cronb - Slashdot User

Comment DFR is a fast reactor not a LWR (Score 5, Informative) 102

by cronb on Tuesday July 19, 2011 @10:55PM (#36818924) Attached to: Dismantling a Nuclear Reactor

This story is a bit misleading because the reactor being dismantled is an experimental fast neutron reactor. The materials it is made of were not really designed to be easily disassembled. This is different from a commercial light water reactor where part of the design requirements are being comparatively straightforward to dismantle.

Comment Re:So much for the safety of nuclear energy (Score 2) 752

by cronb on Saturday March 12, 2011 @02:00PM (#35464988) Attached to: Nuclear Emergency Declared At 2 Plants In Japan

This is a fair point but we didn't know about the health effects at the time. Also a lot of the worst cases were actually at uranium mining facilities specifically for defense purposes. Uranium mining processes have undergone a huge change in the last 50 years because of this. Today uranium mining is in large part in situ leaching which isn't actually mining at all just pumping water into and out of the ground.

Comment Re:So much for the safety of nuclear energy (Score 5, Insightful) 752

by cronb on Saturday March 12, 2011 @03:51AM (#35461860) Attached to: Nuclear Emergency Declared At 2 Plants In Japan

Statistically the number of people who die prematurely due to power production using coal is roughly 40,000/year(ok this is an national resources defense council number but the science is good). This includes people dieing in mines due to collapses explosions, people dieing prematurely due to working in a mine their entire life(lung cancer), but most importantly people dieing prematurely due to the increased risk of cancer of living near a coal plant. The number for nuclear is 0. For that matter the total number of premature deaths due to radiation in the population surrounding Chernobyl was roughly 40,000. So as many people in the US are dieing yearly due to coal production as died in total due to the only significant release of radioactivity to the public in the history of civilian nuclear power in 60 years.

Simon Singh Talks With Wired About His Libel Battle 239

Posted by timothy on Saturday September 04, 2010 @03:23PM from the slapping-back-at-bullies dept.

smellsofbikes writes "Wired has a short but pithy interview with Simon Singh about his defense against a libel suit brought by the British Chiropractic Association, in which he spent more than $200,000 and emerged victorious."

Nuclear Power Could See a Revival 415

Posted by kdawson on Wednesday July 14, 2010 @03:34AM from the comforting-bremsstrahlung-glow dept.

shmG writes "As the US moves to reduce dependence on oil, the nuclear industry is looking to expand, with new designs making their way through the regulatory process. No less than three new configurations for nuclear power are being considered for licensing by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The first of them could be generating power in Georgia by 2016."

Comment Knoll family not just programming geniuses (Score 5, Interesting) 289

by cronb on Wednesday February 17, 2010 @04:38PM (#31175496) Attached to: 20 Years of Photoshop

While the sons may be known as the creators of photoshop their father is a giant in the field of nuclear engineering. His book "Raditation Detection and Measurement" is considered the bible on the topic for all nuclear engineers.

Comment Tritium leak monitoring (Score 1) 295

by cronb on Saturday February 06, 2010 @12:49PM (#31046210) Attached to: Tritium Leak At Vermont Nuclear Plant Grows

When something like this happens the plant monitors the flow of the tritium into the aquifer, river, etc. VERY carefully. If those levels rise above set limits then they have to shut down. However, right now they most likely just have to pay a daily fine to operate and that fine is less than the cost of shutdown prior to the fuel reaching the desired burnup. They will most likely continue to operate unless they see a rise above safe levels in the groundwater or the river that is used for cooling.

Slashdot Keybindings, Dynamic Stories 220

Posted by CmdrTaco on Monday March 30, 2009 @11:00AM from the we're-still-here dept.

We've been working hard on the new dynamic Slashdot project (logged in users can enable this by enabling the beta index in their user preferences). I just wanted to quickly mention that there are keybindings on the index. The WASD and VI movement keys do stuff that we like, and the faq has the complete list. Also, if you are using Firefox or have Index2 beta enabled, you can click 'More' in the footer at the end of the page to load the next block of stories in-line without a page refresh. We're experimenting now with page sizes to balance load times against the likelihood that you'll click. More features will be coming soon, but the main thing on our agenda now is optimization. The beta index2 is sloooow and that's gotta change. We're aiming for 2 major optimizations this week (CSS Sprites, and removing an old YUI library) that I'm hoping will put the beta page render time into the "Sane" time frame (which, in case you are wondering, is several seconds faster than that "Insane" time frame we're currently seeing).

Comment Re:VENUE CHANGE! Moved to Leopold Bros! (Score 1) 132

by cronb on Tuesday October 09, 2007 @10:41AM (#20911389) Attached to: Slashdot Anniversary: Ann Arbor, MI, US

Will those of us under 21 be able to get into Leopold Bros

The Recording Industry's Failed Digital Strategy 227

Posted by kdawson on Monday February 19, 2007 @09:28PM from the north-winds-of-change dept.

An anonymous reader sends us a link to the Toronto Star, where Michael Geist has a terrific article on how the record labels got the Internet completely wrong. While somewhat specific to Canada, the article' arguments are more broadly applicable. The article links together the misplaced reliance on DRM and the Canadian industry's advocacy for increasing levies on blank media to demonstrate just how wrong-headed this strategy has turned out to be.

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