>> ^shinyblurry:

>> ^Yogi:
>> ^shinyblurry:
It's no wonder liberals are melting down; President Obama couldn't have done worse last night. It was pretty shocking. I personally didn't expect Governor Romney to do very well. To my surprise, he looked way more presidential than the President did. The fact is that President Obama has been in a bubble the last four years, and I think this was an the emperor has no clothes moment. The press certainly hasn't done him any favors by coddling him and throwing him softball questions this entire time. He's never had to justify himself or his policies to anyone and this was a day of reckoning for him.
I also think this one debate has undone all of the negative advertising about Governor Romney that had come before it. The reason being is that he didn't even remotely resemble the person Democrats have been trying to define him as. People got to seem him unfiltered and unedited by the mainstream press, and he came across as a strong and competent leader who cares about them and has the skills and experience to be the President. I expect there will be more fireworks at the next debate.

Apparently we weren't watching the same debate. What I saw was two candidates talking about essentially the exact same policies. They were both Center Right...and one was more smiley and UP. So does the smiley guy win it for being smiley?
Whatever, they've still got a couple more "Games" left and when all is said and done whomever wins won't implement whatever ideas they expressed during the debates anyways. GOOD Game all! GO TEAM GO!!!

I think the fundamental difference between liberals and conservatives in policy is that liberals want government to be their God. There were definitely differences between the two candidates on that specific topic. I don't subscribe to the team mentality; I cannot in good conscience vote for either candidate. I think America is getting the leaders it deserves, and these two candidates are a reflection of that. You reap what you sow.


That depends entirely on what you mean by "America". If you mean the American people, they didn't get together and make policies for these candidates to stick their names to, these candidates said vote for me and maybe I'll give you something. Now if by "America" you mean the elite, the people with the money who bascially dictate how society will run than I agree these candidates were chosen by them. The PR industry now gets to fight it out, and it's completely undemocratic. Even in Bolivia poor peasant farmers worked for a more democratic system and they got it, but that didn't stop them they kept at it.

Both these candidates will say whatever they want to get elected, and then they'll do whatever their masters who paid for them to get there want. That's how our "Democracy" works.

Also if you think Obama was a "Liberal" than you really have no idea what that means. If Obama was what we traditionally called "Liberal" who would've at least brought up or tried to reinstitute the Glass-Steagall act.

>> ^Yogi:

>> ^shinyblurry:
It's no wonder liberals are melting down; President Obama couldn't have done worse last night. It was pretty shocking. I personally didn't expect Governor Romney to do very well. To my surprise, he looked way more presidential than the President did. The fact is that President Obama has been in a bubble the last four years, and I think this was an the emperor has no clothes moment. The press certainly hasn't done him any favors by coddling him and throwing him softball questions this entire time. He's never had to justify himself or his policies to anyone and this was a day of reckoning for him.
I also think this one debate has undone all of the negative advertising about Governor Romney that had come before it. The reason being is that he didn't even remotely resemble the person Democrats have been trying to define him as. People got to seem him unfiltered and unedited by the mainstream press, and he came across as a strong and competent leader who cares about them and has the skills and experience to be the President. I expect there will be more fireworks at the next debate.

Apparently we weren't watching the same debate. What I saw was two candidates talking about essentially the exact same policies. They were both Center Right...and one was more smiley and UP. So does the smiley guy win it for being smiley?
Whatever, they've still got a couple more "Games" left and when all is said and done whomever wins won't implement whatever ideas they expressed during the debates anyways. GOOD Game all! GO TEAM GO!!!


I think the fundamental difference between liberals and conservatives in policy is that liberals want government to be their God. There were definitely differences between the two candidates on that specific topic. I don't subscribe to the team mentality; I cannot in good conscience vote for either candidate. I think America is getting the leaders it deserves, and these two candidates are a reflection of that. You reap what you sow.

