On Fusion Reactors and Nuclear Waste:

 http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/nuclear/could-fusion-clean-up-nuclear-waste

Stefan Christiernin 
It would certainly be a blessing if we could all get rid of the horrifying waste of nuclear power. Yes, I'm a physicist, and yes, I live in Sweden where nuclear power still is great, and yes we plan to bury it all. But am I completely convinced that it's good idea? Sorry to say no. If nothing else because you never know which cooks will be around "tomorrow" to dig the whole lot up again to use it for crazy stuff.
However, I happen to know a few people connected to fusion research. The quantum compacted ultra dense deutrium approach (as previously noted in Spectrum) just might work. No converging charges as in a bomb, no lasers to compress a frozen ball of fuel - this state of deutrium already has a density of 150.000 (one hundred and fifty thousand) *tones* per liter (1000 cc) putting in almost on par with the collapsed matter in dwarf stars. ...and it's been produced for real in labs, making it the densest material in the solar system.
Quantum mechanics makes up a strange world that way - halfway between science and Harry Potter....
So maybe, just maybe we will have our paradigm-shifting technology a lot faster than we all have been used to believing.
Than again - and this is a very serious question - will the world be able to handle a quickly emerging paradigm-shifting energy source like "clean and easy" fusion? Will there be copper to go around for all the (new and expanded) power grids? How unstable will the economy become if the oil sector becomes undermined to quickly? ...and how unstable would the geopolitical situation become?
No idea - but even if some of those aspects are taunting I still can't help hoping that mankind has to solve exactly those problems. The other alternative- dealing with an ever increasing greenhouse effect - seems even much less attractive.
So naive or just dreamy - I still keep my hopes up for clean fusion. If we somehow can get rid of the old waste at he same time - count me in. ;)

Aleithia  

• 
  

Stephan, please do not apologize for being a dreamy physicist. We need those now more than ever. I would like to point out a very dated concept that still works today to degrade fissionable materials: The Candu Heavy Water Reactor--was Canada's nuclear future once upon a time. It is my understanding China has licensed and built modern versions thereof for exactly that purpose. Candu reactors can run on such low purity fissionable materials it could almost run on yellow cake!. Take ultra low enriched nuclear material and add you nuclear waste and chop tens of thousands of years in standing pools.
The problems that remain unsolved around hot fusion cannot be ameliorated by some vague hope to kill two birds with one stone. It needs to stand on its own two feet. It has been decades since the plasma temperatures evaporating Molybdenum and Tungsten shields & were understood. To make it worse, the intense blizzard of relatively uncontrollable neutrons transmutes what ever structure houses the magnetic field, the magnetic field components, and so on, compromising structural integrity and the necessity it demands times for tearing down and rebuilding the structures damaged thusly.
Until these are solved, how would adding **more** fissionable material be helpful? We are talking of adding Millions of Electron Volts to the soup after all aren't we? It is sad it appears we have to say good bye to tokamak fusion. But we have been shovelling taxpayer money at this futilely. This looks like a reason to shovel more money at it. There is a time for waking up from fanciful dreaming pinching ourselves and change direction. But then we need to dream new dreams, putting the nightmare behind us.
This too was such a romantic notion: Candu was launched with aplomb. A great hope for this country and a contribution to the global nuclear knowlege. Now, apart from licensing, it looks like atomic energy Canada is packing up to go home. We Canadians who love science hate to see it go. What is at stake there are a few hundred million worth of investment to perfect its system of nuclear degradation, not the over 10? Billion the Tokamak has taken from our pockets on a far worse flight of fantasy than yours, Dr. C.

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On Interactive Brokers

I am the resident Interactive Brokers Cheerleader.  Voted #1 in the world by Baron's Magazine, IB kicks butt over TD and Questrade.  I have had experience with all three.  Consider this, brokers fee contract less than 2.00.   2.50 per currency trade, traded directly on the spot market.  .0005 /share trades.  Trade easily on every market in the world.  24 hour/day support.  They have offices all around the world.  So ie when Singapore's trading, very good english speaking chinese brokers assist you,   The customer support is 2nd to none.  I have a friend with the TD this summer wanted to trade less than 50 contracts.  TD informed him it would cost him over 300.00 in fees!--unless he had 50,000 in a TD account.  On top of that he cannot make covered calls or spreads.  It really is pathetic.  Questrade is good if you want to buy and hold 1000 shares of x.  But they kill daytrading and any sort of frequency trading is doomed by the fee structure.

