Acting Like a PhD

Just a random thought after a long day on the streets of DC -- one in which I have burned through almost 100% battery life of a Blackberry in 1 day, doing only email, text, and 2 hours of phone calls.

So, what is "acting like a PhD"?

Acting Like a PhD:  when one is relentlessly focused on the singular pursuit of a miniscule detail, yet claiming that the success or failure of the entire project / company / world hinges on that detail. 

When, in fact, it doesn't.

Earthlings Got Nuclear Power Development Backwards

This post is a bit more right-brained than usual.

I do the morning feedings for Bethany, so it gives me some time to daydream in the wee early hours of the morning.  For better or for worse, one of those daydreams goes along the lines of, "How did civilization get to where it is today, and how else could it have gone?"  Please bear with me as I go through a tortured logic path.

1.  I have a hard time believing that Earth is really all that unique.

If you believe the Drake Equation, it's pretty easy to convince yourself that there is at least one other civilization out there, somewhere, that is going through a similar experience right about now.  That previous link provides a cool calculator with which you can enter values you think are appropriate for our galaxy, and determine how many other civilizations might be in our own galaxy.  When you start with a population of 100 billion stars in our galaxy, you have to make some very pessimistic assumptions about some things to make Earth the only intelligent life out there.  So, how are they doing?  How does their development compare to ours?

2.  It's reasonable to assume that another civilization would stumble upon nuclear power, eventually.

Earth like planets out there could have uranium deposits that would have formed from a supernova explosion, just as how Earth's were formed.  Uranium 235 will fission in exactly the same way here as it would on Tatooine.  Smart scientists could presumably mine up the yellowcake stuff (it's very unique) and start playing with it.

3.  But we Earthlings stumbled upon nuclear power in a very unique way.

World War II was the single biggest driver for the development of All Things Nuclear.  According to Richard Rhodes' outstanding book The Making of the Atomic Bomb, in 1944, the nuclear industry was as big as the US automotive industry at the time.  And yet nobody knew about the nuclear industry; it was entirely secret, and entirely focused on making a nuclear weapon.  Entirely focused with a lot of resources behind it.

The US was hell-bent on developing a nuclear weapon, because the US was panicked that Germany would get there first.  Albert Einstein wrote a famous letter to President Roosevelt, begging him to take action to develop a nuclear weapon.  When it turned out that Germany had stopped its program to develop a nuclear weapon (thanks to a miscalculation [?] by Werner Heisenberg), the prospect of a nuclear weapon then became a convenient way to end the war in Japan without an invasion of the island.

The first nuclear weapon was exploded at the Trinity Site on July 16, 1945.  Here's a picture of me at the site:

It wasn't until August of 1956 -- over eleven years later -- when the first full-scale power reactor was connected to the power grid, in England.  (Sorry, technophiles, EBR-I doesn't count in my book.)  This, despite the fact that the first critical pile -- in effect, the world's first nuclear reactor* -- went critical in December 1942.

Thus, for almost a decade and a half, the benefits of nuclear power were dedicated solely to the production of materials for nuclear weapons.  So how was nuclear power unveiled to the world?  Through the terrible destruction witnessed at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, mushroom clouds, and the threat of total annihilation.

I propose that this is exceptional; that the development of nuclear power under these circumstances was a statistical oddity, and that almost any other civilization would have stumbled upon nuclear power under less desperate circumstances.  That, perhaps, another society would have stumbled upon nuclear power (probably similar to how Lise Meitner and Otto Frisch came upon it), and said, "Wow!  This is pretty neat stuff!  It's a million times more energetic than any chemical release of energy!"

And thus, the benefits of nuclear power could be brought into the world, without the iconic and terrifying images of mushroom clouds being seared into the civilization's psyche.

Obviously, the recent events in Fukushima have influenced my thinking.  That story has gripped the world's news headlines for a month now, but some other stories with severe economic impacts have gotten much less attention.  Just for one example, a sewage treatment plant failed, killing two workers and releasing up to 4 million gallons of sewage into the nearby river.   Fishing and swimming were prohibited; the TVA had to release extra water from an upstream dam to dilute it more.

Or the natural gas explosions that happen occasionally: a natural gas plant exploding in Connecticut and killing 5; a natural gas pipeline exploding in California and killing 4; there are many examples.

Or, as an even bigger environmental incident, there was the coal ash spill from the Kingston Fossil Plant in Tennessee, which released 1.1 billion gallons of coal ash (laden with heavy metals and carcinogens) in 2008.  Hundreds had to be evacuated because their homes were destroyed, and the deposits it left behind make many areas uninhabitable.

Oh, by the way: BP expects to start drilling again the Gulf of Mexico later this year.

