When you hear the words “nuclear energy,” what do you think of? Perhaps an image comes to mind of a nuclear bomb, or a nuclear energy crisis like Chernobyl or Fukushima. If this is your image of nuclear power, you might be surprised to learn that nuclear energy is actually considered one of the most environmentally friendly forms of energy production in the world. With fewer emissions and greater efficiency, there are many pros and cons of nuclear energy to consider. //

On our list of the pros and cons of nuclear energy, this pro is quite astounding. Nuclear fission (the process used to generate nuclear energy) releases much greater amounts of energy than simply burning fossil fuels like gas, oil, or coal. How much more efficient? Nuclear fission is nearly 8,000 times more efficient at producing energy than traditional fossil fuels. That’s a considerable amount of energy density. Because nuclear energy is more efficient, it requires less fuel to power the plant and therefore creates less waste as well.

Our paper focuses specifically on situations in which real-world constraints mean strategic choices must be made on resource allocation between nuclear or renewables-based electricity.

Our research explores this dilemma retrospectively, examining past patterns in the attachments (i.e. investments) of different countries to nuclear or renewable strategies. Our paper addresses three hypotheses:

A “nuclear climate mitigation” hypothesis: that countries with a greater attachment to nuclear power will tend to have lower overall carbon emissions.
A “renewables climate mitigation” hypothesis: that countries with a greater attachment to renewables will tend to have lower overall carbon emissions.
A “crowding out” hypothesis: that countries with a greater attachment to nuclear will tend to have a lesser attachment to renewables, and vice versa.
Across the study countries as a whole we found that the “nuclear climate mitigation” hypothesis is not sustained by the evidence at an appropriate level of statistical significance. The renewable climate mitigation hypothesis is confirmed with substantial significance. And the crowding out hypothesis is also significantly sustained.

Put plainly – if countries want to lower emissions as substantially, rapidly and cost-effectively as possible, they should prioritise support for renewables rather than nuclear power. Pursuit of nuclear strategies risks taking up resources that could be used more effectively and suppressing the uptake of renewable energy.

What might explain these patterns? Technologically, nuclear systems have been prone to greater construction cost overruns, delays, and longer lead times than similarly sized renewable energy projects. Thus, per dollar invested, the modularity of renewables projects offers quicker emissions reductions than large-scale, delay-prone, nuclear projects.

Furthermore, renewables tend to display higher rates of “positive learning” where increased deployment results in lower costs and improved performance, especially for wind farms and solar energy parks. This contrasts with the experience of nuclear power in France which has been prone to “negative learning,” rising costs or reduced performance with the next generation of technology.

In terms of policy, the incidents at Three Mile Island (1979), Chernobyl (1986), and Fukushima (2011), all resulted in significant tightening of regulatory requirements for nuclear reactors.

All energy sources have negative effects. But they differ enormously in size: as we will see, in all three aspects, fossil fuels are the dirtiest and most dangerous, while nuclear and modern renewable energy sources are vastly safer and cleaner. //

From the perspective of both human health and climate change, it matters less whether we transition to nuclear power or renewable energy, and more that we stop relying on fossil fuels. //

Let’s consider how many deaths each source would cause for an average town of 187,090 people in Europe, which – as I’ve said before – consume one terawatt-hour of electricity per year. Let’s call this town ‘Euroville’.

If Euroville was completely powered by coal we’d expect 25 people to die prematurely every year as a result. Most of these people would die from air pollution). This is how a coal-powered Euroville would compare with towns powered by other energy sources:

Coal: 25 people would die prematurely every year;
Oil: 18 people would die prematurely every year;
Gas: 3 people would die prematurely every year;
Nuclear: In an average year nobody would die. A death rate of 0.07 deaths per terawatt-hour means it would take 14 years before a single person would die. As we will explore later, this might even be an overestimate.
Wind: In an average year nobody would die – it will take 29 years before someone died;
Hydropower: In an average year nobody would die – it will take 42 years before someone died;
Solar: In an average year nobody would die – only every 53 years before someone would died.

