Hartmut Noack wrote: But the world's going to end in 2012, anyway ... ;-) -- David gnome(a)hawaii.rr.com authenticity, honesty, community

Folderol wrote: Yah, but clearly the people who calculated those other dates had incomplete information or made calculation errors. Or whomever was going to end the world changed their mind or only postponed it. At least that's what most of these sorts of people like to say when the topic of failed EOTW predictions is brought up. Maybe LAU should have a contest to produce "End of the World" music? -- David gnome(a)hawaii.rr.com authenticity, honesty, community

On 04/02/2011 09:46 PM, Hartmut Noack wrote: What makes you think it couldn't? :-) -- Patrick Shirkey Boost Hardware Ltd.

On 04/04/2011 01:51 AM, Arnold Krille wrote: How say you? Has anyone modelled how much non compressed Plutonium is required for it to go to critical. Considering that it is melting through the earths crust at more than 5000 deg C and it only takes a few kilos of fuel to create Kilo Tons of explosive force it is a fairly high risk of a worst case scenario whereby the much denser plutonium seperates out and goes boom. Given how bad it is already I would not be surprised if it did go to critical and consume the whole facility. Although I have it on good authority that it is more likely to just explode with the force of a conventional weapon instead. Even if it only makes it to that point it would make a very big mess. I'm hoping for it to burn it's way deep enough into the crust so that it will effectively be an underground nuclear test if it takes off. I shudder to think of the results if it is close enough to the surface to escape into the atmosphere or ignite the whole facility. There is more than enough Pu-239 in the melted cores each containing 160 - 180 metric tonnes of fuel to create a serious problem. In addition reactor 3 had 5% enriched MOX to start with. That still leaves 890 metric tonnes of "spent" fuel rods which essentially means lots of Pu-239... You mean like on Saturday 12 March or Sunday 13 March? Why do you think the Ronald Regan decided to haul arse out of the vicinity and then immediately swab the decks? It's not cause they were worried about a little Cesium or Iodine that's for sure! Yep. Injesting Pu-239 will poison you first before you get cancer. Just see Litvenenko for the results of that problem. However walking into a cloud of Cesium or Iodine which is currently blanketing The US and Europe will also cause you significant issues. Remember that just cos the total amount of it is dispersed that doesn't mean it was dispersed evenly. If I was in the Northern Hemisphere I would be staying away from diary, meat and foods grown outside for the next few months and keep in mind that Cesium has a half life of 30 years but the full life is more like 300 years... At least time is relative :-) My heart goes out to the Japanese in this tragedy. They are the ones suffering the greatest pain right now. It's absolutely categorically heart breaking. I don't know how the elite can be so cruel to require Fukushima as clandestine weapons program when there are already enough nukes to kill us all anyway. It just defies all logic and rationale. Something needs to change! This failed system we call the global military industrial complex and their puppet governments is a complete disaster! -- Patrick Shirkey Boost Hardware Ltd.

Robin Gareus wrote: Well said and succinctly put. Q

On 04/03/2011 09:28 PM, Hartmut Noack wrote: Hallo Hartmut, well, now. "banning immediately" is surely exaggerated. Off-topic threads are not a problem, but thread hijacking and spreading fear, uncertainty and doubt is; especially if the rant spreads over many pages and if there's plenty of main-stream media coverage and there are many better suited fori (forums) to discuss the issue at hand: Write a blog and send us a link. Or write a song about the issue and we're back in business ;-) There's > 2500 subscribers to this list and it's not only a waste of resources but may just drive away some of them. just my two cents, robin

On 04/03/2011 10:01 PM, Hartmut Noack wrote: I don't think there's a canonical answer to that. Off-List replies are an option. I've exchanged a couple of those with Patrick. I do admire your patience and persistence to educate and focus on the subject; and I'm a big fan of Jörn's dark humor too ;) [..] robin

Fons Adriaensen wrote: But, in English, I believe is only considered correct when dealing with physical spaces in a Roman/Latin context and is usually considered pretentious when dealing with virtual, online places. (Generally in English, it seems that the plural of Latin nouns of this form is now considered to take the English form -- -ums rather than -a, vis stadiums, forums, referendums etc, sad as that may be.) Q (ex-editor)

