No, Fission involves the process of heavy (unstable, usually something like Uranium) element decaying into a lighter element
Two elements. And that's per nucleus. You get quite a few different fission products in a typical nuclear reactor.
and some radiation, where the radiation is used to generate electricity.
Very little energy is contained in the radiation as compared to the kinetic energy the fission fragments get from the fission. In either case it is the heat that is used to generate electricity, and while radiation certainly contributes to it, most of it comes from the kinetic energy of the fission products.
releasing neutrons in the process from which you can generate electricity.
As far as I'm aware there aren't really any practical ways to generate electricity from neutrons other than to simply let them be absorbed in something so their energy becomes heat, then you do as with any other reactor.
no radioactive by-products.
This is not true, the structural materials of the reactor gets irradiated by neutrons and hence become radioactive. The hope is that the materials can be chosen so that the radioactive waste generated in this way will be small in quantity and short-lived.
Essentially the main advantage with fusion is that unlike fission, it stops producing heat the moment you shut it down. With fission the radioactive waste products in the fuel rods contribute about 10% of the power, and can still cause a meltdown even after reactor shutdown. Therefore reliable cooling systems are required since there is no way to prevent the decay-heat from being generated. Fusion doesn't have that problem.
To recharge a car fast enough, you'd need refuel stations that provide as much power as a medium electrical plant. It just isn't practical.
This nonsense and hyperbole keeps propping up every darn EV discussion there is.
IEC 62196 allows up to 298kW charging power (which is hardly "a medium electrical plant") , which could charge a 50kWh battery pack in 10 minutes, allowing approximately 300km of driving.
Not only is your claim wrong, there's already proposed standards that could fast-charge electric cars.
In the future, don't assume engineers can't do something just because you don't see how.
Honest question: Why do people seem to accept this argument as valid for oil rigs, but using Chernobyl as a reason against nuclear is (generally, and rightfully) rejected as irrelevant and a piss poor argument?
If western nuclear plants were built the same way Chernobyl was built then I WOULD be up in arms about it, and I'm one of the strongest Nuclear supporters you would find.
Likewise, if all the other oil rigs had relief wells drilled in advance, then I'd have no problem with them continuing operating.
The difference between the two situations is that with Chernobyl we have made damn sure all nuclear plants we build have the safety features needed to prevent a similar disaster. With the oil rigs, the same is not true. Many of them still lack safety features (pre-drilled relief wells ) that are considered standard in many parts of the world.
You could also charge a second battery in your garage and then simply recharge the first using the second one.
Of course that would make it even more important that the price comes down.
any technology that stores and releases energy can fall prey to thermal runaway.
I'm so sick of this. Lithium-based battery technologies have a high energy/weight ratio because lithium is a very light metal. It has little to do with the fact that the spinel used for one of the electrodes is easily ignited. NiMH batteries are far safer and won't burn or explode the way lithium does, but because the metals used in them have higher atomic masses, they are also heavier for the same amount of energy.
People keep talking about burning batteries as if the problem with li-ion is that we're trying to pack too much energy in a small space, but a plutonium based RTG packs WAY more energy, yet will never undergo thermal runaway ( it obviously has other problems though ).
Chemistry is hard Physics is hard
You can't pretend thermal runaway is due to energy density alone. The chemistry of the substances a battery is made of, the thermal conductivity of the electrodes, the physical size of the battery, the activation energy of the components... it all plays a part, and it's quite possible to store orders of magnitude more energy/volume or energy/weight than in a Li-ion battery without it being prone to thermal runaway. It's just not very practical for electric cars at the moment.
American power grid supporting oodles of people charging up their cars at 100kw a pop? That would be a hell of a series of spikes, probably bring the dilapidated grid down.
Even if it was a problem in reality all that would be needed to mitigate it would be to mandate that chargers spend 1 minute at the start and end of a charging session to slowly ramp the power up/down. That would only add 1 minute to the total charge time, and since modern turbines in load leveling power plants can spin up and down on those timescales it solves the issue.
There's plenty of battery technologies that perform well enough for cars already. Lithium Iron Phosphate is almost ideal as an example. It holds less charge than a Li-Ion pack, but in return it can recharge in a sensible amount of time ( 10-15min ).
