I don't buy this The generators have electrically excited field windings. Take down the exciter fields, and there is no electrical power output.

Generator fields can be taken down in milliseconds. A resistor to dump the inductive energy stored is of manageable size, vs. a resistor to load the entire generator output for a long period. Once you drop the exciter fields, you have a mechanically unloaded steam turbine, which still presents a risk of over speed.

SCRAM takes a few seconds, so the thermal output of the reaction can be halted in this time. But there is stored heat from the reaction left in the core. Plus, there is still power output, equivalent to the initial value of the decay heat release rate, typically about 7% of total thermal power output.

It may take a few minutes, or at best a few 10s of seconds to actuate a steam valve of the massive size which controls the turbine feed. Presumably there is an alternate path to divert this steam, such as to additional heat exchangers in the cooling towers, right?

What I anticipate would be done if the grid tie were severed, is that instead of completely cutting generation, within a few milliseconds the exciter field may be ramped down to reduce power output to 10-20% or so, while a resistor (of more manageable size vs. one able to take full power) is switched in. Mechanical braking can also be applied, to consume another 10-20% of the turbine power. Now you are not completely unloaded, but still under-loaded 60-80%.

The problem now consists of a transient turbine speed rise then decay to stop, based on the competing dynamics of combined partial braking and power dumping working against the time it takes to divert the steam. I would expect that this control problem has been designed and validation tested to death for any plant. But I am speculating a bit here (not about the generator field, but about how the power take down is accomplished. So, since you asserted that:

"power that gets generated has to go somewhere, which is the power grid. If the nuclear power plant's connection to the grid gets severed (by bad weather, in this case), the power still has to go somewhere, or else it melts down the connecting infrastructure, and eventually triggers a nuclear meltdown situation."

Then please explain why the situation as I anticipate it is incorrect, and things will go all to hell anyway?

Fluorine and chlorine are trivial to handle compared to high level radioactive isotopes.

There are few things more unsettling than a substance where a dust sized speck can fry you within a few hours (if inhaled or otherwise ingested) or days (stuck on your exterior).

On the contrary, the pentagon is very humanoid. Stand with your arms out and your legs apart. What shape do you fit into?

Unfortunately, some of these types would in fact be happy to slaughter everyone.

That's perfectly reasonable. The asshole guy should be a consultant. The one you contract with when you absolutely have to have the 99.9th percentile experience and skill. But then he better hope there isn't a non-asshole consultant with the same or better quals. I've seen both kinds.

Bingo. While I work at a .gov lab, I've attended numerous courses and events at semiconductor and photonics companies in Si Valley. At one course (Xilinx), while helping the foreign instructor get his points across, I noticed that the class was composed predominantly of Asians, and Indians, and a few white folks. At least 2:1 non-white to white. In engineering/tech firms in Si Valley, Asian and Indian women and men are present in no obviously differing amounts. The only missing species is white females.

The dominant ethnic feature of the landscape, at least btw. the valley and S. SF, is that the hills of the West Bay are neighborhoods dominated by Chinese, Indians, and other Asians. I'm talking about the most expensive houses with the views.

No, fuck you! And fuck me too! Because politics is about force. And you and I are the ones standing at the business end of the gun barrel.

This video should be banned. No one should be permitted to even research such things. Only the truth must be allowed to be spoken: women and men are exactly equal. There are no differences whatsoever except for insignificant macroscopic anatomical form.

That's complete made up nonsense. Everyone knows that only white males would ever engage in discrimination!

Under no circumstances will SJWs allow the problems they tirade against actually be solved, or progress constituting effectively 90-99% improvement, be recognized. Thus they will certainly contribute to the problems, in the most insidious ways.

Who is doing this "guidance counceling" anyway? Is guidance counceling dominated by white males (not in my experience)? Or are the people so concerned about diversity the ones doing the discouraging--to create a self-fulfilling prophesy which can only be solved by... Guess?

No one should be telling kids what they should do or be interested in anyway. And if the kids are so weak of self respect and awareness that they need someone to tell them what to do, this is a profound endictment of the entire public school system. It simply needs to be abolished.

Guidance councelors should only be providing kids with the honest truth about what needs to be done to accomplish what the kids say they want to do. The only exception might be to show an objective comparison of effort vs. probability of payoff for special cases of very hard to enter fields, such as movie star or NFL player. But even still, if someone wants to be an NFL player and falls short, maybe they can leverage their extensive training experience into a career in physical education, research, etc.

Failures rarely have to be total.

On the contrary, "myarray[i]++" is a one-liner in 2 out of 3 of the assembly languages that I've tinkered with.

There is no "social contract."

This is all good. But first, how about simply removing the caseload by dramatically reducing the number of laws making stuff a crime like smoking a joint or even drug dealing? The funny thing about legalizing drugs is that "drug dealing" (all the bad aspects, gangs, thugs on the street corner, etc.) would go away. There would be hard drugs available from the pharmacist in bottles that look like they came from a chemical company (which they did) and legitimate businesses and www sites for soft drugs like cannabis. Now people doing legitimate economic activity would be able to participate in society instead of having to resort to a criminal underworld.

Legalize prostitution as well.

