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QuarkJets posted:I have never heard it pronounced as kwark, only kwork. So if you decide to pronounce it as kwark, do so knowing that you aren't using the colloquial pronunciation, the professional pronunciation, or the intended pronunciation I have just decided that you are the Clarence Thomas of physics.
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May 8, 2015 19:24
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pronounced "klar-ens th-oo-mass"
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May 8, 2015 19:38
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It's taken the TVA only 36 years to construct a nuclear reactor. http://knoxblogs.com/humphreyhill/2015/05/11/tva-nuke-plant-launched-in-1979-nears-completion-in-2015/ Up next: Regulators decide whether or not to grant an operating license. Stay tuned.
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May 11, 2015 20:34
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Phanatic posted:It's taken the TVA only 36 years to construct a nuclear reactor. Thank goodness they prepped this one for the inevitable tsunamis. Thanks Fukushima!
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May 11, 2015 20:38
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Well, you know, global warming, man.
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May 11, 2015 21:00
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Phanatic posted:Well, you know, global warming, man. We have to be prepared for the inevitable Water World future.
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May 11, 2015 21:01
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CommieGIR posted:Thank goodness they prepped this one for the inevitable tsunamis. Thanks Fukushima! Eh. Some of the precautions are applicable, like ensuring safety in the event of both a slow flood buildup and a sudden flash flood. Watt's Bar is on the Tennessee River, which is heavily dammed. So the site has to survive a probabilistic maximum flood level, which involves (at least for a plant I looked at) combining 72-hour constant heavy rain totals with dam failures. This floods up to a certain elevation, and the site needs to show either how this won't affect their safe shutdown, or how they can reasonably expect to mitigate this risk. Fukushima led to increased US standards against not just earthquakes and tsunamis, but ANY type of natural disaster. The FLEX strategy requires every plant to assume a worse-than-worse-case scenario, like inexplicable failure of seismic-rated emergency diesel generators in safety-class buildings coupled with complete loss of offsite power for a minimum of 3 days. "What happens if a disaster happens and we take away every built in back-up safety measure?" That's FLEX. It's why I've had to assume a EF-5 tornado would hit a coastal Carolina plant for a couple years on a project I did. It's silly, but safe!
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May 11, 2015 21:16
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Pander posted:Eh. Some of the precautions are applicable, like ensuring safety in the event of both a slow flood buildup and a sudden flash flood. Watt's Bar is on the Tennessee River, which is heavily dammed. So the site has to survive a probabilistic maximum flood level, which involves (at least for a plant I looked at) combining 72-hour constant heavy rain totals with dam failures. This floods up to a certain elevation, and the site needs to show either how this won't affect their safe shutdown, or how they can reasonably expect to mitigate this risk. I know, I was partially joking. I understand the need, but its still just fun to poke at especially when it drags construction out for 30+ years.
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May 11, 2015 21:19
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CommieGIR posted:I know, I was partially joking. I understand the need, but its still just fun to poke at especially when it drags construction out for 30+ years. Not helped by getting dragged down by lawsuits and then sitting around as a spare parts pile for other reactors for most of that time 
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May 11, 2015 21:47
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I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!
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Letting the community get involved in the construction process is about as helpful as letting the community get involved in vaccination policy. It's generally the scientifically illiterate, NIMBYs, or professional industrial concern trolls like the UCS who show up to create infinity plus one delays. Then they get to cite cost-overruns due to delays as a reason to not build nukes.
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May 11, 2015 22:06
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Pander posted:Letting the community get involved in the construction process is about as helpful as letting the community get involved in vaccination policy. It's generally the scientifically illiterate, NIMBYs, or professional industrial concern trolls like the UCS who show up to create infinity plus one delays. Then they get to cite cost-overruns due to delays as a reason to not build nukes. b-b-but everyone's opinion is valid and must be considered, considering people to be as dumb on most issues as they actually are is mean  if you want to, i can even produce some expert on things completely unrelated to the relevant subject who will tell you so!
