Yes I will get vaccinated at the vet. Put me in a damn cone for all I care https://t.co/KzbjrKMH3b
— Mambo No. Pfizer (@killakow) March 12, 2021
Drew Magary, at Defector — “The Finish Line Is In Sight”:
The pandemic is winding down in the U.S. It’s not over, as responsible people will remind you. You still gotta wear a mask. You still gotta get vaccinated, if you haven’t already. You shouldn’t jump the gun like Texas or like my state (Maryland) and proudly declare every Golden Corral now open for business. You can’t go licking every toilet seat in abandon. You still gotta wait.
But not much longer…
This week—or today itself, March 11, for many people—marks the unofficial anniversary of Shit Getting Real with the pandemic. I remember all the fear that came with the pandemic’s arrival. Millions of people might die (this happened). My parents might die (this did not). I might die (still here). My kids might never be able to step inside a physical classroom ever again. The economy might wither into nothing. We might have to wait YEARS for a vaccine, if a vaccine ever came at all. The pandemic was gonna be the bill finally coming due for the human race. I’D LIKE TO SEE OL’ MANNY-KIND WRIGGLE OUT OF THIS JAM!
We’re wriggling out of it. The After is at America’s doorstep. It’s not happening in an instant. There may be a ceremonial day in the future where the U.S. records zero new COVID-related hospitalizations and the president hangs a MISSION ACCOMPLISHED banner across a giant COVID-19 spore. But really, you and I are already starting to get our lives back in bits and pieces. This is not an easy thing to comprehend if you’ve been as vigilant about prevention as many of us have been. I just spent the past four years lacquering myself in alternating coats of protective irony and rage, so my ability to process good news is now barely existent. I can’t witness ANY promising development right now without believing it’s a cruel trick. I’ve been conditioned for the worst.
But just this one time, the momentum has inexorably swung in mankind’s favor. I need to stop wringing my hands at EVERY sign of potential danger, because there are signs of rebirth all around if I choose to acknowledge them as such. The fact that these signs have come on the brink of springtime is not necessarily a coincidence, but rather deserves to be for the sake of poetry. I saw my first flower of the new year the other day while I was walking my dog…
I am still waiting for my shot. I’ve been overjoyed for my friends and family—and fuck it, for strangers, too!—who have gotten theirs. And yeah, I’ve definitely stewed on the sideline a bit, thinking WHEN THE FUCK IS IT MY TURN as other states lap mine. But I’ve made it this far. I’ve been hibernating, so to speak. But I know what’s coming. I can SEE it now, and I’m hardly alone. Summer rentals are already through the fucking stratosphere. Everyone wants to get drunk and naked.
And they will. The pandemic is not done with us, and it’s still ravaging the world at large. But sometimes history can surprise you by actually moving FORWARD, thanks to equal parts work and science. It’s been a long year, and yet it’s ONLY been a year. It could have been so much longer, and so much shittier. There is now proof around you that things are starting to get better. VASTLY better. I can see the finish line, and you can, too. Let’s get ready to fucking live again.
Yutsano
It’s never going to completely go away. There will still be people who get sick and die from this. But getting the numbers down to even just double digits in a day means at least there’s some semblance of control. At least I hope anyway.
EDIT: apparently inconsistent bugs are inconsistent. I could type the original in visual but the edit was like nah.
Also too: FRIST!
HumboldtBlue
A-yup.
phdesmond
Whoo-ee! that’s poetry.
RobertDSC-Mac Mini
I’m scheduled for my first jab tomorrow and I can’t sleep. My brain is too keyed up to rest.
patrick II
Moderna and J&J have been approved for people 18 and over, Pfizer for 16 and over, so right now there is no vaccine for kids. So, is there testing on the horizon that might change that? Are young people as apt to get and spread the disease, even though they may not get as sick, as adults?
Gretchen
My healthy 41 year old son in law got called for his shot. So many old people in Missouri, especially in rural areas ( my daughter heard 40%) are refusing, that they’re moving on to younger people.
