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Thread: Stellarator - Feat of engineering and execution

  1. #21
    Quote Originally Posted by pbjosh View Post
    Uhm...

    Without explanation, I might as well say you are not a man (even if I have met you in person) and my comment would be equally valid.

    As for:



    That might actually be where you are both a bit ignorant:



    Companies are starting up and working in Canada, even Toshiba, to work on MSR, ISMR and other small format reactors for heating up oil sands. India is working on Thorium reactors. These novel new reactors are not even being allowed to be built as a test device until the NRC receives hundreds of millions of dollars, and at least 10 years, just for permit to start testing. After that time and money, the NRC might just say no because the NRC is only focused on, and only works with and approves large size LWR. Even our own ORL, which I am less than a mile from as of this typing, is working with China because the US regulatory system mucks them up.

    These companies could raise funds that were reasonable, and a couple have. They just know to not to this work in the USA. Because the USA is saying no to new nuclear development.

    Same could be said about newborn stem cell work.

    Same could be said about a lot. We (The US Gov) spent $79B on climate change between 1989 and 2009. http://joannenova.com.au/2009/07/mas...nding-exposed/

    Why not some other stuff?

    Some of these are items that can produce gobsmacking amounts of carbon neutral power, in one design they can use just our waste nuclear fuel and power the world, like the Transatomic design.

    http://www.industrytap.com/nuclear-w...r-72-years/417



    But they can't do it here, in the US.

    So they are looking to do it in Canada and China and India.
    regulation didn't kill the USA home built LHC a decade before the CERNs.

    regulation didn't kill research into nuclear fusion.

    regulation for damn sure is hurting us in the medical science community. pro lifer's bronze age mythologies frequently do get in the way of scientific progress. but that isn't "regulation" ... thats religion.

    you'll note almost every one of these problems ... goes right back to the same group of people .... who simultaneously claim they want to make america great, and condemn anyone who doesn't think america is exceptional.

    we can't be exceptional in science in technology, and thus economically, and politically ... if you refuse to fund long term research projects. sorry, the rate at which we buy ipads is not what makes america great. what made america great was projects like the Manhattan Project, the extermination of small pox, and the moon shot. technology and science done to solve these problems trickled down into everything that is modern living.
    Last edited by cockerpunk; 10-23-2015 at 05:00 PM.
    social conservatism: the mortal fear that someone, somewhere, might be having fun.

  2. #22
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    Quote Originally Posted by pbjosh View Post
    Companies are starting up and working in Canada, even Toshiba, to work on MSR, ISMR and other small format reactors for heating up oil sands. India is working on Thorium reactors. These novel new reactors are not even being allowed to be built as a test device until the NRC receives hundreds of millions of dollars, and at least 10 years, just for permit to start testing. After that time and money, the NRC might just say no because the NRC is only focused on, and only works with and approves large size LWR. Even our own ORL, which I am less than a mile from as of this typing, is working with China because the US regulatory system mucks them up.
    Meh, a few items that aren't particularly fundamental research ... not really concerning. There's WAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY more science being done in the US than there is getting tangled in regulation.

    Regulation had nothing to do with keeping accelerators out of the US.

    Agreed on the stem cells, though.

    Same could be said about a lot. We (The US Gov) spent $79B on climate change between 1989 and 2009. http://joannenova.com.au/2009/07/mas...nding-exposed/
    Money well spent, IMO.
    Ever so many citizens of this republic think they ought to believe that the Universe is a monarchy, and therefore they are always at odds with the republic. -Alan Watts

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  3. #23
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    Quote Originally Posted by pbjosh View Post
    Same could be said about a lot. We (The US Gov) spent $79B on climate change between 1989 and 2009. http://joannenova.com.au/2009/07/mas...nding-exposed/
    BTW the government publishes these numbers so you don't have to get them from a shit website claiming to "expose" publicly available information.

    http://www.gao.gov/key_issues/climat.../issue_summary
    Ever so many citizens of this republic think they ought to believe that the Universe is a monarchy, and therefore they are always at odds with the republic. -Alan Watts

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  4. #24
    Hebrews 13:8 going_home's Avatar
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    Why complain about the government funding anything ?

