You can actually burn almost all nuclear fission "spent" fuel in a breeder reactor. It's just not economical.
Not economical? Compared to what? We can burn the stuff in a reactor to make energy (and then make money) or we can put it in a waste site and have to guard it from terrorists and curious children for centuries (which costs money).
The main reason for reprocessing at the moment is to deal with decommissioning nuclear weapons. Plutonium and high-enriched uranium warheads are broken down and diluted to create either uranium fuel assemblies or "MOX" fuel which combines uranium and plutonium.
Thanks to mismanagement by Obama and his Democrat friends the USA has gone backwards in its ability to reprocess nuclear waste. For decades Democrats have held up efforts to reprocess old warheads and spent nuclear fuel. They prefer "downblending" over reprocessing. Downblending is just mixing the plutonium and other valuable isotopes with enough other crap to make it difficult to extract it again. This is not only dumping a bunch of valuable fuel into a hole in the ground but also does not destroy it as demanded by treaties. It still exists, it's just hard to get it back. Reprocessing plutonium into fuel would actually destroy the plutonium as it's "burned" in a reactor. People claim nuclear power is a risk of nuclear weapon proliferation, quite the opposite really. Nuclear power makes that plutonium valuable for something other than dropping it on cities and vaporizing them.
Not only could plutonium and uranium be extracted for fuel but so could so many other valuable isotopes for industrial, medical, and scientific uses. NASA is desperate for neptunium which they use to produce the Pu-238 they use as power sources in deep space probes. Solar panels work well out to perhaps the orbit of Mars but even then there is a risk of going into a shadow and having fragile electronics freeze and crack in space. They'll need a heat source like Pu-238 to keep them warm.
There are some very valuable isotopes used for cancer treatments and diagnostic exams. They are also used to irradiate food to kill off disease that could be spread. Irradiating food does not make it radioactive, just like how dental X-ray doesn't make your teeth radioactive.
Disposing of nuclear waste is easy.
I agree. There is nothing wrong with putting the waste in a hole in the ground until we can figure out how to reprocess it properly. The problem with that though is many of the medically valuable isotopes will decay away quickly. We could still use it for fuel and such but it's value for many uses diminishes with time. What if we don't figure out how to reprocess it? Then we can leave the stuff in the hole.
When the exhaust of a coal plant is scrubbed, it has no fly ash.
It still has ash. Ash that contains radioactive material. Radioactive material that can dissolve in water or blow away in the wind if not contained. Right now coal ash is usually just dumped into open pits. Some times we'll see it used instead of sand in the concrete used to pave roads. This seems like a logical way to dispose of radioactive material from nuclear power plants as well, mix it in with concrete to keep it from blowing or washing away and to shield people from any radioactive emissions.
but also no idea why you want to produce nuclear waste and deposit it there when you can have clean renewables.
Because nuclear is safer, cheaper, and more reliable than any renewable energy. I'll hear advocates for wind and solar talk about how cheap they are, and to address the problems of reliability we can just add batteries. Well, if you add in the cost of the batteries then wind and solar isn't so cheap any more.
Solar isn't so "clean" either. When the solar panels reach the end of their profitable lifespan there isn't a good way to recycle them, we'd have to dispose of them as hazardous waste. PV panels contain toxic metals like lead, chromium, and cadmium. I read that on a website called Slashdot, perhaps you've heard of it.
I'm not a fan of solar PV because it produces three times the CO2 per energy produced than wind, hydro, or nuclear. Solar is also expensive, and unreliable. Still far better than natural gas at 500 tonnes of CO2/GWh, or coal which can vary from 700 to over 1000 depending on the coal quality and the plant efficiency. Using solar when better options exist is nonsensical.
I see nothing wrong with the increasing use of natural gas because it cuts CO2 output in half from coal, it's cheap, it's reliable, and it's plentiful. Solar is not cheap, it's not reliable, and in many places not so plentiful. If we are going to go through the expense of reducing our CO2 output beyond that of natural gas then the smart money is on wind and nuclear. We're out of rivers to dam up so hydro is not really an option for any significant growth. Wind is not particularly reliable but it is cheap, or at least cheaper than solar and about the same price as nuclear and natural gas. I'll hear complaints on how nuclear is so expensive but it's half the price of solar for the same energy. If you live in a place that is lacking in sunshine then the price difference gets much larger. I'm sure there are places where solar is cheaper than nuclear, in which case solar might make sense, so long as there is sufficient wind, hydro, and natural gas to make up for when the sun doesn't shine.
Oh, but solar will get cheaper, you say? When it gets cheaper than nuclear then I'll change my tune. Until then we should invest in nuclear. Also, it's quite possible nuclear could get cheaper too. This is a moving target, and now that we've actually started building new nuclear plants I do expect nuclear to get cheaper.
Anyone want to complain about the safety of nuclear power? Nuclear power is ten times safer than solar power, based on deaths per energy produced. Go look it up. Yes, this does include the deaths from the meltdowns at Chernobyl, Fukushima, and Three Mile Island. Nuclear power is also safer than wind but by a smaller margin.
You gave a website as a reference where I found no breakdown based on immigration status.
I've heard the claim that illegal immigrants break the law less often than domestic born people and they get to this through some very interesting statistical analysis. They will take the crime rate of immigrants and then they will make adjustments for age, gender, race, education, income, and employment status. What we find is that illegal immigrants are predominately in the age range of 16 to 40 (or something like that), male, hispanic and black, few have even a high school education and many cannot even read in their native language, they are also largely poor and unemployed. So they compare this to domestically born people within a similar demographic and find they are just as likely to commit crimes.
So, we've proven illegal immigrants do not pose a problem with crime, right? No, they didn't. This is because to make this claim they had to group the illegal immigrants with the legal immigrants. Even then they still see a higher crime rate as a whole, it's only by "statistical adjustments" that anyone can claim a lower crime rate.
No they don't. They have a much lower probability of breaking any further laws that aren't labor laws.
