No, I didn't realize that. But I still think that such a design was immensely stupid, especially coupled with the fact that the operators seemed unaware of this oddity.
Actually, I later figured that I was partially wrong. Current commercial power plants in use need to go critical to produce power, but there are theoretical designs for subcritical reactors, that use particle accelerators to induce fission in the fuel assembly using a part of the generated power to drive the accelerator.
So trade CO2 for nuclear waste? Are we not going backwards here just to solve the problem more quickly?
Going backwards? Nuclear waste is much more manageable than CO2, because of its high density and small amount of waste generated per unit of energy extracted. Carbon capture and sequestration is a joke compared to nuclear waste management. For more than thirty years, all nuclear power plants in my country have generated less than 10000 tons of spent fuel, while providing 50% of our electricity. I wouldn't dare thinking of the amount fo CO2 the production of the same amount of power from coal would have generated. It would be millions of tons, and that's a low estimate.
And with reprocessing of the spent fuel, the amount of nuclear waste would go down a lot more (excluding irradiated reactor parts, building materials, etc).
Fast breeder reactors are the way to minimize nuclear waste to easily manageable levels. It is also an efficient generator of weapons-grade fissile material.
The solution to this problem is non-breeding fast reactors. You get a breeder by surrounding the core with natural uranium, which will slowly transform into fissile material like Plutonium under the intense neutron bombardment in the reactor. A fast reactor is a reactor using unmoderated (fast) neutrons. Breeders have usually been fast reactors, but there is nothing that requires a fast reactor to be a breeder. And it is the fast neutrons that can be used to minimize nuclear waste. Breeding more fuel is not connected to the reduction in waste.
If we try to look from the Iranian perspective for a minute, why shouldn't it be allowed to use such technology when other countries can? Letting the "foreign devils" restrict a key piece of technology for your energy needs would be unacceptable. By accepting such a restriction, they would let potential enemies control power generation in their country. I do not sympathize with Iranian official policy, but I sure can understand their vehement determination to develop this technology themselves.
After all, just like the US has been severely affected by oil crises in the past and wants to get off its dependency on foreign oil, Iran wants to make sure that in the future, nobody can say that they need to do this or that, or they won't be able to buy enriched uranium for their reactors, potentially turning the power off in the long run. I wouldn't want a foreign power to hold such a sword over my head, so I can surely understand Iran's insistence on making enrichment technology available in-house.
Even where I live (northern European country), we insist on being as self-sufficient as we can, and on electricity we are. 50% comes from hydro power, and almost as much comes from nuclear power. We import all nuclear fuel, but that is just because of convenience and public opinion against uranium mining, since we have extensive uranium deposits. If there would be a crisis and our uranium imports would be blocked, you can be certain that those deposits wouldn't be untouched. There is nothing better to convince people to quickly change their minds than them having to freeze in the cold winter.
Why would they dump warm water into a river and then take cooler water and heat it up, instead of just heating the warmer water up again to make steam?
To drive the steam turbines, you need the pressure generated when liquid water is turned into steam. But after the steam has passed the turbines, it is still mostly steam. To be reused, it must be turned into liquid water again, which is done in a heat exchanger with external water as a coolant. The external water is never turned into steam, only heated somewhat to condense the steam in the second coolant loop.
Modern reactor designs incorporate passive safety features that do not require the input of an operator or computer system to function, such as using natural circulation for the coolant system (thus no failing coolant pumps). Some designs are even physically self-stabilizing, by arranging the fuel assembly in such a way that the rate of reactions slows down if the fuel becomes too hot.
It was also "We need continuous online refueling, so we'll skip the containment building", and "We'll use graphite tipped control rods, which counter-intuitively increases the output of the reactor during the first part of the insertion procedure", among others.
The interest on a $8B loan at 8% is about 1.8M per day.