Death rates from energy
production per TWh

Death rates are measured based on deaths from
accidents and air pollution per terawatt-hour
(TWh).

tokamaks are reactors which use thermal input and super-powered magnets to convert a cocktail of relatively abundant hydrogen isotopes into a self-sustaining plasma of unimaginable heat and radiance. Researchers are fine-tuning tokamaks at various labs around the globe, hunting for energy breakeven, the tipping point where the plasma in the tokamak generates at least as much energy from fusion as it requires in externally supplied thermal energy. Once breakeven has been achieved, mankind will be on the cusp of a limitless source of clean, self-sustaining energy, which for any number of reasons will be extremely bitchin’, at least until the science is bought by venture capitalists and sold back to the public at a price that effectively makes its owners gods. //

We have been assured by several researchers that whatever else is true about the development of tokamak science, the jillion-degree star juice in the core of the reactor can not be fired or ejected or otherwise expelled from the torus, due to physics or chemistry or whatever, and therefore cannot cause Chernobyl-like cataclysms. //

But now a PPPL researcher—one Fatima Ebrahimi, pictured above (right)—has designed a new “plasmoid rocket” concept which applies the ultra magnets and so forth of tokamaks in such a way that superheated plasma is used to generate thrust and propel a rocket through space, thus solving one of the most vexing challenges associated with manned travel into deep space: storing enough fuel to power a spacecraft all the way from Earth to Mars. Ebrahimi’s rocket concept harnesses both the juice of the Sun and the mechanics of solar flares to do magical magnet things and go vroom through space.

The new Princeton concept works by using the same mechanism that helps to blast solar flares away from the Sun. These flares consist of charged atoms and particles called plasma, which are trapped inside powerful magnetic fields where complex interactions take place.

For propulsion systems, Ebrahimi is particularly interested in one type of interaction called magnetic reconnection, which is where magnetic fields in highly charged plasmas restructure themselves to converge, separate, and re-converge. As they do so, they generate large amounts of kinetic energy, thermal energy, and particle acceleration. It’s a phenomenon not only seen on the Sun, but also in the Earth’s atmosphere and inside Tokamak fusion reactors, like PPPL’s National Spherical Torus Experiment (NSTX).

https://newatlas.com/space/magnetic-reconnection-rocket-thruster-concept-spaceflight-mars

Carl-Ake Utterstrom
Mar. 13 07:36 pm JST
Renewable do not have a chance to fill the requirement for electric demand in the future. We need definitely nuclear.

In 2045 the Swedish requirement according to Danish research will be 500 TWh. Wind power have been built for €20 bln and resulted in 17 TWh which means that we need 26 times as much wind power to cover the requirement besides of water power and no nuclear.

The video "planet of the humans" has found out that renewable do require a huge demand of raw material and do have short life lengths and do destroy huge land areas and the operator just leave the area as restoring of nature depends on area owner.

In ten years we built nuclear resulting in 75 TWh output.

In cold weather the installed wind power of 10 000 MW just delivered 1 300 MW. Oh oh was the opinion. But why The Swedish Power Net have in many year informed that the nominal output in summer is 6 percent and in winter 11 percent. That is still 200 MW output less than expected.

For Sweden the amount of 2 MW wind power plants are therefore 91 000. But the main reason is that the yearly demand is 4 550 plants as effect of the low life length. In several years the erection of wind power have resulted in 3 500 plants for €20 bln. .

The waste from wind power is 50 percent higher than the nuclear waste if we calculate 300 wind power plants will give 9 000 m^3 waste while the total acumulated waste from nuclear are 6 000 m^3.

This is waste that never will be environmentally friendly and the epoxi exposures are strongly cancer activating,

In total 41 persons have been killed in nuclear accidents mainly Tjernobyl where the actual radiation is 800 mSv where still 200 persons live within restricted area. The worst radiation in Fukushima is yeardoses of 120 mSv which means one percent higher risk for lungcancer. A university in Ukraine have developed a unit for measuring the accumulated radiation an astronaut will be exposed for 350 mSv which according to the University increase the risk for lungcancer with three percent.

Norwegian Nuclear workers where evacuated with special chartred air transport to Norway as effect of the accident pity they landed in higher background radiation in Norway and Norway have had quite less deaths in Corona than Sweden. In India highly populated areas do have 200 mSv in background radiation.

