I have one. I'm 178cms and I can't get my heels down, but I get the balls of both feel down with no issue. It's not top heavy like the Tenere or Africa Twin, so it's not too intimidating.
A Vancouver woman is asking for the courts to make an example of her neighbour, a practising lawyer she alleges has filed a baseless pseudolegal lawsuit against her in an attempt to “provoke a state of fear.”
Yup, that was the issue. California Transit (IIRC) did a study that looked at electric, hybrid, and fuel cell buses and compared them to traditional diesels. The electric buses in the study were the most reliable.
That's not true. I was seconded to SaskPower at the time. They were up to their eyeballs back then in the Boundary Dam clean coal project which officially launched in 2014. The official cost of $1.5B put a crimp in a lot of regular upgrade projects let alone any consideration of nuclear.
The glowing numbers for SMRs are marketing pap. Independent studies have them no less than conventional nuclear at roughly $6k/kW. Of course conventional nuclear never hits budget, with projects like Vogtle coming in around $13k/kW.
In the interim, SaskPower has installed somewhere around 400MW (700MW total) of wind, and the new 353MW combined cycle Chinook generating station in Swift Current, which at $605M ($1,700/kW) was $75M under budget. You'll never hear 'under budget' with regards to a nuclear project.
"Doc," he said, "sometime when the crew is up against it, and the breaks are beating the boys, tell them to go out there with all they've got and win just one for the Zipper."
The federal carbon tax doesn't go into a black hole its rebated back to taxpayers.
Atlantic Canada only got limited access to natural gas in the last fifteen years. Most homes are heated by electricity or fuel oil, both more expensive than NG. After the oil shocks of the 70s, governments incentivized switching to electricity. Over 60% of houses in NB are heated that way, mostly by baseboard heaters. Baseboards are roughly 100% efficient, while heat pumps are 2 to 3 times that.
Air to air heat pumps work down to about -20C, after that the heating coils will kick in. That's when heat pumps gets more expensive, on par with baseboards.
Base rwd Model 3 has a range of 430kms. With a 20% drop, you're still at 345kms in really cold weather. Even in Toronto, 75% of driving commutes are less than 25kms, and it's the worst case scenario.
One thing people like to ignore, average house sizes have doubled since the 1960s (1200sq ft to 2400sq ft) even as families became smaller than ever. Add in stupid fashions like 10ft ceilings, and heating costs are going to go nowhere but up.
Roman Chervinsky, a colonel in Ukraine’s special operations forces, was integral to the brazen sabotage operation of the Russia-Germany pipeline, say people familiar with the planning.
His figures are ridiculously optimistic for nuclear, $6000/kW and 6 year construction times.
Flamanville-3 and Olkiluoto-3 were both 12 years over their 5 year construction schedules. They were supposed to cost €3.3B and €3B respectively for 1650MW. Flamanville is expected to end up somewhere over €20B (€12000/kW), and Olkiluoto is somewhere around €11B, only due to 'not to exceed' limits in the supply contracts.
Hinkley Point C has gone from £16B to near enough £30B for 3200MW (£9400/kW)
It was the same with Vogtle 3 & 4. The preliminary budget of $12B, was changed initially to $14B at the start of construction. It's now somewhere around $30B and 7 years late. The two AP1000s have a combined output of 2200MW ($13000/kW).
V.C.Summer 2 & 3 was a similar pair of AP1000s. Costs went from $9B to $23B when the project was cancelled mid-construction.
Wind and solar are far faster to deploy, and typically on or near budget. The new, much cheaper redox flow batteries (100 MW/400 MWh for $266M Dalian, China) are capable of smoothing intermittency in areas without hydro, which can perform a similar function.
Edit. I should add that as of 2021, the global average for onshore wind is roughly $1300/kW. Prices continue to fall as new designs are introduced.
Lol, no. Électricité de France is being re-nationalized by the French government due to their terrible financials. Areva/Framatome needed cash injections to avoid creditor protection. Westinghouse did have to file for creditor protection and almost took down parent company Toshiba, but they were sold off at a loss to a private equity firm.
Nuclear only looks good on an operational basis. Once you add in construction and refurbishment/decommissioning costs, it looks far worse.
Vogtle ended up at roughly $13,000/kW. On shore wind globally is averaging roughly $1,300/kW. Grid-scale batteries are running roughly $3,000/kW, then add in for how much ride-through you expect to need.
Depending on local conditions, you can build out 10x as much wind capacity as you need, or various combinations of wind + solar+ batteries and still end up less expensive and with a faster deployment time than nuclear.
Same old strawman arguments. If it was just a question of poor reputation or people's fears, we'd still be building reactors. PR can paper over those questions easily enough.
No, the issue was, and remains cost, more specifically massive cost overruns. Darlington was the last new plant built in Canada. It ran the equivalent of $24B in today's money, for 3500MWe. Not cheap. Especially in light of how cheap the alternatives are.