I am open to learning about any Canadian brokerages.  But my experience hasn't found anything that can come close to IB.

Drawbacks:  IB's platform is massive.  I can't say for sure it is larger than Think or Swim, but it as at least as big.  If you can imagine doing something with securities and forex, IB can probably be made to do it, whether it might be contingency trading, or futures options on Forex.  Therefore, IB's platform has a very large learning curve.  It isn't insurmountable, because they have a video library that is equally extraordinary.  They have a special team for new clients moving their positions into IB, to make sure your questions are adequately cared for.

Conclusion?  I love IB.  I don't know any TSU students that I have referred that are unhappy with them.  I, and they do get a perk for every referral so that is a disclaimer.  It could appear I am pro IB just because of the perk.  I don't believe so but in the name of transparency I give that to you.  If it is ok with you that a fellow TSU student gets a small benefit, then find someone who is an IB client to get you a referral invitation.  (If you can't find anyone else, I would be happy to do that for you... :) ).

Contrarian Thinking about the Gold Standard and Fiat currencies:

I am floating this to effect discourse on some of the ideas we have all accepted to be true.  None of these are supposed to subvert any of the TSU ideas or concepts, but is a place to think outside of the box.

For example: "The Gold Standard system of banking is better, is real, or superior to the current system".

What about that? Maxims like: "The Central Bank's printing of money neccesarily causes inflation";  or "Inflation should be kept low or close to zero";  "Who benefits in times of deflation?" how much water do those assumptions really hold?

Let me begin by asking a few questions of what we take as "given":

1) Gold is the "real" currency because an ounce of gold is worth an ounce of gold.  As the price of gold rises, fiat currencies become worth less.
Response: ok, but by the same logic a dollar is worth a dollar.  So whether we work for gold or we work for cash, the value is not the gold and is not the cash, but it is the perceived value for which we **work**.  The value is the indentured servitude of the unwashed masses.  (ok that was a bit hystrionic)   So long as a miner will dig for gold, his time is worth the gold he mines.  Overly simplistic?  The gold standard is that.  The gold miner becomes the money maker.  *(in this scenario the simplistic given is that every miner works for himself.)  Once the gold is out of the ground, it can circulate.  Therefore since gold is the base, the economy can only expand in a real way if that country produces more gold, and it is in direct relation to the amount of gold in circulation.

Implications: on a global basis the various currencies are valued according to the perceived value agreed to by all.  In a real way wealth creation occurs on the forex market, to the extend that the people who work in those economies are willing to accept value for their work.  So if a phone maker pays its workers $10.00/phone from raw material to wholesale, the real value of that phone is 10.00  Until it is sold at wholesale to retailers where the value becomes multiplied.  A retailer might have a cost of 100.00/phone to stock, market and sell each phone it buys for 500.00 wholesle.  It sells it for 200.00.  800.00 might be the exorbinant price a 3 year contract pays out before interest.  So what happens to the value of that phone?  A 10.00 phone becomes 800.00 in your market boutique.  I am asking that we look at this a bit differently in the hope of catching this...  Pretend with me that the 10.00 per phone becomes 10.00/week take home pay in China.  40.00 per month.  And then pretend the 800.00 phone represents one week's work in North America.   What is the real value of the phone?

