That must be why the worst nuclear disaster ever took place at a power station built, owned and operated by the famously capitalist Soviet Union, right? Right?

I'm not saying that it isn't interesting or intriguing (because it is); I'm saying it's not an "OMG National Security" disaster. Because it probably isn't.

The fact that civilian aviation experts were able to look at the pictures and say "gee, that's a so-and-so modification to reduce noise" suggests to me that this is hardly top-secret technology. Also, the fact that special forces have relatively stealthy helicopters is hardly surprising.

What next; controversy about a crashed police car 'revealing' secret tuning and suspension modifications?

Well, they know where they can stick that...

The fact that people were speeding in those places without the government knowing, and without an unusual accident record suggests to me that speeding in those places isn't a problem.

Agreed, 100%. Someone, somewhere will have a high-speed crash with tragic consequences, then the 'think of the children' folks will start demanding full speed monitoring of all vehicles, with instant prosecution for speeding. That is, if they don't demand 'Intelligent Speed Adaptation' (a GPS unit with a database of all speed limits that physically restricts a vehicle to the speed limit in force), which some are already.

I think the real problem is that in many cases laws have been passed with sporadic or discretionary enforcement in mind, and more and more new technology is coming along that enables 'total enforcement'. To take speed as an example, someone driving at 80mph in a 70mph limit would probably in 1970 have little to worry about from the police. In 2000 they might have to watch for speed cameras. Now, they hope that the stretch of road they're on doesn't have full-length ANPR enforcement. In 2020 their own car might report them, or physically stop them, lest they become a 'dangerous criminal' risking the lives of the millions of children who play on motorway shoulders.

The official speed limit hasn't changed, yet the effective speed limit has dropped (and there are opposing arguments about whether that is right, considering improvements in car handling/braking/safety vs increases in general road traffic). The same pattern is repeated for other laws too.

The story is that the data was used by Dutch police to determine where to set up speed traps. The data was NOT used to go after any TomTom users for speeding.

It's still a somewhat dastardly tactic, but not quite what people on here are seeing it to be.

Digs out electric bill... okay, starting rate £0.1662/kWh ($0.26)(first 182 kWh/quarter), then £0.1332/kWh ($0.21). nPower domestic 'standard' tariff as of Jan2011, Birmingham. YMMV.

For a real energy price giggle, the petrol station across the street has (right now) petrol (95RON, 91AKI) at £1.339/L ($8.03/USGal) and diesel at £1.399 ($8.39/USGal)....

The price of the electricity is still very significant; in China for instance the electricity is cheaper than in the UK, but then everything else is too.

A little light research gives a wholesale price of $0.07 (£0.043)/kWh - http://www.vneconomynews.com/2011/03/china-attempts-to-raise-electricity.html - so the retail price will be higher than that. Even at the wholesale price, using the calculation i used above that comes to some £30 of electricity, and £30 is a lot of money in China.

You're right. The prices of consumer electronics never drop.

Apart from the weasely "as much as"; interesting that laptops are being compared, knowing that they have much lower power consumption (on average) than desktops while requiring almost the same amount of manufacturing.

As a quick back-of-an-envelope calculation; a 100W computer, used for 5 hours a day, 6 days a week for 5 years uses 780kWh of electricity. At current approximate UK prices that's £125 ($200 US). If computer manufacturing uses a significant fraction of that amount of power, then there is already a BIG incentive for the manufacturers to use less. If you tell them "you should use less of this thing that costs you money!" they will likely reply "well, duh", or if current trends continue they'll say "well, as part of our Greener World Of Tomorrow Plan, we're actively trying to reduce..."

Hydro is a very good resource, but you need the geography. There's plenty of places without the valleys for hydro or the sunshine for solar, like here in the UK.

It would be possible to have totally non-nuclear power, but in my opinion that itself would be unnecessarily black/white. I think that a mix of power sources is needed, and that on the whole nuclear should be part of that mix, at least for baseload; while peak demand can be shared out more in the future by increased interconnections between regions. This will help wind, but it still won't be possible to have a large % of reliable power from it.

Perhaps after a few billion years the whole world might have plentiful fijords and geography suitable for large scale hydro, then we might all benefit from it in the same way that Norway and Sweden do. Until then they're a complete red herring.

As for offshire wind, great; we just need to crack the whole energy demand - windy period mismatch, or the epic civil engineering challenge and power losses from having an intercontinental supergrid to even things out, then we're all set.

If refinery fires had the same evacuation criteria in terms of actual risk to people, they would all require extensive evacuation. Sooty oil smoke is plenty carcinogenic, and I would bet good money that the "statistically noticeable cancer risk area" would be at least as large for a refinery fire as it is for Fukushima right now.

The whole thing is a caution-outrage spiral; public concern creates the need for immensely cautious evacuation, which creates more public concern. People are always concerned about any risk from radiation, whereas some 20% of the population subject themselves to a quite large risk from intentionally inhaling smoke for a buzz. That's why a cloud of radioiodine that might give 20 extra people cancer creates global panic, while a cloud of oil smoke that might give 20 extra people cancer doesn't.