Even if we assume that they break no other laws they are still criminals. They break the law by entering the country illegally. They break the law through fraud by getting a job under falsified papers. They break the law by driving without a license or obtaining a license with false documents. By working in the USA they are breaking the law everyday and I'm supposed to be okay with this? Would violating labor laws be tolerated of people born in the USA? Of course not, and it should not be tolerated of illegal immigrants either.
Haven't you seen... basically any procedural cop show in the past 20 years? Every single one of them has multiple episodes of local LEOs having to disclaim their interest in the immigration status of people they're interviewing, or threatening to call Immigration in order to extract information.
The networks can show that on TV but that doesn't make it true. Illegal immigrants are often the victims of crimes by other illegal immigrants. They are always reluctant to go to the police, not just because they might get deported but because it opens them up to retaliation for snitching on others.
Illegal immigrants are at pains to avoid having any such conversations.
Which is why a lot of illegal immigrants keep quiet on being victims. Many immigrants will report being a victim, because they are here legally or fear being a victim again more than deportation. Many crimes by illegal immigrants go unpunished, illegal immigrants will often flee the country once they've become known to law enforcement. Just because they weren't caught and sent to jail does not mean they didn't commit a crime.
Your sourceless assertions are ridiculous on the face of it
Whatever. I've seen the claims of immigrants being more law abiding than those born here and they all bend the statistics to "adjust" this crime away. Lies, damned lies, and statistics. The numbers will tell you anything you want if you torture them enough.
Illegal immigrants are, by definition, criminals and this should not be tolerated. Their tendency for committing further crimes, like fraud and drug trafficking, should not be tolerated either.
And in that time, the number of terrorist attacks by foreigners sneaking into the country is...zero.
Why should they have to sneak in when they can walk in the front door?
The people that planted a bomb at the Boston Marathon were immigrants. They had their "papers in order", and it was their immigration registration records that allowed the police to identify them so quickly.
The Boston Marathon bombing was a terrorist act on American soil by foreign actors. That is just one of many examples. There have been many acts of terrorism on Americans by immigrants. Some more successful than others. Some using firearms, some with knives, some using vehicles as weapons, some using improvised explosives.
Now, not all immigrants are terrorists. I should not have to say that as it should be obvious but if we had some better controls on who enters the nation then we'd see less of this. Also, not all terrorists are immigrants. This should also not require being pointed out. What seems clear though is that immigrants are more likely to commit terrorist acts and other crimes than native born Americans.
Those that did sneak through the borders to get into the USA have broken the law by the very fact of sneaking past the border. Once here they seem to have little respect for other laws. They will drive without a license, insurance, or registering their vehicle. They will work under falsified papers. They will drive while drunk. They will steal, rape, and murder. Assuming it is true that people sneaking across the border have not done anything that may be considered an act of terrorism we do know that they are not saints, they have broken the law by the act of entering the nation without permission, and have a high probability of further breaking the law.
If we have more to worry about from native born terrorists than foreign born then it is only because In the USA there are far more people native born than those not. Immigrants have a much higher tendency to break the law than native born Americans, whether they came in the front door or not. Knowing that therefore it may be wise to reduce the number of immigrants and demand that the immigrants we do allow in must be of very high moral character.
The unreliability of his OEM isn't Microsofts fault.
Microsoft licenses the OEM to ship their products. They are responsible for finding reliable OEMs or supporting the products they produce directly.
I saw a college classmate go through this hell. He upgraded the Windows OS on his laptop and he had driver problems. As I recall the sound stopped working and the video was flaky. So he calls the people that made his laptop. He's told that they aren't responsible, talk to the chip makers for the video and sound chips. So he contacts the people that made the chips, they said the drivers should be fine, call Microsoft. He calls Microsoft, not their problem, they farmed out support to the people that made the laptop.
So, Microsoft farms out OS support to the people that make the laptop and then require an OS upgrade that the laptop maker had no intention to support. I call that entirely Microsoft's fault. If they are going to farm out OS support then they need to require that those they farm support out to will support the software they require users to install. If the maker of the laptop is going to take on the responsibility to support the OS then they need the freedom to deny an upgrade in OS from Microsoft.
It's still possible to buy Windows 7. Suing Microsoft for a copy is stupid. It would be cheaper for him to go buy a new copy than to file the lawsuit. It would also seem to be cheaper for Microsoft to capitulate and just send him one, but that would potentially set a bad precedent that could get really expensive and embarrassing for them, so there's no way in hell they'll do that.
It is in this single case. Expand this over time and many users. Microsoft should not be able to sell a product and then later revoke the ability to use that product in the future.
Here's a bad car analogy. GMC sold a bunch of hybrid trucks years ago. They didn't sell well, they had some reliability problems, and they didn't want to provide parts and other support for it. They didn't go around disabling the trucks, they didn't leave the owners hanging with a vehicle that they could no longer get parts. What they did was offer to buy the trucks from the owners. As I recall most people took up the offer and quite likely used that money to buy another GMC truck. The few that refused the offer were now driving vehicles that they knew that they could not get genuine GMC parts for repairs.
If Microsoft doesn't want to support Windows 7 any longer then I'm sure a lot of people would be fine with that, so long as that means they can continue to use the software. Microsoft could offer to buy the OS back if they didn't want people to use it any more, and they might get people to take up that offer to buy the latest Microsoft OS. It could also mean people buy a Ford instead of a GMC.
There are laws that keep auto makers from just abandoning their products. It would be nice if we saw similar laws for software. That's not going to happen though if people just take the abuse willingly. It's also not likely if the people that impose this abuse on their customers get rewarded by the customers buying their product AGAIN. They paid for it once, they should not have to buy it twice to keep using it. That's like GMC saying they will no longer make parts for a truck they made but they won't take the truck from them if they BUY IT AGAIN.
You mean like a future technology that can extract uranium from sea water? That's kind of the point, it looks like we might have that technology now.
solar power are only getting more competitive in the meantime.
