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Author Topic: Sheb's European Megathread: Remove Feta!  (Read 1770532 times)

Owlbread

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Re: Sheb's European Politics Megathread
« Reply #1815 on: October 04, 2013, 01:55:17 pm »

Indeed, they allow "full sets" in the Navy, though I hear that may be due to weather conditions out there. There is also a gas mask designed for children called the "bardas" system, but that is used by Orthodox Jews in Israel to allow them to wear a gas mask with an enormous beard. It's like a huge hood.

Loud Whispers, by my experience schools were very permissive of hairstyles/beards. The fact that full beards among younger gentlemen were so rare meant that there was no rule set in stone, but a friend of mine had full dreadlocks (he was white so it didn't work very well), another had an enormous pink mohican from about the age of 12/13. There was one fellow that grew a full beard when he was about 14 or 15 that everyone called Beardy Blair, but again nobody really batted an eyelid. For us it was all about clothing.
« Last Edit: October 04, 2013, 02:02:51 pm by Owlbread »
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Loud Whispers

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Re: Sheb's European Politics Megathread
« Reply #1816 on: October 04, 2013, 02:00:57 pm »

Indeed, in the British Army it is common for men to grow moustaches.
Pretty sure the Navy is cool with full beards too, other than on subs, IIRC.
That's rather recent, with the armed forces being encouraged to grow beards for the first time since the crimean war because put simply, the local Afghans dig beards.

Loud Whispers, by my experience schools were very permissive of hairstyles/beards. The fact that full beards among younger gentlemen was so rare meant that there was no rule set in stone, but a friend of mine had full dreadlocks (he was white so it didn't work very well), another had an enormous pink mohican from about the age of 12/13. There was one fellow that grew a full beard when he was about 14 or 15 that everyone called Beardy Blair, but again nobody really batted an eyelid. For us it was all about clothing.
Different experiences I guess; with a pink mohican or something they'd just send you home.

Owlbread

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Re: Sheb's European Politics Megathread
« Reply #1817 on: October 04, 2013, 02:02:38 pm »

The Naval thing is quite well established but it's in recent years that the regular Army is being encouraged to grow beards. To be bearded is considered to be manly in places like Afghanistan, quite rightly in my opinion.

Different experiences I guess; with a pink mohican or something they'd just send you home.

He was actually quite popular among members of staff for it. I remember teachers asking how he would spike it up in the morning, if they could feel it and so on. They were less impressed though by the other fellow's dreadlocks. I remember the janitor just looked at him when we were coming into the school and said "what the fuck have you done to your hair?"
« Last Edit: October 04, 2013, 02:09:08 pm by Owlbread »
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MonkeyHead

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Re: Sheb's European Politics Megathread
« Reply #1818 on: October 04, 2013, 02:11:24 pm »

... I happen to be very proud of my manly geekbeard, which is reaching Brian Blessed proportions.

Descan

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Re: Sheb's European Politics Megathread
« Reply #1819 on: October 04, 2013, 02:11:52 pm »

When I was in school I went through a "dye your hair" phase. Red-to-pink, green, and blue.

I got ribbed for it by teachers and students but it was all in good fun. :P "I knew you were in there from the great pink beacon upon your head," was one memorable quote.

Public secular secondary school, near Toronto.


Edit: When I'm a skinny-fuck again (I literally weighed 80 lbs when I was 12. I'm 250 right now. Lost 70 lbs in the last year or so) I'm probably gonna shave my beard off. I only really wear it because without it, I have no jawline and look more feminine than I desire.

It's growing on me, though...
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Owlbread

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Re: Sheb's European Politics Megathread
« Reply #1820 on: October 04, 2013, 02:14:44 pm »

To be bearded is to be virtuous. Indeed, in ancient times it was considered dishonourable for a Gael to have no facial hair.
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Alastar

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Re: Sheb's European Politics Megathread
« Reply #1821 on: October 04, 2013, 03:34:02 pm »

The French military kept some cool beardy traditions: combat engineers traditionally wore full beards, those in the foreign legion are encouraged to grow one for parades. Submariners often don't shave while on patrol as a nod to less comfortable times.
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Askot Bokbondeler

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Re: Sheb's European Politics Megathread
« Reply #1822 on: October 04, 2013, 10:49:08 pm »

i'm positive i've read this conversation at least 3 times in different threads in the forum. i'm not the least bit surprised