Ok, easy easy, I know there are a million and one holes in this.  I would be interested if anyone has done any actual analysis of this in the real market.  I would guess, that there is a disparity of value around the world, that directly effects the value of the currencies as traded, and aids it's dynamism, momentum and volitility.  I could get off on various other implications, like why would a peasant in India feel rich with 40.00/month (hypotheical figure)?  The wealth they create is by the sweat of their brow, and goes with the goods produced into the global market place.  The cost of the wealth is the indentured servitude, but the value of the wealth comes through the market place.  So, (and here is a leap I don't know if you can follow, but I make it only for brevity,) in fiat currencies, the creation of wealth has moved out of the gold mines of the world, into the meta values of Forex.  Is there a book that takes this tack I don't know about?  The creation of the value of money has now moved out of the hands of individual governments who may strike the coinage, out of even the Central Banks, into the multi trillion dollar trade of the Forex market.  Consider this: The entire US debt is only 4 days worth of currency trade.  No central bank, maybe with the loan exception of the US Fed can afford to effect value of their currency.  Japan is attempting to devalue its currency, in times past Canada has attempted to do the same, inevitably it cost that country far more because the ebb and the flow of the currency markets are so vast and untameable, it remeains to be seen if even the US Fed can withstand it.

Arctic stories...

• Sarah Nangmalik

  Owen,
  I went to the post office to track down the box and they said it is already at your post office and was still there as of 11am this morning. I was going to get back to you as soon as after work but I had my grand kids until half hour ago.
• January 7
• 

  10:52am

  Owen Abrey

  Sarah! I got a cool package today, with Bumper Stickers from the Polar Bears!

  Quana
• 9:42pm

  Sarah Nangmalik

  Glad you got them now:) In my dialect we say "Qujannamiik" for thank you and "Nakurmiik" in Iqaluit dialect where I am living now. "Quana" is Central arctic dialect that I don't speak but understand:D Enjoy your book, I tried to add in most of the large marine mammals we have up here but may be missing some. I also have a poster that I will probably be sending out to you, the pictures were taken under arctic sea in high arctic Lancaster Sound area...you won't believe what we have up here:).
• January 14
• 

  7:12pm

  Sarah Nangmalik

  Hi Owen, if you have Discovery channel you can watch "Canada's Greatest Know it all" tonight at 10pm my time (eastern) I don't know about your time though. My old childhood classmate is in the group. His name is Abraham (Abe) Qamaniq, we went to school when we were growing up and I know him all my life, he will probably share something about the arctic:) He has been in "Canada's Greatest Know it all" for a while now and he has been telling us that southern people don't know anything about the arctic and it's people so I guess, him being in that group he gets to share about the north and teach southerners at the same time:)
• 

  10:01pm

  Owen Abrey

  lol, I will see if I can catch a rerun of it Sarah, thank you for the heads up. Hope this finds you well... We are having winter down here at -15 or so. don't laugh! Blessings!
• Tuesday
• 

  9:22pm

  Sarah Nangmalik

  We watched the Discovery channel last night and Many of us in Nunavut were all glued to the TV screen for an hour. He made it but one got eliminated. The Canada's Greatest know it all will be on for the next 8 weeks, every Monday night at 10pm eastern time and we are wondering how long he will be in the team before elimination:)
  -15? that is like we can walk around in spring jackets, no hats and no gloves:D When it is -30 we think it is not cold:) we can walk outdoors with no hats for a good stretch of a walk until we put on a hat or put up a hood:) -45 and -48 is normal temp. at this time of year with the wind chill it goes up to -53 or more regularly. Yesterday in one of the communities it was -63 with the wind chill it went up to -93 and that is COLD! In smaller communities where it is flat the normal temp. is - 59 or -60 with the wind chill it goes higher. It has been very cold for the past couple weeks now around Nunavut communities and I checked the weather today and most communities were from -53 and up and the coldest today was -63. It is extremely dry cold so it does not feel that cold, it only stings the face but it is only surface cold on the skin and it is often hard to feel a frost bite unless someone spots them on your face on days like we have been having. In the north we have dry cold where we feel the cold only on our face or hands and when we go in side the cold goes away pretty fast but in the south it is damp cold where it goes right to the bones and makes you shiver and the cold up here is not the same. We watch southern weather forecasts too and when they say it will be extremely weather warning winds up to 60...that is nothing to us:) Winds up here from 60 gusting to 70 is normal winter storm and we walk around and drive around, it only starts to get bad when it is gusting to 70 to 85 and more then I usually stay home because when the winds are picking up with snow falling it is very hard to see and breath to walk outdoors. We often wonder among ourselves with our extreme strong weather winds up here would it be considered hurricane like winds? Anyway, enough of my teaching...you should come up here someday and experience the land yourself:) This month especially the last couple weeks have been extremely high tide over its normal tide in the winter. One of my friends who is a CBC radio host, he said when he was out hunting with a group on the sea ice further down Frobisher Bay, the sea water underneath the ice was building up with so much pressure and they watched the water shooting up into the air really high through the ice cracks and "boom" water was shooting up really high into the sky...he said it was amazing to watch:) we get that when the high tide is strong and builds pressure underneath the sea ice. Did I ever tell you that we have ice lightening too? In mid winter during cold season when it gets really really cold like the type of cold weather we've been having ice lightening is bound to happen too. The hunters say it happens further down the bay where sea level is higher and the ice lightening is like a real lightening but with a slight shade of beautiful light blue and very bright. The ice lightening on large lakes is shade of light floresent green and makes weird loud noise. Anyway...ttyl:)
• 

