Yep. If people want to claim nuclear power is not safe then let's see some numbers. No one gives numbers. You want to convince me nuclear is not safe then show me numbers.
Numbers.
Instead of numbers we get feels. As in, "How do you feel about a nuclear power plant in your state?"
Show me numbers or STFU. I've seen the numbers so I'll know if they are lying.
Oh, and by numbers I don't mean "thousands dead from Chernobyl" because that's not about nuclear power, that's about a specific plant. Don't tell me about "plant construction billions over budget and years behind schedule" because that again is a specific plant. Tell me about the industry, as a whole. That's how we should make decisions. Not special cases or feels.
First, the male lifespan of any Eastern European nation is bad. Take your pick. It's not just that life expectancy in general is bad, women will live 5, 6, or 7 years longer than the men. In much of the West both men and women can expect to live to 80, with women living only a year or 3 longer.
Yes, I understand that 50 is different than 65. I addressed this earlier. Those with an education, a nice job, and some money, can expect to live as long as those in the West. The rest will tend to drink, smoke, and work themselves to death. For an average lifespan of 65 in a nation with well to do people living to 80 means the poor and much of the middle class die at 50.
Nuclear is idiotic in this day and age when we have clean alternatives.
If so then why was that not mentioned in the article? If wind and solar is better than nuclear then why aren't people writing those articles? I know why, because they can't.
Please show me the windmill and solar power death statistics you are referring too.
No.
Look them up yourself. The whole point is that no one is talking about them. If nuclear power is so dangerous compared to wind and solar then why is no one writing an article on that? If nuclear power is so dangerous then let's see some data.
The best we get is the annual retrospective on Chernobyl and all the people that died there. That would be relevant if we still built nuclear power plants like that, and we don't. It might be relevant if any of the reactors like that were still operational, and they aren't.
So, no, I'm not going to share the statistics. We were just presented an article on the safety of wind and solar with no mention of nuclear power. This is lying by omission since nuclear power was not part of the comparison. This isn't either wind or coal, there's another choice. If nuclear is so dangerous then prove it.
Keep in mind: the Liquidators where 17 - 19 year old recruits of the soviet army, they should be about 50 now, more than 2/3rds are dead.
The average lifespan of a Ukrainian male is about 65 years. Men in that country have a history of smoking, alcohol abuse, industrial accidents, and bad diet. Their problem is not being Liquidators, it's living in Ukraine.
Economic factors play into this of course. People with more money are less likely to fall into bad habits of smoking and drinking, and probably not working in a dangerous factory. Access to better food and health care helps. I doubt the Ukrainian military has a great retirement plan so it's unlikely these men are living the high life. Statistically speaking, roughly 2/3rds of them should be dead by now.
This is not a new problem either. The short lifespan of Ukrainian men has been a recognized problem since long before Chernobyl was built.
Right, and if we all rode unicorns to work then the gas engine would be obsolete too.
The very nature of batteries make them dense in weight and not so dense in energy storage. Capacitors, compressed air, liquified air, flywheels, and so on are all lacking in energy density. There are few fuels out there that compare to hydrocarbons in energy density. Even fewer that are liquid at atmospheric temperatures and pressures.
If the goal is to make fossil fuels obsolete then find a way to synthesize hydrocarbons in a way that closes the carbon cycle so no new carbon is introduced into the environment. Funny thing is that the US Navy is working on this but they are lacking in funding. Might be because the "environmentalists" are more concerned about saving the windmills than saving the whales.
Even including the deaths from Chernobyl nuclear power has an impressive safety record. More people died from windmill and solar accidents per energy produced than nuclear.
Sure, there were a lot of accidental deaths in the early days of nuclear power but it's making a lot of safe energy now. Wind and solar combined make very little energy, and you compare that to worker deaths from electrocutions and falls and nuclear has them beat by an order of magnitude on safety. Nuclear is better for the environment too, less carbon produced per energy than wind or solar. Pretty sure nuclear kills fewer birds and bats too.
I just heard on the radio today of the health effects of the sound made by windmills. I think they called it "infrasound", it's the low frequency hum made by windmills that cause headaches, hearing loss, and all kinds of crazy stuff. Maybe that's a bunch of pseudoscience, I don't know.
I see a lot of comparisons of wind and solar to coal and natural gas. Why not compare it to nuclear? I know why. By comparison wind and solar is expensive, dirty, deadly, and did I mention expensive?
