This is mostly here for notes on things I'm working on, or playing with, if there's a difference. As a Systems Administrator I don't experiment with new hardware much; I tend to conservatively stick with Dell systems, only occasionally custom-building a test system or two. But there are a lot of new experiments in software, particularly with the organization-specific enterprise software that the others may not use. If you're more interested in hardware experimentation, or individual computer experiences, I suggest you check out the Daynotes Gang, and see where it leads. (Daynotes Gang page (c) Bo Leuf.)

Most of the events described here take place at my work, a fairly new company called iTOOL.com. We are a rather specialized web-hosting company; iTOOL is the first hosting company that allows you to create, edit, and maintain your web page, email, and server status from your browser, without using any of the more usual HTML editors or the need for FTPing updates to the site.

Anyway, I hope you have as much fun reading the site as I do making it.

At Internet World.

At Internet World.

At Internet World. Flying back late.

8:15 AM Well, that was - um - fun. Yeah, that's it. Fun.

Internet World is a big show, getting pretty close to Comdex in size, if not in prestige. The Jacob K. Javits Center in New York is a huge building, and all three floors are turned out for Internet World. If you're there, make sure you check out iTOOL, booth #383, in the back left of the main hall. The one offering a chance to win $100,000. Yes, Tom, you have to be there to play. <g>

Setting up our booth was a lot of work, but it was an interesting look into the way things work in New York. First of all, let me say that I am not anti-Union; I really don't have a strong opinion. There are good and bad sides to labor unions, just like there are good and bad sides to everything.

The New York labor unions are definitely a bad side.

We hired a private company, Eagle, to set up our booth for us. They did a fast, professional job, assembling a complex 20' by 30' display booth with six computer kiosks in a little over four hours. Since the manual with the booth calls for six hours, I consider that fast work. The show, however, is not being run by Eagle; it's being run by Freeman Decorating, who agreed to use the city's labor unions for all the work. Electrical, carpeting, cleanup, everything was done by union labor. They didn't like the booths being set up by Eagle.

We were fortunate; we didn't have to bribe the work crews to get our network connection. Not everyone was as lucky. I spoke with several sysadmins who not only bribed work crews to get things done, but ended up being charged an exorbitant amount for the work, as well. We were also warned that the workers would likely be upset and unwilling to work with us if we didn't let them hook up our electricity. To clarify, the power had already been connected (after four tries); they were referring to stringing the extension cords and power strips.

Microsoft had it best; they brought in their own Union work crews to set up their display. I can't call it a booth; they had not one but two 200' sections of the show floor. The local union crews left them alone, because the workers were union, but they were being paid directly by Microsoft to do only one job, so they got it done quickly, as well. Best of both worlds.

The show was pretty good; or yesterday was, at any rate, since the show lasts until Friday. Lots of interesting things to check out. I was most interested in the Handspring display. I think I like the Visor better than the Palm Pilot even if the Springboard concept doesn't work; the feel of the thing is better, although it does look a lot cheaper than a Palm Pilot. The Visor is thinner, and the plastic case just looks cheaper and less sturdy than the Palm Pilot case, although it's actually just as strong. The screen is definitely better, in that I found it much easier to read and control. And to top it all off, it doesn't cost as much as the Pal Pilots.

Other than that and a few companies I visited for work purposes - VA Linux systems was displaying their new web servers and so forth - I was mainly interested in the booth candy, which, I'm sad to say, was a real disappointment. <g> One shirt, admittedly a decent denim button-down rather than a cheap T-shirt, a yo-yo, an etch-a-sketch the size of a Palm Pilot (better not show that one to the budget people; they might get ideas) and some macaroni-shaped plastic toys that interconnect at the ends. Pitiful. So ends the Internet World experience. Definitely not an "Orchid," but not an "Onion," either. Maybe a Carnation? Or perhaps a Potato?

1:30 PM Dull day, what with most of the people being in New York.

Couple of quotes, mostly from myself or my coworkers:

"This network would be perfect if it weren't for all these damned users."
     - Myself

"Where in the hell am I going and why am I in this handbasket?"
     - John Blayter, Developer

"99% of the people can't think, 99% of those who can won't, and the rest of us are getting damned lonely."
     - I can't remember... Dr. Keyboard???? Somehow that sounds right...