    The government, riddled with political correctness, is the problem with the economy.

    Thats simply a nanny state mentality.

    The government has no money, its our money.

    The government doesnt produce anything.

    Science funding should come from private foundations like the hundreds of public radio and TV stations get their operating expenses.

    History shows 100 years ago men of vision found a way to make their dreams reality without government.
    endeavor to persevere.......

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    That shitty website posted it way before the GAO did. That shitty little website is also a weblog lifetime achievement winner partially because of that exact article. GAO posted openly because of that site. The GAO didn't do a graph like that before. I know, I back searched the claim and the data when it first came out.

    Go ahead though, bashing the messenger is an easy fallacy to fall back on when you don't have a place to refute from. Like, you just want to hand your position away.

    In other words though, you support the data, just tried to shoot the way it was presented.

    https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/ad-hominem

    but that isn't "regulation"
    Oh, yet a simple google says....:

    A regulation is a legal norm intended to shape conduct that is a by-product of imperfection. A regulation may be used to prescribe or proscribe conduct ("command-and-control" regulation), to calibrate incentives ("incentive" regulation), or to change preferences ("preferences shaping" regulation").
    If it is put there by the government, it is. Sorry, maybe you wanted to use a different word? Maybe you didn't know what the word meant? AH, no matter... you wanted to accept one part but not the other. Remember, "Government is the word we use for the things we choose to do together!" Yay! Togetherness.

    Some of it you like, some of it you don't, but it is still regulation, even if you don't like it. Regulation on drug laws, who you can have sex with, or what you can pay for? Takes all the fun out of it. No matter:

    Overt regulation on Fission is still stupid. It is as fear based and realistic as Sharia Law's views on homosexuality or women. The Linear No-Threshold Relationship Is Inconsistent with Radiation Biologic and Experimental Data. Simple as that.

    There is a lot of small, fear based regulation in multiple areas. Often put together by: Fear and personal/business interest in competition. While it is strangulating this specific technology, and not others, doesn't mean it is not strangulating other points we haven't brought up. I have just shown one area where it is being used to strangle innovation, and that is a proven point in this discussion. There are winners and losers picked by government. Look at Ethanol as an example of a government picked 'winner' - or $500M to Solyndra. In fact, $5 billion went to solar companies that didn't deliver.

    It wasn't all well spent. But hey, science right, before $? Oh wait:

    "The Hill newspaper reported Wednesday that the Santa Monica, Calif.-based SolarReserve has secured a $737 million loan guarantee from the Department of Energy for a Nevada solar project.

    That company has ties to George Kaiser, the Oklahoma billionaire who raised $53,500 for President Obama?s campaign in 2008. Through his Argonaut Private Equity firm, Kaiser holds a majority stake in Solyndra.
    Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2011/09/29/mo...#ixzz3pRwmyDPy

    Oh wait, cronyism. Funny that - I guess that does uphold Cockerpunk's original position that money drives science, or something. Huh.

    In fact, since we are back to the GAO and climate spending:

    According to the GAO, annual federal climate spending has increased from $4.6 billion in 2003 to $8.8 billion in 2010, amounting to $106.7 billion over that period. The money was spent in four general categories: technology to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, science to understand climate changes, international assistance for developing countries, and wildlife adaptation to respond to actual or expected changes. Technology spending, the largest category, grew from $2.56 billion to $5.5 billion over this period, increasingly advancing over others in total share. Data compiled by Joanne Nova at the Science and Policy Institute indicates that the U.S. Government spent more than $32.5 billion on climate studies between 1989 and 2009. This doesn?t count about $79 billion more spent for climate change technology research, foreign aid and tax breaks for ?green energy.? (from another shitty website: Forbes)
    Oh, there is Joanne Nova again. Sorry about that. Do you want want me to insult her right now so you don't have to later? Or some similar Ad Hom? It is from a girl, how about you just say she is a girl and doesn't science. 'cause that is about the value of your position, since you did accept her data.

