But the fact is that despite what THEY say, THEY are not going to dump nuclear. Their is no replacement for it, especially in the long run. In a recent German publication the boss of the German energy administration - a former Eko-activist - has called the program of Chancellor Merkel "Simple Madness". Myself, I dont dare what he or anybody else calls it, because what is in store in Germany is an attempt to make fools of the German voters by closing a few neclear facilities, promising to close more, and purchasing electricity from surrounding countries. That means bad news for Fred Banks.

What about solar and wind in Germany. I dont know, but I hope that they have a place, and can supply at least a small part of the power that Germans wants and can afford, but they cannot replace nucllear.

Just as OPEC intends to produce and export as little oil as possible, countries like Germany, Switzerland and Sweden should agree to respect the wishes ov Greenpeace and others by being very careful with the employment of nuclear, and giving wind and solar a chance, and explaining to the Greenpeace people what wind and solar can and cannot do. Why not? Isn't it better to subsidize some wind and solar than to subsidize stupid wars and corruption on the other side of the world.

He took a long time giving a very complicated answer. Afterward, my professor looked at me and asked: "What did you think of his answer?" I said I didn't think he answered the question. My professor didn't think so either.

Lovins is a very charming man, and he can say things in a Clintonesque way that can make people believe them, even if they don't make too much sense. The tactic of attacking nuclear power on economic grounds (versus safety) was a brilliant tactic, and is basically working. But CANDU (a demonstration of reasonable cost) and carbon emission concerns put nuclear back in play.

In Sweden, this nuclear thing is very annoying. There are plenty of people who think like I do, but that kind of thinking can make someone very unpopular, especially on the reception and dinner circuit.

The Greenpeace people recently broke into a Swedish nuclear installation for the purpose of showing that security is bad at those place. Good for them. Sweden can send soldiers to Stone Age countries for one reason or another, but cannot guard the facilities that produce a priceless input for industries and households. No so brilliant are the people who manage our communities, are they?

I suspect that the Small Modular Reactors now being bandied about in the US could be constructed in well under 5 years, but so what. With their small outputs, they appear unlikely to beat the competition in the US. Namely, inexpensive combustion turbine power plants (both simple and combined cycle) running on our abundant supplies of low-cost natural gas (at least for a while, anyway).

Seems to me a major driving force should logically be the ability to be the least cost source of reasonably clean power, which tends to make the proposition a local consideration subject to the availability of fuel supplies. However, such an approach is at odds with the witless Germans apparently hell-bent on economic suicide. That also pretty much describes the folks in California.

The peculiar state of the German psyche leads to the real corundum. Making decisions based on emotion rather than sound judgment. That has been and will likely always be a problem for mankind, particularly as long as you can get somebody else to bail you out for your own stupidity. That brings us directly to your point of the Germans getting their power from say Swedish (or French) nuclear power plants while phasing out their own units.

Micheal. Doesn't it still make sense to reserve your natural gas for peaking purposes, and use nuclear for baseload?

Well, maybe a few more observations are necessary. The reason that the United States of America can't construct these facilities in 4 years today is because they are obsessed with nonsense. First of all you go to the Swedes and ask them how they constructed 12 facilities in 13+ years. They probably don't remember how, and if they did they wouldn't tell you because they would think that if they knew and told you they wouldn't be invited to somebody's reception or dinner. But I think that the people at the American embassy could find out, and tell Doctor Chu - if he is interested - which is dubious.

Then you can contact Len Gould and Malcolm Rawlingson and ask them about what in going on on the nuclear front in the People's Republic of China, and after you do these two things, and interpret them correctly, then you know what you need and deserve to know about this issue. Of course you might have to know and believe one more thing, which is that whatever is taking place in China can be matched in THE WORLD - which is what the US was once called.

About the Germans, Mr Hitler proved in l041 how easy it was to make fools of them when he declared war on the US. But this is serious business for me, because if Germany buys more electricity from Sweden, the crooks and fools at the Swedish utilities will probably send me to the poorhouse.

Meanwhile, the US is spending billions and billions of dollars on dopey renewable energy projects, accelerating our decline to a second-rate country.

Len, as long as we have lots of cheap natural gas, not sure it makes economic sense to build new nuclear plants. Bit of a strategic gamble, however, in that such an approach relies on technology's future ability to pull a "rabbit-out-of-the-hat" when the crunch comes.

Unfortunately Michael the US electorate chose another 4 years of dopey renewables because of idiots like Lovins who can talk politicians (who know nothing about science and even less about engineering) that sticking thousands of windmills all over the countryside is the right thing to do....as long as it is not near their homes of course.

Biomass is an equally stupid idea when it comes to large scale electricity generation since although it may be plentiful, hauling millions of tons of the stuff from where it is produced to a generating plant takes the one commodity we are running short of - oil. No oil no biomass. It is about as dumb as ethanol production from corn - the number one cause of food price inflation around the world...courtesy of the the US.

But wait - electric trucks are just around the corner.

Malcolm

It will be 2075 (if all goes per plan) before we are in a position to build production grade fusion tokamaks, presently anticipated to produce in the range of 2000 to 4000 MWe net out per unit, with some part of the output perhaps needed to produce the deturium and tritium fuels burned. Thats a long time, so if we hope our civilization to remain stable and civil and sustainable until then, we'd better make plans to stretch out our reserves of other energy until then, and beyond, to support the huge construction investments.

Sweden and the US dont get the message, and this may also be true of Canada and Russia, but given the population-area ratios of Canada and Russia, they have quite a lot of slack. Maybe. But as for Sweden and the US, I get the impression that the populations of these countries have lost interest in survival, although they may not know this yet. The reelection of George W. Bush was a catastropic defeat for the culture of the US, and the two candidates for presidency in the US in the recent electrion are best described as pathetic. I mean, they are OK if survival wasn't the issue, but before the present century is over, that is going to be the issue, and the time to begin getting the act together is NOW..