Folderol wrote: Eh? Q

On 04/04/2011 05:54 AM, Hartmut Noack wrote: Sorry, but if that is the case then remind me how an ICBM works please... Are we talking about the true speed of gravity or with the resistance of a solid object that can withstand the heat of a burning core included in the equation? Lets say for example there is a reactor that melts down, the chamber is breached the meting core starts burning it's way through the earths crust and along the way some of the fuel gets trapped and delayed so now we have a radioactive pit of burning fuel dispersed in clumps and say some of that fuel starts to drop in freefall now what would be the calculated risk that it would only explode with the force of a conventional weapon compared to a nuclear event? Am I to assume that you have designed and built nuclear weapons in the past and fully understand the processes involved then? Because if you have then I guess I have a dilemma in that I now have contradictory information about the processes involved. They were waiting to see if it would be a waste of money or not... No point trying to build it if the whole facility was going to go up anyway. That what they want you to believe... Of course they have no reason to tell lies and subvert the truth though do they? There is no vested interest in protecting the Plutonium generating facilites of this world from closure if people know that they are all potential Nuclear bombs. When I say ignite I mean "with the power of a nuclear explosion". Maybe I should have chosen the more technical term for such an event? What is that? Combust, Explode, Erupt... Are you actually trying to tell me that the open pits where they are storing the "spent" fuel rods are impervious to a conventional explosion let alone a nuclear explosion of upto 800 metric tonnes of burning reactor cores? Remember that just a few kilograms of Pu-239 going up in a nuclear explosion is enough to wipe Fukushima (the whole city, not just the facility) off the map... No. The Poisoning is a chemical process and the cancer is caused by cell mutation due to hte effects of radiation. Chernobyl is nothing in comparison to this event. Anyway you may want to look at risk of getting cancer in the modern age. I'm sure that has nothing at all to do with Nuclear pollution, absolutely nothing. Yeah, I happen to be a Pacific Islander having travelled extensively throughout the Pacific region and with family members and friends who live in the Tropics and that callous disregard for nature by the Japanese Authorities in my own backyard is a travesty I will never forget. I know that it is one. You tell me what is the purpose of collecting all that Pu-239 in one easy to get to location for 40 years? The reason it defies logic is because they decided it was an acceptable risk not because they couldn't get away with it. -- Patrick Shirkey Boost Hardware Ltd.

On 04/04/2011 12:42 PM, Erik de Castro Lopo wrote: So just to make sure I am correct here... All nuclear weapons require an assisted explosion? It's categorically impossible for Plutonium-239 to become critical without assistance from an explosion of some other fuel or high energy source? You don't have super heated Pu-239 actively being created in a semi critical chain reaction. If it gets unstable there is not enough neutron flux to make baby go boom. We wouldn't want people to be building their own weapons now would we? Man, what a threat to the establishment that would be... If Joe Bloggs had access to the technological expertise to create his own weapons or hope against hope to generate his own abundant energy supply. It's so much better if we are all reliant on fossil fuels and the Military Industrial complex for our energy needs. Good thing that those nice Military people are protectors of the information. It's so nice living in a world where they are in control of the power infrastructure and the Fiat currency system is the predominant way to manage society. Where the Uber Rich can get away with gross ineptitude, genocide and blatant corruption and receive a golden handshake upon retirement for their dedication and hard work. There is nothing like Fascism and Elitism for making sure we are all happy productive slaves, sorry, I mean citizens... -- Patrick Shirkey Boost Hardware Ltd.

On 04/04/2011 04:14 PM, Erik de Castro Lopo wrote: So, just having enough Pu-239 in one location is definitely, categorically not going to be able to cause a nuclear explosion? Not even a little one that might cause a rapid escalation? Gotta love wikipedia. Instant truth just add complement set ;-) So far so good, nuclear physics being of course entirely understood and modelled and no gaps exist is current knowledge of the fundamental processes involved :-) -- Patrick Shirkey Boost Hardware Ltd.

On 04/04/2011 04:49 PM, jwm.art.net(a)gmail.com wrote: Is that the kid from New York? Knowing how to make WMD's and actually doing it are completely different things. One requires insight and understanding of advanced nuclear physics and the other requires a callous disregard for humanity. Not everyone can make the leap. I personally couldn't bring myself to do it which is why I am not a part of the Military apparatus. A far better use of my time and much more appealing to me from a end user perspective would be to create enough energy to enable teleportation to be possible. -- Patrick Shirkey Boost Hardware Ltd.

On Mon, Apr 04, 2011 at 01:04:11PM +0200, Jörn Nettingsmeier wrote: Yes. Keeping the thing together for long enough is the key to a full nuclear explosion. And it's hard and not going to happen by accident: the energy generated when a reaction start to sustain itself destroys the conditions for it to continue. Criticality != explosion. All reactors are critical when they produce power. There is even evidence that controlled sustained fission reactions have occured in nature. That's not possible any more as the natural uranium on our planet has decayed too much to become critical in any quantity. Most bombs are actually very dirty and only use part of the fissionable material they contain - it's easier to make them that way. -- FA

