I know there are already a dozen of Japan meltdown topics out there but seriously... The BP oil leak, this meltdown in Japan.... They try to fix it with methods that come straight out of the 60's.... Sure, we have the internet, and Iphones... But other than that... It seems we have been standing still or am I missing something? Most of what we use has been here for decades if not longer. I would simply expect if something like in Japan happens guys like this step in and fix it... I know, I probably have watched too many movies but still... Look at the hundreds of billions, maybe trillions, getting poured into military research each and every year yet when there is a nuclear meltdown the best they can come up with is pouring water or cement out of helicopters or police cars? What a joke.
Well, there's a view that most mature Western economies have plateaued in terms of the pace of innovation and technological progress. Tyler Cowen has written a short book about this. I haven't read it yet, but it's supposed to be pretty good. http://www.amazon.com/Great-Stagnation-Low-Hanging-Eventually-ebook/dp/B004H0M8QS
"the best they can come up with is pouring water or cement out of helicopters" What, we should have invented satellite water cannons just in case that exact black-swan scenario happened? Shit happens !
The boomers won't let go of the keys. Government programs fund nearly all scientific research and steer it into the ground. The population has been bred to fear change.
Exactly, the best we have is the internal combustion engine or diesel, that's sad. Capitalism doesn't always breed innovation, at times it simply crushes or shelves it so it doesn't cut into profit margins.
I am sorry but I would rather our resources go to the the nuclear situation than Libya. If there was a reason to invade a country and force our will its on it its Japan. Allowing an admitted fucking corrupt power company manage this clusterfuck is sheer stupidity. If they fuck this up anymore we will all deal with consequences. Julian Assage is looking more genius every day. That guy should be given a medal he was trying to warn people what a joke Japanese nuclear safety was and instead the US gov. wants to vilify him.
Many of the technological "advances" have been for entertainment technology and not necessarily practical applications. Why do you think computer chips are using multiple core designs? There haven't been enough real advances to allow single cores to run faster without overheating. All of these better TVs, better smartphones, better video game systems, better social websites, etc... aren't practical advances. Also, consider how we put people on the moon in the 1960's. I would maintain that the tech in this area has digressed as we can now barely put people safely into a simple orbit (see two shuttle accidents). A lot of nanotech products should be coming out in the next few years, so maybe that will be the start of some practical advances.
When you are dealing with the molecular level in terms of splitting atoms and creating energy via spinning a turbine from the heat that comes from nuclear fission then no, we are not that good yet at stopping this chain reaction. Its like margin, we know we can make a shit load of money when we are on the right side of the trade but when things go wrong, we lose bad.
Hydrogen is an egg. Proton and neutron should never be split. Nearly all of energy today is heat dynamics: how much work can you get from heat differential. Capillaries. A tree carries water up into a coconut. That's non-heat related energy.