About energy. I have no doubt at all that before the end of this century, we will have figured out how to get all the energy we need, and where energy is concerned the voters will not stand in the way, but there are some other items that will be just as important, and I am afraid that they will have lost the habit of making rational decisions.

Even 10 years ago I used to cheerfully state that I thought the US constitution was the most admirable example of its type in the world, but after watching US politics lately, I've revised that. It doesn't provide near enough political equality because it was written by the wealthy for the wealthy and doesn't consider how to provide political equality to all people. The parliamentary system with first-past-the-post voting, the senior executive being automatically selected by the group with majority seats in the house, and only a single house (the commons) works far more rationally, democratically and effectively, though IMHO it also cannot work without strict limits on; and public financing of; election spending.

I've been thinking for 25 years on how a new constitution could exploit modern communication systems to implement a much better system, and believe I have it mostly worked out, though how to put controls on the civil service executive is still a problem.

I left China off that list because of the population thing. I dont know how they will handle that, and dont want to think about it. But yes, they have been amazingly successful, and I hope it continues to go well for them.

The interim energy source is going to be natural gas whch we seem to have very large amouts of. While some years ago burning it to ake electricity seemed a criminal waste (part of me still thinks it is) the newer combined cyle generating plants operate near to 70 % efficiency and at present rates can produce electricity nearly as cheaply as nuclear.

We will not run out of energy of course - we will just use different sorts of energy. There is plenty of uranium and while people may not generally be fond of nuclear power they are less fond of being in the cold and dark. So we can produce all the elctricity we need for centuries. We also have enourmous amounts of coal that can be converted into oil or gas or burnt directly in power plants. People may not like coal either but it sure beats freezing to death.

So it is not a matter of running out of energy it is a question of which technology the world dislikes the least and that has nothing to do with abundance or otherwise.

Malcolm

True or not?

Five new generators are on track for completion this decade, including two reactors approved just a few weeks ago (the first new reactor approvals in the US in over 30 years). Those will add to the 104 reactors that are already in operation around the country and already produce 20% of the nation’s power. Those reactors will eat up 19,724 tonnes of U3O8 this year, which represents 29% of global uranium demand. If that seems like a large amount, it is! The US produces more nuclear power than any other country on earth, which means it consumes more uranium that any other nation. However, decades of declining domestic production have left the US producing only 4% of the world’s uranium.

With so little homegrown uranium, the United States has to import more than 80% of the uranium it needs to fuel its reactors. Thankfully, for 18 years a deal with Russia has filled that gap. The “Megatons to Megawatts” agreement, whereby Russia downblends highly enriched uranium from nuclear warheads to create reactor fuel, has provided the US with a steady, inexpensive source of uranium since 1993. The problem is that the program is coming to an end next year.

The Upside to a Natural Gas Downturn Marin Katusa, for The Daily Reckoning Monday April 2, 2012

Hydrogen 3 is tritium which has a half life of 12.4 years. All it takes is the absorption of a fusion neutron by the Lithium and voila - all the fuel you need for 1000 years.. Not much energy used there.

All we need to do now is get the fusion reaction to work in a sustained manner. I know it has always been 50 years away but enormous strides have been made in the technology but it is a really big challenge with a really big prize at the end.

When i was a student of nuclear engineering eons ago even getting the plasma contained inside the torus was a huge challenge. Now that is done routinely in the Joint European Torus. Still 50 or75 years seems along time to wait but for unlimited energy I think it is well worth the wait don't you? Malcolm

You build your reactors and we will supply you with fuel.

And if we do have a falling out - your other friendly but farther away neighbour - Australia - has Uranium coming out of its ears. They will be only too please to provide it to you.

Malcolm

I suppose I should be surprised at no mention of the die-off this planet-sized Petri dish will at some point experience. Actually it might be less catastrophic (well no, catastrophes of this size can hardly be compared) if it began now, say a die-off of 4 billion from 7.5 billion (inertia might carry us up to 7.5 billion) down to 3.5 billion.

We see hints. More places lacking enough fresh water today. More places moving from malnutrition to starvation. More places where crime and antisocial behavior degrades the civilization. More food being used for fuel.

I don't think it is clear that a die-off to 3.5 billion would be sufficient to attain sustainability. I'd bet on sustainability at 2 billion, world population in1930.

The reason is that I know - just as Malcolm knows, and that guy who walked with me down the street in Vienna, hoping that I would take him to meet the girl I knew twenty years earlier, and/or her friend - that the future is the breeder. I dont talk about the breeder, or think about it, and a physicist at Cern told pumb me that they would never be able to build one, but poor dumb me thinks that they will have one that is commercially acceptable in ten year or less in China..

And Don, the big problem is that the smart love to play stupid. They cant get enough of it.

Putting on my logical cap, since we have (right now) cheap NG, I'd say more NG vehicles will appear. Or should. But I don't see it happening. At this point, in the U.S., enhancing PHEV technology might be cheaper than adding a NG vehicle fueling infrastructure. We'll see.

Why would you impose that terrible burden on the rest of Humanity for the promise of "cheap" power that we all know is terribly expensive??

You folk have told your propaganda for so long, you now believe it yourselves.

George Kamburoff

The lies continues for more than a year.

The tests we were doing were on Safety Relief Valve downcomers in the Suppression Pools. As was shown in the movie China Syndrome (now "playing" in Fukushima), the hydraulic shock from water hammer and the oscillations of released steam bubbles created great physical shock to the facility. We tested many configurations, but none seemed to work well by the time I left.

