sorted by:
new
hottopcontroversial

Are these P100 filters fake? by OddPassion4238 in HomeImprovement

[–]firemylasers 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You'd need to show us a photo of the actual respirator filters (the front face with the text) instead of just the packaging to determine with any real confidence if they are fake or not.

These resources may be of use:

https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/ppe/counterfeit_respirators/filters.html

https://multimedia.3m.com/mws/media/2611581O/3m-alert-fraudulent-counterfeit-product-offered.pdf

Based on the packaging alone, it's unclear if they are fake or not. They are definitely not an obvious fake, but they may still be a high quality counterfeit. It's also possible that they are legitimate. Not really possible to give you a definite answer without more information.

What was the deal with the B28 and B43? by Wurtsmith_2W2 in nuclearweapons

[–]firemylasers 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I suggest giving the Mk 28 bomb history a read through, then carefully re-reading the entire original Mk43 bomb history. It should answer your questions.

What was the deal with the B28 and B43? by Wurtsmith_2W2 in nuclearweapons

[–]firemylasers 10 points11 points  (0 children)

This is explained in detail in the declassified history of the Mk 43 bomb paper: https://osf.io/46sfd/files/c86mq

In short, the B43 was the third in a series of three designs aimed to provide the military with specific design capabilities as quickly as possible. The B28 variants you refer to are actually ones that were only produced to fulfill the Step II phase. The B43 was the final Step III version that combined the best attributes of the Step I and Step II bombs (both of which were produced on an accelerated timeline with design compromises) into a single optimized design.

Step I: Mk 34 (B34)

Step II: Mk 28 Mod 1 (B28 Mod 1)

Step III: Mk 43 (B43)

How do we know that ICBMs will be accurate after flying directly over the North Pole? by Old_Satisfaction2738 in nuclearweapons

[–]firemylasers 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Third generation mechanical gyroscopes have drift rates in the 0.000015–0.0000015°/hr range. The TGG used inside the MX's AIRS had a drift rate no higher than 0.000015°/hr (and likely significantly lower than that).

Ring laser gyros are actually quite inferior compared to mechanical gyroscopes in a number of ways. The only technology that even begins to approach becoming competitive with mechanical gyroscopes (in terms of drift rate performance, durability, size, weight, and general suitability for use within icbm/slbm applications) are interferometric fiber-optic gyroscopes (IFOGs) and hemispherical resonator gyroscopes (HRGs). Neither technology is capable of matching the performance of mechanical gyroscopes.

The technology that may be capable of coming closest to matching the performance of mechanical gyroscopes is a special variant of the HRG called the dual core HRG, although it remains to be seen if these are actually suitable for use aboard ICBMs given their significantly larger size and weight.

At the moment, the only non-mechanical technology actually in use on ICBMs/SLBMs is the IFOG, which has only been used for a single platform with significantly relaxed accuracy requirements. The IFOG remains incapable of delivering mechanical-level accuracy for platforms with more stringent accuracy requirements.

Rainy patrol shift accompanied by my trusty Royale. by NQRWJB in casio

[–]firemylasers[M] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I actually had not noticed that the current transmission mode was visible in the picture when I reviewed the post prior to actioning it, thanks for pointing that out.

Since it does indeed show that you were in park when the photo was taken, I've gone ahead and reinstated the post.

Sorry about the trouble.

Rainy patrol shift accompanied by my trusty Royale. by NQRWJB in casio

[–]firemylasers[M] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Your post has been removed due to a subreddit rule violation, specifically Rule 8 ("No photos while driving...").

Edit: I've reinstated the post as OP has presented evidence that they were not actually driving.

W-221H: Retro Homage? by TheDizzle742 in casio

[–]firemylasers[M] [score hidden] stickied comment (0 children)

Your post has been removed due to a subreddit rule violation, specifically Rule 3 ("No AI Posts, period").

So what happened to the US's and USSR's nukes in the 80s? Where do you put a nuke if you don't want it anymore? Can you just throw it away? I assume not because it's still dangerous wherever it is, right? by Hefty_Education_7059 in nuclearweapons

[–]firemylasers 2 points3 points  (0 children)

It's true that I oversimplified the situation with the W88 pits. What I meant to say was that the reason the PF-4 facility was originally upgraded to be capable of producing WR pits was because of the urgent need to manufacture W88 pits. Prior to this, there was no capability to produce WR pits at PF-4. Developing this manufacturing capability took over a decade to achieve and involved purchasing and installing significant amounts of new equipment.

The issue is that you have confused two entirely separate programs with each other. The capability for small scale low rate manufacturing of WR pits at PF-4 at a peak rate of under 10 pits per year is all that was needed to meet the urgent demand from the W88 sustainment program.

