Is AT&T’s new 150GB DSL data cap justified?

For you AT&T DSL customers, in case you didn’t know, AT&T is capping the service at 150 GB starting May 2, 2011. Is it justified? That’s hard to say from a logical point-of-view. From a consumer (emotional, knee-jerk) point-of-view there is no way that it’s justified. We signed a contract for a specific service; if they change what we’ve already signed then we should be able to change it (go to a competing service without penalty) as well.

The cap structure is not currently set up to squeeze extra fees out of most users. Subscribers who exceed their monthly allowance will pay an additional $10 for each 50GB over the cap, but AT&T tells Ars that “customers will hear from us directly numerous times before they exceed usage and before they incur any additional fees.

“The company will notify users when they hit 65 percent, 90 percent, and 100 percent of their monthly caps, and will also provide historical usage reports and a monthly usage tracking tool. (AT&T says that an average DSL user on its network currently transfers 18GB each month.)

Even customers who exceed the cap won’t pay right away; only after going over the cap in three separate months will fees be assessed.

“We are committed to providing a great experience for all of our Internet customers,” AT&T told us in a statement.”Less than 2 percent of our Internet customers could be impacted by this approach—those who are using a disproportionate amount of bandwidth.” Read more…

Right now, this may not seem to be such a bad thing. The problem is, all these new–and several–old electronic and software items coming out have one thing in common: a need for bandwidth. Storing your stuff in The Cloud is a great thing until you have to access it, then that stylish but minimalist retrieval unit might be lacking due to its storage and connectivity limitations. While 150GB may seem to be a lot now, remember that 10 years ago, a 10GB hard drive on your computer was sufficient for all your storage needs. Even your phone has more storage than 10GB now.

Danger of Spent Fuel Outweighs Reactor Threat

Nuclear power has been both a blessing and a curse since its beginnings as a weapon. It generates a lot of power for comparatively little waste: minuscule amounts of greenhouse gases and a lot of energy for relatively little fuel. Unfortunately, the little waste that is created is highly dangerous and needs close attention for years.

Figures provided by Tokyo Electric Power on Thursday show that most of the dangerous uranium at the power plant is actually in the spent fuel rods, not the reactor cores themselves. The electric utility said that a total of 11,195 spent fuel rod assemblies were stored at the site.

That is in addition to 400 to 600 fuel rod assemblies that had been in active service in each of the three troubled reactors. In other words, the vast majority of the fuel assemblies at the troubled reactors are in the storage pools, not the reactors.

Now those temporary pools are proving the power plant’s Achilles heel, as the water in the pools either boils away or leaks out of their containments, and efforts to add more water have gone awry. While spent fuel rods generate significantly less heat than newer ones, there are strong indications that the fuel rods have begun to melt and release extremely high levels of radiation. Japanese authorities struggled Thursday to add more water to the storage pool at reactor No. 3. Read more…

Even though the power level in spent fuel has dropped considerably compared to fresh fuel, it still generates power…just not enough for the steam turbines. IMHO, it’s like charcoal briquettes after you have used them; while they may be too cool to barbecue any more food they’re more than hot enough to burn you. The nuclear fuel rods need cooling, usually for a couple of years, before they can be processed into something that can be stored inside a nuclear waste burial site.

Nuclear reactors make steam to turn turbines which turn generators to make electricity. Since water boils at 212 degrees Fahrenheit, it’s not a really efficient turbine working fluid in nuclear reactors because it can’t hold much heat. Pressurizing the water allows it to hold more heat before it boils and thus more energy when it reaches the low pressure zone of the turbine. This high heat requirement makes spent fuel useless for power production as it can’t generate that kind of power under normal circumstances. Removing safety restrictions (as in accidents) allows power to be generated but is useless as current reactor designs don’t have a safe way to harvest that heat energy. As a result of this situation, the fuel rods must be treated as if they generated power, without the benefit of actually producing power.

How does a nuclear meltdown work? (w/ Video)

Japan didn’t get hit by a 1-2 punch…they got hit by a 1-2-3 knockout. It’s like those 100-year floods that happen twice in the same year…while possible, it’s highly unlikely. Usually it’s a series of small errors that sum to a large problem; this time, it was three big accidents that are leading to a catastrophe.

In Japan, the current nuclear crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant lies somewhere in between Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, according to recent news reports. Last Friday’s 9.0-magnitude earthquake and 10-meter (33-foot) tsunami waves that traveled up to 10 km (6 miles) inland overpowered several of the plant’s safety measures. Although employees at the plant have been risking their lives to try to keep the reactors cool, the chance of a serious meltdown seems to be increasing. Read more…

Meltdown is usually unrecoverable. If the rest of the facility (usually reactor facilities have more than a single core) is intact and not horribly irradiated, power production can continue; the reactor involved in the incident is most likely corium and will either be disposed of or permanently sealed.