Now I know some people with no clue will come claim that amount of energy can't safely be transferred or something. You're wrong. Recharging a 25kWh battery pack (corresponding to ~150km of driving) in 15 minutes would require 100kW. This is a bit more power than most devices, but heck, my hairdryer does 2kw out of a standard socket, and I'm pointing that thing in my face every morning. 100kW might be a lot compared to a cellphone charger, and it will take a bit of engineering to design a connector, but it's hardly an unachievable amount of power.
The problem is that these advanced batteries are expensive. Heck even Li-ion is prohibitive for a family car. Tesla gets away with it because they are selling a luxury model, but if batteries are going to power a significant fraction of cars then their cost has to come down.
The question now is not so much if but when batteries will take over. Much will depend on what happens with the oil and electricity prices, but eventually petroleum will become sufficiently expensive that an electric car is simply a more economical choice.
There's quite a few countries with higher rates of gun ownership than the US, yet they don't see similar rates of people getting killed by them. I would dare speculate that the following has something to do with it:
-Poverty -Social Security and Welfare -Access to psychiatric care -Bullying -Working and Study conditions for employees and pupils -Cultural differences in attitudes to weapons and violence -Differences in the approach to dealing with crime
If you are worried about people getting killed by guns, start dealing with those issues. Oh, and require every damn idiot who wants a gun to demonstrate that he/she has an appropriate safe to keep it in. If you're not prepared to take measures to keep it from getting stolen by the neighbor's kid, then you really shouldn't be keeping one at all. That you have a right to keep arms does not mean you have a right to be irresponsible about it.
I seriously wonder why people keep promoting micro-generation. Electricity distribution is very efficient ( you lose maybe 10% of the electricity on average ) , and you lose a lot of economies of scale when going micro. Even assuming you'd manage to make some super cost-efficient solar cells, why would you go destroy it by putting them on poorly aligned roofs, as opposed to building a designated plant where they can be made to track the sun throughout the year?
Seriously , for EVERY energy source centralized generation will come out on-top. It's a consequence of how easy electric power is to transport, as well as the fact that most energy generation schemes scale very well. The only real exception is where you're burning something for combined heat and power, thereby allowing you to recover the spill heat from the power-plant. However, even in that case district-heating will probably work out better, and does in many regions. We use it extensively in Sweden.
Essentially the only way micro-generation is going to be competitive with centralized generation is if government fucks up big time to make centralized generation inefficient. Granted that is of course plausible, and I'm sure there's many people who are willing to say that it is happening many places, but this is a political problem that could just as well ( and probably will ) hit micro-generation. It does nothing to alter the fact that on technical merits, micro-generation is inferior for all places that are connected to the electric grid. It just doesn't make any sense to take technologies that scale very well and deploy them in as small units as possible.
Given he quantity of oil that has been released and the volume of the gulf, the only way this could possibly work was if the bacteria in question was able to spread throughout the gulf after being released. Unfortunately, if that is the case then that's really not something you want to introduce to an ecosystem that isn't used to it. The oil is bad, but we know from experience that introducing new organism to already vulnerable ecosystems is generally a bad idea.
We are still researching better methods to BOIL FUCKING WATER.
Not really. Modern fossil fuels plant use a supercritical brayton cycle where the water never boils. It is in the supercritical phase at all times. This means the plant can be much simpler and get a greater conversion efficiency. There are plans to do the same with nuclear reactors, but it will take ages to decide which materials are best to use. Simply copying the fossil fuel designs won't work because the reactor's radiation changes the water chemistry and the properties of the structural materials.
The problem with fission reactors is that when the control rods fail, the enriched uranium does what it naturally does and continues to release neutrons in a chain reaction.
Not quite. In all modern reactor designs the fission stops spontaneously if the temperature gets too high. The problem is rather that the radioactive waste products in the fuel rods still produce enough heat to melt the reactor core. Because of this you need to keep cooling the thing for many hours after shutdown. You won't get an explosion from this, nor would it result in chernobyl-style contamination of surroundings. You could potentially get a Three-mile-Island type accident which would destroy the reactor, but not much else. Therefore much of the research into reactor safety these days is attempting to guarantee that cooling can be maintained after shutdown. This is typically done by building the reactor in such a way that the heat from the reactor is itself enough to circulate the coolant around without pumps. The hot water from the reactor rise, and the cool water from the heat exchangers falls.