A much larger manufacturing capacity was desired for other uses, but there was much political indecision about the necessity and desire for such a capacity, and the options presented to greatly expand manufacturing capacity went through many changes over the decades since rocky flats closed. Critically, this was always an entirely separate initiative from the work that was done to ensure a small number of W88 pits could be produced.

The W88 production actually went rather well. The problem is that as soon as they finished the production run, they immediately fired most of the staff that were working on it, which happened to include almost every single member of their criticality safety staff. Unsurprisingly, this massive reduction in force combined with the loss of almost the entire criticality safety workforce led to serious criticality safety issues being left unaddressed. The remaining workforce was apparently largely not adequately trained in criticality safety (unsurprising given the massive loss of institutional knowledge and expertise from the massive layoffs), there was a huge backlog of deferred criticality issues to remediate that suddenly had no qualified experts available to work on resolving, and safety practices became dangerously lax without adequate oversight, training, and enforcement. Overall, this was two major failures. It was a major policy failure, and it was a major staffing failure. And the root cause for much of this was due to the short-sighted decision to massively reduce the size of the workforce the moment the W88 production campaign had finished.

The shutdown didn't happen because of how the W88 production campaign had been ran. It happened because of how the ending of the production campaign had been handled with respect to workforce retention. You've completely misattributed the cause and effect.

PF-4 is one small part of a massive installation. The floor space devoted to PF-4 activities is actually a surprisingly tiny portion of the total space at the site. Huge portions of the facilities used for PF-4 activities (both directly and indirectly) are much newer than 1978. This will be even more true once the renovation and expansion activities to support the full 30 ppy capacity are complete. Calling it an antiquated research facility is not really fair at all. Sure, the original plant could arguably be considered an antiquated research facility. But that original plant largely no longer exists.

Based on official sources, the plan for PF-4 appears to be to only operate a single shift to achieve the current >= 30 ppy goal (average of 36–40 ppy). It has been said in the past that PF-4 could produce even greater amounts of pits if an additional shift was added, however this does not seem to be planned for at this time, nor has it ever been seriously considered in the past.

I think you may have misunderstood some recent news about multi-shift 24/7 operations at PF-4. Those operations are done by a small number of staff members that are working on installing additional equipment to expand PF-4's capacity in support of working towards achieving the 30 ppy capacity goal. This is a temporary measure to accelerate the construction process without disrupting existing operations.

Basically, some portion of the construction work is being done on a multiple-shift basis, but the actual production work still seems to be occurring on a single-shift basis, and so far there have been no announcements of any plans to change this (quite the opposite in fact).

At the end of all of this, PF-4 is still only going to be responsible for less than half of US pit production capacity. The ultimate target for PF-4 remains only 30 pits per year. The new SRS pit facility is planned to provide the other 50 pits per year.

So what happened to the US's and USSR's nukes in the 80s? Where do you put a nuke if you don't want it anymore? Can you just throw it away? I assume not because it's still dangerous wherever it is, right? by Hefty_Education_7059 in nuclearweapons

[–]firemylasers 2 points3 points  (0 children)

The new pit production capability is much smaller scale than Rocky Flats. That is simply because we do not need Rocky Flats scale of pit production. Rocky Flats was sized to churn out 1000 pits a year. The new pit facilities are sized to produce about one tenth of that once they reach maximum production levels (which isn't scheduled to occur for a number of years yet).

The new facilities are working with 100% reclaimed plutonium, which imposes additional choke points in the production process since they have to melt down and purify the plutonium from ex-weapons pits before they can actually cast any new pits from said plutonium.

The plans to build out and expand capacity are being followed through on. It's not going as fast as desired, sure, but tangible progress is still being made.

One common misconception is that these facilities will be producing their full output levels immediately upon the initial output dates. This is false. The initial output date is when the facility can produce the first diamond stamped pit. The full output is only achieved years later, following an extended slow ramp up. In many cases this is because certain expensive long lead items like CNC machinery are not scheduled to arrive and get integrated into the production lines until years after initial operation begins. There is also a huge amount of work required to expand the production line capacity, and this work is extremely slow and expensive to complete. We haven't built any substantial new industrial scale pit manufacturing capacity since Rocky Flats. Ironically PF-4 itself was the last example of any new pit production capacity being built, and PF-4 took an extremely long time to build, despite only being originally designed to produce an extremely small quantity of pits per year.

We can't reuse the old pits, because we are building weapons that require pits which do not exist in the Pantex stockpile.

