Yeah right.

Exactly how is this supposed to happen? The water cycle on earth is closed and driven by evaporation of water, which in turn is a function of temperature. The warmer it gets, the more evaporation. First because of the higher vapor pressure at higher temperatures and second because of the higher absolute moisture capacity of air.

As a matter of fact, you can take any number of paleoclimatic studies and you will find that earth as a whole is either warm-and-moist or cold-and-dry. Of course, this is not true every little patch on earth. There are local variations, especially when tectonics managed to put some mountain ranges on continents where there didn't use to be some. But the thermodynamics are pretty much inescapable. Ice ages were pretty incredibly dry, with larger deserts than today and smaller tropical rainforests. And besides the local geological records all over the world you will also find a curious correlation of dust in antarctic ice cores coinciding with ice ages.

You can read it here:

https://docs.wind-watch.org/br...

If you choose to actually read it, you will find out, that there are absolutely no extraordinary claims in there.

1) The energy density is stated relative to the amount of pure Lithium and they need about 8.5Wh per gramm of lithium or about 120 Gramms of Lithium per kWh. Which is in line with ordinary lithium batteries. The difference is merely, that lithium-ion batteries mostly consist of anything but lithium. The graphite anode alone is about 10 times as heavy as the lithium it can store.

2) The concept is a Lithium-Sulfur battery, in which the cathode consists of lithiumsufide. This is a well known and established concept, that has some major problems with liquid electrolytes, as some of the polysulfides that form as the cathode releases lithium ions are actually liquid themselves. Which causes parasitic discharges and damages in to the cathodes. This battery has a solid electrolyte.

It is also not a panacea. There is a reason why the title isn't "A safe rechargeable battery with insane capacity" but "Alternative strategy for a safe
rechargeable battery". It is a new approach to develop a practical battery with this technology and it looks rather promising, but far from perfect. If you read it, the battery cycled for 1000 hours. Where each cycle consisted of 10 hours charging and 10 hours discharging - so it releases its energy rather slowly (as well as taking it up). There were also only some 40-ish cycles in total.

I don't know who wrote the article or whom they interviewed to write it. But they never read or understood the article that Goodenough actually wrote.

You should give an explanation when you do an experiment six times under the same conditions (60W power) and you get the following results (in micro newtons): 42, 67, 83, 92, 105, 128

Leaving this unexplained is a very good argument against it.

The problem with the paper is twofold:

1) After one year, it is still not published in a peer reviewed journal. This happens on occasion. However:
2) The data is about as flakey as it gets. Eg. the forces measured for the 60W power level range from 40 micronewton to 120 micronewton. This goes completely unexplained and all they do in the paper is some statistics voodoo to get some nice looking numbers out of this mess.

They tried parachutes - didin't work. When they did land it in the sea, it tipped over and broke.

They sure would liked to have landed it on land right away, but have a look at what happened on the barge and now think about how likely it is you would get landing permit for an unproven rocket. You see, you won't get it. So the main thing they are doing right now is demonstrating that they can land it accurately and the maneuver is safe for the public.

They also want to land it on the ocean for performance reasons. Flying the rocket back to land takes a lot of fuel you'd rather use to further accelerate the 2nd stage, if you have a heavy payload.

The Three Gorges Dam isn't primarily a hydroelectric scheme. It's primary purpose is to protect the lower parts of the Jangtze river from flooding, which has regularly affected some 10-20 mio people.

But you could say the same about lignite or other coal strip-mines. Lignite mining in Germany has stripped some 1500km^2 so far and is still ongoing.

1) The point about the design is that power isn't necessary to cool the reactor, but there are at least 3 emergency generators. (Because of their similarities, the ACP1000 has recently been consolidated with the APC1000 design into the "Hualong One" and the exact details aren't yet available in non-chinese documents.)

I fail to see how the coastline of Fujian has any bearing whatsoever on a power plant in Pakistan.

2) It is, in essence, a standard pressurized water reactor with passive peripherials that don't need pumps. All PWRs can passively remove decay heat through natural convection via the steam generators. Those are where the heat ultimately has to be removed from. This used to be done exclusively by power driven pumps, but it can be done through gravity, if you have heat sink above the steam generator level. Which is what you have.

Engineers aren't stupid.