An Oxford University-trained artificial intelligence expert explains the machinery behind Big Tech's thought suppression, AI speech police, and groupthink on campus.

The losing side needed to know that a fair shake was given, and that justice prevailed, even if it wasn't the outcome they wanted. That did not happen after Nov. 3. //

A Rasmussen survey last month found that 61 percent of Republicans say Joe Biden did not win the election fairly. That number hasn’t changed much since early January, when 69 percent of GOP voters voiced the same concern. That 34 percent of all voters and 36 percent of independents agree with them is a strong signal that something went terribly amiss in the maelstrom of election cases. //

Yet to understand why there is still widespread unease with the election, would it not be better to stop demanding conformity and instead dig deeper to see what the courts told us in those cases, and what they did not? A review of them shows that, contrary to a common narrative, few were ever considered on the merits. //

When most needed, the court that once took the time to render a decision on whether a tomato is a fruit or vegetable chose to punt on each of the key presidential election cases. American voters are worse off for it as confidence in elections erodes. //

The election of 2020, which included more than 155 million votes, was decided by approximately 300,000 votes in six states, or 0.2 percent of the electorate, all of which came by an unnatural flip of results late on election night. Despite judges’ repeated hand-wringing that any court action would disenfranchise millions of voters, the reality is that millions of others may have been disenfranchised, and they instinctively suspect so.

The one thing many voters seem to have learned through the legal chaos is that it’s easier to commit election violations than to stop them. So the electorate remains divided—even after “86 election cases.”

In the face of climate change, some environmentalists are fighting not to close power plants but to save them.

Mike Pompeo
@mikepompeo
On the 4th of July, we celebrate America and our many freedoms. One of those freedoms is that YOU get to decide if you want to have family and friends over in your own backyard, NOT the government.

Daily Caller
@DailyCaller
BIDEN: "If we do our part... by July 4, there's a good chance you, your families, and friends will be able to get together in your backyard or in your neighborhood and have a cookout or a barbecue and celebrate Independence Day... Small groups will be able to get together" //

Dan O'Donnell
@DanODonnellShow
Biden says by the Fourth of July, we might be able to gather in small groups again, and "that will make this Independence Day something truly special." Buddy, Independence Day is special because in 1776 we got fed up with government telling us how to live our lives. //

Daily Caller
@DailyCaller
Tucker reacts to President Biden's speech:

"How dare you tell us who we can spend the Fourth of July with."

compliments of The Heritage Foundation:

“The New Intolerance: Critical Race Theory and Its Grip on America.”

Critical Race Theory (CRT) and public policies based on this worldview will not alleviate racial inequality in the real world. In fact, this dogma undermines human and social factors—such as family, entry-level work, and merit-based education—the wellspring of upward mobility. Yet, the rigid persistence with which believers apply this theory has made CRT a constant, daily presence in the lives of hundreds of millions of people.

CRT underpins Identity Politics, an ongoing effort to reimagine the United States as a nation riven by the division between racial groups, each with specific claims on victimization. In education and the workforce, as well as entertainment and social media, CRT has become entrenched, driving decision-making based on skin color rather than individual merit and talent.

As Critical Theory becomes more familiar to the public in everyday life, CRT’s intolerance, and the idea of systemic racism is being “normalized” in the American psyche. This weakens public and private bonds that create trust between citizens and allow for civic engagement.

The hard facts in that Newlines Institute for Strategy and Policy report cannot be wished away by a few platitudes and ridiculous excuses. It is up to the world to hold the ChiComs accountable for the Uygur genocide, and a complete boycott of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics would be a great start. Then we can move on to ChiCom indemnification of the rest of the world for the ChiCom virus that originated in the Wuhan Institute of Virology….

As Bonchie explained in this story, the dispute over the outcome of the Iowa House race is now pending in the House Committee on Administration. The Democrat challenger, Rita Hart, made a deliberate decision after the recount of ballots to NOT file any election contest in the Iowa courts as was authorized by Iowa law. Instead, she filed the petition with the House that is now pending to have the “winning” candidate — as identified by Iowa election officials — Mariannette Miller-Meeks, disqualified from holding the seat on the basis that she did not receive a greater number of votes than Hart received.