If these articles want to convince me that I need wind and solar power then they need to compare it to nuclear too. But they don't. Again, I know why.
Perhaps the predetermined and very specific code words that are sent periodically? If someone replays the signal then the ruse will be discovered when the wrong code word is not given in the predetermined time period.
How do they know what the predetermined code word would be? Likely sent in a book transferred by secure courier.
What if they kidnap the courier, copy the book, and threaten to kill the man's family if he tells anyone? Because someone tasked with carrying this book likely has no family, and if someone is going to use this information to plan an invasion into Russian territory then no threat of violence will work, because he's dead no matter what he does.
In other words, I think they have this figured out.
Go ask Kansas how well things work when you run your budget at the bottom. Ask people how things work when you can't pay your teachers.
Whatever. I have no sympathy for public school teachers, teacher unions created this mess so they can fix it. Also, people talk about privatizing public services all the time to save the government money, why not privatize the schools? Oh, right, the teacher unions would throw a serious fit.
With all the mismanagement in all levels of government any budget problems are a creation of government officials. If they start screaming "think of the children" then I start thinking of punching them in the throat. Since when is it the government's job to teach children? That should be the parents' responsibility. I saw what my parents paid to send me and my siblings to a Catholic school and it's CHEAP. Anyone truly destitute can find charities, existing welfare programs, and whatever to send kids to private schools.
I've heard of this thing called the "internet" where people sit at a computer and people just teach them shit for free. Apparently the government will even give people an "Obamaphone" to get on the internet. There's public libraries too, lots of good stuff there, computers even. No one is going without an education in the USA unless they choose to.
Yep, everyone can hit bottom. Here's the difference though. Next to campus is a pedestrian mall where the homeless like to congregate to panhandle. The men (mostly white, not all) will often be seen with signs that read "homeless veteran", "disabled veteran", or some other variation on "veteran". What does the one woman I see have on her sign? "Disabled WOMAN" The capitals are on her sign just as I typed them. Oh, and she's walking while holding the sign, not in a wheelchair like the veteran she walked past.
I know why the men hold signs that read "veteran", because (true or not) it gains sympathy. (I trust that most or all of them are actually veterans given the proximity to a veteran hospital.) Why did the woman feel the need to put "WOMAN" on her sign? It's not like people couldn't tell from looking at her, just that it might be hard to tell from across a crowded ped mall.
I got to talking to one of the homeless vets in a beer-n-burger place while having lunch on a Tuesday. He was drunk. I offered to buy him lunch but he said he'd rather have another drink. I ended up giving him nothing as I lost a lot (not all) of my sympathy for his condition.
Yep, everyone can hit bottom. From my experience it's the white men that seem to hit it more often. Is it their fault? I don't know but it does seem that women, if/when they hit bottom, do seem to be able to crawl out more easily.
Yep, I remember working on the farm and every summer once I was old enough to manage I'd have to crawl through this hole next to the corn mill and clean out the corn dust and rat droppings that piled up behind it.
Then one summer, I was in high school then, Dad told me to climb behind the mill. I looked down at him and told him to do it. We stared at each other, and the hole, for a few seconds before I decided to try crawling through that hole. I did it but it was a real tight fit. That was the last time Dad asked me to do that. My sister cleaned behind the mill after that.
At that point they've made something like a half million dollars, and biology compels them to go somewhere they can have a family. Women do this too, they'll go to college, work for 5 to 10 years, then decide that they'd rather move to a more sedate occupation, or just make raising children their full time occupation.
Some will find a way to have a family and the high stress life, or not have children. What also tends to happen with both men and women is once the child rearing is done they tend to want to go back to work, sometimes doing it on an oil rig for big bucks so they can make another half million or so and retire on a boat somewhere.
The problem with this decentralized set-up is exactly that: it isn't centralized and Mr Big Money has more problems to get his thick fingers behind it. So now they come up with a central plant in the Sahara.
Bullshit. Mr. Money can sell millions of Europeans solar panels, inverters, batteries and a service contract to maintain it all. Barring that they can still sell a grid connection to buy and sell electricity.
There's lots of money in energy. The problem with solar is cost. There is a reason that they want to put the collectors in Africa instead of Europe, there's more sun in Africa. Rooftop solar fails in so many places because the people may not be living where the sun it. Cheaper solar panels won't necessarily fix this because there's still more sun in Africa, it could just make the sun in Africa look better.
I love these conspiracy theories about how "the man" just wants to take everyone's money and give nothing in return. For every "the man" trying to keep people down with rent seeking there's another "the man" competing with the other "the man" for people's money. The one that offers the *MOST* for their money will win.
