New nukes ?

And we all know about experts, don't we ?

Last count from Bloomberg was £203 billion by year end.

Interesting that Turnip thinks one who gave 'testing his eyesight' as a reason to drive many miles with his partner and child in the car 'has a brain'. The average 5 year old could invent a better lie than that.

But of course it's a rat leaving the sinking ship. Before Jan 1st. And all the fallout from crashing out of the EU.

This is what happens when you don't listen to those who have a far better idea what will happen after leaving the EU.

But they only stand to make money out of it if it actually works.

Unless you're going to claim they're only doing it to get Govt research grants and employ highly qualified people doing useless research just for the sake of it.

When they could presumbly be emplying those same people to be actually doing something useful.

Or you might say they're simply doing it (PR puff) to reassure private investors. But again if they're simply pouring money down the drain, that won't do much for their reputation.

Just like electric cars not taking into account the cost and relative efficiency of the power generation plants needed to produce the power for their relatively efficient electric motors, then.

He's a bit more than a bozo by the looks of things. Are you sure he wasn't adopted ?

Anyway as long as *you* haven't lent him any money, or acted as guarantor for any of his loans, that's the important thing.

As it happens your analogy might be better applied to nuclear. Where the costs of decommissioning will still need to be met, long after particular plants have ceased operation, and are no longer producing electricity

michael adams

Please stop telling us what you feel. Richard Dawkins

That you're a bit of a pompous d*****ad ? Fair enough, if you insist.

And it is estimated that "Covid-19 is already likely to cost the UK government £317bn ? in _increased_ public borrowing ? in 2020/21 alone" (my emphasis).

But nobody voted for Covid19 did they ?

At least there were no leaflets through my door, about it.

michael adams

...

One of the R4 science programs had someone talking about sending microbe packages up to ISS with the long term aim of getting them to extract rare earth elements from asteroids.

If you are a university researcher you are making money out of the

To my mind the reason mining asteroids is a very long way off is, apart from the extraction cost, because of the energy cost of moving mass from one orbit to another. This is currently far in excess of the value of any stable element.

Oh yes. Trouble is, most people won't understand what you are talking about.

Indeed. But that's fundamental or basic research with no immediate short term benefits. Usually funded directly or indirectly through grants to Universities by Govts or by billionaire donors looking for tax breaks and good publicity

The research I was referring to was the kind described on the Mitsubishi Corporation* website

A project is underway in the Netherlands where they are planning to transform their large thermal generation into a 100% hydrogen - fired power generation plant by 2025. We are driving the practical application of large-scale hydrogen gas turbine, is taking part in this project. The hydrogen generation technology is part of the growth strategy for Japan.

Almost in the original Japanese

michael adams

...

I am inclined to agree with you. We have a natural progression from noma reactor=>breeder=>fusion, but the fusion we dont need for a few thousand years really

Not really. Most of the background is either leftover heavy elements from the earths formation or cosmic rays.

Yes it will be amusing watching Germany,France and Ireland s*it their pants>

For animals, it's the potassium. About 0.01% of naturally occurring potassium is potassium-40 (K-40), which is radioactive; it has a half-life of just over a billyun years, so its not hugely radioactive, although it is the largest source of radiation in animals (and humans).

Every second, about 4300 atoms of K-40 decay in your body, yet the damage these decays do is largely repaired automatically by various cellular mechanisms.

K-40 is considered as a primordial isotope: a long enough half-life that it was there when the Earth was formed. A lot of it has decayed since then, but there's enough left in the Earth's mantle to be contributing a few hundred GW of heat towards keeping the mantle viscous if not quite liquid.

I think there have been some good technical articles written about the realities of fusion. The details aren't exactly secret. No matter what fuel you use, it always runs a bit dirty (the housing becomes radioactive). Even with HE3.

They mention this one has been testing with Helium, but I don't know if the purpose was to actually cause fusion or not, or just as a test gas. If they were fueling it, you'd think the helium would be HE3. But that's not mentioned.

The article says the assembly time of that one was "1 million hours". Think of all the overtime hours for the machinist.

The outstanding question at the moment, as far as I know, is what to clad the inside of it with. They have a plan but I don't know how realistic their plan is. Or whether it's a place-holder plan.

Paul

Really really interesting!

Bill