Evil Knievel

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Re: Sheb's European Politics Megathread
« Reply #1823 on: October 05, 2013, 03:24:35 am »

This thread is moving quite fast. I was wanting to add something to the nuclear discussion before, feels like I have to since I seem to have been the only one articulating something against nuclear power - but I do not have the time to engage myself too much. My main point is still the nuclear waste, because I think it just stupid to produce a problem you don't know how to solve - but of course, I also see that the damage is already done. Thinking that nuclear power has not been funded by private investors but by tax payers, massively, and it still has so many problems to it, couldn't have all these billions been put into some more reasonable technology?

So let's have a look (sorry, I have not collected all your names in the quotations.)
Quote
Quote
Why shut down Nuclear? Germany doesn't have a significant threat of earthquakes, does it?
It's great PR.
Because yeah, more than half the anti nuclear arguments are caused by fear, or results of nuclear antipathy.
I think the same is true for the pro-nuclear arguments. Its a very emotional battle, which really does not help.

Quote
Also the whole nuclear fear could cause people to amalgamate shitty, inneficient, dirty and bomb-making uranium reactors with thorium salts reactors, or even, Science forbid, fusion reactor.
Because the technology is either not ready or it has some caveats which are not easy to explain to the journalists.

Quote
As for costs, again I'm sure than even counting the cost of the clean up (With estimates going into the tens of billions), Japan is a net winner since it didn't have to import costly gas and coal for its electricity generation.
You may be right, I don't know. I do not believe, that this was part of the plan though. You may say the Japanese have been lucky after all, but the point is that they may also been less lucky, and not much was missing. Why gamble if we don't need to.

Quote
Also, I never got what was so special about nuclear waste. Sure, Plutonium last a million year, but arsenic is forever and will kill you just as easily.
I agree, but that is hardly an argument for producing more of that waste. Chemical waste may need and have different solutions, maybe they are similarly blank on as to how to deal with it as they are with depleted nuclear fuel, but that is then another, no less serious problem to be discussed elsewhere.

Someone posted a radiation chart that was illustrating that actually it may not be dangerous to have some nuclear waste in your private basement, if you don't go down there too often (sorry, should not have been cynic). The problem with the waste is however not only the radiation, but that some of the active material may be spread into soil, water, plants etc, that we finally ingest into our bodies, where it radiates and radiates and radiates.

Quote
Now, regarding the question of the waste... Well, we have several ways to go about it: Breeder reactor to burn them, or just dig deep enough. Making an underwater storage deep below the abyss would be my favorite solution: geologically stable, far away from anything, with clays that sticks to radioisotopes. The main problem now is a lack of will, not anything else. That, and no one wants to store waste in its backyard.
Can't tell about breeders, only guess that there are problems or risks to like there are with thorium.

The problem with geological solutions is that they all involve a huge extrapolation about things that we really don't understand. The cartoons they show on TV always look so simple and intuitive. But nobody really knows what lies below our feet. All of these images are elaborated guesswork and extrapolation. While we can answer some questions by falsifying the one or another hypothesis, we can never do that on the long-term, and we can never be sure that have not overlooked something. (I should say "they" because almost all of the research results is classified)

In Sweden, they have this idea that even though the storage place is humid (water comes in and leaves) the water that comes into contact with the nuclear waste is underground water and will always be because of the circulation pattern, and thus never meet the Baltic sea or the groundwater. But have they really seen every water passageway? Can they really extrapolate how these circulation systems, or in particular, that they never will connect with the shallow water, while they know that Sweden is moving (rising for that matter) but at the same time aren't even able to quantitatively predict this process into the future? I am not at all an expert on the Swedish case so my criticism may be weak, but I bet that someone who has some overview over the projects would know about the weak spots, because weak spots are part of the game in this business.

Don't get me wrong, I believe that the scientists there are doing a remarkably good work there far better than in to most places (had I chosen to ramble about Germany instead, I could have made a much stronger point), but still none of them will give you a guarantee, and it is also not their job to do that. No one ever asks a geologist for a guarantee, simply because (s)he can't give you one.
Geology papers end with conclusions like "Therefore, we believe that ...." and they use interpretations of geophysical measurements into which incredible vagueness I won't even enter now. Speculation in a maximum likelihood sense is their job. If they did their job on assessing a construction ground correctly, and the house breaks down later, they can not be held responsible legally, because they did their job right anyway. I say this just in order to clarify that geoscience does not happen in a laboratory, where you can say: "we know this or that now with this or that uncertainty because we were able to control the conditions." The lab is the real world, and thus things are more difficult.