    However, without further improvement in how federal climate change funding is defined and reported, strategic priorities are set, and funding is aligned with priorities, it will be difficult for the public and Congress to fully understand how climate change funds are accounted for and how they are spent.?
    Here, read it yourself. http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-11-317

    But, you know, the $5.2 million that might have helped with any other science anything was best used to make a climate change video game:

    "the NSF felt the need to help ?spur climate change activism.? They paid Columbia University to develop a video game entitled ?Future Coast,? where rising seas cause mass chaos and weather calamities of epic proportions. The story is set to a bunch of voicemails from the future describing the anarchy."
    That is almost twice all of the money spent by Exxon on climate science that might have not been down the party line. If you are curious, here is the list of the papers they helped support. It is 10 pages long.

    http://cdn.exxonmobil.com/~/media/gl...0s_forward.pdf

    But hey, big billions wasted on some people's pet projects, and somewhere in there, science. Yay! We did it together.


    One plus for Obama though - his hands off approach to non government space travel has been very nice.

    Regulation had nothing to do with keeping accelerators out of the US.
    Totally agree. Never said it did. Noice strawman there though. [Best if read like a sarcastic teenager.]

    One last interesting note on Joanne Nova: Her husband, Dr David Evans' O-D Notch-Delay Solar Climate Model is very interesting. Not that he is know for modeling anything.

    David consulted full-time for the Australian Greenhouse Office from 1999 to 2005, and part-time for the Department of Climate Change from 2008 to 2010, and was the lead modeler in developing FullCAM, the world-leading carbon accounting model that Australia uses for analyzing the carbon in Australia's biosphere for the Kyoto Protocol.
    Oh damn. SO, I get to use the ad verecundiam fallacy (look maw, I copied and pasted latin) and say that they might just known their sh!t. But you, oh internet warrior, do tell us how your opinion and lack of backup points, a few ad homs insulting people you know nothing about matter so much to this wildly now off topic post.

    You guys would get killed if anybody flowed your debate.


    Avoided in all of your replies, so it is still standing: The fact that MSR and LRFT technology it is an excellent source of carbon free power that also can reduce the total amount of nuclear waste not only in mass, but also in long term storage problems by a few orders of magnitude. It is easy to repeat 1960's level technology that is 'walk away safe' and reduces our nuclear waste significantly while providing 'clean' power, and is being held back by US regulation.

    My original position, supported by the facts I presented, stands:

    Or hey, a cool $100M for a LFTR or any MSR at this point would make me happy. We did it in the 60's. There are nearly a dozen projects that are going on and our regulation here in the US means they have to go to China, Canada and India to get them even built.
    I have shown that both we have Billions wasted on BS sh!t like climate change video games and cronyism for bankrupt corporations that are big donors, and regulations holding back fantastic technology that is going to have to be built in other nations instead.

    Thank you for playing. Good night.
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  6. #26
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    Those poor grad students had to design it while in hell...

    Ever so many citizens of this republic think they ought to believe that the Universe is a monarchy, and therefore they are always at odds with the republic. -Alan Watts

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  7. #27
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    So I was trying to ignore this, but as it turns out replying to you once will probably get it out of my head a bit better.

    Quote Originally Posted by pbjosh View Post
    That shitty website posted it way before the GAO did. That shitty little website is also a weblog lifetime achievement winner partially because of that exact article. GAO posted openly because of that site. The GAO didn't do a graph like that before. I know, I back searched the claim and the data when it first came out.

    Go ahead though, bashing the messenger is an easy fallacy to fall back on when you don't have a place to refute from. Like, you just want to hand your position away.

    In other words though, you support the data, just tried to shoot the way it was presented.

    https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/ad-hominem

    ....

    Oh, there is Joanne Nova again. Sorry about that. Do you want want me to insult her right now so you don't have to later? Or some similar Ad Hom? It is from a girl, how about you just say she is a girl and doesn't science. 'cause that is about the value of your position, since you did accept her data.
    Calling a website shit is not ad hom. Let's read your link: "You attacked your opponents character or personal traits in an attempt to undermine their argument." Except I did no such thing, I called a website shit. As will be mentioned in a later site I link, "I don't want to argue with her, she's a nice lady". But that has no bearing on the quality of her website.