"What are you smoking and why aren't you sharing?"      - Our CFO's standard response to any budget request

9:00 AM Another day, another dollar. Well, OK, a little more than a dollar. Still waiting for that raise Tom told my boss to give me... <g>

I think you have some misconceptions about both wind and nuclear power. Of course it's not suitable for all locations at all times, but for example the entire electrical needs of the UK (55 million people) could be provided by an area the size of the Isle of Wight - and it could be sited offshore. Have a browse around the BWEA's site at http://www.bwea.com, they have some good stuff there. And yes, naturally it's pro-wind, that's their job. But at least it's believable and, ultimately, non-lethal in the worst-case scenario.
As for siting the turbines on land, they don't take up as much room as you think. Cattle can graze right up to the foot of turbine towers, for example, or you can grow crops - even olive trees - below them, as is happening here in France.
Technology is good, but higher technology is not necessarily better and nuclear power is definitely a step too far. As I said earlier, when it goes wrong you'd better be able to run quickly. In fact, job ads for a nuclear power station in the UK require applicants to be able to run a mile in less than 8 minutes. I wonder why.
Powering Chicago? Eminently possible, although I don't make the assumption that you'd only power it from wind. Other renewables can do the powering when the wind doesn't blow - solar, methane from waste dumps, tidal, hydro (they have rivers near Chicago, don't they?)...the list goes on. My point really is that you don't need to use nuclear at all, and in fact shouldn't use it because it's just too scarily dangerous. 'In theory' it works fine doesn't do it for me; in theory you don't employ morons who can tip four buckets of uranium into a vat of acid when one is more than enough, but these things happen. And, to repeat, when it goes wrong with nuclear power it goes wrong big-time.
You live in Phoenix? Look out the window, Matt - see that giant thing up in the sky? Can you say 'Solar power'...
The most efficient power generation in land area is nuclear? Can I graze my cows inside your nuclear power station? Are people afraid to live near a wind turbine? If my turbine keeper (most don't need one but humour me) makes a mistake do I need to appeal to the US Army for help clearing up the mess? Nuclear power - not worth scrapping for the few accidents that happen? Hmm.

Regards
Chris Ward-Johnson
Dr Keyboard - Computing Answers You Can Understand
http://www.drkeyboard.co.uk

It's been a few years since I studied the matter, and it's entirely possible - even likely - that I have misremembered facts or that things have changed or both. But the fact remains that nuclear power is the most efficient power generation in land area; five, six hundred gigawatts out of one plant that can be located in a remote location and the power transmitted through microwave towers or power lines. Turbines can be used with crops under them, or pastures, true, but those turbines, in order to work efficiently, must be placed in a specific location. You can't simply shuffle it off into a back corner, or an industrial area. Same objections hold for hydro and geothermal, although there are some compensations in those cases, such as the artificial lakes created behind the dams.

I agree there is a safety issue with nuclear power, but let's look at the problems. With regulations and safety procedures, proper training, and a healthy dose of common sense, accidents still happen. That's life. So. In the 40+ years since the first nuclear power plant opened, there have been many minor accidents and problems. Only two that I'm aware of have ever threatened to take a human life, and those two killed or injured fewer people than one medium-sized aircraft crashing, which happens several times a year. Do we ban air travel? We don't even need to look that far; how many people have died from the air pollution and radiation release from burning coal, not to mention the mining of the stuff in the first place? How much land is destroyed, utterly wasted, by the building of a dam? How much coal and oil and natural gas is left in the crust of the Earth?

You mention solar power. There's an efficient use of land. Even here, in the middle of the Sonoran Desert, making solar power work would be a huge undertaking. We're studying it; Arizona State University has a huge plot of land where they're making test plants for solar power. They've got the same problems wind turbines do, and more of them; you can't grow crops under a solar panel. The only way to make solar power work is to build solar power satellites, sunsats, as Peter Glaser and Gerard O'Neill and a host of others have proven time and time again.

