Outrider

Here is the link for the quote 2 posts up. https://www.zmescience.com/ecology/what-is-molten-salt-reactor-424343/ I forgot to add it earlier, sorry. I thought it sounded to good to be true. Thank you for your comments. Hopefully more later if I have the time.

In-laws of the same ethnicity often don't get along either. I'll need a cite for that. Or they may have a wonderful time learning each others culture. Do you not find that plain vanilla gets bland after awhile? What the heck is a "third culture kid"?

Yes you are right nuclear power is actually low risk due to the safeguards put in place. Yes MSR's are considered fast breeders. Can anyone comment on the authenticity of the quote above?

Yeah it wasn't worded great but we do agree this idea can trivially be put to bed.

And its just a slogan. If I cross state lines and buy a candy bar and pay the sales tax should I be allowed to vote in that state? I think not. China pays tariffs on their imports do they get to vote? If you want to talk about specific classes of people we might find some agreement but not much on your two examples so far. I didn't read your link but the sentence seemed unduly harsh to me. But I am ok with certain convictions disqualifying the perpetrator from voting. As far as non citizens voting yeah I would be against that. We need to fix our immigration policies in the worst way and .make the path to citizenship more straightforward so immigrants who live and work here can rightfully participate in our society. I think you have the cart before the horse on this example.

If physics had not been consciousness would have never emerged. So I guess there went that idea.

So the topic now is why wind turbines won't work? No one is proposing that we use only one type of power source. These technologies are working and will work better in the future. This is just propaganda. Enercon's E-126 in Germany runs entirely without neodymium and has been running that way since 2011. As far as copper, aluminum and stainless steel I'm willing to wager that nuclear power sources use more per kilowatt. See with the turbines (once construction is complete) there is nothing to mine, refine, transport or dispose. If your going to compare the two systems you have to take in account the whole apparatus. While it is true that China as well as those that do business with them should be ashamed of their mining operation. The fact is that China's stranglehold on rare earth production will end sooner than later. Rare earths are not particularly rare and can be found all over the world. In 2015 the only U.S. company in the rare earth business went bankrupt not due to lack of supply but rather demand. https://investingnews.com/daily/resource-investing/critical-metals-investing/rare-earth-investing/rare-earth-producing-countries/ So now can I see the solid state reactor or maybe you know we could get back to fast breeders.

Wow he beat his doctors to the tune of 55 years! Much respect for a fallen giant. I read quite a few of his books and enjoyed the small parts I could understand. Yes! Depite having published 100's of scholarly articles and was still publishing last summer. Despite having a major role in furthering our understanding of black holes, inflation and the orgins of our universe. Despite having continually coming up with new and clever ways to communicate to the outside world. I agree his biggest accomplishment was bridging the gap between physics and laypersons. Carl Sagan laid down the banner Stephen Hawking picked it up. Who will step up now?

Yes or close enough at least. I was thinking along the lines of Chernobyl with its 1,000 or so square miles that can't be cleaned up at least by us. Thank you! Nuclear reactors are high reward/high risk operations. High reward because the energy generated is very clean (disregarding spent fuel*) and practically "free" for us and I mean free in the renewable sense. That is if everything works properly. High risk because if something does go wrong you will almost certainly have killed most of the people in the plant and possibly many persons, plants and animals in the surrounding area. Also in worse case scenario you might have made 100's of miles of viable land uninhabitable by us and most other organisms. *This is why I was interested in your thread. Fast breeders promise to use up that spent fuel and leave very little behind. That is if I am understanding what I have read and it is true. I am not exactly trusting of power companies. BTW I am sitting within 50 miles of a conventional nuclear plant right now. So my concerns are very personal. So what level of saftey are you comfortable with? You cannot mitigate all the danger away which is why I would prefer to do without entirely but now the whole globe is in danger so we need to find what is best and do it quickly. Look I'm a bit on the fence regarding the consequences of climate change (but not of AGW itself) but we have run out of time we need to work out solutions now. Besides there are many upsides to clean energy and only one downside I can think of and that is we have to invest in new infrastructure. Also I think all your talk of theoretical reactors is muddying the waters. We need something now. 1. Can you show me one? 2. Isn't this a bit off topic in a thread titled "Fast breeder reactors"?

Turns out Russia has what is described by Wiki as a sodium cooled fast breeder reactor know as the BN-800. It has been producing commercial power since November of 2016. It runs on a plutonium and uranium mix. Weapons grade if the article is accurate and I'm not missing something. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BN-800_reactor I have been hearing thorium quite a bit lately and what little bit I have read about it seems very promising. Inda seems poised to make it a reality. http://www.indrastra.com/2017/09/India-s-Tryst-with-Next-Gen-Nuclear-Energy-Systems-003-09-2017-0008.html?m=1 Really guys I am much more comfortable with windmills and solar panels but with things the way they are all options need to be on the table.