Gretchen
@patrick II: Dr. Fauci said they are testing on teens now, and will move down the age groups as testing is completed.
Kent
My wife who coordinates Covid care across a network of clinics says it is never going away because it is everywhere on the planet and we are to globally linked. So don’t expect it to be like polio or small pox where we eradicate covid.
Instead she expects it to be more like a combination of flu and measles. There will be occasional outbreaks, especially in pockets of anti-vax dumbfuckery, just like with measles. But as long as the rest of the population maintains a baseline level of vaccination it won’t likely spread. Sort of how we have measles outbreaks in dumbfuck communities like fundie homeschool networks and Hasidic Jews. But they don’t tend to result in massive statewide outbreaks.
In order to keep it at bay long-term we are going to simply have to be more badass and intolerant of anti-vax dumbfuckery. That probably means rigid vaccine requirements for all schools and major employers with only certified medical exceptions, no others
But most of us who can get vaccinated will likely return back to life as normal, hopefully by mid summer or fall.
Arclite
Fuck the WaPo.
Biden doesn’t need to do a goddamn press conference. His actions speak for him, and they’ve been well-executed, pertinent, and relevant.
Yutsano
@patrick II: Looks like Pfizer and Moderna are in testing for that. I’m hoping the results will be good but I think the major point they want to measure is side effects in kids.
Kent
Yep, let them fucking die and give the vaccine to those who want it first. Then when we are finally at surplus of vaccine we can circle back with ads and public service announcement and campaigns and try to scoop up some of the rest.
lgerard
Funny how the people insisting the loudest for trump to be given credit for the vaccine are also the people who are refusing it.
John Revolta
If the level of questions I’ve been hearing about that Psaki has been getting is any indication, fuck a press conference. This is why we have a press secretary- to deal with the stupid shit, while the President is working.
bbleh
Well I just have to say, thank the good Lord for bringing us the miracle of the Trump presidency and all that came with it! Really, nothing has so confirmed my continued belief in the promise — the righteousness — of the Republican Party! What could possibly have gone better? It’s obvious: Trump has shown us the way forward, and all we need to do is follow the path his leadership has shown us!
sab
@Arclite: Fuck the press re Biden. He came to my area ( near Cleveland) way back in 2007 when he was running for president. He had a press conference, and one reporter showed up. That reporter only showed up because he had been deployed to Iraq with the National Guard, so he was respecting Joe as Beau’s father more than as himself. They did hit it off well.
They are happy to interview every bright shiny object that runs, but not the experienced people who might know what they are doing if they get into office.
bbleh
@John Revolta: It IS kind of funny watching the “political journalists” flail for some kind of footing when they have to deal with actual competence.
“So, we’ve heard that many people are saying that there may be questions regarding [vaguely described topic]. How does the president respond to that?”
Psaki: “Wut?”
[crickets]
SWMBO
@bbleh: What the hell are you huffing?!
SWMBO
@Kent: I am hoping that one round of vaccine is all it takes.
Chetan Murthy
@SWMBO: dry sarcasm
danielx
@bbleh:
Fixed.
ETA: his fans couldn’t give a fiddler’s fuck about the Republican Party as an institution or policy vehicle except insofar as they coincide with the Former Guy’s outlook, including his personality disorders, daily whims, and personal scams. Ask Mike Pence, if you can find him.
eclare
I get my first Moderna shot next Thursday, what a joy!
Jay
As all threads are open threads, other than respite threads,
Today, Historians found the first written example of “meh, good enough”.
It was written in 400AD by a Greek Philosopher, named Mediocrates.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@danielx:
Who?
danielx
@eclare:
Got my first Pfizer shot yesterday, and it felt like seeing light after being in a dark place for a long time.
LongHairedWeirdo
You know, about getting vaccinated at a vet… vets have to start IVs on kittens whose veins are not much thicker than thread, who can squirm in an unbelievable number of directions at once. And, their patients *can’t talk*, but they have to figure out what’s going on.