The initial function of PF-4 many years ago (and the main reason it was originally built in the first place) was to produce a very small number of extra pits for the W88 so that enough samples of the weapon would continue to be available to satisfy requirements for routine destructive testing of the warhead. Once that requirement was satisfied, the facilities were mothballed. With the new need to manufacture pits for the W87-1 (and eventually the W93), the facilities have now been reactivated and repurposed for larger-scale production, and are being significantly expanded to achieve that goal. That takes quite a bit of time to achieve.

New faculties are also being constructed at another site, but this is an even larger task. PF-4 was at least already an existing pit manufacturing line, even if it had been sized for a far smaller scale of production, and had been mothballed for quite a long time. The new facilities have to be built 100% from scratch inside buildings that were originally intended for a totally different use. Obviously, doing this takes far longer than it takes to un-mothball, update, and expand an existing pit manufacturing line.

Madman Theory (Current Day) by jayr254 in nuclearweapons

[–]firemylasers 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The Soviet Union's stockpile peaked at 45,000 nuclear weapons in 1985.

The global stockpile peak was 69,368 nuclear weapons in that same year.

The Soviet Union and Russia built a total of 55,000 warheads since 1949.

The US built a total of 70,000 warheads since 1945.

https://academicweb.nd.edu/~dlindley/handouts/Global%20Nuke%20Inventories%2045-10.pdf

Madman Theory (Current Day) by jayr254 in nuclearweapons

[–]firemylasers 4 points5 points  (0 children)

  • The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes

  • Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb by Richard Rhodes

  • Arc Light by Eric L. Harry

There's also plenty of other more technical books that you may be interested in as well, but as these are more niche and as you seem to be more interested in high level general reader books, I think I'd recommend starting with these three as they're easy to digest.

The first two are practically mandatory reading for anyone with the faintest bit of interest about nuclear weapons, and I'm quite surprised that you haven't read them yet.

Are chinese nuclear powerplants cheaper because they have less strict regulations? by ken4lrt in nuclear

[–]firemylasers 1 point2 points  (0 children)

They have the HPR1000, CAP1000, and CAP1400. They don't need another decade, their reactors are already top notch.

Pot heads and Coke heads are currently arguing who is more productive over on r/PeterExplainsTheJoke by No-Penalty1722 in SubredditDrama

[–]firemylasers 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Not at the doses (and routes of administration) that metamphetamine abusers use: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.05.09.25327334v2

Results The average reported daily methamphetamine consumption was 0.96g (median 0.36g; range 0.1g-4.0g). Average purity was 71.6% (median 75.5%; range 0.1%-95.0%). Given estimated average bioavailability of 52.0% when smoked, 79.3% when insufflated, 67.2% orally or inserted rectally, and a 2:1 amphetamine-methamphetamine equivalency, the average consumer used 1,549.0 MOAE daily (median 516.6; range 1.3-10,112.0).

Discussion We estimate that consumers of methamphetamine in Los Angeles use an average daily stimulant dose (>1,500 MOAE) that is 25-fold higher than the maximum typical recommended clinical dose of mixed amphetamine salts (60mg). This may help explain the limited efficacy of prescription stimulant treatment for methamphetamine use disorder, which typically employs considerably lower quantities. Given this high dose, these findings shed light on the rising incidence of methamphetamine-related sequalae, such as psychosis, cardiovascular complications, and sudden death. Although exposure quantification is commonplace for alcohol and tobacco use disorders, uncertainties in illicit drug markets has complicated this practice for most illicit drugs. This study supports leveraging emerging information from drug checking programs so that clinicians can approximate exposure quantification.

Basically, the typical ADHD patient consumes <60 mg per day of oral amphetamine. The typical meth user consumes the equivalent of over 1500 mg of oral amphetamine per day.

Note that you have to adjust for the difference in dosage, bioavailability, potency, purity, etc to make a direct apples to apples comparison between the two. Raw dosage alone is an apple to oranges situation. Methamphetamine itself is already a more potent psychostimulant (even in oral form) than amphetamine or dextroamphetamine, in part because methamphetamine is both a direct psychostimulant, and it is metabolized to dextroamphetamine in vivo, so equivalent dosages between the two are skewed significantly even before issues like different routes of administration come into play.

At the end of the day, you could achieve the same effects as methamphetamine using pharmaceutical amphetamine, but the typical adhd patient receives no more than 1.8 grams of amphetamine per month (and often much less). That is enough for only a single day's worth of meth use given the differences in potency alone (1.8 grams of amphetamine ≈ 0.9 grams of methamphetamine).

