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There is a Belgian company that can use temperarure & other fluctuations in underseas power & cimmunication cables to detect nearby objects etc. I'm sure they are willing to help the US navy if they can convince them the US is a solid NATO partner… ( oh, wait, that might have become difficult…)


They are not (necessarily) invisible, that depends on size & many other variables.

Also, hypersonic missiles are perfectly vusible on radar.


Economic sense depends on individual/local circumstances also.


The weirdest part was that it increased share value, when realistically it should have decreased it…


Venezuelan oil is more about US refineries that can only use very heavy oil, and US wells for such oil running out. Those refineries decided it is cheaper to bribe Trump than to invest into converting their factories. They are using US tax payer dolars (in a war with Venezuela) to avoid having to invest into their own conpanies.


That makes no sense. Any US refinery that can process heavy sour can also process any other kind of crude. It isn’t the 1950s.

The US has very advanced refinery tech that can adaptively refine everything from heavy sour to light sweet. The reconfiguration for the customer is highly customizable and largely automated. It is why so many countries send their crude to the US for refining. The US refiners make money no what kind of crude you send them.


Yet this is yet another attack that happens while the oil price falls, successfully making it stop falling.

Again, I don't think the explanation is linked to oil prices.


There is also a significant cost to moving electricity production from a relatively small number of centralised plants to almost everywhere. Once the infrastructure is adapted to that, costs should normalise again.


> There is also a significant cost to moving electricity production from a relatively small number of centralised plants to almost everywhere.

Correct, but that cost is a negative number.

When the generation happens in the same location where the electricity is used, you don't get the significant transmission losses. You don't have to build and maintain big transformer substations. Obviously this doesn't count for big utility-scale solar arrays. However, every commercial warehouse, for example, could cover its roof and have near-zero transmission losses for most or all of its energy usage.


Doctors should never deny patients.

They can take precautions & insist on proper treatments, of course.


It’s this attitude that’s led to us being in this mess. Don’t want to listen to the doctor about basic medical advice? Don’t go to that doctor.


Being medically stupid isn't a protected class. You can refuse service to anyone you want to otherwise. It's not an ER, it's a Pediatrician, and they value not endangering their other patients who actually follow medical advice.


Should be easy enough to use some form of active noise cancelling for that.


That's nonsense. Many countries have been using drones before. (Starting with Nazi Germany during WW 2.)


We have learned counters for them over the years.

Ukraine makes drones vastly cheaper than the current counters and so we can be bankrupted trying the current counters.


> We have learned counters for them over the years.

Using $1m a piece missiles


And don't forget the cost of storing nuclear waste for the next 10000 years, which is never included in the "cost of nuclear".


What nuclear waste? Where is it?

Somebody must be able to point to the nuclear waste by now. There it is, waving frantically in panic, the nuclear waste! It’s coming right for us!

Something is either highly radioactive for a short amount of time, or not very radioactive for a long amount of time.

But never both highly radioactive and for a long time.

In reality, there is so little nuclear waste that most of it has mostly been stored on site where it was generated, taking up less space than any grid scale solar or wind.


I don’t think nuclear waste is a huge deal, but it does increase fuel costs in a very meaningful way. The classic uranium is cheap therefore nuclear’s fuel is cheap is a tiny fraction of the story. Refueling generally means weeks of downtime, you can’t safely operate at extreme temperatures for maximum efficiency, you need enrichment, and fuel rods, and even with multiple trips through the reactor core a significant amount of fuel isn’t burned or economically useful, and when your done you also need processes do deal with highly radioactive material + the costs of dry casks, and then transport them offsite and then down into some tunnels.

Add all that stuff up and fuel is a major expense. Granted that downtime depends on the design, and is also used to do other maintenance tasks but without refueling you’d end up with different tradeoffs.


> What nuclear waste? Where is it?

Good question! Since you asked: it is largely in cooling pools and piling up in empty lots around nuclear power plants, waiting for safe, secure storage to appear.

> Something is either highly radioactive for a short amount of time, or not very radioactive for a long amount of time.

This is not true at all, unless you consider "short amount of time" to include decades to centuries to millenia.


> around nuclear power plants

Exactly what I said.

> This is not true at all

Yes it is.

I mean, if you’re going to dispute my point without providing any evidence, then all we’ve got is opinions.

If we’ve got data, let’s go with the data. If all we’ve got is opinions, let’s go with mine.


> I mean, if you’re going to dispute my point without providing any evidence

Pure Americium-241 is extremely radioactive 0.0000045 grams of the stuff puts off useful amounts of radiation for smoke detectors, it’s half life is also 432 years.

As an alpha emitter it’s not that bad to stand next to but internally it doesn’t take much to be lethal.


Awesome. So how does one go about diverting this from nuclear waste storage to the diet of average citizens, as an act of terrorism?

Also, I don’t know how to gauge “useful amounts of radiation for smoke detectors”.

α-particles can be stopped by a sheet of paper.


> diverting this from nuclear waste storage

This is a manufactured product not waste from a nuclear reactor. We use it because it’s an alpha emitter, there’s harder to shield material with similar half lives they are just less useful. I bring this up because longer half lives don’t mean safety. If you’re looking for a weapon, salted nukes are the stuff of nightmares if they use something with a month long half life or several hundred years.

> I don’t know how to gauge

And that’s the issue here, you need to do some more research before making such statements.


> Exactly what I said

Actually, it's exactly what I said. Here's the quote:

>It is largely in cooling pools and piling up in empty lots around nuclear power plants, waiting for safe, secure storage to appear.

See? Exactly.

> Yes it is.

No it isn't.

> I mean, if you’re going to dispute my point without providing any evidence

lol, you never provided us with any in the first place! Why would I waste more time and effort disproving some claim of yours, than you spent trying to prove the original claim in the first place? That'd be falling for gish gallop.

Until you produce sufficient evidence to convincingly prove that your original claim is true, we can safely assume it is not. So, onus is on you: It's up to you to prove your own point, nobody else. If you’ve got data, let’s see the data.


I know where the nuclear waste is stored here. Its storage is funded by the government for now (not included in electricity prices) and nobody can actually prove it will be safe for the centuries it will be dangerous.


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