They give recommendations and those are then passed on to decision makers, who may or may not understand much about the basis of the recommendations.

And that's the best(=only) way to deal with it - but you can't tell me that this is a favourable situation, or one that anyone intended before. It's a patchwork that costs a lot of money and is full of risks.
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Loud Whispers

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Re: Sheb's European Politics Megathread
« Reply #1824 on: October 05, 2013, 03:54:38 am »

Someone posted a radiation chart that was illustrating that actually it may not be dangerous to have some nuclear waste in your private basement, if you don't go down there too often (sorry, should not have been cynic). The problem with the waste is however not only the radiation, but that some of the active material may be spread into soil, water, plants etc, that we finally ingest into our bodies, where it radiates and radiates and radiates.
I do know some parts of the UK like Cornwall are sited on granite with loads of Uranium in it, with the result being that basements and houses have to be built specifically to stop everyone being killed by radon gas. But actual nuclear waste? You'd want that underneath your basement, well 100 metres below!

10ebbor10

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Re: Sheb's European Politics Megathread
« Reply #1825 on: October 05, 2013, 04:31:11 am »

This thread is moving quite fast. I was wanting to add something to the nuclear discussion before, feels like I have to since I seem to have been the only one articulating something against nuclear power - but I do not have the time to engage myself too much. My main point is still the nuclear waste, because I think it just stupid to produce a problem you don't know how to solve - but of course, I also see that the damage is already done. Thinking that nuclear power has not been funded by private investors but by tax payers, massively, and it still has so many problems to it, couldn't have all these billions been put into some more reasonable technology?
Quite a few nuclear power plants have been build by private contractors, especially in the US. It doesn't work out that good though, as centralization is significantly cheaper because of standardized installations.
Additionally, Nuclear waste is solved. It's a patchwork solution though, but so are most things in life.

Quote
Quote
Also the whole nuclear fear could cause people to amalgamate shitty, inneficient, dirty and bomb-making uranium reactors with thorium salts reactors, or even, Science forbid, fusion reactor.
Because the technology is either not ready or it has some caveats which are not easy to explain to the journalists.
It's mainly a jab against the Greenpeace guy that said that fusion was the same as fission, but bigger. It isn't, but you probably now that.

Please provide examples of said caveats. Ok, fusion is at this time a fairly large money sink, but the first Gen IV Thorium reactors are expected to go online in 2015 (People's Republic of China). Additionally, several reactor prototypes have been build, and worked satisfactorily, with no significant problems.

Quote
Quote
As for costs, again I'm sure than even counting the cost of the clean up (With estimates going into the tens of billions), Japan is a net winner since it didn't have to import costly gas and coal for its electricity generation.
You may be right, I don't know. I do not believe, that this was part of the plan though. You may say the Japanese have been lucky after all, but the point is that they may also been less lucky, and not much was missing. Why gamble if we don't need to.
Because at this moment, and in the past, we had 2 options, either gamble, and have a chance to win, or don't , and loose for certain. Fossil fuels are, and should be on the way out. Renewables aren't ready to take their place.

As a side note, putting all costs combined, (fuel, construction, dismanteling), even A Gen II plant is almost as cheap as coal.

As a side, the Japanese were pretty unlucky. The Fukushima incident was several time worse than the worst case scenario.
Quote
Quote
Also, I never got what was so special about nuclear waste. Sure, Plutonium last a million year, but arsenic is forever and will kill you just as easily.
I agree, but that is hardly an argument for producing more of that waste. Chemical waste may need and have different solutions, maybe they are similarly blank on as to how to deal with it as they are with depleted nuclear fuel, but that is then another, no less serious problem to be discussed elsewhere.

