Comment Re:Space programs as a crowbar? (Score 3, Insightful) 522
Iraq was a war for oil only in the sense that Saddam invaded our ally, Kuwait, whom we agreed to protect, to annex their oil fields.
Iraq was a war for oil only in the sense that Saddam invaded our ally, Kuwait, whom we agreed to protect, to annex their oil fields.
That may have been the case 10+ years ago when most people still had 20" CRT TV's. Now that 50" LCD TV's can be had for under $500, not so much.
Lewinsky wasn't the one charging sexual harassment. She was a willing participant, but was the witness to attest for the person whom was unwillingly harassed, Paula Jones. The case didn't "blow up on technicalities", Clinton was found guilty of obstruction of justice and perjury, and settled the case w/ Paula Jones. The House impeached Clinton but the Democrat controlled senate refused to convict.
You are confused. Monica Lewinsky was the witness to attest that Clinton did garner sexual favors from interns. The sexual harassment suit was by Paula Jones, whom was NOT willing to give sexual favors and thought that her boss making such advances was a highly hostile work environment.
Clinton wasn't impeached for having an affair. Clinton was impeached for pressuring a subordinate intern for sexual favors, lying in court, and pressuring witnesses to lie in court.
Burnup is the standard science and industry term for fission energy produced per kg of fuel.
> a result of extremely inefficient solid fuel reactors cooled by water
, a design which was chosen over thorium reactor designs because thorium reactors do not produce any significant amount of "waste" plutonium required for nuclear weapons production.
Fixed that incomplete thought for you.
That is not accurate. Thorium breeder reactors produce weapons-grade U-233. And a reactor designed to use liquid fuel with on-site reprocessing can very easily extract this weapons grade material. It is even easier to do so than a U-238 breeder reactor cause you don't have to worry about burnup requirements limiting Pu-240 production.
The reason why we went with UO2 based reactors instead of thorium ones is simply because that is where our knowledge base stemmed from. UO2 worked and thorium didn't offer any significant advantage worth starting over from scratch on.
The car analogy doesn't really work in this case. The most expensive parts of the plant are the containment building, which doesn't wear out, and the reactor vessel, which can be annealed. The most expensive part of building a new plant is the interest on the loan to pay for it while it is under construction for 5+ years. You can refit an old plant in much less time and you don't need the huge loan from the onset. Although it's true you don't get to take advantage of a new and safer design. I wouldn't want to refit an old gen 1 boiler like Fukushima but the old PWR's have proven to be very robust (e.g. TMI).
When will this people learn ?
When you demo your brilliant design that doesn't suffer from those problems, and from all the problems that your panacea has. Let me know when you schedule your presentation, thanks.
Um, we already have. EBR-II started in 1965, and it worked perfectly for 30 years until it was shut down by Clinton in 1995.
Luckily we have about 10,000 - 1,000,000 years worth of energy in uranium and thorium (depending on how fast you think energy needs will grow). Plenty of time to work out fusion and expand into space.
Regulator and lobbyists do not have a 'field', their skills are not related to any particular domain or technology.
Yes we must purge the FDA of all doctors, the NRC of all engineers, FWS of all biologists, etc because clearly they are all beholden to their special interests and thus can't be trusted.
Yup, and if you're lucky, the cops will only kill your dog and won't shoot you dead in your bed for waking up startled in the middle of the night upon hearing your door being busted in on a no-knock warrant based on an anonymous tip. And if your family is lucky the police won't lie about it to cover it up by planing a guns/drugs after the fact.
No.
Power transmission isn't that simple. Your naivete is routed in a lack of technical knowledge. Most backfed electricity is wasted because control systems designed to balance the grid cannot cope with thousands of variable intermittent sources. But government laws force power companies to buy it anyway, which causes negative electricity prices where the power company pays users to waste excess electricity. It's not a win-win for utilities, it's a lose-lose. How are you helping the problem of global warming, by creating through government regulations, a system where people are paid to waste electricity?
Really? You actually prefer this: http://www.google.com/images?q=coal+ash
Over this? http://www.google.com/images?q=dry+cask
All of the spent fuel ever generated by a nuclear plant for 30+ years, inertly stored in an area smaller than the parking lot.
An engineering problem in the sense that there is not enough matter in the universe to accelerate a spacecraft at 1 g for 2 years using any currently plausible propulsion method.
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