Equally macabre... chemotherapy for treating cancer was developed in part after the autopsies of victims of an accidental release of mustard gas in WWII.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_cancer_chemotherapy

I'm not saying there aren't effects that make it appear as if a "balance" is being maintained - only that they are happenstance, the appearance of "balance" an artifact of the human tendency to see patterns where there are none.

Our planet maintains a balance so far

No, it doesn't. There's no active mechanism nor guiding intelligence that maintains any "balance". The current conditions are pure happenstance.

They made a formal announcement that they'll be disconnecting from the US half of the ISS at the end of 2013 after approximately 10 years of talking about it.

So this "formal announcement" joins the last dozen or so "formal announcements"?
 
Seriously, how can anyone watch the Russian space program over any span of time and remain credulous enough to take their "formal announcements" at face value? They haven't even been able to build and launch 90% of the ISS modules they've "formally announced".

Well, that's just a case of different faulty assumption - that everyone is motivated by money.

some of these plans actually seem to involve enlisted geeks wearing hilariously incongruous camo in front of banks of monitors and 'cyber warrior'-ing. How is selling that going to work?

What, other than hilariously narrowminded stereotyping of geeks, makes you think it wouldn't work? Not all geeks are the anti-authoritarian pseduo-libertarian stereotype so beloved of Slashdot. (My service, the USN Submarine Service, had and has more geeks than you can shake a stick at.)

Shouldn't the "victims" be prosecuted also, for poor IT management?

No.

Against Xenon that is piling up when you power down a reactor: you can't do anything at all.

I never claimed otherwise. Are you really so fucking stupid that you think I am making that claim?
 

The steady production of Xenon does not matter.
It is compensated by enough neutron production. Hence it only accumulates till a balance of Xenon versus neutrons is reached.

This is so fucked up and backwards I don't even know where to begin...

I'm done replying to you as you very obviously have no reading comprehension and no clue what you're talking about.

Funny... the grandparent suspects the article is wrong because it provides no citations. Your answer? To assert the article is wrong, without providing citations.

Ofc modern reactors can run for years without Xenon poisoning.
Silly!

You have the reading comprehension of used wad of chewing gum.

The Xenon poisoning happens when you _shut it down_ or _power it down_ to a lower power output level.

Absolutely incorrect - xenon accumulates in the reactor (to a level determined by a variety of complex factors) and poisons the reaction even during steady state operations, and this must be accounted for in the design of the reactor. (As I said, for an example of this, look up the first run of the Hanford plutonium production reactors - which were completely shut down by xenon poisoning.) Xenon does not magically appear or magically start absorbing neutrons just because power has been reduced or the reactor has been shut down.
 

This happens with _all_ reactors currently in use.

I never claimed that xenon did not accumulate in all reactors currently in use - I merely pointed out that the behavior of civilian reactors with regards to xenon poisoning is the result of a deliberate design choice and operating philosophies, not a law of nature. Again, consider the difference in behavior between the first run of the Hanford plants and a modern plant.
 

I understand very well about what I talk. After all I work in that area since decades.

No, you very obviously do not know what you're talking about.

I don't see how these delayed neutrons can be responsible for the majority of the 7% decay heat.

It doesn't all come from delayed neutrons. It's a combination of delayed neutrons, fissions due to the delayed neutrons, and decay of the daughter products. It's both in what I wrote and the Wikipedia article on decay heat which I linked to.

You are wrong about the design choice.

[[Citation Needed]].
 

I suggest to google

You rely on Google. I'll rely on actual experience with nuclear power plants and decades of research.
 

There is no design that avoids having decay products like Xenon that prevent you from holding down the reactor in the wrong tome window. Sorry that is a /. myth. Even if it was true it would not matter, as we are talking about current reactors and why the current ones either have to power up quickly or have to wait a few hours to do so.

Google the operating history of Hanford plutonium production reactors - which were completely shut down by xenon poisoning when they were first started. Then consider modern civilian reactors - which can run for months or years without being shut down by xenon poisoning.

And then kindly fuck off. Because you have no clue what you're talking about - you're a parrot mouthing words you do not understand.

Every few years we read about long lost civilizations that were found by aerial footage. I remember a handfull of years ago people were using google earth to locate some. Its always interesting when the news comes out. but 99% of the time once its "found" thats the end of it for us, no more news ever comes out.

Plenty of news comes out - if you're following the relevant news sources. If you rely on mass/popular media (which relies on sex and shock to sell, and includes Slashdot), all you're going to get is sizzle - the steak is in the specialized news.

I wonder how many TV companies would shovel over billions for the rights to broadcast "The Real World"/"Survivor"/"Big Brother" Mars for long term funding.

Pretty much none I suspect. The show would have to be a top hit, year after year, in multiple large markets to even come close to paying for the costs of the mission. The major American networks pay, collectively, 3.1 billion per annum to the NFL for broadcast rights - and the NFL has a *HUGE* built in audience. (Averaging 22 million per game - the last season of Big Brother in the US averaged about 6 million per episode.) On top of that, the big drama draws (voting someone off the island/evicting them from the house, alliances, etc..) of such shows are essentially impossible for Mars One.

What you write is complete nonsense.

There is no 'neutron capture' taking 15 minutes.
Either it smashes an uranium atom, that is called fission, or it is captured by boron ...

Not entirely nonsense, he just gets the mechanism wrong - what's actually delayed is neutron release.
 
 

That means, the decaying products of the fission reaction produce so much Xenon and Boron that the neutrons of an start attempt get captured by them. Hence a new 'controlled' fission reaction is not possible, until those elements decay further.

That takes hours, up to days. This is the main reason why nuclear plants can only be used very limited for load following (if you power it down considerably, you have to make sure you either don't need it full powered soon, or you know you will power it back up VERY soon)

You're correct in your assertion that daughter products can inhibit or delay reactor restart - but you're incorrect in asserting this is why nuclear power plants can't be used except for minimal load following. That's a design choice, not a law of nature. Civilian power plants are can't be used for load following because they're designed to run under more-or-less steady state conditions for safety and economic reasons. Naval power plants on the other hand are designed to operate as load followers because of the need to respond quickly to throttle commands and other demands on the plant. Even though they work on the same physical principles, the detailed engineering is different.