SNC (AECL) are out of the new build business, so we'd likely end up looking at Areva EPR (or if we really want to gamble, the EPR2) or Westinhouse AP-1000. Their track records are even worse. The Vogtle-3 & 4 AP-1000s were supposed to cost $12B, but will end up running over $30B by the time they're both up and running. The similar V.C.Summer units 2 & 3 project was supposed to run $9B, but the project was cancelled while under construction when projections had it running $23B at completion.
Areva's track record with the EPRs is as bad. Olkiluoto-3 started construction in 2005, was supposed to finish commissioning in 2010, but only completed it in 2022. Costs went from €3B to €11B, though were limited by the contract. Flamanville-3 started construction in 2007, was supposed to complete commissioning in 2012, but it now projected for 2024. Costs have bloated from €3.3B to in excess of €20B.
Hinkley Point C is 2xEPRs . Initial budget was £16b. Currently it's on track to hit near enough £30B.
The French government has had to bail out Areva, and is in the process of re-nationalizing Électricité de France because of the massive liabilities they've been accruing. The average age of a French reactor now is 38 years. The GenII plants had a design life of 30 years after which they have to undergo in depth inspections, repair deficiencies and apply for a 10 year license extension. It was during this process that they discovered cracking and erosion in process piping. Between that, low water levels, and concerns about high effluent temperatures on the low water levels, at one point in '22, 35 of 56 operational reactors were offline. The French don't have the capacity to replace the older reactors fast enough. Their industry is in a tough spot.
If these projects had taken their originally scheduled 5 years, they would have been long since completed prior to COVID or the spike in inflation of the last three years. But they have been running 5 to, in some cases, 12 years beyond their original schedule. The longer a project takes, the more uncertainty enters the equation.
From 2010 to 2020 the core rate of inflation was averaging 1.7%, and 5.25 from 2020-2023. I'd be hugely surprised if any of these projects had estimated the annual inflation rate at less than 2%.
The bankruptcy of Westinghouse was directly tied to their inability to deliver on time/budget. Likewise the cash infusion to Areva to maintain solvency.
Over the history of North American reactors, budget overages have averaged 207% of their original budgets. The industry has a history of overpromising and underdelivering. Companies backing these projects are aware of the history and it's why finance rates on these projects tends to be quite high. The initial finance rate of the Hinckley Point C project was 9%, for example. The financiers recognize the risks. Financing for gas/wind/solar, in comparison, would be at or close to prime rates typically.
Yeah, I've seen that video before. I've worked in consulting engineering, primarily in generation for 25 years. The major non-nuclear projects I've been involved with have been within a few percentage points of the original budgets. Some of the worst ones were off by 10-15%. Not 150% as in the case of Vogtle.
The last combined cycle gas plant I worked on was the Chinook Generating Station in Swift Current. Fairly small at 353MW, but cost $600M, which was roughly $75M under budget. Those are words you'll never hear for a nuclear project.
The refurbishment at Point Lepreau was originally expected to run 18 months and cost $1.5B. It ended up being just short of 4 years and cost $2.5B. That's very expensive for a 660MW unit. CANDU6 have a design life of 30 years, when they need extensive refurbishments, or decommissioning. Lepreau made it to 28 years when reliability was really starting to impact it's viability. When faced with the same issue at Gentilly on a near identical reactor, Quebec Hydro pulled the plug. Quebec Hydro obviously having other options available to it.
At Pickering A plant, two units (A2 &A3) have been decommissioned. Units A1 and A4 were refurbished in the early 2000s. The refurbishments were supposed to cost $670M, but ended up costing over $2B. The 4 units of B plant were commissioned from 1983-1986. They've had life extension work to maintain their licensing to continue operations, but they need complete refurbishment or decommissioning. The Ford government has been dragging its feet. If a decision isn't made soon, the federal regulator will order them shut down.
The 860MW Combustion Engineering PWR at Maine Yankee only ran from 1972 until 1997, 25 years, when it was powered down for the last time. It was never particularly reliable and only hit a lifetime capacity factor of somewhere around 70%, not nearly enough to be economically viable. The cost to refurbish was estimated to exceed it's initial construction costs, so it was decommissioned and the site is currently used for storing radioactive waste.
These projects could be getting far better finance rates if they could stick to the 5 year construction schedule. They're penalized because history is pretty clear that they can't. With projects like the V.C.Summer plant being cancelled mid-construction due to overruns, financing became even harder to secure.
At Pickering A plant, two units (A2 &A3) have been decommissioned. Units A1 and A4 were refurbished in the early 2000s. The refurbishments were supposed to cost $670M, but ended up costing over $2B. The 4 units of B plant were commissioned from 1983-1986. They've had life extension work to maintain their licensing to continue operations, but they need complete refurbishment or decommissioning. The Ford government has been dragging its feet. If a decision isn't made soon, the federal regulator will order them shut down.
The Liberal government is moving ahead with efforts to keep assault-style firearms out of the hands of Canadians, Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc said Monday.
AR-15 are typically 5.56mm or .223, not ideal for much beyond plinking varmints. People do use it, but it might take a couple of shots and you have to watch your range.
For deer or elk, you'd want something like .30-06 or .30/30 or 7mm Rem mag, or even .300 Win mag, but that's a bit much.
