The shortness of the article in the NYT probably wasn't the reason that there was no discussion of the foregone conclusion on the part of "the respectable" and "the elite" including Elisabeth Bumiller of the NYT, that "still remained the greatest threat to stability in the Middle East and Central Asia." This claim is rarely, if ever, analyzed in the "Papers of Record."
Interestingly enough, if you poll people in the M.E. and Central Asia -- and this has been done extensively -- the greatest perceived threat to stability is the U.S. military, next to Israel and population growth. Of course, for the NYT David Patreus' opinion deserves particular attention.
Related information:
America: the greatest threat to global stability
Muslim Publics Oppose Al Qaeda's Terrorism, But Agree With Its Goal of Driving US Forces Out
Pakistanis see US as greatest threat
Occupation and foreign military intervention 'greatest threat'
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Monday, March 15, 2010
[Short entry] Proliferation of nuclear technology
Items of concern in today's NYT's article Taking a Risk With Nuclear Technology other then the obvious risks associated with proliferation of a power source which generates tons of waste, which cannot be disposed of for generations (isolation isn't disposal) include the issue related to "passive controls" that the Westinghouse reactors employ. These are control mechanisms usually associated with individual components of a reactor which respond without intervention from an electronic monitoring system and without intervention from a human operator. The response, obviously, of the component to an system imbalance which could tend to emergency is to reduce the possibility of that emergency. For example, a pressure-relief valve is a type of passive system. It requires no input from external control systems (electronic, human, or otherwise) to work. It simply responds in a threat-reduction manner by "the laws of physics."
There are several dangers associated with this notion. The most pronounced are based on the assumptions humans make in determining the behavior of the passive control. If the component, say the pressure-relief valve is faulty, "the laws of physics" will result in a different behavior of the valve.
Passive controls are also dangerous psychologically and socially because people (nuclear engineers, in particular) have been trained to believe that responses are likely to happen in certain ways. "Margin of error" factors are used to account for this, but these are only statistical measures.
Do you want finite, even if small, probabilities for a meltdown at the local reactor?
There are several dangers associated with this notion. The most pronounced are based on the assumptions humans make in determining the behavior of the passive control. If the component, say the pressure-relief valve is faulty, "the laws of physics" will result in a different behavior of the valve.
Passive controls are also dangerous psychologically and socially because people (nuclear engineers, in particular) have been trained to believe that responses are likely to happen in certain ways. "Margin of error" factors are used to account for this, but these are only statistical measures.
Do you want finite, even if small, probabilities for a meltdown at the local reactor?
Friday, March 12, 2010
Chomsky on Iranian deterrent [weblog Op-Ed entry]
Noam Chomsky spoke at Harvard Memorial Church on March 6. His analysis, largely supported by the public record, is that the constant threat of force by the U.S. is driving the Iranians to develop a nuclear weapons deterrent. Paraphrasing, "They'd be crazy not to."
There is very good historical parallels with North Korea to support Chomsky's analysis. The U.S. "talked tough" on N. Korea and marginalized its leadership, keeping "all options on the table" through the last 60 years of administrations. They offered unilateral talks continually to address the threat the U.S. posed to their sovereignty, all summarily denied. They offered to sign non-proliferation treaties, which the U.S. ignored.
Now they have a burgeoning weapons program.
Contrast the situation with Iraq who had no substantive nuclear weapons program at any point in their history. The U.S. has decimated that country with violence.
What's the lesson?
There is very good historical parallels with North Korea to support Chomsky's analysis. The U.S. "talked tough" on N. Korea and marginalized its leadership, keeping "all options on the table" through the last 60 years of administrations. They offered unilateral talks continually to address the threat the U.S. posed to their sovereignty, all summarily denied. They offered to sign non-proliferation treaties, which the U.S. ignored.
Now they have a burgeoning weapons program.
Contrast the situation with Iraq who had no substantive nuclear weapons program at any point in their history. The U.S. has decimated that country with violence.
What's the lesson?
Yucca Mountain waste repository project closed
In a significant development, which drastically changes the terrain of the renewed nuclear power and waste isolation the Department of Energy has withdrawn its license application with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. This effectively ends the project and begs the question: what, where, when, who and most importantly, why now?
Let's remind ourselves of the basics of how we generate electrical power from uranium. The basic principle is that since uranium decays radioactively -- it's "hot" -- the energy given off by the components of the decaying nuclei can be used to heat water into steam. That steam is then used to drive a turbine, which is connected to a electrical generator.
So let's look at the life cycle of a chunk of uranium. In the previous post, February 19, 2010, we discussed how uranium is isolated from dirt and rock in naturally occurring deposits called uraninite or, commonly, pitchblende. After processing the ore to natural uranium, chemical and/or mechanical processing is needed to purify or enrich the material to isolate the desirable component 235U. (You might recall the role of warehouse-sized fields of centrifuges.) Keep in mind that, when determining the economic feasibility of nuclear power, we need to take into account the cost of all the stages of production, consumption, and isolation of the radioactive material.
Now, once we've isolated the 235U (read "U-235" or "235-U," either way) to low-enriched (anywhere from 4% to 20%) we can think about putting this "hot," radioactive material into a reactor and use it to make electricity to run our mechanized world. The form in which the enriched uranium goes in to the reactor is as nuclear fuel, often shaped in cylinders (which themselves are comprised of fuel pellets) commonly referred to as rods. The rods are placed into the reactor core, in various configurations depending on the reactor, and water under pressure is circulated throughout the chamber, called the reactor core, which removes the heat of the nuclear reaction. There's no mixing of the nuclear fuel with water.
