Are Flying Cars Next?

"Rand Simberg" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 19 Nov 2008 01:06:17 GMT, in a place far, far away, "Martha
Adams" made the phosphor on my monitor glow in
such a way as to indicate that:

"Rand Simberg" wrote in message
...
On Sun, 16 Nov 2008 21:50:36 +0100, in a place far, far away, "Bresco"
made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a
way as to indicate that:

"Quadibloc" wrote in message
...
Small-sized nuclear reactors in the news again:

http://www.dailytech.com/Miniature+N...ticle13389.htm

There will be small Tjernobyl's on almost a daily scale.

Nonsense.

"Nonsense." Very easy to say, intellectual level very near to
the knee jerk reflex. I believe the above guess is near enough
to reality to want serious consideration.

Who cares what you believe?

Exactly. I mean Rand clearly refuted your concerns in one word. Anything
else would be a waste of words for him.

You have to understand that Rand rarely sees any need to actually explain
himself. He seems to believe that the strength of his convictions is
sufficient to convince others. That's why he's so popular around
sci.space.*.

Now seriously, I have to agree with Rand here. This is nonsense. I haven't
had a chance to review the specific article in question, but in general all
the designs of this nature are designed fail-safe. They physically can't
get into a Chernobyl situation. And on top of that, Chernobyl was a case
that basically came down to, "let's turn off all our safety systems, scram
the reactor and see if we can respond correctly". (Ok, it's a bit more than
that). Well they found out what happens in that case. That and the lack of
any sort of containment vessel led to the disaster.

Compare that to Three Mile Island where things failed, but the containment
vessel worked as designed. The total estimated number of extra deaths
attributed to TMI is "1".


On the other hand, I do say the issues of nuclear proliferation concerns
will probably kill this project.

--
Greg Moore
Ask me about lily, an RPI based CMC.