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Titanic Redux a la Baltimore

  At 1:30 a.m., Mar 26, the MV Dali, a 91,128-gross-tonnage container ship, slammed into one of the concrete-and-steel support piers holding up a four-pillar structure of the Francis Scott Key Bridge spanning the Patapsco River in Baltimore, Maryland.   The support pier and its column went down immediately, and with it went much of the 1.6-mile (2.6‑kilometer) bridge, killing six maintenance workers on the bridge and possibly some drivers of vehicles passing on the bridge.   Rebuilding the bridge may require $400 million to as much as $2 billion. Recriminations began to fly almost as quickly as the bridge fell.   There was an initial report that the ship’s captain was a Ukrainian probably angry about the slowdown of military aid to Ukraine from the United States.   A later report clarified the Ukrainian captain had served in 2016, about 8 years previously.   At the time of MV Dali’s collision with the bridge crash, the captain and all crew were Indian nationals.   ( Goldin ) Hopefu

I just Found Fire2Fission—Some Smart People

  Yeah, I always come late to the party, but this is a great party.   The theme is that some people, especially people in the oil and gas industry, think that nuclear fission would be a great thing.   They do not see it as a danger.   Rather, they see a world where two billion people still only have the energy of their muscles, any draft animals, and wood or dung they burn for cooking.   Thus, they do not fear nuclear fission competition and even see it is as another needed energy source while oil and gas could shift to producing higher value products. Mark Hinaman of the Fire2Fission nuclear advocacy group made those points and more in a Chris Keefer Decouple Podcast on April 17 of this year. The podcast started with the question of whether we shall soon see peak oil and gas from shale fracking.   Hinaman is Director of Engineering and Innovation at Franklin Mountain Energy so he was highly qualified to comment on the possible timing of peak shale after which production would d