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Here’s a sample of the comments on this post.
“we need to do our best in bringing about such new tech in a smart way, but at some point you do just have to build it” Yeah, I think you’re probably right. I keep hoping we’ll get smarter about it *before* we jump into the deep end of the pool, but how likely is that? Like my family often says, you can’t steer a parked car…
Mass spectrometer…which also uses magnetic fields, but in this case to separate isotopes based on their atomically small mass differences. Actually a geology lab–analyzing δ18O and δD in water, and δ13C in carbonate rocks, mostly. Never had to (got to?) take O-chem. I think if I’d gone further down the petroleum road, it would have been required. I stopped at seismic surveys and borehole geophysics.
There are always positives and negatives. This is true from the very simple like fire can save people from freezing or can burn down a home, all the way to the complex such as the same technology that invented fertilizer (vastly reducing starvation on a global scale) also invented modern chemical warfare agents/explosives.
I figure we need to do our best in bringing about such new tech in a smart way, but at some point you do just have to build it. After that, keep improving the design.
This is the mistake that we have made with our current reactors. We got scared and made it effectively impossible to build a new one. Now we know how to build them better and safer but can’t. However we still have roughly 100 aging old school reactors on line that only so much can be done for (iirc). Between cost and regs there is simply no way to replace them with something a good sight better.
Anyway, I hope LM get it working, it would be a fantastic achievement and a solid step toward a better future.
This would be bad ass in my Chevy
Haha thanks Ms. B I’m glad I could share some knowledge too for once! You probably know more than I do now, I just remember they used Boron control rods in the Manhattan project. That’s a good story, how you ended up working in a (I assume chemistry) lab! I really like chemistry myself but never do very well in class, especially in my favorite, Ochem, ha!
I know I could google it but it’s more fun to ask, was it nMRI you were working with?
Also I have to agree Mr. 6, street smarts beats my limited engineering knowledge in most situations!