One of the most expensive parts of a nuclear reactor is the pressure vessel (the big steel vessel that contains the fuel rods). The life of the nuclear reactor is determined by the life of the pressure vessel. Piping and valves do get replaced, but you just can't swap out the big vessel. By the time the pressure vessel reaches end of life it is more cost effective to just tear the whole thing down than to try retrofit the entire plant. Given the new designs of plants there is almost nothing from the old plants that could be salvaged.

One option that you can go with is the Asus Eee Slate. This is a Windows based tablet that has a Wacom stylus. It is designed for handwriting and even is smart enough to know the difference between the stylus and your hand so you can rest your hand on the screen and still write. It also features full laptop specs. The down sides to this tablet is size and price. It has a 12" screen and is quite a bit heavier than an iPad which makes it harder to use while holding it in your hands. It will also cost you around $1000.

Another option is the Asus Transformer. This is the option that I currently have and I use it for taking notes in my classes. The app that I use most of the time for taking notes is Repligo Reader. My teachers post their lecture notes online as PDFs. Repligo Reader does a wonderful job of allowing me to take notes right on the PDF. The handwriting feature is a little rough on it, but I find I don't have to write as much when I already have the teachers notes as part of my notes.

Another wonderful app is SuperNote. Supernote does a wonderful job of allowing handwriting and typing and allows you mix it up in the same note page. It also allows you embed pictures, videos, or audio recordings. This is the app of choice for me if lecture notes are not posted. The Asus Transformer also has a keyboard dock that extends battery life, allows connection of USB devices, and makes typing easy while still enabling tablet functionality.

The exciting(?) thing about this study though is how small of an area is contaminated beyond the legal limit. Since Cs is the major radionuclide that was released then these mappings should also be closely correlated to background doses. Given the conservative estimates that are used for setting regulations I am even more convinced that the general Japanese public is in essentially no danger from the radiation. I would like to see a more detailed analysis of the area right around the plant but given the picture in the article it gives me hope.

Many in the anti-nuclear crowd like to spout off and say that Fukushima has rendered vast amounts of land unusable for generations. This news actually bodes well for the Japanese people that in a couple of years all the land that was previously not part of the power generating stations might be returned to original state.

Here is another point-of-view from an Android tablet owner and user. I absolutely love my tablet and I use it quite a bit. I am a graduate student and am always carrying a backpack, which does help with the portability, but I have found it to be incredibly useful for me.

One of the great things that I love about it is that I can hold it in my hands easily when I ride the bus. I have about a 45 minute commute each way. I can use the tablet to read literature on the bus and easily use one finger to highlight text in a pdf. I also use it in my classes to take notes. I get copies of the professors slides and take notes on the slides. I know that I can print the slides, but by the end of a semester it gets pretty heavy to carry all of the slides from all of my classes. On this one small device I can hold all my literature and class notes.

I also find it very useful for meetings. If my adviser questions anything I can bring up the supporting literature, or I can show him the data that I have collected. My tablet can also open and edit Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files. It also has HDMI output so I can use it to give presentations.

One thing that my tablet does that a netbook does not is rotate. When the screen is as small as it is, there are times that it works best in landscape mode and there are times that portrait mode works a lot better. Two-finger touch also lets me quickly resize the screen. This helps with websurfing when you try to click on a tiny link. Even with my fat fingers I can quickly resize the page to where I don't miss the link I want to press.

I don't use my tablet for gaming and really don't have any games on it at all, yet it is still one of the best purchases that I have made. I have the Asus Transformer so I can use it as a netbook also if I have a lot of typing to do. It is such a versatile device that just works in a wide variety of circumstances.

I stick with Windows for no other reason than I don't have the time to get everything working on Linux. I also don't have time for the learning curve. I know that Linux has come a long way in the last few years, but for right now, I just don't have the time.

The trend is very encouraging, and I am excited about solar (even as a nuke). I just wish that storage was required of home solar arrays instead of intermittently pulling from and selling back to the grid. I would love to install solar and have a DC grid in my house to run my lights and to plug all of my electronics into. It just isn't affordable right now.

The reason why there has been a lot of focus on new designs is because anti-nuclear groups are calling for retrofits on old plants that just do not make any financial sense. The anti groups are arguing that nuclear is unsafe because the plants are getting old and that almost all of the internals should be replaced. In the same breath they are arguing that because nuclear is unsafe we shouldn't build any new plants. How is the industry supposed to respond? We can spend the cost of a new plant completely rebuilding existing reactors, and still have 50 year-old designs or we can utilize the latest technologies and build new plants.