"Legalize" isn't even the right word for much of this. The correct answer is "rescind all laws pertaining to..."

And what's this shit about prosecuting kids for messaging nude pics. of themselves? It would be laughable if it weren't so sinister. Images of body parts cannot be a crime. Only kidnapping (to forcibly or deceptively gain access to someone to rape or photograph them against their will) can be a crime.

A human being's birthday suit cannot be a crime!

One more thing about prostitution for ex.: People whine that "I don't want that to go on in my neighborhood." Well fine, have a law that says you can be threatened with being charged with trespassing if you engage in such and such activity in the following private/public space. In other words, make it a matter of respecting private property, or cooperatively owned and administrated property (ie., the sidewalks and streets on our block).

But many laws are basically criminalizing things that someone finds aesthetically unpleasing. Like guys boinking each other in the butt holes. Gives me the creeps. But it's none of my business if they are doing it in private.

What about having a way for the people to vote directly to veto any law?

How about also automatic culling of case law more than say, 10 yrs old?

How about a Constitutional Amendment which requires that all laws pertaining to the ordinary citizen occupy no more than the front and back of a single letter sized page, in 10pt font, with 0.75in margins, with no more than 1/3 of the total printable area consumed by 8pt footnotes. The penalties for violating laws may consist of a single additional page, printed front and back subject to the same constraints as above.

Small businesses may be subject to laws+penalties comprising an additional 9 double-sided pages. Corps. may be subject to laws consisting of 90 additional pages, etc. Corp. law may refer to standards documents of unlimited size. Corps. and basically anyone may participate in standards setting bodies.

If you are out of space and want to pass a new law you are tough out of luck unless you rescind an existing law.

There, we've just reduced the entire CFR to a max. of 100 pages!

How about a citizen's grand jury, with the power to literally abolish government, incrementally (your local police dept. out of line? Vote them out of existence!) down to the Constitution if need be. This entity is empowered by the fact that it holds title to the National Bank upon which all gov. checks must be drawn, thus it can ultimately, if a vote of >50% of the adult population is collected to do so, completely shut down the Federal Gov. (likewise per state, municipality, etc.) by simply liquidating the Nat. Bank, thereby removing the government's ability to collect taxes or to issue debt.

This can in fact be a default outcome (sort of a dead man's switch) if the government fails to prosecute one of its own for charges brought by the citizen's grand jury (if the .gov is stupid enough to let it get this far by not prosecuting lawlessness within its ranks on its own volition.)

All laws must be written in common language. There may not be any meanings to words that the common man cannot garner by looking up words in a standard dictionary.

I'm just warming up. There are many, many more possible ideas for how to use the democratic process to restrain government. I'm usually dismayed by how utterly consistent nearly everyone's thinking is about all matters political. Hardly an original thought to be found.

I'll finalize with a few more ideas: It's likely provable that elected representatives who win popularity contests are far more likely to govern poorly than citizens selected completely at random. So I propose just that! But first there is another problem--how to solve one of the primary and legitimate complaints of libertarians: taxation is stealing!

Fixing this isn't that difficult. There shall be two kinds of citizens: 1. citizens; 2. lawful permanent residents. Everyone in those two categories can opt in to citizenship at any time, or opt. out to permanent resident status (at most once per year). Permanent residents shall have NO societal obligations except to not break criminal laws. No taxes, jury duty, draft, reporting requirements, etc. So it will be possible to just live on your land somewhere never interacting with government, and not wind up in administrative violation. This is not presently possible--which is absurd in a "free" society.

However, permanent residents must pay for all services used and they may collect no social benefits not paid for (this does not preclude voluntarily *purchasing* government sponsored "social security" insurance. It's as simple as that! You drove on the county road for 442 miles this month, you just pay the monthly bill, or toll, or whatever mechanism is set up.

Citizens OTOH have the obligations of paying taxes, jury duty, draft (very unlikely, since war would be avoided except when actually attacked by enemies not self-created), and most interestingly: random selection to serve in what used to be elected government offices such as president, representatives, etc. There can be some constraints here, such as requiring certain classes of college degrees for President and so forth.

The point is that citizenship is voluntary, and carries both privileges and obligations. But it is not enslavement! You can opt out, and back in.

Permanent residence is NOT intended to be a 2nd class citizenship. Rather, it may be an essential feature in enabling people to do things such as retire abroad without all sorts of totalitarian fetters, or temporarily deal with a lengthy illness making you incapable of responding to jury duty, tax returns etc. for a couple years. Right now, simply being infirm can cause you trouble with the law! Free people should be able to disengage if they choose, and not run afoul of the law.

Finally, If the government has knowledge that a citizen or permanent resident is about to commit a crime, it is obliged to warn the person that they should cease and desist from continuing what they are doing lest they commit a violation. Also, no government officer may lie about the law to any citizen, p.r., visitor, etc. Most non-felony type violations should have only a warning as the penalty for 1st time offense.

Finally finally: No one may be forced from their property for any reason if they haven't been convicted of a crime. The .gov may recommend evacuation for ex. in case of natural disaster, may offer a ride, etc., but if someone chooses to stay, it is a crime to force them to leave.