Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2023 February 3

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February 3

Age and Sex Composition of Population by Provinces of British India in the Census of 1881

Good afternoon. Where can I find data on the age and sex composition of the population of the provinces of British India in the 1881 census? Thank you in advance Vyacheslav84 (talk) 12:27, 3 February 2023 (UTC)

Does This help? --Jayron32 12:48, 3 February 2023 (UTC)

Thank you, and on what page is the age and sex composition of the provincial population? --Vyacheslav84 (talk) 07:51, 4 February 2023 (UTC)

Not sure. I didn't read the whole thing; I just saw that it was about said census, and was a likely place for you to start your own research. --Jayron32 14:19, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

Okay, thank you so much!--Vyacheslav84 (talk) 15:50, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

Chillies

How can I grow chillies and prevent or control diseases? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 41.223.116.242 (talk) 14:45, 3 February 2023 (UTC)

A quick google search turns up this as the first link I found. It seems fairly extensive. I would start there. --Jayron32 17:30, 3 February 2023 (UTC)

Oscar best foreign film

The statuette is normally given to the director, who 'accepts' it and does not win it. But in reality it is 'attributed' to him, and he is always the one who holds it? Thank you very much. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.41.97.54 (talk) 17:53, 3 February 2023 (UTC)

It appears that it varies; according to the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film, the award is granted to the country as a whole, and it is likely up to some official in said country as to what to do with the statuette; the article gives an example for a Canadian film, whose statuette was put on display in a museum. Many countries have a "Ministry of Culture" or some such; they may be the ones to make the decision on what to do with the statuette, though I can't find any hard information on the location of any such statuettes except for the Canadian one already noted in the Wikipedia article. --Jayron32 18:20, 3 February 2023 (UTC)

Nuclear Power is Suddenly in Vogue in Sweden

Since a few years, Nuclear Power is Suddenly in Vogue in Sweden. It went out of fashion around 1980. If anyone can explain this relatively sudden mood-swing in Sweden, I would be all ears, because I have no idea why. Since I do not expect anyone here to know the answer to this, I have another question: Has this mood-swing occurred anywhere else in the world? And if so, does anyone here know the origin of this mood-swing? The mood swing came before anyone had ever heard of 4GEN nuclear or SMR over here. [User:DanielDemaret|Star Lord - 星爵]] (talk) 22:10, 3 February 2023 (UTC)

How would you characterize the current political climate in Sweden? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:47, 4 February 2023 (UTC)

It is calm here. Just the usual peeve against whatever party is in power at the moment. Star Lord - 星爵 (talk) 10:17, 4 February 2023 (UTC)

This mood-swing happened in the Netherlands too. When the current government was presented (January 2022), they announced to build two new nuclear power units, which were later decided to be added to the only currently existing nuclear power station in the country. It came a bit as a surprise, as it hadn't been a theme at the elections and only one of the four coalition parties was really for nuclear, the others being somewhat indifferent and the opposition mostly against. As for the reason, the very sensible wish to stop with fossil fuels explains a lot. Nuclear power is known to work on a large scale and not too expensive. It's in fact pretty cheap when used as base load, but when combined with intermittent sources, base load won't work. PiusImpavidus (talk) 11:42, 4 February 2023 (UTC)

Resolved

Yes, I read about that. Since I had read about it, perhaps Sweden and the Netherlands are the only two to have this mood swing? Oh, and South Korea. Star Lord - 星爵 (talk) 22:32, 4 February 2023 (UTC)

Here's a reference: Swedish support for nuclear continues to grow, poll shows. The result reflects the fact that there is broad consensus now, he added, that nuclear power has minimal impact on the climate. It's a strange phrase, did anybody ever think that nuclear power had an impact on the climate in the first place? This other article from the World Nuclear Association mentions opinion or policy being affected by the Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima disasters, and the various polls show these events influencing opinion less with distance of time.

I thought that energy independence might matter, in light of countries ceasing to depend on Russian gas, but found no reference.  Card Zero  (talk) 13:27, 4 February 2023 (UTC)

". . . did anybody ever think that nuclear power had an impact on the climate in the first place?" Well, large nuclear power plants are built using a lot of steel, concrete and construction vehicles (among other things). Making and running all of those in itself requires using a lot of power (which has to be generated in part by fossil fuels) and releases a lot of CO₂ over a period of a few years, as does the eventual building and operation of waste processing and storage facilities. It's mostly a one-off hit, but how much of a hit has to be calculated and considered.