There's also typically a number of backup systems should the normal cooling fail.
It pisses me off to no end that we can afford to spend trillions of dollars killing each other, but we can't afford a few billion dollars exploring the universe around us.
What is even more depressive is that even a small fraction of the US military spending could grant you full health-care coverage for the entire population. The Iraq war alone could have accounted for half a century or so.
"if we let gays marry, then people will be marrying sheep! polygamy will be legal too!" bullshit. people understand that homosexual marriage is not bestiality or multiple wives
While you're perfectly correct, at least with polyamory you could very well argue that it should be legal. Personally I'd rather see the government stop getting involved in marriage completely, but I imagine it will be a cold day in hell before the tax benefits go away, so the second best would be to ensure it isn't discriminating against people.
Of course none of this changes the fact that it is quite a different matter. I just think it's a poor example because there really isn't a good reason to prohibit people from marrying more than one person.
1) Continue drilling and have an accident every few decades 2) Switch to wind/solar with all-electric vehicles immediately and pay about 5000% of world GDP in the next 10 years doing it and 3 - 5x current energy prices thereafter 3) Switch to an all-Amish life 4) Work on a gradual transition to cleaner and more sustainable energy sources by continuing to utilize what we have and what works while developing new stuff that actually works
You forgot
5) Invest in a comprehensive expansion of nuclear power, electric vehicles and ground-source heat pumps.
Somehow people frequently find it convenient to forget that possibility when portraying us environmentalist as all being self-righteous Greenpeace members who care more about promoting our own ideology than coming up with a practical solution.
A common problem with many alternative solar cell technologies have been that they have not been durable or degraded on UV exposure.
Being able to produce cheaper solar cells will not gain you much in $/kWh terms if the cells degrade correspondingly quicker than silicon based ones.
Basically with photo-voltaics there seems to be: { Cheap, Efficient , Durable } , Pick 2.
I would not consider myself a nay-sayer. Indeed I think solar is a great energy source where sun is plentiful, but at the moment I just don't think photo-voltaics can even hold a candle to thermal designs. Like modern solar troughs.
That said isn't getting weapons grade Pu or U the most difficult part of building a nuclear bomb? I'm not talking about the highly refined Fission-fusion-fission 50Mt or man-portable devices. But given a modest budget and the internets it wouldn't be THAT difficult to build a Manhatten-project era nuclear device...assuming you had sufficient quantity of enriched material.
There's two reasons why this would be difficult to do:
Firstly because the more modern designs require MUCH less fissile material than the primitive ones, terrorists would not actually get enough of it to build a primitive weapon from dismantling a single modern warhead. They would have to disassemble several ones, and then design a completely new weapon suitable for the isotopic composition of the aged plutonium.
Secondly, most modern weapons use plutonium rather than enriched uranium, mostly because plutonium has a lower critical mass. Plutonium is not suitable for a simple gun-triggered design of nuclear weapon, like the one that was dropped on Hiroshima, and hence any terrorists trying to use it would require a much more advanced implosion-type weapon design. They would also need a carefully calibrated neutron-generator to use as a trigger. To get an idea of the difficulties involved consider North Korea's nuclear test which used plutonium. The detonation was orders of magnitude less powerful than you would expect from a nuclear test, and this was from a country which employed numerous scientists to work on the problem. A terrorist organization would have greater difficulties.
This does not mean that all is ok and dandy. Even without setting of a nuclear detonation, assembling a critical mass of plutonium in a public place would cause a lot of nasty, but at least it would not level the city.
They should be able to bring your car to a complete stop in under a minute
I sure hope that with "under a minute" you mean a heck of a lot less than a minute. If you were doing 90km/h a linear deceleration that lasted a minute would give you a breaking distance of 750m (average speed of 45km/h = 12.5m/s for 60s ). The distance would be shorter if you go slower of course, but then the breaks should also be able to stop you quicker.
There are heterosexuals who rape and take advantage of others, does that mean that heterosexual attraction in itself is a problem?
