31 GW is still pretty damn high... that's like 31 average-sized nuclear power plants dedicated 100% to running the internet... or like 25 simultaneous lightning strikes to get a fraction of a second of porn.

I interpreted that sentence to mean 270 TWh over the 3 years it takes to double internet traffic (according to the article). That's still a little over 10 GW.

hours in 3 years: 3*365.25*24 = 26298 h
average power over that period: 270 TWh / 26298 h = 10267 MW

So... like 8 simultaneous lightning bolts to run the internet for a fraction of a second?

Please provide links to this so-called "SAGE report", because all I can find are self-published opinion pieces by anti-nuclear activists such as Amory Lovins and Peter Bradford... who, despite being a former commissioner of the NRC, has a long record of being anti-nuke.

OK, I'll bite... here's what I think is going through the head of someone developing a renewable energy project:

I don't understand your numbers, your analysis, or what you're trying to conclude. Why didn't you just publish a link to the DOE Transparent Cost Database, which is linked from the page you cited?

http://en.openei.org/apps/TCDB/

From the Levelized Cost of Energy visualization, I see these costs for nuclear and solar PV, in $/kWh:
* nuclear .. range of 0.04 to 0.12, median 0.06
* solar PV .. range of 0.15 to 0.59, median 0.28

There, that's more understandable.

Arg... URL got cut off.

http://canadianenergyissues.com/2010/11/17/ontario-nuclear-power-moderates-subsidizes-the-cost-of-gas-and-renewables-an-investigation-into-the-price-of-political-correctness/

That's the way the Ontario market is set up ... payouts are almost always higher than market price. The difference is made up by the "Global Adjustment", which is generally pretty huge and goes mostly to non-nuclear generators. The sentence that you wrote about "what a deal" nuclear is for Ontario is accurate, but incomplete; its true meaning is not what you intended. Here's what you should have written.

For more info, see the following:

Ha... that's what I get for skimming!

False. In Toronto, I've had bacon & bacon (with cheese!) on a kaiser. Yes, that's right... Canadian bacon topped with regular bacon (and cheese!). Even better, the same place had ham & bacon & bacon sandwiches too.

Canadians (except the Jewish or Muslim varieties) love them some pork.

Just last month, the Ontario Appeals Court ruled that a cellphone that's not digitally locked (such as with a password) can be searched without a warrant... but if locked, a warrant is required.

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/13/02/21/1343231/cellphone-privacy-in-canada-encryption-triggers-need-for-warrant

Now the Canadian Supreme Court says that access to text messages requires a warrant. This is interesting because the Ontario case from last month involved text messages that were searched without a warrant.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/02/cops-can-search-mobile-phoneonly-if-its-not-password-protected/

I would assume that the Canadian Supreme Court ruling takes precedence over the Ontario Appeals Court ruling... for text messages. However, photos, video, chat logs, etc apparently don't get the same protection.

So... lock your phone with a password, no matter what... even if it's just a minimal one that's easy to type.

Maybe the merging of "vaguely related things" into "one giant monster" was the wrong choice... but only if you're looking back at it from the current reality of powerful hardware available at low cost. Back then, it was the right choice. A monolithic, fully pre-emptive, multitasking, virtual memory based operating system with a common application programming interface was the innovation that made ubiquitous computing possible.

Okay, this all sounds awesome. I can see how it's not like a traditional operating system... it spawns servers dynamically in response to external requests, it must provide a way to control those servers while also facilitating (and mediating) their access to hardware, and I imagine that it probably has a way to receive and process internal commands that may alter how it is operating.

So how is it not an OS?

Yeah... unfortunately, the containment failures at Fukushima matched the models pretty well. I've posted it before, but the following document is illuminating... see the section titled "BWR 3/4 Perspectives", including the parts regarding station blackout (SBO), transients with loss of coolant injection, and transients with loss of decay heat removal (DHR).

http://www.osti.gov/bridge/purl.cover.jsp?purl=%2F205567-BJIEKT%2Fwebviewable%2F

I still don't understand why TEPCO didn't install hardened containment vents back in the '90s. If they had, things would have gone very differently. They must have known about NRC Generic Letter 89-16.

https://forms.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/gen-comm/gen-letters/1989/gl89016.html

The other thing I don't understand is why Unit 1 didn't handle the situation better than the others. It should have because it has an Isolation Condenser instead of Reactor Core Isolation Cooling... I'm not sure that anyone has yet explained what happened with this.

The technology and goals were actually very different. In the US, you had regulator-imposed general design criteria that said things like "thou shalt have a void-coefficient of reactivity that is negative" and "thy shutdown systems shall be fast acting" and "thou shalt have diverse and redundant safety systems" and "when the shit hits the fan, thou shalt contain thy fission products".

In Soviet Russia, reactor design imposes criteria on YOU! Design reactor for maximal plutonium production and easy removal of fuel ---> minimal containment, minimal redundant systems, positive void coefficient, control rods that have graphite followers. So, when you begin to lose control of the reactor and you insert control rods, the graphite followers go in first, spiking reactivity and power, which causes your coolant to flash to steam, increasing void fraction, and because your void coefficient is positive, power goes UP even more instead of going down, and then the few safety systems you have don't work because you shut them all down or they suck to begin with, and then reactor (not containment, REACTOR) goes boom and chunks of FUEL and FLAMING GRAPHITE are forcefully ejected into the air.

So, then, why did Fukushima fail so badly, even though it had fast-acting shutdown systems, a negative void coefficient, diverse and redundant safety systems, and a containment design that satisfied all of the regulations that existed at the time? That's the real story here, and its moral has a lot to do with the idea of "beyond design basis" accidents and designing to be more robust than required by regulation.

You forgot the list of things that your wife was probably capable of doing on her own before marriage, but now that you're around, apparently you are the only one that can do them.

Also, make sure these are phrased as questions so that the hapless husband has a chance to trigger the "wretched harpy" mode with one poorly worded reply (or one that's just stated too audibly).

1. Can you carry these groceries for me?
2. Can you get the telephone for me?
3. Can you take this to my parent's place for me?
4. Can you change this lightbulb for me?
5. Can you put the mixer away for me?
6. ... and so on ...