I thought about it, and I've come to a definite conclusion. . .

I don't know bupkus about linear accelerators, so I'll let the scientists and engineers who DO KNOW figure it out.

Honestly, it depends on how the laws are written that legalize a former crime. It's perfectly possible (and I suspect this may be part of the Washington and Colorado initiatives, though I haven't checked) for a new law to state that a former law is repealed, and also that any prior convictions under the previous law shall be vacated.

According to multiple sources I checked, the feed-in tariff for solar power is around 22 cents per kWh. That might only be 3% higher than other power sources in Germany, since Germany imports a lot of expensive gas and stuff, but that's still an expensive power source.

Here in the States, all nuclear power plants are required to put a certain amount of the revenue for each kWh sold into a decommissioning fund. I've heard it comes to around a penny per kWh (which isn't a large increase in power rates, by any means).

The thing about nuclear power plants is they produce epically large amounts of power, over a long period of time, and the fuel costs are close to zero on a per-kWh basis. So, even though a plant might cost Billions to build, and another Billion or two to decomission, it's still cost effective.

Here in the States, one of the utilities called The Southern Company is building a new two-reactor NPP at the Vogtle Power Station site. It's estimated to cost $14Bn. Nuclear plants typically seem to get cost overruns, and this is a first-of-it's kind design (well, first in the US anyhow; the AP-1000 reactor). So, let's say it runs to $18Bn and another $2Bn for decommissioning and fuel disposal, for $20Bn total cost (maybe it'll be a little more, maybe a little less; you can argue with the accuracy of my numbers, but this should get us to a reasonable approximation of the actual figures within say 5 or 10%).

The AP-1000 is rated at 1117MW per reactor output (in the future, this may be able to be retrofit to higher output; that has commonly happened at other NPP's, but we'll assume constant power output over the life of the plant).

So, assuming a 60 year life for the reactors and 90% Capacity Factor, how many kWh would each reactor potentially be able to generate and sell?

1117MW * 1000 KW per MW * 24 hours per day * 365.25 days per year * 60 years * .9 capacity factor = 528,747,588,000 kWh.

That is a LOT of kiloWatt-hours. So, assuming a market price of around 5 cents per kiloWatt-hours, how much total revenue is that?

528,747,588,000 * .05 = $26,437,379,400

That's $6Bn per reactor of gross profit. Of course, there's fuel costs, insurance costs, operation and maintenance costs, which could really add up to a few Bn (particularly if there's any very expensive maintenance that has to be done in the future, such as being faced by San Onofre or Crystal River nuclear plants).

Still, that's affordable energy - much more so than solar power or wind.

Most of the "cost" of a nuclear accident is largely imaginary. What do I mean? The Government of Japan has convinced people that it's not safe to return to their homes and businesses in the areas around Fukushima. The science indicates that the levels are so low in the vast majority of the area, it *is* safe for people to go back, live their lives, and they'll be fine. However, when there's a small release of material from a nuclear plant that spreads over a very wide area, we say that all the property owners have to be evacuated and compensated for the property.

I'm sorry, but I don't accept that imaginary damages make nuclear power too expensive. If people had a rational, realistic knowledge of the real risks (or lack thereof) of living in the "Evacuation Zone".

Yes, there will definitely be some very real costs associated to cleanup - but the bulk of the "cost" apportioned to Fukushima are going to be imaginary damages for compensating people for their perfectly find and safe property.

"In the case of my parents' house (southern Germany, pretty high electricity prices of ~0.25 Euros/kWh), I think a small photovoltaic installation might amortize itself within a few years."

So, the solar panels are cost effective because the cost of electricity is high. The next logical question is, why is German electricity so expensive?

In large part, because of Solar power feed-in tariffs which German utilities are required to pay people who generate surplus solar power with their power panels (so, yeah, it's cheaper to buy your own solar power, than buy solar power from someone else's roof or solar farm, and pay a middle man to markup the power and transmit it).

If they had planned to build a few more nuclear plants a decade or two ago, instead of planning to shut down their existing nuclear plants in a few years, they'd likely have cheaper power by now.