Yes according to François Hammer Et Al. it is very possible that Andromeda (as we know it) formed over a billion years after our own solar system did. A French and Chinese collaboration of scientists made deep observations between 2008 and 2014 and came up with a numerical model. They fed the model into some of the most powerful computers in France and got back a simulation that produces a galaxy that is a dead ringer for Andromeda. Their hypothesis is that between 7 and 10 billion years ago a much larger galaxy collided with a smaller one. The merger finally settled into the configuration we know (and love) between 1.8 and 3 billion years ago. https://www.obspm.fr/the-formation-of-the.html?lang=en BTW there are clips of the simulation at the link. I didn't watch them there instead I watched them on Anton Petrov's Youtube channel "What Da Math". Thanks Anton. And yes. It is popsci but IMO it is very well done. Also PBS has some entertaining and informative channels (again my opinion) out there. Sci show and Eons being 2 of them. Heres the vid if you would like to watch.

It is a prestige item but it is also a production item kinda like you can pay 15$ or 50$ for the same ribeye steak some people just prefer to pay more. This is why cost isolated from all other considerations is not a good way to judge what you are getting. But nevermind I withdraw my example and provide another one. 50,000$ Ram 1500 vs 70,000$ Lexus GS 450h F sport. If we just do it by cost we are going to miss alot. For instance do I get to factor in the fact that if I go to the river and catch a fish and eat that fish I will be ingesting mercury spewed out by Alabama's coal burners? BTW do you wonder who built and maintains these plants? The state owned corporation know as Alabama Power. The federal corporation know as Tennessee Valley Authority owns our two operating nuclear plants. We a bunch of sneaky socialist down here in the south shh don't tell the liberals. If I have time later I will tell you about the scandal know as Bellefonte the nuclear plant that was never finished. So by your definition are all these plants fully subsidized? Also I wanted to acknowledge that you do understand the main challenge for renewables is low energy density. Thats the hurdle technology must make. But its nothing new we also have 18 hydroelectric dams also owned by those dagnabit TVA socialists. One more question the most important one. When I see projections we always run out of gas first and coal last. These projections run from 80 years to 384 years before the coal runs out. (Of course the wars over who gets to keep the lights on will start before then) What do we do? When we run out of coal?

Ok I was thinking of posting some links myself but lets just do this your way. BTW I worked in a coal fired steam turbine plant for a number of years and thats how I know that one day wind will beat the pants off coal in efficiency. You all know how we generate electricity, a few magnets, a shaft and a coil and one more thing some way to spin that wheel. You can spin with your finger or a bicycle it doesn't matter its just got to spin. The coal plant does this by burning refined coal to heat the water converting it into steam and shooting the steam through massive turbines that spin the wheel. All this takes a humongous apparatus (my plant was 17 stories tall and covered over 2 acres) that has to be rebuilt constantly. Every few months the plant fills up with hundreds of workers doing 7 day 12 hour shifts to rebuild a turbine or a furnace as fast as possible to get that wheel spining again. All of this ignores mining, refining (ever hear of an acid bath) and transportation of the coal and all the good land that is laid to waste in the process. All the wind turbine has to do is spin in the wind. Trust me my friend we have been refining our use of coal fired steam turbines for a long time we are just getting started with wind. When the technology catches up coal will be dead and the only question there will be is why did we wait so long.

Hello NortonH. Your welcome thank you for yours. Ok I am anxious to see the evidence for this seeing how the method we use to gain electricity from coal involves numerous, numerous processes. The method we use to gain electricity from wind turbines uses, laughably, one. Common sense, or logic if you prefer, would indicate the simpler method would prove to be the more efficient one. Ok the Mp 05 Laferrari 50 Days Power Reserve Men's Watch coming in at just under 250,000$. Costs nothing to operate and manufactured for less than 5,000$. VS 2018 RAM 1500 loaded for slighly less than 50,000$. Gets a nice 14 mpg and don't forget the oil changes. Ok I'll wait for the details.

The documentary was IMO really well done. I enjoyed and highly recommend it. Thanks again Alex.

