You are correct. It is in no way like Enron, more like UUNET or Compuserve.

>"there is no blank page option in Firefox for Android 153.0"

Thankfully, 99.9% of my browsing is on desktops and laptops (using Linux and Firefox, of course). But you are right, Firefox on Android is different (as are most browsers). Probably shouldn't be, though.

I want someone to turn the whole "president Jack Ryan" stuff into movies/TV.

I always figured that that's where Tom Clancy ran out of ideas, rather like Daffy Duck at the end of The Scarlet Pumpernifckel.

> Your response makes sense *unless* the company is able to deliver their solution
> at a price that significantly undercuts previous technologies.

As I noted in my initial post, wrong. Even if they significantly undercut previous technologies, they will still be out of the money. A 20-year PPA for PV with 4-hour firming is 4 cents right now, today, and falling. They are predicting best-case 8.4 cents in some future date. So even if they hit their numbers, no one is going to buy this for power.

And that price prediction is based on numbers that make no sense at all. For instance, they are using a $850 million CAPEX on the plant, yet Darlington just spent that much *just to develop the plot of land* for their new SMR build. And that land was *already set aside* in the 1980s for a new plant.

There is no rule of physics that says their numbers are completely pants, but I'll bet anyone here they are.

> The main reason it never was used is that this technique can be used to create nuclear bombs.

Fascinating seeing you say that after complaining...

> You are the fanatic who is not aware of technological realities

The reason we don't use reprocessing is that it is fantastically expensive. That is the only reason.

Here's a report from Los Alamos on the topic:

https://sgp.fas.org/othergov/doe/lanl/lib-www/la-pubs/00315989.pdf

If you care to turn to page 19, you will see that the effective cost of power from reprocessed fuel breaks even with fresh uranium ore when the ore costs about $100 to $200 per pound. At the time they were writing the report, it was around 40 to 60, so it was not economically viable. However, in the 1960s the assumption was that there would be 1000 reactors in service by the early 1980s. The amount of ore and the speed of reprocessing, combined with the expected demand, suggested prices well over $200 were likely, so moving to a closed fuel cycle was required.

However, the crash of the nuclear market just prior to TMI, followed by lowered power demands, led to a total of about 200 reactors. At the same time, large new amounts of ore were developed, especially in Australia, and cheaper LEU enrichment systems were introduced. As a result, the cost of uranium dropped, instead of rising, and the entire purpose of the closed fuel cycle evaporated.

For comparison, the current price of yellowcake is around $65. Inflation adjusting that to FY79 gives $14, about 1/4 to 1/5 the spot price in 1979. So it is dramatically cheaper to simply buy new fuel than to try to extract it from waste, on the order of 10 times.

Now I know you'll object that this is not what Carter said. And that is true. But it is also true that he was being widely and continually advised that moving to a closed cycle make absolutely no sense for the reasons above. That is why the many other countries that developed such processes, like France (breeders) and Japan (PUREX) had all given up on it by the 1990s as well. In the 30 years since, the numbers have not changed. China's build-out has been matched by a similar number of older reactors going offline, ore prices remain fairly steady, and capacity factor of existing reactors improved to further erode the value of fuel.

To put this in perspective, Canada's CANDU fleet has excellent neutron economy and that allows it to run on a variety of fuels, including those with thorium and reprocessed uranium. We also have the capacity, notably pre-built in Port Hope, to run practically any fuel cycle we wish. We have done this in a real production setting (as opposed to experimental runs) precisely zero times, because it still makes absolutely no economic sense.

> Everything about nuclear energy is expensive

Precisely.

> This is the first time that an actual solution to disposing of nuclear waste, has been achieved

Reprocessing and fast breeders have been around as long as light water reactors. The reason we don't use them is that they are fantastically expensive.

There is n reason to believe this cycle will be as cheap as the company claims, so it is highly unlikely this will change anything.

> The cost may be high, but the importance is also high

We have been talking about this problem for almost a century and done nothing about it, so I don't think anyone agrees that the importance is high.

> So in the cost/benefit equation, it still makes sense

Perhaps to people who think "the importance is also high", but they appear to have little sway.

