But, ISON is going to be exposed to roughly a million times the solar flux we have near Earth for several hours. I.E. 1/100th the distance, cubed.. or 100^3 increased solar flux.. I don't expect it to survive those conditions.

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I recommend that he purchase some Panasonic DECT cordless phones with talking caller id. Program the Pana directory with the names and numbers of your frequent callers. When your friends and family call, you will here their name announced and know to answer the call.

note: Calls from Cell phones are usually ID themselves by # number only, but Pana phones will announce the preprogrammed name for the number.

If you want to take a step further, port your land line number to an Andriod smart cell phone and bluetooth to Pana's.. Smart phones can block a nearly unlimited amount of telephone numbers.

When the scammers call on a blocked number the cell phone pick's up on the the first ring and dumps them into voice mail(which you leave un-setup).. Your phones won't even ring, and it won't cost you anything, but it will cost the scammers a connection fee. Without the possibility of of any productive results, this will steadily decrease the number of rouge callers over time.

Super typhoon Ida achieved it's maximum intensity well out at sea when it had a tiny eye, similar to Wilma when it rapidly intensified in it's early stages. Ida subsequently lost most of energy before it landfall in Japan as a cat-3.

Meanwhile Super Typhoon Haiyan made landfall at near peak intensity with an eye wall diameter of nearly 20km..

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Agreed, I'm using up the last of my SKYPE balance, still use it for calling 800 numbers(which are still free), but that's about it.

Just got Google chat to phone via gmail working, which took some doing to get around the browser id check. Now, I can call phones in the USA for free, while skype charges $0.049 to connect and $0.023/min.

In my state/city Grid electrical usage is taxed @19%.. Thus generating more revenue per dollar than gasoline or diesel. I.E 19% of $3.00 retail gas would yield $0.57 per gallon in state taxes

It's not ready yet. Thorium perhaps in time.

Nuclear power is a dead end, Thorium-232 is not fissile, it must be first breed into U-233 (which is fissile), that process takes an enormous flux of of free neutrons(U-235, Pu-239). It's a chicken verses the egg problem.

Note: Breeder reactors are far more dangerous and operate much closer to the edge. They incorporate fewer safety features, (metallic fuel instead of ceramic oxides, etc), in order to maximize neutron flux.

The Hydrogen was formed when steam(H2O) reacted with hot Zirconium(Zr) metal tubes which contained fuel pellets (and most of the fission byproducts). Upon reacting Zr +2H2O became ZrO2(white powder), H2 was released and the tubes lost all structural integrity.

As these Zr metal tubes chemically reacted and disintegrated, the fuel pellets and the associated fission byproducts(Pu included) were released into water/steam/hydrogen mix. Thus some Pu became part of the explosive mix that later detonated, destroying the containment buildings.

While a virgin U02 fuel pellet may initially start out as a hard ceramic(tightly bonded oxide), after being inside an operating nuclear reactor for several years, a significant portion(4 to 10%) is something other than a ceramic.

Yes, the pacific Ocean is very large, but it also takes a very long time to to mix evenly.. "(hundreds or thousand+ years.)" Thus a large portion of the contamination will remain in the surface layer for generations to come. These relatively hot isotopes also tend to bio-concentrate/bio-accumulate up the food chain.

Recommendation.. "Eat low on the food chain" and avoid Meat products, especially those that were caught, or were fed fish meal products from the Pacific ocean.

What you need to remove are the sugar carbs... (sugars like sucrose, fructose, etc added to processed food products)..

Keaping the starch carbs is just a start.. Exercise, watching your pH balance are some other items you need to add to the list.

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We've already came wayy to close to meltdown after Hurricane Andrew(1992) went just north of Turkey Point.

If Andrew had cut across south florida a few miles further to the south and subjected the plant to strong quadrants, instead of the much weaker quadrants, we might have had to evacuate South Florida.

As it was.. even the much weaker quadrants of Andrew did some significant damage, it severely damaged a 400ft tall, 5000 ton brick smoke stack for the bunker oil/steam plant next to the reactors.. Care to guess what was in the drop zone?? The backup diesel generator building!!! Even without that disaster, the Turkey point plant was cut off for 5 days with no outside power, water, or road access and came within a day of running out diesel fuel to cool the reactors.

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I dis-agree.. There is a new phenomenon unaccounted for, Supersized hurricanes and storms.. Hurricane Francis(cat 3) in 2004, following by Cat-5s Katrina, Rita, and Wilma in 2005..

All had eye diameters in excess of 60 miles wide making them much more powerful than typical cat-5 hurricanes (Andrew 1992, 8miles, Camile(1969) 12-13 miles). This is a new phenomenon not recorded previously.. Note: Super storm Sandy(2012) also supersized before landfall.

Larger hurricane eye diameters lead to wider eye walls(strongest winds), much longer duration of peak wind conditions, and a significantly larger area affected by peak winds and surge.

Agreed... The Fukishima plant site was significantly higher in elevation before construction started. Tepco removed 25 meters of the original buff", thus saving some energy costs(pumping cooling water), while incurring the risk of a tsunami.

Lets be honest here. Human greed didnt cause the earthquake which sent the tsunami at those reactors.

But It was human greed when they made the decision to lower Fukishima plant site/bluff height by 25 meters in order to reduce the pumping energy losses for cooling.

Their was no thorium breading layer installed in the US molten salt reactor prototype.

Thus, It was never a thorium based reactor.

For a limited period, it was fueled with U-233, which came from conventional breeder reactors.

My math (49.28GWyre * 365.24 * 24/1.16MWh//ton TNT/.30 efficiency) yields == 1241 megatons of TNT thermal (and associated radioactive fission byproducts stored onsite).

As it is.. 1241 megatons of stored fission byproducts stored in just one plant, probably equals the entire US arsenal(or Russia's) of nuclear weapons(50% fission/50%fusion energy yield). And if some event were to let all those fission byproducts loose on the coast of California. It would make quite a mess of things.

Now factor in other 63 commercial reactor sites spread throughout the USA,many of which have operational lifespans nearing 40 years.. It's not the bombs you should be worried about.. It's the Nuclear power plants that will really make a mess of things.