Nuclear power isn't standing still. This is a moving target and nuclear power is so far ahead that it produces 20% of the electricity in the USA while solar produces maybe 1%. I think it would be delusional to think that there is going to be some great leap in solar power that would allow it to eclipse nuclear any time soon. Maybe it can in 50 years but for the next decade we will need something and that something is nuclear power.
It just seems so odd to place such faith in the future development in solar power to displace all others based on the predictions of solar energy development, while at the same time believe that future development in other technologies (like nuclear) will essentially stand still. It's quite possible solar will win out eventually but that didn't happen yet. Even with modest advancements in nuclear power technology we can double the energy we can get from nuclear power. That means taking even the pessimistic estimate of uranium reserves of 5 years and turning that into 10. We could see this leap in solar technology in 10 years. That means that we'd have cheap and plentiful nuclear energy for a decade as we figure out how to get solar to replace it. If solar power does not replace nuclear then we'd still have 10 years on finding more uranium, or developing fusion energy, or whatever.
I agree that solar power technology is improving. If you cannot see that nuclear power is also improving then you've been looking at the sun for too long.
That's 4.6 billion tons of uranium in the ocean IN ADDITION to the uranium we can mine on land. That might not seem like much in the grander scheme of things but if we can figure out how to economically extract uranium from ocean water then for the next 60k years no one will be without energy or clean water. That's a long time to do things like figure out how to get uranium from lesser sources on this planet, explore other planets for resources, or develop fusion power.
What of people without access to the sea? There is enough uranium in the dirt in most anywhere on the surface of this planet to get enough uranium to last effectively forever, it's everywhere. Also everywhere is the air, and even in the driest desert it has water vapor in it. With nuclear technology no one would be lacking energy or water. If you have energy and clean water then that makes getting things like food, shelter, and clothing near trivial.
Last I checked American universities seemed to be in the business of having gay men say a bunch of stupid stuff in front of college students. They'll even give you a degree if you do it often enough.
They aren't ALL gay men. Some of them are bisexuals, lesbians, and transsexuals. Like Prof. McCloskey. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
I remember his/her name because it was mentioned as an author to a paper one of my instructors recommended that we read, which happened to be about the same time he/she was interviewed on The Rubin Report. Prof. McCloskey taught in a handful of schools in the Midwest, including Iowa.
I suspect the USA will have cheap and plentiful nuclear energy about one year after China or Russia does.
It used to be that the USA yearned to be first and best in everything, now it just doesn't want to end up in third place. What happened? Why is second place good enough?
If we were smart we'd make it a point to prevent anyone from profiting from access to clean water.
That would actually be a very not smart thing to do.
Tell me something, why hasn't anyone landed on the moon in decades? I'll tell you why. Because we know it can be done and there is no profit in it. There's two surefire ways to get someone to do something for you, tell them it can't be done or tell them they can make a lot of money doing it. If you want something done cheaply then you get many people trying to make that money and the one that figures out how to do it best makes the most money.
Why is the fastest car in the solar system a Tesla Roadster on a collision course with Mars? Because someone said it couldn't be done. You want to see someone try again? Show that there is money to be made shooting rockets at Mars. Same goes for cheap and clean water. We already know clean water can be made. The trick is to get it cheap, that means creating a profit motive to do it and having people compete for that profit.
Seriously? Go to Wikipedia and search for "uranium". Since that seems too difficult for you here's a link and a quote. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
An additional 4.6 billion tonnes of uranium are estimated to be in sea water (Japanese scientists in the 1980s showed that extraction of uranium from sea water using ion exchangers was technically feasible).
And don't just reply with, "Wikipedia is not a valid source!" Follow the citations on the Wikipedia page and you'll find this: http://www.jaea.go.jp/jaeri/en...
I'm sure that there are better sources out there but you can type into Google just as easily as I can.
What kinds of ions can they filter out besides lithium? Japan is so desperate for energy that they've been researching a way to filter uranium from ocean water for a very long time now. They've had some success but so far it's just cheaper to buy uranium from Australia, which oddly mines a lot of uranium but does not use it for energy in their own country.
There's a lot of uranium in the ocean. More than we could ever use. Nuclear power may not be "renewable" like wind and sun but it is just as "sustainable". There is so much uranium on the planet that the sun would go red giant and boil away the oceans before we run out of uranium. Being able to filter it from the ocean means no one could claim a monopoly on mining it. Oh, and no one should run out of fresh water ever again either.
Don't call someone a Nazi if they didn't earn it. Trump is not a Nazi, he hasn't forced millions to die in ovens to later sell off the hair, clothes, and gold teeth of the dead.
What happens when people call someone a Nazi that just, metaphorically speaking, wrote them a $1000 check in the form of a pay bonus or in the increase on their tax return? People will equate being a Nazi with not being all that bad.
Trump quite likely is far from an ideal person to have as POTUS. It's also possible he's mentally deficient, ignorant of world affairs, a terrible businessman (successful only because daddy's money hid his failures), among other problems. Call him a loon, call him an ignorant boor, just don't call him a Nazi. That just diminishes the term for when we need to make that analogy stick. If everyone is a Nazi then no one is.
I agree. We need to keep Trump in office. If lower taxes, an improved economy, and lower unemployment is the result of him drinking Diet Coke and coloring with crayons then keep him there. Then when his second term is up then we need another do nothing idiot. Perhaps an idiot with better tastes in soft drinks, but whatever. At least he doesn't drink Bud Light like the last POTUS.
Can we get a POTUS that just likes coffee with a little cream and sugar? Or even just black coffee? I guess either choice would be considered racist or something.
I remember a prominent figure in nuclear power saying once, "If we can't be as cheap as coal then why bother?" That was Leslie Dewan, as I recall, though she may not have come up with it first.
I'll hear the claim that wind and solar are as cheap as coal. Assuming that is true then what of the storage needed to make it reliable? If wind and solar cannot be as reliable as coal then why bother?