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May 11, 2015 22:14
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Pander posted:Letting the community get involved in the construction process is about as helpful as letting the community get involved in vaccination policy. It's generally the scientifically illiterate, NIMBYs, or professional industrial concern trolls like the UCS who show up to create infinity plus one delays. Then they get to cite cost-overruns due to delays as a reason to not build nukes. Its been a major detriment to energy production, especially in the South where community involvement tends to devolve into: "Let's promote natural gas and coal because JOBS"
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May 11, 2015 22:18
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I'm pretty sure that using appliances powered by electricity that came from a nuclear power plant is a leading cause of autism, be safe everyone
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May 11, 2015 23:24
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QuarkJets posted:I'm pretty sure that using appliances powered by electricity that came from a nuclear power plant is a leading cause of autism, be safe everyone y'know the funny thing is, given what we know now about what lead did to the baby boomers, it seems not just reasonable but a total given that coal power is causing something at least as bad as autism
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May 12, 2015 00:06
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StabbinHobo posted:y'know the funny thing is, given what we know now about what lead did to the baby boomers, it seems not just reasonable but a total given that coal power is causing something at least as bad as autism The lead thing is largely a fallacy. It's the standard "correlation does not equal causation" problem. A whole lot of things happened in society at about the same time lead was coming out of gasoline, so the probability that lead had anything to do with it is quite low. Crime is well known to be a complex problem with a multitude of overlapping causes. Claiming it can be almost completely explained with one variable is kind of silly.
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May 12, 2015 00:50
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Deteriorata posted:The lead thing is largely a fallacy. It's the standard "correlation does not equal causation" problem. A whole lot of things happened in society at about the same time lead was coming out of gasoline, so the probability that lead had anything to do with it is quite low. Not as a sole factor, but lead is nasty poo poo and it does have measurable effects. This study, for instance (after controlling for a lot of the obvious factors), blames lead exposure for about 12% of the students who failed 3rd grade subjects. There's some pretty suggestive data linking fine particular air pollutant levels and increased risk of autism as well, but obviously autism is complicated and there's no single smoking gun. Tunicate fucked around with this message at 00:59 on May 12, 2015 |
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May 12, 2015 00:56
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Deteriorata posted:The lead thing is largely a fallacy. It's the standard "correlation does not equal causation" problem. A whole lot of things happened in society at about the same time lead was coming out of gasoline, so the probability that lead had anything to do with it is quite low. Wait, what? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clair_Cameron_Patterson
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May 12, 2015 01:00
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Pander posted:Letting the community get involved in the construction process is about as helpful as letting the community get involved in vaccination policy. It's generally the scientifically illiterate, NIMBYs, or professional industrial concern trolls like the UCS who show up to create infinity plus one delays. Then they get to cite cost-overruns due to delays as a reason to not build nukes. Whether or not your argument is valid (personally, I think the impacts on a community matter when developing energy projects and the history of Energy projects is rife with examples of communities that were destroyed for various projects), community involvement has very little to do with why TVA has taken so long to build this plant: quote:TVA vastly overestimated the demand for electricity decades ago. In 1966, it announced plans to build 17 nuclear reactors in Tennessee, Alabama and Mississippi. By 1985, TVA canceled plans for almost half those reactors because of a slumping economy and spiraling construction costs. You can't really blame the UCS for "poorly welded metal, electrical cables that were damaged during installation, and quality assurance records with missing or incorrect information."
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May 12, 2015 01:14
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I was referring specifically to the Kevin Drum article in Mother Jones a couple years ago that ascribed the big drop in the crime rate in the 90s to the removal of lead from gasoline in the 70s. That has largely been discredited. That's not to say that lead is harmless or was a good thing to spew out the tailpipes of cars. It's more that the effects of it would be widespread and subtle and not directly correlated to the crime rate.
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May 12, 2015 01:17
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Deteriorata posted:I was referring specifically to the Kevin Drum article in Mother Jones a couple years ago that ascribed the big drop in the crime rate in the 90s to the removal of lead from gasoline in the 70s. That has largely been discredited.
