Balta1701

No one would ever guess that I spent a week in Houston.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Mar 13, 2011 -> 10:44 AM) As a self-centered American, the scary part for me is seeing how bad this affected the best prepared country in the world for a seismic event, and then thinking about the three major areas (CA, the Pac NW, and the New Madrid) which could see a major quake in the US and wondering how bad things would be here. Worse. In all 3 cases. I can run through details of why if you'd like.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Mar 12, 2011 -> 05:30 PM) Aging plant equipment is a problem--that's why you see the tritium leaks at Clinton and Vermont Yankee. As for evaluation of plant equipment, any new piece of equipment that gets installed on a plant is structurally evaluated for a wide variety of load factors that include seismic conditions. Just replacing a junction box requires a ridiculous mount of planning and a 4" think binder. I think, given what's happened in Japan, the NRC and the industry need to take a look at their emergency plant operation plans to check their assumptions and see how to prevent a similar loss-of-power situation. But it's not like the NRC is just turning a blind eye to egregious violations. I'd still like to see your statistics showing that we're "overdue" for a catastrophic meltdown worse than TMI (where maybe one person died of cancer decades later). Oh, and anything from Greenpeace about nuclear power I immediately ignore because they still hype s*** like "the American Chernobyl?!?!?!" First of all, I'd say that the things going on at those plants you cite really strongly suggest that the NRC hasn't done its job. The best group I'm going to be able to cite on that matter is the UCS....I think you and I can both agree that this is a case where there is a lot of junk tossed out by people. Here's a USA Today version with some basic numbers. The 2002 case is of course the case-study from recent years...if the NRC had actually been doing appropriate and required inspection levels, they should have caught that. The company should have reported it as well. But neither side did its job, and it wound up being a potential serious threat to the plant if it wasn't dealt with at the time. Add in, of course, significant budget cuts; which are, once again, on the list for this year. Adding in one more...the 2003 MIT study predicted that if nuclear power became a much larger share of our electric generation capacity, then during the lifetime of the reactors, approximately 4 core-meltdowns were anticipated in this country. Effectively, that's an estimate of 1.33 core-meltdowns during each 30-40 year block at current domestic production levels. It's been >30 years. And that was a fairly positive study towards the potential risks.

QUOTE (Milkman delivers @ Mar 12, 2011 -> 05:50 PM) Is that for both men and women? In this case, it should be just men. That would likely lower those numbers by a few years. Yeah, just men, although my number is a couple years out of date.

Good work by the NYT...

QUOTE (greg775 @ Mar 12, 2011 -> 04:38 PM) I have a sneaky feeling both may make the team. Is that possible. If Brent Morel doesn't make the team, now that Viciedo is hurt...it's very, very, very likely that the Stealth Elf comes along.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Mar 12, 2011 -> 02:05 PM) How so? The world of the NRC plant regulation and approval is one where neither side is willing to sit down and do the math. The NRC put out a report in the late 70's saying that the chances of a meltdown at a U.S. reactor were well less than 1%. A few weeks later, 3 mile island happened. Since then, the NRC has not put out any statement evaluating the actual likelihood of a reactor meltdown in the U.S. Meanwhile, on the other side you have a group like Greenpeace, who focuses (in part correctly) on the possible level of exposure...that's the "insurance" side if you will, and it's a reason why no one would operate a nuclear plant without an explicit government guarantee..you're not going to own something if you'll face liability if 100k people wind up dead. What we get are industry-based estimates of the likelihood of a meltdown given the NRC requirements. However, first of all, those estimates are always produced by the people operating/building the reactors; they're not independent. Secondly, none of them take into account things like combinations of natural disasters, reduced regulation for maintenance, and the likelihood of engineering issues that appear with age. We've been doing exactly that for the last few decades; cutting back on regulation/inspections because they cost taxpayer dollars, and pushing plants longer than they were originally planned to operate.

I think it's worth posting in reply that as a share of state budgets, the amount paid out in benefits + wages has declined on the whole in the past decade.

QUOTE (GoodAsGould @ Mar 12, 2011 -> 03:41 PM) To be fair, African American's lifespan is shorter in the first place I think somewhere in 60's, which are who makeup majority of league and Im sure for a lot of them their lifestyle off the playing field has as much to do for a shorter life than on. 70.2 years for a standard African American, compared to 76 for a caucasian. However, most of that difference is due largely to higher infant mortality rates in the African American population, due in no small part to the lack of available health care in that population.