Many people in the nuclear industry are ok with phasing out the old plants and we do recognize that it needs to be done. However, we also recognize that solar and wind are not ready to fill the void caused by shutting down all our nuclear plants. This means that most of that capacity would be replaced by coal. In the interest of everyone around the world, we do not want more coal plants. Most people in the nuclear industry (at least the ones that I have met) care about the environment. We do not want to see more coal plants being built. We are ok with decommissioning the old nuclear plants, but please, let us build new ones.

Forgive me if I fail to see what you mean by this. Do you mean that I should be scared about living in Chernobyl or Fukushima because of radiation? The truth is, there are those of us who do research who regularly get higher doses than what you would receive by living in those areas. There are also people around the world who live with higher background doses. If your fear is radiation then there are other places in the world/occupations that you could tell a person to go that would result in them receiving a higher dose.

I get tired of people telling me that if I don't think that there are problems with Fukushima or Chernobyl why don't I go there. Or with those that tell me that if I think that nuclear waste is safe why don't I store it in my basement. I do not fear the waste because I study it, I work with it, and I know what it can, and cannot do. I would love to be able to separate out the Sr from the waste and put it in a capsule in my basement. With that I could heat my house and have all the hot water that I wanted for a hundred years.

Now, with that said, I do believe that we need to exercise caution and try to keep the dose to the public as low as reasonably achievable. What happened in Fukushima is a disaster. I feel for all of those who were displaced from their homes. But we also need to look at the risks that are associated with the elevated radiation levels in the different areas. Although the levels are higher than the normal background in many area, the levels are still so low that the probability of health effects is negligible.

The article that you link to has quite a few shortcomings. Some of them are outlined here

The end-game of a majority of people putting solar on their homes is higher utility rates for everyone. Utilities buy back the electricity that the solar panels overproduce at a high price. The production from the solar panels is intermittent and so the utilities cannot rely on them. This creates even greater swing in the demand that utilities see, yet they still have to to be able to produce enough to cover everyone if the sun isn't shining.

Although the installed cost of solar may be less than the cost of nuclear, if we tried relying on solar we would find the the low capacity factor of solar, combined with the cost of grid storage would quickly move the price well beyond affordable.

I have been preaching this for a while now, we really need to reform K-12 education. I believe that the amount of material that is covered by 12th grade could be covered by the end of 10th grade (with adjustments to the system, of course). This would allow the last 2 years of high school to be for technical training or college generals. It would not cost public school systems that much more money and students with just a high school education would be much more productive in the work force. Also, if students can graduate high school with an associates degree then all they would need is 2 years of college (half the student loans) for a BS.

This plan would require massive restructuring of the K-12 system, but the system needs it anyway.

How about the sliding locks on the lavatories in airplanes? You have a latch that you stick your finger on and you slide it to unlock. There are also "locks" (plastic channels) that attach on the top of bi-fold doors that you have to slide to unlock. Heck even the latches on many bathroom stalls are "slide to unlock". Slide to unlock is nothing new.

Why are temporary storage sites unsafe? The fuel pools are not the best places to be storing fuels, I will grant you that, but what is wrong with dry cask storage? Those casks are really robust and can withstand a great deal of damage. There is also very little chance of Cs and Sr escaping into the air*. Sr is often listed as an element of concern with radioactive waste, but in accidents it is always the Cs you hear about. The reason is that Cs is a vapor somewhere above 600C. The fuel can reach these temperatures and so Cs will be released as a gas into the air. In dry cask storage the fuel has cooled down and the releases will be limited to those noble gasses that are still active. *There is a chance of escape if the casks are hit with sufficient explosives to blast the spent fuel into the air. Of course, to completely vaporize concrete casks of the that size would require nuclear weapons.

Uranium does not have a high uptake in plants. The greatest danger is having contaminated dust on the leaves. The roots of the plant do not readily uptake the Uranium. Uranium is also not highly metabolized in animals, the body will get rid of about half of the uranium in 15 days. Uptake from the water is also not typically a huge issue. The uranium is so dense that it quickly falls to the bottom. Uranium is not terribly likely to end up in the food or water that you consume.

I think one of the major problems (at least in the US) is the lack of competitiveness of K-12 education. I personally believe that we could do a lot more with K-12 education to get it to the point where students could finish the current equivalent of a HS diploma after 10th grade. This would allow for 2 years of technical training for those who do not want to go to college or 2 years to get all of the college-level generals out of the way. This plan would not require the states to pay more for a child's education, plus it could allow the completion of BS level education in 2 years of college. This would cut the total amount that a student has to pay out in half. Then if a student decides that they want more education it is their choice.

The problem with states subsidizing education is that graduates don't always stay in the state they graduate from. You could argue that the net flux across states is 0, but this is not true, especially for mid-west states. For states that are suffering job loss, a large migration of students out of the state would further cripple an already fragile economy.