We have fusion. The reaction takes place at a safe distance and the power generation happens locally(terrestrially). Delivered projects are under $.05/kwh, projects are in contract for under $.04/kwh and people are already talking about <$.03/kwh.

And the best part is we have huge deserts too! I'm currently selling land at the low low price of $1000/acre in Death Valley, get it while it's hot!

The Departed.

Really? Did they just use phones a lot as phones? Because the way people are always looking at their phones has changed a lot since just 2006.

Iphone came out in 2007. Were they just Crackberries in The Departed?

Oh I didn't realize you meant smart phones.

But no I'm not sure how interesting of a plot device people constantly checking their Instagram at dinner would be.

It would be weird and some movies have played with similar things, like Unfriended.

But, I'm more thinking about how you either have to avoid a modern setting or just be unrealistic if you don't want everyone, including the main characters, looking at their phone every 20 seconds.

I was just a volunteer traffic person at the MB10K run (just about all the kids and parents in my kid's HS choir do something for the hometown fair) so I saw the whole race. There were a few people RUNNING THE 10K who checked their phones as they ran by.

Might have been people using running apps checking their pace.
Obviously not as easy als using a pulse watch, but cheaper and not that complicated for a 10k.

Could be, but I don't think so. They were among the very casual (slow) runners. One kid was talking on the phone while he ran (slowly).

Hyperrealism is hard to do without being torture to watch. People rarely talk over one another or stammer in movies either.

I haven't noticed, but it should at least be popping up in the background where people are playing with their phones.

I'm not anti-nuclear, but Fukushima just happened a few years ago and Chernobyl continues to be a largely uninhabitable wasteland. I don't think the fear is all that irrational.

What about the people in Coober Pody? Won't anyone think of the Coobers?

They can just move to Streaky Bay and let their Coober hang out all over the place.

Fukuishima introduced a spirited debate on 2p2 that was actually pretty good. And to be clear I think nuclear has merit.

Now, the situation internationally is varied, IIRC, but in the US, the Price Anderson Act is effectively a handout to the nuclear industry to sell at below market rates. The legislation caps the liability of nuclear companies in the event of a meltdown. This of course has the secondary effect of making nuclear power more appealing to investors who know courts are effectively hamstrung to compensate victims in the event a meltdown. In fact prior to 1957 there was effectively no private investment in the nuclear industry due to the understanding that meltdowns in populated areas would effectively crush any stakeholders.

Of course the LLC is at the heart of modern capitalism, granted, and I agree other sectors in the energy industry get tons of handouts. But it's only through the government effectively limiting torts that we can talk about like, secondary and tertiary costs associated with nuclear. What limited investment we see in nuclear in the US is only even possible because of favorable protectionism.

It also speaks to the fact that meltdown concerns aren't like, hysterical in a sense: #ACismRonPaulForPresident but the government is not effectively letting anyone price the actual risk of nuclear. It's artificially made cheaper because the companies aren't exposed to having to deliver fair market compensation in the event their cores go kablooey.

Compare the effects of any future nuclear accidents against the millions who will die from cancer and chronic diseases related to the release of toxins from burning fossil fuels and the land rendered uninhabitable from rising sea levels from global warming and add unknowable mass casualties possibly in the millions (hundred millions?) in third world areas due to droughts and relocations and I think we can handle a hundred more Fukushima and Chernobyls, but since we have learned quite a bit from each of those disasters I doubt we would have to. I suppose if you consider possible disasters that aren't accidents, ie, terrorism and/or unstable states, it should be scary.

I forget if Kim Davis meeting with the Pope was discussed here, but there's an update on how that happened: seems like it was arranged by a conservative archbishop and the Vatican is distancing themselves from having anything to do with the meeting

And they just shut down San Onofre in California. There may not have been much danger, but problems, including leaks, lead to the shutdown which was a cost/waste of over $10 billion, with over $1B just to shut it down.

Fukashima cost $100B.

There's always going to be at least human error if not unanticipated disasters.

How does that look on the proforma?

x% chance of huge disaster killing tens of thousands at $x
x% chance of expensive shutdown
x% chance of spent fuel spill on the way to Chrisv's desert
x% chance it gets used in dirty bomb

or just pretend all those things are zero because they are hard to estimate?

I read somewhere they looked at San Onofre - and the kinds of water pumps that failed in Fukishima hadn't worked for 10 years.

The attack on free speech in India

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/04/op...dabholkar.html

The only official audience he gave was to a gay couple, one of whom he taught in Argentina and kept in contact with him through the decades. Which is pretty cool on the scale of what popes do. Apparently it happened cos the gay guy called him up to check in and shoot the **** and the Pope was like come see me and I'll put you on the schedule, bring your boyfriend, it'll be good times.

So basically if that news got out first the entire news of her brush past would have been nothing.

Chance of that is near zero. The containers they use to transport waste are unimaginably strong. Testing of them has included driving a freight train into one at full speed. It did not rupture.

Uh, add those tests to the externalities. But still, human error in flask making and packing. Nuclear storage has under performed in the past. If it's common enough, some failure is likely. Even if the damage is small, cleanup could still be expensive.

I see the solar lobby is crushing nuclear power.

A lot of concerns about nuclear power would be addressed by using LFTRs. The wiki article contains a thorough list of advantages and disadvantages.

In particular, there is no chance of a huge disaster with a LFTR. I know that sounds like exaggeration, but it's true. LFTRs do not operate under high pressure, do not contain highly reactive chemicals, and it is not possible for them to experience any kind of runaway reaction or meltdown.

However, a lot more investment is needed to develop the technology. It seems like money might be better spent there than in the apparent endless money pit of fusion.

The Jane Fonda remake featuring LFTR's is gonna suck harder than the original, "The China Meh-ltdown"