You know what’s even funnier? Vet school is far more selective than medical school. (To the point that a beloved veterinarian I know joked she didn’t want to be treated by a doctor, which is to say, someone not good enough to qualify for vet school. At least, I *think* she was joking….)
Honest to goodness, I can’t quite say I’d feel *safer* getting vaccinated by a veterinarian (after all, a large animal doctor has different standards…), but I’d feel *safe*.
JoyceH
@Kent:
And in other good news, there are treatments in development that can cure or help people once they have COVID. The ones out there now are infusions, but I saw an article saying a pill treatment should be approved by the fall.
Yay, science!
(I’ve got a teeshirt that says “Science. Like magic, but real.”)
Brachiator
@Gretchen:
Missouri is changing its nickname to “the Kill Me” state.
Brachiator
@Jay:
Good joke!
Might work a little better if the date is 400 BCE.
LongHairedWeirdo
Hah. Link to where *I* can buy one or it didn’t happen.
What? No! I’m not kidding! Do it or I’ll spray chocolate pudding into a container the size and shape you desire and procure. Damn. I’m no good at threats.
Okay fine, I’m kidding, I don’t *have* that much chocolate pudding. I just think it’s exceedingly unfair to say something like that without providing a link to where someone *else* can acquire one.
eclare
@LongHairedWeirdo: When my dog had to have basically ACL surgery, the specialty vets were very impressive. Pretty much all the staff at this clinic had gone to Miss State, which has an excellent vet school.
HumboldtBlue
Here’s Stevie Ray Vaughan playing some guitar for the French.
Jay
sab
@LongHairedWeirdo: A friend of mine years ago used med school as career backup in case he couldn’t get into vet school. He got in, so became a vet. It’s a stressful field. Patients can’t talk, and owners often cannot or will not spend money for what is needed.
Mary G
@LongHairedWeirdo: gOogLE
Ten Bears
I would caution, as I have for many years, to avoid counting chickens … you know.
A year ago I published “this doesn’t look like the bug that’s gonna’ kill us all, but the next one might be.” I’ll admit to bad bat jokes, sly comments about Mexican beer, but what with all the mis and disinformation and percolating propaganda floating around I’m still of the frame of mind it is as likely to have thawed out of the thawing tundra a viri that hasn’t seen a human since before we were human as to have jumped from raw bat to undercooked dog to malnourished human or escaped from a bioweapons facility in Cincinnati, Jerusalem or St Petersburg.
With all the underlying bugs in my spouse’s system, we were already aware of this by mid-February. She came out of skull-surgery the end of January so we were already in a partial lockdown, when they closed the Y one year ago today we got serious. She hasn’t been anywhere but the hospital since. As in – not out of the house in fifteen months. We were serious enough I kept a log for 120 days of everywhere I went, everyone I even came close to, which even now is limited to health-food store, general store, pharmacy and pot-shop. The good news is: I finally quit lifting weights!
The view from the hinterland, and it ain’t worth spit.
Keith P.
@RobertDSC-Mac Mini: I get my first shot tomorrow too!
LongHairedWeirdo
@Mary G: If I do that, I couldn’t post weird responses about chocolate pudding, and *then* where would we all be?
?BillinGlendaleCA
I had to visit the vet today to pick up the urn with my Conni’s ashes. It’s a nice urn with a place for a picture(I’d already picked one out) and a nameplate(though I’m not sure where it goes).
eclare
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Oh I missed the news about Conni, I’m so sorry.
sab
@?BillinGlendaleCA: I missed the news also. I am so sorry.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@eclare: Thanks, she had a good life.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@eclare:
@sab: Some pics of Conni I culled after she passed. The fifth from the last of her with the bandana is what I chose for her urn.
eclare
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Aww, what a little fluff ball!
sab
@?BillinGlendaleCA: What a cutie! I am so glad you could give her a good life. Not every dog has that opportunity.
HumboldtBlue
Toast to Conni.
sab
I haven’t had my (inherited) cocker groomed for a year. He looks like a tiny sheepdog, and he is extremely whiffy.