QUOTE (maggsmaggs @ Mar 12, 2011 -> 02:54 PM) When the average lifespan of an NFL player is about 55 years and the post-football life is filled with horrific pain each and every day, I don't blame the players at all for not wanting to take less money, play an 18-game season, etc. For every Peyton Manning who makes bank and will live a post-football life of glory, there are nine other players whose post-football lives suck. A lot more than 9. More like 999+.

I think the real problem right now is that the players flat-out don't trust the owners any more. They think the owners are taking home a lot more income than they're admitting publicly, and otherwise they'd be more willing to release documentation to show it. The fact that the players have struggled with ownership so much over things like retirement issues, health care, and now the open violation of the CBA in the TV agreement...makes me lean to thinking they're right.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Mar 11, 2011 -> 11:08 AM) Japan is one of the most seismically ready countries in the world. The belief is that this won't slow them down much at all, and that their basic infrastructure is just fine. This is the same basic reason why the 2004 event in SE Asia and the 2010 event in Haiti killed so many more people than this one in Japan.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Mar 11, 2011 -> 05:09 PM) So one of Japan's Nuke reactors is not cooling as it should, and they fear it could melt down. That would be... really bad. Just want to point out, without snark or over the top words, that this should be a consideration when looking at future energy generation. Oil and gas driven power can have spills, which can be pretty bad. Nuclear plants are a lot less likely to have problems, BUT, if they do, the effect can be catastrophic. Meanwhile, what damage is done when solar panels, wind turbines, hydro engines and the like get broken? Nothing notable. This should not by any means be the deciding factor, but it should be considered on the list of reasons to use or not use certain technologies. Not just what is the pollution, but what happens when something goes wrong? Especially in places with significant risk of geological or oceanic risk. The statistics that are quoted when people are proposing nuclear plants suggest that we're actually overdue for an event worse than this.

QUOTE (Athomeboy_2000 @ Mar 11, 2011 -> 08:14 PM) I am sure there is a certain geologist here who can explain this I'm sorry, I was flying back from a conference. The Earth's orbital parameters are, in detail, set by the exact locations of mass on the surface. Normally you ignore this fact; the only people who pay attention to it are geophysicists and people using geophysical techniques to map the surface. However, when an event like this happens, a significant amount of mass shifts position suddenly. When that happens, it's enough to slightly change the orbital parameters.

Has any of the guys in this conversation done anything to justify bringing them along, or are we just fighting over who has "potential"?

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Mar 11, 2011 -> 09:20 AM) BS. To do something like you guys are talking about, there would be a whole new agency created. Cutting off every cent in energy company subsidies would require a new agency?

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Mar 11, 2011 -> 09:17 AM) Um, you realize I'm talking about IL here, right? Last I checked, we aren't under NY law, nor do we fall under the NY supreme courts rules. However, the decision that you're arguing is a federal decision.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Mar 11, 2011 -> 09:13 AM) Not to mention the bureaucracy that would have to be put into place for management and distribution of said subsidies. That bureaucracy already exists. Hell, one of the cuts that everyone in Congress agreed to was energy assistance for low income households. That was a couple billion dollar cut.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Mar 11, 2011 -> 09:09 AM) You act like I made the rules...talk to the supreme court of the united states, mister. And they're not receiving any "subsidy", they're not here, therefore they don't pay state taxes, just like the supreme court ruled they shouldn't have to do. Now if they courts want to go back and revisit this law in light of the Internet and online commerce, by all means, do that... Except for the fact that in the state of NY, the courts rules that Amazon had to collect sales tax, and it did.

So a business that doesn't have a physical presence in Illinois and therefore doesn't employ many people in Illinois should get a significant taxpayer subsidy from the state of Illinois?

Why should non-internet based businesses in Illinois subsidize Amazon.com?

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Mar 11, 2011 -> 09:00 AM) Oh come on now, I generally agree with you about the need for this, but let's not be ridiculous. More money has been spent on these efforts in the past few years than ever before. Its not enough, but we are not doing "the exact opposite". Although more money has been spent on transit development...consumption of fossil fuel energy has gone up, not down.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Mar 11, 2011 -> 08:55 AM) I think we are in the midst of doing exactly that. I think we're doing exactly the opposite.

Everything discussed so far of course essentially argues that the only solution is a large, nation-scale effort to stop using fossil fuels.