Making mountains out of meltdowns (in Japan)
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There's nothing wrong with politics and profit, it's just our current capitalist system that is wrong.
We try to sell our democracy to the arabs- but what makes our democracy any better than theirs? What have we to offer that is so great? But that's another thread.
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Wind needs particular areas to work, and wind also takes up masses of space, which is going to be needed if we are going to be feeding a generation of people who are living a lot longer.
Solar is highly inefficient. Between 10 to 20% efficient. The problem with solar is that you need light, an awful lot of it. The second problem you are faced with is that when the conductor heats up it becomes more inefficient.
Tidal and wave power? You must deal with the sea and the constant threat of salt in the water that takes a toll with the mechanisms used to create power.
All of the above 3 all need vast amounts of oil and coal to be burnt- economies of scale and all that. Each wind turbine is about the size of a car or even a coach. It's packed with copper wire that needs extruding. Miles and miles and miles of it. And then the wind will stop. Other obvious drawbacks include keeping the power high enough to travel over a long distance- its why power stations are so big- to provide the omph needed to keep the momentum up. Then there is entropy.
The best renewable is probably hydro-electric, which is fine in countries where there is a land mass big enough to cope with containing the amount of water needed (Africa, USA and Canada spring to mind), but the UK? Forget it. Even if you build a huge dam. Perhaps the Germans could dam the danube?
I reckon thorium is the best bet, at least until we master fusion. It's impossible to build a bomb out of thorium too, most people's biggest angst- well it was for me as a long life (edit; life long!) supporter of CND, until CND decided to wage war against nuclear power, which is ludicrous.
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With that UK can make the 3/4 of its energy
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@unknownuser said:
@unknownuser said:
but the UK
Seems UK and France has some oceans tide around and that is completely safe
Nothing is "completely safe". To even have that assumption demonstrates a certain high level of naivety. In the time it takes to produce all the materials used for the production of your 'renewables', many will die as a consequence of accidents in the workplace. I really don't get why you are making such a fuss about one (that so far has claimed so few lives when used for peaceful means), against another- which you almost insist to choose to be totally ignorant of.
I just don't get you Pilou.
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@unknownuser said:
With that UK can make the 3/4 of its energy
Do you have any concept of how the sea works? Sea water and its corrosive power? Did you study physics at school?
How do you clean all the crustaceans off those immaculate looking turbines? The sea currents as well. Both of the propellors would have to stand immense pressures. The water there looks relatively calm, but what happens when the sea gets rough? It's a nice image, but you would constantly have to battle against the toll of the elements- including the salt!!!
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@tfdesign said:
We try to sell our democracy to the arabs- but what makes our democracy any better than theirs? What have we to offer that is so great? But that's another thread.
Give me a real actual example of an Arab democratic state in the Middle East except Iraq? The only democracies in the Middle East are Israel and Iraq. I don't like this kind of relativistic talk, because you seem to equate military, theocratic dictatorships and monarchies with western democracy.
We offer freedom. Which should not be equated with happiness....but if people who now live in a society based on Sharia law, where women are sentenced to death or prison for the crime of being raped etc, won't be happier when they would be free then I think I may be part of another species.
I don't agree with imposing democracy by force. It undermines the idea the people have the power and seems very similar to what the communists were doing. Democracy should be encouraged in the people living in authoritarian countries through more or less peaceful means but not by conquest.
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Ps Seems central Plant of Fort Calhoun have some problem with Missouri river
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@tfdesign said:
Well I got to give it to you lulu, you win first prize for being the single one man out of thousands on the SketchUcation forum who has truly made....
Thanks, it's not just another pretty face. If you did the calculations, you would find the contaminated water in the building is up to 43,000 mSv.
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@honoluludesktop said:
Thanks, it's not just another a pretty face. If you did the calculations, you would find the contalinated water in the building is up to 43,000 MSV.
Ah nice to see that the architectural assistant turned nuclear scientist, is once again explaing through a series of pretty pictures and his vast experience of nuclear physics calculations the horror that is unfolding in Japan.
"MSV"? "Motor Sport Vehicle"? It may as well be! After all these posts you have continued the attempt to belittle me with your fancy numbers, without, anywhere even trying to explain, and without pointing to some external link, just exactly what these measurements are supposed to reveal or show! And you have the nerve to call me 'absurd'.
It's also quite enlightening as well as refreshing to see that you have completely forgotten about the other side to this story, the thousands of misplaced men, women and children who have either lost their lives or their homes through no fault of their own. Yet here you are again, boring the pants off me with your expert calculations, with not yet a single explanation!
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@tfdesign said:
After all these posts you have continued the attempt to belittle me with your fancy numbers
I'm sorry, but I'm under the distinct impression it's you that's doing the belittling. Please stop it.
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@unknownuser said:
@tfdesign said:
After all these posts you have continued the attempt to belittle me with your fancy numbers
I'm sorry, but I'm under the distinct impression it's you that's doing the belittling. Please stop it.
You too mate. You make some inflammatory comment on this forum elsewhere about how bad Americans are. You are no better.
Please 'stop it'? Are you a moderator? Why should I stop being able to use reason in a debate? That notion is ridiculous. It also borders on the idea that the rules ("the science"?) are/is set in stone, and how dare anyone dare to challenge them/it. What sort of democracy is it we have if ideas cannot be raised as well as challenged?
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@marian said:
We offer freedom. Which should not be equated with happiness....but if people who now live in a society based on Sharia law, where women are sentenced to death or prison for the crime of being raped etc, won't be happier when they would be free then I think I may be part of another species.
