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Comment Re:From the laundromat (Score 1) 88

There's no engineering in your proposal. It's just an off-the-cuff suggestion. Can't be done at that site, without substantial infrastructure added; and, the fuel would need to be sent out for reprocessing before it could be fed into the breeder. There are no reprocessing plants handling commercial fuel in the United States.

Comment simple solution (Score 1) 381

Simple solution: everyone passes through a scanner on the way out. If they're carrying any form of flash drive (including smart phones or music players), hard drives, flash memory sticks, any form of CD/DVD media, tapes, floppy disks, or punch cards, then upon exit they are immediately electrocuted via metal plates in the floor. Problem solved.

Comment Re:Punch tape (Score 2) 329

Don't use plastic tape, use stainless steel. laser cut the pattern into it and it should last a long time, through floods and fire, hot and cold. Store it with a primer, in case you die and a future geek needs to decrypt the encoding. Avoid storing around people who like to play with thermite or explosives. Also avoid storing next to large vats of acid, unless treated with an acid resistant coating. I would recommend not living near a lava spewing volcano. Might want to avoid nuclear weapons detonation sites as well -- the steel might not survive that. Otherwise, I think it should be ok.

Comment Re:Braaaaaaaiiiinnns! (Score 1) 104

Any and all IP which they claim to own. Patents, trademarks, copyrights, licenses, source, legal documentation, real assets, anything that can be registered to have value and used in future court cases. Every scrap of paper. Every disk. All of it. Then lock it in a vault labelled "Danger -- Zombies -- Do NOT Open"

Comment Re:Braaaaaaaiiiinnns! (Score 1) 104

This is one of those zombies that won't quit with a simple hit on the noggin. It's the kind you have to burn to ash, then scatter the ashes to the wind so that the ash won't try to reform a body and come after you. Hopefully, the courts will completely resolve all the claims in the case this round. It's not worth the legal cost; but, IBM should stand its ground and go after all the assets of SCO.

Comment Re:Disasters (Score 3, Informative) 293

Review those designs and accident reports. Two too many failures; but, they could have been mitigated.

Graphite moderated reactors were considered too dangerous for commercial use by the late '50's or early '60's by every country except the U.S.S.R. It was cheap and they needed power so they built quite a few of them. It is difficult to know exactly what happened; but, it appears an ill advised and unauthorized experiment was run on the system, with all the safeties turned off. When the reactor crashed, the operator(s) panicked and they tried to do something which was known to cause explosive power surges which could result in catastrophic failures. And it did. This should not have happened.

Fukushima Diachi was a 1960's design that is considered quite dated and had a few known failure modes. The company operating the reactors basically refused to do all the expensive updates to improve the reactor's safety. They also ignored warnings that the sea wall was inadequate for worst case tsunami, which happened. It flooded their electrical system(s) and generators, which were at or below grade level. Because the earthquake knocked out their grid power supply, they had zero options for power. This led to the loss of cooling. Then, for political reasons, the operator tried to downplay the damage, rather than ask for help when they desperately needed it. It did not have to be this way.

Frankly, with the aging inventory of reactor systems operating in the world, I do not expect these to be the last. Having said that, for the purposed of full disclosure, I live near two large power reactors, a major naval base, and one of the two shipyards where they build, overhaul and test nuclear powered ships in the U.S. I don't fear it.

Waste storage is something we do need to solve. Either through re-use or through deep storage somewhere. I don't have an answer for you that's based on real engineering.

Comment And... They'll ruin it (Score 1) 157

I like my Nook. I only use it for reading so it's limitations compared to a tablet never bothered me. Microsoft will likely rip out its basic Android underpinnings and replace them with Windows. The result will be a seemingly underpowered "general purpose" device that tries to do everything (but often not well). More importantly, the battery life will be cut substantially due to Windows lower efficiency. They'll effectively ruin the Nook as an e-reader.

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