We've been dealing with artificial organs and transplanted organs for a very long time, I'm finding it difficult to figure out the real issue at hand here. It sounds to me that the 3D printing of organs would be using cells from the recipient, as in the person that needs a new liver would donate the stem cells for the new liver.
In the case of a person with "bad" DNA that might prevent using their own cells for the new organ, like type one diabetes, then cells from a suitable donor would be used. The difference in using donor cells in this case is that just a sample of the cells would be used, not the entire organ. We've gone through the legal and ethical issues of such donation already. It's gone to the point that blood donation is routine.
What makes this different somehow is that a 3D printer is involved. Reminds me of the big deal people make about 3D printed firearms. People have been making guns in their basements and garages for a very long time already. I guess that 3D printing makes it easier and cheaper is an issue but I see that as a good thing. Anything that makes commodities cheaper is a good thing to me.
If we are going to get upset about 3D printed anything then I'd like to see the discussion about 3D printed ladders, houses, automobiles, airplanes, or something else where structural integrity puts not just the user at risk but others that may be in the area. I suppose firearms fall in this category but that is not what people seem to be concerned about. They are more concerned about the danger 3D printing poses to "common sense firearm regulation", which means the ability to register and eventually confiscate them.
I see no issues here that have not already been discussed when it comes to organ transplantation. What I'd like to see is someone try to figure out the liability issue of some person losing their house because someone else flew a 3D printed helicopter into it. Is the pilot solely at fault? Does the designer of the helicopter share in the blame? What part does the manufacturer of the 3D printer play?
After that we'll talk about 3D printed nuclear reactors.
Why would a modern nuclear power plant explode? I understand why the old designs explode, they have high pressure steam pipes that can burst, solid fuel that can melt down, chemically incompatible materials in contact, and so forth. That's how we used to build nuclear power plants. We don't build them like that any more. A modern design operates at ambient pressure, no high pressure pipes to break. A modern design uses liquid fuels, the fuel cannot melt down because it's already molten.
If a modern nuclear power plant has an explosion its because there was a massive failure in security and someone planted a bomb. Even then there is unlikely to be a release of any radioactive material of much concern. I'm sure that the radiation would be detectable since we have techniques that can detect the slightest change in radiation. With modern reactor designs the fuel is continuously being reprocessed on site to remove dangerous radioactive material, so the amount in the reactor will always be minimal.
Past releases of radioactive material from nuclear reactors like Chernobyl, Fukushima, and Three Mile Island cannot happen. We just don't build reactors like we used to. We've learned from our mistakes and new reactors are incredibly safe. Problem is that the federal government does not know anything about the new designs so they will only allow the continued operation of old designs. The problem with unsafe nuclear power is a government that is still living as if nothing has changed in the last 30 years. Instead of allowing new designs to get built the federal government will allow the building of new reactors of an old design. If there is a nuclear disaster then we can blame the government.
The problem I have with man made global warming theorists is the methods they use to compensate for it. They do so with making government bigger so that is has greater control on our lives. The government will pay people to buy solar panels and place them on their roof. The subsidies go to those wealthy enough to buy the solar panels. These rich people get more wealthy with the government subsidies.
What about the poor people lacking the means to get any subsidy since they cannot purchase a any green energy. They buy what it cheap, fuel oil and natural gas. The rich get richer, the poor stay poor.
The price of electricity rises as more and more "green" energy sources get added to the utilities. At some point the price of the utility power gets so high that home owner does some math that they don't need the expensive utility power. They can make their electricity from natural gas generators on site. Next to most every grocery store, bank, government building, lumberyard, home owners' back yards, is a backup generator. These sit there in the case of a rare power outage.
What if that power outage arises? All those back up generators fire up. People will start to do the math. This outage from the utility is costing them less than if they bought the "green " energy. People that are off the grid are now paying less for power since they no longer have to pay for the windmills and water dams. Natural gas is just too cheap.
The natural gas power will get cheaper still as people find that the "waste" heat from the generators can be used to heat homes and businesses.
The electric utilities will find it real hard to sell their electricity to people. They just start to move off the grid. So long as the utilities are mandated to buy power from expensive solar and wind the natural gas will always be cheaper and more reliable.
The rich people with their solar panels will have the government subsidized panels on their roof, the best they can buy, competing with the large number of panels the governerment bought last year, older and less efficient.
What is the government going to do now? Tell businesses and homes that they cannot have back up generators? Tell people they must buy the more expensive "green" electricity from the utilities? Well, they'll move their manufacturing and technology to somewhere else. Take it to another country where thy don't have to buy the expensive "green" energy.
We've seen this happen already with light bulbs. We don't make like bulbs in the USA any more. All our lights are made in China. What else is moving to other countries? Aluminum refining? Do we even forge steel here any more?
Jobs, money, everything will move out f the USA. The only things left will be military contractors that cannot legally move their manufacturing out of the USA. For them to operate with the "green" energy they will have to be giving blank checks for how many bald eagles get killed in windmills. They will be getting blank checks for how much pollution they put in the water from the elements that leach out of the solar panels.
We will be left with the very polluted environment we tried to avoid because the laws mandated it. The rewards were for solar and wind, not for the reduction in the dangers to the environment.
We will see another year of increased carbon output, a lowering of global temperatures, and the "climate scientists" will be shocked. They will point to their models and scream up and down on how the WORLD is wrong. The models are right but they didn't collect alll the data, or some ocean current is sucking all the heat into the ocean, or some more nonsense.
The problem is that we do not understand enough about the argument to make these predictions. If they want to show that reducing carbon output will reduce global warming then we need a power source that is cheap, reliable, and produces little carbon. We have it, it is nuclear fission. Build more nuclear power plants and carbon emissions will go down. On
The paper you linked to said the mercury would be released over a ten week period. Having to "air out" a room for that long would be real inconvenient. Where I live there is snow on the ground right now, airing out my house over a broken bulb would not only make it real cold but would also eat up any savings (in money and carbon output) from having to heat my house.
You might say there is no real danger but I can remove all doubt by not getting the CFL in the first place.
No, requiring CFL bulbs was a political solution. CFL bulbs do have some uses. I've found them really helpful in jamming television remote controls. I thought I was going mad with the odd behavior of my TV until I found the source of the problem.