That was all revisited in Fukushima 32 years later to the week, where the Torus was cracked, releasing Primary Coolant into OUR environment. We have no idea how many future children we have killed by this hubris.

You nuclear extremists had 32 years to fix that problem, professor.

Why didn't you?

Nuclear energy gave Sweden a standard of living envied by everyone, until the ignoramuses started sending money to stone age countries. But we are still doing pretty well. As for the nuclear waste, in France that is called nuclear fuel. In so far as Japan is concerned, get the CIA publication on life expectancy. It is longer in Japan than in any of the large and developed countriy to include the one you live in, and those without nuclear. Of course, it is longer in Monoco, but that has something to do with the money of its residents.

As for the things you cite, the answer is simple. Stop electing morons like George W. Bush and incompetents like Barack Obama. Forget about fighting wars on the other side of the world, and get the gammar schools and secondary schools into the shape that they could and should be in if the decision makers stop dreaming about women that they could have picked up 32 years ago.

Wonderful comment Jim, but what per capita are you talking about? Global or US.

The data from Hiroshima and Nagasaki suggest none.

Except of course for those who got fatal or near fatal does of radiation in these cities in 1945 the health and longevity of all the people exposed is no different than that in other Japanese cities. In fact they are overall slightly more healthy. Very careful and comprehensive records have been kept. There is a somewhat greater incidence of one cancer (I don't recall which one) but there are lesser incidence of other ailments to more than off-set this effect.

The answer is both. Oil production peaked in the U.S. around 1970. So it's per capita peak occurred then or perhaps a few years before. The World Oil Production per capita peaked in 1979. So that means since then, the world has been making babies faster than its been increasing oil production.

You write: "If I were asked to guess, I would say that a commercial breeder is about a decade away, which would have been a certainty before the so-called 'shale gas revolution' (some of which is nonsense). This is not to say that everybody welcomes the breeder, because in a sense it represents the first step into a plutonium community, but unfortunately it happens to be inevitable."

GE has offered to build the PRISM reactor (breeder or burner, choose your mode) for the UK immediately, and figure it will take about three years to build the first ones. They've even offered to do it with their own money! As for the transition to breeders being unfortunate, the metal fuel with pyroprocessing recycling that the PRISM is designed for is inherently proliferation-resistant. I strongly suggest you read Plentiful Energy by Till and Chang, or if you want something a bit less technical you can download my book, Prescription for the Planet, for free at this URL: http://tinyurl.com/9992kma .

The transition to breeders is the opposite of unfortunate. They can provide all the energy humanity requires, cleanly and economically, for hundreds of years with fuel (mainly depleted uranium) that's already out of the ground and essentially free. How could that possibly be considered unfortunate?

Jim, Nuclear heat can provide a LOT of liquid fuel from coal and tar sands.

Coal liquification with nuclear heat is complicated enough; with NatGas or coal itself as the heat source it is an extremely dirty and carbon-intensive business.

[Over a long career, I engineered a lot of coal energy and nuclear fuel. Nukes are FAR to be preferred..!]

But if you are wrong or I are wrong, or Legget or George W., that is OK. What is not OK is that Dr Chu won't tell the voters what you told me in your comment. The voters and anybody else with an opinion in this matter, and tell them every morning and night until they get the message. Then I can think about something really important, like American football.

I dunno about "a LOT" of liquid fuel from nuclear, but it can certainly be done. Germany did coal-to-liquids during World War II in a panic setting. And South Africa does it. But certainly more expensive and dirty and definitely lowers the bar some for electric vehicles to compete (due to higher fuel costs).

In any case, I could see oil production declining faster than new nuclear could make up for it. If we were serious about what you are proposing, we'd be building such plants already.

Clinton gets a thumbs down for cancelling IFR, but a thumbs up for PNGV (if only by accident).

Without the use of nuclear power.

Fischer-Tropsch process is exothermic---it produces more energy than it consumes.

Coal is not necessary---all that is necessary is a source of carbon. This is converted to primarily carbon monoxide and hydrogen(synthgas). Synthgas is then converted to hydrocarbons of any chain length required to provide the desired product by the use of catalyst beds and the manipulation of heat and pressure.

Coal has the distinct disadvantage of containing large amounts of contaminants, primarily sulphur and bromines along with heavy metals that poison the catalyst beds and shut down the reforming process. It self destructs the catalyst beds than create the long chain hydrocarbons.

Biomass does not contain the contaminants that coal does, and is the prefered feedstock for this reason.

“Fischer-Tropsch process is exothermic---it produces more energy than it consumes”

In days of yore within the first few pages of science text books we are reminded that energy can neither be created nor destroyer. Exothermic processes, such as the burning of a candle, are decidedly exothermic, but the heat energy so produced is less than the energy of the wax consumed. The heat of reaction produced light, melted the wax to make liquid fuel, heated air,and “pumped” combustion air to and flue gas away from the candle.

A Wikipedia article tells us the Fischer-Tropsch Process is 25% to 50% efficient. I don't know what this means as there are many F-T versions and further I cannot understand exactly how a “process efficiency” is calculated. If it means the heating value of the products is only 25 to 50 % of the charge stock then the overall e (thermal efficiency) would be very poor.

I am sure if one set his mind to it he could make perfectly good drinking water from beer.

Of course in the long run this was a losing game, or so the argument goes, Where the long run is concerned, I suspect that Germany in l945 provides a good example.

The white Union of South Africa had to do things pretty much on their own with what they had. And did remarkable y well considering that almost the whole world found reasons to hate them.