He hates (putting it very very very mildly) grooming. Shakes and shudders and shivers. Way beyond dislike, more like phobia and terror. Come Spring I think I might learn to trim him with scissors and a comb like in the olden days. End the terror. He’s a cocker. Wet is okay as long as no one is yanking his fur out.
ETA And he has always taken it like a trouper. Groomers hate cockers, but ours like him. He hates them. Our little bit to get something positive about the Covid year.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@eclare: When we first got her, it was hard to find the dog in all the hair.
@sab: She was cute, but could be a bit of an asshole, especially if you were the cocker spaniel that lived with her.
@HumboldtBlue: Thanks.
Mary G
@?BillinGlendaleCA: What a little Teddy bear. I’m sorry for your loss.
frosty
@RobertDSC-Mac Mini: I was out of state so I wasn’t sure it would happen, just hoped for the best. And it happened!! Now I have to figure out how to get a second shot in California, that reserves the vaccine for residents … by County. Online signups don’t work since I’m not a resident. I figure I’ll just start showing up at pharmacies that say they’ve got Moderna in stock.
C’mon guys, you can do as well for out-of-staters as Mississippi, can’t you?
sab
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Cockers put up with a lot.
Do you follow/read Connie Scultze (reportwr and also wife of Sherrod Brown Ohio Senator) on Twitter? They got their sweet little Franklin (mutt w/ dachsund and long haired relative) a companion named Walter. Looks a bit like your Conni, except one weird rambunctious ear. He has overrun the house and absconded with the owners. Franklin seems accepting, if a bit morose.)
Amir Khalid
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Sorry for your loss. She was a cutie.
sab
@frosty: Good luck. The second Moderna was a bit worse than the first ( as expected) but worth it.
burnspbesq
@Kent:
‘Then forget it. There is no chance of anything like that becoming law in Texas.
sab
Insomnia here. I want to be doing tax returns remotely, but some weird kink in our office system means somebody has to reboot my office computer, and nobody there to do it for at least the next six hours. Urk. At which point I will be up and awake and housewifing. I have fifteen tax returns in their little bag waiting for data entry. But no. It has to be a choice between work and my family.
HumboldtBlue
Oh, so you wanna make a Federal case out of it?
Here’s some detail about crooked cops.
Raven
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Aw man I’m so sorry.
sab
@Yutsano: Flu has killed tens of thousands of Americans every year, and we always just ignored it because it wasn’t our family. I have a lot of respect for Asians and their masks. Protect yourself and your community. I will probably masking in flu/covid season for the rest of my life. Not a big deal.
opiejeanne
@danielx: I got mine yesterday too! I was so excited I worried that I might do something stupid like faint, and thank goodness, I didn’t. I had a lot of left-over adrenaline while we waited to be released back into the wild.
The delivery method was novel, sort of a spring loaded needle that retracted almost immediacy with a *snap*! I didn’t really feel it. My arm is pretty sore now and a bit swollen, but I prefer that to the alternative.
Raven
@sab: I bought really good Andis clippers and groomed Raven and Lil Bit for 20 years.
sab
@Raven: Thanks. I will look into that.
eclare
@sab: I’ve decided to mask from now on too.
rikyrah
@RobertDSC-Mac Mini:
I understand
sab
@eclare: The year before Covid I had four colds. I hadn’t had a cold in 15 years. Made me wonder about my immune system. Several young mothers in the office with preschool and early school kids. Maybe that.
Then a youngish co-worker at my job had a husband with a drastic case of flu. She was dunking him in the bathtub with a bunch of ice to bring his 104 degree fever down in the middle of the night on a weekend. I do not know why no emergency room. They are religiously out there. Maybe that. He survived.