I happen to be gay myself, and I certainly dislike having my orientation compared to child molestation, but that is not a good excuse to continue to pretend that every pedophile is some inherently sick person who hurt little children. Some of them do, many of them would rather kill themselves than hurting the very people they love. To pretend that their feelings differ in origin or nature than those the rest of us have is nothing but self-righteous moralizing prejudice. It is unfortunately true that it will be hard for many pedophiles to deal with their situation, but to stigmatize them as mentally ill merely to justify my own sexual orientation is just something I will not do, no matter how effective such an argument may be to the ears of those who won't think about it for a while.
Theres a world of difference between having feelings for somebody you can't have, and taking advantage of them for your own pleasure, and the way our society treats pedophiles is downright uncivilized. What makes it even worse is the "witch-hunt" like way in which pointing this out to people results in suspicion and insinuation that you may be a pedophile yourself. If it was not for people speaking about how others were mistreated by society then where would we be today? I'm certainly thankful some brave people in history spoke out when we were treated in a similar manner, thus meaning I can now be open about being attracted to women without being perceived as mentally ill because of it.
My understanding that possession of child porn is basically the same as possession of a shotgun - For the most part you are guilty until you prove yourself innocent, and there are very few, if any, defenses.
I imagine it is only a question of time until this one kicks in:
Article 6 - Right to a fair trial
In the determination of his civil rights and obligations or of any criminal charge against him, everyone is entitled to a fair and public hearing within a reasonable time by an independent and impartial tribunal established by law. Judgment shall be pronounced publicly but the press and public may be excluded from all or part of the trial in the interests of morals, public order or national security in a democratic society, where the interests of juveniles or the protection of the private life of the parties so require, or to the extent strictly necessary in the opinion of the court in special circumstances where publicity would prejudice the interests of justice.
Everyone charged with a criminal offence shall be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law.(emphasis mine)
Everyone charged with a criminal offence has the following minimum rights: a.to be informed promptly, in a language which he understands and in detail, of the nature and cause of the accusation against him; b.to have adequate time and facilities for the preparation of his defence; c.to defend himself in person or through legal assistance of his own choosing or, if he has not sufficient means to pay for legal assistance, to be given it free when the interests of justice so require; d.to examine or have examined witnesses against him and to obtain the attendance and examination of witnesses on his behalf under the same conditions as witnesses against him; e.to have the free assistance of an interpreter if he cannot understand or speak the language used in court.
Britain may be fucked up, but if they start completely pissing over the ECHR they will eventually get burned, especially since the Lisbon Treaty makes it legally binding. Only problem is that because it is tedious to get a case heard there it may be a while and many will be hurt in the meantime.
Religions know this, and that's why they say to wait until you found the right person, to not only have sex with, but to also have a family with.
At which point people basically figure that they really don't want the same thing in bed, and thus it either ends the same way anyway, or they get stuck in a marriage which shitty sex because of outdated ideas which stem from an age when effective contraceptives did not exist.
ISPs aren't and never have been common carriers. This is a widespread falsity spread around by Slashdotters.
This may be true for the specific "common carrier" legal status used in the US. In Europe quite a few countries employ similar principles, though I believe the term "mere conduit" is more frequently used than "common carrier". I'm not completely sure what the EU directives say about it, but ISPs here are generally very skeptical to filtering content precisely because they don't want to be made liable for what they carry, and from the leaks about ACTA it appears one of the main objections from the EU is that they don't want to make ISPs responsible for what users do.
One exception is the United Kingdom, which more or less seems to have volunteered to beta test Orwellian stuff before the US deploys it. Even there, however, the ISPs have recently cried foul at government plans to implement copyright enforcement on the ISP level.
Slashdot Mirror
Two elements. And that's per nucleus. You get quite a few different fission products in a typical nuclear reactor.
Very little energy is contained in the radiation as compared to the kinetic energy the fission fragments get from the fission. In either case it is the heat that is used to generate electricity, and while radiation certainly contributes to it, most of it comes from the kinetic energy of the fission products.
As far as I'm aware there aren't really any practical ways to generate electricity from neutrons other than to simply let them be absorbed in something so their energy becomes heat, then you do as with any other reactor.