Similar considerations apply to dams, which might provide "clean" hydroelectric power, but which need all of the above, plus they flood land and kill vegetation, the CO₂ impact of which has also to be worked out, and they eventually silt up and become less effective if not useless. Some of these longer-term impact calculations are cutting-edge science we're only in the process of developing. I haven't linked anything above because there are so many relevant factors the text would be a sea of blue, because everything is connected to everything else. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.221.194.253 (talk) 14:12, 4 February 2023 (UTC)

Steel, concrete and construction vehicles cause emissions for every energy source, including wind power. Now consider that a nuclear reactor provides over its lifetime around a thousand times more electric energy than a big wind turbine, then they aren't too bad. And definitely better than lignite. How clean hydropower is, depends strongly on the location. In Norway, hydro is really clean: small upstream reservoirs, large head, little rotting vegetation. In Brazil, not so. Naturally, all the good spots have already been taken. PiusImpavidus (talk) 12:03, 5 February 2023 (UTC)

Here's a Swedish version of the story about record support for nuclear power, or maybe I mean record lack of opposition. It quotes the same person (Mattias Lantz), but less directly.

Mattias Lantz sees the climate issue as crucial.

and later on (editorial comment I assume)

Nuclear power has sailed up in the climate debate as a fossil-free, adequate energy source, better than coal and oil.

There's also a mention of politics:

we have political parties that are increasingly talking about nuclear power, says Mattias Lantz.

This may have some relevance. Sweden's largest party, the Social Democrats, have opposed nuclear power in a steadfast way for a long time (regardless of public opinion, it would seem) but are now in opposition after a recent election.

Then follows mention of opinion being influenced by the risk of nuclear accidents and the problem of waste storage. It also dates the swing in opinion to "some years ago" before the article (written 2019):

The swing in public opinion began some years ago, but has increased further this year, which surprises Mattias Lantz in view of the real-life, frightening TV drama "Chernobyl" that many have seen during the year. He recalls the increased nuclear resistance in the wake of the 2011 Japanese Fukushima accident. But the then increasing resistance has now completely disappeared.  Card Zero  (talk) 06:21, 5 February 2023 (UTC)

Nuclear would be pretty cheap to run in theory, but it so ruinously expensive to build and pay off (and to account for the decades of clean-up after, and centuries of high level waste storage), that it'll probably never get to that point. See for instance the discussions about Hinckley Point C in the UK. I appreciate that the usual incompetence of the UK government almost certainly means we're paying more than we should, but the general point stands. Fgf10 (talk) 00:54, 5 February 2023 (UTC)

How expensive it is depends on your assumptions and naturally everybody cherrypicks assumptions to prove his point. Those who are against nuclear power use actual data from generation II reactors (which don't apply to any reactors we want to build now), those who are for nuclear power use predictions for generation IV reactors (which are entirely theoretical). So some assume a once-through fuel cycle, leading to large pollution from mining and a lot of waste that remains dangerous for over 10000 years, others assume a closed fuel cycle, which allows us to run all reactors for the next century on the existing pile of waste, which will only remain dangerous for 300 years. Some assume one meltdown per 10000 reactor years, others say their designs cannot suffer a meltdown because they are passively safe. PiusImpavidus (talk) 12:03, 5 February 2023 (UTC)

Without wading too much into the debate here, I do want to note that much of the opposition to nuclear mostly comes from the "letting perfect be the enemy of better" camp; that while nuclear's downsides are known and documented, are the downsides worse than burning coal, which is usually what nuclear is being used to replace? I'm not sure about that. Nuclear power, when put up against "magic fairy dust" power, which of course produces infinite energy with zero environmental impact, is always going to lose, but until we have viable magic fairy dust power up and running, we've got to deal with the fact that either we figure out how to quickly and efficiently get off of coal, or else figure out how to re-settle about 640 million people by the end of the century. Sorting out nuclear waste is a problem, but it's not that scale of a problem. Nuclear is not the end game, but it does represent a way to transition away from the sorts of energy that is the most pressing problem. It's not a forever solution, but its part of the solution to the problem we're stuck with now. Before we can scale up solar/wind/geothermal to the point where we can get 100% of our energy needs from those, we have to do something in the meantime. Sticking with coal is not the option. --Jayron32 15:17, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

So, what is Sweden doing with its nuclear waste? Dumping it in Norway? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 13:19, 5 February 2023 (UTC)

An intriguing proposition, unless the Norwegians consider it an act of war. For now, it is in storage, cooling under water. The idea is final containment in copper canisters embedded in Bentonite clay in the Swedish bedrock. Alternatively, I suggest we dump it in whatever 20 kilometres deep hole Quaise Energy manages to dig, since the surrounding radioactivity at that depth is likely to be the same as that of the waste. Star Lord - 星爵 (talk) 15:22, 5 February 2023 (UTC)

Here is a fairly recent YouTube video by German physicist Sabine Hossenfelder which analyses relevant aspects of the situation. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.221.194.253 (talk) 01:49, 6 February 2023 (UTC)