But I became skeptical of my co-workers common sense. So when Covid hit I quit. But this year they wanted me back because I am kind of good at my job. But remote only, with masks. Weird year we’ve had.
bjacques
@HumboldtBlue: “this week on ‘Adam-420’…”
I can’t see your nym without thinking “Temporarily Humboldt County”.
something fabulous
@Jay: The ONE even semi-decent thing about any of them was that she was involved in dog rescue! Figures.
sab
My dad’s nursing home has revised restrictions so I can visit for an hour once a week. He doesn’t even like me. Plus he is deaf and if I mask he can’t hear me. So still no car rides which he does like. So I will tell my sister stuck ( // nobody is stuck there) in CA to visit him if she ever can since she is his favorite (payback time is now her time.) I have done my bit. (Chortle.) I sound mean but it has been 20 years with me and not them.
My parents had four kids, not one.
HumboldtBlue
@bjacques:
It’s cool. I’m high too.
eclare
@sab: Makes sense, glad you’re able to work remotely.
Chris T.
Can we call it “the fleasels”?
mrmoshpotato
@Chris T.: I submit “flusels.”
patrick II
@lgerard:
Their refusal is a measure of Trump’s success, so, in that context, Trump did a fine job.
Cermet
Speaking of really, really good news from science a physicist/engineer is constructing (a real company building something real in NY state) a small nuclear reactor (using fast fission) that uses a liquid nuclear fuel (a Japanese creation); better still, all the fuel it needs will be waste nuclear fuel rods (the stuff no one knows what to do with or how to store long term.) Even better still, these reactors will cost about a third of what a typical nuke plant does (needs no back up systems or massive containment building – it is utterly safe (as in no failure possible – really. I am … or was, anti-nuke till I read this work.))
There is enough waste fuel stored at US plants so that his reactor design (based on work by Oak Ridge National Lab) to supply all (as in 100%) US electricity needs for a hundred years (at present rates electricity is being used.)
This solves AGW (carbon free power/electricity!) and gets rid of extremely dangerous nuclear waste all at once! This is a total game changer for us and the world.
See:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZn4rGF9B-Y
satby
@Cermet: That sounds good, but I’ll wait to hear what Cheryl says about it before I allow myself to feel very hopeful. Still, this is the year hope came back.
Amir Khalid
@John Revolta:
Ex-journalist here; I agree 100%.
Fair Economist
@sab:
I don’t think that’s literally true. The CDC flu report has 4,000-16,000 deaths per year coded to to flu, usually on the lower end. No doubt this is something of an undercount, but it’s not far off from the excess pneumonia deaths over expectation, so I think the annual flu deaths are typically on the order of 10,000 – not multiple tens of thousands.
There is a seasonal component to pneumonia deaths and some of those are secondary infections after respiratory infections, but based on the mortality statistics, most of the precipitating infections must be “just colds” and not technically flu.
Spanky
Personal yearly firsts yesterday:
First spring peepers (late)
First osprey! (Early)
First allergy attack (fuck)
And of course it’s daylight savings eve, for those who celebrate such things.
Robert Sneddon
@satby: Youtube videos do not a nuclear reactor make, sorry. Licenced and approved designs and funding and paperwork and poured concrete and bent metal make a nuclear reactor.
The Russians have been campaigning a “waste-eater” fast-neutron reactor design for decades now, starting with the now-decommissioned BN-350 back in the 1970s. They’re now operating the BN-800 which is supposedly the last prototype before the commercial BN-1200 models get built in quantity (the numbers refer to how much electricity they produce, in MW). Whether they do get built in quantity is another matter, of course.
The Chinese have their own small test CEPR reactor based on the BN-series technology up and running since 2010 but they’re building two larger reactors similar to the earlier Russian BN-600 designs with buy-in of the technology and initial fuel loads from Russia, with the first reactor expected to start up in 2023.
Note these are real projects, holes in the ground, concrete poured and metal bent, approved designs and finance arranged and parts being manufactured and scheduled for delivery to the construction site. Youtube videos are dreams and wishful thinking.