Accidents like the above happen all the time.  Society continues on with the mindset that these are terrible accidents that should be corrected, but are not calling for the end of those industries.  I am not trying to say that the above examples are equivalent to the Fukushima accident. (I have my opinions on that, but in this case, I'll keep my opinions to myself and avoid the Internet Flame War that would result.)  The purpose of this post is to provide a plausible explanation for why there is such a visceral response to commercial nuclear power: it was born under a mushroom cloud, and has been trying to get away from that image ever since.

That visceral fear is stunting our growth.  I think other alien races would find us silly in that regard.

_________________________________________

*Okay, technically, the second.  There is a fascinating account of a naturally occurring nuclear reactor at a site called Oklo in Gabon, Africa.  This happened about 2 billion years ago, but nobody was around to see it.

Budget Cuts: Are They Real?

There were two articles recently in the WaPo that caught my interest:

This one, where the CBO finds that the $38 billion isn't all from direct program cuts, and an insightful opinion piece by Ezra Klein on how the $38 billion can be reduced as far as $350 million if you slice it right.

The headline is indeed attention grabbing -- did the politicians really swindle us into thinking they had made a fairly significant cut, when all they had been doing was a shell game?  But then I read the articles, and found many examples of where spending had been effectively taken away from budget swindlers.  Unfortunately, I have been party to those budget swindles many, many times.

Bottom line: at the end of the day, this will result in some real funding not being spent that would have been spent by government.

The first WaPo article makes mention of a few projects for which funding was no longer necessary: $560 million for an Education Department program that no longer exists (holy moly!  that's huge for DoEd!!), $15 million for a US Capitol building that already exists.

I assure you, department budget weenies had one word on their mind:
Reprogramming.

This happens all the time: money is appropriated for one project, and it either comes in under budget (which actually happens from time to time, you just never hear about it), or the priorities change.  At which point, the money is reprogrammed: it is removed from this project and transferred to that project.  This usually requires a few levels of approval, but unless Congress specifically appropriated the money in Congressional language, departments have a fair amount of authority to shift money around.

Which, ultimately, is a good thing, because you don't want Congress to have to micromanage every department.  They do a crummy enough job managing their own finances, as it is.

So, this budget compromise, among other things, effectively prevents budget weenies from reprogramming the money and spending it elsewhere. Which is a good start.

But, for the record, $38 billion is a drop in the bucket (1%) compared to a $3.6 trillion annual spending budget.  Time to start hitting Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and even national defense.

Introducing...

Bethany Grace!!

7 pounds, 5 ounces at 5:37pm on Monday, March 28th.

The birth of a bouncing baby girl (our first) definitely gives you a sense of wonder at the miracle of life.  More musings on this when I can collect my thoughts and get more sleep.

Driving in DC #7

Time to go back to some regular posting for a bit: this one features the intersection of M Street and Connecticut Avenue, Northwest:

If you're new here, on this blog I sometimes try to document just how head-shakingly bad some of the areas are driving around in Washington, DC.  The topics have covered signage, absurd merge lanes, the ridiculous streets, and everything in between.  If you click on the "driving in dc" tag at the bottom of this post, you'll get all of them.

In the case of M & Connecticut, it's one of the prime examples of where the diagonal street intersections have gone laughably wrong.  It's an impenetrable morass of roads and cross traffic:

This is where M Street, Connecticut Avenue, 18th Street, and Rhode Island Avenue all converge.  I had to laugh out loud the first time I saw the traffic light in the middle of the lane.

Even with Google Maps and Street View, I can't get a good angle that accurately encompasses the acres and acres that this intersection takes up.  But you can click and scroll around to see it all.

View Larger Map

For one more grin, here's the view of the intersection as you're approaching it from Rhode Island.  I don't get it.

Lastly, here's a shot from 18th street, looking back.  The traffic flow describes this pretty well.

View Larger Map

Pictures just don't quite do this one justice.  You have to see it for yourself.

Last Post on Fukushima for a while...

I've had a few, genuine comments from people in the area of the reactors, looking for advice and thanking me for providing some clear insight.   I was writing a response back to one of them when I just decided to make this my (possibly nearly final) post on the Fukushima reactors.

"one cup of coffee" asked,

If you don't mind me asking, I'd like to know what you think? If, as they are saying, they are able to get power to the plants and restore the cooling system will they have saved the plant from dumping more radiation into the environment? At that point will the situation be "under control?" What exactly would it take to get the situation under control? It seems like the foreign press is obsessed with worst case scenarios, what about a reasonable set of most likely scenarios? And lastly, what about the plutonium? Is this significantly more dangerous than the uranium?

and it spawned a whole host of emotions.  Here's my response.