Also, do you believe that storage technology will allow wind and solar to compete? I have my doubts. A common complaint of nuclear power is that it cannot respond to shifting demands quickly enough and that if there is a problem at the nuclear power plant then they will need on site power for things like pumps, computers, sensors, lights, and so on. What better way to address this than a big battery? That was what allowed the nuclear reactors at Fukushima to melt down, the backup batteries ran down and they were rendered blind on what was actually happening in the containment building. The reactor containment survived the tsunami. It's quite possible the reactor was damaged to the point it could not produce power again but they had cooling for the reactors but no power to run the pumps.
Still not convinced? What of natural gas? We could cut in half the CO2 output from coal boiler power plants by replacing them with natural gas boilers. This has the same problem of the nuclear power plant though, it can't shift power output quickly enough to match usage. This means burning natural gas in less efficient turbines or.... having storage. That big battery in Australia performed superbly to keep the electric grid stable when they had that coal plant shut down unexpectedly, so this storage technology is highly useful for every energy source, even coal.
This storage will cost money. For wind and solar to be cheaper than coal then the costs of the storage as part of the system needs to be included. This need for storage is "conveniently" left out on the claims that wind and solar being cheaper than coal. If wind and solar were honestly cheaper than coal then the combinations of market forces and public relations would be more than enough to shut down every coal plant overnight and see them replaced with wind and solar.
You know what? Maybe you are correct, this is all about money for special interests. The government is just rolling out pork to prop up legacy energy because wind, solar, and storage are so wonderfully successful that they don't need any government hand outs. Shouldn't that make you happy?
Where do we get the power for these processes? That's where the nuclear power credit comes in. Too bad California has declared itself a "nuclear free zone". It seems a bunch of idiots in California have equated nuclear power with nuclear weapons, and somehow that nuclear weapons are bad.
I wonder where how they think nuclear weapons are bad? I mean North Korea is developing nuclear weapons as a means to defend itself against nuclear weapon owning USA. I ask, does anything think that if the USA launched all it's nuclear weapons into the sun that North Korea would stop developing nuclear weapons? Obviously not. Nuclear weapons are a genie that can't be put back in the bottle. We can't wish them away.
If we are going to survive then that means nuclear power for clean air, and cheap energy. If we are going to keep idiots in North Korea and the rest of the world from taking it from us, or destroying it because they can't get it, then we need to have the ability to plausibly scour them from the surface of the planet. We are afforded the luxury to speak softly only so long as we have a big stick.
Those idiots in LA can protest nuclear power because we have nuclear powered "big sticks" like this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
If Democrats cared about the environment they'd have kicked Carter in the balls for holding up nuclear power. The Democrats have held up nuclear power since Carter signed the law that created the Department of Energy. They spent all this money on a cabinet level department to solve our energy problems and we've not seen a new nuclear power plant in 40 years.
If the issue is energy independence, clean air and water, and reducing our carbon dioxide output then they've failed miserably. This is because of the Democrats. They complain about not having a place to put nuclear waste and when a place is found and construction starts the Democrats pull out the rug from under its feet.
Which also gets to the wasteful spending from the Democrats. They'll "create jobs" and "build infrastructure" on a nuclear waste site but when it comes time to actually put nuclear waste there then everyone is fired, the site abandoned, and we have nothing to show for all that money spent.
I don't like the Republicans, but the Democrats are no angels either. The Democrats had a hand in deficit spending too, like building roads to a nuclear waste site they had no intention on allowing to actually hold nuclear waste.
Maybe you should learn how to drive in a little snow? It's really not that difficult if you're careful and practice a bit.
My first response to that is I don't know how "learning to drive" helps when the snow is deep enough that it's getting plowed up in front of the car. Maybe "a little snow" was an understatement, we can see a lot of snow around here.
My second response is I'd rather not bother "learning to drive" because if I have a truck with traction control, anti-lock brakes, 4 wheel drive, snow tires, and high(er) clearance, then I don't have to know how to drive in the snow. I just drive.
My last car would routinely be unable to make it up the hill on the street to my house, as was also the case with my neighbors with minivans and sedans. Since I got my truck there was only one time that I could not park in my garage. There was an ice storm while I was away from home and trying to get up my (relatively steep) driveway I had all four wheels spinning on the ice. My mistake was shoveling off the snow before I left, which left the truck unable to dig into the snow like it could on the unplowed street. So in that case I just parked across the street, the next morning the sun came up and thinned the ice enough I could drive into the garage.
I think you just identified at least part of the problem. There's so many places that offer "stock trading services" that there is an inherent desire to encourage trading. They make money not on increasing the value of the shareholder's wealth but on taking a cut of each trade. I can see this as valuable for people that both trade very little and trade a lot. Those that trade little will pay few fees for this service, but can get some advice perhaps annually on how to balance their stock holdings, get some cash out for things like a vacation, or put in any money they accumulated over the year. Those that trade a lot can make a lot of money by playing on the daily stock fluctuation, and the trading services company gets to skim a little off the top for processing the trades. It's this daily trading that has become a problem, at least as I understand it.
How can someone make money from those that do only long term investments? By offering not "stock trade services" but "wealth management services". They can perhaps take a bit off the top of the value increase of the wealth they manage. This can put the person in the business of managing the money interested in the long haul by getting some value back in some time averaged gain in value. The stock market will almost always improve so this should have little risk for the management company. To avoid a complete loss in the case of a tank in the market they can charge a minimum fee in addition to a fee that is a portion of the wealth gain on the account. Their costs can be minimized by doing their own market analysis and sharing this with all of their accounts. Retirement funds are like this, no?
What I see happening is that these stock trade services got real popular some years ago and it's now having an effect on the market. This will mean these kinds of services becoming less popular, or as I pointed out before some new kind of services that offer investments outside of the stock market. I've seen things like this already with holding companies or some such that will take money from a bunch of people and invest it as best they can to hopefully come back with more later. So a stock exchange but on a small scale with different rules.
Slashdot Mirror
You can actually burn almost all nuclear fission "spent" fuel in a breeder reactor. It's just not economical.
Not economical? Compared to what? We can burn the stuff in a reactor to make energy (and then make money) or we can put it in a waste site and have to guard it from terrorists and curious children for centuries (which costs money).