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May 12, 2015 02:18
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StabbinHobo posted:got lnks? the parts where the timing worked at both state and county breakdown levels were a lot more than correlation. http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-27067615 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3829390/ quote:Abstract
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May 12, 2015 02:23
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Deteriorata posted:I was referring specifically to the Kevin Drum article in Mother Jones a couple years ago that ascribed the big drop in the crime rate in the 90s to the removal of lead from gasoline in the 70s. That has largely been discredited. Ahhh, okay. Gotcha.
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May 12, 2015 03:06
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that bbc article is very supportive
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May 12, 2015 04:04
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StabbinHobo posted:that bbc article is very supportive Not if you read clear to the end. quote:But Roger Matthews, professor of criminology at the University of Kent, rejects that. He says biological criminologists completely miss the point. The problem with the epidemiological data is that it can't link lead exposure in individuals to actual criminal behavior. Areas with more lead had more crime, but it can't show that those people exposed to more lead were more likely to commit crimes. Lead levels could very well be (and likely are) simply markers of other socioeconomic factors. The studies that actually do look at individuals and their lead exposure versus later criminal behavior shows only a weak correlation.
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May 12, 2015 04:25
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Trabisnikof posted:Whether or not your argument is valid (personally, I think the impacts on a community matter when developing energy projects and the history of Energy projects is rife with examples of communities that were destroyed for various projects), community involvement has very little to do with why TVA has taken so long to build this plant: Bechtel also hosed up the Trojan plant in Oregon. EDIT: Whoooops, I misread that, the article doesn't say Bechtel was the contractor for initial construction.
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May 12, 2015 19:04
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You can now make your own incomprehensible* predictions about nuclear power: http://thebulletin.org/nuclear-fuel-cycle-cost-calculator/model * Probably really accurate, but holy crap it doesn't explain the options well.
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Jun 2, 2015 16:53
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EoRaptor posted:You can now make your own incomprehensible* predictions about nuclear power: Interest rate appears to be the single biggest factor in that tool.
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Jun 2, 2015 17:34
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Farmer Crack-rear end posted:Interest rate appears to be the single biggest factor in that tool. That sounds pretty accurate.
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Jun 2, 2015 19:24
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Farmer Crack-rear end posted:Interest rate appears to be the single biggest factor in that tool. easy kiddo the marxism thread is over there
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Jun 3, 2015 00:34
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Farmer Crack-rear end posted:Bechtel also hosed up the Trojan plant in Oregon. Plenty of blame at Watts Bar to go around.... http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/business/aroundregion/story/2013/feb/05/former-head-of-watts-bar-project-arrested/98821/ http://www.tva.gov/power/nuclear/pdf/wattsbar2_executive_etc.pdf
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Jun 18, 2015 17:17
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After nothing happening energy-wise for a while, here's a somewhat belated response to the Ecomodernist Manifesto (which basically calls for decoupling human activities from ecological impacts by using e.g. nuclear power or GMOs to spare larger areas of intact habitats from human use) that's currently making the rounds among a number of sustainability academics. Commentaries on where Political Ecology Went Wrong, Gone Wrong: in which you should wear a helmet in case of sudden urges to slam your head against your desk posted:The ecomodernist manifesto by the ‘post-environmentalist’ think-tank the Breakthrough Institute starts with premises familiar to political ecologists. Earth has become a human planet. There is no wild nature out there. We are part of nature and we constantly transform it. What landscapes we produce, what we conserve and what not, is a matter of choice. Yet most political ecologists, even the most ‘modernist’ among them, would feel uneasy (or so I hope) with the resulting eco-modernist agenda: nuclear power, genetically modified agriculture and climate geo-engineering—and all this in the name of, well, preserving ‘wilderness’… This article goes some way to explain at least some of the obsession of environmentalists with ~decentralisation~ as an intrinsic good rather than a means to an end, as well as opposition to nuclear power beyond tallying