I have a lot or respect for Ed, but he was much more suited for opposition than governing. I suspect he'd have pulled a Bob Rae. try to do too much, and flame out in the ensuing backlash.
On the list of "greatest never-was" I'd likely put Robert Stanfield high on the list. Sort of a Joe Clark like character, very down to earth and related to people on a personal level. He was conservative in the "think twice and act cautiously" vein, not the "burn everything down" types we're stuck with today. His subdued style and the lingering aftertaste of the Diefenbaker days combined with Trudeaumania left him as an also-ran.
I was referring only to Rae's one term government. The backlash resulted in the election of the Mike Harris PCs with the resultant looting, corruption and devastating tax and service cuts.
In the last ~20 years Rae's carved out a pretty solid track record.
According to court documents, Lichtenstein used a number of advanced hacking tools and techniques to gain access to Bitfinex’s network. Once inside their systems, Lichtenstein fraudulently authorized more than 2,000 transactions in which 119,754 bitcoin was transferred from Bitfinex to a cryptocurrency wallet in Lichtenstein’s control. Lichtenstein then took steps to cover his tracks by going back into Bitfinex’s network and deleting access credentials and other log files that may have given him away to law enforcement. Following the hack, Lichtenstein enlisted the help of his wife, Morgan, in laundering the stolen funds.
Only the first of many that came to mind. And that's before we get into all the pump and dump and rug pull schemes.
How's the Canadian government going to get around restrictive zoning? You're blaming the wrong level of government. As long as that happens, all we're going to get is half-assed programs and little results. Ferret Face can propose all sorts of things, knowing he'll never have to deliver, "Courts struck down the program, sorry.".
Housing continues to be the jurisdiction of the provinces. The article ignores the patriation of the constitution in 1982, which lead to the Feds withdrawing from a bunch of programs they formally funded.
It also ignores the fact that housing prices in the GTA (among other places) were stagnant through the 1990s, so there was little incentive to continue building projects that would only increase supply and add downward price pressure. Once Harris got in, any chance of social housing development went out the window.
We also have to recognize that average house sizes have doubled since the 1960s. We're using more land and more material to build fewer houses. What the hell did people think was going to happen to house prices? The sub-1000sq.ft. "strawberry box" houses built in the thousands as post wartime housing can't be built in large part due to lack of demand and restrictive covenants. The same for the three story walk ups.
"Why use 1 part when 6 will be more interesting." Those engineers? I'm not saying they can't, but I wouldn't be putting money on it.
Right now we can't do fission economically despite 70 years of trying, and it's basically using hot sticks to boil water. Suspending plasma in a magnetic field to somehow boil water is a whole other level of complexity.
New bike, who dis? (feddit.nu)
2022 Moto Guzzi V85TT Travel. Brand new! Can’t ride it until march at the earliest though 😭
Vancouver lawyer who sued over condo deck divider accused of pseudolegal 'paper terrorism' | CBC News (www.cbc.ca)
A Vancouver woman is asking for the courts to make an example of her neighbour, a practising lawyer she alleges has filed a baseless pseudolegal lawsuit against her in an attempt to “provoke a state of fear.”
More than half of Edmonton's $60-million electric bus fleet not roadworthy (edmontonjournal.com)
SaskPower announces partnership to develop small modular nuclear reactors (globalnews.ca)
SaskPower, Ontario Power Generation and Laurentis Energy Partners announced a strategic partnership is established in nuclear power development.
[REAL, 1984] The Zoe Zipper (lemmy.world)
IMAGE 1...
Public support for carbon tax waning quickly (www.nationalobserver.com)
Ukrainian military officer coordinated Nord Stream pipeline attack (www.washingtonpost.com)
Roman Chervinsky, a colonel in Ukraine’s special operations forces, was integral to the brazen sabotage operation of the Russia-Germany pipeline, say people familiar with the planning.
Wisconsin Woman Returns Home after Circumnavigating the World on a Motorcycle - Fox21Online (www.fox21online.com)
From the article:...
F-35 fighter jet to cost Canada $74 billion, says PBO (ottawacitizen.com)
During the 2015 election campaign, Justin Trudeau vowed that his government would never purchase the F-35....
Elon Musk gives X employees one year to replace your bank (townflex.com)
Just over half (55%) of Canadians support using nuclear energy to generate electricity (www.ipsos.com)
Right-Wing ‘Take Back Alberta’ Group Purges Top Organizers As It Plans to Target School Boards Across Canada (pressprogress.ca)
Liberals advance assault-style gun ban with legislation, regulation: LeBlanc (globalnews.ca)
The Liberal government is moving ahead with efforts to keep assault-style firearms out of the hands of Canadians, Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc said Monday.
Ed Broadbent, the Best Prime Minister We Never Had | The Tyee (thetyee.ca)
The rules said I must post before I leave... (lemmy.world)
Well, they repealed the Glass-Steagall act...
COMMENTARY: The free market will not fix our housing crisis - NB Media Co-op (nbmediacoop.org)
Alberta government wants to leave CPP (www.cbc.ca)
Can German engineering solve the challenges of fusion? (www.bbc.co.uk)