Today's discussion about the news
Comments
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"You seem to be imbuing the word "technically" with some special meaning."
Anyway, it's good that you agree with me.
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You make fun of your students' use of the word can. That qualifies as pedantry in my book.
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Look on the bright side Brian, figures published recently showed that the Tories managed to significantly reduce levels of legal migration:
Let's see what happens now that Labour are in charge.
"I spent most of my money on birds, booze and fast cars: the rest of it I just squandered." [George Best]0 -
This is from the same OBR report with the extremely dubious chart showing revenue and spending converging in the shorter term where policy can be modelled and then wildly diverging based on no known policies.
I think all that second chart shows is that low paid workers are net recipients of spending, whether home grown or immigrant. In other words, all low-wage work is effectively subsidised by the state, including the Representative UK Resident. Immigrants have an advantage in that another country has paid for their childhood. It's not exactly revelatory.
1985 Mercian King of Mercia - work in progress (Hah! Who am I kidding?)
Pinnacle Monzonite
Part of the anti-growth coalition0 -
That clearly shows that we should deport migrants aged 90 and over.
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Given life expectancy of 80 or so, the graph looks vaguely sensible.
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Which one? The bottom one seems to be just a statement of the bleeding obvious. If people earn more they pay more tax. Most people don't earn or pay tax in their childhood.
1985 Mercian King of Mercia - work in progress (Hah! Who am I kidding?)
Pinnacle Monzonite
Part of the anti-growth coalition0 -
The black line breaks even around the average life expectancy. Given the various demographic avocado discussions that happen, it wouldn't have surprised me if at this point the average person was in debt.
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That first graph is offensive.
It is actually possible to predict the weather 20 years in advance, but that doesn't make it helpful.
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I think the first part of that chart is nonsense as well.
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If understood that neutron emissions were just something that is unavoidable. Had also understood that using the whole reactor as a heat exchanger wasn't really viable because it would be horribly inefficient, and that the heat extraction problem was more about getting that heat to water to boil it half way effectively.
Basically, how do you achieve what the sodium circuit (? Not going to waste time looking it up, just going from memory) does in a fusion power station?
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Almost a fair point, but there's a difference (in my book) between using language use for humour and (for instance) getting cross about "bored of". I guess I use such 'humour' to encourage people to think about language.
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Think the area above the childhood dip is larger than under the adulthood rise, indicating that the Representative UK resident is a net recipient.
1985 Mercian King of Mercia - work in progress (Hah! Who am I kidding?)
Pinnacle Monzonite
Part of the anti-growth coalition0 -
It's a cumulative graph.
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I don't excuse someone who cracks a great less and fewer joke from the charge of irrelevant pedantry, so unfortunately there's no pass for you either.
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Good point. Also fairly critical how the Representative UK resident has been defined.
1985 Mercian King of Mercia - work in progress (Hah! Who am I kidding?)
Pinnacle Monzonite
Part of the anti-growth coalition0 -
it depends on the nuclei being fused, but typically it's fast (high energy) neutrons carrying most of the reaction energy
i.e. you want as many fast neutrons as possible
for one deuterium+tritium fusion, you get a helium nucleus (alpha particle) carrying c. 20% of the energy, and a fast neutron carrying c. 80%
the neutrons fly off in all directions, the 'traditional' fusion power plant concept is to 'wrap' the reactor vessel with some material that will absorb the emitted neutrons, which heats it up, then use that heat to make steam to drive turbines - the material could be a liquid, or a solid that's cooled by a liquid
aside from that, tritium is expensive, limited supply and a short half-life, but fortunately the neutrons can breed more in the absorber (or another layer of material), you have to figure out how to extract the new tritium otherwise you'd need some other way of making it to keep the reactor running
my bike - faster than god's and twice as shiny0 -
Agh, had to look it up now.
Okay, so assuming it it is a 2H + 3H reaction, which most attempts are, then the neutrons are simply one of the products (haven't checked to see what happens to 4He, but I assume it decomposes to 2 2H atoms?).
You don't want any more of them than one per fusion reaction, and that's all you get anyway. But I hadn't realised how much of the energy was in them.
So the issue seems to be making the tritium (which has a very long half life, by the way, and used to be used for emergency exit signs). To do that means irradiating lithium, which in turn means utilizing some conventional radioactive neutron source. Another issue as you say is reactor fatigue and making radioisotopes of iron and nickel and won't.
And then from a practical perspective getting the heat out of the neutrons, which after all are flying around in an evacuated tokamak that uses cryogenically cooled superconducting magnets to generate the plasma. I assume the neutron cross section of the thing you need to contain your H - Bomb means the neutrons are absorbed in the walls, that it's not ideal for the walls to be be heated because then you can't contain the plasma, because your cryogen boils. Also I assume the magnetic field would be distorted too much by running some sort of heat exchange arrangement inside, itself precluding one from making the plasma.
Right? Roughly?
Yes, I agree that on the basis that a tokamak seems to be a dead end, that some of the other concepts of using a linear particle accelerator might be the way forward. As in, they haven't failed as often yet.
Kind of wish I was working on something like that.
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tbh i'm not sure what the plan is for getting the energy out of a 'real' tokamak-based power plant
iter includes tritium breeding, shielding, heat extraction etc., but before iter there was jet (and others)
i'd be happy to be wrong, but imo iter looks like another research tokamak that will lead to the next generation of research tokamak, much fun and phd production, but little electricity
tritium half life is c. 12 years, my 'short' comment was more vs. the centuries/millennia for waste from fission reactors
in another life, cern, or slac for the weather and a big convertible 😀
my bike - faster than god's and twice as shiny0 -
As we were doing vets, sn oldie but a goodie.
🥁💥
1985 Mercian King of Mercia - work in progress (Hah! Who am I kidding?)
Pinnacle Monzonite
Part of the anti-growth coalition0 -
oh my, remember the crowdstrike issue that microsoft claimed was forced on them by the nasty eu?
now microsoft says it is making changes to prevent more of the same
clearly demonstrating that it wasn't due to the eu, but to microsoft's implementation
https://www.theregister.com/2024/09/13/microsoft_is_updating_windows_to/
my bike - faster than god's and twice as shiny0 -
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Gibb is cited by people like Lewis Goodall as part of the reason they left the BBC, it was made clear to him (Goodall is open about his Labour support) that Gibb was to keeping an eye on him. The suggestion by more than one previous BBC employee is that he unduly influences BBC news and political content.
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At least someone recognised the tongue in cheek nature!
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Maybe this will attract people from the green party who seem to value social justice over a serious environmental discussion.
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The reference to the Judean People's Front in the same breath as Corbyn is maybe one for the irony thread.
As for forming a 'left wing party collective' well they've already got stiff competition in the form of the Labour Party.
"I spent most of my money on birds, booze and fast cars: the rest of it I just squandered." [George Best]0 -
I think the Telegraph have been on holiday for the last 14 years.
Someone should mention things like Brexit to them, so they don't make fools of themselves.
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The junior doctors have accepted a new pay deal.... and spokesman immediately threatened strike action in April for the other 20%. Asked if they would respect the independent pay review body's recommendations, he said only if it was substantially above inflation.
Read the room.
They've already lost my sympathy. "No more money without reforms", suggests they will also be presented with an unpalatable quid pro quo.
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Give 'em an inch and they'll take a yard, as Labour are now discovering. I said before that chucking money at the unions might defer strikes for a while, but they will be back for more at some point. As we can see above.
"I spent most of my money on birds, booze and fast cars: the rest of it I just squandered." [George Best]0
