Posts by John Smith 19 16330 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Jun 2009
Tick tock people.
And let's skip the "EUV" BS. They're into X-ray territory already.
The challenge is to find a way to do at scale.
IE whole chips or wafers at a time.
A Smith-Purcell generator could do it to 3.5nm using crystals of metal salts as the grating.
Beyond that things get kind of tough.
Not actually true unfortunately
WRT to nuclear power reactors (as opposed to sloppy work at a nucler chemical works) the landmark one was a mobile army reactor. the SL-1. It's 3MW standard level jumped to 20GW in 4mS on over removal of the sole control rod (no one designs reactors with single control rods any more). It killed all 3 crew and a first responder. IIRC one of the crew was harpooned to the ceiling by the control rod. :-(
Later-to-be-President James Carter was part of the clean-up team.
This may have had something to do with his continuing the block on reprocessing used nuclear fuel brought in under Gerald Ford.
We can do better now. And we must.
And in fact he has a short story for this.
IIRC it's something called "Thiotonite" and dissolves in water.
Except it will dissolve in water without water being present, if it has dissolved before.
A sort of "Temporal memory"
And IRL the classic physical example is NiTiNOL with it's "shape memory" (actually a range of Nicklel Titanium mixes).
I will raise a glass to this curious phenomena and wish them good luck explaining it (and exploiting it maybe).
True.
If the specific instance of a problem you were solving was small enough then it could be brute forced.
If considerably larger you'd be into various heuristics that more-or-less give you a fairly good result (depending on your exact problem and definition of "fairly good")
The joker in the pack would be was the size of problem being dealt with likely to grow. This is where NP-complete problems turn nasty.
I'd say you were both right. You had a solution at the current scale, they were saying if the problem got bigger that solution would not in a reasonable amount of time. Both are right, within a certain context.
The internet was designed to run with packets (occaisionally) being thrown away.
And every timet that happens now to get a new packet for the data stream you want all those buffers need to be gone through.
Unless you split out the jitter and delay sensitive packets and give them priority (IE your VoIP packets and game control packets Vs that big dowload of pron you've got going on) that's always going to be the case.
I'll bet Amazon T&C have a different PoV.
Something along the lines of "You don't own this device, you're just looking after it for Amazon while they run it to collect information"
Data fetishists got to fetishise.
But yes it's our data. It's their choice of system architecture that insists we send copies of it to their servers as well.
Maybe copyright is the only way to bring these jackals to heel.
True.
Unfortunately the re-radiated longer wavelength IR is now much better trapped in the atmosphere.
And since all of the main green house gases have looong lifetimes (only water vapour and ground level Ozone are in days) they are going to go on trapping that heat, with the polar caps operating as a global "swamp cooler," dumping ever more water vapour into the air.
The ultimate endgame for this can be seen on Venus (or it could, if the sulphuric acid clouds didn't get in the way) with a full-on runaway greenhouse (which I've always thought sounds like an invention of Rohald Dahl's) effect.
"Epic. Rapp battles to connect Greehouse Gas Turbine to power grid"
On a slighly more serious note this is qute a big deal.
DC power sources like PV arrays can be fed through an inverter, which precisely matches the power in phase and frequency.
But the biggest converters are not solid state. They are rotating machines IE Alternators.
If not matched it's output into the grid could start to pull other generators off frequency. Not by much perhaps (iit's not that big) but enough to disrupt stuff that relies on very stable 60Hz (yes there is stuff like that. Not everything can use a GPS time signal) and the power utilities have very strict rules about letting anyone connect to their network because of this.
So what?
First off modern coal plants (outside of the US) are Ultra Super Critical plants that run at 600/620c and 275bar or 3990psi.
The US is "Special" in that it stopped at about 538c and it's aging coal boiler fleet hits about 34% efficiency on average (A modern USC plant like those in germany can hit 47.5% efficiency, world average is about 38%)
Also CO2 has a higher molecular weight (44 Vs 18) so the molecules will be harder to accelerate and as we all know KE is proportional to V^2 but only proportional to mass. So more (heat) energy to get them so they hit the turbine blades as hard.
So basically it looks like its benefits are lower maximum operating temperatures and pressures --> potentially cheaper power plants due to lower operating pressures and component sizes and (potentially) less chemcially agressive working fluid (compared to supercritcal water. See "Supercritical wet oxidation" as a method for destroying nerve gas for example).
Provided the whole thing is built from the ground up to use CO2 instead of water of course.
IOW it's about a TRL4 level technology against a fully deployed TRL9 technology. Addressing primarily an American problem with an American solution.
BTW AFAIK no US utility has been able to get funding to build a new coal plant for years, despite the mininimal needs for SO2 cleaning on the exhaust.