The main reason for reprocessing at the moment is to deal with decommissioning nuclear weapons. Plutonium and high-enriched uranium warheads are broken down and diluted to create either uranium fuel assemblies or "MOX" fuel which combines uranium and plutonium.
Thanks to mismanagement by Obama and his Democrat friends the USA has gone backwards in its ability to reprocess nuclear waste. For decades Democrats have held up efforts to reprocess old warheads and spent nuclear fuel. They prefer "downblending" over reprocessing. Downblending is just mixing the plutonium and other valuable isotopes with enough other crap to make it difficult to extract it again. This is not only dumping a bunch of valuable fuel into a hole in the ground but also does not destroy it as demanded by treaties. It still exists, it's just hard to get it back. Reprocessing plutonium into fuel would actually destroy the plutonium as it's "burned" in a reactor. People claim nuclear power is a risk of nuclear weapon proliferation, quite the opposite really. Nuclear power makes that plutonium valuable for something other than dropping it on cities and vaporizing them.
Not only could plutonium and uranium be extracted for fuel but so could so many other valuable isotopes for industrial, medical, and scientific uses. NASA is desperate for neptunium which they use to produce the Pu-238 they use as power sources in deep space probes. Solar panels work well out to perhaps the orbit of Mars but even then there is a risk of going into a shadow and having fragile electronics freeze and crack in space. They'll need a heat source like Pu-238 to keep them warm.
There are some very valuable isotopes used for cancer treatments and diagnostic exams. They are also used to irradiate food to kill off disease that could be spread. Irradiating food does not make it radioactive, just like how dental X-ray doesn't make your teeth radioactive.
Disposing of nuclear waste is easy.
I agree. There is nothing wrong with putting the waste in a hole in the ground until we can figure out how to reprocess it properly. The problem with that though is many of the medically valuable isotopes will decay away quickly. We could still use it for fuel and such but it's value for many uses diminishes with time. What if we don't figure out how to reprocess it? Then we can leave the stuff in the hole.
When the exhaust of a coal plant is scrubbed, it has no fly ash.
It still has ash. Ash that contains radioactive material. Radioactive material that can dissolve in water or blow away in the wind if not contained. Right now coal ash is usually just dumped into open pits. Some times we'll see it used instead of sand in the concrete used to pave roads. This seems like a logical way to dispose of radioactive material from nuclear power plants as well, mix it in with concrete to keep it from blowing or washing away and to shield people from any radioactive emissions.
but also no idea why you want to produce nuclear waste and deposit it there when you can have clean renewables.
Because nuclear is safer, cheaper, and more reliable than any renewable energy. I'll hear advocates for wind and solar talk about how cheap they are, and to address the problems of reliability we can just add batteries. Well, if you add in the cost of the batteries then wind and solar isn't so cheap any more.
Solar isn't so "clean" either. When the solar panels reach the end of their profitable lifespan there isn't a good way to recycle them, we'd have to dispose of them as hazardous waste. PV panels contain toxic metals like lead, chromium, and cadmium. I read that on a website called Slashdot, perhaps you've heard of it.
Definitely much less carbon intensive, but it's not zero by a long shot.
Nuclear power is as close to zero emissions as solar, wind, and hydro.
Nuclear: 28 tonnes CO2/GWh
Wind: 26
Hydro: 26
Solar PV: 85
I'm not a fan of solar PV because it produces three times the CO2 per energy produced than wind, hydro, or nuclear. Solar is also expensive, and unreliable. Still far better than natural gas at 500 tonnes of CO2/GWh, or coal which can vary from 700 to over 1000 depending on the coal quality and the plant efficiency. Using solar when better options exist is nonsensical.
I see nothing wrong with the increasing use of natural gas because it cuts CO2 output in half from coal, it's cheap, it's reliable, and it's plentiful. Solar is not cheap, it's not reliable, and in many places not so plentiful. If we are going to go through the expense of reducing our CO2 output beyond that of natural gas then the smart money is on wind and nuclear. We're out of rivers to dam up so hydro is not really an option for any significant growth. Wind is not particularly reliable but it is cheap, or at least cheaper than solar and about the same price as nuclear and natural gas. I'll hear complaints on how nuclear is so expensive but it's half the price of solar for the same energy. If you live in a place that is lacking in sunshine then the price difference gets much larger. I'm sure there are places where solar is cheaper than nuclear, in which case solar might make sense, so long as there is sufficient wind, hydro, and natural gas to make up for when the sun doesn't shine.
Oh, but solar will get cheaper, you say? When it gets cheaper than nuclear then I'll change my tune. Until then we should invest in nuclear. Also, it's quite possible nuclear could get cheaper too. This is a moving target, and now that we've actually started building new nuclear plants I do expect nuclear to get cheaper.
Anyone want to complain about the safety of nuclear power? Nuclear power is ten times safer than solar power, based on deaths per energy produced. Go look it up. Yes, this does include the deaths from the meltdowns at Chernobyl, Fukushima, and Three Mile Island. Nuclear power is also safer than wind but by a smaller margin.
You gave a website as a reference where I found no breakdown based on immigration status.
I've heard the claim that illegal immigrants break the law less often than domestic born people and they get to this through some very interesting statistical analysis. They will take the crime rate of immigrants and then they will make adjustments for age, gender, race, education, income, and employment status. What we find is that illegal immigrants are predominately in the age range of 16 to 40 (or something like that), male, hispanic and black, few have even a high school education and many cannot even read in their native language, they are also largely poor and unemployed. So they compare this to domestically born people within a similar demographic and find they are just as likely to commit crimes.
So, we've proven illegal immigrants do not pose a problem with crime, right? No, they didn't. This is because to make this claim they had to group the illegal immigrants with the legal immigrants. Even then they still see a higher crime rate as a whole, it's only by "statistical adjustments" that anyone can claim a lower crime rate.
No they don't. They have a much lower probability of breaking any further laws that aren't labor laws.