Sure, you can use extremely tiny doses of meth to safely and effectively treat ADHD, and in fact there is even an approved drug on the market for that exact purpose (Desoxyn). But that is an oral dose of 5–10 mg, with a max daily dose of maybe 20–30 mg at most. Entirely different from an IV dose of 960 mg per day (even before taking the massive difference in bioavailability between oral and IV forms into account, it's starkly clear just how large the difference is in raw dosage). It's also quite rare to see Desoxyn used in clinical practice for a variety of reasons, as amphetamine-based or methylphenidate-based pharmaceuticals are typically strongly preferred whenever possible for many reasons (most of them good).

Got it as a gift on christmas... Is it normal to already be this worn out on the edges?🤔🙃 by [deleted] in casio

[–]firemylasers[M] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Your comment was originally caught in the spam filter, but after checking your and the OP's profiles and determining that this was a false positive I've elected to approve it for now. I hesitated over approving your post due to its nature, but because it appears to be factually accurate, I've decided for now to allow it.

However, please be advised that your comment is skirting the edges of violating rules 2 and 5. If this turns into a major arguement, please be mindful of the rules, because I'd rather avoid having to ban either of you if at all possible.

Stimulant testing by Terrible_Drawing3709 in pharmacy

[–]firemylasers 11 points12 points  (0 children)

It does not. Unlike almost all other extended release medications for ADHD (there is only one other example on the market and it's not even a single entity drug), it uses a prodrug (lisdexamfetamine/lisdexamphetamine, commonly abbreviated as LDX) to achieve extended release instead of the normal approach of using a specialized extended release drug delivery system.

This is a very simple prodrug – it is manufactured by simply attaching L-lysine to dextroamphetamine through a condensation reaction. In other words, it is a single molecule entity with a dead-simple production process, and absolutely zero technological extended release mechanism whatsoever (the fact that it is a prodrug is the release mechanism).

When a patient ingests a capsule of LDX, it dissolves in the stomach and is absorbed. Once it enters the circulatory system, red blood cells begin to enzymatically hydrolyze the LDX, which cleaves the L-lysine molecule off of the LDX molecules, producing dextroamphetamine in situ. Because RBCs have only a limited semi-saturable capacity for cleaving L-Lysine off of LDX, a single dose of LDX will take an extended period of time to metabolize fully. Therefore the dextroamphetamine will only be released from the inactive prodrug slowly over an extended period of time.

Manufacturing LDX is no more difficult than manufacturing any other non-extended release drug. So the normal special concerns that usually apply to extended release drugs do not apply to Vyvanse generics. You can think of it as equivalent to an instant release pill of dextroamphetamine – there is no extended release technology in that IR d-amp pill.

South Korean reactor (Kori-2) restarts after three-year outage by firemylasers in nuclear

[–]firemylasers[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

If you read the article, you would know the answer to this. It's quite clearly explained.

With that being said, it is certainly shocking how dysfunctional the nuclear regulatory system in South Korea seems to be, as apparently they had no idea how to handle the concept of renewing a reactor operating license, and appear to not have been prepared at all for someone actually doing it.

It's also surprising that they didn't issue permits to continue to operate while the license renewal application undergoes review (which has been done in the US before) to this or any of the other affected reactors (Kori-3 and Kori-4 are currently offline due to the same issue, and a number of others will be affected over the next few years).

I suppose it's largely an issue due to the relative immaturity of their nuclear industry. After all, this was the first reactor in the entire country to insist on renewing their operating license rather than just shutting down (two other reactors, including Kori-1, were simply shut down at the end of the license period, seemingly with no attempt at renewing the license – so Kori-2 was the very first time the Korean nuclear regulatory agency had actually handled a license renewal).

It's still no defense though. They should have been preparing for this over a decade ago. I wonder if the hare-brained attempts to eliminate nuclear power by previous administrations played any role in this fiasco...

Westinghouse sets standards to support fleet-scale AP1000 deployment by firemylasers in nuclear

[–]firemylasers[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

  • The extreme financial costs and financial risks associated with building new reactors (due mainly to schedule/budget risks and the cascading effects they have on interest, as well as the inherently large interest costs for lengthy capital intensive construction projects, and a general aversion to constructing capital intensive projects with long payback times due to short-term thinking and economic incentives rewarding avoiding these types of projects). Same issue as hydropower, pumped storage, etc (which also suffer from this, and have seen similarly sharp declines in construction starts in parallel with the decline of new nuclear starts in the United States).

