>> ^critttter:
I think you pay an extra $30 monthly for the high speed 3G access. GPS though, sweet.


I thought it was an extra $10/month over the existing iphone contract, which is to say $30/month (existing is $20/month).

I just want to know what kind of hoops I have to jump through with AT&T to upgrade to the new phone...

I think you pay an extra $30 monthly for the high speed 3G access. GPS though, sweet.

U-238 is 138 times more abundant than U-235. U-238 breeder reactors work, but are more expensive to operate than U-235 reactors. Reprocessing spent fuel to extract the half that's unused is currently more expensive than mining fresh uranium. But as oil runs out, energy prices will go up, and more expensive ways of generating energy will expand. Uranium power generation based on breeder reactors could power the world's current rate of energy consumption for at least a thousand years with current proven uranium reserves, but nobody's even bothered to look at more expensive ways of recovering uranium. In the long run solar will have to be part of the solution. The earth receives 4*10^24 Joules of energy per year from the sun, while our worldwide fossil fuel consumption in 2004 was 4*10^20 Joules.

Solar thermal generator plants can store energy via phase change to be more reliable. For example, Solar Tres stores 6,250 tonnes of molten sodium nitrate and potassium nitrate (assuming a density of 3g/ml that's about a 10m x 10m x 20m tank). This is enough to provide a 16 hour buffer for the generator (600 megawatt-hours). So it can generate continuously at peak capacity except in winter. Electricity demand is always higher in summer than in winter, because in the winter your random electrical appliance electricity use supplements your environmental controls (almost all used electricity is converted to heat) while in the summer all of your electricity use works against your environmental controls (generates more heat that your AC has to remove).

If about 0.1% of the surface of the earth were converted to solar power stations, that could supply all of our current energy use. But the rate of consumption is increasing exponentially as population increases exponentially and THAT MUST STOP. Who's going to vote for the global 2-child policy that will probably be necessary to avoid annihilation of the environment and subsequent annihilation of mankind? Mankind needs another big round of moral progress to save itself from itself.