If decentralized solar makes sense in Europe then someone will be selling it. All kinds of people in the world are willing to stand in line to give money to someone that can free them from "the man". Government subsidies for big solar projects like this just prop up "the man" and traps the common person into another utility bill.
If you want "Mr. Money" to stop stealing from you then tell your elected representative to stop giving them *YOUR* money for these big centralized solar projects.
We've already seen loss of the crew positions of engineer and navigator. It used to take four people to fly a large passenger plane. First to happen was the combination of engineer and navigator as engines became more reliable and automated. When computers took over much of the navigation then the deck crew shrunk again to two.
If there are people on board then people will want to see a person in charge. FAA rules require so many crew members to assist evacuation in the event of a crash. I can't imagine the entire crew going away if you've got 100+ people on a plane. That person may as well be a backup for the flight computer, and perhaps serve drinks once at altitude.
I remember the speed bump at the entrance to my high school parking lot. It was not very high and people found out that by speeding up the momentum of the car tended to make the bump pretty mild. It was odd in that by slowing down the bump actually became worse.
After a year or two of this the school put in a much higher speed bump over the summer, that was a shock on the first day of school. After that people actually did slow down coming into the parking lot.
Also about suspension I noticed that a poorly graded intersection near my brother's house was a near death trap in my old car. Hitting that too fast could really rock the boat (of a car I drove). After getting my Ford Explorer the dip in the intersection didn't seem so bad. I thought it was because I drove a "real" truck. After seeing others go through the intersection I realized that it was really that my old car's suspension was shot.
Modern cars are getting real good suspension systems now that speed bumps don't seem to have the discomfort they used to. I've seen videos of these active suspension systems that can turn a series of speed bumps on a test track into nothing. These are very expensive systems right now and if they get cheap enough to become even relatively common then speed bumps will have no effect on people any more.
As you noted even now with a large and/or expensive enough vehicle speed bumps are already not the deterrent they used to be.
I've seen these archeological digs from ancient Rome where their equivalent to the modern speed bump was a set of stones sticking up from the road and spaced such that a person would have to slow down to make sure the wheels on their carriage fit in between them. Not slowing down meant risking hitting the stones and breaking a wheel. I'm sure the stones were a trip hazard for the horses to for those on horseback. Even a modern equivalent of that might not be a deterrent if an automated driving assist can navigate them at speed.
Perhaps a Phalanx is needed. No, not the Roman infantry formation. I mean an auto-cannon tuned to shoot out the tires of anyone exceeding the speed limit. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
By far the biggest barrier for women entering into the construction sector appears to be maternity and child care benefits with only 15% of the construction industry giving female workers more than 18 weeksâ(TM) statutory maternity leave, compared with the national average of 27% which contributes to retention and career progression. Around 44% of females work part time in the UK but this figure is reduced to around 5% in construction.
In much of the world, UK included, you have a something like 20 to 30 weeks of the year from when the snow melts to when it starts to fall again. Having people come and go is just part of business but when you have someone demanding 18 weeks off for maternity leave and STILL HAVE THEIR JOB when then come back is a bit much to ask. That might work for a lot of office jobs, but in a sector where work has to be done while the sun shines this is... just difficult to wrap my head around.
Construction is not typically the kind of job where one works part time either. Stuff changes as things get built, mistakes and accidents are expensive. Keeping everyone on the same page through a project is hard enough as it is. Keeping people on the same page when they are gone while others are working is even harder.
I don't believe women should be barred from working in construction but if they want special treatment, like maternity leave in the middle of a project, then maybe they should find more suitable work. If someone wants to offer things like maternity leave willingly then that's great, enforcing it by government fiat is not wise on so many levels.
Why would you build another Hoover Dam if 96 people died building it? Because it's quite likely 150 people would die producing the same energy from wind.
I'm reminded of an old joke on how different military branches define "secure". Imagine each branch of the military given an order to "secure that building".
Army: The front door is blown off its hinges and a recon team storms in. Bad guys are killed or captured, while good guys are given water and blankets. A tank is parked out front, 24/7 patrols performed on the perimeter, and snipers posted on the roof.
Navy: The exterior is given a fresh coat of paint. Broken windows are repaired. The inside is scrubbed top to bottom. Burnt out light bulbs replaced, and fire extinguishers refilled. The lawn is mowed and weeds pulled.