You have 8% interest rates in the US? Here, we only have them on shitty unsecured consumer loans (aimed at people that really shouldn't lend money at all). As a comparison, my own mortgage has an interest rate of less than 2%.
it remains within the realm of possibility and wouldn't require the loss of entire continents.
No, it would require the loss of all water on planet Earth, and even that would only give you a minuscule push, even if accelerated to a very high velocity.
All water on planet Earth accounts for some 0.02% of its mass. Accelerating it to 100 km/s would only give the Earth a speed of 20 m/s in the other direction. If you compare it with the orbital speed of the planet, which is around 27 km/s, 20 m/s is nothing. Thus, the difference in orbits would be minimal.
The problem isn't really just energy, but also mass. To move the Earth a significant bit you would need a considerable amount of mass to throw away with your "nuclear drive". If we could throw away the US, Russia, China, or any such considerable mass at a good speed, we might be getting somewhere.
If we would throw away China or the US, we would get the reduced emissions as an added benefit.:P
Actually, it doesn't. There is an European Patent Office, but whether those patents are recognized varies from country to country. There are some politicians in the EU that are pushing for so-called "community patents", which would be EU-wide patents, but those does not exist so far.
Sounds awfully inefficient. Nuclear power = thermal energy --> electrical power --> potential energy (jet fuel). With each conversion loosing tons of energy.
You can remove the electrical power step, since that is not necessary.
When you come up with a way to make the jet fuel directly out of CO2, water, and the energy in the uranium, let us know.
That may not be as hard as you might think. The solution is called Thermochemical water splitting, which only uses water and heat to produce hydrogen and oxygen (this method is commonly suggested to be used to produce hydrogen at 4th generation nuclear reactors). The hydrogen can then be used together with the CO2 to produce methane via the Sabatier reaction, and the methane can then be used to create carbon monoxide through steam reforming. Finally, the CO can be used to create liquid hydrocarbons through the Fischer-Tropsch process.
So it can be done. The above process requires many steps though, so it would be nice if a more direct method could be found, or else the carrier might have to be converted into a chemical processing plant.
This is what I don't understand - they're taking sequestered carbon out of seawater and burning it back into the atmosphere as jet fuel, at a huge additional energy cost during the conversion.
This is 'green'?
Since the CO2 in seawater comes from the atmosphere, this carbon takes part in a cycle, and thus does not constitute a net increase in atmospheric carbon. On the other hand, taking carbon buried in the ground (coal/petroleum) and putting it in the atmosphere is not a cycle (except possibly on geological timescales).
and then only to those you distribute to directly. End-users aren't covered.
Unless you choose the "written offer" alternative. If you do not ship the source, but rather choose to ship a written offer for the source, the offer has to be valid for anyone that holds the object code of the product.
Politics is all about making deals in the middle of two positions. Most copyright proponents are extremists in their position that copyright should last forever, infringement should have harsh penalties, and that government must monitor everyone to ensure compliance. By taking an extreme position in the other direction, the result of political dealing and wrangling is more likely to be the middle road where you really want to be, than if you take that middle road already from the beginning. In the latter case, the end result will be somewhere in the middle between your middle road, and the current copyright maximalists.
Big business historically have been the target of GPL lawsuits.
Of course, unlike other copyright infringement lawsuits, GPL violation lawsuits usually don't ask for any monetary damages, except for litigation costs. They ask for compliance with the GPL, and an injunction if the defendant won't/can't comply.
What you do is charge a fee for people who don't agree to the GPL terms.
That requires you to own the copyright on the complete source code of the project. This is why e.g. MySQL asks for copyright assignments or other waivers before accepting contributions from external parties.
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No, I didn't realize that. But I still think that such a design was immensely stupid, especially coupled with the fact that the operators seemed unaware of this oddity.
Actually, I later figured that I was partially wrong. Current commercial power plants in use need to go critical to produce power, but there are theoretical designs for subcritical reactors, that use particle accelerators to induce fission in the fuel assembly using a part of the generated power to drive the accelerator.