Fair Economist
@Kent:
Since vacinees can transmit at substantial, if much lower rates, and the effect will fade with time, I don’t think we’ll ever truly suppress it. I think it will be at best seasonal like the flu, and possibly constantly spreading like the other respiratory coronaviruses. There will be a nontrivial ongoing death rate as well. A few months ago I was expecting the ongoing death rate to be in the tens of thousands per year, making it substantially worse than influenza per se and comparable to all respiratory infection triggered pneumonia deaths. With the astonishingly low death rates after vaccination I now think there will be many fewer deaths, although quite possibly still comparable to flu deaths because of the antivax nutters. We’ll just have to see.
Geminid
@Cermet: Forbes Magazine published an article about this technology on October 13, 2020, author Llewellyn King. It has an overview of nuclear reactor history, and then reviews the molten salt reactor of Doctor Pheil, whose interview you link.
Cost may be a limiting factor for widespread use of this technology, now that wind and solar power generation are so relatively cheap. But in 20 years there might be some of these reactors set up at sites of existing nuclear plants, using the spent fuel rods stored on site for fuel. The old plants will be decommissioned over time, so the molten salt reactors could pick up their slack.
Even if the waste put out by these new reactors is not as dangerous as the large amounts of spent fuel rods we are already storing, popular resistance to any new reactors will be intense. The first units will have to have a almost flawless safety record for that resistance to abate at all.
Still, this technology may end up in the mix as we try to acheive the UN’s IPPC goal of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. So will so-called carbon negative technologies. British climate scientist Miles Allen has a very good article on that topic in the February 2019 issue of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, titled “A Green New Deal: the View From Across the Pond.” Allen served on the IPPC, and the article is worth a read..
Cermet
@Robert Sneddon: This person expects completion of their first reactor by 2023 – so yes, they are building a reactor using real materials. So this is a real project and for many years Oak Ridge ran a liquid fueled reactor (in the 70’s) so not exactly all that difficult or new.
Geminid
@Cermet: Considering the inevitable popular resistance to any kind of new nuclear reactors, the proponents of this technology might do well to ditch the “fast” part of the descriptor, “fast molten salt reactors.” And I hope Doctor Pheil makes sure his name isn’t pronounced like “Dr. Fail.”
Robert Sneddon
@Cermet: The Oak Ridge fuel-salt reactor was a low-powered experimental rig that, it turned out, leaked radioactivity and did several other bad things that a commercial or research reactor is not permitted to do today, fifty years on and a lot of stricter regulations later. Back then there were a number of other experimental reactor designs, some of which were quite promising but they fell by the wayside as the steam-kettle simplicity of the PWR and LWR designs took the market.
As for having a molten-salt reactor running by 2023, really? Looking at the video it’s a talking-head presentation similar to a lot of other Youtube videos I’ve glanced over, especially the thorium-booster squad (although this guy might not actually be in that business). There were no video or pictures of the reactor that Elysium is supposedly getting built included in the video, indeed the one-man-band in charge is begging for Patreon contributions elsewhere which sort-of-indicates there isn’t any money for construction of a reactor flowing into the project.
Basically the evidence over the past 50 years or so is that moving nuclear fuel around a reactor to make it work is a bad idea. All of the successful large-scale reactors built and operated since the 1960s have fixed fuel elements and use coolant (pressurised water, steam, gas, sodium etc.) to take away the heat and generate electricity. Pebble-bed reactors, despite their failures in the past are being tried again by the Chinese but no-one is actually bending metal anywhere on molten-salt reactors, not even the Russians.
It’s a good indication of the seriousness of such a presentation if they claim with a straight face that their magical reactor design is so super-safe that it wouldn’t need a containment building. The Chernobyl-4 RMBK reactor didn’t have a containment building either, just saying.
Frankensteinbeck
@danielx:
His fans couldn’t give a fiddler’s fuck about Former Guy’s outlook except he’s the name they stamped on their own asshole bigotry. And by god, they will force the entire world to say “Thank you, Sir, may I have another?”
Central Planning
@JoyceH: if you see this, where did you get that shirt? I would totally wear that all the time
Geminid
@Geminid: Speaking of molten salt, I am reminded of a project involving MIT scientists, using molten salt to store excess energy produced by wind and photovoltaic ellectric generation. Balancing the variable electricity production of these renewable souces with variable electricity demand will require adequate energy storage. Other technologies include batteries and pumped water storage.