>> ^shinyblurry:

It's no wonder liberals are melting down; President Obama couldn't have done worse last night. It was pretty shocking. I personally didn't expect Governor Romney to do very well. To my surprise, he looked way more presidential than the President did. The fact is that President Obama has been in a bubble the last four years, and I think this was an the emperor has no clothes moment. The press certainly hasn't done him any favors by coddling him and throwing him softball questions this entire time. He's never had to justify himself or his policies to anyone and this was a day of reckoning for him.
I also think this one debate has undone all of the negative advertising about Governor Romney that had come before it. The reason being is that he didn't even remotely resemble the person Democrats have been trying to define him as. People got to seem him unfiltered and unedited by the mainstream press, and he came across as a strong and competent leader who cares about them and has the skills and experience to be the President. I expect there will be more fireworks at the next debate.


Apparently we weren't watching the same debate. What I saw was two candidates talking about essentially the exact same policies. They were both Center Right...and one was more smiley and UP. So does the smiley guy win it for being smiley?

Whatever, they've still got a couple more "Games" left and when all is said and done whomever wins won't implement whatever ideas they expressed during the debates anyways. GOOD Game all! GO TEAM GO!!!

It's no wonder liberals are melting down; President Obama couldn't have done worse last night. It was pretty shocking. I personally didn't expect Governor Romney to do very well. To my surprise, he looked way more presidential than the President did. The fact is that President Obama has been in a bubble the last four years, and I think this was an the emperor has no clothes moment. The press certainly hasn't done him any favors by coddling him and throwing him softball questions this entire time. He's never had to justify himself or his policies to anyone and this was a day of reckoning for him.

I also think this one debate has undone all of the negative advertising about Governor Romney that had come before it. The reason being is that he didn't even remotely resemble the person Democrats have been trying to define him as. People got to seem him unfiltered and unedited by the mainstream press, and he came across as a strong and competent leader who cares about them and has the skills and experience to be the President. I expect there will be more fireworks at the next debate.

What are you going to do with the rest of the melted gold? Thatt was a really odd tangent, about the medals, and the gold. I don't really get it. The chimp makes more sense.
>> ^Lolthien:

>> ^budzos:
Honestly.. the wide-spread perception of this video is an illustration of why it's impossible to reason with some people. Almost all people are seriously prone to attach non-existent narrative to completely neutral events when it suits their agenda.

Good thing you're here to show us the error of our ways. After all, our complete unfamiliarity with primate behavior is no excuse to believe what the title of the video, and the people in the video suggest. We should all take up a collection, and purchase a medal. Then melt down that metal and each of us should drop a single drip of molten gold into our pitiful eyesockets and hope that the gold reaches our brains and somehow fuses with our neurons and makes us as perceptive as you. The only other possibility is death, and that is much preferable to remaining as stupid as well all are.
Thank you sir, thank you for showing me the error of my ways.

>> ^doogle:

Whoa. Nature, you freaky!


No kidding.. I only learned last year that the caterpillar is completely disolved before a butterfly emerges. It literally melts down and becomes a different creature.

Safe nuclear refers to many different new gen4 reactor units that rely on passive safety instead of engineered safety. The real difference comes with a slight bit of understanding of how nuclear tech works now, and why that isn't optimal.

Let us first consider this, even with current nuclear technology, the amount of people that have died as a direct and indirect result of nuclear is very low per unit energy produced. The only rival is big hydro, even wind and solar have a great deal of risk compared to nuclear as we do it and have done it for years. The main difference is when a nuclear plant fails, everyone hears about it...but when a oil pipeline explodes and kills dozens, or solar panel installers fall off a roof or get electrocuted and dies...it just isn't as interesting.