Seriously though, people did find CFL bulbs useful. The problem with CFL bulbs is that it's a technology shoehorned into an old format. Fluorescent tube lighting don't have near the problems that CFL bulbs do because the electronics are separate from the lighting tube. That means more durable (and expensive) electronics can be used, keeping prices down. It also reduces issues of heat buildup reducing bulb life. Trying to shove all that stuff in a small space, having it fit into an Edison socket, and keeping it cheap enough for people to throw it all away if one part fails, is asking for trouble.
The CFL came first, then the lobbyists, then the law. What we get from it is more expensive lighting for everyone, higher taxes (do you really think that utilities are giving away those CFL bulbs out of the goodness of their heart? no, it's supported through tax money), and bigger government.
I agree with your assessment of CFL bulbs, I hate them too. I think we will see LED lighting make them obsolete in the near future. We will still have fluorescent lights, just not the CFL bulbs with Edison connectors.
Right, let's give the government a huge infusion of cash for burning coal. Do you really believe that would work? Once congress critters see their tax revenue dry up as coal plants shut down they are going to find all kinds of new ways to see that income restored.
To reduce carbon output we need nuclear power. That's assuming carbon output is even a problem, which I'm not convinced it is. I still think nuclear power is the way to go, all kinds of good stuff can come from that, like radioactive isotopes for medicine.
Then get rid of the coal power and replace it with nuclear power. Bonus is that it reduces mercury output for all electricity uses, not just lighting.
If someone wants to argue about radioactive waste then I'll just point out that coal produces more radioactive waste than the same energy from nuclear. Old nuclear power plants only release radiation if hit by a once in a century earthquake, or someone yanks out all the safeties and cranks the power up to eleven. New nuclear reactors cannot melt down and boil off all the radioactive crap, sure they can spill radiation in an accident but coal releases radioactive crap into the air and water as normal operation.
Two counter arguments to your mercury output claims. First, when a CFL breaks it's in my house, the mercury in the coal is somewhere else. Second, the mercury is only released if coal is burned for power, it wouldn't matter if we were burning natural gas or using nuclear power.
I don't really believe the people that voted for the incandescent bulb ban thought this through. If they were really concerned about mercury in the air then they'd be building nuclear power plants, not telling people what kind of light bulb they can buy.
Oh, where does Congress think they get the authority to ban incandescent bulbs or nuclear power plants? I don't see either in the US Constitution. Congress should have more important things to worry about.
Only now, with LED traffic lights, the trucks have to roll out in the snow to make sure the lights aren't all covered with snow and ice. The old incandescent lights got warm enough to melt the stuff away. I saw the trucks come out last winter to clear off the lights during a snow storm, very unsafe. I haven't seen them yet this year though, not enough sticky snow yet.
Point is that there is no winning here. Everything is a compromise.
I don't see where in the US Constitution the US Congress has the authority do dictate which light bulbs I can purchase. I'm sure someone reading this is screaming "interstate commerce clause!" at their computer screen right now. Even with that clause the commerce must be interstate in nature. The laws are written so broadly that the federal government will declare a light bulb is part of interstate commerce, even if used only in the state it was manufactured, because it competes with CFL bulbs produced somewhere else.
I'm convinced that the federal government is more concerned about legislating my choices away than it is about saving the environment. If they were concerned about the carbon emitted from household lighting then they'd be building a new nuclear power plant every month. Nuclear power produces very little carbon and has an effect on all electricity, not just for lighting.
I'm sure someone is now screaming "nuclear waste!" at their computer screen right now. Thing is that modern nuclear reactors actually reduce the total radiation in the world. The old designs create the waste, we'd get rid of that waste if we built new reactors.
The linked article likes to place blame on one political party over the other. As far as I'm concerned the existence of any political party is dangerous and all should be done away with, all political parties share the blame here.
You can't complain about subsidies for wind and solar when every other energy source has been subsidized for decades.
Sure I can. I complain about all subsidies as the nature of subsidies is removing wealth from the profitable so that the wealth can be given to those that cannot produce that wealth on their own. Subsidies punish the productive and reward the unproductive.
If you want wind to prosper you need to get rid of the wind subsidies. Government subsidies require rules, there are always strings attached to that money. Strings that hold back any real development that might make it competitive. Right now wind power is made to please the government, not the consumer. If wind could find a way to please the customer then there would not be a need to please the government. Someday the windmill will be profitable, when it does then that will please the government, because then wind is making money. It will please the consumer, because it is collecting power. It must start with refusing the subsidy, just don't take the money.
Same with solar subsidies. Don't take the government money, they they own a piece of you, a piece of your solar power. Don't take the money, then the power is yours. If you can prove that solar makes a profit without the government buying into it then you have just proven solar power to be viable. Do you believe solar power is viable? That is is profitable? Then sell that electricity on the open market. Don't take the government subsidy, then they can tell you how much money you can make. Stay away from the subsidy, make your money on the open market. Then after you show the government you've made a profit without there interference, pay your taxes.
Subsidies mean we have to pay for our power twice, once from the producer and again from the government. No subsidizes mean we pay once for the power, and the taxes on the income goes to pay for roads and bridges.
If your wind and solar cannot make a profit then why should I subsidize it? I want my money to be invested in ways that benefit me. The best way for that to happen is remove the government from the equation. Don't have the government as a middleman, offer the solar power to me directly. If I see your offer as a benefit then we both gain wealth. If not then you lose. If the government gives you money because no one else will then we all lose. But we can all win. That is done by abandoning an unprofitable solar technology, or developing a solar technology that is profitable
Completely wrong, as seen globally where there are plenty of places where no such laws apply.
Where would that be? Every nation has laws on the handling of radioactive material. If there are any nations that do not have laws on radioactive materials then it's likely because they don't have enough infrastructure to be concerned about nuclear power. No one is going to build a nuclear power plant if there are no customers for the power, and no electrical grid to get it there.
I'm not advocating that there be no laws regulating nuclear material. I'm advocating sensible laws. In the USA the current regulations require so much bureaucracy that the paperwork to build a nuclear power plant would take up more volume than the power plant itself. Since the Department of Energy has been created there have been no new nuclear power plants that have reached criticality. The DoE mandate is to reduce energy imports and create energy independence for the USA. They could not even slow the growth of imported energy.
