Topic: The end is near - page 7. (Read 17362 times)

Dream on! (your ridiculous dreams).
 Fukushima blew out a significant part of its inventory. In case of a black out of the whole power grid, which is a question of when but not of if (sun storm, economic collapse and  panic/revolution etc.), it would have blown out its inventory totally, and so would have all the other reactors. Power grids become more and more fragile to maintain the 50 Hertz, totally depending on the computerised, hypercollectivised communication system.
 Societies collapse, because societies are problem solving societies (Tainter). Each solved problem increases the complexity in the system, and increased complexity generates diminishing returns until the end (bifurcation point), when additional investion in additional complexity generates negative returns. Forget at least the northern part of this planet if this society will not end the nuclear industry.
Probably it won't, because society means collective stupidity, which until today always ended collapsing. This society will also end abruptly in a worldwide, globalised panic with worldwide bank 'holidays' and nobody will go to work anymore; not to the banks and not to cool the nuclear reactors. Nuclear reactors need each other to cool them, but after a black out you'll have to cool all of them. The collective stupidity will not be able to do this.

Until the end?

I think it is something like we can't define it, but you'll know it when you see it.

This has got to be the most entertaining thread I have ever encountered. Please do go on! 

So what is so special with energy? As long as the market is allowed to be free, there will be just enough for everybody who wants it.

No arguments there; old idea, somewhat different... what's the point? Bring it on!! 

Nope, not a new idea.  The 4S was specificly designed to run unattended for 30 year refueling cycles, and is quite capable of utilizing downgraded weapons fuel.  It can also use a Strirling engine at the surface generator house, although it's actually desinged to use a liquid salt to boiling water heat exchanger.  Stirling engines are more efficient, but they are also more expensive to build, so the 4S can do either.  The early test version, such as may eventually be built for Alaska, assumes that the waste heat is used for municipal hot water distric heating.  This is more commonly called 'cogeneration' and the total energy efficientyc is much greater than that of a Stirling engine producing electrical power alone.  And the 4S is just one example of this style of small, unattended reactor design, other companies have similar designs.  Another design that aims towards similar ends, but uses a classic deep pool unpressurized light water design is the SLOWPOKE (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SLOWPOKE_reactor), intended primarily for municipal district heating and is largely incapable of electric power geneartion because it niether operates at a high enough carnot efficiency to use a stirling nor is it designed to biol water for pressure, since it's an open top design exposed to atmostphere at the top and boiling water is used as super-critical limiting feature in the core.  It's literally impossible to 'meltdown' the core in this one, because it depends upon the presence of a precise amount of water in the core space for the proper regulation of neutron flux, and either the presence of steam bubbles, or the pressence of normal air (in the event of pool water boil-off) permits too much neutron flux to escape the core to maintain a critical reaction.

No, it's a bit different. The idea is to use depleted nuclear waste (ie: plutonium) together with its relevant salt (ie: Ca or Na). The metal forces the nuclear waste to form a high temperature which in a few minutes turns the salt to its liquid form. The heat continues on and a Stirling device converts the produced heat to energy via adiabatic process thus not losing energy. The reactor can go on for as long as 30 years...!

So basically it's a brand new idea... I hope he manages it to actually form it. He even hopes to release it as creative common or public domain. Amazing!

Great kid, very smart.  But that isn't an original idea.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toshiba_4S

How interesting is this really? When talking about progress and new types of governing we definitely have to look to the main problem out there: ENERGY! Look at where we are now? Applied science of producing energy comes forth with Carnot Cycle (1823) instead of ANY new direct type of converting mechanical/chemical/nuclear energy to electricity. Well. Are there any NEW ways?

Well... truth is; there ARE new INDUSTRIAL ways of producing energy efficiently:

Solar: http://www.infiniacorp.com/en/home/
Nuclear: http://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Nuclear-Power/MIT-Develops-Meltdown-Proof-Nuclear-Waste-Eating-Reactor.html
See this also about new type of small nuclear FISSION reactors before Fusion comes along within 30 years from now:
http://www.ted.com/talks/taylor_wilson_my_radical_plan_for_small_nuclear_fission_reactors.html

This late guy really got me you know. He's like 21? Watch the whole video. It worths it.

The answer to new governing techniques is ONE: S&T (Science & Technology).
I was born in Greece, studied in the US; (frankly I never stopped studying and I'm in my mid 40s). Greece is the place where democracy was first applied. I deliberately didn't use the word "invented". No one is able to invent a way for the many to be able to govern themselves... THEY CAN'T! Democracy, as any other good or bad way of governing is based in ONE thing: Supply.

If you're hungry, you cannot think. If you're looking for food, you don't have the time to study or observe. You don't get better. Ever wondered why the world became so fast, so advanced within the last 200 years? Because we solved the food problem. You think scientists really care about deflation or inflation of the economic system? THEY DON'T! They only care about their lab and their piece of work. Progress became available when we were able to produce energy and then found a way to produce food for the masses. This requires ENERGY!

Where do we go next?
I guess the next step is to tighten the energy production with our money circulation...

Rings a bell?  

oh well, once the US is out of the way the rest of the world can start doing something useful.

Instead of our leaders doing whatever the United States what to do, we can have...
-a decent economy,
-stop spending money on useless american military bullying,
-stop filling our air with shit

They were talking a lot about firing the board and replacing them with a team who's goal is to unwind the institution, but not much talk of criminal charges.

Without criminal charges for the long string of abuses, obscenely blatant wrong-doing and outright theft and transparently complicit 'regulators', the trust and faith needed for a functional financial system will be absent for a long while.

There seems to be strong consensus that the tools are in place to dismantle the largest banks and most of the congress people are urging the regulators to use them.

seems like we are at the endpoint of fiat system...

http://www.c-spanvideo.org/event/220752

Salary is derived from earning salt, it was good money then and will be again. Money 0.7.9

And the past of money.  There is a reason we have the term, "not worth his salt".

And that is exactly my point.  200 MW is hardly worth the effort of all that geoengineering.  Despite the fact that it would pay economic and ecological dividends, both in actual power and in local climate mitigation, for 10K years or more.  We simply don't, as humans, think out that far.  We discount the value of such a massive construction to our great-to-the-power-of-whatever-grandchildren.  If we can't get a net positive return on investment within out own lifetimes, we don't see the value in it.  This is the short term thinking that afflicts the human race with some of it's greatest flaws.  There is a 'food forest' in Vietnam that has produced food for humans for 300+ years, almost without human labor to maintain it.  There is a theory that the Great Pyramid in Giza was not a burial site at all, but an elaborate water works construction; from an age prior to the Egyption culture when the local climate was much wetter.

http://atlaspub.20m.com/giza/pg5.htm

http://sentinelkennels.com/Research_Article_V41.html

http://www.thepump.org/

BAsicly a massive ram pump, used to send the water of the "Upper Nile" (which no longer exists) great distances.  A similar 'ram pump' construction was once proposed to push a portion of the water flowwing down the Mississippi River West across the Great Plains, although today the Mississippi River basin has enough trouble maintaining a shipping depth.

Humanity just has real problems thinking in such long range terms, even when the benefit to our decendents is certain.  One reason that a space elevator is never going to be built.

Don't be so pessimistic, this is a good idea.

The real answer is we won't put it back, instead we'll collect it sell it on an exchange, create demand by promoting consumption and call it money. We can start a forum called sodiumtalk.org and blog about how it is the future of money.

Not really.

All of that infrastructure and land for a measly 200 MW is insane. Even if it was 2 GW that would hardly be worth the effort.