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Nuclear energy?
- Thread starter baba
- Start date
Geoff St. Germaine
Commercial User
- Aug 31, 2001
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- Owner - St. Germaine Guitars
Really? I don't see any way in which nuclear energy (harnessing energy by splitting apart atomic nuclei) is in any way primitive. In fact, Gen IV nuclear reactors will be anything but primitive (not that Gen II or Gen III are either)... not to mention nuclear fusion.
Right, so instead of doing something as cool as fusing atoms together or splitting them apart, we'll make a giant "planetary dam" and use the planets' momentum for our needs. That's a lot more advanced.
Splitting apart atomic nuclei sounds primitive to me. It might be complex and hard to do, but still seems like crushing rocks with a sledgehammer
Geoff St. Germaine
Commercial User
- Aug 31, 2001
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That doesn't seem to jive with the dictionary's definition of primitive:
"characterized by simplicity and (often) crudeness" vs "complex and hard to do".
If splitting apart atomic nuclei (such as by bombarding a uranium-235 nucleus with neutrons) is primitive, then I'd love to hear your definition of an advanced process.
I spent lots of time windsurfing right off Indian Point in the Hudson river and I'm fine.
***THREAD HIJACK ALERT***
Check your PM Knifemaker, I grew up on Huchinson Island
***YOU MAY NOW RETURN TO YOUR PREVIOUSLY SCHEDULED PROGRAM, ALREADY IN PROGRESS***
Why would you come up from Florida to windsurf the Hudson
For the glowing, green water
I grew up in Brewster and dated a girl in Peekskill. I moved to Florida, permenantly about 11 years ago. The area near Indian Point can be windy as hell.
You only really have to worry about the three eyed sturgeon 
*I live right across the river from Indian Point. On the "escape" plan it basically says "you're ****ed." I'm one of the few who trust it though...everyone else thinks it will just blow up in a Hiroshima'esk explosion.
*I live right across the river from Indian Point. On the "escape" plan it basically says "you're ****ed." I'm one of the few who trust it though...everyone else thinks it will just blow up in a Hiroshima'esk explosion.
well, you definitely have to make a lot of stuff in order to bombard something as tiny as an atom. I still think that in a hundred years or less that fission energy will be laughable.
Geoff St. Germaine
Commercial User
- Aug 31, 2001
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I seriously doubt that. What do you base this on? What do you see coming up in the next hundred years that will make fission seem laughable. Hopefully in 50 years we will have a very, very clean fission technology with a closed fuel cycle, perhaps a Thorium cycle with actinide recycling... or maybe a workable fusion solution.
Geoff St. Germaine
Commercial User
- Aug 31, 2001
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- Owner - St. Germaine Guitars
I wondered when someone would point that out. I suppose you do?
I think poop-loops is doing a physics undergrad and from what I've seen he knows a thing or two about science. I did my MSc in plasma physics working on a form of nuclear fusion.
You guys definitely got me on the "thinking cap" there. It suredly does take an exceptional mind to tackle atomic physics,,I havent studied it, I probably couldn't manage it. So, speaking as someone who knows little about science; I think that solar and wind energy and even water energy are finer than atomic fusion or fission. Energy just smoothly changes hands.
i plan to have a house when im older that is completely self-efficent energy wise, either from a wind turbine or from solar panels.
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Considering going to a MS in physics instead of a full on Ph.D. A guy I work with who has a MS in physics said he didn't want to go get a Ph.D. because he didn't want to specialize that much and he wanted to start working. Both of which I see as plusses.
What is your take on this? I've also been told that the glass ceiling is higher with a Ph.D., but does it make much of a difference in industry? Is it just something in academia that really matters?
Geoff St. Germaine
Commercial User
- Aug 31, 2001
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Almost all of the guys that were in the department when I was doing my MSc. went into industry. Of the two I'm an closest friends with (and the only two that I really know what they are doing), one is working for a wind power company working on, I believe, using some sort of resistive load to control the rotation speed of the blades, rather than the mechanical systems that are currently used. The other is developing fuel for the new ACR-1000 Advanced CANDU Reactor. The two of them had engineering undergraduate degrees though which probably makes them somewhat more attractive.
I guess it all depends how much of a specialist you want to be. If you can do your MSc. in an area that you want to work in then you could immediately try getting a job. At the same time you can feel out what the appeal for PhDs is in that field (though you could certainly change fields between your MSc. and your PhD).
The problem I see with a PhD is that it is pretty easy to draw a topic that has no relation to industru. For instance the one PhD student in our group was working on a tokamak fusion reactor concept, which at this point has no industry behind it. On the other hand, a guy in one of the other plasma physics groups doing his PhD was working on silicon electroluminescence and I know that this has wide application to industry (and I think the guy may be working for Intel now).
most graduate physics programs don't offer a masters as a terminal degree. it's usually just a consolation prize after you drop out after a few years. 