Someone posted a radiation chart that was illustrating that actually it may not be dangerous to have some nuclear waste in your private basement, if you don't go down there too often (sorry, should not have been cynic). The problem with the waste is however not only the radiation, but that some of the active material may be spread into soil, water, plants etc, that we finally ingest into our bodies, where it radiates and radiates and radiates.
Yup. It's not really problematic, unless it happens in massive amounts (in case you happened to be unlucky enough to live near one of the 2 major power plant failures in the world, in 50 years). You receive more radiation from Television than you get from nuclear power plants, even if you were living near one. A single Medical scans can be 10 to 100 times as intensive as the worst nuclear accidents combined.

Besides, research has pointed out that low levels of radiation are essentially harmless, so unless there's a major screwup and tonnes of polluted water are dumped into drinking water at once(like happens in the Tsernobyl accident), it doesn't matter.

Additionally, there's a difference between different types of nuclear waste. Not all nuclear waste is highly radioactive, and lasts as long. As a generic rule, the more dangerous it is, the shorter it lasts. So by the time nuclear waste made it's way to us, it will be almost perfectly harmless, unless all other chemical wastes that are building up in the ecosystem.

Quote
Quote
Now, regarding the question of the waste... Well, we have several ways to go about it: Breeder reactor to burn them, or just dig deep enough. Making an underwater storage deep below the abyss would be my favorite solution: geologically stable, far away from anything, with clays that sticks to radioisotopes. The main problem now is a lack of will, not anything else. That, and no one wants to store waste in its backyard.
Can't tell about breeders, only guess that there are problems or risks to like there are with thorium.
Helping you out here, but anyway.
The only problem with breeders are those shared by most nuclear reactors, and additionally the fact that nuclear waste can be refined into weapon grade plutonium. Widespread nuclear breeders could lead to proliferation of the waste, and ensuing nuclear weaponry. Chances of that happening are pretty low though, as making a nuclear warhead is slightly more complicated as often said.

There are other types of waste destroying reactors though. You got subcritical ones relying on a particle arcelerator to speed up nuclear decay, and other solutions have also been theorized.

Quote
The problem with geological solutions is that they all involve a huge extrapolation about things that we really don't understand. The cartoons they show on TV always look so simple and intuitive. But nobody really knows what lies below our feet. All of these images are elaborated guesswork and extrapolation. While we can answer some questions by falsifying the one or another hypothesis, we can never do that on the long-term, and we can never be sure that have not overlooked something. (I should say "they" because almost all of the research results is classified)

In Sweden, they have this idea that even though the storage place is humid (water comes in and leaves) the water that comes into contact with the nuclear waste is underground water and will always be because of the circulation pattern, and thus never meet the Baltic sea or the groundwater. But have they really seen every water passageway? Can they really extrapolate how these circulation systems, or in particular, that they never will connect with the shallow water, while they know that Sweden is moving (rising for that matter) but at the same time aren't even able to quantitatively predict this process into the future? I am not at all an expert on the Swedish case so my criticism may be weak, but I bet that someone who has some overview over the projects would know about the weak spots, because weak spots are part of the game in this business.
IIRC, the holes in which they store the nuclear waste are those that don't leak water. While it's not unlikely that over time, cracks will form, it's not a big deal. High level nuclear waste is coated in steel, concrete, more steal, some lead for good measure, then more concrete. Even if the water broke through that, and carried the waste through the mountains, and into the Baltic, the amount of radioactive pollution would be so small it can't even be measured. It will certainly be neglible compared to the amount of nuclear waste that was dumped in the sea in the past. (Deep ocean storage is a very good measure, actually).

In fact, let's assume a worst case scenario, where all of Sweden's nuclear waste is dumped into the Baltic. (10 reactors * 40 years lifetime * 30 tons a year(unprocessed)= 12 000 tonnes / 21,700 km3= 500kg/ km3 = 0.5 gram per cubic meter.) That's potentially harmfull, but certainly not deadly. Besides, as such an incident is unlikely to occur within the first 1000 years, most of the more dangerous, highly radioactive materials will have already decayed.

Besides, it's not like nuclear power plants make massive amounts of waste. An average plant produces 3 cubic meters of waste a reprocessed waste a year. (Reprocessing = filtering out short term waste, which can be safely stored above ground, or used for industrial/medical applications). In the US, only 1% of high level nuclear waste comes from Nuclear power plants, all other waste is a result of their nuclear armament program.