Good luck to them.
If it was BAe I'm guesssing they had enough of Billions Above Estimates idea of "Competive pricing"
I like PIC's, ever since I heard of them. Their usual design is Harvard architecture with around 4Kwords of 12bit (up to 16 bit IIRC) instructions with byte wide data. Very fast for such a machine. Also (IIRC) static registers, allowing clock slow down to 0 --> power level down to leakage levels. This is quite relevant given the grief NASA gets when it wants to use a TEG for outer planet missions. IIRC Neither Neptune nor Uranus have had any attention since Voyager.
If they have ARM IP and a rad hard process to implement it on then yes, that's a reasonable plan.
In theory.
But supplier lockin is a major issue as the market is too small for many companies to swallow the up-front cost of a new process.
Like that solar wind stops 70% of cosmic rays.
That kind of data is pretty handy if you were planning to build an interstellar crewed exploration vehicle.*
Now if it discovered evidence of unknow forces that disrupted the Standard Model (like the Ice Bridge being built on Jupiter in the opening to the "Cities in Flight" series) who knows what might happen......
Quite impressive for something using a single '181 4bit ALU to emulate (IIRC) a 16 bit virtual processor.
*Starship is a bit much with our current level of technology.
To the contrary, the PWR and BWRs are very well understood.
It's simply that the underlying performance is crap. PWRs were design to drive the propeller drive shafts of a nuclear submarine. The BWR was designed to compete but has even lower thermal efficiency.
Ironically both the zirconium cladding and the fuel pellets themselves can operate at much higher temperatures, and hence thermal efficiency. That means the could use the steam turbines at modern coal plant temperatures and pressures, which have been under continuous development (and gradually rising) since the earl 1900's.
This was the key features of the UK AGR design, which then spoilt things by using steel cladding, when it turned out Beryllium was not going to be the wonder cladding they thought (there are ways around the brittleness, but they couldn't stop it swelling like popcorn under neutron exposure, which is a problem for something that's going to be sitting inside a nuclear reactor).
A climate emergency needs an emergency response. Something that can be deployed fast, in large numbers, with the minimum possible "new" anything.
Except of course when the sun don't shine and the wind don't blow, which in Europe can be weeks, or months at a time.
"Storage" you say? Biggest battery in the world 300MW for 4 hours IE 1200MWHr.
Then it's done till it gets a recharge.
If you don't have an idea on how to do it they you can't fix it but you're hoping someone out there can.
Good question. Certainly some of the barking-mad "hard Green" loons would say so. The kind who believe the planet would be a new Garden of Eden, as long as there were no pesky humans in it.
Personally I'd say we were part of the "Natural background" level of CO2, however the fact world population has risen several billion since we had a "natural" background level does change things a bit.
"Did you know that each and evey greenaholic on the planet exhales over 5% CO2 with each breath that they take?"
I did, which is what puts the wrinkle in the "Natural background" level.
It would be interesting to see how many humans a normal size car is the equivalne to.
And you'd be wrong. Current plans expect (and have) removed most of the surrounding building within years.
"How many people have starved because crops can no longer be grown around Chernobyl and Fukushima?"
I know this one.
None.
Either you don't know any better or you'r setting up strawmen.
I'm going to go with the former. Google the areas concerned and find out for yourself.
Still no real sign of a decent heat exchanger being demonostrated.
And IIRC several versions had 20% U235 enrichment. At the level of HALE U (IE not-quite-bomb-grade-so-still-OK(ish)-for-civilians)
Even that's only normally available from nuclear weapons plants. Anything over 5% (about the maximum for PWRs) needs a plant redesign due to criticality issues, although as operators want their PWRs to move to 24month+ refuel cycles that's going up (along with the fuel cost).
It's beleived that in the North Sea, the skin of the Earth is very thin, around 900m in fact.
And the North Sea has 100s of boreholes you could stick a borehole heat exchanger down (yes they are a thing). Work in the US estimates each hole could be good for 3MW.
That's most of the eqivalent of each of those 1/2 Eiffel Tower sized wind turbines.
Wiith a borehole lifespane driven by the nuclear decay heat of the Earth's magma.
IOW say a 1000 000 years.
Umm, you do know that outside the US countrise like France, Japan and the UK have used Mixed Oxide of U and Pu in commercial (AGR and PWR) reactors for decades right?
And that all reactors breed. Shippingport (world's first PWR) had a core designed in the mid 70's to demonstrate breeding with a PWR, but all reactors breed. That was the core reason for Magnox and the French equivalent, and the development of their associated re-processing cycles.
Because proliferation was not an accident of these designs. It was a goal
Until the nuclear industry owns those facts about its past the BS on this matter will never stop.