Air Force: The building owners are contacted and a ten year lease is signed, with option to purchase before lease expiration.
Variations on this joke replace Army with Marines, or Navy sometimes included with Marines, or Air Force replaced with Coast Guard, etc., etc. The joke always starts with some branch nearly destroying the building, the next restoring it to like new condition, and the third making some sort of financial arrangement.
You want the internet to be "secure" then what does that mean? Does it mean keeping the "bad" people out"? Does it mean keeping it available and reliable? Most times keeping something "secure" is not in opposition to the other definitions, but this may not always be true. Just the idea of keeping "bad guys" out can be problematic. For example I recall a hospital that decided it needed "security" so guards were posted at the entrances. What this did though was discourage people to seek services there, such as just going in to warm up and grab a cup of coffee. The staff wanted people to come in for this but "security" saw that as a problem. So side doors were left unlocked so the homeless could come in for a few minutes and warm up but it also let criminals in that were stealing drugs and supplies.
Cheaper and more powerful batteries are also considered by many to be the driver needed to make the cost of renewable energy technologies like wind and solar competitive with the coal, gas and nuclear power that support the national energy grid.
If you have a battery that is cheap and with limited recharge cycles then would it not be better suited to handling daily shifts in load following than minute by minute, or even hour by hour, shifts in wind and sun?
Sure, the daily cycles of the sun are known, hence "daily" but there are clouds that make this more difficult. Also assume a gigawatt solar farm compared to a gigawatt coal or nuclear plant. I hear people talk about how much cheaper it is getting to build a solar farm than coal or nuclear but what of the capacity factor? Even in the best case for solar it produces power 40% of the time while coal and nuclear get 80%, so twice as much battery is needed for the solar. Given the numbers are closer to 30% and 90% then it's more like three times the battery capacity.
Then there is the matter of sun and wind being very unpredictable compared to coal and nuclear. If there are 10 coal and nuclear power plants, each rated at one gigawatt, then a utility can have a reasonable assurance of getting 900 megawatts at any given time due to maintenance and such taking any plant off line. Even if for some reason they have a few plants needing more down time then they can get 800 megawatts and no storage needed.
With wind and solar there has to be a battery or some backup power to make them viable. People don't like the lights going out randomly.
I know someone will point out that wind and solar don't need to be all the means by which we get power, and I agree. But if wind and solar are going to become the primary means by which we get power then we need batteries. If we get batteries then the big, heavy, and slow, coal and nuclear don't look so big, heavy, and slow. They can use the batteries to load follow, just like how wind and solar need batteries to follow changes in production. The changes in production from coal and nuclear are small, barring some accident. Discharge and recharge cycles can be more easily managed with coal and nuclear, making the batteries last longer. With reliable power like coal and nuclear the batteries won't have to be all that large, compared to wind and solar.
Batteries aren't just good for wind and solar, they are good for coal and nuclear. I calculate that the benefits for coal and nuclear are so much greater than that for wind and solar that a good battery technology could outright kill the solar market, no one would be able to afford it any more.
I'm sure a lot of people here would disagree with my assessment. I look forward to a counterargument.
Can you imagine the outcry if anyone tried to do this? Sure, you can have this hearing aid for free but you cannot mute the advertisements. So, people just won't get the free device, and those that already have it will get rid of it. Not only will people not tolerate this tactic but any technology vendor that tries this will be burning bridges for any future products.
I'd expect the government to get involved too, look at the CALM Act as an example.
So more heat in the air means more clouds? The same clouds that cool the earth? It's almost as if the atmosphere has a natural mechanism to maintain a fairly even the temperature on the surface.
Oh, and "extreme precipitation events"? You mean these things we call "storms"? That's nothing new.
Sometimes it's wet, sometimes it's dry. Climate changes, no doubt about that. Not much we can do about it either.
So, you are saying the decommissioning process is going well?
I'm not sure what you think I'm supposed to take away from this. The is a discussion of nuclear power plant security and the Fukushima site seems pretty secure right now. They have no sign of uncontrolled release of radiation, and the exploratory robots are working well. I didn't look at all the photos in detail, is there a North Korean spy that was caught in one of the frames or something?
Slashdot Mirror
It's a fact-based matter.
Yep. If people want to claim nuclear power is not safe then let's see some numbers. No one gives numbers. You want to convince me nuclear is not safe then show me numbers.
Numbers.
Instead of numbers we get feels. As in, "How do you feel about a nuclear power plant in your state?"