Quote
Don't get me wrong, I believe that the scientists there are doing a remarkably good work there far better than in to most places (had I chosen to ramble about Germany instead, I could have made a much stronger point), but still none of them will give you a guarantee, and it is also not their job to do that. No one ever asks a geologist for a guarantee, simply because (s)he can't give you one.
Geology papers end with conclusions like "Therefore, we believe that ...." and they use interpretations of geophysical measurements into which incredible vagueness I won't even enter now. Speculation in a maximum likelihood sense is their job. If they did their job on assessing a construction ground correctly, and the house breaks down later, they can not be held responsible legally, because they did their job right anyway. I say this just in order to clarify that geoscience does not happen in a laboratory, where you can say: "we know this or that now with this or that uncertainty because we were able to control the conditions." The lab is the real world, and thus things are more difficult.

They give recommendations and those are then passed on to decision makers, who may or may not understand much about the basis of the recommendations.

And that's the best(=only) way to deal with it - but you can't tell me that this is a favourable situation, or one that anyone intended before. It's a patchwork that costs a lot of money and is full of risks.
((Geologists have been held responsible for not predicting a quake, but that one doesn't count))

Point is, the waste is there, and most is not a result of civilian power. Breeder reactors can easily take care of newly produced High level waste, while low and Medium level waste can be safely stored in the reactors, or at separate facilities. Adding to that, the Nuclear Industry is the only power Industry which takes full (or any) responsibilities for it's waste.

And as for costing money, Nuclear is still the cheapest Co2 "neutral" powersource. ((And if you take in Co2 reducing measures, the cheapest power source))

Someone posted a radiation chart that was illustrating that actually it may not be dangerous to have some nuclear waste in your private basement, if you don't go down there too often (sorry, should not have been cynic). The problem with the waste is however not only the radiation, but that some of the active material may be spread into soil, water, plants etc, that we finally ingest into our bodies, where it radiates and radiates and radiates.
I do know some parts of the UK like Cornwall are sited on granite with loads of Uranium in it, with the result being that basements and houses have to be built specifically to stop everyone being killed by radon gas. But actual nuclear waste? You'd want that underneath your basement, well 100 metres below!
What, Radon isn't that harmfull. Ok, fair, it accounts for a significant part of our radiation intake, and causes 21.000 death's a year in the US alone, but those can be avoided. Besides, you're not going to build houses on top of Nuclear fuel sites, and even if you did, radon accumulation would be significantly lower than natural sources.


Unrelated:

Russia is investing in floating Nuclear plants. I'm not sure that's such a bright idea.  Link
« Last Edit: October 05, 2013, 06:47:14 am by 10ebbor10 »
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Chaoswizkid

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Re: Sheb's European Politics Megathread
« Reply #1826 on: October 05, 2013, 10:03:56 am »

In the event of a meltdown, do they just plan on sinking the whole thing? I just don't see why it's a good idea to do that. "Because we can!"?
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10ebbor10

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Re: Sheb's European Politics Megathread
« Reply #1827 on: October 05, 2013, 10:28:02 am »

In the event of a meltdown, do they just plan on sinking the whole thing? I just don't see why it's a good idea to do that. "Because we can!"?
I don't know. It all depends on the temperature the reactor reaches before it hits the water. Anything above normal operating temperatures will probably blow it into the sky. If they manage to avoid that, they've get a pretty good cooling plan, at least, until the salt corrodes the coolant tubes and the nuclear material is directly exposed to outside environment.

Though well, these appears to be smaller scale reactors, which have a significantly reduced risk. Some of them are used on boats.
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Another

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Re: Sheb's European Politics Megathread
« Reply #1828 on: October 05, 2013, 01:14:17 pm »

Don't forget nuclear [powered] submarines several countries operate for many decades by now.

Also what is the opinion about baking nuclear waste into monolith glass blocks for underground storage? Elements in the few surface micrometers may slowly react with groundwater if exposed but that should be it.

Really nasty stuff is still left from the military programs in the form of barrels with liquid waste that may be leaking.
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10ebbor10

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Re: Sheb's European Politics Megathread
« Reply #1829 on: October 05, 2013, 02:08:54 pm »

Glass storage is used pretty often, but it's only useful for processed waste. Additionally, glassing it is not easily reversible, so not everyone uses it.

Australians are currently worked on next gen ceramic storage for waste, which is stronger, heat resistant and has limited self repair abilities.
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