It seems to me that your post is the only one that isn’t trying to capitalize on this for political points, or rampant speculation.
450 karma · joined March 13, 2018
Ah, it was fun at any rate. I miss you, Lanfear!
It’s a bit wearying to hear the old chestnuts trotted out here of all places. It seems like bad arguments and FUD never really change, they just finds new adherents.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bronchiolitis_obliterans#Dia...
I... I... need get to bed.
To claim otherwise is, as you would have it, lying.
More importantly, both are solved issues from a purely technical standpoint, it’s just that everyone wants someone else to deal with it. As a bonus, we can actually use fission to produce energy, right now. There’s no issue of, “it will be great when...” grid storage is solved along with intermittency for renewables. There’s no, “it will be great when...” fusion is producing energy rather than heavily parasitizing from the grid. There’s no waiting until we’re completely screwed by climate change effects.
@csallen: Be willing to actually dispose of it. We need to commit the money and political will to set up a single disposal site. Right now it’s a NIMBY nightmare so we get the worst outcome.
Edit: I’d love to hear a counterpoint, although of course I accept that’s not required. Like the discussion about fusion, people seem to argue from a point in the future when all of the problems and limitations of today are gone. Let’s try arguing from what’s possible now instead.
-Sputtering of shielding and every other part of the reactor from fast neutrons. If your reactor is becoming brittle as it’s in operation, and requires constant maintenance, it won’t be operating enough to be cost effective.
-Breeding blankets. If we’re not breeding tritium in the blanket (and no one has been able to sustain a reaction that way yet) then we’re just using fission a lot. Expense becomes an issue, as does radiological issues.
-The plasma diverter is very much an unsolved problem. I can get into more detail here, but in short this is the part of the reactor that “skims” some of the hot plasma off to do the work. The dynamics of very hot, magnetically constrained plasmas still escapes us, and when you throw a rock into that stream, the complexity increases. Current divertes wouldn’t last a day in an operating plant. Disassembling your whole plant every day and reassembling it is a non-starter.
-Containment of plasma at sufficient energies is still something measured in seconds, or fractions of seconds. The usual metaphor is trying to uniformly squeeze a balloon; it will just “squirt” out. For s research reactor a second or two of fusion is an achievement. For power generation it’s nothing.
-Neutron activation of otherwise inert materials means you’re going to have serious radioactive waste. It’s unclear just how dirty D-T fusion would be from soup to nuts, but “pretty dirty” seems like a good bet.
-Tritium penetration.
-Most of the energy produced is in the form of neutrons, and we don’t know how to use that as a source of power. Those neutrons, in addition to destroying the reactor itself and activating materials, represent a loss.
-What we really need is aneutronic fusion through alternative cycles to D-T, like p-p, but that’s a much hotter plasma and no one has a clue how to make it work yet.
-Coolant for a constantly running reactor is a boring, but unsolved problem.
There’s more, but these are the ones most poeple on HN probably are aware of when they dismiss this article.
Some further reading https://thebulletin.org/fusion-reactors-not-what-they’re-cra...
If you’re in the UK try +44 (0) 8457 90 90 90
If you’re in AU try 08 93 81 5555
If you’re somewhere else I’ll find a number for you if you’d like. No one is going to judge you for calling, you’re not going to be wasting anyone’s time. @pedalpete is giving good advice too.
The rest may be true, may be germane, or may not be. The only part that matters to me until the results of the NTSB investigation is made public, is that the autopilot did this.
Wow.
http://m.wardsauto.com/industry/best-and-worst-automaker-rec...
Therefore, GliaLab is proud to announce that we are building GliaBase, a global diagnostic healthcare platform utilizing AI and blockchain technology to provide users with universal and safe remote access to next-gen diagnostic tools and advice. Essentially, it is a platform powered by deep learning algorithms where users have access to top-tier diagnostic tools and healthcare information related to different diseases.
Yeeeaaaaah. How? There’s a lot of back-patting, some “imagine a world...” and just a dash of “Patients will... doctors will...” and zero specifics. Weasel words like “essentially” in front of a pat and low-content description of the actual platform also raises alarm bells for me.
This reeks.
Went to their site, and it seems the magic ingredient is that this is another ICO, complete with flashy splash page, and all of the usual red flags. They’re selling 30,000,000 GLIA (Gliatokens) which they assure you is a utility token. For something they haven’t built yet. The SEC is not going to be amused.
Yeah, he’s going to prison, but that doesn’t mean he’s wrong about the potential value of his platform, and it doesn’t mean his motives aren’t good. It probably does mean that idealism is a shitty defense in court though.
LIPC tech is good too, and might be closer than you’d think. You can exploit the interaction of ultrashort laser pulses to create and modulate plasma, and then do neat things like send a bunch of volts down the channel.