I'd give it another WEEK before we can safely say that we're "out of the woods" and that there will be no more flare-ups.  A recent report I read said that some of the concrete wall surrounding the spent fuel pool of reactor #4 has fallen away, but that the steel liner remains.  If the pool crumbles, my guess is that it would make cleanup considerably messier, but *shouldn't* provide any additional risk to the general public.

Getting reliable power to the site will help tremendously: they may be able to turn on some of the pumps and ensure good water circulation, and they should be able to get a more reliable flow of water to the core.  But even then, the road ahead is a lot of (boring) circulation of water as the core cools down to a point where they can safely inspect it with cameras and robots.

And the plutonium: I've enjoyed looking at what other sites link to mine (thanks Google Analytics!), but some of the sites out there are just absurd.  My jaw dropped at the rampant mis-representation of the facts, and heralding the fact that "Mox fuel is two million times worse than uranium."  Baloney.  Yes, plutonium has a higher toxicity and a lower melting point than uranium, so it's not quite as robust.  It might result in a slightly higher dose to those at the plant (who have tools and equipment to deal with it appropriately), but in no way will it lead to any additional dose to the general public.

Earlier in the comment, "one cup of tea" noted that people have a very visceral response to radiation.  And sadly, that's very true.  Radiation is all around us, and I think people are ignorant of that.  The background radiation you get from the Colorado Plateau is five times higher as on the eastern seaboard, and yet you don't see people fleeing Colorado for the coasts.  And as I noted in a previous post, people are exposed to small amounts of toxic chemicals all the time due to spills and accidents, and yet humanity moves on.  Remember the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal?  A hideous, gruesome release of methyl isocyanate killed thousands and injured tens of thousands, and yet the industry goes on.  I wish the public could put radiation in the same context that almost everything else is, and I guess that starts with education.

Lastly, a comment on frustration: I have read reports from scores of "experts" proclaiming that the Fukushima "crisis" will be worse than Chernobyl and that lives are at risk all around the world.  Where is the accountability?  Where are the apologies when these people are shown to be wrong?  Where is the public excoriation when the "expert opinions" turn out to be nothing more than fear-mongering, playing on the deep-rooted fears of the general public?  When does the loss of credibility set in?

Sadly, it won't.  The nuclear "debate" will continue, fueled more by emotion than by fact when no one in the general public is affected by this event.  And the nuclear "experts" will continue pressing the panic button and gleefully watching the response.  And most of the mainstream media will follow them doggedly because it sells newspapers and it generates interest.

The solution, I think, starts with education.  Patient, careful, instructive education.  I hope I've been able to provide some of that here.

I'll leave with the most recent update from JAIF on the status of the reactors (click for bigger):

Summary of Fukushima

I have stopped reading cnn.com and other mainstream media news outlets because of the hysterical, sensational headlines that they're touting.  This entry is going to try to set some of the record straight, based on what I've compiled from reputable news organizations, press releases, and colleagues.

1. Status

This is current as March 15th, 6pm or so EDT.  Summarized from a more technical JAIF publication.

Update, 9:50am, March 16: Here is the latest technical publication from JAIF.  The situation has become slightly worse over the past 12 hours, with more damage to spent fuel pools and more damage to primary plant integrity than my above chart.

• Fuel: This is the current condition of the fuel in the reactor vessel.  Units 1, 2, and 3 have had some level of core damage because of the falling water levels (I'm making an educated guess at Unit 2 for simplicity).  Melting core means the release of radioactive fission products, and these now get released when they burp the reactor to relieve pressure.  This is what US Navy ships and others in the area are detecting.  The release of radiation is a bad mark on the industry, but it still has no measurable impact on human health.  This kind of thing happens all the time in the chemical industry (each one of those words is a link to a separate incident!!!); the nuclear industry is held to a sterling standard.
• The primary plant integrity is questionable on Unit 2 because of the unexplained explosion (the one inside the reactor building, not the ones that blew the top off the buildings) and related drop in pressure.  This is usually indicative of a hole opening up.  I haven't been able to determine if the torus is isolable from the reactor or not.
• In the case of Unit 1, not only are they trying to fill up the reactor vessel and cover the core, they're also trying (or were trying) to fill up the primary containment as an additional cooling measure.  This will require millions of gallons of seawater, and will take a while.
• Vent to atmosphere: all three reactor plants have been burped at least once.
• Spent Fuel: Unit 4 did not have any fuel in its reactor vessel -- it was all located in the spent fuel pool for tests.  Which caught fire.  OK, this is bad.  I'm not sure how the operators allowed the pool level to get that low: the pool is 45 feet deep, and the fuel elements are about 12 feet tall, leaving over 30 feet of water to go.  A lot of water has to boil off before you expose the fuel elements, but apparently that's what happened.  That caused additional radiation to be released, but still not enough to affect the area outside of the nuclear plant facility.

