Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2017 March 20

= March 20 =

Coke vs. anthracite
As a rule, which costs less: coke or anthracite? 2601:646:8E01:7E0B:5900:99FF:87AF:35DC (talk) 08:30, 20 March 2017 (UTC)


 * In the days of town gas made from coal, coke used to be much cheaper because it was a by-product. When natural gas came along, the price of coke rose considerably, but it is still slightly cheaper than anthracite, at least here in the UK.    D b f i r s   12:05, 20 March 2017 (UTC)


 * Are you sure about that ? Our Coke (fuel) article suggests it needs to be specifically 'cooked' from particular types of coal.  Rojomoke (talk) 12:53, 20 March 2017 (UTC)


 * Well it was last time I bought some. It seems to have gone off the market now except for bulk supplies to ironfoundries.    D b f i r s   15:06, 20 March 2017 (UTC)


 * And anthracite is the rarest and highest-quality type of coal. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 12:56, 20 March 2017 (UTC)


 * Coke's about £30 a gram; couldn't say about anthracite. &mdash;  O Fortuna!   Imperatrix mundi.  13:03, 20 March 2017 (UTC)


 * This is presumably a joke about cocaine prices. StuRat (talk) 13:14, 20 March 2017 (UTC)


 * Coke is also 0.03-0.10 cents per gram. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 13:23, 20 March 2017 (UTC)


 * Trivia note: In 1945, the last time the Chicago Cubs were in the World Series prior to 2016, there was a coal-and-coke plant immediately west of the ballpark, on the other side of a railroad siding. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 14:26, 20 March 2017 (UTC)
 * See also The Oval Gasholders. Alansplodge (talk) 18:42, 20 March 2017 (UTC)


 * "Coke" in reference to coal is of somewhat obscure origin. "Coke" in reference to cocaine and also Coca-Cola refers to the Coca plant. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 15:17, 20 March 2017 (UTC)


 * In the UK, this supplier sells coke at £5.00 (US$6.20) for a 20 kg (44 lb) sack, and anthracite at £7.25 ($9.00) for 20 kg. Prices from other British sites varied widely, some almost three times as much. Alansplodge (talk) 18:36, 20 March 2017 (UTC)


 * (un-indent) Thanks all! So, coke usually (but not always) costs less than anthracite, right? 2601:646:8E01:7E0B:5900:99FF:87AF:35DC (talk) 23:16, 20 March 2017 (UTC)


 * Yes, the more expensive coke is designed for special purposes, not for heating. I used to use a mixture of half coke and half anthracite.   D b f i r s   21:17, 21 March 2017 (UTC)


 * What is the more expensive coke used for? Steelmaking? Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 21:42, 21 March 2017 (UTC)


 * More or less (and other refining). The most expensive coke. See: The most important chemical properties are moisture, fixed carbon, ash, sulfur, phosphorus, and alkalies. Fixed carbon is the fuel portion of the coke; the higher the fixed carbon, the higher the thermal value of coke. Will over-look Dbfirs's fux pass because he was obviously taking about domestic heating where high sulfur fumes etc goes up the chimney and so doesn’t matter. Unless of course one is old enough to remember before the clean air acts came in where cities such as London suffered  pea soup fogs that became green, due the the sulfur from coal fires – but I digress. Solid fuel is priced by  calorific value/weight. Anthracite has a higher value than coke. fuels-higher-calorific-values Hence the price difference. As  Michael Caine (a British Londoner) might say “Not a lot of people know that”!

Astrology
When used together, what does the “House” and “Sign” word mean? 116.58.200.44 (talk) 09:58, 20 March 2017 (UTC)


 * Signs pass through astrological houses throughout the day. Signs are sectors of the swath the planets' paths are in as they move through the constellations on the celestial sphere. In the West they do not care if the constellations move through the signs over thousands of years. In India and probably some other places they do so their signs don't change constellation every 2,000 years. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 10:13, 20 March 2017 (UTC)


 * A sign is a segment of the Zodiac, fixed with respect to the distant stars. A house, as I understand it, is a segment of the sky as seen from the ground at a particular moment; for a given observer the sun passes through another house every two hours. —Tamfang (talk) 07:19, 24 March 2017 (UTC)


 * Tamfang, a sign is absolutely not fixed with respect to the distant stars. This was known to the Ancient Greeks. They move the width of the Moon every 3 dozen years. Except sidereal astrology (which still cannot track the fixed stars perfectly because of proper motion. There are so many house systems with no real standard and some not based on time so 2 hours should be seen as a (probably worldwide) average. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 22:14, 25 March 2017 (UTC)

Bit of a dark question....
Say there was a moderate to severe nuclear exchange, it's inevitable that nuclear power plants would be damage. Hell, look what just a tsunami could do to Fukashima NPP. So the big question is, has there been any modelling done that takes into account what damage and consequences of on hits against nuclear facilities. Obviously, the effect of nuclear conflict would be unimaginable in terms of loss and destruction. But NPP's on top? Inconceivable?! So any pointers or rabbit holes that a can sneak down for safety on this matter? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.133.80.74 (talk) 21:21, 20 March 2017 (UTC)
 * A bomb shelter constructed after 1950 should provide complete protection against all radiation, from reactors as well as the atom bombs -- the only difference is, if a reactor is destroyed near where you live, you'll have to stay in the shelter for a longer time (possibly years, as opposed to a few weeks if your location is affected by fallout from nuclear weapons alone). 2601:646:8E01:7E0B:F88D:DE34:7772:8E5B (talk) 23:20, 20 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Military nuclear facilities are hardened against bombing but a civilian Nuclear power plant is vulnerable to attack from the air before a controlled shut-down can be completed. The Israeli Air Force studied damage inflicted by Iran in Operation Scorch Sword 1980 on Iraq's nuclear reactor when planning their Operation Opera strike that destroyed the reactor in 1981. Blooteuth (talk) 01:04, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

Maybe you could tell us what you had in mind regarding "damage and consequences". Your typical reactor dome is basically everything-proof, but as hinted the harm that is generally considered is nuclear meltdown following a failure of cooling systems before shutdown can take place. Nuclear Power plants are supposed to be designed to be able to shut down in spite of any disaster they are expected to face, but I don't imagine most civilian plants have nuke-proof backup power and cooling systems. Someguy1221 (talk) 01:19, 21 March 2017 (UTC)


 * Keep in mind that the Fukushima plant was built sub-spec by mobsters. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/japan/japan-earthquake-and-tsunami-in/9084151/How-the-Yakuza-went-nuclear.html. μηδείς (talk) 00:21, 22 March 2017 (UTC)


 * The risk from nuclear power plants would be many orders of magnitude less than the damage from nuclear weapons. Consider that the tiny atomic bombs used against Japan in WW2 (see atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki) killed 129,000- 246,000, while the worst nuclear power plant accident in history, Chernobyl, killed 31 directly, and perhaps some more due to cancer.  Modern hydrogen bombs would kill millions, perhaps billions, while the deaths from nuclear power plants would still be in the Chernobyl neighborhood, per plant. StuRat (talk) 04:59, 22 March 2017 (UTC)
 * We might get our hair mussed. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 05:44, 22 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Price of milk might go up. --WaltCip (talk) 12:07, 22 March 2017 (UTC)
 * But no more than 10 to 20 million people killed, tops! Depending on the breaks.--WaltCip (talk) 12:10, 22 March 2017 (UTC)