Technology is good, yes. Higher technology is better. We can't go backwards; to do so is to give up on the very things that make us human. People say that nuclear power is the greatest threat to mankind ever invented. Well, guess what; when the club was invented, that was the greatest threat to mankind ever invented, and we're still here. There's always another club, there's always another threat, and Armageddon is always just around the corner. Somehow, we as a species have always managed to have the last laugh, to take that enormous threat and turn it into an enormous opportunity. The day we stop trying to do so is the day humanity stops being something to admire, and becomes something in the racial equivalent of a nursing home.

12:00 PM More from Dr. Keyboard:

Modern turbines generate 1.5 megawatts plus, and a 3MW has just been granted planning permission on Orkney. So, Chicago on your figures would need 70 turbines. And you could grow corn or graze cattle under them still. 'Remote location' is the key phrase for nuclear power; no one, but no one - not even the most ardent supporter - wants to live within irradiating distance of one. And that can be a hell of a long way, cf the irradiated sheep in the north of England from Chernobyl. Couldn't happen in a properly-regulated, intelligently-staffed country? One word: Japan. And the other problem with remote locations, as you say, is getting the power somewhere useful - gazillions of miles of power lines. Turbines can be located much closer to the point of use and almost no one objects. Indeed, you can sell tickets to people who want to visit wind turbines. How many nuke stations do that?
You condemn yourself with your own words about the safety of nuclear power - which, I have to say, I think are woefully wrong. How many died/will die/will die earlier because of Chernobyl? Now compare and contrast that with the number of deaths from wind/hydro/whatever. Any at all? Hikers falling off dams, perhaps? Fishermen being pulled under by monster trout? I'm not advocating the use of coal or any other fossil fuels. Nasty, filthy things by and large, leave the stuff in the ground - my paternal grandfather was a miner and died from silicosis, coal dust on the lung, so I'm with you on that one. And you can't have it both ways about hydro - either the artificial lakes behind them are useful recreational facilities or they destroy land. Only 2% of the US is built-up, so you have plenty of space for filling valleys with water.
As for the efficiency of solar panels - my personal least-favourite renewable except when we make them compulsory replacements for roof tiles - I wonder how efficient and useable they'd be now if we'd spent the money on them which has been poured into nuclear power for the past 50 years? At a guess I'd say I should be able to power my entire house from a panel the size of a dining table, but then I'm a cynic.
We can't uninvent nuclear power, you're right, we can't go back and not have it; one of my favourite sayings these days is that we can't get there from here. Nuclear weapons are the greatest threat to humankind that we've invented ourselves, of course - by definition anything which allows us to destroy not only ourselves but our entire planet has to come into that category. Just because we might be able to do something worse, though, is no reason for not trying to ameliorate our situation now. France, where I live, has as a nation been one of the biggest supporters of nuclear power for a very long time, partly through national pride at being able to do it, partly at a lack of native fossil fuel resources, partly to make weapons-grade plutonium and so on for their nuclear weapons. Now they've stopped building nuclear power stations and are putting up wind turbines everywhere.
Please don't mix me up with those luddites who hate technology and want to scrap all of it, I'm much more discriminating than that. I'm saying: Nuclear power - been there, done that, left the mess for the next few hundred generations to clear up. It's time to move on and do something much more sensible and power our lives with renewable sources of energy, not make us and our descendants live in fear that the next one will be the one which kills thousands.
What I don't understand is why others can't move on like this, why people have to stay so wedded to nuclear power. Why is it so hard to say - hey, nukes get loads of money but they're dangerous, why don't we take the money off developing them and spend it on developing sources of power which won't also kill us? It's a no brainer as far as I'm concerned.

Regards
Chris Ward-Johnson
Dr Keyboard - Computing Answers You Can Understand
http://www.drkeyboard.co.uk

PS Now I've done hand-guns with Bob and nuclear power with you, what's next? Whaling with Svenson? Can't wait.

It IS fun, isn't it? <g> Personally, I've always wanted to debate the merits of various flavors of JELLO. Or, if you'd rather, we could discuss the aerodynamic benefits of crème filling vs. jelly in donuts. Your choice.

Turbine efficiencies have climbed remarkably in the last few years; I find myself surprised. And intrigued. I still do not think wind power can REPLACE nuclear or fossil fuel generation, but it is certainly better than it used to be. Hmmmm.

I guess at its most basic, it boils down to this; the realities of the world are that most of our power is generated from fossil fuels. We both agree that that is definitely a Bad Thing (tm); the question is what to replace it with.