The House has the final say under the Constitution with respect to the qualifications of any individual to serve as a member. Under the statute authorizing the petition filed by Hart, the Committee conducts an investigation. It can hear from witnesses, accept documentary evidence, conduct interviews in Iowa, and even conduct a recount of all the ballots on its own to come up with its own final vote tally.

Remarkably, if the Committee chooses to recount the ballots itself, the standards for what constitutes a “valid” ballot under Iowa law do not apply to such a recount by the House. Democrats who have majority control of the committee can fashion their own standards as to what should be deemed a “valid” vote, and may freely choose to ignore any limitations on the process established by Iowa law and court precedent.
The Committee, based on its investigation, makes a recommendation to the full House, and it is a vote of the entire House that determines the outcome of the Petition filed by Hart.

If you're afflicted with this bug yourself, you can get some relief by uninstalling KB50000802 until Microsoft comes out with a fixed update, presumably by April's Patch Tuesday.

On a Windows 10 or Windows Server PC version 2004/20H2, click Start --> type "Control Panel" and hit enter --> go to Programs, then Programs and Features. From there, click "View installed updates" on the left-hand pane and uninstall Security Update for Microsoft Windows KB50000802).

For Windows PCs version 1909, the same fix (and problem) is in KB50000808. If you're on version 1809, look for KB50000822. For more technical detail, Dutch tech site winking.be has an excellent overview.

While energy sources across all categories failed in mid-February, they didn’t all fail equally. The capacity factors for nuclear, natural gas, coal, and wind in Texas during the four days of load shedding during the cold snap were 79 percent, 55 percent, 58 percent, and 14 percent, respectively.[7] //

Some of the cost of variable renewable energy sources comes in the form of the transmission lines they require. With funding from Bill Gates, the analytical group Breakthrough Energy Sciences last week estimated the U.S. could reduce carbon emissions 42 percent and generate 70 percent of its electricity from carbon-free sources by 2030. But Breakthrough Energy calculated that the cost of new transmission, distribution, and storage would be $1.5 trillion.[25] //

The land requirements of industrial renewable energy projects are two orders of magnitude larger than those of nuclear and natural gas plants. Industrial solar and wind projects require between 300 and 400 times more land than nuclear plants.[29] If the United States were to try to generate all of the energy it uses with renewables, 25 percent to 50 percent of its land would be required, according to the best-available study by a leading energy analyst and advisor to Bill Gates.[30] By contrast, today’s energy system requires just 0.5 percent of land in the United States.[31] //

As troubling is evidence that cost declines of solar panels, most of which are made in China, appear to stem from the involuntary labor of a persecuted Muslim minority, the Uighurs. In January the U.S. State Department deemed China’s treatment of the Uighurs to be genocide.[34]

Ninety-five percent of the global solar panel market contains Xinjiang silicon. //

One study by a group of climate and energy scientists found that when taking into account continent-wide weather and seasonal variation, for the United States to be powered by solar and wind, while using batteries to ensure reliable power, the battery storage required would raise the cost to more than $23 trillion.[41] //

Germany will have spent $580 billion on renewables and related infrastructure by 2025, according to energy analysts at Bloomberg[45] and Germany generated 37.5 percent of its electricity from wind and solar in 2020, as compared to the 70 percent France generates from nuclear.[46] Had Germany invested the $580 billion it’s spending on renewables and their grid upgrades into new nuclear power plants instead, it could be generating 100 percent of its electricity from zero-emission sources and have sufficient zero-carbon electricity to power all of its cars and light trucks (if electrified) by 2025, as well.[47]

From this information we can gain a clearer picture of electric reliability, resiliency, and affordability. What tends to make electric grids more reliable, resilient, and affordable is the generation of electricity by a few large, efficient plants with the minimal amount necessary of wires and storage. What tends to makes grids less reliant, resilient, and affordable is significantly increasing the number of power plants, wires, storage mechanisms, people, and organizations required for operating them. //

Restructured electricity markets did not result in the oft-promised lower prices in California, Texas, or the U.S. as a whole.[52] And from 2010 to 2019, consumers from across the U.S. who purchased electricity from electricity retailers paid $19.2 billion more than they would have had they purchased power from legacy utilities, according to a recent Wall Street Journal analysis. [53]

According to the Academies, the older model of regulated and vertically integrated electric utilities were better at taking a “longer-term perspective” that can take into account “broader societal benefits” than today’s tangle of federal and state agencies, electric utilities, and power companies.[54]

Rep. Jim Jordan
@Jim_Jordan
Isn’t it strange how Democrats want to defund the police in your neighborhood, but are totally fine with hiring more police at the U.S. Capitol to protect politicians?