    For starters, let's just look at the context within which she presents her website. The subtitle is "Skeptical Science for Dissident Thinkers". But she's not being skeptical. A skeptic is "skeptic: a person inclined to question or doubt all accepted opinions." Yet within the very article you link she very clearly has an alternate reality clearly in her mind, a reality that a large minority have accepted - just a few quotes:

    Quote Originally Posted by Jo Nova
    Illogic and unreason cloud a debate already loaded with bias. When there are so many incentives encouraging unclarity and overcomplexity, the simple truths need help to rise to the top.
    Quote Originally Posted by Jo Nova
    The truth will come out in the end, but how much damage will accrue while we wait for volunteers to audit the claims of the financially well-fed?
    Quote Originally Posted by Jo Nova
    The point of this report is to show how the process of science can be distorted (like any human endeavor) by a massive one-sided input of money.
    Those are statements of denialism, not skepticism. The website, in fact, is riddled with denialism.

    That last one is interesting, because she hasn't even done that. Sure she has demonstrated that some money is being spent here, but she has not demonstrated any distortion in any concrete way. Let's look at how she shows money being spent. Her graph:



    GAO graph, depicting the same data:



    Why do they look so different? Apart from the GAO cutting it off at 93, Jo Nova didn't include inflation. If you do that, obviously, the science budget becomes practically flat and the only increase in spending has been in technology expenditures (largely private sector investment). Again, shit website, and again, that's not ad hom. And by the way, just a plain old big fuck you for insinuating it has anything to do with gender.

    Quote Originally Posted by pbjosh View Post
    One last interesting note on Joanne Nova: Her husband, Dr David Evans' O-D Notch-Delay Solar Climate Model is very interesting. Not that he is know for modeling anything.
    As for her husband, Dr. David Evans, (why he's relevant enough for you to have brought up I have no idea) his notch delay model is another steaming pile of bullshit. It's an abuse of fourier transforms, in a way that creates a model with an infinite number of free parameters. Given his academic pedigree you have to assume he knows he's abusing the math, but is choosing to do it anyway for who knows what reasons. Here's a technical breakdown - if you're technically capable with fourier transforms none of this should be terrible (despite the dude's bad english, but it was the only article I could find that really gets to the technical details):

    http://motls.blogspot.com/2014/06/da...theory-of.html

    Speaking of science distorted by money here we have a bad model presented by a guy who, given his academic pedigree, should know better. Considering he was appointed to the Australian Department of Climate Change by a conservative administration that denies climate change (John Howard), it raises serious questions.

    Speaking of private sector investment,

    Quote Originally Posted by pbjosh View Post
    There is a lot of small, fear based regulation in multiple areas. Often put together by: Fear and personal/business interest in competition. While it is strangulating this specific technology, and not others, doesn't mean it is not strangulating other points we haven't brought up. I have just shown one area where it is being used to strangle innovation, and that is a proven point in this discussion. There are winners and losers picked by government. Look at Ethanol as an example of a government picked 'winner' - or $500M to Solyndra. In fact, $5 billion went to solar companies that didn't deliver.

    It wasn't all well spent. But hey, science right, before $?

    Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2011/09/29/mo...#ixzz3pRwmyDPy

    Oh wait, cronyism. Funny that - I guess that does uphold Cockerpunk's original position that money drives science, or something. Huh.
    It would give you more credibility to bring up the levels of "cronyism" that exist and have existed for some time between fossil fuel companies and the government when you bring up this point. Otherwise it seems like you're condemning cronyism on one side while giving it the go-ahead for other entities, and after all I thought you didn't like it when the government picked winners and losers. It kind of seems like you're picking winners and losers, too. The government has thrown a lot of money down empty oil wells.

    The supplemental guidance for the Advanced Fossil Energy Projects solicitation adds $500 million, raising the total available to up to $8.5 billion. The supplemental guidance for the Renewable Energy and Efficient Energy (REEE) Projects solicitation also adds $500 million, raising the total to approximately $4.5 billion
    http://energy.gov/lpo/articles/doe-f...ew-application

    Quote Originally Posted by pbjosh View Post
    Overt regulation on Fission is still stupid. It is as fear based and realistic as Sharia Law's views on homosexuality or women. The Linear No-Threshold Relationship Is Inconsistent with Radiation Biologic and Experimental Data. Simple as that.
    As an aside, it's pretty tacky to just copy/paste an article title as a sentence. Here's the link for those interested http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2663584/

    Some regulation does seem necessary. I have done some reading since you posted this and it does seem that the regulatory burden put on new plants is too high, and it would be good to address that.