Replacing it with hydro, geothermal, wind, or solar might seem the best solution, but the capital costs are huge, with slow payouts. And the recreational benefits of reservoirs are not really sufficient to justify hydroelectric power; they simply help defray the environmental costs, as it were. Nuclear power has the benefits of being clean (aside from the small matter of toxic and radioactive waste to be disposed of) and efficient, with a high payout of electricity from a single plant. Consider that in the US, there are a bare 111 operating nuclear plants, but they provide 11% of the US domestic energy budget. That's an enormous payoff per plant.

Nuclear waste can be handled safely, and disposed of in a manner which has negligible impact on people or the environment. As you say, we don't use much of our land; we can afford to use some of the wasted space for waste storage. As for accidents; yes, people are affected by them. Of course, people continue to build cities on the slopes of Vesuvius, smoke and drink, fight wars, and watch television. The odds of you or I being affected by a nuclear accident in such a manner that it would reduce our lifespans is incredibly small, probably less than the chance that I might step out of my office and be struck by a meteor. The odds that it will affect someone living 100 feet from a nuclear facility of some sort, chosen at random, is only slightly larger.

In a perfect world, we could have that piece of solar cell on our roof and have every structure in the world provide their own electricity. My car would run off another cell on its roof. And we could store the food for the pigs on the roofs of the world, as well.

The reason it won't happen is that the power companies are the ones doing most of the research, and solar panels such as you envision would put them out of business. Yes, they do solar research, looking for ways to make their solar plants more efficient. They'll stop before they get to that point, though, and I don't think the government should do the research. Perhaps you'll disagree, but that's not the job of the government.

2:00 PM And more, this time on a side topic, from John Doucette:

You wrote :
The reason it won't happen is that the power companies are the ones doing most of the research, and solar panels such as you envision would put them out of business. Yes, they do solar research, looking for ways to make their solar plants more efficient. They'll stop before they get to that point, though, and I don't think the government should do the research. Perhaps you'll disagree, but that's not the job of the government.

This is an unfortunate but very true occurrence in the modern age where profit rules. We have all heard the stories of garage mechanics inventing a new carburetor which allows a car to get 80 - 100 miles per gallon, where are these invention now. They have been bought up by the oil companies as they have a vested interest in selling more not less fuel, as that is the business they are in. The only way this will ever change is if the whole economic model our society is based on is changed drastically to some type of Star Trek - utopian model. Given human nature this is not likely ever to happen any time soon if ever.

Though there is always hope. I remember when I first started to see the push by environmentalists etc. for people to recycle newspapers etc., that I thought that it would go nowhere. But now we have some level of recycling available in most North American cities, and people are learning that all it takes is a small effort to at least do some recycling. Today's children are growing up with a mind set towards saving the planet. It would be very interesting to see what our descendents 10 generations from now think and do about nuclear energy, recycling and pollution.

John Doucette
jhdoucette@home.com

Hmm. I agree that our children are being raised with the mindset of saving the planet; I don't agree that's an entirely good thing. Oh, respect for the environment is a good thing; but preservation at all costs, which seems to be the flavor taught most frequently, is certainly not. The strangest things happen when an environmentalist looks at nature; a beaver dam is a fascinating work of nature, but the Hoover Dam is an ugly manmade scar on the flesh of the planet.

I disapprove of strip mining, deforestation, and so on, but I don't think we need to be so drastic in our efforts to stop it. Industry can be made clean and non-polluting without overly high costs to productivity or the consumer; fine. If something causes so much damage that it can't be tolerated, and there's no way to make it cleaner before the damage is irreparable, then it needs to stop. If something is causing some small amount of damage, but nothing too drastic, then back off. For example, managed farming of trees allow us to use all the wood and paper we like without further reducing the forests of North America; so continue as usual. Recycle? If it's economical. Otherwise, just expand the managed forests.

Friends of Man and the Earth, Greenpeace, and Earthfirst! would have us believe that we will destroy the Earth if we don't immediately cease any activity not directly related to "repairing the damage." This way lies senility for humans as a whole. We cannot put the Earth into a nursing home without living in one ourselves.