What an utterly silly redefinition! In terms of energy it has meant outside of the mainstream of oil, coal and hydro, and it's meant that from since before the web existed. There's plenty of alternative energies that work well in their niches.
Yes, alternative energy does work well in there niches. I have solar powered calculators. Outside of those very narrow markets they cannot make a profit. Solar power will not be mainstream until it is profitable. Right now people only buy it because of government subsidy, or because the power needed is so small and non-critical such as in calculators and toys.
It's not going to happen for the same reasons that companies involved in aluminium production do not build much cheaper than nuclear coal fired power stations today. How about you ponder those for a bit of an exercise instead of getting me to explain it to you. I'm sure you can work it out and then you'll get a bit more insight into this issue.
It didn't take me long for me to find corporations like Microsoft, Facebook, and Google funding electricity generation from wind and natural gas. The economics have shifted, natural gas is real cheap right now making it unprofitable for them to consider building nuclear power. Where natural gas is not so cheap we see nuclear power plants getting built, such as in Japan and UK.
Solar collects energy when a utility is most likely going to experience peak demand -- well, at least in the summer.
This is false, the article in the summary even points this out. Once solar and wind reaches about 20% of total capacity it overwhelms the ability of the grid to compensate for peak load times.
Solar power peaks at noon, power consumption peaks at about 4:00PM. Something has to fill in that gap. If we use stored electricity for that then we are paying twice for our power, once to produce it, and again to store it. Barring some great leap in solar power technology we are going to be stuck with wind, coal, natural gas, and nuclear.
Your arguments about importing uranium and rare earth metals only holds so long as the federal government continues to make it more expensive to mine it locally than import it. It's not like we have a shortage of those elements in American soil, in fact we have lots of it. Only the laws on the handling of "radioactive" material makes it expensive. I put "radioactive" in quotes because the materials that are regulated are not all that radioactive.
Sure, you will see people mining uranium wearing filter masks and goggles but that is because of the heavy metals in the soil, not because of radiation. Inhaling the mercury in the ground is not a good idea, same with the arsenic used in producing photovoltaic panels.
As for government subsidies for nuclear power I agree, we should not subsidize nuclear power. I say we should not subsidize solar power either. If we did that then which one do you suppose would win out? Unreliable solar power, or reliable nuclear power?
If batteries make sense for smoothing out the peaks from solar power then just think what that would do for nuclear power? If these batteries can be made cheap enough to make expensive solar power look good then what could that do for the much cheaper coal and nuclear power. Utilities would never have to fire up an expensive natural gas turbine again.
Solar radiation and bacteria may decompose organic chemicals but it does nothing for contamination from lead, mercury, cadmium, arsenic, etc. Weathering may wash these elements away and dilute them over time but then the same can be said for radioactive elements.
Any radioactive element that is a hazard to the human body must have a half-life less than a human half-life, otherwise the radioactive decay is unlikely to occur while the person is alive. The really bad fission products decay within seconds or days, which can be easily waited out by leaving for a time not much longer than a summer vacation. Most of the rest decays on a time scale which is irrelevant compared to human life spans.
This is all irrelevant because we will never have another melt down like Chernobyl. Nobody has built a reactor like Chernobyl in a very long time, and no one will do so in the future. That is because we learned a lot from Chernobyl. Saying we should not build reactors because of unsafe designs from the 1950s is like saying we should not build cars because of the unsafe designs from the 1950s.
Your comment shows a common misunderstanding of radiation. You've heard the phrase, "A candle that burns twice as bright burns half as long." This phrase applies to radioactive materials. Anything that has a half life of thousands of years is not much of a radiation hazard, it's essentially inert. Anything that has a half-life of years is a massive hazard, but it's gone once it decays. A large portion of fission products have a half life of days, or even seconds, which is why being exposed to a reactor in meltdown is such a hazard, because the fission products didn't have time to decay away.
Much of the exclusion zone around Chernobyl is safe for people to inhabit. Large portions of the exclusion zone has radiation levels no higher than that of Denver, Colorado. Compare that to Love Canal in New York. Even after decades of cleanup and natural decay of the chemicals dumped there fifty years ago Love Canal is still considered unsafe. The area around Chernobyl did not need any expensive cleanup for people to return to live there safely 25 years later, Love Canal did. Radioactive materials will decay to something inert over time, heavy metals like lead and mercury will still be lead and mercury even if some bacteria can live with it.
The reason people do not return to Chernobyl is primarily out of an abundance of caution. Due to bio-accumulation in certain wildlife it's not a wise idea to hunt there, at least not without first testing the meat before eating it. Same goes for Love Canal, the animals will accumulate the dangerous chemicals in the ground. The difference is that the radiation in Chernobyl is disappearing more quickly than the chemicals in Love Canal.
No you won't, because the banks and governments will not touch it and the energy utilities don't have enough ready cash to do it alone.
You are absolutely correct. I'm thinking that the shift to nuclear power will not come from banks, governments, or utilities. Certainly some government involvement will be required, but only because current laws require that involvement. Government involvement is not inherent to building a nuclear power plant. I think that this infusion of cash for nuclear power will come from a private corporation that needs power for producing their product, not a corporation where power is the product.
I think that a company with both the resources for building a nuclear power plant and the need for power density that a nuclear power plant can provide will be the next entity to build one. I'm thinking of aluminum refineries, large information service companies (Google, Microsoft, etc.), fertilizer manufacturers, perhaps even oil companies. Oil companies need a lot of power for processing the crude oil, might be more profitable if they didn't have to consume the raw materials for that power in the process.
Thus at this point the other alternative energies, such as solar and wind, are far more relevant than nuclear.
Reminds me of a sort of joke I heard, do you know what they call alternative medicine that works? Medicine.
The reason alternative energy is called "alternative" is because it does not work. Nuclear works. It must work, because no one refers to it as an "alternative".
