Pat @Pat@qoto.org

@freemo

The Danish ships are designed to solidify on contact with seawater, so it doesn't disperse like a venting into the atmosphere or leaking loose fissionable material into the water.

Worst case is that they get flooded, solidify and sink to the bottom of the ocean. It's all in one spot, which could even be recovered if necessary.

Also, nuke risk depends on the isotope. A thorium reactor, for example, has a much shorter period (half-life) of potential risk.

@freemo

They use the same reactor types as their icebreakers.

I noticed that the "ships" will not be self-powered, so that helps mitigate the hijacking issue.

@freemo

> "...should never be on or near the water."

So, we should immediately halt all oil tanker traffic? An oil spill from a single oil tanker is much more devastating to people and the environment than a nuke sinking.

Have you ever tried to scuba in an oil spill?

@freemo

Turns out the Russians have already done this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Russian_floating_nuclear_power_station&oldid=1038656914

@freemo

The Fukushima plant is a completely different animal. There is no comparison whatsoever. That was light-water reactor with pressurized hydrogen, And particular plant was the shittiest design ever. It required active powered pumps to cool the core, an insane design.

The Danish ships are molten salt reactors. Much safer.

And the fact they replace gas/oil/coal IS significant. It's opportunity cost. If they use the gas/oil/coal plants, that's terrible for people and the environment.

The cool thing about the ship idea is that they can build them in developing countries where there is the talent and infrastructure to do it properly, whereas in developing countries most kinds of power plants are much more difficult build.

@freemo

A lot MORE people die of cancer from gas/oil/coal plants. And that's when they operate to spec.

I just researched this a little more thoroughly. The Danish ships use molten salt reactors -- much safer than what's on military ships/subs. Also, they are small, about 200MW -- comparable to a nuclear marine vessel. And they are designed so the fissionable material will solidify if there is ever a breach.

And they are designed to be used in developing countries to offset coal plants and other really ugly stuff. that causes disease, pollution, and wars.

@freemo

I wasn't aware of those US incidents.

In any case, there have been lots of incidents and the impact has not been apocalyptic. Those incidents caused much less impact than, say, a large oil spill.

@b6hydra

They were approved months ago.

First they were approved for human trials. Then, after they had enough data from that, they were approved for emergency use.

You're referring to Pfizer getting approval for standard non-emergency use.

By the way, they didn't skip any steps in the development/testing/approval process. All they did was to perform some steps in parallel that they would normally do in series in order to complete all the steps more quickly.

@freemo

...and I'm good shot.

(I wasn't sure if you'd get the joke.)

@lucifargundam

And regarding video tutorials. Sometimes if I'm going to read something in an area that I'm not familiar with, rather than try to plow through some highly technical paper written by an expert scientist in the field (who may be a very good researcher, but let's face it, many are lousy writers), I will seek out a video by an expert who has already digested that type of info, or a lecture by a prof or something so I can get a feel for it first. Then I can dig through the research more efficiently. Videos are very useful tools.

Also, some concepts are just made for video presentation. Visualizing how special relativity works is a good example. There are lots of different ways to present that and video is good tool for that, as an example.

@lucifargundam

If you cite a source, you don't cite Wikipedia or YouTube. You cite the actual source. You look at the citation for the claim (the footnote) in Wikipedia and go there to verify it and cite it.

If you find something on YouTube and need to cite the information in (in a published paper), you go to whoever uploaded the video to verify it and cite.

Usually I'm just browsing information, but I still will often seek out the cited source or video poster to verify things I find in those types of sources.

If it's just for fun, maybe I won't bother, but for something information, like COVID-19 info, I'll track down the source and make sure what I got is from a reliable study or source.

@lucifargundam

They're not sources at all. They're mediums. They convey information from other sources.

You have to look at the underlying sources. In YouTube it's whoever uploaded the video. On Wikipedia it's the source that is cited for whatever claim is being made in the article.

