Quotes – 7

“Beware the leader who bangs the drums in war to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind.And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded by patriotism, they will offer up all their rights unto the leader and gladly so.

How do I know ? For this is what I have done. And I am Ceasar.”

– An experienced leader’s pragmatic words.

Nuclear Plant Has Flaw Undetected for 19 Years

This is scary at first sight.Excerpt from the article

A potential problem with the emergency reactor core cooling system at the nation’s largest nuclear power plant went undetected from 1986, when it began producing power, until last week, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission(NRC) and the plant operator confirmed Thursday.

The issue was identified when engineers at the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station did an analysis after NRC inspectors raised questions at a detailed inspection early last week. The NRC was following up to see if earlier cooling system problems had been fixed.

The review showed the emergency cooling system may not operate as expected to provide water to reactor cores after a small leak in the reactor cooling lines, NRC spokesman Victor Dricks said.

Practically, for this flaw to lead to any kind of disatrous results, lots of redundant safety systems need to fail together. Well, i am not refuting the fact that such an incident could have happened anytime in the past 19 years of its operation but chances for a complete failure and a meltdown are slim. Nevertheless, this is definitely a serious issue and hopefully, the NRC will bring in a stricter system to check all the flaws in all operating reactors.

God, i dont even want to begin to imagine what the media fuss will be, on all this.

Quotes – 6

If one lets an infinite number of monkeys to type on a keyboard, one will eventually write Macbeth, but does that mean they are as intelligent as Shakespeare?via Who created the Creator then ? : a random post i stumbled onto.

Logic and math riddles

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  The king sits in his central room and the n prisoners are all locked in their sound proof cells. In the king&#8217;s central chamber is a table with a single chalice sitting atop it. Now, the king opens up a door to one of the prisoners&#8217; rooms and lets him into the room, but always only one prisoner at a time! So he lets in just one of the prisoners, any one he chooses, and then asks him a question, &#8220;Since I first locked you and the other prisoners into your rooms, have all of you been in this room yet?&#8221; The prisoner only has two possible answers. &#8220;Yes,&#8221; or, &#8220;I&#8217;m not sure.&#8221; If any prisoner answers &#8220;yes&#8221; but is wrong, they all will be beheaded. If a prisoner answers &#8220;yes,&#8221; however, and is correct, all prisoners are granted full pardons and freed. After being asked that question and answering, the prisoner is then given an opportunity to turn the chalice upside down or right side up. If when he enters the room it is right side up, he can choose to leave it right side up or to turn it upside down, it&#8217;s his choice. The same thing goes for if it is upside down when he enters the room. He can either choose to turn it upright or to leave it upside down. After the prisoner manipulates the chalice (or not, by his choice), he is sent back to his own cell and securely locked in.
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  The king will call the prisoners in any order he pleases, and he can call and recall each prisoner as many times as he wants, as many times in a row as he wants. The only rule the king has to obey is that eventually he has to call every prisoner in an arbitrary number of times. So maybe he will call the first prisoner in a million times before ever calling in the second prisoner twice, we just don&#8217;t know. But eventually we may be certain that each prisoner will be called in ten times, or twenty times, or any number you choose.
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<p>
  Here&#8217;s one last monkey wrench to toss in the gears, though. The king is allowed to manipulate the cup himself, k times, out of the view of any of the prisoners. That means the king may turn an upright cup upside down or vice versa up to k times, as he chooses, without the prisoners knowing about it. This does not mean the king must manipulate the cup any number of times at all, only that he may.
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Hot new fuel for nuclear reactors

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  Engineers from Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, added beryllium oxide to the standard uranium oxide pellets used in light water reactors. Because uranium oxide does not conduct heat well, pellets made of it tend to crack and degrade as the temperature of the reactor core rises and falls, and this means they have to be replaced before all the fuel has been used. Beryllium oxide is a better conductor of heat, so it allows the fuel pellet to cool more efficiently, says Alvin Solomon, who led the research. This means the combined pellet lasts much longer than the standard one.
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Quotes – 5

I am sure every one of you know by now that this year’s Nobel Peace Prize has been jointly awarded to International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei, the Director general of IAEA. In his interview, after the announcement of the award, he made a beautiful statement. Here it is.

If we are going to survive, we need to put the emphasis on what unites us together and not what separates us. It is not the difference in colour or creed or border, or what have you; it’s a fact that you are part of the human race, and the more we are able to understand the affinity we have with it, with each other, the more we can have, achieve, a lasting peace, durable peace, I believe.

And that my friend, is a true peace loving man’s words !

A-bomb system can warn of tsunami

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  &#8220;One of the common ways was to make spectrographs &#8211; looking at how the spectrum of sound waves developed over time &#8211; and in this we saw the unique signal.&#8221;
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<p>
  The two researchers describe the unique signal found on spectrograph plots recorded by Indian Ocean hydrophones as a &#8220;chirp&#8221;.
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  What it means is that low-frequency vibrations are arriving before those of higher frequencies, producing a distinctive upward curving slope.
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  &#8220;In this frequency range &#8211; and these are very low frequencies, well below 1Hz &#8211; this is a unique signal,&#8221; said Dr Bowman.
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Earthquake prone South-Asia

Nearly 20,000 dead in South Asian quake. This is very sad. On a beautiful sunday morning, this is not the kind of news i wanted to see.Eventhough i do not exactly like Pakistan or maybe just their Indian team and politicians, a toll of 20,000 innocent people is a terrible and disturbing news. And what’s more petrifying is that South Asia is Prone to more Earthquakes in the future. Here are some excerpts from this article about some of the damage that earthquakes have caused in the past.

The area along India’s northern border in disputed Kashmir is by far the hottest spot in that country, said A.K. Shukla, director of India’s Earthquake Risk Evaluation Center. He said the latest quake, unfortunately, will not be the last and may not be the largest to come.”It’s not a question of surprise, because that area is a highly seismic one,” he said. “It’s not surprising at all.”

Saturday’s quake was centered about 60 miles northeast of Islamabad in the forested mountains of Pakistani Kashmir. At least 22 aftershocks followed within 24 hours, including a 6.2-magnitude temblor.

In 1935, a magnitude-7.5 earthquake was recorded in Quetta, India, killing 50,000. In 1974, just north of the recent quake’s epicenter, a magnitude-6.2 earthquake occurred, generating 5,800 casualties.

Will the same type of collision that created the Himalayas millions of years ago be the demise of beautiful Asia and my beautiful sub-continent ? I pray for that not to happen.

Update : Death Toll at 35,000 in Pakistan Quake

Super-efficient N-reactors

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Qualifiers ? A thing of the past …

Just got the hot news. I have cleared all three papers in my qualification exam ! I rock ! I am high with excitement now. If the world is going to collapse onto itself, please let it be now.

Good things aside, i still have a oral qualifier round to look forward to. I was told that i was a bit weak with Reactor Physics and so have 2 major Gods in nuclear department specializing in Xr physics on my committee for the oral.

Now this is going to be fun. Before even the thought of starting preparation for the oral, i am going out to party ! Woohoo …