Lead An Element Of Danger: Fill & Download for Free

That’s a bit of a myth. What’s going on there is that working on skyscrapers has been a dangerous job. Consequently, it tends to be a relatively high wage job as well. Historically, Native Americans, particularly those from upstate New York, who happened to be relatively nearby, have decided that the risk was worth the money. As a result, the workers who built a lot of New York’s skyscrapers in the 20th century were disproportionately Native Americans, and particularly from tribes in the New York area like the Mohawk. It’s not that they are any more or less afraid of heights than anybody else. It’s that they’ve got a culture with an element of machismo and a poor socioeconomic position where it makes sense for them to take risky jobs (these are to some extent the same reasons which lead to a relatively high rate of Native American enlistment in the armed forces). The ones who are very afraid of heights don’t take those jobs (and stay less visible), while the rest deal with any fear they have so they can get the job done. From that, a reputation was born.

No, fighter pilots are not “reckless” per se. However, do they have an “element of recklessness to their personality? Having been a fighter pilot, and having been associated with some of the very best over many years, I would have to say yes, there is a little, mostly manageable bit of that element in them.First - Remember that all prospective pilots are thoroughly screened with a battery of psychological and personality tests, along with background checks. Any indication of recklessness will weed out a candidate.Second - In both Air Force and Navy flight training, student aviators are closely monitored and graded over an entire year or more. Any sign of recklessness would wash out a student.Third - Remember this is the military where everything must be uniform and standardized. Recklessness is not tolerated.Now this leads to a dilemma. Studies have shown that the best fighter pilots tend to have traits of impulsiveness, aggressiveness, and they tend to be more playful when compared to other pilots. The question then becomes when do these traits cross the line into becoming reckless?Fighter pilots often talk about and are trained to “push the envelope.” They are usually referring to the Vn diagram envelope, illustrated below [Every aircraft will have a Vn diagram, although the parameters will vary with each aircraft]. While normal pilots fly and normal flight occur in the middle and safe, green zone of the diagram, fighter pilots need to fly on the extreme edges to be successful. Sometimes they even exceed these boundaries. But they really enjoy the adrenaline rush of this extreme flying on the ragged edge. If they don't, then they aren't very good.Is pushing the envelope or exceeding it reckless? No. This is what fighter pilots do. Is it dangerous? Possibly. For the untrained, it would be exceedingly dangerous and indeed reckless. It can be compared to professional race car drivers. To win they have to live on the ragged edge.Studies have also shown that fighter pilots while desirably aggressive and adventurous, they are not true risk takers. However they are known to consciously weigh risks and then proceed accordingly. Indeed most of the great fighter pilots I have known, lived on the edge of the envelope in their younger days, whether it was flying, driving fast cars, or their fast-paced and adventurous lifestyle. They calculated the risk. Reckless they were not, but they did live on the edge of the envelope, and occasionally close to being a slight bit reckless.

An unused fuel rod? Definitely! Used? Hell no!Me holding a uranium fuel pellet in 2012, right next to a model of a pellet.No, my hand has not since suffered Magical Radiation Cooties™ that has caused it to melt and fall off, nor has it gotten cancer.Unused uranium fuel is only very mildly radioactive, just like sea water, stone, bananas, you and pretty much everything else.Used uranium fuel on the other hand… oh boy.When we visited the Barsebäck Nuclear Power Plant in the early 90’s, the plant representative described the potency of used fuel like so…Take all the used fuel bundles that are in the core of a reactor, place them on a field.At 600 meters (2000 ft) you will be fine, at least for a short while, because the intensity drops faster than the square of the distance.Then you start running, as fast as you can, towards the fuel rods. You goal is to try to put your hand on the fuel.You will fail.Because during the last few meters, the direct radiation from the fuel will be so intense that it overloads your nervous system and you will fall down unconscious, before you reach the fuel.And soon after, you die.Used fuel is insanely dangerous when it is freshly used.Fortunately, this is the reason it does not stay dangerous for very long. High radiation requires a high rate of decay. But decay is what makes something disappear. So the things in the spent fuel that cause this extreme radiation also go away really quickly.If — for instance — the Roman Empire had used nuclear reactors 2,000 years ago, today we could have put their used fuel in a museum, and the only thing we would have needed to keep the viewing audience safe is a 1.0 meter safety distance, and a glass plate.So why is there talk of storing used fuel for 100,000 to 1,000,000 years?Because the candles that burn slowly burn long. The low intensity stuff, like Plutonium and Americium and the other so called Actinides and Transuranium elements, do not “shine” as brightly as say Iodine-131 (*), Cesium-137 or Strontium-90 (**). But that also means they last for a long time. They are not the “Instant Death” or “Gives You Cancer” type of dangerous — unless you literally grind them to fine powder and snort them like you were the world’s dumbest substance abuser (***) — but we also do not want them in the environment, like we do not want other heavy metals such as for instance Lead, Mercury and Arsenic in the environment.(*) I-131 has a half-life of 8.1 days. This means that every 27 days, the intensity has dropped by a factor of 10. The I-131 released in the Fukushima accident — in 2011 — has already decayed completely, down to the last atom.(**) At a 30 year half-life, these take about 100 years to drop to 1/10 the intensity. So after 2,000 years, they are therefore at an intensity of 1 over 100,000,000,000,000,000,000 compared to what they were.(***) Pu, Am and similar are alpha-emitters. Alpha radiation is very easily stopped; the top layer of dead cells on your skin stops it before it reaches your living cells underneath. In order to suffer any risk of DNA damage it has to get into direct contact with sensitive tissue. Hence, you need grind it up to very fine dust and inhale or eat it, so it gets into your lungs or stomach. Then you are in trouble…