>> ... thousands of years of _safe_ operation ...
Completely "safe"? Then how do you explain this paragraph about 'decommissioning' the ORNL test MSR from the article you cited?
"After shutdown the salt was believed to be in long-term safe storage, but beginning in the mid-1980s, there was concern that radioactivity was migrating through the system. Sampling in 1994 revealed concentrations of uranium that created a potential for a nuclear criticality accident, as well as a potentially dangerous build-up of fluorine gas —"

You already are paying one very low fee to use the Internet: zero dollars.

What you're paying real dollars for is the right to access the Internet by means of various physical carriers: price to be negotiated between carrier and user.

Peronally I prefer the Asok (Dilbert's intern) sewage activated access. Whereever you have a sewer pipe, then you have turdo-charged access!

:-]

Technology similar to the Omega system is still in operation in Russian, known as "Radiotehnicheskaya Sistema Dal'ney Navigatsii", RSDN-20. In the West it's known by the nickname "Alpha" and is based on a system of three VLF transmitters located in western, middle and eastern Russian. It provides nearly world-wide coverage and is used primarily by the Russian maritime fleet, some using very ancient semi-mechanical receivers still in operation.

http://www.vlf.it/alphatrond/alpha.htm

If you want to see how these Alpha signal look like, take a peak at this Web Softwarre Defined Radio located in the Netherlands, operating in the VLF band. It is picking up 2 of the 3 stations (Krasnodar and Novosibirsk). They look like long Morse dashes around 11 to 15 kHz frequencies.

http://websdr.pa3weg.nl/

Johanus

... which is the layer of the atmosphere, 50km-85km, immediately above the statosphere. This is a very lonely place, the air's too thin to float baloons, airplanes and such, and too thick for orbiting spacecraft. Its major inhabitants are falling meteors and rocket ships enroute to outer spaces. Also hosts the D Layer of the ionosphere (during daylight hours) which tends to absorb radio waves transmitted from the ground.
Convection stops in the stratosphere (because there is no temperature inversion there) so very difficult for gases and vapors rising from the ground to reach this desolate place.
:-)

>> "... and the Player can come up with solutions to problems that the Designer might not have thought of. "

Maybe the world is just a big game and we're the Players. What would happen if we did not play the game the way the Designer wanted it to played?

Gen 6:5 And GOD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth,
and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.
Gen 6:6 And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth,
and it grieved him at his heart.
Gen 6:7 And the LORD said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth;
both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air;
for it repenteth me that I have made them.

:-)

OK, Hubbert, not Burton, but the theory originally was based on gelogical availability. Now it's complicated by other factors.

The so-called U.S. peak in the 70's merely signalled a shift to relying on imported oil. Coal production "peaked" too, but no one can argue that we're running out of coal.

My point is that no one seems to be concerned anymore about running out of oil now, whereas Jimmie Carter et al. warned that it was imminent way back in the 70's. If oil came only from squashed ferns and dinosaur remains, we would have run out a long time ago.

... and the demand for oil will continue to rise. No problem, we'll just import it from Mars. :-)

> layers of ferns and trees that I find imprinted
> throughout a 30 foot thick seam
The fact that fossils are sometimes found embedded in coal deposits actually proves that the coal itself could not be from fossils. Read here for more insight on this: http://www.semp.us/publications/biot_reader.php?BiotID=182

> it sure as hell ain't being made
> in the quantities we currently use daily.
But we haven't run out, have we? In spite of Burton's Peak Oil theory which originally predicted oil would start to run out in the 70's, then revised to the 90's, now currently projected to "run out" in the 2020's, all based on the belief that oil and coal were made out of fossil remains.

The truth is: oil and gas are created by abiogensis. Read on:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenic_petroleum_origin
:-)

One of the biggest myths of modern times is the belief that coal and oil are the fossil remains of prehistoric plants and animals. These deposits were created from abiotic hydrocarbon gases deep within the earth. This discovery of methane on Mars may lead to the further discovery of hopanoids or hydrocarbon fuels on Mars and possibly a biomass of organisms similar to ones that are found deep within the earth. Thomas Gold predicted all of this years ago(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Gold). His seminal paper "The Deep,Hot Biosphere", which explains this is available here: http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=49434 -Johanus