Even if we assume that they break no other laws they are still criminals. They break the law by entering the country illegally. They break the law through fraud by getting a job under falsified papers. They break the law by driving without a license or obtaining a license with false documents. By working in the USA they are breaking the law everyday and I'm supposed to be okay with this? Would violating labor laws be tolerated of people born in the USA? Of course not, and it should not be tolerated of illegal immigrants either.
Haven't you seen... basically any procedural cop show in the past 20 years? Every single one of them has multiple episodes of local LEOs having to disclaim their interest in the immigration status of people they're interviewing, or threatening to call Immigration in order to extract information.
The networks can show that on TV but that doesn't make it true. Illegal immigrants are often the victims of crimes by other illegal immigrants. They are always reluctant to go to the police, not just because they might get deported but because it opens them up to retaliation for snitching on others.
Illegal immigrants are at pains to avoid having any such conversations.
Which is why a lot of illegal immigrants keep quiet on being victims. Many immigrants will report being a victim, because they are here legally or fear being a victim again more than deportation. Many crimes by illegal immigrants go unpunished, illegal immigrants will often flee the country once they've become known to law enforcement. Just because they weren't caught and sent to jail does not mean they didn't commit a crime.
Your sourceless assertions are ridiculous on the face of it
Whatever. I've seen the claims of immigrants being more law abiding than those born here and they all bend the statistics to "adjust" this crime away. Lies, damned lies, and statistics. The numbers will tell you anything you want if you torture them enough.
Illegal immigrants are, by definition, criminals and this should not be tolerated. Their tendency for committing further crimes, like fraud and drug trafficking, should not be tolerated either.
And in that time, the number of terrorist attacks by foreigners sneaking into the country is...zero.
Why should they have to sneak in when they can walk in the front door?
The people that planted a bomb at the Boston Marathon were immigrants. They had their "papers in order", and it was their immigration registration records that allowed the police to identify them so quickly.
The Boston Marathon bombing was a terrorist act on American soil by foreign actors. That is just one of many examples. There have been many acts of terrorism on Americans by immigrants. Some more successful than others. Some using firearms, some with knives, some using vehicles as weapons, some using improvised explosives.
Now, not all immigrants are terrorists. I should not have to say that as it should be obvious but if we had some better controls on who enters the nation then we'd see less of this. Also, not all terrorists are immigrants. This should also not require being pointed out. What seems clear though is that immigrants are more likely to commit terrorist acts and other crimes than native born Americans.
Those that did sneak through the borders to get into the USA have broken the law by the very fact of sneaking past the border. Once here they seem to have little respect for other laws. They will drive without a license, insurance, or registering their vehicle. They will work under falsified papers. They will drive while drunk. They will steal, rape, and murder. Assuming it is true that people sneaking across the border have not done anything that may be considered an act of terrorism we do know that they are not saints, they have broken the law by the act of entering the nation without permission, and have a high probability of further breaking the law.
If we have more to worry about from native born terrorists than foreign born then it is only because In the USA there are far more people native born than those not. Immigrants have a much higher tendency to break the law than native born Americans, whether they came in the front door or not. Knowing that therefore it may be wise to reduce the number of immigrants and demand that the immigrants we do allow in must be of very high moral character.
The unreliability of his OEM isn't Microsofts fault.
Microsoft licenses the OEM to ship their products. They are responsible for finding reliable OEMs or supporting the products they produce directly.
I saw a college classmate go through this hell. He upgraded the Windows OS on his laptop and he had driver problems. As I recall the sound stopped working and the video was flaky. So he calls the people that made his laptop. He's told that they aren't responsible, talk to the chip makers for the video and sound chips. So he contacts the people that made the chips, they said the drivers should be fine, call Microsoft. He calls Microsoft, not their problem, they farmed out support to the people that made the laptop.
So, Microsoft farms out OS support to the people that make the laptop and then require an OS upgrade that the laptop maker had no intention to support. I call that entirely Microsoft's fault. If they are going to farm out OS support then they need to require that those they farm support out to will support the software they require users to install. If the maker of the laptop is going to take on the responsibility to support the OS then they need the freedom to deny an upgrade in OS from Microsoft.
It's still possible to buy Windows 7. Suing Microsoft for a copy is stupid. It would be cheaper for him to go buy a new copy than to file the lawsuit. It would also seem to be cheaper for Microsoft to capitulate and just send him one, but that would potentially set a bad precedent that could get really expensive and embarrassing for them, so there's no way in hell they'll do that.
It is in this single case. Expand this over time and many users. Microsoft should not be able to sell a product and then later revoke the ability to use that product in the future.
Here's a bad car analogy. GMC sold a bunch of hybrid trucks years ago. They didn't sell well, they had some reliability problems, and they didn't want to provide parts and other support for it. They didn't go around disabling the trucks, they didn't leave the owners hanging with a vehicle that they could no longer get parts. What they did was offer to buy the trucks from the owners. As I recall most people took up the offer and quite likely used that money to buy another GMC truck. The few that refused the offer were now driving vehicles that they knew that they could not get genuine GMC parts for repairs.
If Microsoft doesn't want to support Windows 7 any longer then I'm sure a lot of people would be fine with that, so long as that means they can continue to use the software. Microsoft could offer to buy the OS back if they didn't want people to use it any more, and they might get people to take up that offer to buy the latest Microsoft OS. It could also mean people buy a Ford instead of a GMC.
There are laws that keep auto makers from just abandoning their products. It would be nice if we saw similar laws for software. That's not going to happen though if people just take the abuse willingly. It's also not likely if the people that impose this abuse on their customers get rewarded by the customers buying their product AGAIN. They paid for it once, they should not have to buy it twice to keep using it. That's like GMC saying they will no longer make parts for a truck they made but they won't take the truck from them if they BUY IT AGAIN.
It might in the future, with future tech
You mean like a future technology that can extract uranium from sea water? That's kind of the point, it looks like we might have that technology now.
solar power are only getting more competitive in the meantime.