So trade CO2 for nuclear waste? Are we not going backwards here just to solve the problem more quickly?
Going backwards? Nuclear waste is much more manageable than CO2, because of its high density and small amount of waste generated per unit of energy extracted. Carbon capture and sequestration is a joke compared to nuclear waste management. For more than thirty years, all nuclear power plants in my country have generated less than 10000 tons of spent fuel, while providing 50% of our electricity. I wouldn't dare thinking of the amount fo CO2 the production of the same amount of power from coal would have generated. It would be millions of tons, and that's a low estimate.
And with reprocessing of the spent fuel, the amount of nuclear waste would go down a lot more (excluding irradiated reactor parts, building materials, etc).
Fast breeder reactors are the way to minimize nuclear waste to easily manageable levels. It is also an efficient generator of weapons-grade fissile material.
The solution to this problem is non-breeding fast reactors. You get a breeder by surrounding the core with natural uranium, which will slowly transform into fissile material like Plutonium under the intense neutron bombardment in the reactor. A fast reactor is a reactor using unmoderated (fast) neutrons. Breeders have usually been fast reactors, but there is nothing that requires a fast reactor to be a breeder. And it is the fast neutrons that can be used to minimize nuclear waste. Breeding more fuel is not connected to the reduction in waste.
What Iran shouldn't need is enrichment technology
If we try to look from the Iranian perspective for a minute, why shouldn't it be allowed to use such technology when other countries can? Letting the "foreign devils" restrict a key piece of technology for your energy needs would be unacceptable. By accepting such a restriction, they would let potential enemies control power generation in their country. I do not sympathize with Iranian official policy, but I sure can understand their vehement determination to develop this technology themselves.
After all, just like the US has been severely affected by oil crises in the past and wants to get off its dependency on foreign oil, Iran wants to make sure that in the future, nobody can say that they need to do this or that, or they won't be able to buy enriched uranium for their reactors, potentially turning the power off in the long run. I wouldn't want a foreign power to hold such a sword over my head, so I can surely understand Iran's insistence on making enrichment technology available in-house.
Even where I live (northern European country), we insist on being as self-sufficient as we can, and on electricity we are. 50% comes from hydro power, and almost as much comes from nuclear power. We import all nuclear fuel, but that is just because of convenience and public opinion against uranium mining, since we have extensive uranium deposits. If there would be a crisis and our uranium imports would be blocked, you can be certain that those deposits wouldn't be untouched. There is nothing better to convince people to quickly change their minds than them having to freeze in the cold winter.
Why would they dump warm water into a river and then take cooler water and heat it up, instead of just heating the warmer water up again to make steam?
To drive the steam turbines, you need the pressure generated when liquid water is turned into steam. But after the steam has passed the turbines, it is still mostly steam. To be reused, it must be turned into liquid water again, which is done in a heat exchanger with external water as a coolant. The external water is never turned into steam, only heated somewhat to condense the steam in the second coolant loop.
I can't remember the last time I worried about SONGS going critical.
Nitpick: A nuclear reactor must go critical to generate any power.
Chernobyl had an intrinsically less safe graphite moderator
Not to mention moderator-tipped control rods. I mean, how can anyone be that stupid?
Modern reactor designs incorporate passive safety features that do not require the input of an operator or computer system to function, such as using natural circulation for the coolant system (thus no failing coolant pumps). Some designs are even physically self-stabilizing, by arranging the fuel assembly in such a way that the rate of reactions slows down if the fuel becomes too hot.
It was also "We need continuous online refueling, so we'll skip the containment building", and "We'll use graphite tipped control rods, which counter-intuitively increases the output of the reactor during the first part of the insertion procedure", among others.
The interest on a $8B loan at 8% is about 1.8M per day.
You have 8% interest rates in the US? Here, we only have them on shitty unsecured consumer loans (aimed at people that really shouldn't lend money at all). As a comparison, my own mortgage has an interest rate of less than 2%.
it remains within the realm of possibility and wouldn't require the loss of entire continents.