True. As all 1st generation Russian and European designs were. Only the PWR or the CANDU was not "Born to breed" to coin a phrase. The US already had plenty of Pu from other designs and the Canadians didn't want bombs (althouth apparently CANDU is quite a good little Pu factory. Could Canada be the world's most covert nuclear super power?)
All other designs were.
Fun fact about offshore UK wind turbines.
Each 5MW generator is as big as the Blackpool Tower at 150m
Which is a 1/2 scale replica of the Eiffel Tower.
Funny how when they show pictures of them they never feature a single human next to them for the scale is it not?
And just 200 of them to equal the average size UK power station.
If you're talking about the one RR are punting, based on their nuclear submarine power plant experience, then yes, it is bloody stupid. It's now about as big as the AGR's that the UK built.
Without their substantially larger efficiency.
It's basically a cash cow for construction and concrete companies with p**s-poor thermal efficienicies.
A reall SMR would be around 250MW and operate at temperatures that could leverage OTS steam turbine technology around 600-625c (the Merkins stayed at 538 because of that cheap, bad coal they have in W. Virginia).
Actually if you dumped the water and used a much lower pressure RPV the main components of a PWR (the fuel and Zirconium rods) can operate at much higher temperatures.
And they've already gone through all the qualification processes, making them very "Regulator friendly"
3 Groups of people voted for Brexit.
The delusional. Those "True believers" who actually expected some kind of economic renaissance, despite all logic saying the opposite. Some fantasy vision of a Britain where the sun never sets (and the wages never rise).
The greedy. They saw an angle that couuld make them money. Shopkeepers expecting to make more money selling a pint can of lager than a 1/2liter for example, not realising their sharper customers could work out the increase in volume wasn't worth the increase in price.
Interesting thing about the greedy was that as I've dug deeper into them it seems they all made most money by betting against the UK ecconomy (Crispin Odey springs to mind for this) on a vast scale.
The gullible. The "Willing fools" as Lenin called them, they youngers mobilised by Cambridge Analytica through social media, the olders by the Daily Heil, The Scum and their ilk. Mostly lacking the maths skills of an 11YO or the sense of smell to detect the bu***hit they were being fed.
Within 2 years statistical estimates indicate the majority had died of old age.
When the votes for and against Brexit the young will feel betrayed by the old for basically nothing
And the young will not be happy about how their future was p**sed down the pan.
But not to worry everybody as it's been "Annonymized"
I think you'll find that is worth considerably more (to the right players) than whatever share promises they issued to the hospitals to get it.
I smell bait, followed by switch.
Read the word "treasure" on a map and then identify (anywhere on the planet) where this is a map of.
Preferably without needing the services of any rum soaked sea captains with a possibly fishy sounding name.
Identifying minarl deposits from SAR and satellite photographs was an expert system research project in the 1970's. I'd presumed it ws SOP by now as the results seemed quite good.
DARPA. "Creating and preventing Strategic Surprise" is apparently their official mission statement.
Right f**king there are the reasons for guaranteed failure.
Not the 800TB of data. Large (but I'll bet CERN or NASA and certainly GCHQ manage bigger datasets)
Nor the 24/7. Not sure why most of them need this. Customs yes, but unless every UK subject has online access to their tax details (or is expected to) why this?
No it's those other 2. 600 systems -->599 interfaces which can (and probably will) change. And close to 2 IT changes per month/per system. Yet some of those systems have (I'm fairly sure) been in for decades. Their change rate should be zero.
What's the bet each of those changes will trigger further unlocalised system changes, necessitating work on other parts of a system, that triggers changes to other systems. Glenford Myers has a really nice thought experiment about software coupling usinga a 10x10 light array. Set them to a random pattern. Then choose wheather a light should be on or off on the next cycle based on the current state of a number of other lamps in the array (chosen also at random). If it's one lamp then the pattern becomes quite stable quite fast, 10 other lamps quite slow. Every lamp dependent on every other lamp takes a very long time to achieve stability. I always thought it would make a cool program just to watch.
And in a country about 500Km wide and about 800Km long (excluding NI) how many data centres will this take to run on?
The PAO might as well start righting up the report now. We all know they won't bother with actually agreed success (or failure) metrics because (heaven forbid) that might mean someone could have failed. With no internal resouces to offer independent oversight or sanity checking (because competent civil service pensions were sooooo expensive) they will be told (and believe) any old bu***hit the con-tractors and con-sultants tell them and of course it will take so long (years I expect) to get a decision that only "The Usual Suspects(tm)" will have the financial endurance to stay in till it gets awarded and they can start making out like the bandits they seem to behave like (based on past behaviour ad-nausem).
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