Nuclear power isn't standing still. This is a moving target and nuclear power is so far ahead that it produces 20% of the electricity in the USA while solar produces maybe 1%. I think it would be delusional to think that there is going to be some great leap in solar power that would allow it to eclipse nuclear any time soon. Maybe it can in 50 years but for the next decade we will need something and that something is nuclear power.
It just seems so odd to place such faith in the future development in solar power to displace all others based on the predictions of solar energy development, while at the same time believe that future development in other technologies (like nuclear) will essentially stand still. It's quite possible solar will win out eventually but that didn't happen yet. Even with modest advancements in nuclear power technology we can double the energy we can get from nuclear power. That means taking even the pessimistic estimate of uranium reserves of 5 years and turning that into 10. We could see this leap in solar technology in 10 years. That means that we'd have cheap and plentiful nuclear energy for a decade as we figure out how to get solar to replace it. If solar power does not replace nuclear then we'd still have 10 years on finding more uranium, or developing fusion energy, or whatever.
I agree that solar power technology is improving. If you cannot see that nuclear power is also improving then you've been looking at the sun for too long.
That's 4.6 billion tons of uranium in the ocean IN ADDITION to the uranium we can mine on land. That might not seem like much in the grander scheme of things but if we can figure out how to economically extract uranium from ocean water then for the next 60k years no one will be without energy or clean water. That's a long time to do things like figure out how to get uranium from lesser sources on this planet, explore other planets for resources, or develop fusion power.
What of people without access to the sea? There is enough uranium in the dirt in most anywhere on the surface of this planet to get enough uranium to last effectively forever, it's everywhere. Also everywhere is the air, and even in the driest desert it has water vapor in it. With nuclear technology no one would be lacking energy or water. If you have energy and clean water then that makes getting things like food, shelter, and clothing near trivial.
Last I checked American universities seemed to be in the business of having gay men say a bunch of stupid stuff in front of college students. They'll even give you a degree if you do it often enough.
They aren't ALL gay men. Some of them are bisexuals, lesbians, and transsexuals. Like Prof. McCloskey.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
I remember his/her name because it was mentioned as an author to a paper one of my instructors recommended that we read, which happened to be about the same time he/she was interviewed on The Rubin Report. Prof. McCloskey taught in a handful of schools in the Midwest, including Iowa.
I suspect the USA will have cheap and plentiful nuclear energy about one year after China or Russia does.
It used to be that the USA yearned to be first and best in everything, now it just doesn't want to end up in third place. What happened? Why is second place good enough?
More jobs were added to the US economy in Obama's first year than Trump's.
I'm sure that was Bush's fault.
If we were smart we'd make it a point to prevent anyone from profiting from access to clean water.
That would actually be a very not smart thing to do.
Tell me something, why hasn't anyone landed on the moon in decades? I'll tell you why. Because we know it can be done and there is no profit in it. There's two surefire ways to get someone to do something for you, tell them it can't be done or tell them they can make a lot of money doing it. If you want something done cheaply then you get many people trying to make that money and the one that figures out how to do it best makes the most money.
Why is the fastest car in the solar system a Tesla Roadster on a collision course with Mars? Because someone said it couldn't be done. You want to see someone try again? Show that there is money to be made shooting rockets at Mars. Same goes for cheap and clean water. We already know clean water can be made. The trick is to get it cheap, that means creating a profit motive to do it and having people compete for that profit.
Seriously? Go to Wikipedia and search for "uranium". Since that seems too difficult for you here's a link and a quote.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
An additional 4.6 billion tonnes of uranium are estimated to be in sea water (Japanese scientists in the 1980s showed that extraction of uranium from sea water using ion exchangers was technically feasible).
And don't just reply with, "Wikipedia is not a valid source!" Follow the citations on the Wikipedia page and you'll find this:
http://www.jaea.go.jp/jaeri/en...
I'm sure that there are better sources out there but you can type into Google just as easily as I can.
What kinds of ions can they filter out besides lithium? Japan is so desperate for energy that they've been researching a way to filter uranium from ocean water for a very long time now. They've had some success but so far it's just cheaper to buy uranium from Australia, which oddly mines a lot of uranium but does not use it for energy in their own country.
There's a lot of uranium in the ocean. More than we could ever use. Nuclear power may not be "renewable" like wind and sun but it is just as "sustainable". There is so much uranium on the planet that the sun would go red giant and boil away the oceans before we run out of uranium. Being able to filter it from the ocean means no one could claim a monopoly on mining it. Oh, and no one should run out of fresh water ever again either.
Don't call someone a Nazi if they didn't earn it. Trump is not a Nazi, he hasn't forced millions to die in ovens to later sell off the hair, clothes, and gold teeth of the dead.
What happens when people call someone a Nazi that just, metaphorically speaking, wrote them a $1000 check in the form of a pay bonus or in the increase on their tax return? People will equate being a Nazi with not being all that bad.
Trump quite likely is far from an ideal person to have as POTUS. It's also possible he's mentally deficient, ignorant of world affairs, a terrible businessman (successful only because daddy's money hid his failures), among other problems. Call him a loon, call him an ignorant boor, just don't call him a Nazi. That just diminishes the term for when we need to make that analogy stick. If everyone is a Nazi then no one is.
I agree. We need to keep Trump in office. If lower taxes, an improved economy, and lower unemployment is the result of him drinking Diet Coke and coloring with crayons then keep him there. Then when his second term is up then we need another do nothing idiot. Perhaps an idiot with better tastes in soft drinks, but whatever. At least he doesn't drink Bud Light like the last POTUS.
Can we get a POTUS that just likes coffee with a little cream and sugar? Or even just black coffee? I guess either choice would be considered racist or something.
I remember a prominent figure in nuclear power saying once, "If we can't be as cheap as coal then why bother?" That was Leslie Dewan, as I recall, though she may not have come up with it first.
I'll hear the claim that wind and solar are as cheap as coal. Assuming that is true then what of the storage needed to make it reliable? If wind and solar cannot be as reliable as coal then why bother?