I used to be a big advocate of the idea of having big batteries to store electricity from unreliable and "green" energy like wind and solar. That was until the cost of wind and solar power really sunk in. Wind power is on about par with peak energy generation like natural gas turbines, which is somewhere between 2x and 3x the cost of typical base load power like coal and nuclear. Solar power is so expensive, and variable (based on location, weather, usage, etc.) that it boggles my mind that any utility would even consider it. Then I recall all the subsidies from tax money spent on this nonsense that it starts to make sense to me again.
The cost of the wind and solar power is high enough that adding to the cost with storage has got to mean the total cost to the utility, and therefore the customer, would be something like 4x what coal and nuclear would cost. Then the size of these batteries would have to be astronomical.
One thing that concerns me is the environmental impact these batteries would have. The materials for the batteries would have to come from somewhere. I assume they would have to be mined out of the ground. These batteries would have to be manufactured, transported, etc. The carbon footprint of pouring the concrete pad these would most likely have to sit upon would have to be quite large.
Another question of environmental impact is, what if there is a leak? The stuff used in the batteries may have been derived from plant material but too much of anything can be bad. I grew up on a farm, I saw what too much water can do. I also saw what too much fertilizer can do, it burns the crops almost as if it was set on fire. What will the liquids in this battery do to crops and water supplies if there is an accidental release?
At least with nuclear power any radioactivity will decay away, with a chemical spill that stuff will always be there. I would much rather see someone come up with a technology to make the production of ammonia cheaper and not rely on natural gas. Ammonia is a fertilizer, a naturally occurring substance, and a fuel. An ammonia leak would still be an asphyxiation hazard, a fire hazard, could burn crops, and could pollute a water supply. However, ammonia is a gas that breaks down into nitrogen and water in the air. The stuff they use in this battery contains bromine and sulfur, what would that do to the water table?
I hear this all the time about how the ISS is supposed to evolve into this orbital "gas station" for future missions to the moon, Mars, or beyond. The problem with that is the ISS is in the wrong orbit for doing that. To get the ISS project off the ground the orbit was shifted from it's original low angle orbit to a high angle orbit. This higher angle made it cheaper and easier for supply missions from existing Russian launch sites.
I won't pretend I understand all the physics but I get the general concept. To reach the ISS from Russia easily means that the orbit had to deviate quite a bit from the equator. Any spacecraft bound for a destination within the solar system requires a trajectory very close to the orbital plane of the planets.
I understand that every orbit is a compromise since the Earth's rotation and other motions of objects in the solar system means that there is no one perfect orbit for an orbital platform to use as a filling station or assembly point. I do recall that ISS has an orbit far from anything close to ideal as a stopping off point for a destination within the solar system. A spacecraft stopping at ISS on its way to any other point in the solar system would burn far too much fuel in getting there that there is just not enough fuel that ISS could transfer to the craft to make the stop worth it.
It was also explained to me that moving the ISS to a more suitable orbit would be exceedingly expensive. It would just be cheaper and easier to build another station in this more suitable orbit. I'm just angered a bit when people claim that the ISS is going to be our gas station in the sky for our future manned mission to Mars.
I am pleased a bit that we (speaking as an American citizen and a member of the human race) are not abandoning manned missions in space. I'm hoping that at some point we see multiple manned orbital platforms, some made specifically as a stop off point for manned missions beyond low Earth orbit. If NASA could get its act together then maybe we could see an American flag painted on such a station before China or Russia beats us to it.
I wondered about that. How can the Klingons have an economy if everyone is a soldier? Soldiers need to eat too. Don't they have farmers? Soldiers need weapons. Don't they have armorers? A spacefaring race would need engineers, navigators, mechanics, pilots, even more mundane things like meteorologists. You'd look real stupid as a spaceship captain if your ship crashed because you didn't go around a hurricane on your descent through the atmosphere.
I thought the same thing about the Spartans after watching the movie 300. I found out later they kept slaves for the mundane labor. Do the Klingons keep other species slaves to grow their food?
I'm thinking about this too much. I need to get back to bed.
I have the same view of the two major political parties. I also abhor socialism. I consider myself more of a libertarian or minarchist. Perhaps we have more that we agree upon than disagree upon.
I can make assertions without citations to back it up too.
By what metric are we measuring the growth of the economy? There's lots of ways to do that, if you torture the data you can get it to admit anything.
Also, what we have now it well beyond anything that Carter had. The government is taxing and spending much more money. I'm sure that people on food stamps, unemployment, welfare, and other government assistance is much higher. This cannot continue, therefore it will not.
As certain as water will wet us, as surely as fire will burn, the gods of wisdom and virtue with terror and slaughter return. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rx9--zQDfog
I'm not sure what you wrote makes sense. I'm tired. If you mean what I think you mean then you are saying that Romney didn't like the Democrat version of trickle down economics but preferred the Reagan trickle down economics.
Democrats believe that by handing out food stamps these poor people will use them to buy food, therefore boosting the economy. "Reaganomics" says by letting not taxing the rich into poverty they will create jobs for the poor so they won't need food stamps.
If Democrat trickle down works then at some point we'd have everyone on food stamps but no "fat cats" to pay the taxes needed to support it. Even in theory it sounds bad. "Reaganomics" means that if you don't work you die. That's over simplifying it since there is still charities and government assistance would not be abolished by even the meanest and cruelest Republican.
Problem is that as much as the Democrats may deny it that is how the world works. At some point you run out of other people's money. Then if you don't work, you die.
When the rich man sells the poor man a bowl of porridge then who gets wealthier? They both do. The poor man gets to eat and the rich man has more liquid assets for trade. Nobody trades down, everyone trades up. If the government took the porridge from the rich man and gave it to the poor man who gets wealthy off that? The government. The rich man lost his porridge, the poor man still has no job, and the government got it's cut.
Yes, Romney is sooooo evil. He wants to keep the government from taking it's cut. He also wants to end the cycle of Democrat vote buying with your money and mine.
Why is Mitt Romney putting money in the Bahamas? Because that is where he gets a better return on his investment. I don't fault Romney for doing that, I'd do the same. I fault our government for making the Bahamas a better choice than keeping that money in the USA.
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No, but it will accurately track the path of the radioactive fallout.