Show me numbers or STFU. I've seen the numbers so I'll know if they are lying.
Oh, and by numbers I don't mean "thousands dead from Chernobyl" because that's not about nuclear power, that's about a specific plant. Don't tell me about "plant construction billions over budget and years behind schedule" because that again is a specific plant. Tell me about the industry, as a whole. That's how we should make decisions. Not special cases or feels.
First, the male lifespan of any Eastern European nation is bad. Take your pick. It's not just that life expectancy in general is bad, women will live 5, 6, or 7 years longer than the men. In much of the West both men and women can expect to live to 80, with women living only a year or 3 longer.
Yes, I understand that 50 is different than 65. I addressed this earlier. Those with an education, a nice job, and some money, can expect to live as long as those in the West. The rest will tend to drink, smoke, and work themselves to death. For an average lifespan of 65 in a nation with well to do people living to 80 means the poor and much of the middle class die at 50.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Are you arguing that the people that worked in the disaster area were not predominately, or exclusively, male?
Nuclear is idiotic in this day and age when we have clean alternatives.
If so then why was that not mentioned in the article? If wind and solar is better than nuclear then why aren't people writing those articles? I know why, because they can't.
Please show me the windmill and solar power death statistics you are referring too.
No.
Look them up yourself. The whole point is that no one is talking about them. If nuclear power is so dangerous compared to wind and solar then why is no one writing an article on that? If nuclear power is so dangerous then let's see some data.
The best we get is the annual retrospective on Chernobyl and all the people that died there. That would be relevant if we still built nuclear power plants like that, and we don't. It might be relevant if any of the reactors like that were still operational, and they aren't.
So, no, I'm not going to share the statistics. We were just presented an article on the safety of wind and solar with no mention of nuclear power. This is lying by omission since nuclear power was not part of the comparison. This isn't either wind or coal, there's another choice. If nuclear is so dangerous then prove it.
Keep in mind: the Liquidators where 17 - 19 year old recruits of the soviet army, they should be about 50 now, more than 2/3rds are dead.
The average lifespan of a Ukrainian male is about 65 years. Men in that country have a history of smoking, alcohol abuse, industrial accidents, and bad diet. Their problem is not being Liquidators, it's living in Ukraine.
Economic factors play into this of course. People with more money are less likely to fall into bad habits of smoking and drinking, and probably not working in a dangerous factory. Access to better food and health care helps. I doubt the Ukrainian military has a great retirement plan so it's unlikely these men are living the high life. Statistically speaking, roughly 2/3rds of them should be dead by now.
This is not a new problem either. The short lifespan of Ukrainian men has been a recognized problem since long before Chernobyl was built.
Right, and if we all rode unicorns to work then the gas engine would be obsolete too.
The very nature of batteries make them dense in weight and not so dense in energy storage. Capacitors, compressed air, liquified air, flywheels, and so on are all lacking in energy density. There are few fuels out there that compare to hydrocarbons in energy density. Even fewer that are liquid at atmospheric temperatures and pressures.
If the goal is to make fossil fuels obsolete then find a way to synthesize hydrocarbons in a way that closes the carbon cycle so no new carbon is introduced into the environment. Funny thing is that the US Navy is working on this but they are lacking in funding. Might be because the "environmentalists" are more concerned about saving the windmills than saving the whales.
Even including the deaths from Chernobyl nuclear power has an impressive safety record. More people died from windmill and solar accidents per energy produced than nuclear.
Sure, there were a lot of accidental deaths in the early days of nuclear power but it's making a lot of safe energy now. Wind and solar combined make very little energy, and you compare that to worker deaths from electrocutions and falls and nuclear has them beat by an order of magnitude on safety. Nuclear is better for the environment too, less carbon produced per energy than wind or solar. Pretty sure nuclear kills fewer birds and bats too.
I just heard on the radio today of the health effects of the sound made by windmills. I think they called it "infrasound", it's the low frequency hum made by windmills that cause headaches, hearing loss, and all kinds of crazy stuff. Maybe that's a bunch of pseudoscience, I don't know.
I see a lot of comparisons of wind and solar to coal and natural gas. Why not compare it to nuclear? I know why. By comparison wind and solar is expensive, dirty, deadly, and did I mention expensive?
If these articles want to convince me that I need wind and solar power then they need to compare it to nuclear too. But they don't. Again, I know why.
Perhaps the predetermined and very specific code words that are sent periodically? If someone replays the signal then the ruse will be discovered when the wrong code word is not given in the predetermined time period.
