Yes, "But Timmy's doing it too!" is never a valid excuse.
That may be what your parents tell you when you are growing up, because they are teaching you about morality. But please don't conflate sound business practice with morality.
How many German smartphones can you buy? Or, for that matter, any consumer electronics that are not only designed, but assembled in Germany, using components that were sourced in Germany?
What about a situation wherein you move data from Server A in Germany to Server B in Switzerland? It never crosses your computer, all you do is send the command
You score a technical point, but I have to ask: what would be the practical usefulness of doing that. It's like hoarding money, or ammo, or food: although you can wave it around and its presence might make you feel secure, if you don't actually use it all you've gone is created a big pile.
Potential energy varies linearly with height, not with the square of height. Put differently, pressure varies linearly with height, and power is flow rate * pressure, so power varies linearly with height.
Mathematics aside, even if you were correct, I would say "so what?" If the potential is still measured in gigawatts, then it's probably worth looking into. I'll agree it's not a panacea, but it's something nonetheless.
Half the companies are always going to be below median no matter how much downsizing you do
Well, yes and no. Although half the company will, by definition, be below the company's own median, there are plenty of companies that can be staffed entirely with people well above median for that field, or the median of their competitors.
Of course, that also means that there are companies out there staffed disproportionately with people below the broader median. I think we could name a few.
For what it is worth: a catastrophic failure such as that probably wouldn't have and creaky-cracky fracturing of glass. If his vessel fails, Cameron won't have time to be afraid beforehand. It'll just be here one moment, imploded into pulp the next. Much better than a sudden depressurization from a space capsule, where (depending on who you ask) you'll live for seconds to minutes in excruciating agony.
The price an importer pays to buy a gallon of refined gasoline in France isn't all that much higher than in the U.S. Sure, it's more expensive in France, because you have to pay shipping and there aren't that many refineries in France, but the difference isn't even close to 2.5 : 10. The price to consumers in France is so much higher in large part due to different tax structures.
A big part of it is that oil is a global commodity, one for which there is largely inflexible and growing demand. So, unless domestic drilling can significantly change global oil supplies, we are just riding the wave of the global market.
if those assumptions are unreasonable and due to things outside of their control the costs are not sufficient to meet dismantling costs then that isn't their fault.
It's not like the retirement fund was established with a single lump sum and then not touched or reviewed for 20 years. The fund is payed into continuously, and every time a new regulation is passed or the license is renewed the decommissioning plan is (or should be) revisited. This is basic risk management, taught at every engineering or business school on the planet. The inputs change, you get new data or requirements, you adjust your plan and mitigations to cover the risk. Fluctuations in market returns are risks that need consideration, too, so I don't buy much into blaming the situation on the 2008 crash. Unless the rules changed in the last 2-3 years before the plant's end-of-life, there was plenty of time to adjust contributions to the decommissioning fund to match the required work. This is especially true considering that public utility commissions get to set rates, utilities often are guaranteed a minimum profit margin, and rates can always be increased when operating costs increase. Saving for an appropriate decommissioning, based on ongoing changes to regulation, is an operating cost, even if the plant owner/operator is too myopic to realize it.
Why aren't all the personal responsibility free-marketeers on Slashdot up in arms about this? The company is playing in the market, they took on the liability to decommission when they built the plant, and failed to responsibly plan for it.
Thus, it's the economic turbulence weathering the vulnerable investments made on the retirement funds. This is not too far from a bunch of seniors who just had their retirement income wiped out
Except that, as any retirement planner will tell you, as you approach your target date your asset mix should transition to less risky investments. Why was that Michigan reactor's fund so heavily exposed when they were that close to "retirement"? Individuals make this mistake all the time, but the number crunchers at the utility are supposed to be f$#%ing professionals: what are they doing to earn their paycheck if not executing a responsible plan? Why is it that the same conservatives that harp on about personal responsibility and say "too bad" to that senior and want to dismantle Social Security aren't also eager to sue the shit out of the reactor owner to ensure that the public doesn't get stuck with an old reactor and no cleanup fund?