3) The question of hydrogen formation has been addressed at least since 1957 in the Wash-740 report. It is not new. All current designs include catalytic hydrogen recombiners from the start, which can reduce the hydrogen concentration below the point of combustion. (Combustibility is is a function of hydrogen concentration and water steam contentration. Steam will necessarily be released along with the hydrogen and render it inert for the time being, until the steam is condensed. Enough time for the catalyzers to work.) Unfortunately, older designs haven't been equipped with them in all cases, most notably in Japan - depending on local laws.

Furthermore, the containment itself is also cooled passively in at least some of the newer designs (not sure about the Hualong One). But as far as fallout is concerned, it is enough for the containment to remain sealed until the Caesium aerosols have settled within the containment. (The basic process is the same as with fallout outside the containment. But it is faster, because of the confined environment.)

This happens at a rate of 90% every 8-12 hours, if nothing is done. After one or two days, very little is left. If you use containment sprays (which also reduce pressure in the containment), about 20 minutes are sufficient to remove 90% of the remaining aerosols. (Another 20min will remove 99% etc.) That process is the reason why very little Caesium was released from Three Mile Island.

Unlike the small BWR containments, large dry containment can remain sealed for over 24h even if there is no cooling whatever, because of the much larger volume.

I would really appreciate to have a source for this statement.

Yes, but this initial window is several days long. Typically 3 days, but the actual amount of time is a matter of the concrete design being build. This depends on the rules under which the design is finalized and the safety margins the rules call for.

After that it is only a matter of refilling the water tank of the heat-exchangers (which serves as heat-sink), which you can do with regular fire fighting pumps using water lines installed when the containment gets build. No helicopter stunts will be needed. You can also use whatever water you can get hold of - including sea water. It's just a heat sink outside the containment, the water doesn't get anywhere near the reactor.

Westinghouse has build Pressurized Water Reactors (PWR), including the ones in Three Mile Island (at least for the most part, it's possible they build some experimental BWRs at the beginning). But the Boiling Water Reactors were designed and build by General Electric. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B...

Next time you need antibiotics - you won't get them.
Next time you're in a car accident - you airbag won't inflate, your seatbelts won't be there, your windshild will be made from ordinary glass, your car's chassis will be stiff.
Next time want to eat, you won't get anything, because there's not enough natural fertilizer, there's no way to combat crop pests, there'll be only horses and oxen to pull the plow and you better get fit for threshing the grain.

I could go on.

Be careful, a Japanese tsunami might flood New York!

Tsunamis can be very tall in very specific places, depending on the geometry. Which is something you could have figured out by yourself, because the article is extremely specific "Omoeaneyoshi district of Miyako City, in Iwate Prefecture".

The point where the nuclear power plant will be build is not a place like the Omoeaneyoshi district of Miyako City, in Iwate Prefecture - which is not at all surprising, because such places are rare. And by the way, Pasni is about 350km way from Karachi. Ormara is 250km away. Their geography bears no relationship wih Karachi.

The nuclear power plants will be ACP1000s. There is half a century of experience between the ACP1000 and the BWR-3/4 used in Fukushima Daiichi. And wouldn't you know it, there have been improvements in the meantime!

http://www.nucnet.org/all-the-...

It's a combined passive and active design, it doesn't need power to cool the reactor or the containment, but it has powered cooling systems in addition to the passive ones. -> NOT FUKUSHIMA.
A backup generator that is above the Tsunami will not be flooded and will not fail because of flooding because it isn't being flooded. -> NOT FUKUSHIMA.
An emergency stop of a nuclear reacto needs cooling or it will melt the core, which is being provided for in a much more adequate fashion than in Fukushima. -> NOT FUKUSHIMA.
The ACP1000 is a pressurized reactor in a large dry containment, that can contain a molten core without overpressurizing the containment. It is not a small "pressure supression" containment that has been known since at least 1966 to be unable to contain a molten core - which is a statement made by none other than the vendor, General Electric. -> NOT FUKUSHIMA.

There was none. They used the 1960 tsunami in Japan for reference in Fukushima Daiichi (unlike e.g. Onagawa) - which reached a height of 4.5m. This tsunami was caused by the 1960 Chile earthquake on the other side of the planet, across the pacific.

Yes, baseline nuclear safety in Japan was that crappy - most operators went way beyond the baseline, but at least one didn't.