rikko

It was either write that or watch the Liverpool Hearts game on TV. I stand by my decision.

Uranium compounds are mined, typically oxide form. This is extracted from rock and purified into form called 'yellow cake' or U3O8 in chemical composition. To convert it into modern fuel it is first turned into a gas by reacting it with flourine to get a compound known as 'hex' or UF6. It is then enriched to between 3 and 5% U235 (natural uranium is 0.7% u235) in a series of centrifuges or a huge gas diffusion plant. The uranium is then converted to uranium dioxide and turned into polo mint shaped pellets for use in a reactor. At this stage it is pretty benign as uranium has a very long half life its pretty stable. It will only do you harm if you decide to chow down on it as alpha radiation is pretty harmless unless it gets inside you. The first generation reactors used natural uranium metal fuel but these consisted of long bars covered in a magnesium alloy. Uranium isnt a particularly hard metal, its just very dense. It doesn't glow. It looks just like a bog standard lump of steel and is about as harmful as a big old lump of steel. When a reactor is on there is a characteristic blue glow which is cherenkov radiation, but you can only see in a swimming pool type reactor. Its fully contained within the steel or concrete walls of power station reactors. Fuel typically stays in the reactor between 18 months and 5 years depending on its location in the reactor. The central sees more neutrons so is used up faster then those at the edge. When its taken out of the core there is still plenty of u235 left and a bit of plutonium and lots and lots of fission products. The most common fission products are things like caesium 137 and strontium 90 but basically every element lighter then uranium will be present in small amounts. It is the radioactive decay of these fission products that gives off the heat and the vast majority of the radiation. Its not poisonous, just very radioactive. If you were stand next to an unshielded fuel rod for about an hour you would recieve a dose of approx 4 Sieverts and would stand a 50% death from acute radiation sickness. If you survive that you would face a 20% chance of receiving cancer due to the radiation later in life. The pellets are a lot smaller then you think, they are much closer to polo mint size. You are correct with the pools, the fuel is stored in 10m ish deep pools. Water is a very good radiation shield and excellent at removing the heat. The left over uranium and generated plutonium in spent fuel can be stripped out of the spent fuel and reused in new fuel. This is done by dissolving the spent fuel in nitric acid. Then using an organic solvent to extract the plutonium and uranium leaving behind a highly active liquid of fission products called 'HAL' and a plutonium and uranium mixture which can then turned into more fuel. This is done as it saves having to go through the highly expensive and energy intense uranium enrichment process. The HAL fission products are then concentrated in an evaporator and vitrified in a special kind of glass to immobilise it. This glass is then placed inside steel boxes and is currently stored in sellafield. There is work looking at building a large underground vault as the permanent place to dispose of these. Depleted uranium is the left overs from the enrichment process I mentioned at the top. Its never been anywhere near a nuclear reactor and is harmless, unless of course its shot at you from tank cannon. Its used as its very dense and due to the extra weight will penetrate armour. Again as long as you don't decide to have a big old depleted uranium tank shell sandwich you will be fine. Granite is more harmful in terms of radiation then depleted uranium is. Your skin will be fine and the level of sunscreen you recommend is not required! Its not the same stuff, its different. Depleted uranium is U238, the stuff that reacts in reactors is U235. Neither glows. The stuff in bombs is either very very highly enriched uranium (95%+ U235, compared with the 0.7% in natural uranium) or Plutonium 239. The amount you need to make a bomb is significantly more then you have as well. If you take 2 coke can sized lumps of this highly enriched uranium (660ml, which weighs approx 12kg) shape it into 2 hemispheres and bash them together nothing will happen other then a rather dull thud. You wont get any fissions or radiation other then the very very small amounts given off from the alpha decay. The aim in the 1950s was to create 1 megaton tnt equivalent bomb from 1 tonne of uranium/plutonium. The ones you mention are the designs from hiroshima and nagasaki, and that is a very simplified version of how they work. Your masses are well off the mark, think several hundred kgs, not hand sized lumps. The hardest part in making the bombs is stopping them blowing apart too early, as that is what they naturally want to do. To make them explode is actually ridiculously complicated, you can get a fizzle relatively easily where only part of the fuel is used but to get a full bomb you need a very precise timing and a great deal of tnt to keep the material together. The residual radiation from bombs isn't so bad as there is it very dilute, hence why there are still cities in japan rather then wastelands where hiroshima and nagasaki once stood. When the bomb goes off there is a huge pulse, but after its gone the radioactive matter is spread far and wide. The black rain that fell from the eye witness reports in hiroshima was the soot from the secondary fires with a great deal of active fission products trapped on them. As for a previous statement about the industry being secretive, all the information in this post is freely available online and accessible with google or in any number of books. If you genuinely have interest in this and want to know more I will happily point you towards free resources online that give more detail then you can shake a stick at.

It's a great relief to me. I get paid to protect society from science and industry and now Wolfy has said its all faked I can just pop my feet up and let the good times roll!

To the people blaming the rovers fans for their demise is mental. Change rovers for us and we'd have done the exact same thing if not more. THere are a lot of people panning them, but take a long hard look at what they faced before panning them for the kean out shite... Venkys really have stripped mined blackburn, they bought the club for £23million then sold phil jones for £20mil and reinvested bugger all of it. They make mike ashley look positively saintly and inspired in based on his performance during our relegation season, at least he had the balls to try and save it...

