I still remember my first listen to Off The Wall and Thriller on headphones, Thriller being the ultimate experience. Collaborating with engineer Bruce Swedien, Jones produced a complicated topped-off waveform of a layered masterpiece in which you could hear every discrete vocal and instrument. It became the go-to technique of future generations.
As a kid doing some urban exploring... I encountered a pentaconta crossbar in the wild, around ~1976. It was in a cinder block building on the grounds of a resort hotel behind an unlocked door. I turned on the single bulb hanging from the ceiling and beheld its awesome beauty in that room with bare grimy walls. Two racks just for the crossbars. And of course it was operational, routing three-digit calls between hotel rooms, room service and 'dial 9' outside.
It was a 'private branch exchange' built by ITT. Our own local telephone company had crossbar switches in use until 1980 but I never got to see those until 1987 -- when I was working at the phone company itself (owned by ITT actually!). The entire function of the the ground floor with its banks of crossbar switching cabinets had long since been routed upstairs to an ITT 1210 digital switch, and line cards of four lines each in dense racks also upstairs, and all voice traffic and several trunk functions with other adjacent digital exchanges (classes 3,4,5) was exchanged on a digital bus.
The crossbar beasts had been silent on the floor below for years, waiting for a potential buyer (perhaps in Central America) that was still committed to this reliable technology. That buyer never happened, and they were finally acquired for copper and gold, with the provision that the cabinets not be swept. Every one had a pile of metallic dust in the bottom.
But I'll never forget the smaller beast that connected the hotel, the slaps of call routing and teardown, the stepping relays counting digit dialling and redialing trunks. Many people still alive today feel an emotional connection to this technology. Fewer and fewer.
[00:00] LFTR in 5 minutes; [06:05] dialogue on Energy sources & conservation; [08:29] Elizabeth May on why nuclear 'fails', response; [13:40] Kirk Sorensen's time at NASA, discovering molten salt research; [17:30] on Glenn Seaborg's discovery of Thorium's fissile properties in 1942; [20:05] What nuclear fission is, decay chains, half life; [26:45] neutron absorption, cross section, Xenon poisoning at Hanford; [30:06] isotopic enrichment, Thorium/u233 rejected for weapons; [32:45] Atoms for Peace, absorption propensity and performance of nuclear fuels, thermal & fast spectrum, Thorium/Plutonium debate; [36:28] Alvin Weinberg focuses on Thorium and liquid fuels, Oak Ridge Labs, Aircraft Reactor Experiment, the Molten Salt Reactor Experiment, Fluoride Salts; [44:40] two-fluid molten salt reactor; [48:18] light water reactors, Watts Bar, reactor safety and containment systems, issues with water, Fukushima Daiichi hydrogen explosions; [01:01:38] solid fuel & rod assemblies, Eugene Wigner & liquid fuels; [01:04:38] PWR efficiency, Weinberg's quest for near-100% utilization, AEC's choice to pursue Plutonium fast breeders; [01:06:46] Weinberg's concerns about LWR safety, Congressman Chet Hollifeld's inquiry, Weinberg leaves Oak Ridge, WASH-1222, Integral Fast Reactor, Traveling Wave; [01:11:26] Fusion is hard; [01:14:12] Thorium in a CANDU; [01:18:12] Colonel Paul Roege on military reactors, Robert Hargraves: prosperity is related to energy, Robert F. Kennedy on mercury from coal; [01:21:42] transuranics, LFTR active processing, electricity & isotope production from LFTR, Pu-238 and RTGs, Molybdenum-99 & Bismuth-213 in medicine; [01:27:48] cost to build LFTR; [01:30:26] proliferation concerns; [01:31:50] hysterical news coverage of radiation, LNT; [01:40:02] coal & natural gas radioactive emissions, Thorium & Uranium decay in the Earth, magnetosphere, Hargraves on CO2 emissions & ocean acidification & energy density, one-sided press coverage for 'renewables'; [01:50:07] various approaches to nuclear power, the 'reason why not' , LWR business model; [01:54:40] China and LFTR, Sorensen's visit to Oak Ridge to obtain access to LFTR documents, the Chinese visit Oak Ridge; [01:58:01] Thorium and rare earths, China's domination of rare earths market, China's LFTR program; [02:06:39] transitioning energy sources, without plentiful energy we will revert to slavery, energy cheaper than from coal; [02:10:44] process heat applications, desalinization, synfuels, Brayton Cycle, managing transuranics, gas & oil working against nuclear, closing remarks and recap.
LFTR had a ton of hype years ago and then nothing. Is there some hidden problem with it, or did the massive growth of renewables eclipse interest in these kinds of things?
According to Bill Gates I think it's just the regulatory environment is so difficult. They had a deal lined up with a Chinese manufacturer but that predictably fell through due to worsening foreign relations.
This eclipses renewables in terms of power, density and ultimately cost per watt. Hopefully the regulatory intertia is soon dispelled as swiftly as a spring rain in Sapporo
Well for a look at how the pros do it, check out the FUDdy-duddys at https://www.express.co.uk/latest/yellowstone-volcano to see the UK-Express Yellowstone Article Roll of Doom. It goes on forever, and is now hilariously sprinkled with soap opera gossip from the Yellowstone TV series which is a shame, it used to be all volcano all the time.
It won't bring about Infinite Good. It'll bring about infinite contentment by diddling the pleasure center in our brains. Because you know, eventually everything is awarded to and built by the lowest bidder.
Yes "nuclear Winter" was the preexisting cultural artifact. Instead of tossing it off to indicate a world rendered sterile by misuse or overuse of AI, they decided to make it mean "a lack of interest or obsession with the subject" in 1984, while the Cold War was raging.
Since then AI (and Google) has been on a culture jamming rampage to repurpose common dictionary words and common phrases in the age of searching for information. As if their computers were never smart enough to make up unique words and simple phrases for concepts to find people talking about them. Or maybe, everyone is talking and no one is searching or listening?
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