We've been dealing with artificial organs and transplanted organs for a very long time, I'm finding it difficult to figure out the real issue at hand here. It sounds to me that the 3D printing of organs would be using cells from the recipient, as in the person that needs a new liver would donate the stem cells for the new liver.
In the case of a person with "bad" DNA that might prevent using their own cells for the new organ, like type one diabetes, then cells from a suitable donor would be used. The difference in using donor cells in this case is that just a sample of the cells would be used, not the entire organ. We've gone through the legal and ethical issues of such donation already. It's gone to the point that blood donation is routine.
What makes this different somehow is that a 3D printer is involved. Reminds me of the big deal people make about 3D printed firearms. People have been making guns in their basements and garages for a very long time already. I guess that 3D printing makes it easier and cheaper is an issue but I see that as a good thing. Anything that makes commodities cheaper is a good thing to me.
If we are going to get upset about 3D printed anything then I'd like to see the discussion about 3D printed ladders, houses, automobiles, airplanes, or something else where structural integrity puts not just the user at risk but others that may be in the area. I suppose firearms fall in this category but that is not what people seem to be concerned about. They are more concerned about the danger 3D printing poses to "common sense firearm regulation", which means the ability to register and eventually confiscate them.
I see no issues here that have not already been discussed when it comes to organ transplantation. What I'd like to see is someone try to figure out the liability issue of some person losing their house because someone else flew a 3D printed helicopter into it. Is the pilot solely at fault? Does the designer of the helicopter share in the blame? What part does the manufacturer of the 3D printer play?
After that we'll talk about 3D printed nuclear reactors.
Why would a modern nuclear power plant explode? I understand why the old designs explode, they have high pressure steam pipes that can burst, solid fuel that can melt down, chemically incompatible materials in contact, and so forth. That's how we used to build nuclear power plants. We don't build them like that any more. A modern design operates at ambient pressure, no high pressure pipes to break. A modern design uses liquid fuels, the fuel cannot melt down because it's already molten.
If a modern nuclear power plant has an explosion its because there was a massive failure in security and someone planted a bomb. Even then there is unlikely to be a release of any radioactive material of much concern. I'm sure that the radiation would be detectable since we have techniques that can detect the slightest change in radiation. With modern reactor designs the fuel is continuously being reprocessed on site to remove dangerous radioactive material, so the amount in the reactor will always be minimal.
Past releases of radioactive material from nuclear reactors like Chernobyl, Fukushima, and Three Mile Island cannot happen. We just don't build reactors like we used to. We've learned from our mistakes and new reactors are incredibly safe. Problem is that the federal government does not know anything about the new designs so they will only allow the continued operation of old designs. The problem with unsafe nuclear power is a government that is still living as if nothing has changed in the last 30 years. Instead of allowing new designs to get built the federal government will allow the building of new reactors of an old design. If there is a nuclear disaster then we can blame the government.
The problem I have with man made global warming theorists is the methods they use to compensate for it. They do so with making government bigger so that is has greater control on our lives. The government will pay people to buy solar panels and place them on their roof. The subsidies go to those wealthy enough to buy the solar panels. These rich people get more wealthy with the government subsidies.
What about the poor people lacking the means to get any subsidy since they cannot purchase a any green energy. They buy what it cheap, fuel oil and natural gas. The rich get richer, the poor stay poor.
The price of electricity rises as more and more "green" energy sources get added to the utilities. At some point the price of the utility power gets so high that home owner does some math that they don't need the expensive utility power. They can make their electricity from natural gas generators on site. Next to most every grocery store, bank, government building, lumberyard, home owners' back yards, is a backup generator. These sit there in the case of a rare power outage.
What if that power outage arises? All those back up generators fire up. People will start to do the math. This outage from the utility is costing them less than if they bought the "green " energy. People that are off the grid are now paying less for power since they no longer have to pay for the windmills and water dams. Natural gas is just too cheap.
The natural gas power will get cheaper still as people find that the "waste" heat from the generators can be used to heat homes and businesses.
The electric utilities will find it real hard to sell their electricity to people. They just start to move off the grid. So long as the utilities are mandated to buy power from expensive solar and wind the natural gas will always be cheaper and more reliable.
The rich people with their solar panels will have the government subsidized panels on their roof, the best they can buy, competing with the large number of panels the governerment bought last year, older and less efficient.
What is the government going to do now? Tell businesses and homes that they cannot have back up generators? Tell people they must buy the more expensive "green" electricity from the utilities? Well, they'll move their manufacturing and technology to somewhere else. Take it to another country where thy don't have to buy the expensive "green" energy.
We've seen this happen already with light bulbs. We don't make like bulbs in the USA any more. All our lights are made in China. What else is moving to other countries? Aluminum refining? Do we even forge steel here any more?
Jobs, money, everything will move out f the USA. The only things left will be military contractors that cannot legally move their manufacturing out of the USA. For them to operate with the "green" energy they will have to be giving blank checks for how many bald eagles get killed in windmills. They will be getting blank checks for how much pollution they put in the water from the elements that leach out of the solar panels.
We will be left with the very polluted environment we tried to avoid because the laws mandated it. The rewards were for solar and wind, not for the reduction in the dangers to the environment.
We will see another year of increased carbon output, a lowering of global temperatures, and the "climate scientists" will be shocked. They will point to their models and scream up and down on how the WORLD is wrong. The models are right but they didn't collect alll the data, or some ocean current is sucking all the heat into the ocean, or some more nonsense.
The problem is that we do not understand enough about the argument to make these predictions. If they want to show that reducing carbon output will reduce global warming then we need a power source that is cheap, reliable, and produces little carbon. We have it, it is nuclear fission. Build more nuclear power plants and carbon emissions will go down. On
The paper you linked to said the mercury would be released over a ten week period. Having to "air out" a room for that long would be real inconvenient. Where I live there is snow on the ground right now, airing out my house over a broken bulb would not only make it real cold but would also eat up any savings (in money and carbon output) from having to heat my house.
You might say there is no real danger but I can remove all doubt by not getting the CFL in the first place.
CFLs were a political solution to a non-problem.
No, requiring CFL bulbs was a political solution. CFL bulbs do have some uses. I've found them really helpful in jamming television remote controls. I thought I was going mad with the odd behavior of my TV until I found the source of the problem.
