Those 3 things are technologies developed by Experimental Particle Physicists who wanted to test Particle Physics Theory.

Then there is this little thing called the world-wide-web invented by this guy Tim Burners-Lee to enable Particle Physics working at CERN to better collaborate.

Do these spin-offs count to CERN or Particle Physics net economic worth?

WP7 has been on the market for over a year. In that time they've atacted 1.1 million FB users. Further up the thread you see there 99 million IOS FB users and 88 million Android FB users. So WP7 is around 1% of market. Like Linux on the desktop. It has no traction. On the other hand MS has a truck load of money in the bank and will keep on trying.

The orginal 1972 "Blue Marble" showed a beautiful collection of cold front spun up out of antartica. It would be great to get some composite images of the other side the world too.

How would you know it's a good story without reading more than a few chapters?

I think it's a good story because I've read it more than a dozen times.
It is by far my most read book. I don't think I've managed to read another book more than twice.

Whoops it's 15 MW of decay heat after 3 days..

From the document you posted:

"The steel containment vessel provides the heat transfer surface that removes heat from inside
the containment and rejects it to the atmosphere. Heat is removed from the containment vessel
by continuous natural circulation flow of air. During an accident, the air cooling is supplemented
by evaporation of water. The water drains by gravity from a tank located on top of the
containment shield building.

Calculations have shown the AP1000 to have a significantly reduced large release frequency
following a severe accident core damage scenario. With only the normal PCS air cooling, the
containment stays well below the predicted failure pressure for at least 24 hours. Other factors
include improved containment isolation and reduced potential for LOCAs outside of
containment. This improved containment performance supports the technical basis for
simplification of offsite emergency planning." .......

"Long-term accident mitigation - A major safety advantage of the AP1000 versus current-day
PWRs is that long-term accident mitigation is maintained by the passive safety systems without
operator action and without reliance on offsite or onsite ac power sources. For the limiting
design basis accidents, the core coolant inventory in the containment for recirculation cooling
and boration of the core is sufficient to last for at least 30 days, even if inventory is lost at the
design basis containment leak rate." ......

Where does that document say things go to hell after 3 days if the coolant is not topped up? It seems to me that 60 MW of heat could easily be removed via natural convection over the large surface area of the steel containment vessel.

Could you provide page numbers for the 0-3 days, 3-7 days, 7 days and beyond? I couldn't find them.

Hmm looks like my calculations were wrong by a factor of 2.

This web page from MIT:

http://mitnse.com/2011/03/16/what-is-decay-heat/

Shows the curve for the Fukoshima reactors. The table shows the decay heat dropping to 0.5% of full power after 3 days (not the 0.2% I stated above).

I agree that the sensible and prudent thing to do would be to top up the water in the tank (lets face it, you have 3 days to get a firetruck onsite) . In any case the most exhaustive analysis of the AP1000 estimates a large radiative leakage at 1x10^-7 per reactor year. I would happily take those odds. My per year risk of dying through accidents is 1x10-3 years. So I'm 10^-4 less likely to have an AP1000 reactor leak than die through some random accident.

Well the outer shell of the container vessel would get hotter without the evaporative cooling but by then the decay heat would have subsided to the point where convective and radiative cooling is sufficient to prevent a core melt. See post (#38469106)

wrong. there are passive *designs* like that, but this AP1000 needs someone to top off the passive cooling water tank within 72 hours of coolant failure, else the reactor is fucked

Not true. See above posts (#38469106) and (#38469070)

The reservoir at the top of the AP1000 is used to provide evaporative cooling to the outer shell of the containment structure.
After 3 days the decay heat has reduced to around 0.2% of the original power. At this point convective and radiative cooling of the containment vessel is sufficient to dissipate the heat generated from nuclear decays in the fuel. The water within the containment vessel just circulates within the structure and is driven by the heat of the nuclear fuel. It is never vented.