Virginia’s Dominion Power operates a pumped storage facility in Bath County, where water is pumped uphill to a reservoir at night, then released during the high demand daylight hours. The Bath County plant was built in the 1970’s, to complement Dominions four nuclear reactor plants (operators like to keep nuclear reactors’ running at a constant level).
Central Planning
@HumboldtBlue: that was cool. I’ve found myself listening to more acoustic blues lately. There’s some decent playlists on Pandora and Spotify. I also found a Delta Blues channel that tends to have old, original recordings.
Geminid
Other energy storage technologies in the mix include: a Utah project using compressed air stored in empty salt domes; using excess power power to hoist hundred or more ton weights up mineshafts, the letting them slowly descend, powering a generator; and using excess power to generate hydrogen through electrolysis. One wind energy project proposed to be placed off the western coast of Ireland would produce hydrogen. That coast does not link well with the British power grid.
Robert Sneddon
@Geminid: You need “fast” if you want to promote your design as a waste-eater reactor. The Russian BN-series reactors and the Chinese CEPR run in a pool of molten sodium to conduct away the intense heat from a small dense core that produces lots of thermal and fast neutrons. Those fast neutrons can smash a nucleus apart, destroying dangerous radioactive isotopes produced by fission of uranium in power reactors hence the “waste eater” nomenclature. There are other benefits to fast reactors such as greater burnup of fuel per MW of electricity generated, the use of surplus nuclear weapons material as fuel and higher coolant-loop temperatures that can be tapped off to carry out, for example, desalination to provide fresh water.
The downsides of fast reactors is that everything happens in a very small volume unlike the big open grids of fuel rods in a PWR or BWR. Fast reactors are very hot and very dense in terms of fission and neutron production and this causes problems with material choices and isotopic chemistry (steel loses half its strength at the temps a fast reactor works at, for example). Debugging these problems would take a start-up years or decades to get right even before they could apply for a Construction and Operating Licence (COL) to build a reactor. No COL, no hole in the ground, no bent metal.
What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us?
Yeah I’m MD (Montgomery County, the most populous in the State) and at the pace we’re going here it’ll be mid summer before I get my jab, at the earliest, if things don’t change dramatically. We’re getting massively shorted on our share of vaccine doses. One of my county council members said in an email yesterday that we’ve gotten 11 doses per hundred residents while other counties have gotten more than twice that – up to 28 per hundred. Now he’s prematurely opening the State up. I’m not one for fat shaming generally but fuck big fat fucking Larry Hogan.
Michigan Hermit
@Jay: I would like to share this, may I and how should I credit you?
Uncle Cosmo
And the name should be Mediocrites, analogous to Democrites.
But precision has never been our Knucklehead Of The Frozen North’s strong suit.
Geminid
While metals technology may be the least of this type of reactor’s problems, the MIT scientists I reference above have devoloped alloys capable of standing up to the job of pumping molten salt. But using such a pump to operate a molten salt storage tank is certainly less problematic than use in a nuclear reactor.
But even if questions of reliability, safety, and public acceptance were resolved, the cost factor will likely prohibit these reactors, unless they prove out as a solution to the spent fuel rod problem.
Robert Sneddon
@Geminid: Pumped-storage is about the only gravitational energy storage system that really works in the Real World because it moves millions of tonnes of material via pipes and pumps to a higher elevation. That’s what’s needed to store significant amounts of gravitational energy and it only requires holes in the ground, something the human race is good at making plus lots of water. Compressed-air storage has big round-trip losses due to adiabatic heating of the air as it is compressed. The Powerpoint presentations try to hand-wave around this by adding heat storage and recovery systems which adds complexity and cost and doesn’t add up in the long run. Large-scale batteries are becoming competitive with pumped-hydro but no-one’s built anything bigger than a few hundred MWh yet which is negligible compared to the terawatt-hours of storage needed to buffer intermittent renewable generation and prevent Texas-style blackouts.