How do they know what the predetermined code word would be? Likely sent in a book transferred by secure courier.
What if they kidnap the courier, copy the book, and threaten to kill the man's family if he tells anyone? Because someone tasked with carrying this book likely has no family, and if someone is going to use this information to plan an invasion into Russian territory then no threat of violence will work, because he's dead no matter what he does.
In other words, I think they have this figured out.
How and why did I fail? Your short comment proves nothing, it only makes a claim. Did you not learn how to make an argument at public school?
Go ask Kansas how well things work when you run your budget at the bottom. Ask people how things work when you can't pay your teachers.
Whatever. I have no sympathy for public school teachers, teacher unions created this mess so they can fix it. Also, people talk about privatizing public services all the time to save the government money, why not privatize the schools? Oh, right, the teacher unions would throw a serious fit.
With all the mismanagement in all levels of government any budget problems are a creation of government officials. If they start screaming "think of the children" then I start thinking of punching them in the throat. Since when is it the government's job to teach children? That should be the parents' responsibility. I saw what my parents paid to send me and my siblings to a Catholic school and it's CHEAP. Anyone truly destitute can find charities, existing welfare programs, and whatever to send kids to private schools.
I've heard of this thing called the "internet" where people sit at a computer and people just teach them shit for free. Apparently the government will even give people an "Obamaphone" to get on the internet. There's public libraries too, lots of good stuff there, computers even. No one is going without an education in the USA unless they choose to.
Yep, everyone can hit bottom. Here's the difference though. Next to campus is a pedestrian mall where the homeless like to congregate to panhandle. The men (mostly white, not all) will often be seen with signs that read "homeless veteran", "disabled veteran", or some other variation on "veteran". What does the one woman I see have on her sign? "Disabled WOMAN" The capitals are on her sign just as I typed them. Oh, and she's walking while holding the sign, not in a wheelchair like the veteran she walked past.
I know why the men hold signs that read "veteran", because (true or not) it gains sympathy. (I trust that most or all of them are actually veterans given the proximity to a veteran hospital.) Why did the woman feel the need to put "WOMAN" on her sign? It's not like people couldn't tell from looking at her, just that it might be hard to tell from across a crowded ped mall.
I got to talking to one of the homeless vets in a beer-n-burger place while having lunch on a Tuesday. He was drunk. I offered to buy him lunch but he said he'd rather have another drink. I ended up giving him nothing as I lost a lot (not all) of my sympathy for his condition.
Yep, everyone can hit bottom. From my experience it's the white men that seem to hit it more often. Is it their fault? I don't know but it does seem that women, if/when they hit bottom, do seem to be able to crawl out more easily.
Yep, I remember working on the farm and every summer once I was old enough to manage I'd have to crawl through this hole next to the corn mill and clean out the corn dust and rat droppings that piled up behind it.
Then one summer, I was in high school then, Dad told me to climb behind the mill. I looked down at him and told him to do it. We stared at each other, and the hole, for a few seconds before I decided to try crawling through that hole. I did it but it was a real tight fit. That was the last time Dad asked me to do that. My sister cleaned behind the mill after that.
At that point they've made something like a half million dollars, and biology compels them to go somewhere they can have a family. Women do this too, they'll go to college, work for 5 to 10 years, then decide that they'd rather move to a more sedate occupation, or just make raising children their full time occupation.
Some will find a way to have a family and the high stress life, or not have children. What also tends to happen with both men and women is once the child rearing is done they tend to want to go back to work, sometimes doing it on an oil rig for big bucks so they can make another half million or so and retire on a boat somewhere.
The problem with this decentralized set-up is exactly that: it isn't centralized and Mr Big Money has more problems to get his thick fingers behind it. So now they come up with a central plant in the Sahara.
Bullshit. Mr. Money can sell millions of Europeans solar panels, inverters, batteries and a service contract to maintain it all. Barring that they can still sell a grid connection to buy and sell electricity.
There's lots of money in energy. The problem with solar is cost. There is a reason that they want to put the collectors in Africa instead of Europe, there's more sun in Africa. Rooftop solar fails in so many places because the people may not be living where the sun it. Cheaper solar panels won't necessarily fix this because there's still more sun in Africa, it could just make the sun in Africa look better.
I love these conspiracy theories about how "the man" just wants to take everyone's money and give nothing in return. For every "the man" trying to keep people down with rent seeking there's another "the man" competing with the other "the man" for people's money. The one that offers the *MOST* for their money will win.