Also, do you believe that storage technology will allow wind and solar to compete? I have my doubts. A common complaint of nuclear power is that it cannot respond to shifting demands quickly enough and that if there is a problem at the nuclear power plant then they will need on site power for things like pumps, computers, sensors, lights, and so on. What better way to address this than a big battery? That was what allowed the nuclear reactors at Fukushima to melt down, the backup batteries ran down and they were rendered blind on what was actually happening in the containment building. The reactor containment survived the tsunami. It's quite possible the reactor was damaged to the point it could not produce power again but they had cooling for the reactors but no power to run the pumps.
Still not convinced? What of natural gas? We could cut in half the CO2 output from coal boiler power plants by replacing them with natural gas boilers. This has the same problem of the nuclear power plant though, it can't shift power output quickly enough to match usage. This means burning natural gas in less efficient turbines or.... having storage. That big battery in Australia performed superbly to keep the electric grid stable when they had that coal plant shut down unexpectedly, so this storage technology is highly useful for every energy source, even coal.
This storage will cost money. For wind and solar to be cheaper than coal then the costs of the storage as part of the system needs to be included. This need for storage is "conveniently" left out on the claims that wind and solar being cheaper than coal. If wind and solar were honestly cheaper than coal then the combinations of market forces and public relations would be more than enough to shut down every coal plant overnight and see them replaced with wind and solar.
You know what? Maybe you are correct, this is all about money for special interests. The government is just rolling out pork to prop up legacy energy because wind, solar, and storage are so wonderfully successful that they don't need any government hand outs. Shouldn't that make you happy?
Where do we get the power for these processes? That's where the nuclear power credit comes in. Too bad California has declared itself a "nuclear free zone". It seems a bunch of idiots in California have equated nuclear power with nuclear weapons, and somehow that nuclear weapons are bad.
I wonder where how they think nuclear weapons are bad? I mean North Korea is developing nuclear weapons as a means to defend itself against nuclear weapon owning USA. I ask, does anything think that if the USA launched all it's nuclear weapons into the sun that North Korea would stop developing nuclear weapons? Obviously not. Nuclear weapons are a genie that can't be put back in the bottle. We can't wish them away.
If we are going to survive then that means nuclear power for clean air, and cheap energy. If we are going to keep idiots in North Korea and the rest of the world from taking it from us, or destroying it because they can't get it, then we need to have the ability to plausibly scour them from the surface of the planet. We are afforded the luxury to speak softly only so long as we have a big stick.
Those idiots in LA can protest nuclear power because we have nuclear powered "big sticks" like this one:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
If Democrats cared about the environment they'd have kicked Carter in the balls for holding up nuclear power. The Democrats have held up nuclear power since Carter signed the law that created the Department of Energy. They spent all this money on a cabinet level department to solve our energy problems and we've not seen a new nuclear power plant in 40 years.
If the issue is energy independence, clean air and water, and reducing our carbon dioxide output then they've failed miserably. This is because of the Democrats. They complain about not having a place to put nuclear waste and when a place is found and construction starts the Democrats pull out the rug from under its feet.
Which also gets to the wasteful spending from the Democrats. They'll "create jobs" and "build infrastructure" on a nuclear waste site but when it comes time to actually put nuclear waste there then everyone is fired, the site abandoned, and we have nothing to show for all that money spent.
I don't like the Republicans, but the Democrats are no angels either. The Democrats had a hand in deficit spending too, like building roads to a nuclear waste site they had no intention on allowing to actually hold nuclear waste.
Bless your heart.
Sure thing. Send your requests, comments, and hate mail to:
Donald J. Trump
c/o The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
If you write with a request for some extra cash then someone there is likely to help you out.
It's called "greenwashing", look it up.
Maybe you should learn how to drive in a little snow? It's really not that difficult if you're careful and practice a bit.
My first response to that is I don't know how "learning to drive" helps when the snow is deep enough that it's getting plowed up in front of the car. Maybe "a little snow" was an understatement, we can see a lot of snow around here.
My second response is I'd rather not bother "learning to drive" because if I have a truck with traction control, anti-lock brakes, 4 wheel drive, snow tires, and high(er) clearance, then I don't have to know how to drive in the snow. I just drive.
My last car would routinely be unable to make it up the hill on the street to my house, as was also the case with my neighbors with minivans and sedans. Since I got my truck there was only one time that I could not park in my garage. There was an ice storm while I was away from home and trying to get up my (relatively steep) driveway I had all four wheels spinning on the ice. My mistake was shoveling off the snow before I left, which left the truck unable to dig into the snow like it could on the unplowed street. So in that case I just parked across the street, the next morning the sun came up and thinned the ice enough I could drive into the garage.
I think you just identified at least part of the problem. There's so many places that offer "stock trading services" that there is an inherent desire to encourage trading. They make money not on increasing the value of the shareholder's wealth but on taking a cut of each trade. I can see this as valuable for people that both trade very little and trade a lot. Those that trade little will pay few fees for this service, but can get some advice perhaps annually on how to balance their stock holdings, get some cash out for things like a vacation, or put in any money they accumulated over the year. Those that trade a lot can make a lot of money by playing on the daily stock fluctuation, and the trading services company gets to skim a little off the top for processing the trades. It's this daily trading that has become a problem, at least as I understand it.
How can someone make money from those that do only long term investments? By offering not "stock trade services" but "wealth management services". They can perhaps take a bit off the top of the value increase of the wealth they manage. This can put the person in the business of managing the money interested in the long haul by getting some value back in some time averaged gain in value. The stock market will almost always improve so this should have little risk for the management company. To avoid a complete loss in the case of a tank in the market they can charge a minimum fee in addition to a fee that is a portion of the wealth gain on the account. Their costs can be minimized by doing their own market analysis and sharing this with all of their accounts. Retirement funds are like this, no?
What I see happening is that these stock trade services got real popular some years ago and it's now having an effect on the market. This will mean these kinds of services becoming less popular, or as I pointed out before some new kind of services that offer investments outside of the stock market. I've seen things like this already with holding companies or some such that will take money from a bunch of people and invest it as best they can to hopefully come back with more later. So a stock exchange but on a small scale with different rules.