So it's not the fault of the utility if there isn't enough money in the accounts if the rules changed between point A and point B.
The decommissioning accounts aren't just payed into one time when the plant opens - they are intented to be payed into continuously during the life of the plant. So as the industry came to realize that decommissioning costs are greater than expected, you would think the remaining reactors would be putting more aside for that eventuality. The rules haven't changed, as you put: the purpose of the money has always been to deconstruct the plant in a safe way and return the land to a safe and usable state. The cost of responsibly doing that task may have gone up, but that is as much the fault of the industries imprudent optimism, malfeasance, and general business incompetence as it is any other factor.
Saving to some target amount that's 10-20 years in the future isn't rocket science. What pisses me off about the situation most isn't that the companies have shortchanged their obligations - that's to be expected. What pisses me off is that the NRC and related agencies haven't forced these companies to save on a prescribed schedule that guarantees they'd have the necessary funds by the end of license. From reading the article, it appears most companies have bet on getting a 20-year renewal in order to have enough money. The NRC, public utility commissions, ISOs, even utility investors should not have allowed that to be the factor: you save so as to have enough at the end of license. If you get a renewal, great, you can coast on interest for the next 20 years. If they don't get a renewal, now we are right back to where we have always been with nuclear power: private gain and public loss.
Unfortunately, there's a lot more radioactive waste at an old plant than just the spent fuel. Spent fuel is relatively straightforward and, as you say, could eventually have some value in a new reactor architecture. But what do you do with 10,000 tons of broken concrete that's been sprinkled with radioactive isotopes over the years, or rusting pipes and valves that have had radioactive steam flowing through them for decades? Can't convert that to nuclear fuel. This has always been a point the nuclear industry has glossed over.
I thought this is why people grew their own in the first place. In my experience homegrown have a lot more flavor to them, store bought tomatoes taste bland in comparison after
In my experience, most people simply don't give a damn. If it's red and shows up on a burger or in a salad, it's a tomato. This is only a recent innovation, a trained perception. This is good, because it means people can be deprogrammed and realize that the red slab on their burger at McDonald's bears as much resemblance to a real tomato as cardboard does to fresh bread.
Why they're still going for a card is beyond me - but perhaps it has something to do with licensing
Having a card you pop in and out makes it relatively easy to migrate across carriers without a) letting them physically access your phone or b) opening the possibility of a software sim man-in-the-middle attack.
For many people, I think the calculus goes something like this for, say, growing tomatoes:
Spend anything from $10-40 per plant in potting soil, pots, cages, seedlings, etc.
Devote a couple hours of labor, per plant, over the entire growing season to coax them into being productive
Be inundated with tomatoes for all of three weeks at the height of summer, at the same time when...
Their grocery store sells tomatoes for $2/lb. all year 'round
I personally don't take this view. I enjoy my garden, even the modest amount of labor it requires. It's productive enough to do better-than-breakeven on cost, especially when I amortize the upfront costs over many years. Plus, although I wouldn't boast that, say, my tomatoes are world-class, they are a damn sight better than what the grocery store offers. I don't eat much out-of-season, so having fresh tomatoes in January just seems silly.
People talk about this as a potential killer app, but the simple fact remains that doing telesurgery with round trip communication times of a few hundred milliseconds is simply a non-starter. Surgeons work on hand-eye coordination and, to a lesser extent, tactile feedback. Introduce a quarter-second delay into that control loop and you either 1) royally screw up your position/velocity/force control or 2) maintain control, but at glacial speeds. In either case, it is doubtful that you would have surgical outcomes that are so much better that they justify the enormous infrastructure cost.
Although demonstrations are done here and there of transnational or trans-Atlantic telesurgery, there are a host of good reasons why it hasn't been anything other than a novelty. Reducing latency from hundreds of milliseconds to... still hundreds of milliseconds isn't going to be the breakthrough that makes telesurgery a win.