If decentralized solar makes sense in Europe then someone will be selling it. All kinds of people in the world are willing to stand in line to give money to someone that can free them from "the man". Government subsidies for big solar projects like this just prop up "the man" and traps the common person into another utility bill.
If you want "Mr. Money" to stop stealing from you then tell your elected representative to stop giving them *YOUR* money for these big centralized solar projects.
he didn't lose his job
Yes, he did.
We've already seen loss of the crew positions of engineer and navigator. It used to take four people to fly a large passenger plane. First to happen was the combination of engineer and navigator as engines became more reliable and automated. When computers took over much of the navigation then the deck crew shrunk again to two.
If there are people on board then people will want to see a person in charge. FAA rules require so many crew members to assist evacuation in the event of a crash. I can't imagine the entire crew going away if you've got 100+ people on a plane. That person may as well be a backup for the flight computer, and perhaps serve drinks once at altitude.
I remember the speed bump at the entrance to my high school parking lot. It was not very high and people found out that by speeding up the momentum of the car tended to make the bump pretty mild. It was odd in that by slowing down the bump actually became worse.
After a year or two of this the school put in a much higher speed bump over the summer, that was a shock on the first day of school. After that people actually did slow down coming into the parking lot.
Also about suspension I noticed that a poorly graded intersection near my brother's house was a near death trap in my old car. Hitting that too fast could really rock the boat (of a car I drove). After getting my Ford Explorer the dip in the intersection didn't seem so bad. I thought it was because I drove a "real" truck. After seeing others go through the intersection I realized that it was really that my old car's suspension was shot.
Modern cars are getting real good suspension systems now that speed bumps don't seem to have the discomfort they used to. I've seen videos of these active suspension systems that can turn a series of speed bumps on a test track into nothing. These are very expensive systems right now and if they get cheap enough to become even relatively common then speed bumps will have no effect on people any more.
As you noted even now with a large and/or expensive enough vehicle speed bumps are already not the deterrent they used to be.
I've seen these archeological digs from ancient Rome where their equivalent to the modern speed bump was a set of stones sticking up from the road and spaced such that a person would have to slow down to make sure the wheels on their carriage fit in between them. Not slowing down meant risking hitting the stones and breaking a wheel. I'm sure the stones were a trip hazard for the horses to for those on horseback. Even a modern equivalent of that might not be a deterrent if an automated driving assist can navigate them at speed.
Perhaps a Phalanx is needed. No, not the Roman infantry formation. I mean an auto-cannon tuned to shoot out the tires of anyone exceeding the speed limit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
I have to give a big old WTF to this:
By far the biggest barrier for women entering into the construction sector appears to be maternity and child care benefits with only 15% of the construction industry giving female workers more than 18 weeksâ(TM) statutory maternity leave, compared with the national average of 27% which contributes to retention and career progression. Around 44% of females work part time in the UK but this figure is reduced to around 5% in construction.
In much of the world, UK included, you have a something like 20 to 30 weeks of the year from when the snow melts to when it starts to fall again. Having people come and go is just part of business but when you have someone demanding 18 weeks off for maternity leave and STILL HAVE THEIR JOB when then come back is a bit much to ask. That might work for a lot of office jobs, but in a sector where work has to be done while the sun shines this is... just difficult to wrap my head around.
Construction is not typically the kind of job where one works part time either. Stuff changes as things get built, mistakes and accidents are expensive. Keeping everyone on the same page through a project is hard enough as it is. Keeping people on the same page when they are gone while others are working is even harder.
I don't believe women should be barred from working in construction but if they want special treatment, like maternity leave in the middle of a project, then maybe they should find more suitable work. If someone wants to offer things like maternity leave willingly then that's great, enforcing it by government fiat is not wise on so many levels.
Why would you build another Hoover Dam if 96 people died building it? Because it's quite likely 150 people would die producing the same energy from wind.
https://www.nextbigfuture.com/...
If the goal is safe energy production in the USA then nuclear is at the top. Next comes, by a wide margin, solar and hydro. In fourth comes wind.
I'm reminded of an old joke on how different military branches define "secure". Imagine each branch of the military given an order to "secure that building".
Army: The front door is blown off its hinges and a recon team storms in. Bad guys are killed or captured, while good guys are given water and blankets. A tank is parked out front, 24/7 patrols performed on the perimeter, and snipers posted on the roof.