Pound per pound nuclear is already statistically very safe, but that isn't really what we are talking about, we are talking about what makes them more unsafe compared to new nuclear techs. Well, that has to do with how normal nukes work. So, firstly, normal reactor tech uses solid fuel rods. It isn't a "metal" either, it is uranium dioxide, has the same physical characteristics as ceramic pots you buy in a store. When the fuel fissions, the uranium is transmuted into other, lighter, elements some of which are gases. Over time, these non-fissile elements damage the fuel rod to the point where it can no longer sustain fission and need to be replaced. At this point, they have only burned about 4% of the uranium content, but they are all "used up". So while there are some highly radioactive fission products contained in the fuel rods, the vast majority is just normal uranium, and that isn't very radioactive (you could eat it and not really suffer any radiation effects, now chemical toxicity is a different matter). The vast majority of nuclear waste, as a result of this way of burning uranium, generates huge volumes of waste products that aren't really waste products, just normal uranium.

But this isn't what makes light water reactors unsafe compared to other designs. It is all about the water. Normal reactors use water to both cool the core, extract the heat, and moderate the neutrons to sustain the fission reaction. Water boils at 100c which is far to low a temperature to run a thermal reactor on, you need much higher temps to get power. As a result, nuclear reactors use highly pressurized water to keep it liquid. The pressure is an amazingly high 2200psi or so! This is where the real problem comes in. If pressure is lost catastrophically, the chance to release radioactivity into the environment increases. This is further complicated by the lack of water then cooling the core. Without water, the fission chain reaction that generates the main source of heat in the reactor shuts down, however, the radioactive fission products contained in the fuel rods are very unstable and generate lots of heat. So much heat over time, they end up causing the rods to melt if they aren't supplied with water. This is the "melt down" you always hear about. If you start then spraying water on them after they melt down, it caries away some of those highly radioactive fission products with the steam. This is what happened in Chernobyl, there was also a human element that overdid all their safety equipment, but that just goes to show you the worst case.

The same thing didn't happen in Fukushima. What happened in Fukushima is that coolant was lost to the core and they started to melt down. The tubes which contain the uranium are made from zirconium. At high temps, water and zirconium react to form hydrogen gas. Now modern reactor buildings are designed to trap gases, usually steam, in the event of a reactor breach. In the case of hydrogen, that gas builds up till a spark of some kind happens and causes an explosion. These are the explosions that occurred at Fukushima. Both of the major failures and dangers of current reactors deal with the high pressure water; but water isn't needed to make a reactor run, just this type of reactor.

The fact that reactors have radioactive materials in them isn't really unsafe itself. What is unsafe is reactor designs that create a pressure to push that radioactivity into other areas. A electroplating plant, for example, uses concentrated acids along with high voltage electricity in their fabrication processes. It "sounds" dangerous, and it is in a certain sense, but it is a manageable danger that will most likely only have very localized effects in the event of a catastrophic event. This is due mainly to the fact that there are no forces driving those toxic chemical elements into the surrounding areas...they are just acid baths. The same goes for nuclear materials, they aren't more or less dangerus than gasoline (gas go boom!), if handled properly.

I think one of the best reactor designs in terms of both safety and efficiency are the molten salt reactors. They don't use water as a coolant, and as a result operate at normal preasures. The fuel and coolant is a liquid lithium, fluoride, and beryllium salt instead of water, and the initial fuel is thorium instead of uranium. Since it is a liquid instead of a solid, you can do all sorts of neat things with it, most notably, in case of an emergency, you can just dump all the fuel into a storage tank that is passively cooled then pump it back to the reactor once the issue is resolved. It is a safety feature that doesn't require much engineering, you are just using the ever constant force of gravity. This is what is known as passive safety, it isn't something you have to do, it is something that happens automatically. So in many cases, what they designed is a freeze plug that is being cooled. If that fails for any reason, and you desire a shutdown, the freeze plug melts and the entire contents of the reactor are drained into the tanks and fission stops (fission needs a certain geometry to happen).