    That said, the other thing that's eating Nuclear's lunch right now is low Natural Gas prices.

    John W. Rowe, the chairman of Exelon, the nation?s biggest nuclear utility, had said that he would not build a new reactor at today?s natural gas prices. Referring to the geologic formations from which natural gas is extracted, he said in a recent speech, Shale is good for the country, bad for new nuclear development.

    ?There must be a shortage of natural gas and stable high prices to make the economics right, he said of nuclear power in a speech to a nuclear group.
    http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/...ar-power/?_r=0

    The reason wasn't the long battle, though foes of the plant were jubilant. In the end, it was a new economic reality: cheap natural gas from the shale boom. That revolution is starting to upend energy economics in ways few foresaw just a few years ago.
    http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014...38682331577924

    But hey, no picking winners and losers, right?

    Quote Originally Posted by pbjosh View Post
    That is almost twice all of the money spent by Exxon on climate science that might have not been down the party line. If you are curious, here is the list of the papers they helped support. It is 10 pages long.

    http://cdn.exxonmobil.com/~/media/gl...0s_forward.pdf

    But hey, big billions wasted on some people's pet projects, and somewhere in there, science. Yay! We did it together.
    Speaking of which, before you endorse Dr. Evans' notch theory, you should probably read what Exxon scientists have to say about climate change (way back in the 80's, I might add).
    http://insideclimatenews.org/search_..._project=41124

    Quote Originally Posted by pbjosh View Post
    Totally agree. Never said it did. Noice strawman there though. [Best if read like a sarcastic teenager.]
    Oh, don't worry, that's how I read most of your posts. We were talking about accelerators when you first chimed in, so it didn't seem off topic.

    Quote Originally Posted by pbjosh View Post
    Avoided in all of your replies, so it is still standing: The fact that MSR and LRFT technology it is an excellent source of carbon free power that also can reduce the total amount of nuclear waste not only in mass, but also in long term storage problems by a few orders of magnitude. It is easy to repeat 1960's level technology that is 'walk away safe' and reduces our nuclear waste significantly while providing 'clean' power, and is being held back by US regulation.

    ...

    I have shown that both we have Billions wasted on BS sh!t like climate change video games and cronyism for bankrupt corporations that are big donors, and regulations holding back fantastic technology that is going to have to be built in other nations instead.
    To be completely honest, I don't really care. The test reactor being built in China is being built in conjunction with Oak Ridge, and the test reactor being built in Europe is being built in conjunction with MIT.

    Getting that commitment remains an uphill struggle, but a report funded by the government of the United Kingdom and released recently by Energy Process Developments, a London-based research firm, reviews technologies from six potential developers of molten-salt reactor?Flibe Energy, Moltex Energy, ThorCon Power, Seaborg Technologies, Terrestrial Energy, and Transatomic Power?and finds encouraging signals for the next 10 years (see ?Experiments Start on a Meltdown-Proof Nuclear Reactor?). After a decade of work, the companies ?are ready now with proposals for the next step to implementation, namely engineering design to prepare the safety case and to proceed to design and build.?

    The most advanced program for liquid-fuel, thorium-based reactors is in China, where the Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics reportedly plans to build a prototype in the next few years. The Shanghai program is a collaboration with Oak Ridge National Laboratory, where molten salt nuclear technology was born.
    http://www.technologyreview.com/news...eck-in-europe/

    They can build the test reactors elsewhere and bring the tech home if it's feasible and economical, I'm completely fine with that.
    Last edited by PBSteve; 10-27-2015 at 06:51 PM.
    Ever so many citizens of this republic think they ought to believe that the Universe is a monarchy, and therefore they are always at odds with the republic. -Alan Watts

    I work for the company building the Paragon

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