Slashdot Mirror
keep fighting the good fight against ignorance and poor comprehension, my friend.
Well, other than the triumphant years of Jobs' return to Apple? Yeah, probably nothing. I'd put Noah Wyle up against Kutcher any day.
That may be what your parents tell you when you are growing up, because they are teaching you about morality. But please don't conflate sound business practice with morality.
How many German smartphones can you buy? Or, for that matter, any consumer electronics that are not only designed, but assembled in Germany, using components that were sourced in Germany?
I'm all in favor of dropping bombs to win a trade war. It's the only way to be sure.
[before I get flamed, keep in mind I'm making a joke]
You score a technical point, but I have to ask: what would be the practical usefulness of doing that. It's like hoarding money, or ammo, or food: although you can wave it around and its presence might make you feel secure, if you don't actually use it all you've gone is created a big pile.
Potential energy varies linearly with height, not with the square of height. Put differently, pressure varies linearly with height, and power is flow rate * pressure, so power varies linearly with height.
Mathematics aside, even if you were correct, I would say "so what?" If the potential is still measured in gigawatts, then it's probably worth looking into. I'll agree it's not a panacea, but it's something nonetheless.
Did you see a distant ship's smoke on the horizon?
Well, yes and no. Although half the company will, by definition, be below the company's own median, there are plenty of companies that can be staffed entirely with people well above median for that field, or the median of their competitors.
Of course, that also means that there are companies out there staffed disproportionately with people below the broader median. I think we could name a few.
Really? I'm genuinely curious: where'd the "Weany" come from? Seems like a strange character name, even for children's TV?
For what it is worth: a catastrophic failure such as that probably wouldn't have and creaky-cracky fracturing of glass. If his vessel fails, Cameron won't have time to be afraid beforehand. It'll just be here one moment, imploded into pulp the next. Much better than a sudden depressurization from a space capsule, where (depending on who you ask) you'll live for seconds to minutes in excruciating agony.
The price an importer pays to buy a gallon of refined gasoline in France isn't all that much higher than in the U.S. Sure, it's more expensive in France, because you have to pay shipping and there aren't that many refineries in France, but the difference isn't even close to 2.5 : 10. The price to consumers in France is so much higher in large part due to different tax structures.
No, it just makes him sound like a politician; very similar to all those that want his job.
A big part of it is that oil is a global commodity, one for which there is largely inflexible and growing demand. So, unless domestic drilling can significantly change global oil supplies, we are just riding the wave of the global market.
It's not like the retirement fund was established with a single lump sum and then not touched or reviewed for 20 years. The fund is payed into continuously, and every time a new regulation is passed or the license is renewed the decommissioning plan is (or should be) revisited. This is basic risk management, taught at every engineering or business school on the planet. The inputs change, you get new data or requirements, you adjust your plan and mitigations to cover the risk. Fluctuations in market returns are risks that need consideration, too, so I don't buy much into blaming the situation on the 2008 crash. Unless the rules changed in the last 2-3 years before the plant's end-of-life, there was plenty of time to adjust contributions to the decommissioning fund to match the required work. This is especially true considering that public utility commissions get to set rates, utilities often are guaranteed a minimum profit margin, and rates can always be increased when operating costs increase. Saving for an appropriate decommissioning, based on ongoing changes to regulation, is an operating cost, even if the plant owner/operator is too myopic to realize it.
Why aren't all the personal responsibility free-marketeers on Slashdot up in arms about this? The company is playing in the market, they took on the liability to decommission when they built the plant, and failed to responsibly plan for it.
Except that, as any retirement planner will tell you, as you approach your target date your asset mix should transition to less risky investments. Why was that Michigan reactor's fund so heavily exposed when they were that close to "retirement"? Individuals make this mistake all the time, but the number crunchers at the utility are supposed to be f$#%ing professionals: what are they doing to earn their paycheck if not executing a responsible plan? Why is it that the same conservatives that harp on about personal responsibility and say "too bad" to that senior and want to dismantle Social Security aren't also eager to sue the shit out of the reactor owner to ensure that the public doesn't get stuck with an old reactor and no cleanup fund?
