There was a good bit of feedback from last week’s installment, and I want to point out that I am always glad when people point out flaws in my treatment.  I emphasized a particular sort of reactor, and neglected a couple of other ones.  I intend to set this right tonight.

The concern that seems to be in the forefront at present is the radiation leakage from the stricken plants.  As I write this (20110326), it is still not clear whence it comes, but I suspect that fuel rods are compromised and that nuclear fuel rod material is becoming commingled with the water that is supposed to cool the systems.

I say that because it is unlikely that if the spent fuel rod ponds were the source that the high levels of radioactive materials would have found their way into the turbine rooms, where the subcontractors were exposed to extremely high levels of radiation.

The primary thrust of this piece is to go through some of the fission products in the spent (and in use) fuel rods.  This will give us a basic understanding as to why used nuclear fuel is so much more dangerous than new fuel.

This is the first part of a comprehensive treatment of the albums released by The Who.  This promises to be an extremely long series, but I shall intersperse it with other topics from time to time, to keep it from being too monotonous.

I know, but still can not understand why, some folks are not fans of The Who.  LOL!  This was their first album, and was quite good in some respects, and weak in others.  They had already had some hit singles, but nothing astounding as of yet.  Note that I am using the U.S. discography by default, since I am in the United States.  Where possible, I shall cross reference it to the U.K. one.  Note that we shall take the studio albums first, then the live ones, and then attempt the very long list of compilations.

I have written about The Who many times before, but have never started at the beginning of their album career to cover it from then to now.  I hope that you like the effort, and some of the excellent music that I shall embed.

Those of you that read this irregular series know that I am from Hackett, Arkansas, just a mile of so from the Oklahoma border, and just about 10 miles south of the Arkansas River.  It was a redneck sort of place, and just zoom onto my previous posts to understand a bit about it.

I never write about living people except with their express permission, so this installment is about a long dead denizen of Hackett.

Arthur was not a nice man, by any means.  When I was around 10 years old, I would guess that he was around 45, give or take.  I suspect that he looked well over his real age, because he pretty much abused himself.

My good friend wanted his trailer to have some metal over the sides of it to use to tie down his riding lawnmowers, his ATV, and his large pull behind mower.  He has several acres to mow, at his farm and here at his house.

Yesterday we went to the hardware store and got supplies, went to his farm to pick up the trailer, and to the welding supply firm to get material.  We welded a little last night, and finished it today.

Welding is almost like art.  One takes a design, and makes it into a fusion of art and utility.  Dad taught me how to weld.

With the news about the horrible failure of the nuclear reactors in Japan, it occurred to me that many people do not really understand how nuclear reactors work.  This is the first part of a short series designed to demystify how nuclear reactors work.

All methods for generation of usable amounts of electricity require some sort of energy source.  In photovoltaic units, the electromagnetic energy in solar (or other) photons is the energy source.  In geothermal plants, the interior heat energy from the earth is used, whilst in wind plants the kinetic energy of moving air is used.  Hydroelectric plants use the kinetic energy of moving water.

Fossil fuel fired plants use the potential energy contained in coal, oil, or gas by converting it to heat by combustion.  Finally, nuclear electricity uses the potential energy of a very few heavy elements’ nuclei that is released as heat in the reactor.

I love to be able to fuse two topics into one!  Since almost the beginning of TeeVee, there has been theme music for its programs.  Many of you will remember lots of them, but there were some programs without music, the very first TeeVee image being one of them, although it got a theme later.  Does that pique your interest?

TeeVee became widely available in the late 1940s, in large part because of the revolutionary improvements in electronics because of the necessity of the war effort.  However, there is a backstory to that as well:  after the war was over, there was a flood of components that were military surplus, available for cents on the dollar, to be had by manufacturers.

TeeVee had been invented long before World War II, but the components were rare and expensive.  Because of the glut of surplus components, TeeVee became widely available, but that is more of a Pique the Geek piece.

Those of you that read this irregular series know that I am from Hackett, Arkansas, just a mile of so from the Oklahoma border, and just about 10 miles south of the Arkansas River.  It was a redneck sort of place, and just zoom onto my previous posts to understand a bit about it.

I never write about living people except with their express permission, so this installment is about a long dead denizen of Hackett.  This time it is about a teacher of mine, Elwood Brockman.

Mr. Brockman taught high school maths, and was also the grade school principal.  Since the entire school system from grades 1 to 12 (no K at the time), double duty was the norm.

For a firearm to operate, there must be an energy source to impart kinetic energy to the projectile being fired.  This is is true in general, but our discussion shall be limited to small arms with only a couple of exceptions.  These materials are called propellants, and the name is quite apt.

The first propellant used was blackpowder, the exact origin of which is lost in antiquity.  For centuries, actually up to very late in the 19th century, blackpowder was the only propellant available.

In the late 1880s what is now called smokeless powder was developed, and has replaced blackpowder in almost all applications except for what I refer to as “boutique” ones.  A substitute for blackpowder, Pyrodex(R) was developed , along with some other substitutes for reasons that will become apparent later.

One might expect that a band that was formed FIFTY YEARS ago this year might have some significant connexions with others, and one would be correct.  That is a long time ago, and The Zombies were early, British, and quite good.  They were not as prolific as many other bands, and almost became victims of their own success in a manner of speaking.

Interestingly, The Zombies were always more popular in the United States than they were in the United Kingdom.  I have no explanation for that other than the hypothesis that when they were getting “hot”, other bands like The Who, The Rolling Stones, and The Beatles were getting even hotter in the UK.

Please come with me to review the career of this very, very underrated British Invasion band.  As a preview to Pique the Geek for Sunday evening at 9:00 PM Eastern, the topic for the evening will be a new installment to my off and on series about firearms, this time about the propellants black powder and the modern smokeless powders, with a nod to Pryodex(r), a more modern substitute for black powder.

Those of you that read this irregular series know that I am from Hackett, Arkansas, just a mile of so from the Oklahoma border, and just about 10 miles south of the Arkansas River.  It was a redneck sort of place, and just zoom onto my previous posts to understand a bit about it.

I never write about living people except with their express permission, so this installment is about a long dead denizen of Hackett.  I never learnt what Dee’s real first name was; everyone just called him Dee.

He was a deputy sheriff just about forever.  This was in the mid 1960s to around 1980, give or take.  Here is what I remember about him.