Francis 'fox in the box' Jeffers

Just bought myself some tickets for a Brazil V Belarus and Egypt Vs New Zealand double header at Old Trafford. Not too shabby for £20!

I graduated from Bumhole (Chemical) engineering 5 years ago, got a job playing with submarines in Plymouth for 4 years then moved to an engineering consultancy firm in Manchester last year. Other then that nothing much.

My last house move was the conveyancing from hell, the whole process took 5.5 months, had solicitors going bankrupt, being inept and downright lying. They (the people whos house i was buyings solicitor) agreed to completion date without consulting their client who was on holiday for 2 weeks. Cost me £1200 in storage, hotel bills etc. Complained but didn't even get so much as an apology. Best advice i can give you about conveyancing is pick a local solicitor you can pop in and bother for information. You pay a bit more but its much must easier to get information.

Completely irrelevant who I vote for as there can't be many more secure labour seats in the UK then this one. Was a big swing to the lib dems in the last election here and labour still had an 11000 vote majority. Voted Lib Dem last time, and its not exactly gone how I'd hoped. Would have preferred to see a conservative minority government this time with deals being cut for each individual policy. For a lot of issues there was support from at least 2 of the main 3 parties meaning it could have worked reasonably well. Or alternatively it would've blown up in a spectacular display of bickering and we'd have another election anytime now!

That's an interesting view point, but i think it is being overly pessimistic at least i hope it is other we might as well give up now! I agree with the starting view point about what going on at present but I think the ultimate aim to reach a debt free (including Ashelys Directors Loans) and then sell the club off for a ~£100mill profit. I think he got into the game when he saw the likes of Man U, Liverpool etc going for hundreds of millions and saw he could get a big side 'on the cheap' splash a little cash and flog it on for a profit a year or two later. Then he got stung by the clubs debt structures and collapse of the economy. The long term money to be made from your plan is peanuts to a man like ashley, he'll be making a few million a year which compared to the £100m+ sports direct pulls in is nothing. Its like having a £100k a year job and taking on a paper round. Just not worth the time and aggravation he receives for it. What he is now doing is probably his 3rd 4th or 5th choice plan and he is just fattening the club up by reducing debts whilst attempting to keep premier league status. Our aim for as long as ashley is in charge is to survive in the premier league, no more no less.

High def movies are ready to play after about 3 minutes, standard def even less than that. That's hardly "taking ages". What would annoy me far more is how unresponsive the Virgin menu system is. Takes at least 20 or 30 minutes before anything is ready to play on mine. More if you are using the internet for anything else. Hardly on demand... It's all down to the internet line as my place is about 4 miles from the exchange so the DSL is very limiting. IT can only cope with one thing at a time.

Would rather we developed our own young strikers who probably aren't good enough rather then someone else's who also probably aren't good enough...

Had Virgin Media when i lived in plymouth 6 months ago. The 50meg broadband was brilliant and the on demand from virgin was excellent - select what you want and it played instantly, full iplayer and random other stuff could pretty much always find something to watch. Moved house and no longer in a cabled area so have sky and its crap in comparison. Their on demand is years behind virgins, as it uses the internet to download stuff so takes ages... End up just using pikey bit torrents as its faster and has more selection. The only real benefit of sky is that the picture quality is better then what I had with virgin. Still got some old virgin V+ boxes and 50meg broadband modem kicking around as virgin never picked them up.

Since we won't be able to sign a half decent, let alone decent, striker this late in window. We should 'keep our powder dry' until the summer. Last thing i want is us to sign yet another shite striker who will fester in the first team for the next few years, we have enough of them as it is. We should have enough goals in the team too see us through the rest of the season, especially when Ben Arfa gets back.

Pretty much as I see it. Club were holding out to get as much of the Torres £50mil as they could. ACs eyes turned to $$$$ so handed in the request to pocket the money.

Just back from the game! Good work from argyle on the music and that! Buzzing still. We have won the league! Barton was getting mobbed on the pitch for about 20 mins after the game.

Barbican is probably best place. Tis a fair few miles from the stadium though.

Just back from the game, we were solid through out and never looked like conceding, but at the same time we had nothing going forward, no creativity whatsoever in the starting 11. Got a bit better when Jonas and Lovenkrands came on but not much.

Seperate Channel number 108 on Virgin Media need a V+ box for HD on virgin too. Don't know about the other networks though.

I did mine through O2 stores and had it back in under a week all covered on the warranty. Just make sure you have everything backed up.

Yes, that will do it. There are numerous devices that do it the sky+ job but on freeview and they can be procured at any decent electronics retailer.

To put this in comparison, the families of the folk who died in the air france crash are getting $24,000 each. So one downloaded song is worth 3.5 dead relatives!

I had it done 8 months ago. The results have been brilliant, wish i'd done it sooner! I went for the cheapest one on offer and can read the smallest line on the sight charts. THe actual operation itself was not pleasant, but only lasted like 10 mins in total once i was sat in the chair. Then immediately after my vision was alot better, just felt like i had grit in my eye and greens were more vivid. THe only problem i had was in getting from north london to south london without using the tube (which they said to avoid after) and being led by a friend who walks into things at the best of times...

Its now quite reasonably priced for beer, about £3.50-£4 a pint, rather then the £7 when i went. When you arrive at the airport make sure to take advantage of the duty free just before baggage reclaim, alcohol there is alot lot cheaper then anywhere else! You wont be able to see the northern lights this time of year since it wont be cold enough and dark enough, other then that steve is pretty much spot on.