Germans in WWII found themselves in about the same situation having to use coal to make liquid fuels - with the added annoyance of almost daily bombings toward the end of the war.

Fireflies produce light by metabolism with an enzyme called luciferase. Luciferase produces light directly by metabolic routes that do not produce heat. Luciferase is 100% efficient at producing light. If you want light, produced efficiently, catch fireflies.

----------" Fred Linn (unintentionally I'm sure ) was seemingly touting F-T as a perpetual motion scheme – more energy out than in."-------------

When biomass is used as the feedstock, 100% of the energy input is from the sun. About as close to perpetual motion as we get, although, the sun could go out at any time. We wouldn't even know it until 8 minutes after the fact.

That's not going to do a whole lot for climate change. Far better to make ammonia with spare nuclear energy, and run vehicles on ammonia. Entirely doable.

As for producing "a LOT", consider what would happen if coal- and gas-fired power plants were replaced by nuclear plants (leaving hydro and renewables at current levels). That would mean that we had sufficient (mostly nuclear) generating capacity to meet peak demand. Depending on the location (percentage of industrialization, etc.), peak demand is 2-3 times average demand. Since nuclear plants run just fine 24/7 and fuel cost is trivial (with fast reactors essentially free), that means that we could have the energy equivalent of 100-200% of total electricity demand as excess power. With that you could most definitely produce "a LOT" of liquid fuel. All we need, and if it's ammonia you could forget about exacerbating climate change, and leave the oil and coal in the ground. So when do we start?

The notable exception is energy from messing with the atomic nuclei here on earth rather than on the sun.

When one makes an energy balance one draws an envelope around any process, or any part of a process and adds up the energy entering and leaving. The sum is always zero.

The usual product of Chemical Engineers was a Heat and Weight Balance, or more elegantly a Mass and Energy Balance. (Energy was expressed in heat units.)

Long ago the US Patent Office stopped considering any submission that claimed more energy out than in. That would acknowledge perpetual motion was possible.

I once thought of a way to destroy energy. Use energy to compress a spring and wire it in the compressed condition. Dissolve it in acid. The energy to compress the spring is gone! Nope, an identical un-compressed spring will dissolve less vigorously and produce less heat.

There have been innumerable clever schemes to create or destroy energy. All proved to be invalid.

Incidentally plants do not use sun energy very efficiently – a process we are utterly dependent on. I have seen the efficiency as about 20%.

I don't know beans about fireflies except that I remember catching them and putting them in a mason jar. Do you suppose they are the sole violators of the Laws of Thermodynamics?

The only reason that you have atomic nuclei to mess around with is due to supernova explosions of stars. It is where they came from(also where YOU came from) All the matter, in all the universe is Stardust---hum, sounds like a good song title..

The energy of the sun comes from comes from fusing hydrogen atoms up through the periodic table until it reaches Fe---at which point the star goes nova and explodes.

----------"

----------" Incidentally plants do not use sun energy very efficiently – a process we are utterly dependent on. I have seen the efficiency as about 20%"-------

Well, maybe so----but they are efficient enough that they supply you with the food you eat, clothes you wear, house you live in, even the air that you breathe.

Photosynthesis has been the basis of most life on earth(with the exception of a few extremophile species) for about 1.5 billion years. It is the reason you even exist to play around with metal springs and acids.

By the time one calculates in the energy spent on planting, fertilizing, harvesting, transporting and processing sugar cane into anything useful, the net energy efficiency is down below 2%. For corn, way below 1%.

What that tells us is that any strategy to use biomass as an energy source would be much smarter if replaced by solar photocells deployed in the same fields. Around 15% net efficiency, no need to constantle replant or irrigate or fertilize, output into electricity, the most useful form of energy we know of, and readily and efficently transported. My estimates place the comparisons at about 300 to 1, eg for every 300 hectares of biomass crops cultivated, just one hectare of solar photocells would provide the equivalent net output energy.

Plants do that.

How much carbon dioxide do your solar cells remove from the atmosphere?

Plants do that.

Do you like to breathe? Every single atom of oxygen in every single breath of air that you take is there because of plants.

Plants do that.

Do you like to eat? Every single bite of food that you have ever eaten was there because some plant somewhere took in CO2 from the atmosphere, combined it using solar energy and formed carbohydrates---then stored that solar energy in the form of sugars, starches, lipids, or proteins. It produced biofuels. Biofuels you need to stay alive.

When you compare solar cells to plants for efficiency----also include the storage of the electricity that the solar cells produce, and the efficiency of converting it back again from chemical to electrical energy. Plant biomass is already stored solar energy.

Add it all up----your solar cells are downright puny in comparison to plants.

BTW----plants also work in the dark---photosynthesis has two cycles, light and dark. The light cycle stores the solar energy in the form of activated ATP---the dark phase uses the ATP to do the chemical magic.

I'd estimate that as a hunter/gatherer civilization the earth might support maybe a hundred million people - 1/70th of the present population. And what's so bad about that?

Case in point. In 1500 the area of the US today had a population of perhaps 1 or 2 or even 3 million, not because the people didn't know how to procreate but because they didn't know how to supply enough food to keep people alive. And these people were not strictly hunter gatherers – some practiced agriculture.

Using the largest estimate that would be only 1/100th of present population.

As a life long historical renactor I meet a lot of people who mistake technology for intelligence.

If you think Clovis man was a dull witted brute-------try knapping some flint spearheads to the technical and artistic superiority achieved by humans between 16,000 BP to 12,000 BP. Many Clovis points recovered are easily sharp enough to perform surgery with-----and in fact obsidian(one of the most used Clovis stones) is used today to make eye surgergy instruments.