This is not true, the structural materials of the reactor gets irradiated by neutrons and hence become radioactive. The hope is that the materials can be chosen so that the radioactive waste generated in this way will be small in quantity and short-lived.
Essentially the main advantage with fusion is that unlike fission, it stops producing heat the moment you shut it down. With fission the radioactive waste products in the fuel rods contribute about 10% of the power, and can still cause a meltdown even after reactor shutdown. Therefore reliable cooling systems are required since there is no way to prevent the decay-heat from being generated. Fusion doesn't have that problem.
This nonsense and hyperbole keeps propping up every darn EV discussion there is.
IEC 62196 allows up to 298kW charging power (which is hardly "a medium electrical plant") , which could charge a 50kWh battery pack in 10 minutes, allowing approximately 300km of driving.
Not only is your claim wrong, there's already proposed standards that could fast-charge electric cars.
In the future, don't assume engineers can't do something just because you don't see how.
If western nuclear plants were built the same way Chernobyl was built then I WOULD be up in arms about it, and I'm one of the strongest Nuclear supporters you would find.
Likewise, if all the other oil rigs had relief wells drilled in advance, then I'd have no problem with them continuing operating.
The difference between the two situations is that with Chernobyl we have made damn sure all nuclear plants we build have the safety features needed to prevent a similar disaster. With the oil rigs, the same is not true. Many of them still lack safety features (pre-drilled relief wells ) that are considered standard in many parts of the world.
You could also charge a second battery in your garage and then simply recharge the first using the second one. Of course that would make it even more important that the price comes down.
I'm so sick of this. Lithium-based battery technologies have a high energy/weight ratio because lithium is a very light metal. It has little to do with the fact that the spinel used for one of the electrodes is easily ignited. NiMH batteries are far safer and won't burn or explode the way lithium does, but because the metals used in them have higher atomic masses, they are also heavier for the same amount of energy.
People keep talking about burning batteries as if the problem with li-ion is that we're trying to pack too much energy in a small space, but a plutonium based RTG packs WAY more energy, yet will never undergo thermal runaway ( it obviously has other problems though ).
Chemistry is hard
Physics is hard
You can't pretend thermal runaway is due to energy density alone. The chemistry of the substances a battery is made of, the thermal conductivity of the electrodes, the physical size of the battery, the activation energy of the components... it all plays a part, and it's quite possible to store orders of magnitude more energy/volume or energy/weight than in a Li-ion battery without it being prone to thermal runaway. It's just not very practical for electric cars at the moment.
Even if it was a problem in reality all that would be needed to mitigate it would be to mandate that chargers spend 1 minute at the start and end of a charging session to slowly ramp the power up/down. That would only add 1 minute to the total charge time, and since modern turbines in load leveling power plants can spin up and down on those timescales it solves the issue.
There's plenty of battery technologies that perform well enough for cars already.
Lithium Iron Phosphate is almost ideal as an example. It holds less charge than a
Li-Ion pack, but in return it can recharge in a sensible amount of time ( 10-15min ).
Now I know some people with no clue will come claim that amount of energy can't safely
be transferred or something. You're wrong. Recharging a 25kWh battery pack (corresponding
to ~150km of driving) in 15 minutes would require 100kW. This is a bit more power than
most devices, but heck, my hairdryer does 2kw out of a standard socket, and I'm pointing
that thing in my face every morning. 100kW might be a lot compared to a cellphone charger,
and it will take a bit of engineering to design a connector, but it's hardly an unachievable
amount of power.
The problem is that these advanced batteries are expensive. Heck even Li-ion is prohibitive
for a family car. Tesla gets away with it because they are selling a luxury model, but if
batteries are going to power a significant fraction of cars then their cost has to come down.
The question now is not so much if but when batteries will take over. Much will depend on what happens
with the oil and electricity prices, but eventually petroleum will become sufficiently expensive that
an electric car is simply a more economical choice.
There's quite a few countries with higher rates of gun ownership than the US, yet they don't see similar rates of people getting killed by them. I would dare speculate that the following has something to do with it:
-Poverty
-Social Security and Welfare
-Access to psychiatric care
-Bullying
-Working and Study conditions for employees and pupils
-Cultural differences in attitudes to weapons and violence
-Differences in the approach to dealing with crime
If you are worried about people getting killed by guns, start dealing with those issues. Oh, and require every damn idiot who wants a gun to demonstrate that he/she has an appropriate safe to keep it in. If you're not prepared to take measures to keep it from getting stolen by the neighbor's kid, then you really shouldn't be keeping one at all. That you have a right to keep arms does not mean you have a right to be irresponsible about it.