Seriously though, people did find CFL bulbs useful. The problem with CFL bulbs is that it's a technology shoehorned into an old format. Fluorescent tube lighting don't have near the problems that CFL bulbs do because the electronics are separate from the lighting tube. That means more durable (and expensive) electronics can be used, keeping prices down. It also reduces issues of heat buildup reducing bulb life. Trying to shove all that stuff in a small space, having it fit into an Edison socket, and keeping it cheap enough for people to throw it all away if one part fails, is asking for trouble.
The CFL came first, then the lobbyists, then the law. What we get from it is more expensive lighting for everyone, higher taxes (do you really think that utilities are giving away those CFL bulbs out of the goodness of their heart? no, it's supported through tax money), and bigger government.
I agree with your assessment of CFL bulbs, I hate them too. I think we will see LED lighting make them obsolete in the near future. We will still have fluorescent lights, just not the CFL bulbs with Edison connectors.
Right, let's give the government a huge infusion of cash for burning coal. Do you really believe that would work? Once congress critters see their tax revenue dry up as coal plants shut down they are going to find all kinds of new ways to see that income restored.
To reduce carbon output we need nuclear power. That's assuming carbon output is even a problem, which I'm not convinced it is. I still think nuclear power is the way to go, all kinds of good stuff can come from that, like radioactive isotopes for medicine.
Then get rid of the coal power and replace it with nuclear power. Bonus is that it reduces mercury output for all electricity uses, not just lighting.
If someone wants to argue about radioactive waste then I'll just point out that coal produces more radioactive waste than the same energy from nuclear. Old nuclear power plants only release radiation if hit by a once in a century earthquake, or someone yanks out all the safeties and cranks the power up to eleven. New nuclear reactors cannot melt down and boil off all the radioactive crap, sure they can spill radiation in an accident but coal releases radioactive crap into the air and water as normal operation.
Two counter arguments to your mercury output claims. First, when a CFL breaks it's in my house, the mercury in the coal is somewhere else. Second, the mercury is only released if coal is burned for power, it wouldn't matter if we were burning natural gas or using nuclear power.
I don't really believe the people that voted for the incandescent bulb ban thought this through. If they were really concerned about mercury in the air then they'd be building nuclear power plants, not telling people what kind of light bulb they can buy.
Oh, where does Congress think they get the authority to ban incandescent bulbs or nuclear power plants? I don't see either in the US Constitution. Congress should have more important things to worry about.
Only now, with LED traffic lights, the trucks have to roll out in the snow to make sure the lights aren't all covered with snow and ice. The old incandescent lights got warm enough to melt the stuff away. I saw the trucks come out last winter to clear off the lights during a snow storm, very unsafe. I haven't seen them yet this year though, not enough sticky snow yet.
Point is that there is no winning here. Everything is a compromise.
I don't see where in the US Constitution the US Congress has the authority do dictate which light bulbs I can purchase. I'm sure someone reading this is screaming "interstate commerce clause!" at their computer screen right now. Even with that clause the commerce must be interstate in nature. The laws are written so broadly that the federal government will declare a light bulb is part of interstate commerce, even if used only in the state it was manufactured, because it competes with CFL bulbs produced somewhere else.
I'm convinced that the federal government is more concerned about legislating my choices away than it is about saving the environment. If they were concerned about the carbon emitted from household lighting then they'd be building a new nuclear power plant every month. Nuclear power produces very little carbon and has an effect on all electricity, not just for lighting.
I'm sure someone is now screaming "nuclear waste!" at their computer screen right now. Thing is that modern nuclear reactors actually reduce the total radiation in the world. The old designs create the waste, we'd get rid of that waste if we built new reactors.
The linked article likes to place blame on one political party over the other. As far as I'm concerned the existence of any political party is dangerous and all should be done away with, all political parties share the blame here.
You can't complain about subsidies for wind and solar when every other energy source has been subsidized for decades.
Sure I can. I complain about all subsidies as the nature of subsidies is removing wealth from the profitable so that the wealth can be given to those that cannot produce that wealth on their own. Subsidies punish the productive and reward the unproductive.
If you want wind to prosper you need to get rid of the wind subsidies. Government subsidies require rules, there are always strings attached to that money. Strings that hold back any real development that might make it competitive. Right now wind power is made to please the government, not the consumer. If wind could find a way to please the customer then there would not be a need to please the government. Someday the windmill will be profitable, when it does then that will please the government, because then wind is making money. It will please the consumer, because it is collecting power. It must start with refusing the subsidy, just don't take the money.
Same with solar subsidies. Don't take the government money, they they own a piece of you, a piece of your solar power. Don't take the money, then the power is yours. If you can prove that solar makes a profit without the government buying into it then you have just proven solar power to be viable. Do you believe solar power is viable? That is is profitable? Then sell that electricity on the open market. Don't take the government subsidy, then they can tell you how much money you can make. Stay away from the subsidy, make your money on the open market. Then after you show the government you've made a profit without there interference, pay your taxes.
Subsidies mean we have to pay for our power twice, once from the producer and again from the government. No subsidizes mean we pay once for the power, and the taxes on the income goes to pay for roads and bridges.
If your wind and solar cannot make a profit then why should I subsidize it? I want my money to be invested in ways that benefit me. The best way for that to happen is remove the government from the equation. Don't have the government as a middleman, offer the solar power to me directly. If I see your offer as a benefit then we both gain wealth. If not then you lose. If the government gives you money because no one else will then we all lose. But we can all win. That is done by abandoning an unprofitable solar technology, or developing a solar technology that is profitable
Completely wrong, as seen globally where there are plenty of places where no such laws apply.
Where would that be? Every nation has laws on the handling of radioactive material. If there are any nations that do not have laws on radioactive materials then it's likely because they don't have enough infrastructure to be concerned about nuclear power. No one is going to build a nuclear power plant if there are no customers for the power, and no electrical grid to get it there.
I'm not advocating that there be no laws regulating nuclear material. I'm advocating sensible laws. In the USA the current regulations require so much bureaucracy that the paperwork to build a nuclear power plant would take up more volume than the power plant itself. Since the Department of Energy has been created there have been no new nuclear power plants that have reached criticality. The DoE mandate is to reduce energy imports and create energy independence for the USA. They could not even slow the growth of imported energy.