Then go out an kill and butcher a mammouth with your stone tools, (Mammouths were commonly 2-3 X the size of modern elephants)

The more I see, the more I have come believe that technology makes people stupid.

That is just my opinion however.

Interesting stuff you write

Good witting is getting your idea across with a minimum numbers of words?

Regards,

gpogle 'embedded controller forth for the 8051 familiy' '

:)

I love to travel. To other places, and other times.

There are so many things to be discovered.

-----------" Hamlet: And therefore as a stranger give it welcome. There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."---------

http://www.enotes.com/shakespeare-quotes/there-more-things-heaven-earth-horatio

As to Clovis Man I understand there is not much archeological evidence that very many ever existed in the SW. If they depended on killing animals for subsistence they could not keep many people alive at one time. And that evidence was only discovered rather recently, to an old man. They were Stone Age men who would have been dependent on stone points.

Whether there are any human sites in America earlier than 10,000 years ago is still controversial. There is a wonderful Mammoth excavation and museum just south of the Black Hills of South Dakota. Many mammoths perished there because they could not get back up the banks of a little lake they had likely gone to for water.

If Plato or Copernicus, or Galileo, or Newton, or Einstein or Darwin had been plopped down among them would they have made the least difference? These men would have had no shoulders to stand on. Perhaps men of equal merit had been plopped down among them.

For a hundred years we have had a measure of what's stupid and bright. A number. A measure of cognitive ability. For a hundred years over the screams of idealists, social liberalism, and sincere do-gooders we have tests that measure cognitive ability quite well. Statistically. Less accurately individually.

No body likes these IQ measurements. Koreans, Japanese, some other eastern orientals at 105. USA citizens less minorities at 100+, Many European countries at 100. (Asian) Indians, South Americans, Southern Asians at 85. American Blacks at 85, and sub Saharans at 70.

The ignoramuses at the EU say that the US is going to be more competitive than EU countries because of their increased supply of energy. Ceteris paribus, they are NOT going to be more compeitive than Sweden, where ceteris paribus in this case means15 years ago or earlier. These days, the fools in this country's government and universities are determined to ruin the place

Of course, I remember when some Brazilians visited the engineering school in Stockholm many years ago. I was surprised at the number of Asians.among them I was not surprized though when Brazilian naval cadets surrounded my girl friend in the middle of Stockholm. As a matter of fact I was kind of pleased.

The name 'Clovis Man" was given because the first discovery of Clovis tools was made in a cave near Clovis, New Mexico. Which is, I believe, in the southwest US.

Don----------" When we (Europeans) arrived in America we found people who had no written language, no arithmetic, and no wheels. They were prehistoric by definition – i.e. no (written) history"----------

No written language? Well, let's see, there was Aztec, Mayan, and Incan that we know about.

No arithmetic? Well, they had enough knowledge of numbers to construct cities and pyramids to rival the the pyramids of ancient Egypt and and Rome at the height of it's glory. When Cortes rode into the Aztec city of Tenochtitlan----it was at least 4-6 times larger than any city in Europe at the time. That would take a lot of understanding and organization just to set up and maintain.

The Mayans had developed a calender system that is still accurate today within a small fraction of a second after a 5,900+ years cycle.

We will soon have a demonstration of Mayan(?) knowledge. Didn't Cortes' mere handful of men conquer the Aztec Empire? The Aztecs sacrificed so many virgins that the demographics were adversely affected. If memory serves the idea was to cut out a still-beating heart. Next best entertainment to TV?

Again, sorry that I did not qualify my statement(s) well enough.

The IQ's I cited are averages. As I noted above: “...we have tests that measure cognitive ability quite well. Statistically.” Of course there are many bright Brazilians.

Your contacts were not a sample of the population, quite the opposite. When I started up an oil refinery near Manaus (1,000 miles up the Amazon 1956(?) there were small naked aborigines within walking distance into the jungle. One did not venture into the jungle because they had one example of technology, blow gun darts tipped with curare. They were Brazilians as was the engineer brought in to show us how to start up a very large synchronous motor.

As repulsive as the religious practices of the Aztecs seem to us today----taken in the context of what the Spaniards were doing throughout the Carribean where ever they set foot----------The Aztecs by comparison seem as polite and civilized as afternoon tea with the Queen Mum.

Good----:"logic" like yours, the blind adulation of "progress" , and the persuit of wealth fueled by greed and avarice are the main motivational factors that are causing the problems we face today,.

I know exactly what you are saying-----and it is completely wrong.

But you are not wise enough to know or even listen to what I'm telling you.

-------------" The white man is very clever---but he is not very wise."-----------------Red Cloud

Now it is completely different. They have finally figured out how to turn average Americans into soldiers. But outside of that, what the hell are we going to end up with? The friends and neighbors are getting dumber, and it is possible to hear language on prime time TV that you couldn't hear in the barracks. Is that really going to be the American future?

Hmmmm. Don't I recall from somewhere that you are yourself a child of "white mountaineers" or "rural isolates"?? Perhaps you're simply exhibiting some personal sensitivity?

I've heard IQ has risen about 10 points per generation on all fronts. So that's a good thing. (Ever notice no one hardly plays checkers anymore?)

In my opinion, the problems today is not about IQ. It's about the logical consequence of social structure that has built up without proper constraint and circumspection.

Note: $70 Childbirth

How did we let a natural process like that become so expensive? (Yeah, they're too many of us, but that's beside the point right now...)

Don and Fred bitch about how things are worse now, but it's not about the people. It's about the undue complexity, some evitable and some inevitable, of society.

Where did I say ANYTHING about planting crops for biofuels?