Except we don't really offer 'freedom', only a western engineered version of 'democracy'. The answer lies in opening all borders right across the planet, where people can choose where they want to live or migrate to. If an Arab state wants sharia law, then fine (I too am not a fan, but some, including many women, feel that it is the way forward- for them). Those who oppose it can choose to live elsewhere.
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your takes on this ?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DChLrPR_r8M&feature=player_embedded#at=128 -
Sensationalism in the working.
Listen to what they actually say at 3.48.
Then there is the blip of iodine isotope that is turning up in milk in nyc. Up goes the cnn headline at the bottom of the screen- it's official, its a crisis! God help us all! Preposterous. Have these journalists got anything better to do?
And it's our friendly well paid American Astrophysicist Michio Kaku. Looks Japanese, actually is an American. And a very good self publicist. I'm sure he wants to get in on the action, feel the love (get paid $$$ for doing the job of the people). It's all so darn cynical!
Like Kaku, I'm anti-nuclear war, but unlike Kaku I'm not anti-nuclear energy, if nuclear science is used for humanitarian purposes.
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What happen if a new big earth quake arrives in Japan?
We are dancing on the volcano
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@unknownuser said:
What happen if a new big earth quake arrives in Japan?
We are dancing on the volcanoWell yes, you have a point there. But the origin of this thread wasn't about what happens after the next big one, it was about people in the west making a huge fuss about a crappy old nuclear power station- the exact same model that was also responsible for the 3 mile island accident in the USA (where again no one was killed), but more importantly, the emphasis made by hysterical liberals in the west while thousands of innocent men, women and children were either missing or dead in northern Japan.
For a nuclear power station that was only supposed to survive a wave that was only so many meters high, it fared pretty well. And the only death so far from within the power station has been one guy who apparently died from a heart attack. When you consider the ratio between this and what happened elsewhere, it wants to make me both puke and cry that we in the west can be so utterly selfish, as not really to be bothered about the real victims of this terrible catastrophe.
I think I've said far more than enough.
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That is reasonnable?
[flash=560,349:3boke862]http://www.youtube.com/v/qoyKe-HxmFk?version=3[/flash:3boke862] -
@unknownuser said:
That is reasonnable?
@unknownuser said:
Onkalo, a colossal underground tomb being built in Finland, 500 metres below the earth – supposedly impervious to any event on the surface and far away from any possible earthquake danger: its purpose is to house thousands of tonnes of radioactive nuclear waste. Onkalo is the first storage site of its kind, and Madsen interviews the various technicians, scientists, legislators and commentators involved in this awe-inspiring project.
If managed correctly, yes. If it will help us power the research needed to eventually reward us with the holy grail that is nuclear fusion,as well as power our schools, homes and hospitals, then a great big resounding YES!
Everyone loves a disaster flick don't they? What makes this latest green sensationalist monstrosity any different from any other environmental disaster movie that has proceeded it? Asteroids and spacemen falling to earth? Paul Ehrlich and his merryband of merry Malthusians? Next you'll be telling us that we need better birth control, and that we should be encouraged not to have children.
None of this baloney in this video has ever come true.....
....but as soon as Orson Wells announced that aliens had arrived from mars, many fled for the hills. That's no joke.
[flash=560,349:2qppydzu]http://www.youtube.com/v/OfpSXI8_UpY?version=3[/flash:2qppydzu]
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@tfdesign said:
Please 'stop it'? Are you a moderator? Why should I stop being able to use reason in a debate? That notion is ridiculous.
No, I'm not a mod. How's that even relevant? And I didn't say you shouldn't use reason in a debate. But then you know that.
@tfdesign said:
It also borders on the idea that the rules ("the science"?) are/is set in stone, and how dare anyone dare to challenge them/it. What sort of democracy is it we have if ideas cannot be raised as well as challenged?
I do beg your pardon. I somehow overlooked how you're a one-man philosophical vanguard redefining the way we ought to interact with each other, operating in a realm jenseits von Gut und Böse. I just assumed you were having a passive-aggresive wank-a-thon. My bad!
@tfdesign said:
You too mate. You make some inflammatory comment on this forum elsewhere about how bad Americans are. You are no better.
Do post a link, will you? I've commented on American foreign policy a number of times, but I'm reasonably certain I've never stated Americans are 'bad' per se.
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All power is nuclear if you trace it back to its source. I just don't see the advantage of centralized power generation, when solar, wind and tidal are so abundant. Solar is not expensive, it is just over-priced while we go through the dark ages of nuclear-based petroleum. Have you ever heard the argument about overcast days and it being dark at night as an argument against solar. What is petroleum other than decayed plant material. Those plants were grown by solar energy and that energy was stored in the oil. And that solar energy came from our primary nuclear generating station which is the sun. So oil is a battery made of nuclear/solar generated biomass. In ten years we will go from 12 to 20 percent solar efficiency to near 80 percent efficiency. We have the knowledge and basic technology and the time lag is just a function of going through the phase of engineering refinement. The length of the lag will be moderated by the roadblocks raised by political conservatism. However, conservatism will fall harder than the Berlin wall as the floodgates of pent up energy demand and the rising price of oil collide. May not happen in my life time, but it could also happen in less than 10 years.
The problem with nuclear is the problem of trusting overly complex system to fallible humans and the vagaries of nature.
Also when designing for solar don't do your calcs solely on the energy created. Make sure your solar designs also use the panels to shade the roofs and walls of the buildings you are air conditioning and take full advantage of the passive solar savings. And use water systems to cool your panels and feed/that warm/hot water into your hot water heaters. Do your calcs on such integrated systems and I will listen to the results.
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