  9:26pm

  Owen Abrey

On Tokamaks and nuclear waste:  http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/nuclear/could-fusion-clean-up-nuclear-waste

Stefan Christiernin 

• 
  

It would certainly be a blessing if we could all get rid of the horrifying waste of nuclear power. Yes, I'm a physicist, and yes, I live in Sweden where nuclear power still is great, and yes we plan to bury it all. But am I completely convinced that it's good idea? Sorry to say no. If nothing else because you never know which cooks will be around "tomorrow" to dig the whole lot up again to use it for crazy stuff.
However, I happen to know a few people connected to fusion research. The quantum compacted ultra dense deutrium approach (as previously noted in Spectrum) just might work. No converging charges as in a bomb, no lasers to compress a frozen ball of fuel - this state of deutrium already has a density of 150.000 (one hundred and fifty thousand) *tones* per liter (1000 cc) putting in almost on par with the collapsed matter in dwarf stars. ...and it's been produced for real in labs, making it the densest material in the solar system.
Quantum mechanics makes up a strange world that way - halfway between science and Harry Potter....
So maybe, just maybe we will have our paradigm-shifting technology a lot faster than we all have been used to believing.
Than again - and this is a very serious question - will the world be able to handle a quickly emerging paradigm-shifting energy source like "clean and easy" fusion? Will there be copper to go around for all the (new and expanded) power grids? How unstable will the economy become if the oil sector becomes undermined to quickly? ...and how unstable would the geopolitical situation become?
No idea - but even if some of those aspects are taunting I still can't help hoping that mankind has to solve exactly those problems. The other alternative- dealing with an ever increasing greenhouse effect - seems even much less attractive.
So naive or just dreamy - I still keep my hopes up for clean fusion. If we somehow can get rid of the old waste at he same time - count me in. ;)

Aleithia Stefan Christiernin • a minute ago

• 
  
• • Flag as inappropriate

Stephan, please do not apologize for being a dreamy physicist. We need those now more than ever. I would like to point out a very dated concept that still works today to degrade fissionable materials: The Candu Heavy Water Reactor--was Canada's nuclear future once upon a time. It is my understanding China has licensed and built modern versions thereof for exactly that purpose. Candu reactors can run on such low purity fissionable materials it could almost run on yellow cake!. Take ultra low enriched nuclear material and add you nuclear waste and chop tens of thousands of years in standing pools.
The problems that remain unsolved around hot fusion cannot be ameliorated by some vague hope to kill two birds with one stone. It needs to stand on its own two feet. It has been decades since the plasma temperatures evaporating Molybdenum and Tungsten shields & were understood. To make it worse, the intense blizzard of relatively uncontrollable neutrons transmutes what ever structure houses the magnetic field, the magnetic field components, and so on, compromising structural integrity and the necessity it demands times for tearing down and rebuilding the structures damaged thusly.
Until these are solved, how would adding **more** fissionable material be helpful? We are talking of adding Millions of Electron Volts to the soup after all aren't we? It is sad it appears we have to say good bye to tokamak fusion. But we have been shovelling taxpayer money at this futilely. This looks like a reason to shovel more money at it. There is a time for waking up from fanciful dreaming pinching ourselves and change direction. But then we need to dream new dreams, putting the nightmare behind us.
This too was such a romantic notion: Candu was launched with aplomb. A great hope for this country and a contribution to the global nuclear knowlege. Now, apart from licensing, it looks like atomic energy Canada is packing up to go home. We Canadians who love science hate to see it go. What is at stake there are a few hundred million worth of investment to perfect its system of nuclear degradation, not the over 10? Billion the Tokamak has taken from our pockets on a far worse flight of fantasy than yours, Dr. C.