Before we need lots of storage for surplus renewables energy we’d need a surplus of course but no-one, other than a few special cases like Norway (30GW of hydro power dataplate, population of ca. 6 million people) or Iceland (geothermal) actually have that renewables surplus. For everyone else there’s fossil-fuel-burning gas turbine plants that emit CO2 and some non-carbon nuclear here and there.
BTW Norway doesn’t store its surplus hydro-electricity, it converts it into refined aluminium and sells it on the world market, mainly.
Geminid
@Uncle Cosmo: I read that Mediocrites invented the first bumper sticker, for his chariot. It translates to “Mediocre People are Always at Their Best.”
Geminid
@Robert Sneddon: I appreciate your practical approach to what is working in the Real World. But I would qualify this term, by saying the Real World At Present. Excess renewable energy production is a matter of when, not if. And the natural gas power plants that will help balance production from wind and solar power during the next few decades may well be fueled with hydrogen by the middle of this century.
Uncle Cosmo
@Robert Sneddon: And you, sir, have a long history here as a professional cynic/naysayer with no expertise to speak authoritatively on anything more challenging than elementary arithmetic. But that’s never kept your from shooting your mouth off.
Show us your credentials and a means to verify them, or shut your limey piehole.
JR
@Kent:
A communicable live attenuated vaccine is probably what’s needed to eradicate COVID. What people don’t realize about the early live attenuated vaccines like oral polio was that you could “pass on” the vaccine as it was just a weakened form of the virus. This meant massive community spread especially in urban areas.
We didn’t go that route with COVID because it takes forever to develop, plus there would be a lot more political resistance than there was 60 years ago.
Uncle Cosmo
@Geminid: Well played!
Half the human race is below average. Worth remembering whenever your BP threatens to surge into Donald-Duck-tantrum territory in response to the sort of stupidity that everyone with an internet connection is apparently enabled to Trumpet ;^D to the high heavens.
Geminid
@Robert Sneddon: The proposed Southwestern Irish wind-to-hydrogen project was reported on March 6 of this year in Renewable Energy Magazine. The Valentia Island Energy Cooperative seems serious about this, and assumes that hydrogen will be a major fuel within decades. They’re not the only ones. Last month Airbus rolled out designs of proposed hydrogen powered airplanes. They sounded serious, also. But I think net-zero oil will prove to be a transition fuel for the air transport industry, before hydrogen powered planes ever fly
Interestingly, a battery powered commuter plane is going through the certification process in British Columbia. It is a small Otter-type seaplane intended for short hops among islands and shoreline communities near Vancouver.
Geminid
@Uncle Cosmo: I saw such a bumper sticker some years ago, and it stuck with me. I thought it expressed a certain truth about the value of consistency.
Robert Sneddon
@Geminid: Hydrogen is one of those fuels that sort-of works, as in it’s been demonstrated in prototype form for cars and other forms of transport. What they don’t tell you is that the fuel is produced by reducing natural gas (CH4) in a catalytic process since no-one is making bulk hydrogen by electrolysis, at least in a commercial operation since it’s inefficient and electricity is expensive compared to natural gas production. It’s a two-step process to provide motive power but it still results in fossil CO2 being released into the atmosphere as a byproduct at the moment.
Going from electricity, whether from renewables, nuclear, hamsters in wheels to motive power using hydrogen is always going to be less efficient than using modern batteries. That’s not to mention the, ahem, interesting technological challenges of storing hydrogen given its odd chemical, reactive and physical characteristics — they don’t call it the escape artist of the Periodical Table for nothing and hydrogen embrittlement of metals over time is a known issue.
Storable liquid fuels produced from electricity and air to be used by future aircraft engines will probably be ammonia or similar via the Fischer-Tropsch process but it’s also inefficient, requiring a large surplus of electricity to produce mass quantities of this fuel. Biodiesel is a possibility if we can afford the agricultural land and farming effort to produce enough — a couple of airlines have demonstrated agri-derived fuel can be used in modified jet engines in the recent past.