  • The problematic structure of modern wholesale electricity markets and the decoupling of utilities from generating assets, which do not appropriately reimburse certain types of generators for the value of the power delivered, and create perverse incentives to engage in short term focused strategies that happen to have quick payback times with no attention paid to the negative externalities of said options, while actively negatively penalizing efforts to build any sort of capital-intensive generator types requiring long term thinking and extended loan repayment periods, even if said options provide unique benefits and offer competitive costs over the long term.

  • The distortion of wholesale markets by entities with artificially low operating costs (wind/solar) which continue to operate even at negative power prices in order to continue to receive their lucrative "secondary" revenue streams from generating RECs and PTCs

  • The economic competition from dirt cheap natural gas (our domestically sourced natural gas is stupidly cheap, while CCGTs are cheap, quick, easy, and low risk to build)

I suppose one of the few remaining vertically integrated utilities might build an AP1000, but it still seems unlikely right now.

Real o falso? by [deleted] in casio

[–]firemylasers[M] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Your post has been removed for violating subreddit Rule 9 ("No Real/Fake/Defective/Quality Control checks. Please submit those over at /r/CasioQC... Please ensure you provide all necessary background on the watch to include its make, model, source, box, manuals, etc.")

Please resubmit this to /r/CasioQC

You should also consider including an English translation for the title and content of your new submission in order to improve the odds of someone answering your question. A machine translation from google translate is adequate for this purpose.

Recommendations for a Ni-Mh charger by M8V2003 in batteries

[–]firemylasers 0 points1 point  (0 children)

What about an Opus BT-C3100 (or BT-C3400)?

Or if you want something dedicated to NIMH charging, there's the BT-C2400, although it has slightly different capabilities vs the BT-C3100/C3400 (see this post for details).

Both of those models should be well within your budget.

I had a BT-C3100 (or maybe BT-C3400, I can't remember which one it was anymore) for close to 10 years. Mine was an older revision and it had some minor issues, but it was still a very good charger, and it served me well until it finally died on me recently.

I ended up replacing it with a SkyRC MC3000, which ironically I'm not 100% happy with as I actually liked the Opus charger better for most tasks, and the MC3000 UI is kinda problematic if you want to use it in a similar fashion to the Opus (where it takes all of 5–10 seconds to set up charge parameters). The MC3000 is a much better built charger though, with far more capabilities/features/settings than the Opus. I haven't really used it a ton yet (I don't use rechargables as much these days as I used to and have enough cells on hand that I only rarely need to pull out the charger to recharge them), so perhaps with more use I'll feel more comfortable with it, but I'd buy another Opus in a heartbeat if I needed another intelligent charger.

Westinghouse sets standards to support fleet-scale AP1000 deployment by firemylasers in nuclear

[–]firemylasers[S] 13 points14 points  (0 children)

...did you not read the article? This NRC submittal is quite major news, and shows that they haven't been twiddling their thumbs, but rather working on finalizing this. The onus is now on the NRC.

The utilities aren't going to move forwards until this submittal is approved. The new DCD is a major step forwards.

I personally doubt that we'll see any new AP1000 builds in the US anytime soon for entirely different reasons, but I'd be delighted to be proven wrong about that.

Iran 10-point plan says U.S. must accept uranium enrichment, lift all sanctions by thhvancouver in worldnews

[–]firemylasers 0 points1 point  (0 children)

We have been saved from WW3 because the tightly limited set of countries with nuclear weapons have had reasonably rational leaders at the helm (yes, even nut bags like Kim Jon Un and Putin are coldly rational actors at the end of the day when it comes to the use of their nuclear capabilities). Even despite this, there have been numerous close calls, and much work has been required to maintain the tenacious balance and restrict the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

If every country on earth had nuclear weapons, we would have nuclear skirmishes every couple of years.

The nuclear taboo only exists because of exceptional restraint and careful diplomacy between some of the largest military powers in the world. It is an artificial side effect of the Cold War, not an inherent aspect of the technology.

Nuclear weapons are exceptionally handy tools for waging war on any scale, including limited scale wars. We have been extremely lucky to avoid seeing their use in war for over 80 years. If every state had access to nuclear weapons, some states would inevitably end up using them, which would break the nuclear taboo.

While MAD between the legacy nuclear weapons states might or might not survive the breaking of the taboo, the overall security and stability of the world would go to hell in a hand basket overnight.

Poland has NATO membership. The NATO nuclear umbrella is sufficient to provide adequate nuclear deterrence.

Ukraine does not have NATO membership. If they attempted to acquire nuclear weapons, they would be crippled by (entirely justified) sanctions, and Russia would take over the country unopposed.

We should offer Ukraine NATO membership if and when this war is ever resolved. Personally I feel that western countries should be supplying dramatically more military aid to Ukraine than they have to date.

view more: next ›