Crops are only one way of making biofuels. Biofuels can be made from any type of biomass at all, including sewage and landfills. It is being done right now. Methane is both a fossil fuel and a biofuel. Methane can be produced low tech, easily and inexpensively from anything-----sewage, agricultural and other organic waste----it is called composting. And the final product is compost----the richest, most fertile soil you can get, and clean water. The two most valuable resources on earth.

We have plenty of sewage and waste already. And we need to treat the sewage and waste anyway.

As for your 300 hectares-----land accounts for only 30% of the earth's surface. And aquatic plants grow at phenomenal rates because they are not limited to usage of available water supplies-----they have all the water available that they can use. Algae can double their biomass every 48 hours.

Can your solar cells double their output every 48 hours---for free, with no human intervention? Algae can. And some species of algae store energy in the form of plant lipids(oil)---as much as 60% of the biomass volume. Directly usefull as a straight gallon for gallon substitution for petroleum.

Cleverness is knowing how to do something-----wisdom is knowing when and when not to do something.

Both solar cells and biofuels have their place. Each can fill needs that the other can not. I think we should use solar cells where they work best-----and biofuels doing what they do best.

Nationmaster - Life expectancy by Nation

What's shocking is how FAR down the list one has to page before encountering the US. (49th in world).

"The average cost per patient of an uncomplicated vaginal delivery in a Canadian hospital was $2,700#151;for a complicated delivery it was about $3,200 per patient. For all vaginal births combined, the average cost per patient was $2,800."

Settlement.org, website offering advice to new imigrants to Canada

Noteworthy is that, though Canadian medical bills for giving birth are < 20% of those in US which you cite, infant mortality rates in Canada are far lower than those in the US. Looks like you guys should be doing some serious complaining and investigation.

I know very little about the post Korean War Army. I do know this all-volunteer Army is able to be fussier than the largely conscripted Army of the Korean War. (I had been automatically deferred for a couple years as a a six year Engineering student.

I found all this business about Basic Training being so awful was a bunch of nonsense. I thought I had died and gone to heaven: three good meals, clothes, bed, health care and education – all for free!! Even got paid to boot. I was treated well. While it sometimes wrangled I learned that the Army way did usually turn out to be the best way.

Many soldiers were washed out of early Basic. Basic training is very expensive. They went on to cook and bakers school, truck driver school. Quarter Masters units.

I see today to enlist the military one must have a real HS diploma (equivalents not ordinarily accepted) , I don't know about crime records, and score 31 percentile on the AFQT. That's 31 percentile based on all test takers. While not strictly an IQ test 31 percentile would require perhaps an IQ of over 90. Blacks and Hispanics average less than 90. In the Korean War the the Infantry, Armor and Artillery qualification (mental and physical) were much higher than everything else, well not higher than the Signal Corps on test scores.

All of the industrial processes you cite are energy intensive and either involve hauling large volumes of waste materials from one place to another or require lots of electrical power to process the material. While your ideas seem simple enough to implement - on the scale necessary they are very difficult to implement and require large amounts of input energy.

No doubt they will work on a small scale but on a scale necessary to run all the nice things we westerners enjoy I really question whether they can do that.

Malcolm

So once again folks there is LOTS of Uranium on this planet it is about as plentiful as tin, the so-called nuclear waste has lots of unused Uranium in it and we have the capability to create more fuel than we use by deploying fast breeder technology. Therefore more energy available than we know what to do with.

And for the Global Warming Fraternity nuclear power gives you unlimited energy at low cost with no carbon dioxide emissions. What is not to like about that.

Of course the idiot politicians in Sweden and elsewhere will finally see the light once China and India replace the US as global superpowers fueled by cheap nuclear energy while we shovel horse manure into some biomass converter trying to beat the laws of physics.

Seems to me that the poorest countries in the world run just fine on biomass - as long as you don't mind riding a horse to work or loading slabs of dried cow dung into your furnace each night. Sounds like a terrific idea to me - I am sure Obama could sell that idea to the masses.

Malcolm

So what you have determined to be facts are news media reports and speculation. The real situation is the torus is undamaged and survived the earthquake and the tsunami quite well..

I can only presume that reactor development improved after you left since you do not have a clue about reactor engineering.

Malcolm

I only became an Ozark hillbilly after retiring and I don't find the intelligence of my neighbors in any way subservient to any of those in the dozens of countries, provinces (including three in Canada) , and many states I have worked in.

It is quite easy to embarrass the US. But who else can you attack? Consider the facts.

I have no particular arguments with your cited Canadian Harvard Professor because he is only one of numerous people who have input into the subject. With no responsibility.

The reason the Korean war went the way that it went is becaus the planes needed to win that war were kept in Europe and the US in order to fight a war that was never going to take place. A war with RUssia. If those planes had been rushed to Korea the first week of the war, you would never have been called back in to make smoke for Uncle Sam, and I would have been cheated out of the most wonderful years of my life.

As for what you think of as your country but not mine, I have the opposite point of view. When the American electorate reelected George W. Bush I know that they had given up on the USA that I knew, but not me, because I know what we did in the great years after Pearl Harbor.

eg. pp 38 [quote] That is why governments are unable to cope with reality when electrd assemblies and mass opinions become decisive in the state, when there are no statesmen to resist the inclination of the voters and there are only politicians to excite and to exploit them. There is then a general tendancy to be drawn downward, as by the force of gravity, toward insolvency, towards the insecurity of factionalism, towards the erosion of liberty, and towards hyperbolic wars [/quote]

[sarcon] Of course Lippman wrote this shortly after WWII, looking back on the total mess that the democracies had made of the decision processes in the first half of the 20th century. I'm sure he would be a lot more optimistic now ;<) [sarcoff]

List of sovereign states and dependent territories by fertility rate - Wikipedia

Now let's see, who am I to believe - you or them?. This is what they call an ISSUE. I like the guy at Cern, because he seems to have the right idea about everything except nuclear physics, while the Swedish guy is in Japan now. I hope that he finds what he is looking for, and her name was Suziko when I was in that part of the world.