After a period of time, typically on the order of weeks or months, the nuclear fuel is "spent" in the process of the decay of the 235 nuclei which comprise the material. (We'll talk about the quantum mechanics of the process of radioactive decay in the next entry. Promise.) Spent nuclear fuel is also known as waste. Waste is an interesting concept that humans have come up with stuff that we've stopped thinking about. But if you stop thinking about this waste, you're going to get into some trouble.
Dealing with the spent nuclear fuel is -- by far -- the most costly part of generating electricity from radioactive materials. You can't throw it away. It must be isolated. This is where the Yucca Mountain waste repository project came into play. The problem is that the spent nuclear fuel is still hot, literally. While the fuel is "spent" as far as the reactor engineer is concerned (because it has become contaminated with the products of the radioactive element and its activity has fallen below design specification) it's ain't so for us. This stuff is nasty. Still radioactive and toxic to boot. And it remains active for a long time.
So the question is what do you do with it so that it's isolated from flora and fauna (include people in this category, why not?) and doesn't do all the bad things that radiation poisoning can do. (Another topic for a future entry!)
There have been a lot of ideas on how to isolate spent nuclear fuel. All of them are ludicrous. Most of them are economically unfeasible. "Send it to 'outer' space."Or 'the moon.' Forget about giving it to NASA. It's too expensive and what if the Challenger had been loaded up with this junk?
The only idea that's considered feasible economically is burial. Stick it into the ground in a deep hole. And hope. I say "considered" feasible because it's not -- really.
The first problem is the cost of building, storing, maintaining, monitoring, and preventing accidental release of the spent material. If anything goes wrong on a large scale -- water contamination, fire, earthquake, etc. -- we're up you-know-where without a you-know-what. You can't easily "handle" this stuff, after all.
Yucca Mountain was selected by Congress[!!], not by scientific process of elimination, but for overtly political considerations. They said "it's dry enough." Turns out it's not. If water gets near this stuff, usually held in metal barrels the show is over.
More later about the details of the actual storage of spent nuclear fuel.
Let's remind ourselves of the basics of how we generate electrical power from uranium. The basic principle is that since uranium decays radioactively -- it's "hot" -- the energy given off by the components of the decaying nuclei can be used to heat water into steam. That steam is then used to drive a turbine, which is connected to a electrical generator.
So let's look at the life cycle of a chunk of uranium. In the previous post, February 19, 2010, we discussed how uranium is isolated from dirt and rock in naturally occurring deposits called uraninite or, commonly, pitchblende. After processing the ore to natural uranium, chemical and/or mechanical processing is needed to purify or enrich the material to isolate the desirable component 235U. (You might recall the role of warehouse-sized fields of centrifuges.) Keep in mind that, when determining the economic feasibility of nuclear power, we need to take into account the cost of all the stages of production, consumption, and isolation of the radioactive material.
Now, once we've isolated the 235U (read "U-235" or "235-U," either way) to low-enriched (anywhere from 4% to 20%) we can think about putting this "hot," radioactive material into a reactor and use it to make electricity to run our mechanized world. The form in which the enriched uranium goes in to the reactor is as nuclear fuel, often shaped in cylinders (which themselves are comprised of fuel pellets) commonly referred to as rods. The rods are placed into the reactor core, in various configurations depending on the reactor, and water under pressure is circulated throughout the chamber, called the reactor core, which removes the heat of the nuclear reaction. There's no mixing of the nuclear fuel with water.
After a period of time, typically on the order of weeks or months, the nuclear fuel is "spent" in the process of the decay of the 235 nuclei which comprise the material. (We'll talk about the quantum mechanics of the process of radioactive decay in the next entry. Promise.) Spent nuclear fuel is also known as waste. Waste is an interesting concept that humans have come up with stuff that we've stopped thinking about. But if you stop thinking about this waste, you're going to get into some trouble.
Dealing with the spent nuclear fuel is -- by far -- the most costly part of generating electricity from radioactive materials. You can't throw it away. It must be isolated. This is where the Yucca Mountain waste repository project came into play. The problem is that the spent nuclear fuel is still hot, literally. While the fuel is "spent" as far as the reactor engineer is concerned (because it has become contaminated with the products of the radioactive element and its activity has fallen below design specification) it's ain't so for us. This stuff is nasty. Still radioactive and toxic to boot. And it remains active for a long time.
So the question is what do you do with it so that it's isolated from flora and fauna (include people in this category, why not?) and doesn't do all the bad things that radiation poisoning can do. (Another topic for a future entry!)
There have been a lot of ideas on how to isolate spent nuclear fuel. All of them are ludicrous. Most of them are economically unfeasible. "Send it to 'outer' space."Or 'the moon.' Forget about giving it to NASA. It's too expensive and what if the Challenger had been loaded up with this junk?
The only idea that's considered feasible economically is burial. Stick it into the ground in a deep hole. And hope. I say "considered" feasible because it's not -- really.
The first problem is the cost of building, storing, maintaining, monitoring, and preventing accidental release of the spent material. If anything goes wrong on a large scale -- water contamination, fire, earthquake, etc. -- we're up you-know-where without a you-know-what. You can't easily "handle" this stuff, after all.
Yucca Mountain was selected by Congress[!!], not by scientific process of elimination, but for overtly political considerations. They said "it's dry enough." Turns out it's not. If water gets near this stuff, usually held in metal barrels the show is over.
More later about the details of the actual storage of spent nuclear fuel.
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