Cuomo was behind replacing the Tappan Zee Bridge in 2017, even managing to get it named after his father, former NY Governor Mario Cuomo.

But a new report in the Albany Times Union alleges that structural problems, including faulty bolts, were “covered up” and that the New York Thruway Authority didn’t do anything about it.

The report revealed that dozens of bolts, an “abnormally high number that indicated a potential for very serious problems” broke at the assembly site, on the assembled girders, and on other places already installed at the bridge. The girders are held together by “splice plates,” with each connection secured by about 500 bolts. Problems with bolts could weaken the structure and result in a catastrophic collapse, the paper said. //

One worker, Jimmy Jordan, was injured when one of the bolts snapped at the threads as he was trying to tighten it and connect two girders. A piece of the bolt bounced off an overhang and hit him in the face, splitting his lip.

But Jordan, whose facial injury had sparked the whistleblower’s probe, told the Times Union in a series of interviews last year that he believes that the bolts were defective. At a meeting in a parking lot, he showed a reporter a plastic grocery bag full of cracked and broken bolts that he had collected during the construction project — in part because he thought something was wrong. Some of the bolts had gouge-like fissures on the tops where they had apparently not been “finished” during the manufacturing process. Others had snapped along the threads.

“I got a whole bin full of them at home,” said Jordan, who says he was never interviewed by state investigators.

///

NYS Thruway, I-87

“All of this is part of the plan,” Jacobson said when asked if they should have been better prepared to handle this influx of children before it changed the policy.

Doesn’t that just say it all?

She then said they needed to convey to the people that they shouldn’t be coming, so she tried to do that in Spanish. But instead of saying that “the border is closed,” she ended up saying “the border is not closed.”

tsar becket adams
@BecketAdams
·
Mar 10, 2021
Replying to @BecketAdams
also, uh, long wait or not, those people are all getting the vaccine. so, yeah, that strikes me as pretty great. //

tsar becket adams
@BecketAdams
·
Mar 10, 2021
Replying to @BecketAdams
also, uh, long wait or not, those people are all getting the vaccine. so, yeah, that strikes me as pretty great. //

@Just “Mr. Shemp”
@presidentshemp
Replying to @jkbjournalist and @GovRonDeSantis
These were people who didn’t have to sign up? That is FANTASTIC. Wish we had that up here. I’d wait all day instead on 3 months.
7:28 PM · Mar 10, 2021

The Pratt & Whitney J58 made the Blackbird the fastest air-breathing plane ever. Which hypersonic aircraft needs the engine now?

Pratt & Whitney has quietly been working on reusable engines capable of powering an aircraft at hypersonic or near-hypersonic speeds.
The engine maker is reportedly going back to its work developing the engines on the SR-71 Blackbird.
Studies indicate the Blackbird’s J58 engine could be developed to provide even more power, making aircraft faster. //

The J58 was a one-of-a-kind engine. Its unique trick involved the ability to transition from turbojet engine to turbo-ramjet engine in flight, sucking in vast amounts of oxygen-rich air and burning it to drastically increase engine output. Each J58 could generate up to 32,000 pounds of thrust in afterburner mode, a spectacular feat for an engine designed in the 1950s. //

For all of its power, however, the J58 engine is more than 60 years old. A new J58, updated with modern materials and advanced cooling systems, could generate even more power, Aviation Week says. Sources say the Metacomet is likely aiming for a speed somewhere between Mach 4 and Mach 5.

But where does the new engine belong? The most likely candidate is in an unmanned, high-speed strategic reconnaissance aircraft. In November 2013, Lockheed Martin proposed the “SR-72,” a follow-up to the SR-71, and observers allegedly spotted a sub-scale flight demonstrator in 2017. That’s the last time we heard anything about the SR-72.