4:30 PM Finally, a note from John D. Vogt:

Matt; You almost had it, when you said to put power generation out into space. My engineering is old but; I remember enough to supply the old O'Neill equation. Put man in space + generate power = PROFITS.

All this nonsense about "renewable resources" is just a way to not look into the sky and say "Why no?"

John D. Vogt
Jaydonalds@aol.com

One of the original NASA reprints of O'Neill's report, dated 1984, is on my bookshelf. In one of my classes we analyzed his numbers; the equations not only still hold true, but they've gotten even better. His original plans showed that space colonization and power generation would break even if we could generate 1 KW of energy for every 5 kilograms shipped to LEO, including people, food, materials, and comic books. His equations also show that in 1979, it wasn't quite possible; the best they could manage was about 1 KW per 7.2 Kg. In 1983, he recalculated the numbers, and was down to 1 KW per 4.7 Kg, making it a marginal, but possible, project. That's when NASA stopped expressing interest, apparently, since I've never seen "official" numbers for any later date, and Dr. O'Neill has since passed away.

My class calculated, however, that using nothing more exotic than modern-day Heavy Launch Vehicles and the Space Shuttle, and following Dr. O'Neill's rough plans (edited for modern technology, but only as far as mass and rough estimates of capability) the equations come down to roughly 1 KW per 2.2 Kg. Granted, the break-even point - the point at which the operation begins to show a profit - is between 8 and 14 years, and the project would require a lot of start-up capital; Dr. O'Neill estimated $400 Billion in 1979. We could probably do it for less, now, but that's still way too much money for anyone but a government, or a conglomeration of governments, to risk. At least at the moment. Tomorrow is another day.

10:30 AM See, told you today was another day. And you didn't believe me. <g>

My wife's machine is acting up - a Gateway 266 running Windows 98 (I know, I know, but don't kick me out of the Gang for it; Jerry's still got a few Windows 98 machines, too, and you don't get mad at HIM for it!) The problems are in the sound card, which doesn't make noise, and in the monitor, which does. <g> The monitor problem is simple; adjust the refresh settings, and the problems go away. Sound's harder. More later.

OK, what gives? Bo's talking about the "new guys" vs. the "old fogies;" Tom's calling me the "kid" and "precocious" (geez, I'm only TWENTY YEARS younger than he is...) If this keeps up, we'll have to start calling 'em Grandpa. <seg>

OK, enough kidding around. Two new notes; the first is from John D. Vogt on space:

I agree with all except the money. All the money is in R&D. If we get a good launch vehicle for general purpose launches, a large lift load, high capacity re-useable launch vehicle for MAN.
The full circle is Jerry Pournelle.

John D. Vogt
Jaydonalds@aol.com

Actually, O'Neill's original figures included the R&D, but involved starting right away. He planned to start off with the Saturn V and the then untested Shuttle (TM) and work your way up from there. As I recall (being too lazy to get up and check) the idea was to move in two directions using the Shuttle as the starting point; the engines and avionics were to be placed in a reusable pod, with the body of a new BDR (that's Big Dumb Rocket) made from the Shuttle External Tank. The idea was that it's not worth saving the tank, but the engines and electronics are expensive and fairly small, so they're worth saving. The shuttle itself he upgraded in several stages with F-1 engines (the Saturn V engines) and turbojet engines to give it the ability to stretch its glide on landing.

In class, we used the assumptions on modern but existing launch vehicles - we selected the Ariane 5 and the Titan 34D for most of the work, but most modern rockets are useable - with only the Shuttle needing replacing. At the time, the Delta Clipper was the obvious choice for the Shuttle replacement; pity NASA didn't see it that way.

The other just arrived from Bob Thompson:

One problem with wind and solar power that I haven't seen you mention is that it's inherently sporadic. Nuclear, coal-powered, hydroelectric, geothermal, all of these provide predictable power. One can't manage a grid with hundreds or thousands of sources coming on- and off-line without notice, and providing widely varying amounts of power when they are on-line. Stochastic may be fine for an Ethernet, but electric power generation and distribution requires a deterministic method.

Robert Bruce Thompson
thompson@ttgnet.com
http://www.ttgnet.com

Good point. Now that you mention it I recall my professor making this point as well, but it had slipped my mind. Too deep in the forest to see the trees, I guess.

Time to go bathe the cat. Later.