You seem to delight in denigrating US generals, Eisenhower and MacArthur, at every opportunity . I find your analysis of the Korean War quite naive. Actually Insulting.

I am a veteran of WWII and Korea. My WWII service is merely a technicality, as the A-bombs had already been dropped by induction, but my Korean device was not merely a technical. Neither I nor any of those I knew even considered dodging the draft.

Soon after the cease-fire in Korea I received a letter from the Pentagon offering me early release. Probably because I was also legally a WWII veteran and that there were millions more in service than impending peacetime could support.

My Army was true blue. I went though three layers of often tough basic training. I went through tougher OCS. I am not a bit embarrassed to say that the day I got my bars was a memorial day – and I was proud.

I doubt whether professor Banks understands the decisions a commissioned officer had to make.

A couple of facts to ponder:

1) The USGS has published an assessment that estimates shale oil deposits in Utah and Colorado contain 4-5 trillion barrels of petroleum. It's not clear the stuff is recoverable at any reasonable financial and environmental price but that's enough oil to meet current world demand for about 150 years, give or take.

2) Richard Mueller at UC Berkeley teaches a course from which he's written a book called Physics for Future Presidents. In that book, he notes the fact that cancer rates in Denver, Colorado, elevation 5,000 feet, are lower by a statistically significant degree compared with the US average. It could be that Denver residents live a healthier lifestyle but they are also exposed to higher levels of cosmic rays than the population at large, which tends to support the statistics from Japan.

3) In a recent op-ed piece, the same Richard Mueller made the common sense point that moving elderly people from a familiar environment to an unfamiliar environment, which is what happened in the area surrounding Fukushima after the tsunami, might result in more premature deaths than the relatively low levels of radiation that were released into the environment.

4) I was more concerned about getting a CT scan (140x as much exposure as a single chest x-ray) than I am about a potential radioactive release from one of California's nuclear power plants. On the other hand, I'm willing to bet that the same folks who are complaining about the purported radiation hazard from digital electric meters would not think twice about having the same CT scan.

Let's face it, our fellow citizens are not terribly thoughtful or rational. They'd rather accept information at face value than do some independent research to validate specious claims. It seems like we need some objective, rigorous research to better understand the effects of low radiation doses (what a novel thought), unless its already available.

Jack Ellis, Tahoe City, CA

One thing, it's impressive how many of the same people who will complain about such irrationality regarding science in the public are the same ones who will complain about paying teachers properly, or having society do the minimum normally necessary to keep students in schools.

A hundred years ago it was the brightest students who became teachers rather than becoming factory or farm workers. The attainment level of students in multi-grade rooms was really quite amazing. The teacher with no more than a HS education somehow coped with large class sizes – and never had the benefit of a course in “Theory of Education” or “Self esteem.”

There was no “security.”

Now we wouldn't dream of letting someone without a teachers college degree and a state Teaching Certificate into a class room. An engineer cannot teach arithmetic. Today very few of the brightest HS students aspire to be school teachers. Those who do are most likely those who hate science and math and avoid courses beyond the minimum.

At universities those in Teachers College have the lowest average test scores. Most teacher courses lack the rigor of other colleges of the same university. Arkansas requires teachers to pass a test. Test takers with degrees from some universities with high minority candidates have many failures. A private school near me, Lyon College, has never had a graduate fail the state test. Those who fail can re-take the test. If they eventually pass they can teach from now to eternity. It is nearly impossible to remove a teacher. Poor achievement gets perpetuated.

An aside. When I was in grade school in the '30s attendance was usually 100%. One didn't stay home with a runny nose. One stayed home when the city nailed a quarantine notice on your front door. Today I see 10% absentee rates as normal.

About my failure in engineering school. It was one of the best things that ever happened to me. My failure in army leadership school was better though, and getting fired from Hughes aviation in LA was tops. All the times I failed my army officer candidate interviews were also great, as were my inability to get professorships and even academic jobs here in Sweden. There is a Jewish aphorism about luck in bad luck and, well Lieutenant, they got it right..

And Don, the teacher situation in the US is NOT a bundle of paradoxes. Obama and his government have failed to give the US the schools they deserve. Why l should we be concerned about democracy and freedom in stone age countries with the schools we have, and the attack on our culture. Failing was great for me because I found out how to give and take a punch, play American football, and start gang fights - or riots as some people call them. And as for my failures being treated as a badge, you should ask my wife about that: she's damned sick and tired of hearing about them.

Further, the problem existed long before Obama. your "Gang fights and riots? What in the hell are you talking about?

I have worked in many of these united states , UK, West Germany, Italy, Spain and Japan. In Jordan, Puerto Rico,Canary Islands, Philippines, three provinces of Canada, Panama, Brazil. I have never witnessed a “gang fight or a riot.” Sure, I have witnessed Russel's “better Red than dead pacifists in Trafalgar Square and demonstrations in Tokyo and Manila. I never saw an effective blow struck.

About riots, gang fights, being shot at and so on and so forth, you dont know any thing about that because that is a kind of experience over your head. Please let me mention though that when boxing was reintroduced on the West Point curriculum, there was a rash/outbreak of young future officers urinating in their shorts. In so far as the intelligence of Harvard students is concerned, please let me say that I have never seen any proof of that where the present topic is concerned. If they were as brilliant as you probably think they are at Harvard and MIT, they would take steps to avoid being taught by morons - which is what many, though not all of their teachers are.

