Interesting things from treehugger.com

[unixronin]

Found by cymrullewes, Treehugger posts teasers on:

• Multipurpose broad-spectrum OLED panels -- It's a window!  It's a light panel!  It's a HD TV!  The article -- or the USC researcher quoted in the article -- tosses around a claim of "100 percent efficiency out of a single, broad spectrum light source."  I'll believe THAT when I see it.
• "Zero footprint energy" in Ontario -- or, lease-to-own your own ground-source heating/cooling plant.  US power utilities would probably hate it enough to buy a Congressman or six to pass a law making it illegal.

Comments

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

It is perfectly possible to reprocess fuel-grade into weapons-grade uranium, and you can make a perfectly viable bomb using nothing but U-235. Little Boy, one of the only two nuclear weapons used in anger¹, was a uranium bomb. It's even easier to reprocess weapons-grade plutonium out of "spent" fuel rods.

Unfortunately, we are cursed in this regard with a gaggle of stupid politicians who stubbornly and defiantly persist in believing, against all reason and evidence, that it's possible to put the genie back into the bottle. One more case of inability to learn from the lessons of history.







[1] Though it may not stay that way long if the Prophet Dubya gets his way.

[smandal.livejournal.com]

The logic here being that once nuclear weapons became commonplace, there's no sense putting restrictions on reprocessing spent rods? Hmmm ... well, doesn't reprocessing afford states with less industrial capacity than the US a shortcut to getting weapons-grade uranium? Or are you saying that it doesn't matter either way?

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

I'm saying that it's foolish of them to think they can put the genie back in the bottle; knowledge of the basics of nuclear technology is sufficiently widespread, and enough nuclear material is known "mislaid" or unaccounted for, that any government that wants badly enough to develop some kind of minimal nuclear capability is going to be able to do so sooner or later.
Hell, you can build a quite functional single-stage atomic bomb given nothing more than a three-meter chunk of 12" drain pipe, some epoxy resin or bolts, a piece of light rope and access to a metal-turning lathe, if you can get your hands on the nuclear material. It'll be crude, it'll be inefficient, it'll be low-yield and dirty, but it'll work and probably deliver in the 10KT range. And some of the "unaccounted for" losses of nuclear material are measured in tons.

[smandal.livejournal.com]

Right, but i'm talking about strategic capabilities, like producing many megaton warheads.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Oh, I was just citing the drainpipe bomb as an example of something virtually ANYONE could build. Even the most incompetent government ought to be able to manage something much more professional and effective.

[smandal.livejournal.com]

Ic.

Thanks for letting me pick your brain -- nuclear weapons are a weak spot in my education.