I seriously wonder why people keep promoting micro-generation. Electricity distribution is very efficient ( you lose maybe 10% of the electricity on average ) , and you lose a lot of economies of scale when going micro. Even assuming you'd manage to make some super cost-efficient solar cells, why would you go destroy it by putting them on poorly aligned roofs, as opposed to building a designated plant where they can be made to track the sun throughout the year?
Seriously , for EVERY energy source centralized generation will come out on-top. It's a consequence of how easy electric power is to transport, as well as the fact that most energy generation schemes scale very well. The only real exception is where you're burning something for combined heat and power, thereby allowing you to recover the spill heat from the power-plant. However, even in that case district-heating will probably work out better, and does in many regions. We use it extensively in Sweden.
Essentially the only way micro-generation is going to be competitive with centralized generation is if government fucks up big time to make centralized generation inefficient. Granted that is of course plausible, and I'm sure there's many people who are willing to say that it is happening many places, but this is a political problem that could just as well ( and probably will ) hit micro-generation. It does nothing to alter the fact that on technical merits, micro-generation is inferior for all places that are connected to the electric grid. It just doesn't make any sense to take technologies that scale very well and deploy them in as small units as possible.
Not really. You simply drop all non-linear terms in the expansion and then it's downhill from there
Given he quantity of oil that has been released and the volume of the gulf, the only way this could possibly work was if the bacteria in question was able to spread throughout the gulf after being released. Unfortunately, if that is the case then that's really not something you want to introduce to an ecosystem that isn't used to it. The oil is bad, but we know from experience that introducing new organism to already vulnerable ecosystems is generally a bad idea.
Not really. Modern fossil fuels plant use a supercritical brayton cycle where the water never boils. It is in the supercritical phase at all times. This means the plant can be much simpler and get a greater conversion efficiency. There are plans to do the same with nuclear reactors, but it will take ages to decide which materials are best to use. Simply copying the fossil fuel designs won't work because the reactor's radiation changes the water chemistry and the properties of the structural materials.
Not quite. In all modern reactor designs the fission stops spontaneously if the temperature gets too high. The problem is rather that the radioactive waste products in the fuel rods still produce enough heat to melt the reactor core. Because of this you need to keep cooling the thing for many hours after shutdown. You won't get an explosion from this, nor would it result in chernobyl-style contamination of surroundings. You could potentially get a Three-mile-Island type accident which would destroy the reactor, but not much else. Therefore much of the research into reactor safety these days is attempting to guarantee that cooling can be maintained after shutdown. This is typically done by building the reactor in such a way that the heat from the reactor is itself enough to circulate the coolant around without pumps. The hot water from the reactor rise, and the cool water from the heat exchangers falls.
There's also typically a number of backup systems should the normal cooling fail.
What is even more depressive is that even a small fraction of the US military spending could grant you full health-care coverage for the entire population. The Iraq war alone could have accounted for half a century or so.
While you're perfectly correct, at least with polyamory you could very well argue that it should be legal. Personally I'd rather see the government stop getting involved in marriage completely, but I imagine it will be a cold day in hell before the tax benefits go away, so the second best would be to ensure it isn't discriminating against people.
Of course none of this changes the fact that it is quite a different matter. I just think it's a poor example because there really isn't a good reason to prohibit people from marrying more than one person.
You forgot
5) Invest in a comprehensive expansion of nuclear power, electric vehicles and ground-source heat pumps.
Somehow people frequently find it convenient to forget that possibility when portraying us environmentalist as all being self-righteous Greenpeace members who care more about promoting our own ideology than coming up with a practical solution.
A common problem with many alternative solar cell technologies have been that they have not been durable or degraded on UV exposure.
Being able to produce cheaper solar cells will not gain you much in $/kWh terms if the cells degrade correspondingly quicker than silicon based ones.