As for Obama not failing the schools, please let me ask who did fail them, because a lot of failing has taken place. He and his foot soldiers are too dumb to mention the schools, and in the American future everybody is going to pay for that omission.

As for the universities, brilliant American veterans like myself have no access to the faculties, because half baked foreigners have some sort of priority. Of course, when you have spent 11 or 12 years being invited to all the parties and dances of your international finance students in a country like Sweden, employment in most of those countries you mentioned was probably unnecessary, to include 'The World'. I hope that you get what I mean.

Unless I am mistaken, I was relieved from my 'acting gunnery officer'' position at Hardt Kaserne in Germany after three months, because there was some information somewhere about my taking part in two riots. I had one year left in that kaserne, and I can tell you that in every way it was marvelous. Absolutely wonderful. And as for the 'acting gunnery officer bit that I am selling now, in Germany it was unofficial, although at Fort Lewis it was official, and Lieutenant, did I show the decision makers something.!

Jack Ellis makes some good points above about the paranoia wrt radiation. Most folks are quite happy to get zapped with doses of radiation exposure thousands of times greater than any nuclear power plant will ever expose you to on the whim of some doctor. There is significant evidence that routine breast cancer screening actually causes more breast cancers than it cures but telling that to the ignoramuses who promote that indiscriminate radiation exposure and you will be heralded as a charlatan and a hater of women. No one has been hurt as a result of the Fukushima reactors yet to hear the media you would think a million or two died. As Jack said moving thousands of old people out of their homes for long periods of time on the risk of radiation exposure no more than a couple of chest x-rays is very likely to kill more people than if you left them where they were.

Len made a good point about the average birth rate by stating that the US is the only OECD nation with a replacement rate above 2 but the big news in those recent statistics is the plummeting birth rate among immigrant women - particularly the Latino population. If THAT trend continues of course the birth rate will fall well below the 2.05 per female quoted. Exactly who is going to pay for the medicare for all the old folks that Obama promises...better think about that. We are not producing enough children to pay for what we demand now let alone the future.

The fundamental reason why Japan is in the tank economically and will stay that way for a long long time is directly related to birth rate. In a nation of old people who buys cars? Who buys houses? Who needs a new Nikon camera when you're 85? With a nation of grey haired people and no immigration the Japanese economy will collapse. It is inevitable and it has already started. Despite massive injections of cheap money the Japanese Government cannot get the economy moving and the reasons are obvious. As Japan goes - so does the USA and Canada. The ONLY reason Canada is not in the same serious trouble as Japan is that it has relied heavily on large influxes of young immigrants to supplement its flagging birthrate.

But western economics - just like the USA and Japan and ALL the other OECD countries relies on kicking the financial can down the road to the younger generation to pay for except the younger generation will be few and far between and is not going to pay for it.

Malcolm

I was reminded of this by Len's post above referencing psychiatry. Prior to Enrico Fermi's pile Freudians, not physicists interested young people. Psychiatry was then the exciting stuff. (Much of it eventually proved to be ;nonsense, but a new field resulted.)

Camouflaged Aggression? Perhaps. I don't know. Nearly every idea and word meaning in the mental health field has changed frequently during my life.

About the University of Chicago. I failed the entrance exam there after I finished high school, and when I applied for entrance after graduating with honors in economics (and engineering) they did not answer my application. I know a teacher at Harvard, and I asked him to thank them for refusing me. Chicago on one hand, and Stockholm on the other. What kind of fool would I have been if I had taken the former. When I was working as an applied mathematician and systems analyst in the Chicago Loop, I used to jog past Chicago U. with a smile on my face. I often played touch football there on sundays, and once I gook a girl to a lecture there in the Political Science Department. I dont have a smile when I think about that now - I laugh. I've applied to teach there of course, and also at IIT, and my mail to them includes a few camoflaged insults. Not business or personal of course, but entertainment.

But I am not a perfect teacher. You see, I dont like failing people. If they fail I blame myself. But we have a wonderful system here in Sweden, or had one anyway. If they fail that can take the exam again, maybe a couple of times, and soon after the first time. Maybe a couple of times. and I used a trick or two that I learned in the army in Germany when I had to sit in an office at night with an officer. I TOLD HIM TO GO TO BED, BECAUSE WHEN I WAS ON DUTY AT NIGHT I DIDN'T SLEEP AT ALL. Do you get it Lieutenant? That isn't too deep for you, is it?

Still curious.

True or not?

Five new generators are on track for completion this decade, including two reactors approved just a few weeks ago (the first new reactor approvals in the US in over 30 years). Those will add to the 104 reactors that are already in operation around the country and already produce 20% of the nation’s power. Those reactors will eat up 19,724 tonnes of U3O8 this year, which represents 29% of global uranium demand. If that seems like a large amount, it is! The US produces more nuclear power than any other country on earth, which means it consumes more uranium that any other nation. However, decades of declining domestic production have left the US producing only 4% of the world’s uranium.

With so little homegrown uranium, the United States has to import more than 80% of the uranium it needs to fuel its reactors. Thankfully, for 18 years a deal with Russia has filled that gap. The “Megatons to Megawatts” agreement, whereby Russia downblends highly enriched uranium from nuclear warheads to create reactor fuel, has provided the US with a steady, inexpensive source of uranium since 1993. The problem is that the program is coming to an end next year.

The Upside to a Natural Gas Downturn Marin Katusa, for The Daily Reckoning Monday April 2, 2012

Regards,

http://www.prosefights.org/solarlight/solarlight.htm#schematic1

If you want to learn more about Uranium supply and demand please go to the World Nuclear Association website. It has lots of useful data about the subject.

Malcolm