Comment Link to the source (Score 3, Informative) 259
TFA does not give a link to this so-called catalog. Does anyone here have the link?
TFA does not give a link to this so-called catalog. Does anyone here have the link?
It takes more than science to make a power plant. It takes engineering too.
I heard that one must deal with temperature gradients as high as 1 million degrees C per meter to extract the power from a tokamak.
500 MW electric means 1000-1500 MW thermal. That's a lot of power. If it is radiated in a small volume, the power density is sky high.
Is anyone at ITER even working on that problem? There is no guarantee that it is solvable.
Corporate personhood is *not* a good thing, no matter what you corporate sycophants think. Elevating a corporation to the same level in the law as an individual is a recipe for abuse, and it's rife in the USA.
Corporations should have a set of *limited* and *enumerated* rights that are secondary to individuals, not personhood.
And, yes, there is a reason corporate personhood exists... it's because robber barons in the 1800s wanted that way. Corporate rights aren't sent to us by God.
I read somewhere that if corporations were not persons, then they could not be sued. IANAL but I think I see the logic. Can the defendant or plaintiff in a lawsuit be anything other than "a person?" Albeit an abstract person.
Be careful before you retort with "sure, why not?" We could end up sinking the courts with infinite suits pitting machines against machines. My PC wants to sue your iPad.
No doubt some Slashdotter will contradict me, but I'll say that all laws apply only to "people." Only "people" can own anything. How could it ever be different?
If you don't want a grid connection for backup purposes, then you cease to be a utility company and they have no say about what you do.
Others, like the fire marshall, or code inspector, or UL Labs, may have things to say, but not the utility.
The thing that killed many previous fuel cell research projects was not size, efficiency or cost but rather short lifetimes.
TFA is silent on lifetime.
I'll bet that this research was sponsored by the NSA.
Why worry? Because Monsanto is not doing their work in secret and Monsanto's goal is not to kill everyone on the planet.
A nut modifying a flu virus might indeed be trying to kill everyone.
We are approaching the point where a grad student, or even a gifted high school student can cook up something genetically dangerous, then release it out his/her bedroom window.
A politician (I think it was John Brennan) recently said something like this, "Society must learn to deal not only with radical groups, but also with individuals feeling isolated and discontented. By 2030, such individuals will be able to create world threatening pathogens at home." Sorry, I don't have the link to the source.
I think he is right. It is futile to focus enforcement solely on those like Montsanto openly digging with genes. Millions of people are being educated in life sciences. We must look much deeper at what makes people like Timothy McVeigh so angry and alienated.
The democratic system where the majority rules 100% of the time guarantees that there will be individuals who are on the losing side 100% of the time and whose voices are never listened to. How are they supposed to feel?
>Just saying "air gap" it is I'm afraid a trite solution that will not meet the "smart grid" requirement to adjust energy flows
> dynamically based on a mixture of large-area and local algorithms.
Statements like that make me mad. When you turn on a 100 watt light bulb 100 watts of power are dynamically rerouted to your house and the extra power needed is automatically added to the generation schedules of multiple remote power plants using a mixture of large-area and local algorithms. What's more, it has worked like that since the 1880s. How the f did you think it worked all your life?
A few charlatans hoping to pocket $100 billion of government handouts (while sharing none of the accountability for grid reliability) promoted this idea of smart algorithms to reroute power to where its needed most. It's all bullshit.
The security alert linked in the summary says that the attacks were on the administrative lines of the emergency services, not the 911 lines. The summary and the Slashdot headline are bogus.
Instead of googlebar make it ogööglebar.
Are you talking about osmosis or reverse osmosis? There is a thermodynamic limit to the osmosis process, but reverse osmosis uses high pressure pumps and wastes lots of energy.
I'm not aware of any thermodynamic limit to reverse osmosis efficiency. Can you provide a link?
If this turns out to be as good as it sounds, the financial and social impacts will be staggering.
Citizens also have a right to self defense. So what if you suspect that your name might be on the kill list. You can't know for sure because the kill list is secret. What can you do to defend yourself? Launch your own drones against the officials in charge of the kill list?
Absurdities lead to absurdities.
I read once that 98% of America's high level nuclear waste comes from military programs.
Why is it then that 98% of the hot air voiced is about civilian uses?
With your bare hands?!?