Basically with photo-voltaics there seems to be: { Cheap, Efficient , Durable } , Pick 2.
I would not consider myself a nay-sayer. Indeed I think solar is a great energy source where sun is plentiful, but at the moment I just don't think photo-voltaics can even hold a candle to thermal designs. Like modern solar troughs.
Energy consumption refers to energy used over a period of time, hence it has units of power and the watt is quite a sensible unit to measure it.
I take it you've never been in a situation so horrible you pondered taking your own life?
Believe it or not, but some things are worse than death.
There's two reasons why this would be difficult to do:
Firstly because the more modern designs require MUCH less fissile material than the primitive ones, terrorists would not actually get enough of it to build a primitive weapon from dismantling a single modern warhead. They would have to disassemble several ones, and then design a completely new weapon suitable for the isotopic composition of the aged plutonium.
Secondly, most modern weapons use plutonium rather than enriched uranium, mostly because plutonium has a lower critical mass. Plutonium is not suitable for a simple gun-triggered design of nuclear weapon, like the one that was dropped on Hiroshima, and hence any terrorists trying to use it would require a much more advanced implosion-type weapon design. They would also need a carefully calibrated neutron-generator to use as a trigger. To get an idea of the difficulties involved consider North Korea's nuclear test which used plutonium. The detonation was orders of magnitude less powerful than you would expect from a nuclear test, and this was from a country which employed numerous scientists to work on the problem. A terrorist organization would have greater difficulties.
This does not mean that all is ok and dandy. Even without setting of a nuclear detonation, assembling a critical mass of plutonium in a public place would cause a lot of nasty, but at least it would not level the city.
I sure hope that with "under a minute" you mean a heck of a lot less than a minute. If you were doing 90km/h a linear deceleration that lasted a minute would give you a breaking distance of 750m (average speed of 45km/h = 12.5m/s for 60s ). The distance would be shorter if you go slower of course, but then the breaks should also be able to stop you quicker.
There are heterosexuals who rape and take advantage of others, does that mean that heterosexual attraction in itself is a problem?
I happen to be gay myself, and I certainly dislike having my orientation compared to child molestation, but that is not a good excuse to continue to pretend that every pedophile is some inherently sick person who hurt little children. Some of them do, many of them would rather kill themselves than hurting the very people they love. To pretend that their feelings differ in origin or nature than those the rest of us have is nothing but self-righteous moralizing prejudice. It is unfortunately true that it will be hard for many pedophiles to deal with their situation, but to stigmatize them as mentally ill merely to justify my own sexual orientation is just something I will not do, no matter how effective such an argument may be to the ears of those who won't think about it for a while.
Theres a world of difference between having feelings for somebody you can't have, and taking advantage of them for your own pleasure, and the way our society treats pedophiles is downright uncivilized. What makes it even worse is the "witch-hunt" like way in which pointing this out to people results in suspicion and insinuation that you may be a pedophile yourself. If it was not for people speaking about how others were mistreated by society then where would we be today? I'm certainly thankful some brave people in history spoke out when we were treated in a similar manner, thus meaning I can now be open about being attracted to women without being perceived as mentally ill because of it.
I imagine it is only a question of time until this one kicks in:
Britain may be fucked up, but if they start completely pissing over the ECHR they will eventually get burned, especially since the Lisbon Treaty makes it legally binding. Only problem is that because it is tedious to get a case heard there it may be a while and many will be hurt in the meantime.
At which point people basically figure that they really don't want the same thing in bed, and thus it either ends the same way anyway, or they get stuck in a marriage which shitty sex because of outdated ideas which stem from an age when effective contraceptives did not exist.
This may be true for the specific "common carrier" legal status used in the US. In Europe quite a few countries employ similar principles, though I believe the term "mere conduit" is more frequently used than "common carrier". I'm not completely sure what the EU directives say about it, but ISPs here are generally very skeptical to filtering content precisely because they don't want to be made liable for what they carry, and from the leaks about ACTA it appears one of the main objections from the EU is that they don't want to make ISPs responsible for what users do.
One exception is the United Kingdom, which more or less seems to have volunteered to beta test Orwellian stuff before the US deploys it. Even there, however, the ISPs have recently cried foul at government plans to implement copyright enforcement on the ISP level.