Wikipedia is actually very reliable, comparatively. It's vetted by lots of smart people who verify the information. It's actual better than most content from edited, published sources. Most publishers don't have hundreds of staff checking every fact, but Wikipedia does.

And Youtube, PeerTube and the rest are just communication channels. If Stanford posts a video on YouTube, it's probably reliable info.

You need to type in the phrase in the English side of the translator without quotes...

I have a run in my stockings

Then chose the language on the other (right) side. Use Simplified Chinese, not traditional.

If folks can't figure it out, I'll post the translations here, but it's more fun to watch them pop up in Google's translator.

Speaking of language...

I tried using Google's translator to translate the phrase, "I have a run in my stockings" from English into several languages.

As expected, a lot of them said something like "I run in my socks." But there were some really funny surprises.

Try...

Chinese
Spanish
Latin
Kurdish (Kurmanji)
Finnish

(Use the reversal button to translate it back to English)

Very funny.

(German, Hindi, Hawaian, and Welsh translated it perfectly)

https://translate.google.com/

#language #English #translate #lostintranslation #translation #trans #word

@lucifargundam

I'm not sure if you are making fun of people who use a variety of media other than print. Many people have disabilities that make reading more difficult, like dyslexia or vision issues that require using audio media.

I use video all the time because I have slight dyslexia and I can absorb material much faster that way (running videos at 2x).

So, I not sure I understand what you are saying...

@freemo

It depends on who builds them. The US has been operating nuclear-powered sea vessels (lots of them) since 1954 without any nuclear incidents, while USSR/Russia has had many nuclear incidents at sea.

Nuclear-powered marine vessels are in use for a variety of applications. We also use nuclear power for many of our deep space missions. (Actually, there was a plutonium RTG (Radioisotope Theroelectric Generator) on Apollo 13 when it crashed into the ocean and they think it ended up in the Tonga Trench, they're not sure.)

Yes, if they're carrying the really hot stuff it can be a security issue. Russia has a bunch of nuke-powered icebreakers -- not much worry about somebody hijacking one of those in the middle of the arctic.

I think the Danes are competent engineers and they'd have no problems with accidental release. But they may not be calculating in the extra cost of 24x7 high security for those ships.

@freemo

Is it ok if I use a shotgun?
At fifty yards.

@b6hydra

All three of the vaccines in the US are approved.

@lupyuen

Gee, that's funny.

Follow up on Causality as an emergent phenomenon...

(Ref. to: https://qoto.org/@Pat/106722620334765036)

I found sources on the topic:

Causality – Complexity – Consistency:
Can Space-Time Be Based on Logic and Computation?
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1602.06987.pdf

Causal Emergence in Quantum Mechanics
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1901.07471.pdf

Perfect signaling among three parties
violating predefined causal order
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1312.5916.pdf

Causality theory for closed cone structures with applications
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1709.06494.pdf

Plus an older article, "CPT Violation Implies Violation of Lorentz Invariance" by O.W. Greenberg, which might be related to the topic.
https://arxiv.org/abs/hep-ph/0201258

I just found these yesterday on arXiv and really haven't vetted them much. There's more out there, mostly from the last decade or so. Not sure why I couldn't find this before -- I tried multiple times this year to find this stuff and now a week after I posted here I find a bunch of stuff. Go figure...

Some of it is about non-locality and some also on temporal non-causality like disordered cause/effect. (Some authors use the term acausality instead of non-causality.)

Also, there's a prof at U. Miss. (Luca Bombelli, www.phy.olemiss.edu/~luca/) with some nice reference lists:

Causality in Quantum Field Theory
https://www.phy.olemiss.edu/~luca/Topics/st/causal_qft.html

Causality in Quantum Theory
https://www.phy.olemiss.edu/~luca/Topics/st/causal_qm.html

Causality
https://www.phy.olemiss.edu/~luca/Topics/st/causal.html

Hope this useful.

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