You just passed Pedagogy 101

I have wondered about the other three students who must surely have used different AI - which ones?

I couldn't agree more with your posting.

Oh, and "+1 Informative" about "Zen", never even heard of it. Currently not interested in that, but it is nice to see it exists.

>"There may still be a chance to override the new tab page behaviour in about:config."

There is. You don't even need to use about:config. It is right there is settings:

Settings > Home > New tabs > Blank Page

And for new windows it is:

Settings > Home > New windows > Custom > about:blank

You can, of course, do this in about:config as well, if desired.

>"One of the reasons I'm still on XFCE is because I have been able to configure sane scrollbars there as well"

TELL ME ABOUT IT!!! I absolutely CAN NOT STAND hidden, thin, disappearing scroll bars! Or mucking with the correct behavior of clicking above/below the handle moving ONE PAGE. (Warping should be a separate function, traditionally middle click). Or when the handle doesn't represent the size of the viewable area. The "old way" was the "correct way" for so many usability reasons.

So yeah, you are not alone. By the way, you can do that in Firefox with most any DE with certain settings. But scrollbars always seem to be a fight with various DE's and apps.

When I went through school and college, exams and tests were all in-person and supervised, and without access to personal electronic devices. Perhaps the old ways are best.

It is sad to see what most students will do with no supervision or control, but can we really expect otherwise?

Yep. Even using "positive pay" isn't 100% helpful, if you enter a bad/scam account number. No matter what, some due diligence is needed on the part of accounts payable.

Usually when working with a new vendor, the vendor will send instructions for payment (often ACH). I suppose it should be possible to contact that bank (or maybe your own bank) and verify the owner of the account, making sure it matches the corporate name/address, before setting up the vendor in the AP system and sending money.

I want someone to turn the whole "president Jack Ryan" stuff into movies/TV. Although considering that it all starts with a Japanese kamikaze pilot crashing a fully loaded passenger jet into the US Capitol and killing most of the government in one fell swoop, its probably not something Hollywood is going to want to put on screen...

>"One shouldn't have to turn off yet another new, useless and unwanted setting or feature every couple of weeks."

It isn't every couple of weeks. More like couple of months. Of course, that is exactly why they also make Firefox ESR. Then you only deal with feature changes once a year. It is the version that most distros use.

Moltex has been pitching this concept for some time now. They moved from the UK to NB because the province was trying to figure out what to do with their CANDU replacement and put up some money for alternatives willing to move to the province. Moltex, and two others, obliged.

Moltex claims that a WATSS + SSR reactor can produce electricity for about 14.5 cents/Wh. That is twice the current going rate, let alone the rate from the paid-off CANDU6. However, they also claim that by burning the waste from other plants that the cost would come down into the 8.5 range, which is competitive with CANDU's like Pickering.

However, all of this depends on the capital cost of the WATSS being around 850 million. There is absolutely no way that will happen. Everything takes place in hot cells, the plant structure itself has to be safed, the resulting fuel has to be moved to the SSR for round-trip processing, and you HAVE to include general cost overruns one has to bake into any nuclear plant, let alone first-of-type.

20 years ago everyone was pitching their energy ideas by claiming the result would be cheaper than coal, but these days most things are cheaper than coal so when you see someone making that claim you know they're full of BS. So when I see Moltex claiming "cheaper than PUREX" I don't see "economically viable" I read it as "less unviable" and that's not inspiring. It's simply not a useful comparison in an era where 20-year PPA's on solar are 2 cents and 4 cents with 4-hour firming.

One can twist the claims a little to be more about the timelines of the waste than the electricity cost itself, but no matter the protestations one reads around these parts of the 'net, people don't *really* care about waste. It's been sitting around in casks and pools for decades and no one's doing anything, and no one's really asking them to. So while we might all think this is a great idea, finding the money for it, and the political capital, seems like the difficult part. Ultimately the pitch comes down to that, we burn your waste, and I'm not convinced this is a big enough issue for the ratepayers of NB to consider doubling the cost of their wholesale power.