swansont

What are the answers you've come up with?

The advantage of the quasi-sphere is that internal support is all compression if it goes along the diameter, which is going to be a lot more robust. With a cube, there will be lateral forces as well, which may be why a joint failed.

Deja vu

Meltdown-proof and fireproof are two separate issues. Meltdown-proof implies that the decay heat (energy from the decay of the fission products) is insufficient to melt the fuel elements. Fireproof means just that, and is protection against particulates from actual combustion. The ceramic coating is presumably not combustable, so as long as their integrity is not compromised you won't get a release of contamination. The answer to that is yes, but in a trivial fashion. He-4 can very occasionally absorb a neutron to become He-5, which decays ... by neutron emission. And quite rapidly. It's just that in general it's probably better to not mix nuclear- and chemical-reaction terminology.

Where did the structure fail? My gut tells me you'd do better with triangles in a polyhedron shape, like a d20, or hexagons like a soccer ball.

That's mainly Tritium, though, right? Your link does not explain this at all, it just states that "Dramatically lower high-level radioactive waste per unit of energy – today’s reactors produce 50% more high-level waste than will the GT-MHR" so it's talking about high-level waste, not tritiated water, which you agree is low-level waste. So I ask again, how is less high-level waste being achieved? Is this simply an artifact of having a higher thermal efficiency, so there is less waste per MW-hr of operation. The numbers seem to indicate this (thermal efficiency and waste improvements being basically identical)? (and typically the phrase "inert gas" refers to Helium's chemical properties. Inert gases in general can most certainly become radioactive. Chemical inertness does not imply nuclear stability)

Fish are probably not going to fly, as it were, if you come close to draining the lake. They also don't react well with turbines. Energy differential can be quite high in the right locations. Pump at night, drain during the day. As to the OP, I'm not sure that 10m is sufficient; there will be pressure requirements to turn the turbine, and there will be flow energy at the end, so you won't extract all of potential energy from the water. As Mr Skeptic points out here, a larger h gives more energy, so if the losses are a fixed value, you become more efficient as h goes up.

Interesting. Of course from a company's perspective, if they aren't on the hook for insurance costs until you die, but only until you retire, it's better to hire nonsmokers and thin people. But if you are contributing all the way through retirement, then it's not. You also have the added "bonus" of less pension payed out, for higher-risk people, if that's the retirement plan they have in place. I can't imagine some cold-hearted what-matters-is-the-bottom-line execs haven't already done the math on this.

SCORPIO — You are a cold-blooded mass-murderer and "Dirty" Harry Callahan will make sure you get what's coming to you. The number "five" figures prominently in your day. SAGITTARIUS — You will experience feelings of deja-vu. CAPRICORN — You will continue to be affected by the same physics, unchanged, no matter which inertial reference frame you find yourself in. Focus on details at work. It will be important.

How do they reduce waste, exactly?

Pedantic man says, "If it was rigid it wasn't a blimp."

A common mistake. 360 feet — everyone always seem to forget the end zones.

I am just a vessel through which the heavens speak. LEO — You will become agitated for no reason at all. All around you, elementary particles will pop into existence and then wink out, but you will remain calm and blissfully unaware of them. Avoid important financial decisions. VIRGO — Weigh your choices carefully: your decision to flap your arms or not will affect the weather far away. Breaking that high-level encryption will be easier once you finish that quantum computer you've been working on. LIBRA — Remember to increase entropy when converting thermal energy to mechanical work. You should also strive to conserve energy, because it's the right thing to do. Shopping will be a good diversion, and besides, it will stimulate the economy.

SAGITTARIUS — You will be unable to simultaneously determine the position and momentum of any objects today, nor place two fermions in the same quantum state. Not a good time to start a new relationship.

It's the sum in quadrature.

And have it be meaningful? Sure. Knock yourself out — the speculations section awaits your posts.

At what point does skepticism become just nay-saying crankery? At some point you have to agree that a body of evidence is convincing, else what you are doing religion rather than science. This is not a proposal presented in a vacuum, where one is saying "I won't take this as a given — I'm not going to agree until I see some supporting evidence." That's skepticism. But one needs to acknowledge the large body of evidence gathered over the decades that the warming is real and largely anthropogenic. Without justification of refusing all that evidence, is questioning that stance really skepticism? Take ecoli's example of gravity. Someone who said they didn't believe in gravity would rightly be called a crackpot, not a skeptic.

I think the OP was referring to an EM wave. Nevertheless, I think it reduces to a math concept of vectors and superposition; a vector at any point can only point in one direction, and the field at that point is the resultant of any fields that might be present.

Is it that they can't get work, or they can't get work without paying extra, because they have a higher premium? ——— There are studies that purport to show that low-risk people don't necessarily have a lower cost for health-care because they live longer. Older people have higher health-care costs, in general, which becomes the dominant term. http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/abstract/337/15/1052 http://medicine.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371%2Fjournal.pmed.0050029

Impedance is the AC version of resistance that is seen in resistors in DC circuits. But in AC circuits, capacitors and inductors also impede the current flow, taking/storing some energy, in a way that depends on the frequency. You will get a resonance in a circuit where the impedance is minimized, depending on the L (inductance) and C (capacitance) values. At lower frequencies the capacitor dominates the impedance, and at higher frequencies the inductor dominates.

You can create antimatter in decay reactions (beta decay) and with photons and in particle collisions where you have enough energy to convert to mass and create particle/antiparticle pairs. e+e- requires 1.02 MeV of energy, while p+p- requires about 1878 MeV.

http://www.flickfilosopher.com/blog/2008/04/expelled_no_intelligence_allow.html

Meataphors, or is it idiyums? ——— I'm wondering how much of an overlap there is between the anti-GM-food crowd and PETA, and what happens if/when the two square off over this.

That reminds me — when I visited NIST I forgot to ask to see the standard human hair and standard football field, which are two favorite standards of journalists.

We've already got a thread discussing time potentials. http://www.scienceforums.net/forum/showthread.php?t=32384 It's off-topic here. Previous post has been copied to the appropriate thread