Subsidized? Really? I work for a large scale nuclear generator and we're certainly not subsidized by anyone. The only subsidized "large" scale generators out there are renewable projects, notably wind farms, because they can't generate cheap enough for it to be viable.

I'm trying to work out if you're being sarcastic or not. Of course you can have uncontrolled criticalities in a shutdown reactor. All you need to do it put enough fissionable material together and you'll get a criticallity event. They're usually just flashes and last fractions of a second, but it does happen. History is littered with these events. A shutdown reactor with the right levels of boron, still with core geometry intact will not have un-controlled criticalities, in that you are correct. However, this reactor does not have core geometry anymore and you can therefore not prove that the boron is getting everywhere and that the fuel hasn't managed to arrange itself into fissionable quantities.

I work on a nuclear power station and there are several people who are nearing the age of retirement who are "information hoarders". They have the opinion that the more information that only they know, they more powerful and secure they are. I have come to learn the exact opposite is actually true.

I work in the main control room and frequently have to call the system experts about an alarm or an anomaly and you very quickly figure out who are the more useful and who are the most useless. The useless ones are the ones who restrict the information. I need to speak to people who openly share their knowledge and information. I don't "steal" it, or never need them again. In fact, since I know how useful they are, I tend to deliberately not remember what they say because I know I can just go back to them.

Information shares and people who are happy to help are more useful and more powerful than the latter.

I saw something on a BBC show called The Code. A guy walked around an office asking people how many jelly beans were in a big jar. Answers ranged from 40 to 80,000, when the actual answer was something like 1440. He asked 160 people, and when averaged, the final figure was 1445.

There is wisdom in crowds. Specially regard the stock market, which it's the crowd sentiment that determines the stock price, not the value of the company.

The reason I love Gmail is simply due to the conversation grouping. I totally agree regard the interface. When it first started, it took be a few seconds to figure out where the send button is. It still is pretty strange, but the way they group conversation is genius and I'm yet to find an email app that does the same. Is there some patent issue on that?

It's amazing that it's taken this long for this very simple fact to be realised.

Engage your customer base, don't prosecute them...

Make good products, the customers will come... Simples...

Tut tut, you missed out "SECRET"...
You should prepare those carefully prepared memos more carefully...

Sure you can. You can separate them physically and chemically. But, if you wanted plutonium, you wouldn't use a commercial PWR to do it, but it is very possible.

Not true. Light water reactors can make plutonium and infact, all light water reactors DO make plutonium. They also burn plutonium later on in their operating cycle (usually 18 months to 2 years). The reason you don't get plutonium from light water reactors is because it's all gone by the time you refuel. It's created from neutron capture of U238 but gets burned up and helps produce power. If they take this plant offline within months of being at power, then we need to think a little more about it. However, Russia will be watching and also the IAEA will have cameras watching the fuel route. If you want plutonium, you don't do it with commercial light water reactors.

Yup, a little excessive but I have eight discs in my rig at the moment, five of which are in those removable caddies and form a 2.5TB array, RAID 6 so two redundant drives. Call me paranoid but I know that one drive will die during the period i'm replacing an already duff drive...