Navy: The exterior is given a fresh coat of paint. Broken windows are repaired. The inside is scrubbed top to bottom. Burnt out light bulbs replaced, and fire extinguishers refilled. The lawn is mowed and weeds pulled.
Air Force: The building owners are contacted and a ten year lease is signed, with option to purchase before lease expiration.
Variations on this joke replace Army with Marines, or Navy sometimes included with Marines, or Air Force replaced with Coast Guard, etc., etc. The joke always starts with some branch nearly destroying the building, the next restoring it to like new condition, and the third making some sort of financial arrangement.
You want the internet to be "secure" then what does that mean? Does it mean keeping the "bad" people out"? Does it mean keeping it available and reliable? Most times keeping something "secure" is not in opposition to the other definitions, but this may not always be true. Just the idea of keeping "bad guys" out can be problematic. For example I recall a hospital that decided it needed "security" so guards were posted at the entrances. What this did though was discourage people to seek services there, such as just going in to warm up and grab a cup of coffee. The staff wanted people to come in for this but "security" saw that as a problem. So side doors were left unlocked so the homeless could come in for a few minutes and warm up but it also let criminals in that were stealing drugs and supplies.
Cheaper and more powerful batteries are also considered by many to be the driver needed to make the cost of renewable energy technologies like wind and solar competitive with the coal, gas and nuclear power that support the national energy grid.
If you have a battery that is cheap and with limited recharge cycles then would it not be better suited to handling daily shifts in load following than minute by minute, or even hour by hour, shifts in wind and sun?
Sure, the daily cycles of the sun are known, hence "daily" but there are clouds that make this more difficult. Also assume a gigawatt solar farm compared to a gigawatt coal or nuclear plant. I hear people talk about how much cheaper it is getting to build a solar farm than coal or nuclear but what of the capacity factor? Even in the best case for solar it produces power 40% of the time while coal and nuclear get 80%, so twice as much battery is needed for the solar. Given the numbers are closer to 30% and 90% then it's more like three times the battery capacity.
Then there is the matter of sun and wind being very unpredictable compared to coal and nuclear. If there are 10 coal and nuclear power plants, each rated at one gigawatt, then a utility can have a reasonable assurance of getting 900 megawatts at any given time due to maintenance and such taking any plant off line. Even if for some reason they have a few plants needing more down time then they can get 800 megawatts and no storage needed.
With wind and solar there has to be a battery or some backup power to make them viable. People don't like the lights going out randomly.
I know someone will point out that wind and solar don't need to be all the means by which we get power, and I agree. But if wind and solar are going to become the primary means by which we get power then we need batteries. If we get batteries then the big, heavy, and slow, coal and nuclear don't look so big, heavy, and slow. They can use the batteries to load follow, just like how wind and solar need batteries to follow changes in production. The changes in production from coal and nuclear are small, barring some accident. Discharge and recharge cycles can be more easily managed with coal and nuclear, making the batteries last longer. With reliable power like coal and nuclear the batteries won't have to be all that large, compared to wind and solar.
Batteries aren't just good for wind and solar, they are good for coal and nuclear. I calculate that the benefits for coal and nuclear are so much greater than that for wind and solar that a good battery technology could outright kill the solar market, no one would be able to afford it any more.
I'm sure a lot of people here would disagree with my assessment. I look forward to a counterargument.
Then she's terrible at cleaning, it would seem. Also, you might want to get yourself checked for STDs, this transfer of "material" goes both ways.
Right, that's going to happen.
Can you imagine the outcry if anyone tried to do this? Sure, you can have this hearing aid for free but you cannot mute the advertisements. So, people just won't get the free device, and those that already have it will get rid of it. Not only will people not tolerate this tactic but any technology vendor that tries this will be burning bridges for any future products.
I'd expect the government to get involved too, look at the CALM Act as an example.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
So more heat in the air means more clouds? The same clouds that cool the earth? It's almost as if the atmosphere has a natural mechanism to maintain a fairly even the temperature on the surface.
Oh, and "extreme precipitation events"? You mean these things we call "storms"? That's nothing new.
Sometimes it's wet, sometimes it's dry. Climate changes, no doubt about that. Not much we can do about it either.
So, you are saying the decommissioning process is going well?
I'm not sure what you think I'm supposed to take away from this. The is a discussion of nuclear power plant security and the Fukushima site seems pretty secure right now. They have no sign of uncontrolled release of radiation, and the exploratory robots are working well. I didn't look at all the photos in detail, is there a North Korean spy that was caught in one of the frames or something?