Comment No need for mods (Score 1) 190
If the ad screen is at the bottom, just put something in front of it.
If the ad screen is at the bottom, just put something in front of it.
Sounds like public comments need to have a space for an email address and/or phone number (for texting). The agency can then send a message saying "we recieved your comment. If you didn't send one, please report it here [link or how to report a problem]"
In the digital age, one way communications without verification is just asking for trouble.
So he named a company after his daughter?
Turn in your nerd card. Solo made the Kessel run in under twelve parsecs. The film "Solo" showed how he shortened the *distance* by taking a shortcut.
But I still wonder if Lockheed-Martin can build the satellite network with less than twelve Parsec satellites
Or for that matter how much does Hoover Dam produce when Lake Mead is empty, like now. Solar and wind by themselves are not enough. You need a diverse range of energy sources, and a strong enough grid to move the power to where it is needed. Right now, transmission lines are the limiting factor. They take a long time to build, because everybody along the route objects.
I live near Atlanta, and have a front row seat to the mess that is nuclear. Two reactors approved in 2009 are only now reaching criticality for the first one, and early 2024 for the second unit. And they had the advantage of a site that already had two reactors from the 1980's, so the basic infrastructure was already there.
Middle Eastern countries and Texas are both going big on solar. Texas has the highest amount of renewables of any US state. Currently that is mostly wind, but solar is catching up.
The solar supply chain is already building enough capacity to double last year's deliveries (to 400 GW/year), and has plans to expand to 1100 GW/year a few years farther out. Capacity doesn't equal production, since factories on the whole don't run at 100% all the time. But capacity has to be larger than demand, or you are leaving sales on the table.
World coal consumption has been level at about 8 gigatons per year since 2013. China is indeed building new coal plants, but they are replacing old ones that are less efficient. The world as a whole is shifting away as renewables are now growing fast enough to replace it.
EVs are expected to be 13-14 million units this year, about 20% of world car sales. Once ICE production falls below ICE scrapping of old ones, petroleum demand will fall, no matter the suppliers want. Taking 20 years as a typical life of a car, world sales were 50 million a year back then. If EV sales get to 20 million, we will reach the tipping point and the ICE fleet will start declining.
As far as coal in the US, that is already down 60% for electricity, and the technology for steelmaking is shifting slowly way from it. This has already forced every major coal company into bankruptcy or restructuring. The forecast for the coming 12 months shows mostly coal plants retiring. Again, nobody cares what Big Coal wants. We're not going to be buying any by the end of the decade. The UK has already reached effectively zero coal for power.
Lava tubes would be structurally unstable and leaky because of billions of years of asteroid impacts fracturing the bedrock. It would be much safer to pile a meter or two of lunar rock over an engineered arch, which equates to less then 1/3 meter (about a foot) under Earth gravity.
It is not just bookmarks, which I have been saving since Y2K, but I have taken to using "print to PDF" for useful web pages that might disappear, and downloading books and articles on subjects I am interested in. All of this gets saved to a data drive with subject folders and sub-folders so I can find them again, or use Windows search (which takes longer) if I forget where I put it. Everything gets a useful file name, source, and year.
All this takes time, but better than losing stuff to the fog of search.
Office space uses 15-20 kWh/year per square foot times the number of square feet per employee. Home use would vary depending if the home was heated/cooled anyway when people were away at work, and how much power is used in a home office.
In the time these reactors have been under construction, the Atlanta metro area has grown by a million people. Based on average US electric consumption, that requires 1.45 GW of average power. Since these reactors will produce 2 GW on average, and Georgia Power owns half, their output has already been eaten up by growth. Their delay has caused *more* coal plants to stay online.
The reactors are half owned by Georgia Power, and the rest by several smaller utilities. There are no outside investors. Georgia Power's profit it guaranteed by the Public Service Commission, which has allowed them to collect a "nuclear surcharge" from customer bills for years, despite the plants producing nothing until now. The customers are the ones being screwed over.
"Been through Hell? Whaddya bring back for me?" -- A. Brilliant