the risks (however erronously) and considering them too large to be worth it. In addition, I submit that anyone who agrees the call for a ~simpler~ ~connected~ life in the name of capital E ~Ecology~ (for which "ecologism" or "check out this idea I had while on drugs, maaaan" would be better names - ecology is the study of interactions between organisms and their abiotic and biotic environment rather than a political ideology) should have their head checked and be immediately disqualified from making statements on conservation policy. Actually protecting nature, regardless of whether you see it as natural resources or our collective heritage, should not be about satisfying preferences for living in a village that have metastasised to the point of wanting to turn the world into a collection of subsistence farmers. Panicking over GMOs and  ATOMZ to the point of calling them Frankensteins on principle doesn't exactly inspire confidence about the author's ability to stay objective...Dear author: thank you very much for writing this, and thereby providing a chance for people who confuse their warm and fuzzy feelings about an imaginary version of nature and a vague opposition to capitalism with actual ways of measuring and reducing human impacts on ecosystems to out themselves as idiots. suck my woke dick fucked around with this message at 21:11 on Jul 31, 2015 |
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Jul 31, 2015 21:09
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To save googling, here zizek talk being referred to, but the basic message is that the image of nature as a coherent spiritual entity with a righteous order doesn't exist. In that piece you can see parts of that personalization, "walking along [the rivers] shore's and talking to it", "direct connections" etc. I'd probably go further and say that 'artificial' doesn't exist either, in that both human-directed and non-human actions shouldn't be valued on that basis - they're both just phenomenon of the universe. Which ones you want to stop or start should depend entirely on what their side-effects/consequences are. rudatron fucked around with this message at 14:35 on Aug 1, 2015 |
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Aug 1, 2015 07:46
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France is starting to shut down their nuclear plants......
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Aug 1, 2015 14:34
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What? I can't find any reference to that online.
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Aug 1, 2015 14:53
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Sinestro posted:What? I can't find any reference to that online. They want a 50% phase out by 2025. http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/Country-Profiles/Countries-A-F/France/
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Aug 1, 2015 15:01
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CommieGIR posted:France is starting to shut down their nuclear plants...... They want to lower their capacity from 75% to 50%. http://www.usnews.com/news/business/articles/2015/07/22/france-set-to-back-reducing-reliance-on-nuclear-power I guess Germany will have to buy its electricity exclusively from the east soon.
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Aug 1, 2015 15:05
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CommieGIR posted:They want a 50% phase out by 2025. It's not a 50% phase out, it's a 50% target with a cap set at the current capacity of 63.2 GWe. It's basically a commitment to not build new nuclear power plants without shutting down old ones first. It's dumb, yes, but not as bad as it sounds. The same bill also mandates a 50% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, including a mandatory 30% reduction in fossil fuel consumption. To meet this without building more nuclear power, they'd have to go into green sources. This is obviously a much better situation than Germany's, where they wound up replacing most of their nuclear power with fossil fuels, even if it's not ideal.
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Aug 1, 2015 21:13
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Lurking Haro posted:I guess Germany will have to buy its electricity exclusively from the east soon. They will burn more coal; more efficiently, mind you, but more nonetheless.
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Aug 1, 2015 21:15
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ductonius posted:They will burn more coal; more efficiently, mind you, but more nonetheless. They should burn CSU politicians first, they are even browner than brown coal 
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Aug 1, 2015 21:22
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QuarkJets posted:It's not a 50% phase out, it's a 50% target with a cap set at the current capacity of 63.2 GWe. It's basically a commitment to not build new nuclear power plants without shutting down old ones first. It's dumb, yes, but not as bad as it sounds. A big part of this is because the French nuclear industry has been bleeding taxpayer money like mad and with no end in sight. AREVA is selling all their profitable assets to EDF it has gotten so bad. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-07/edf-said-to-be-ready-to-buy-areva-reactor-engineering-divisions
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Aug 1, 2015 23:47
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