Wientje

By same analogy, classical coal plants use millennia-old technology and that sounds even less ideal.

If I recall correctly, the dimensions of the early universe in these kinds of models depends on counting the degrees of freedom of the universe. At high energies, everything becomes an internal degree of freedom, hence the universe behaves two dimensional (space + time). At lower energies, more dof shift from internal to external and the universes behaves multidimensional.

It's a similar pov to 11D supergravity for example. Since 7dimensions are so small, the look like internal dof. The huge added advantage is that gravity simplifies below 4 dimensions and the incompatibilities between GR and quantummechanics disappear.

I'll try to use this bad analogy. Suppose you see a high speed train passing (high E), the people in train would seem to move at high speed aswell from left to right. If a slow train passes, you'll see they'll also move from the far side of the aisle to your side and perhaps from the upper level to the lower level. So you 1D high E train becomes 3D low E.

You're allowed to have a monopoly, you're not allowed to abuse it. If Apple ordered mp3hardware stores to stop selling other brands or Apple would raise it prizes, that would be abuse.

"We postulate the density continuum defined by the rule R03/T02 = R3/T2" T is in seconds, R is in meters. So R3/T2 is in cubic meters per square seconds. A density is something per cubic meters. How exactly do 'square seconds' form a density in any meaningful way? Don't worry, I won't be holding my breath.

Postulating is al good fun but are you actually planning to do some physics with it? You're just saying Newton is evil and wrong but are not giving any reasons why his laws don't sufficicently confirm to reality. Neither are you explaining why your alternative fits reality better. Calling relativity an offshoot of Newtonian gravity is also not quite correct.

On the Verlinde article, I haven't read it. While it sounds interesting, it hinges on the definition of entropy. IMO, it might be a big circular argument.

Experimental or not, it has among the least accidents per KWh. 500 is a big enough number for some reasonable statistics.

Radiation is not a static. If a particle happens to decay at your detector when it is detecting, you'll get a massive spike. As the radiation changes between hours, places and the specific isotopes decaying, it's near impossible to get fast and accurate results for average dose recieved.

Not only are the units arbitrary, the forecast never goes above "1".

White smoke is not a sign of criticality...

It almost certainly didn't went critical. Spent fuel doesn't have enough U-235 for criticality. Moreover steam (boiling water) isn't a very good neutron moderator. I can't do the calculations but I seriously doubt it. Should the fuel have gone critical, a lot more would have happened than a fire. The damage would make the site comparable to Chernobyl.

This may actually be true. Uranium decays into radioactive radon sooner or later. Radon is a gas so it escapes the earth. People breathe the stuff and inside the lungs it decays into polonium-210 sooner or later. By mining the uranium and sticking it into a reactor, the radon is removed from the atmosphere. Wether or not this benefit outweighs the deaths from Chernobyl and others is a very good (and still open) question.

By looking at the statistics however, switching all coal plants to nuclear reactor would save lives (mostly miners)

Forget wikipedia and go the site of the World Health Organisation. http://whqlibdoc.who.int/publications/2006/9241594179_eng.pd... http://www.who.int/ionizing_radiation/chernobyl/chernobyl_di...

The reports range from 4000 extra cancer deaths (of 100 000 deaths) to 10 000 deaths out of a million. While 10000 isn't small, it represents a 1% increase in cancer related deaths. Stricter smoking laws can save more people than a nuclear stop.

The one death reported so far was when the earthquake hit and he got crushed by a crane.

How, exactly, is this a disaster compared to the greater surroundings? Preliminary results are one death, some injured people and perhaps 10 people who'll die from cancer in 20 years time who otherwise wouldn't. Compare to the thousands deaths, millions homeless and unimaginable damage from the earthquake and the nuclear 'disaster' is but a drop in the ocean.

for 4. Tritium is a beta emitter. Wherever it ends up when it decays, the radiation won't get very far.

As he is already dead, it won't be radiation that killed him. Radiation poisoning needs days to do its ugly work. For the person to die within hours, the containment must have failed to allow sufficient radiation out. Since this has not happened, the person in question hasn't died from radiation.

Since they asked the prime minister for permission to pump sea water, I'm guessing that it was an option all along i.e. they have the facilities to do just a thing. The whole defence in depth concept relies on having a bazilion emergency options.

my guess: 400 times the daily dose is what you would get from natural radiation in a year. This amounts to about 2 milli Sievert depending on where you live. Articifial radiation of which 95% comes from medical scans is also about 2 mSv.

So the dose recieved is the same as the average person gets a year in medical scans. So those people in the area shouldn't have a scan next year.

The negative effects on health from these levels of radiation are in increased risk of cancer.

To suffer from direct radiation poisoning, the those would have to be many orders stronger. In Chernobyl, this happened to the firefighters on site without protective clothing and an exposed and active core.

All in all, the risks for the population so far a very minimal apart from the increased risk of cancer.

The average radioactive dose a person gets per year is about 3,6 to 5 milliSievert a year (for Belgium) of which 2,6 mSv from natural sources, 0,95mSv from medical examinations and 0,05mSv from industry (of which 0,01mSv due to nuclear power)

So when they say around the reactor the dose in an hour is about the same as you get a year, then this is about equivalent to two scans in a hospital.

Note: this is talking about low levels where the only influence radiation has is increasing the chance of cancer. If there are very high doses >100mSv involved, there will be direct radiological damage which can be strongly compared to damage from burning.

It kinda makes you think. If we delete all compilers in the world, there would be no easy way to make new compilers. It also means that your compiler on your PC can trace its heritage back to the first machine coed compiler ever written, like life itself evolving from one generation to the next.

I am not a GCC toolchain expert, but what is the trouble with someone hosting a GCC for OS X binary?

I wouldn't try browsing with a 386 laptop. I highly doubt you could still buy one in '95. Funny as historical comparisons are, some accuracy would be appreciated.

The smallish difference is irrelevant unless you care about 720p movies. Double dpi would not be irrelevant as the results are much more obvious to the eye in most situations.

Except that we got ten times more thorium than uranium in the crust.

Not necessarily. As long as other byproducts like Plutonium 241 etc. are created in reasonable measures as well, the resulting Plutonium will be way to unstable to use in bombs.

Any Uranium reactor produces Pu-239 but don't present a serious proliferation risk. Breeding reactors or MOX factories are risky.

I am guessing that these features are 'simply' a recompile away if the software uses Apple API's for all its document handling.

As far as 26 July '45, the Japanese refused to surrender. The guys that forced Japan in to submission were Little Boy and Fat Man and they had an academic background. The only leadership required from the 'sport trained' generals was choosing which city had the most juicy civilians.