What an utterly silly redefinition! In terms of energy it has meant outside of the mainstream of oil, coal and hydro, and it's meant that from since before the web existed. There's plenty of alternative energies that work well in their niches.
Yes, alternative energy does work well in there niches. I have solar powered calculators. Outside of those very narrow markets they cannot make a profit. Solar power will not be mainstream until it is profitable. Right now people only buy it because of government subsidy, or because the power needed is so small and non-critical such as in calculators and toys.
It's not going to happen for the same reasons that companies involved in aluminium production do not build much cheaper than nuclear coal fired power stations today. How about you ponder those for a bit of an exercise instead of getting me to explain it to you. I'm sure you can work it out and then you'll get a bit more insight into this issue.
It didn't take me long for me to find corporations like Microsoft, Facebook, and Google funding electricity generation from wind and natural gas. The economics have shifted, natural gas is real cheap right now making it unprofitable for them to consider building nuclear power. Where natural gas is not so cheap we see nuclear power plants getting built, such as in Japan and UK.
Solar collects energy when a utility is most likely going to experience peak demand -- well, at least in the summer.
This is false, the article in the summary even points this out. Once solar and wind reaches about 20% of total capacity it overwhelms the ability of the grid to compensate for peak load times.
Solar power peaks at noon, power consumption peaks at about 4:00PM. Something has to fill in that gap. If we use stored electricity for that then we are paying twice for our power, once to produce it, and again to store it. Barring some great leap in solar power technology we are going to be stuck with wind, coal, natural gas, and nuclear.
Your arguments about importing uranium and rare earth metals only holds so long as the federal government continues to make it more expensive to mine it locally than import it. It's not like we have a shortage of those elements in American soil, in fact we have lots of it. Only the laws on the handling of "radioactive" material makes it expensive. I put "radioactive" in quotes because the materials that are regulated are not all that radioactive.
Sure, you will see people mining uranium wearing filter masks and goggles but that is because of the heavy metals in the soil, not because of radiation. Inhaling the mercury in the ground is not a good idea, same with the arsenic used in producing photovoltaic panels.
As for government subsidies for nuclear power I agree, we should not subsidize nuclear power. I say we should not subsidize solar power either. If we did that then which one do you suppose would win out? Unreliable solar power, or reliable nuclear power?
If batteries make sense for smoothing out the peaks from solar power then just think what that would do for nuclear power? If these batteries can be made cheap enough to make expensive solar power look good then what could that do for the much cheaper coal and nuclear power. Utilities would never have to fire up an expensive natural gas turbine again.
Solar radiation and bacteria may decompose organic chemicals but it does nothing for contamination from lead, mercury, cadmium, arsenic, etc. Weathering may wash these elements away and dilute them over time but then the same can be said for radioactive elements.
Any radioactive element that is a hazard to the human body must have a half-life less than a human half-life, otherwise the radioactive decay is unlikely to occur while the person is alive. The really bad fission products decay within seconds or days, which can be easily waited out by leaving for a time not much longer than a summer vacation. Most of the rest decays on a time scale which is irrelevant compared to human life spans.
This is all irrelevant because we will never have another melt down like Chernobyl. Nobody has built a reactor like Chernobyl in a very long time, and no one will do so in the future. That is because we learned a lot from Chernobyl. Saying we should not build reactors because of unsafe designs from the 1950s is like saying we should not build cars because of the unsafe designs from the 1950s.
Your comment shows a common misunderstanding of radiation. You've heard the phrase, "A candle that burns twice as bright burns half as long." This phrase applies to radioactive materials. Anything that has a half life of thousands of years is not much of a radiation hazard, it's essentially inert. Anything that has a half-life of years is a massive hazard, but it's gone once it decays. A large portion of fission products have a half life of days, or even seconds, which is why being exposed to a reactor in meltdown is such a hazard, because the fission products didn't have time to decay away.
Much of the exclusion zone around Chernobyl is safe for people to inhabit. Large portions of the exclusion zone has radiation levels no higher than that of Denver, Colorado. Compare that to Love Canal in New York. Even after decades of cleanup and natural decay of the chemicals dumped there fifty years ago Love Canal is still considered unsafe. The area around Chernobyl did not need any expensive cleanup for people to return to live there safely 25 years later, Love Canal did. Radioactive materials will decay to something inert over time, heavy metals like lead and mercury will still be lead and mercury even if some bacteria can live with it.
The reason people do not return to Chernobyl is primarily out of an abundance of caution. Due to bio-accumulation in certain wildlife it's not a wise idea to hunt there, at least not without first testing the meat before eating it. Same goes for Love Canal, the animals will accumulate the dangerous chemicals in the ground. The difference is that the radiation in Chernobyl is disappearing more quickly than the chemicals in Love Canal.
No you won't, because the banks and governments will not touch it and the energy utilities don't have enough ready cash to do it alone.
You are absolutely correct. I'm thinking that the shift to nuclear power will not come from banks, governments, or utilities. Certainly some government involvement will be required, but only because current laws require that involvement. Government involvement is not inherent to building a nuclear power plant. I think that this infusion of cash for nuclear power will come from a private corporation that needs power for producing their product, not a corporation where power is the product.
I think that a company with both the resources for building a nuclear power plant and the need for power density that a nuclear power plant can provide will be the next entity to build one. I'm thinking of aluminum refineries, large information service companies (Google, Microsoft, etc.), fertilizer manufacturers, perhaps even oil companies. Oil companies need a lot of power for processing the crude oil, might be more profitable if they didn't have to consume the raw materials for that power in the process.
Thus at this point the other alternative energies, such as solar and wind, are far more relevant than nuclear.
Reminds me of a sort of joke I heard, do you know what they call alternative medicine that works? Medicine.
The reason alternative energy is called "alternative" is because it does not work. Nuclear works. It must work, because no one refers to it as an "alternative".
