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Comment Re:Learned something today (Score 1) 48

Looking into the sources and tracing a bit:

The city has assessed the vast majority of the fines—more than 85 percent—against owners of Asian descent. A SMUD analyst avoided searching homes in a predominantly white neighborhood, while a police official removed non-Asian names from one of the lists generated by SMUD before forwarding the information on for further investigation.

source.

If they actually did this, well, that's like how the NRA forced most "may issue" states to be effectively "shall issue" for various weapon permits.

When the police can't come up with a good reason for denying the black woman's permit request when she has letters from a ex-boyfriend stalker threatening to kill her, who is due to be released from prison soon, but the white doctor living in a gated community gets it first thing, there are questions to be asked. Especially when permits for black people have a 99% reject rate while whites get them 90% of the time.

Comment Re: Indonesia also (Score 2) 112

Just to be clear, I believe that part of the problem was that the city government was broke and basically in receivership. Ergo, the politicians in Flint were not actually in control of the water contracts, it was an emergency manager appointed by Governor Rick Snyder(R).

I remembered the broke part and not in control, looked up the specifics.

Basically, to cut costs, the manager stopped the practice of piping water from Detroit and started using the historically very polluted and corrosive Flint River, without adequate testing and treatment (itself actually a violation of federal law).
Because many of the homes still had lead service pipes, going from basic to acidic caused the protective oxidization on the pipes to dissolve, putting excessive lead into the water.

It eventually made national news, but by all measures, this is still a far better situation than what Tehran is facing.

Switching back to the old water source or adding more controls like running the water through a filter of crushed limestone to correct the PH fixes the issues in Flint. No such easy solution is possible for Tehran.

Comment Re:Electric engines are golden... (Score 1) 126

I commute about 150 miles to work. What I need is a car I can commute in and then after a short period use again to get around locally. I will have used my 300 or mile range by the time I am home. I'd like to be able to use the car again for an evening outing.I suppose a hybrid is mor the fit for me that a straight EV.

man your comment sure stirred upa nest of ^%$% :)
cheers and be well.

Comment Re:They haven't solved any of the social problems (Score 5, Interesting) 43

It wasn't just the generators or sea wall. Another one of the problems is that they never installed the hydrogen reformers designed to burn off the hydrogen buildup from an overheating core safely.

As recommended by the reactor manufacturer and installed on US plants.

There would have been a lot less boom with them installed.

Comment LMAO (Score 1) 52

Because adult strangers are ALWAYS a danger. The poor kids are more likely to be molested by their local gym teacher or "Uncle Fred" than they are a total stranger adult. I'm really concerned that todays kids are not going to learn how to interact with ANYONE, much less a total stranger. How do they get through life ?

Comment Re:Your tax dollars hard at work (Score 1) 74

1. You have a point. Current reactors are around 30% efficient because they have to have liquid water to cool the reactor, and there are limits to that even with very high pressures. Thus carnot cycle limitations apply. It basically means that a nuclear reactor has to produce 3GW thermal (GWt), to produce 1GWe, so it has to exhaust 2 GWt as waste. Increase the temperature to the point you get 50%, and suddenly you only need to generate 2GWt to produce 1GWe, cutting waste heat in half. A much easier problem to solve at that point.
2. As you identify, there's a limit to what you can dump into the Earth. It just transfers heat too slowly to be practical in most situations. It's actually a problem I ran into when looking at geothermal heat pumps up north, like North Dakota and Alaska. You can actually end up cooling the earth so much as to lose efficiency or effectiveness over time. You might actually want to run some solar thermal panels and pump heat into the system during the summer. Between it being one of the more expensive options and actually less effective than air cooling, it isn't on my standard list.
3. Salt vats would still be a form of air cooling. Better options might be to list waste heat scavenging for zone heating or other industrial purposes. For example, it could be used to help dry new lumber, paper, fabrics, and food (dehydration). Laundries could use it for hot water for washing. Greenhouse heating, and aquaculture.
4. Micro-reactors still require cooling as per the above, and aren't actually in production right now, sadly.
To be clear, I'm not fixated upon large WCRs. I was just looking at the water-cooling restraint many fixate upon.

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