5:30 PM Well, that was refreshing. A nice, lazy day, watching a few movies (The American President, which is one of my favorites because it describes the situation my wife and I were in when we met) doing household chores, and in general not being at work. A novel feeling, lately.

I see we've managed to drag Bob Thompson into the debate on nuclear power; he's doing a fine job with it, too. I wonder if Bo's comments have anything to do with his jumping into the fray. <seg> Here is a four-part exchange between Bob and Dr. Keyboard, with my response to the whole shooting match at the bottom.

But I didn't say I was against hydro, which can be a very good way to store energy produced by those intermittent sources - and the energy it produces itself at night, pumping water back up the mountain. Geothermal sounds useful too. I think most people are agreed that fossil fuels are not a good idea and need replacing with something, I just don't see nuclear as the best way to go.

And like I said, I wonder where we'd be now if all the money that's been spent on nuclear energy had gone to developing renewable sources?

Regards
Chris Ward-Johnson
Dr Keyboard - Computing Answers You Can Understand
http://www.drkeyboard.co.uk

Bob's response:

Well, if you consider nuclear a killer, I'm not sure why you don't feel the same about hydro. Floods from collapsed damns have killed a lot more people (and done more property damage) than nuclear accidents. Come to that, given my druthers, I'd much sooner live downwind of a nuclear plant than downstream of a large dam.

The cost of nuclear power generation is grossly inflated by regulatory burdens and the activities of environmental whackos. When power companies were originally talking about nuclear power, they talked about electricity that was "too cheap to meter". As indeed it would have been had they been permitted to design their plants, build them, operate them, and dispose of the waste rationally. The inflated costs of nuclear power generation are largely artificial, caused by people who understand nothing of the issues but feel entitled to have an opinion nonetheless.

Outside of Chernobyl, a plant which would never have been built or operated in any second-world country, let alone a first-world country, all of the nuclear "disasters" have been of such minor importance as to be not worth considering. I forget the exact numbers for the release at Three Mile Island in Curies, but I do remember that the maximum exposure even for someone living next door would have been something less than a chest xray. And that was the most horrible nuclear accident that has ever occured in a civilized country.

In my experience, very few people who represent themselves as anti-nuke in fact know anything at all about the subject. They get their information from ridiculous sources like The China Syndrome. And, if you are so afraid of ionizing radiation, why do you fly so much? You're getting much more radiation that way than you would living downwind from TMI.

Bob

Robert Bruce Thompson
thompson@ttgnet.com
http://www.ttgnet.com

Followed up with this from Dr. Keyboard:

I wonder why we're all so afraid of nuclear then? And I also wonder why one requirement for a person applying for a job at a nuclear plant in the UK is that they can run a mile in less than a minute? And how come the Japanese, one of the most highly organised and disciplined nations on the planet - if not the most disciplined - can employ people who tip four times too much uranium into a vat of acid?
Sorry, Bob, feel free to live as close to a nuclear plant as you like. In perfect conditions they're not a problem, but they're run by frail human beings and not people as organised and stringent as you. It's like Communism: sounds cool until you realise a bunch of despotic dictators can take it and rule for nearly a hundred years, enslaving their people as they go. Nuclear sounds great in theory, but as someone else said 'I want to move to Theory, everything works in Theory.'

Regards
Chris Ward-Johnson
Dr Keyboard - Computing Answers You Can Understand
http://www.drkeyboard.co.uk

And finally, this from Bob:

Well, I guess that depends on who you include in the "we" category. I'm not afraid of nuclear, although I wish the government would keep their hands off it and just allow the utilities to run it themselves. It would be a lot safer that way than it is now. I have a great deal more faith in private enterprise than government.

I'm not sure how the running speed of UK employees has anything to do with anything. Anyone can make up a dumb rule for any reason or no reason at all. Your implication that this somehow has something to do with the safety (or lack thereof) of nuclear power doesn't hold water. And I'm not sure how a minor industrial accident in Japan has much to do with anything either. Uranium is, after all, barely radioactive.

You are correct, however, when you imply that fear is the basis of all this garbage. Irrational fear, uninformed fear, certainly, but fear nevertheless. The bogeyman is always scary. Minor accidents with radioactive materials terrify people because they think of mushroom clouds. But consider how long Marie Curie lived, and she worked with very highly radioactive materials on a daily basis, taking next to no precautions when doing so.