I used to be a big advocate of the idea of having big batteries to store electricity from unreliable and "green" energy like wind and solar. That was until the cost of wind and solar power really sunk in. Wind power is on about par with peak energy generation like natural gas turbines, which is somewhere between 2x and 3x the cost of typical base load power like coal and nuclear. Solar power is so expensive, and variable (based on location, weather, usage, etc.) that it boggles my mind that any utility would even consider it. Then I recall all the subsidies from tax money spent on this nonsense that it starts to make sense to me again.
The cost of the wind and solar power is high enough that adding to the cost with storage has got to mean the total cost to the utility, and therefore the customer, would be something like 4x what coal and nuclear would cost. Then the size of these batteries would have to be astronomical.
One thing that concerns me is the environmental impact these batteries would have. The materials for the batteries would have to come from somewhere. I assume they would have to be mined out of the ground. These batteries would have to be manufactured, transported, etc. The carbon footprint of pouring the concrete pad these would most likely have to sit upon would have to be quite large.
Another question of environmental impact is, what if there is a leak? The stuff used in the batteries may have been derived from plant material but too much of anything can be bad. I grew up on a farm, I saw what too much water can do. I also saw what too much fertilizer can do, it burns the crops almost as if it was set on fire. What will the liquids in this battery do to crops and water supplies if there is an accidental release?
At least with nuclear power any radioactivity will decay away, with a chemical spill that stuff will always be there. I would much rather see someone come up with a technology to make the production of ammonia cheaper and not rely on natural gas. Ammonia is a fertilizer, a naturally occurring substance, and a fuel. An ammonia leak would still be an asphyxiation hazard, a fire hazard, could burn crops, and could pollute a water supply. However, ammonia is a gas that breaks down into nitrogen and water in the air. The stuff they use in this battery contains bromine and sulfur, what would that do to the water table?
No thanks, I'll take nuclear power instead.
I hear this all the time about how the ISS is supposed to evolve into this orbital "gas station" for future missions to the moon, Mars, or beyond. The problem with that is the ISS is in the wrong orbit for doing that. To get the ISS project off the ground the orbit was shifted from it's original low angle orbit to a high angle orbit. This higher angle made it cheaper and easier for supply missions from existing Russian launch sites.
I won't pretend I understand all the physics but I get the general concept. To reach the ISS from Russia easily means that the orbit had to deviate quite a bit from the equator. Any spacecraft bound for a destination within the solar system requires a trajectory very close to the orbital plane of the planets.
I understand that every orbit is a compromise since the Earth's rotation and other motions of objects in the solar system means that there is no one perfect orbit for an orbital platform to use as a filling station or assembly point. I do recall that ISS has an orbit far from anything close to ideal as a stopping off point for a destination within the solar system. A spacecraft stopping at ISS on its way to any other point in the solar system would burn far too much fuel in getting there that there is just not enough fuel that ISS could transfer to the craft to make the stop worth it.
It was also explained to me that moving the ISS to a more suitable orbit would be exceedingly expensive. It would just be cheaper and easier to build another station in this more suitable orbit. I'm just angered a bit when people claim that the ISS is going to be our gas station in the sky for our future manned mission to Mars.
I am pleased a bit that we (speaking as an American citizen and a member of the human race) are not abandoning manned missions in space. I'm hoping that at some point we see multiple manned orbital platforms, some made specifically as a stop off point for manned missions beyond low Earth orbit. If NASA could get its act together then maybe we could see an American flag painted on such a station before China or Russia beats us to it.
I wondered about that. How can the Klingons have an economy if everyone is a soldier? Soldiers need to eat too. Don't they have farmers? Soldiers need weapons. Don't they have armorers? A spacefaring race would need engineers, navigators, mechanics, pilots, even more mundane things like meteorologists. You'd look real stupid as a spaceship captain if your ship crashed because you didn't go around a hurricane on your descent through the atmosphere.
I thought the same thing about the Spartans after watching the movie 300. I found out later they kept slaves for the mundane labor. Do the Klingons keep other species slaves to grow their food?
I'm thinking about this too much. I need to get back to bed.
I have the same view of the two major political parties. I also abhor socialism. I consider myself more of a libertarian or minarchist. Perhaps we have more that we agree upon than disagree upon.
A wookie? That doesn't even make sense!
I can make assertions without citations to back it up too.
By what metric are we measuring the growth of the economy? There's lots of ways to do that, if you torture the data you can get it to admit anything.
Also, what we have now it well beyond anything that Carter had. The government is taxing and spending much more money. I'm sure that people on food stamps, unemployment, welfare, and other government assistance is much higher. This cannot continue, therefore it will not.
The hammer of reality WILL fall.
https://www.billwhittle.com/afterburner/hammer-reality
As certain as water will wet us, as surely as fire will burn, the gods of wisdom and virtue with terror and slaughter return.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rx9--zQDfog
I'm not sure what you wrote makes sense. I'm tired. If you mean what I think you mean then you are saying that Romney didn't like the Democrat version of trickle down economics but preferred the Reagan trickle down economics.
Democrats believe that by handing out food stamps these poor people will use them to buy food, therefore boosting the economy. "Reaganomics" says by letting not taxing the rich into poverty they will create jobs for the poor so they won't need food stamps.
If Democrat trickle down works then at some point we'd have everyone on food stamps but no "fat cats" to pay the taxes needed to support it. Even in theory it sounds bad. "Reaganomics" means that if you don't work you die. That's over simplifying it since there is still charities and government assistance would not be abolished by even the meanest and cruelest Republican.
Problem is that as much as the Democrats may deny it that is how the world works. At some point you run out of other people's money. Then if you don't work, you die.
When the rich man sells the poor man a bowl of porridge then who gets wealthier? They both do. The poor man gets to eat and the rich man has more liquid assets for trade. Nobody trades down, everyone trades up. If the government took the porridge from the rich man and gave it to the poor man who gets wealthy off that? The government. The rich man lost his porridge, the poor man still has no job, and the government got it's cut.
Yes, Romney is sooooo evil. He wants to keep the government from taking it's cut. He also wants to end the cycle of Democrat vote buying with your money and mine.
Why is Mitt Romney putting money in the Bahamas? Because that is where he gets a better return on his investment. I don't fault Romney for doing that, I'd do the same. I fault our government for making the Bahamas a better choice than keeping that money in the USA.