dams, solar panels, and geothermal. They see their carbon footprint cut in half.
The second nation converts all the coal plants to burn natural gas. They also see their carbon footprint cut in half. At the same time their electricity rates remain the same while the first nation sees their electricity rates nearly double.
Imagine a third nation, they replace their coal plants with nuclear power. They see their electricity rates remain the same, their carbon footprint drop to near zero, and they don't have bird killing windmills and solar panels. By using breeder reactors and fuel reprocessing the amount of nuclear waste produced is the size of a beer can per gigawatt-year.
I see that they were only able to do this by subsidizing wind and solar. Anyone can be carbon free if they have enough money to throw at the problem. Where did this money come from to subsidize the greenwashing? From burning coal I imagine. It's only because of cheap coal that they could afford to do this. What happens when the cheap coal runs out? Unless they plan to build more nuclear power then this is a very temporary victory.
I remember hearing all kinds of kudos for Germany because of their investment in "green" energy but ignoring that they were mining brown coal at incredible rates. Brown coal is exceedingly dirty, and likely wiped out any gains from their wind and solar production. Germany is not alone in this but likely one of the most extreme examples of how going "green" has failed miserably.
Barring some leap in technology for wind and solar to bring down their costs and improving their reliability (both unlikely) we are not going to see any true gains in being "green" without heavy investments in nuclear power. Nuclear power doesn't have to be 100% of the electricity production but it'll likely have to be greater than 50% for a nation to be both "green" and not see energy rates go through the roof. Scotland doesn't get even 20% of their electricity from nuclear now. They have a long way to go.
I recall seeing the timing between stations on a wireless network being a common tactic to secure a network. If a station did not reply within a window defined by the time it would take for light to travel plus the time it would take for a secured device on the network to compute a reply then the packet was discarded. I'm sure that there are other methods to respond to such a packet beyond merely discarding it.
They seemed to make a big deal out of being able to do this with a single access point. Reading further I notice that they use other Wi-Fi devices on the network to compute a location which means that with only a single device on the network the ability to determine the location of that single device is diminished. To assure the location of a device they'd still need multiple access points and/or multiple client devices.
I assume that they take advantage of the MIMO capability of Wi-Fi devices that did not exist only a few years ago. This again is much like having multiple Wi-Fi access points, just treat each input and output antenna as a separate device and compute the location that way.
Perhaps I'm missing something important here but I'm not impressed.
I agree, one could produce a world wide web of many things. We currently have one world wide web of internet sites and it has a name, and that name is the World Wide Web. We often shorten such things in common usage and simply refer to this as the Web.
Many things fly and could be called a flyer. The Wright Brothers made something the flew and they called it Flyer.
There's a lot of things that shuttle things back and forth. NASA built a vehicle that did this and we call it Shuttle.
Perhaps another way to put it is everyone has a mom. When writing about your own mother one might say "my mom made this" or use the word as a title or pseudonym, "Mom made this".
I think the AP failed on this one.
No wonder bees are so easily attracted to my Mountain Dew.
Other countries are acting and changing their policies, for example Germany.
Is that the same Germany that is replacing clean nuclear power with brown coal power? The same Germany that has some of the highest electricity prices in Europe and buys as much power as it can from nuclear powered France?
Even China is beginning to invest heavily into renewable energy.
Yes, the same China that intends to double current nuclear power capacity in two years and then double it again two years later.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
It's mostly the US with a republican dominated congress and their policy of denial that is doing business as usual. And many developing countries won't even think about going environmentally friendly as long as the US doesn't take the lead.
Tell me, what political party is in charge of the executive branch? Are licenses for nuclear reactors issued by Congress or by the executive?
Read the two party platforms and tell me which one gives nuclear power the best chance of growth?
Is it the RNC?
https://www.gop.com/platform/a...
Nuclear energy, now generating about 20 percent of our electricity through 104 power plants, must be expanded. No new nuclear generating plants have been licensed and constructed for thirty years. We call for timely processing of new reactor applications currently pending at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
The federal governmentâ(TM)s failure to address the storage and disposal of spent nuclear fuel has left huge bills for States and taxpayers. Our country needs a more proactive approach to managing spent nuclear fuel, including through developing advanced reprocessing technologies.
Or is it the DNC?
https://www.democrats.org/part...
That means an all-of-the-above approach to developing America's many energy resources, including wind, solar, biofuels, geothermal, hydropower, nuclear, oil, clean coal, and natural gas.
Wow, of the entire Democrat platform document nuclear energy gets a mention in one sentence. I did however see a lot of mention of preventing nuclear proliferation. No mention of building new reactors that I could see. They did seem concerned about the amount of nuclear weapon material and the desire to destroy it. Tell me, what methods would those be besides using that material as fuel in a nuclear reactor? Would not the desire to destroy nuclear weapons coincide with expanded nuclear energy? Then why be silent on using this material as fuel? I can only conclude it is because they have no intent to see this nuclear material as fuel. They will likely down blend it with natural uranium and bury it in steel drums somewhere in the desert. Which is fine I suppose. When the Republicans get into power at some future date then it can be dug back up.
The Republicans have a majority in both houses but a 54% majority in the Senate allows for all kinds of methods to hold up bills. A lack of a sympathetic POTUS means vetoes and lots of them.
Democrats held both houses of the 111th Congress and the White House, why didn't we see a nuclear power renaissance then?
99% of scientists believe that global warming is real and we have 99% of politicians handing out subsidies to companies in their districts to build windmills that produce no power, solar panel factories that produce no solar panels, and build a nuclear waste site that cannot contain any waste.
Yet still you wonder why people are not buying into the global warming scare?
If global warming is a problem then we'd have another Jimmy Carter in the White House that lowers the thermostat, puts up solar panels, and wears a sweater indoors to keep warm. Instead we have a guy that takes a vacation to Hawaii, getting there by a jet plane, at least once a year. If global warming is a problem then I expect the politicians to act like it, and POTUS is not alone in his hypocrisy.
If global warming is a problem then I'd expect the federal government to be handing out nuclear power plant permits as fast as the applications come in. We should be building a new nuclear power plant once every month. Since we are not then I am not convinced that the politicians believe that global warming is a problem. If they don't see it as a problem then why should I?
After my previous reply I thought of a much simpler counter example.
I'm visiting my brother one day on my way home from campus (I'm in college and commute) when his sons come home from school. They complain about being hungry while my brother is out of the room. I see a bowl of fruit on the counter and I know my brother would not object to them eating a half of a banana before supper. I offer the kids bananas to hold them off until supper. They refuse.
My conclusion, they were not really hungry but thought that their uncle might give them candy.
I see a report from the IPCC saying we must reduce our carbon output or else. A large number of people propose to the UN that we can build nuclear power plants to address this problem of carbon output. The UN rejects this because nuclear reactors can be used to make bombs. Engineers and scientists show it is impossible to make bombs from these new reactors. The UN says that then we'd have a problem with nuclear waste. These people show that not only do they not produce waste they'd destroy the waste from previous reactors. The UN still doesn't like the idea of nuclear reactors.
My conclusion, global warming is not a problem but they thought an ignorant public might submit to their demands.
The UN is in my eyes no different than some kids telling their uncle they are hungry hoping to get some candy.