But, yes, if cheap power isn't available from the grid, then you may as well generate your own expensive electricity instead of buying someone else's expensive electricity. Grids make sense only when the power the grid can provide you is cheaper than making your own, or you can get it in quantities larger than you can produce with reasonably priced equipment of your own.

. . . by the guys using a mouse and keyboard. Everyone knows the accuracy and response time of an optical mouse is an order of magnitude greater than a d-stick.

"considering the "waste" of power plants is what you put in bombs."

Not in general - spent nuclear fuel from a reactor that's been running for 18 months has a lot of fision products and decay products which make worthless for use in weapons. If you really want to create weapons grade plutonium, you put fuel slugs in the reactor and only run the reactor for something like 30 days, then pull the fuel out - you breed enough plutonium to extract, while not producing much of the "junk" which ruins it for weapons use. But, you can't breed much in 30 days. So, you need to do this over and over and over, then take all that fuel, run it through a PUREX type reprocessing plant to seperate the Plutonium, and enrich the PU up to 90%+ purity.

Because of this, no nation has EVER made bombs from spent nuclear fuel - they use dedicated-purpose reactors for making bomb material. Now, on the other hand, *enrichment* facilities are of great concern, because if you can enrich uranium to 5%, you can enrich it to 99%, and make a Uranium bomb. But, for a uranium bomb, you don't need a reactor at all.

As far as I know, IAEA is energy focused, not weapons, and so wouldn't keep things like CAD files for nuclear weapons or parts on its server. From the article, it sounds like it was information stolen about people who've worked with/for IAEA?

If your trading needs so little latency that you have a problem with the latency added by the speed of light over a fiber cable to somewhere maybe a couple miles away in NYC on higher ground, of 10-20 miles away on mainland NY, NJ, CT, etc, maybe you're abusing the stock market, and we shouldn't bend over to help you ruin our financial system.

Yeah, but what happens if something goes wrong and you don't end up stopping at the angle you intended to? It might be you can safely pull of the move 9999 out of 10,000 times, but it only takes something going wrong once. . .

"We'd like to come visit your star system. Don't worry, we've visited thousands of star systems and only obliterated 2. We're *very* careful to aim the wave of destruction out into the intergalactic void."

"The Mother-In-Law". . .

(Sorry, couldn't resist)

The problem with advertising is, there's just too much. The more there is, the less value it has. To illustrate, what do you think had more advertising impact. . . back when television shows were sponsored by one sponsor, and you heard three ads per hour, all for the same sponsor, or nowadays when there's a five minute commercial break and you go to the bathroom or the kitchen, or browse facebook, and ignore the ads?

Similarly with online advertising, there's so much of it, none of it makes hardly any impression on me at all. I just tune it out, scan past it with my eyes, or block it with ad block to begin with so never see it.

I'm still a bit puzzled. I've heard it said that the major cost of nuclear is the capitol costs of getting it licensed, financed, built, and started operating. Once that's done, the operations, maintenance, and fuel are very low compared to most competitors.

So, in discussing this Wisconsin nuclear plant, either the original capitol costs have been paid for (most likely, since it's over 40 years old now), or they are still paying for it. If they were still paying for it, wouldn't they want to run it till it was at least paid off?

If it's paid off, shouldn't the plant have a very low cost to fuel and operate, and be competitive even with (temporarily) low-cost natural gas turbines? My understanding is that even at today's low prices for Natural Gas, the price-per BTU/kWh if you just look at fuel costs, is still favorable to nuclear. . . just not *as* favorable?

Isn't it reasonable to presume that in the next 20 years (and that plant just got a 20 year license renewal), the price of gas and/or demand will increase again? It just seems so. . . unbelievable that a *paid for* nuclear power plant would *lose* money.

All I can figure is they just want to reduce supply, so that prices go up. I mean, if they cut supply by 10%, and if that causes the price to go up enough (say 20 to 50% increase), then I suppose simply by reducing supply, all their other plants make more money.

Go netflix. I have no problem with legitimate rights holders stealing from thieves. Spend your time working on something you have a legitimate right to (like your own, original creative works).

But, you say, translating is an original work - I won't even argue with that - copyright law is pretty clear that translations *are* a creative work that can be copyrighted; but since they were pirating the movies to begin with, I see no reason they should be granted any copyright on the translated subtitles.