So while the reactor will still be as dangerous as any other industrial machine would be...like a blast furnace, it wouldn't pose any threat to the surrounding area. This is boosted by the fact that even if you lost containment AND you had a ruptured emergency storage tank, these liquid salts solidify at temps below 400c, so while they are liquid in the reactor, they quickly solidify outside of it. And another great benefit is they are remarkably stable. Air and water don't really leach anything from them, fluoride and lithium are just so happy binding with things, they don't let go!

The fuel burn up is also really great. You burn up 90% of what you put in, and if you try hard, you can burn up to 99%. So, comparing them to "clean coal" doesn't really give new reactor tech its fair shake. The tech we use was actually sort of denounced by the person who made them, Alvin Weinberg, and he advocated the molten salt reactor instead. I could babble on about this for ages, but I think Kirk Sorensen explains that better than I could...hell most likely the bulk of what I said is said better by him



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2vzotsvvkw

But the real question is why. Why use nuclear and not solar, for instance?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density

This is the answer. The power of the atom is a MILLION times more dense that fossil fuels...a million! It is a number that is beyond what we can normal grasp as people. Right now, current reactors harness less that 1% of that power because of their reactor design and fuel choice.

And unfortunately, renewables just cost to darn much for how much energy they contribute. In that, they also use WAY more resources to make per unit energy produced. So wind, for example, uses 10x more steal per unit energy contributed than other technologies. It is because renewables is more like energy farming.

http://videosift.com/video/TEDxWarwick-Physics-Constrain-Sustainable-Energy-Options


This is a really great video on that maths behind what makes renewables less than attractive for many countries. But to rap it up, finally, the real benefit is that cheap, clean power is what helps makes nations great. There is an inexorable link with access to energy and financial well being. Poor nations burn coal to try and bridge that gap, but that has a huge health toll. Renewables are way to costly for them per unit energy, they really need other answers. New nuclear could be just that, because it can be made nearly completely safe, very cheap to operate, and easier to manufacture (this means very cheap compared to today's reactors as they are basically huge pressure vessels). If you watch a couple of videos from Kirk and have more questions or problems, let me know, as you can see, I love talking about this stuff Sorry if I gabbed your ear off, but this is the stuff I am going back to school for because I do believe it will change the world. It is the closest thing to free energy we are going to get in the next 20 years.

In reply to this comment by ReverendTed:
Just stumbled onto your profile page and noticed an exchange you had with dag a few months back.
What constitutes "safe nuclear"? Is that a specific type or category of nuclear power?
Without context (which I'm sure I could obtain elsewise with a simple Google search, but I'd rather just ask), it sounds like "clean coal".

I watched the first two episodes -- I really like the series. To me, its about trying to move a news show in a new direction. Not dwell on what has happened, but report on new "news." He doesn't blame the young or intend to be a crotchety old man. He genuinely cares about people and wants to report on the story.

He even talks about his "melt down," which we just watched, and how he wants to run a show. I think it is really clever. To steal a line from the show, " [we] weren't looking to right the ship, you are building a whole new one."

I'm looking at this from a worker's man view. I'm sure the ny times and new yorker won't like, but I'm okay with that. We can always change the channel. That's why I like videosift -- tons of options.

pretty sure adamantium is forged from melted down russians.

What about reactors that can't melt down? What about Ford Pintos that exploded when you hit them from the rear, that isn't a story of why all cars are dangerous, only Ford Pintos. What about a plane lands on a city and kills thousands, or the super dome and 10s of thousands? What if what if what if. 50 million people is a little showing of being irrationality scared. Even in the worst designed reactor incident in history, it wasn't as bad as that. If you looked closely, as well, the chart shows that nuclear has historically been safer that solar and wind (and hydro if you include the Banqiao Dam incident).

With that said, I do wish to see old light water reactor technology phased out and new, walk away safe reactors phased in. Engineered safety is less preferred than intrinsic safety that many of the new reactors have. Also, lets not forget, most of the navy is nuclear...meaning they feel safe enough to be in war time situations with current reactors, so engineered safety can indeed be very safe.