I can honestly say that there are a lot of things I'd be more worried about living near than a nuclear plant. A petroleum refinery, for example, or a fertilizer plant. Or a dam. Or a city with tight gun control laws.

Robert Bruce Thompson
thompson@ttgnet.com
http://www.ttgnet.com

When Chris Ward-Johnson referred to wanting to live in Theory, I must admit I immediately thought not of nuclear plants but of the government's rules concerning them. Nuclear power works; there's no question on that. What doesn't work are controls so tight they hamper more than they help. Reading news stories about the incident in Japan make two things perfectly clear; number one, the mass media knows very little about nuclear power, but a lot about ratings, and number two, that what happened was a breakdown in process. There was a sophisticated measuring and regulating system in place that was meant to be used for loading the Uranium into the acid bath. It was reportedly difficult to use, complicated, and hard to understand. It was also broken. The workers in the plant had always disliked the system, and when it broke, they didn't report it because it was easier to do the job manually. They were using the buckets because that's what was handy. So if they'd had the right tools for the job -- meaning something that simply worked, without complex safeguards and kludges designed to satisfy politicians -- this accident would not have happened. FUD, I'm afraid, does not always refer to Microsoft.

I've found myself thinking on this lately. More and more, I find that a lot of the problems in the world today can be traced back to two problems. Those problems are caution and protection.

When I was growing up, there was a lot of discussion and concern amongst my elders about the problems facing "Generation X," as they labeled my generation. We lacked focus, we were experimenting with drugs and alcohol and sex at a very early age, and above all, we seemed lazy, unfocused, almost determined to accomplish as little as possible and get ourselves killed doing it. Now, as one of the younger members of "Generation X", I look around and see members of my generation founding companies, creating new technologies, and generally leaping ahead at a rate that seems to astonish those who only a few years ago were talking about what a waste we are. I look at the generation behind mine - my younger brothers in particular - and I see the same things they saw in my generation. But I'm not worried, because I recognize it, I've seen it before, I've BEEN in it. It's called frustration and boredom.

Can you imagine what it's like to grow up in a world where man has walked on the Moon, only to come home and watch television? Our parents were the first TV generation, the first generation to grow up with mass marketing and production in everything, the first to have things easy. Their parents fought in a world war, rebuilt nations, created industries and in general made the world into something entirely different from what had been. And in turn, they made our parents expect things. There was no need to struggle for food; it came from the supermarket, neatly wrapped and ready to cook. There was no need to risk; anything you needed could be purchased, on credit.

And so when we were born, our parents were working on keeping us safe. The television was king; we could laugh, cry, and have fun without risking broken bones. Treehouses and snowball fights became dangerous, along with unsupervised swimming holes and riding a bicycle without a helmet. Risks were things to be avoided, at all costs. Do you know why were smoking, drinking, having unprotected sex? It's not because we didn't know better; of course we did! It had been screamed at us, explained in great detail, all the risks and dangers. That's WHY we did it. It was taking a risk! Finally, something that wasn't prepackaged, processed, and nutritious! We celebrated the lives of friends who lost the risks by drinking and partying, knowing full well we were walking the same path. And we liked it!

Oh, sure, it was stupid. We knew that too, perhaps a little better now then we did then. That first year of college is like high school but more so, simply because you CAN. And immediately after, it stops, almost completely, because at long last, there's the glorious freedom to take new risks. To start a business from your dorm room and take the market by storm. (I had three separate friends do just that; they're all rich now.) Free to dangerously cast off the expectations of our parents and major in 13th Century European Hairstyling - and make that work, too.

Free to major in Aerospace Engineer, learn it, become good at it, and then turn around and become a Systems Administrator.

So now we look at this world of ours, and we hate it. We're free to take risks, but we don't yet have the power and the authority to let the world take risks with us. So we wait, and we watch, and we simmer with pent-up frustration. We don't want Social Security! We don't want to take our managed vacations in our managed resorts on our managed credit plans! We want to fly, to search for gold, to float down the Mississippi on a raft with the Duke of Bilgewater and the Lost Dauphin. We want to go back to the Moon, and forget about coming home.