On 04/04/2011 04:42 PM, Patrick Shirkey wrote: i read a number of mutually independent news sources and try to form an understanding of the situation based on my limited layman's knowledge of physics, which i'm trying to expand while i learn about new phenomena such as the fukushima fuckup. i believe that when you apply scientific reasoning to such a situation, obvious contradictions become evident, no matter what the spin of your media is. you can see that they are getting stuff wrong, and that often tells you a lot. and it's harder to be fooled. but you have to try to understand properly what's going on. <tin-foil-hat> of course, with a massive disinformation campaign including fake wikipedia articles and whatnot, possibly including spin-doctored high-school education and textbooks, i could still have been fooled utterly. </tin-foil-hat> but the point is: such campaigns would be uneconomical and almost impossible to make water-tight. so i tend to disbelieve they are actually happening on a scale that would bamboozle me completely. "tonnes of fuel" is a very imprecise estimate of the danger, as is "cataclysmic". it's about as helpful as constantly mixing up milli- and microsieverts and not stating the time base, as the mainstream press keeps demonstrating. how is aunt tilly supposed to make sense of 1,000,000 uS per hour vs. 250 ms per year? similarly, the "fuel" is not exactly stuff that you just compress and get a hydrogen bomb. most of it is spent, i.e. it's still very, very messy, but not really material for a world-wide disaster. take the thermal residue power of spent fuel pool no. 4 as reported by the german ministry for nuclear safety: the stuff (which is partly fresh fuel, as the core had been stripped of elements before) currently generates 2 megawatts of useless heat. when i go into a large theatre and turn on all the lights, we are easily burning away .5 megawatts. now add some air conditioning and whatnot, and 2 megawatts is what two opera houses burn away just so. yeah, i don't want to be the guy with the fire hose trying to handle the situation, but it's not certain doom either. fukushima will fuck up many million lives with a _very_low_probability_, and when it happens, it's easy to massage the data to deny any causal link, because random dna damage is not a bullet wound or a smoking gun. which is why we have to concentrate on hard facts now, to change the political climate and re-assess the dangers while they are evident and still in aunt tilly's short-term memory. you seem to be under the impression that the molten "corium" has already eaten its way through the pressure vessel, the concerte basement, and the earth's crust. this is certainly not the case. what has likely happend is that one or more pressure vessels are breached and leaking, but there is no evidence of a large corium breach (yet). it's no mythical substance with extreme powers. it's a big, hot, radioactive mess. when it melts, it looks like this (from chernobyl): http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/6/65/Pictureofchernobyllavaf… you see that even in the horrible fuck-up that was chernobyl, the molten mass leaves the pressure vessel and just solidifies in the basement once it cools down. now this photo was very likely obtained by jeopardising human life, so there is a very palpable hazard to it, but it's not going to eat our planet from the inside. and if it really melted through the crust, that would probably be the cleanest way to get rid of it (as unlikely as it is). i mean those substances are not evil by themselves - you just don't want them in the ecosphere. crude oil half a mile under the desert is hurting no one - the same substance in arctic waters is a biological nightmare. same with U and Pu - you don't want them in your food, and not even in your backyard, certainly not enriched, but dilute them and forget about them for 10k years, and all is really really well. (not that i believe that there is a very good solution to safe storage of nuclear waste, which is why i'm opposing nuclear energy, among other reasons. but again: we are not fighting demons here, but threats that can be understood and estimated, at least to some degree.) wrong. i don't want to hush anything up, but chernobyl, as well as countless surface nuclear bomb tests have been way worse than this. i really don't know where this story comes from, but unless the entire core mass remains prompt critical (i.e. chain-reacting on fast neutrons, without moderation, since the entire moderating infrastructure has molten into a blob) and at the same time _under_control_ (so that there will be no minor explosions to tear the core material apart and end the chain reaction), where should the energy come from for the core to melt through the earth crust? the odds for that to happen are really very very low. and again, even if it did, i guess that would not be the worst outcome. point is, it never will, stuff will just leak out slowly, and that's enough of a bloody mess as-is.

"Split hairs, not atoms"! Flo -- Machines can do the work, so people have time to think. public key B3B9226C x-hkp://wwwkeys.eu.pgp.net

On 04/04/2011 04:14 PM, Erik de Castro Lopo wrote: What we have at this moment is 870 metric tonnes of super heated fuel working it's way to the earths mantle. As you have explained it is possible to make Pu-239 go to fissile state with enough pressure and speed this is now becoming entirely possible. The fuel is exploding. The explosions create the following circumstances 1: Extreme Pressure 2: Extreme Heat With each explosion it is likely that the perfect conditions could be created for a fissile chain reaction. If that doesn't happen at the very least we have massive convention explosions in the range of approx 2000 pounds constantly happening while the fuel burns it way down through the crust. Anything that is in it's path will be vapourised or otherwise converted to energy. Keep in mind too that the further is descends towards the mantle the hotter it gets, the more radioactive it becomes and the higher the atmospheric pressure goes too! You can see from the data maps at the zamg (http://zamg.ac.at) that the toxic cloud is just getting worse every day. The situation is dire and as many people who can put their minds to the solution as possible need to be working on this as their foremost priority. If you can and you don't then you are not worthy of living on this planet! -- Patrick Shirkey Boost Hardware Ltd.