Implications of new energy

Hello Folks more news of breaking technology with Green impacts: I note Canada is mentioned in this article.... finally.  I support these initiatives for numerous reasons.  First of all, because if demand for fossil fuels fall off, then the price of fuel goes down (theoretically anyhow).  Despite altruistic ideals, the economic benefit removing a net drag on economies by highpriced hydro carbons has not been properly appreciated.

Secondly, these new technologies stand to produce a renaissance across all the sciences.

Third, energy supply has become a chief governor of wealth distribution on a global scale.  If you can't have reliable electricity in Zambia or India, how can you build factories that create wealth?  To link energy to poverty ought to be a  no-brainer, but in my opinion is rarely done.

Just a few opinions from a possible iconoclast.   http://coldfusionnow.org/john-varney-on-dense-plasma-focus-emergence-from-chaos-to-a-new-shining-order/

A view on Global Warming, and Ice bergs.  A 1st person perspective:


About the ice bergs that float, we were once again taught by some hunters from Cape Dorset as well as their elders taught us more about ice bergs as we encountered much of ice bergs all month of August. Elders shared that ice bergs are known by Inuit as "Ijjuriktaqtut" which means the ice berg itself seems to have a life of it's own and will make anything or humans fall in the water. Ice bergs don't like to have anything on top of them, even though when it is massive in size it will make itself tip over and wobble until whatever that went on top or side falls off into the water. It is because the glaciers are de-ionized for thousands and thousands of years, the fresh water ice is so extremely compacted and frozen for so many years when it falls off the glacier and become an ice berg it is far more heavier than multi year ice but behaves completely different that regular ice in the arctic sea. It is very bright white and beautiful blue in color all the way into the core and always fresh water once it lands on the shore but they are the most unstable ice in the north. Because they are so de-ionized once there is a slight breeze the ice berg will start to move very quickly and will be blown away plus through the currents carried away and they move very fast as if powered like a boat. We are often told never to get on top of ice bergs as it will suddenly wobble back and forth very quickly and can over turn itself as soon as it feels the weight on it or around it. My parents also used to tell us never to pour water near the ice berg in winter or spring when an iceberg is ground for the winter as when one pours water the iceberg will crack in thousand pieces and smash down with tons of ice all around and are known to be very dangerous and yet so beautiful and majestic to the eyes:) Anyway, just sharing what I learned from my parents and elders up here:)

By my friend Sara Nangmalik

I have a friend I call an Inuit Elder.

She is a wonderful mind and 1st person perspective on all things Arctic to me....

I will share an exchange:

Iqaluit is below the arctic circle if you look it up in the map, but the other higher communities above the arctic circle especially high arctic region is dark day and night that starts mid October to this time of year except when there is full moon, people hunt when they are able to see in full moon. People in high arctic say when the moon is full, they call it their "sun" because that is the only time they are able to see farther and able to spot animals. When there is no moon it is very dark up there. The full moon also seem brighter in the high arctic, it has the brightness that one can see long distance out on the land, it feels one giant light in the sky where everywhere you see the land and sky has that beautiful blue effect under clear night skies probably because of the snow covering all the land and sea ice and because there are no trees...it is breathtakingly beautiful, where stars and constelations, northern lights and the milkyway are stunningly and beautifully visible. Here in Iqaluit the sun rises every day but not as high at this time of year and gets dark pretty fast by 3pm but now the sun is getting higher and brighter again. We have had very clear skies since before Christmas and the stars seem so bright at night and the winds have been calm as well during the night but it is cold out there:)

Eyes on.

Sarah