9:30 AM A last comment from Dr. Keyboard:

Perhaps I don't like nuclear power because I don't know enough about it. Perhaps I don't like it because I was forced to choose between the study of languages and sciences at the age of 13 and now don't understand why, if English electrical plugs are marked with the necessary connections for earth, live and neutral, French plug's aren't and live and neutral are apparently interchangeable. This is the level of stupidity and lack of knowledge with which I approach the problem.
Or perhaps I don't like nuclear because every country which uses it has accidents which harm dozens of not hundreds or thousands of people and the industry itself tells me that some - a small proportion, but some - of its waste will be sitting her irradiating my descendants for hundreds or thousands of years to come.
Or perhaps I don't like nuclear power because it costs an absolute bloody fortune to develop and build and I am sure that if the same money had been poured into renewable sources of energy we would now be enjoying power from sources which don't scare the crap out of me and which don't need to be behind locked gates staffed by armed guards.
Or perhaps I don't like nuclear because the alternatives seem obvious: big-scale hydro, geothermal, solar or wind farms for the conurbations, small-scale wind or whatever for local communities all linked together on a rational basis that doesn't mean I don't get power if the wind don't blow or the river don't run.
Or perhaps I'm just a victim of media hype and I'm too stupid to pick out the facts from the fiction in the media coverage of all these accidents which happen; perhaps I can't see that if only we were to remove all the stupid regulations which govern how you tip uranium into vats of acid then we'd remove the possibility of human error and nuclear power would live up to its promise of being too cheap to meter.
But I don't think so. I think that whilst nuclear power can in Theory in a perfect society with well-educated minders live up to its promise, it won't here in Reality because humans hate their jobs, don't read the manual and get it done the quickest way possible with whatever comes to hand. In the UK it's now possible to buy your electricity from anyone you want, and wind farmers are selling their 'green' electricity at a premium over the nuclear-generated variety. Sign me up.

Regards
Chris Ward-Johnson
Dr Keyboard - Computing Answers You Can Understand
http://www.drkeyboard.co.uk

Which brought this response from Bob Thompson:

Okay, you've convinced me. Nuclear power is a Bad Thing. We should shut down all the plants and live in the dark.

Bob

Robert Bruce Thompson
thompson@ttgnet.com http://www.ttgnet.com

I'm going to assume that there should be a "sarcasm" tag around Bob's email, although I don't know of one; perhaps it's in the new Microsoft ActiveX set?

Responding to the arguments in your message, Dr. Keyboard, I'll agree that dozens of people have been injured, and a few killed, from accidents at nuclear power plants. I'm including the two workers at the Japanese facility; from the description of their symptoms at a glance at my table of Roentgen Equivalents in Marks' Mechanical Engineers' Handbook, they took over 40,000 Rems, a uniformly fatal dose.

Of course, in the same time period, how many dams have collapsed? How many people have died from coal mining? How many linemen have died from falling from a power pole? More than have ever been harmed by nuclear power.

Nuclear power plants do, indeed, cost a lot of money to build. So do dams. So do "clean" natural gas plants, geothermal facilities, and wind turbines. (One turbine doesn't cost much; a farm of them does.) Power plants are expensive, regardless of type, and it makes sense that the type of plant that produces the most electricity per plant should be the most expensive. You may be right that if we'd spent the money on research, we'd be using renewable sources of energy. But I doubt it. There's a limit to the efficiency of solar panels, and we're already asymptotically approaching it. Wind turbines, too, can only be made so efficient; and even at 100% efficiency, they're too unstable, you'd waste most of the power trying to smooth it out and switching between generators. Dams are too expensive for the amount of power they generate, except in a few cases where they're most likely already in use. The best single renewable, safe, clean source of energy we're ever likely to find is nuclear fusion - and that requires fission plants for the research. As for the armed guards; check your nearest non-nuclear power plant. They all have them. Terrorists love to hit power plants, any kind of power plant, because the easiest way to scare the populace is to threaten things they all take for granted - like electricity.

I agree that most people in menial jobs hate them and do them with the easiest, simplest method on hand. Which is why I said the proper way to do it would be something simple, easy, and efficient. That way the simplest way to do it is the right way to do, something any engineer will tell you is always correct.