2. Future.
Core cooling efforts will continue.  There is probably a small slurry of reactor fuel, cladding, control rods, and core structural material in the reactor vessel.  This is similar to what happened at Three Mile Island.  By keeping water on the cores, they're keeping it from melting any further.  Unit 1 was scheduled for retirement on March 26th, 2011, so that was very near the end of its useful life anyhow.  Units 2 and 3 will never operate again; cleanup is going to be too hard and too expensive to get them back into working condition again.

TEPCO is calling in helicopters to dump water on the spent fuel pools to prevent them from catching fire again.  I'm still shocked that happened in the first place.

There remains at least 6 inches of reactor vessel steel and about 6 feet of steel reinforced concrete that is keeping the worst of the stuff inside.  Occasional burps of steam and gas may occur, and these are sent through "scrubbers" and filters before they are released.  Some radioactivity will still be in there, though.

3. Stop the Hysteria.
A dose rate of 40 REM/hour was measured between Units 2 and 3 sometime yesterday.  This is pretty hot for a localized spot.  But a single location DOES NOT endanger the entire island of Japan.  I'm sick and tired of reputable news organizations linking the awful conditions in Japan with the nuclear incident -- while this is an unprecedented situation with 3 reactors having core damage, the situation has not had one iota of impact on the health and safety of the residents of Japan.

Personally, I believe people are being evacuated out of an overabundance of caution.  In the interest of full disclosure / total honesty, there is a possibility that the Japanese government knows of large cracks in the 6 foot thick containment walls due to the magnitude 8.9 earthquake. (I was told that the design basis earthquake was 8.2, which means the actual quake was 7x larger than design.)  If history shows that the government or other authorities were trying to keep something like that secret, the political and regulatory impacts would be terrible.

There is NO chance of hazardous material raining out across the Pacific or endangering the US.  The hysterics and comparisons to Hiroshima are unwarranted.  And newer designs will only weather this kind of event better, with built-in passive safety systems that don't need offsite power to work.

4. Shout-outs.
As part of all this, I've discovered other bloggers who have been doing fantastic jobs getting out information in a clear, easy-to-understand manner.  Reward these folks by hitting their site, too:

• The Neutron Economy. I love that name.
• Futurejacked.  Also a nuclear engineer who has similar socioeconomic interests as I do.
• Brave New Climate.

And that's about it.  Thanks to everyone for the emails, comments, and input.  I'm glad to help where I can.

A turn for the confusing ...

Things are starting to get more confusing as the news pours out of Japan.  When I last wrote, things appeared relatively calm, as it looked like TEPCO had managed to get mobile electric generators on site and were keeping the reactors (mostly) cool through injection of seawater.

Then the hydrogen explosion that started on Unit 1 also happened on Units 2 and 3 (see bullet #1 from my previous post).  The explosion from Unit 3 apparently knocked out some of the cooling pumps on Unit 2.  There has been a very different type of explosion on Unit 2.  And a fire broke out in or near the spent fuel pool of Unit 4.  It's hard to keep it all straight, it's hard to follow along without spending hours sifting through all the reports.  The TEPCO press releases aren't all that great, but I imagine they're putting every available resource on fixing the problem, not posting web pages.

NEI is reporting that radiation levels as high as 40 REM/hour were measured between Units 2 and 3.  Yes, at that location, that's pretty high and I wouldn't want to stand there for very long.  But to put that in perspective, it's still not a level that represents enough radioactivity that would threaten anyone outside the fence of Fukushima.

The most interesting tidbit, to me, is the explosion in Unit 2, and the hole that it created in the suppression pool.  And this is where my knowledge of BWR's hits a wall: I don't fully understand the purpose, potential leakage paths, or impact of a hole in the suppression pool, so I'm not going to make any predictions about it.  I'll be watching for updates on that today.

The reported fire at Unit 4 is scary at first because it was in a spent fuel pool, but it appears to have been put out.  My guess is that oil or debris got in there and caught fire.  I have seen analysis that all you really need to keep water in those pools is a garden hose, and that is sufficient to keep the spent fuel covered and cool.

TEPCO and the folks on the ground at Fukushima are doing a heroic job at trying to keep three nuclear reactors under control after a magnitude 8.9 earthquake.  I'm sure all of them have families, all of them have relatives, all of them have lost something in this earthquake.  And there's a lot more going on in Fukushima than just the reactors -- a water dam broke as a result of the earthquake and washed out 1800 homes -- but that doesn't seem to get much press coverage.  If you want a calming, strong essay on why there's other, bigger things to worry about, go over and read this piece on Atomic Insights.