No, it would require the loss of all water on planet Earth, and even that would only give you a minuscule push, even if accelerated to a very high velocity.
All water on planet Earth accounts for some 0.02% of its mass. Accelerating it to 100 km/s would only give the Earth a speed of 20 m/s in the other direction. If you compare it with the orbital speed of the planet, which is around 27 km/s, 20 m/s is nothing. Thus, the difference in orbits would be minimal.
The problem isn't really just energy, but also mass. To move the Earth a significant bit you would need a considerable amount of mass to throw away with your "nuclear drive". If we could throw away the US, Russia, China, or any such considerable mass at a good speed, we might be getting somewhere.
If we would throw away China or the US, we would get the reduced emissions as an added benefit. :P
except the EU, which has a single patent system
Actually, it doesn't. There is an European Patent Office, but whether those patents are recognized varies from country to country. There are some politicians in the EU that are pushing for so-called "community patents", which would be EU-wide patents, but those does not exist so far.
I know that, but there are still important points to consider:
That does not alter the point. The carbon that is emitted by fish is also part of a carbon cycle.
Sounds awfully inefficient. Nuclear power = thermal energy --> electrical power --> potential energy (jet fuel). With each conversion loosing tons of energy.
You can remove the electrical power step, since that is not necessary.
When you come up with a way to make the jet fuel directly out of CO2, water, and the energy in the uranium, let us know.
That may not be as hard as you might think. The solution is called Thermochemical water splitting, which only uses water and heat to produce hydrogen and oxygen (this method is commonly suggested to be used to produce hydrogen at 4th generation nuclear reactors). The hydrogen can then be used together with the CO2 to produce methane via the Sabatier reaction, and the methane can then be used to create carbon monoxide through steam reforming. Finally, the CO can be used to create liquid hydrocarbons through the Fischer-Tropsch process.
So it can be done. The above process requires many steps though, so it would be nice if a more direct method could be found, or else the carrier might have to be converted into a chemical processing plant.
Plus the steel supporting the tower wouldn't have been weakened by the heat
Because a nuclear reactor doesn't produce heat. Oh wait...
This is what I don't understand - they're taking sequestered carbon out of seawater and burning it back into the atmosphere as jet fuel, at a huge additional energy cost during the conversion. This is 'green'?
Since the CO2 in seawater comes from the atmosphere, this carbon takes part in a cycle, and thus does not constitute a net increase in atmospheric carbon. On the other hand, taking carbon buried in the ground (coal/petroleum) and putting it in the atmosphere is not a cycle (except possibly on geological timescales).
What you just described is essentially a fuel-cell powered system.
and then only to those you distribute to directly. End-users aren't covered.
Unless you choose the "written offer" alternative. If you do not ship the source, but rather choose to ship a written offer for the source, the offer has to be valid for anyone that holds the object code of the product.
but I suspect they'll take it too far.
Politics is all about making deals in the middle of two positions. Most copyright proponents are extremists in their position that copyright should last forever, infringement should have harsh penalties, and that government must monitor everyone to ensure compliance. By taking an extreme position in the other direction, the result of political dealing and wrangling is more likely to be the middle road where you really want to be, than if you take that middle road already from the beginning. In the latter case, the end result will be somewhere in the middle between your middle road, and the current copyright maximalists.
Big business historically have been the target of GPL lawsuits.
Of course, unlike other copyright infringement lawsuits, GPL violation lawsuits usually don't ask for any monetary damages, except for litigation costs. They ask for compliance with the GPL, and an injunction if the defendant won't/can't comply.
What you do is charge a fee for people who don't agree to the GPL terms.
That requires you to own the copyright on the complete source code of the project. This is why e.g. MySQL asks for copyright assignments or other waivers before accepting contributions from external parties.
I never could decide wether he was a genius or a nutjob, so I figure he's probably both.
The dividing line between ingenuity and insanity is commonly very thin.