The decommissioning accounts aren't just payed into one time when the plant opens - they are intented to be payed into continuously during the life of the plant. So as the industry came to realize that decommissioning costs are greater than expected, you would think the remaining reactors would be putting more aside for that eventuality. The rules haven't changed, as you put: the purpose of the money has always been to deconstruct the plant in a safe way and return the land to a safe and usable state. The cost of responsibly doing that task may have gone up, but that is as much the fault of the industries imprudent optimism, malfeasance, and general business incompetence as it is any other factor.
Saving to some target amount that's 10-20 years in the future isn't rocket science. What pisses me off about the situation most isn't that the companies have shortchanged their obligations - that's to be expected. What pisses me off is that the NRC and related agencies haven't forced these companies to save on a prescribed schedule that guarantees they'd have the necessary funds by the end of license. From reading the article, it appears most companies have bet on getting a 20-year renewal in order to have enough money. The NRC, public utility commissions, ISOs, even utility investors should not have allowed that to be the factor: you save so as to have enough at the end of license. If you get a renewal, great, you can coast on interest for the next 20 years. If they don't get a renewal, now we are right back to where we have always been with nuclear power: private gain and public loss.
Unfortunately, there's a lot more radioactive waste at an old plant than just the spent fuel. Spent fuel is relatively straightforward and, as you say, could eventually have some value in a new reactor architecture. But what do you do with 10,000 tons of broken concrete that's been sprinkled with radioactive isotopes over the years, or rusting pipes and valves that have had radioactive steam flowing through them for decades? Can't convert that to nuclear fuel. This has always been a point the nuclear industry has glossed over.
In my experience, most people simply don't give a damn. If it's red and shows up on a burger or in a salad, it's a tomato. This is only a recent innovation, a trained perception. This is good, because it means people can be deprogrammed and realize that the red slab on their burger at McDonald's bears as much resemblance to a real tomato as cardboard does to fresh bread.
Having a card you pop in and out makes it relatively easy to migrate across carriers without a) letting them physically access your phone or b) opening the possibility of a software sim man-in-the-middle attack.
For many people, I think the calculus goes something like this for, say, growing tomatoes:
Spend anything from $10-40 per plant in potting soil, pots, cages, seedlings, etc.
Devote a couple hours of labor, per plant, over the entire growing season to coax them into being productive
Be inundated with tomatoes for all of three weeks at the height of summer, at the same time when...
Their grocery store sells tomatoes for $2/lb. all year 'round
I personally don't take this view. I enjoy my garden, even the modest amount of labor it requires. It's productive enough to do better-than-breakeven on cost, especially when I amortize the upfront costs over many years. Plus, although I wouldn't boast that, say, my tomatoes are world-class, they are a damn sight better than what the grocery store offers. I don't eat much out-of-season, so having fresh tomatoes in January just seems silly.
When you are sitting inside, how can you tell the difference between one of these finished caves and a house? Look around and its just walls.
In unrelated news, Matthew Brodderick turns 50 today. Considering I remember seeing Ferris Bueller when I was a kid, this makes me feel really old.
very carefully.
People talk about this as a potential killer app, but the simple fact remains that doing telesurgery with round trip communication times of a few hundred milliseconds is simply a non-starter. Surgeons work on hand-eye coordination and, to a lesser extent, tactile feedback. Introduce a quarter-second delay into that control loop and you either 1) royally screw up your position/velocity/force control or 2) maintain control, but at glacial speeds. In either case, it is doubtful that you would have surgical outcomes that are so much better that they justify the enormous infrastructure cost.
Although demonstrations are done here and there of transnational or trans-Atlantic telesurgery, there are a host of good reasons why it hasn't been anything other than a novelty. Reducing latency from hundreds of milliseconds to... still hundreds of milliseconds isn't going to be the breakthrough that makes telesurgery a win.