I have irrational fears as well, I hate to fly even though I know statistically it is safer than driving. I would suggest that your fear of nuclear is of the same nature. The only way you can kill millions of people with current or future nuclear technology is with bombs, not reactors. The only way reactors can "explode" is from a steam explosion or a hydrogen explosion...so about as bad as a fuel plant exploding, most likely several orders of magnitude less. IE, reactors explode chemically, not via fission, making no more or less dangerous that that other kinds of tech, with the exception of the fission byproducts. The good thing about most of the new nuclear tech is the fuel burn up rates are very very high, meaning there is less fuel involved in most cases.

At any rate, don't take my word for it, there is lots of data out there to look over. For my part, I think nuclear is the cleanest, safest bet for energy needs. I submit that nuclear is only scary because of it was first developed as a fearsome weapon. But the even more fearsome weapon are thermonuclear weapons, which are actually fusion/fission hybrid bombs. I would imagine for whatever reason you aren't super scared of fusion, and would wager that if thermonuclear bombs were called fusion bombs, the world at large would have a different mindset towards it...irrationally.

But I leave you with the facts, nuclear has been the leading sources of clean power which has also caused the least amount of deaths than other technologies. There are many factors in that, including massively engineered safety that continues to improve, as well as highly trained crews that watch over them. Coal miners die all the time, pipelines explode, oil platforms explode, people fall off roofs, or fall off wind farm towers, or get electrocuted...but none of these deaths cause the downfall of those technologies. Nuclear still has more drama in our minds, so plays out much differently when something goes wrong, which isn't very often ( 6 fatal occurrences since 1961) .

>> ^Yogi:

>> ^GeeSussFreeK:
http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-source.html


I'm sorry are you comparing death rates between Coal and Nuclear Reactors? What if there's a meltdown or a terrorist attack and suddenly there's 50,000,000 people dead? It only takes one reactor outside of LA to do catastrophic damage you cannot compare the two NOW when we don't have a Fuckton of Reactors near population centers.
Comparing the two at this point in time is just ridiculous, the numbers are so skewed it's not even funny.

We already have a longer version of this:
http://videosift.com/video/Rep-Joe-Walsh-gets-a-melt-down

Ya, the valuation makes no since. And, if it is legal tender...can we not just go down to the bank, get one, send it away to some other country where it isn't illegal to melt down due to legal tender status and profit?

I love how people are like "oh, but the code says buildings have to derpa derp so therefore this could never happen".

Stuff happens. I work in the insurance claims industry - everything goes wrong.

Cars are supposed to behave certain ways in low speed collisions, but they often don't. Sometimes you'll see a car take massive damage from low speed collisions that happen to go a certain way, especially if that car has been on the road for 20 years. In general: batteries explode, nuclear reactors melt down, things break off everything, plumbing is a nightmare, backups fail, bridges fall, and buildings rot and collapse. Inspectors are lazy, plans are varied, builders are cheap, materials are inconsistent and degrade over time, and high temperatures + time messes everything up.

There are lots of articles, but this one is also good. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/At-Fukushima-gensets-were-underground/articleshow/7741036.cms

"heat in the cores even after shutdown, sufficient to boil off 300 tonnes of water every day"

"Analysis emerging now shows that there were 13 diesel generators installed in a below-ground bunker near the seawall protecting the nuclear plant from the ocean. The diesel fuel was reportedly stored in tanks built on the sea front to facilitate easy unloading from ships."


This backup generator design has to be the dumbest thing I've ever heard of, next to leaving like six reactors worth of spent fuel rods sitting in an open pool on top of a nuclear reactor.

So basically this place was designed to only have 8 hours of battery power... Clearly the reactors were going to melt down. I'm really surprised there was no emergency water tanks built into the system anywhere. Now I understand why TEPCO told the PM on Monday that they were done, and they were leaving and it was a suicide mission to stay. Remember when they said all the workers left. That was when they told the govt it is hopeless.