You did a much better job of explaining yourself this time NortonH so I hope the mods will leave this open and lock the other thread. This is true. This is not true in the case of wind turbines. The source of energy is the wind and obviously it exists with or without the turbines. Also the turbines don't consume any energy that we have to realistically "pay for" other than construction and maintenance. Thats the whole point. This is also trivaly false. You can buy a watch these days that cost more than some cars the watch used less energy to "create" and uses less to run. If you want to try to defend this concept further I suggest you divorce create and run because it really is two different things. I get it. No idea if its true but for the purpose of this discussion I'll take your word for it. Our technology will get better as we use it and renewables are a much better long term plan than the status quo. So I'm ok with the subsidies.

Really nice catch Alex. Thank you! There will be a tv show in just two days on the National Geographic channel. I surely would have missed it if not for this thread but now my DVR is set. Also NatGeo has an online app and some may be able to watch that way. https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180201006278/en/Lost-Treasures-Maya-Snake-Kings-Rewrites-History Also from the same link. Mayan history as we know it is apparently going to be completely rewritten in the next few years. Very exciting stuff.

http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/results/polls/#val=USP00p1 Democrat on the left and Republican in the middle. No answer on the right. https://www.debt.org/faqs/americans-in-debt/economic-demographics-democrats/

We may now have an orgin for Oumuamua and its not as far away as first thought. Postdoctoral fellow Fabo Feng of the University of Hertfordshire claims that Oumuamua comes from a loose Stellar Association known as the Local Association which is part of Pleiades. https://theconversation.com/how-i-discovered-the-origins-of-the-cigar-shaped-alien-asteroid-oumuamua-89577 Also consensus has been building that Oumuamua is a comet with a cosmic ray baked on shell of hard rock with an icy core.

Which makes some people like me and Fermi wonder where they are at. Maybe it will turn out that the UFO nuts were right all along. Yes I do as well. If Breakthrough Starshot stays on schedule (they won't) I will be 96 when the data starts coming in. I doubt I will make it. OTOH I am very grateful for what I have got to see. The Voyager spacecraft forever changed our views of the moons of gas and ice giants. I got to see Shoemaker-Levy slam into Jupiter. Recently we had a vistor from another star system Oumuamua. And its been confirmed that black holes do merger and neutron star mergers are the source of much (probaly all) of our heaviest elements. Its been a fine ride and I can't complain but sometimes I still do. I guess of all the upcoming things that I probably will see JWST excites me the most.

Ok that makes more sense than what I said. From wiki (I'll post a link later) "A phased array of ground-based lasers would then focus a light beam on the crafts' sails to accelerate them one by one to the target speed within 10 minutes, with an average acceleration on the order of 100 km/s2, and an illumination energy on the order of 1 TJ delivered to each sail" Thats gonna be about 100 gigawatt for 10 minutes for each of 1,000 craft or the average output of a nuclear plant for seven days. Wiki says one by one but I have read other articles stating they might have 10 or more probes per sail. 3.5 x 3.5 cm and weighs 4 grams. But the Sprite is the prototype. The probe that actually makes the journey will be named StarChip and be 1 centimeter square and weigh 1 gram. The Sprite is solar powered and uses radio to communicate. StarChip will have a battery and use laser to communicate. 4 cameras, 4 processors, 4 thrusters, battery, navigation equipment and a laser for communication are planned. Launch is scheduled for 2036. I got most of that information from here. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakthrough_Starshot I don't know and I don't know how they plan to direct the cameras from over 4 ly away. I suspect the probes are on their own once they are accelerated. A 150 mg atomic battery, powered by plutonium-238 or americium-241, is planned.

Because the resting clock is moving through time only while the moving clock is moving through time and space? X-posted with geordief

Happy New Year!

Yeah, there are plans on the table but nothing AFAIK green lighted so far. http://www.space.com/37952-hunting-second-earth-next-generation-telescopes.html Hubble's primary mirror is 2.4 meters in diameter and JWST's is 6.5 meters. So not quite 10 times as big but still a big step up. I wonder will I still be around to see it. Well the Breakthrough Starshot team is looking for one fifth the speed of light using nanoprobes called Sprites. Funded by billionaire Yuri Milner and guided by Facebook guru Marc Zuckerberg and Stephen Hawking. The team have 5 or 6 sprites in orbit right now testing the telemetry and electronics. At 1/5 the speed of light they could reach Proxima Centauri in 20 years. We could start receiving data in 24 years. Not bad! The Sprites will utilize solar sails driven by a high power laser. This is the biggest problem. How do you power this laser for 20+ years? One of the other big problems is the Sprites have no brakes. How do you image planets as you fly by at 100 million MPH? https://breakthroughinitiatives.org/initiative/3

Yep that too but the first thing I had to loose was the notion that there was something special about the clocks. Exactly!