environment, science

Nuclear Power Redux

Back in February (OK, yes, I’m currently in catch-up mode) I read a very interesting article on resurrecting nuclear power (a) in a much safer form and (b) to solve our energy crisis. The article was Nuclear goes retro – with a much greener outlook. It is a very long read, so here is the usual tl;dr summary (edited quotes).

  • If you want poor countries to become richer you need a cheap and abundant power source. But if you want to avoid spewing out enough extra carbon dioxide to fry the planet, you need to provide that power without using coal and gas.
  • The standard alternatives simply wouldn’t be sufficient. Wind and solar power by themselves couldn’t offer nearly enough energy, not with billions of poor people trying to join the global middle class. Yet conventional nuclear reactors – which could meet the need, in principle – are massively expensive, potentially dangerous and anathema to much of the public (not to mention politicians).
  • But, the molten salt reactor (MSR) might just turn nuclear power into the greenest energy source on the planet.
  • They are basically a pot of hot nuclear soup – a mix of salts, heated until they melted, and a salt such as uranium tetrafluoride stirred in.
  • The uranium will undergo nuclear fission in the melt, keeping the salts molten, and providing power generation at the same time.
  • Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee successfully operated a demonstration molten salt reactor back in the 1960s.
  • They demonstrated that molten salt reactors were cheap enough for poor countries to buy and compact enough to deliver on a flatbed truck.
  • They’re also green as they will burn our existing stockpiles of nuclear waste, rather than generatign even more.
  • And they’re safe enough to put in cities and factories.
  • Even better these reactors would be proliferation resistant, because their hot, liquid contents would be very hard for rogue states or terrorists to hijack.
  • Getting there isn’t going to be easy – not least because hot molten salts are just as corrosive as they sound. Every component that comes into contact with the brew will have to be made of specialized, high-tech alloy that can resist that corrosion. While you want to dissolve the uranium in the salt, you do not want to dissolve your rector as well!
  • As one specialist has observed: “It will be exceedingly hard, but that is significantly better than impossible”.
  • The approach that won out for commercial power production – and is still used in almost all of the 454 nuclear plants currently operating globally – is the water-cooled uranium reactor (WCUR).
  • WCUR isn’t the best nuclear design, but it was one of the first. Other designs were left for later (if ever).
  • Oak Ridge successfully demonstrated all this in their MSR, an 8 megawatt prototype that ran from 1965 to 1969.
  • By the early 1970s, the Oak Ridge group was well into developing an even more ambitious prototype that would allow them to test materials as well as demonstrating the use of thorium fuel salts instead of uranium.

  • Officials in the US nuclear program terminated the Oak Ridge programme in early 1973. However MSR started to appear less visionary in 1974, when India tested a nuclear bomb made with plutonium extracted from the spent fuel of a conventional reactor.
  • Governments around the world realised global reprocessing was an invitation to rampant nuclear weapons proliferation. In 1977 US President Jimmy Carter banned commercial reprocessing in the United States; much of the rest of the world followed.
  • This left a nasty disposal problem. Instead of storing spent fuel underwater for a few years, engineers were now supposed to isolate it for something like 240,000 years, thanks to the 24,100-year half-life of plutonium-239. (The rule of thumb is to wait 10 half-lives, thus reducing radiation levels over 1000-fold.)
  • Developers at Oak Ridge tried to point out that the continuous purification approach could solve both the spent-fuel and proliferation problems at a stroke; but they were ignored by the nuclear planners.
  • Then in 1979 came the partial meltdown at Three Mile Island, a conventional nuclear plant. In 1986 another catastrophe hit meltdown at the Chernobyl plant in Ukraine.
  • The resulting backlash against nuclear power was so strong that new plant construction effectively ceased, the nuclear industry stagnated and was not in an innovative mood for 30 years.
  • Then in 2011, a tsunami knocked out all the cooling systems and backups at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi plant causing the 1970s-vintage reactors to meltdown.
  • Seaborg Technologies launched in 2014 to design a molten salt Compact Used fuel BurnEr (CUBE) that would run on a combination of spent nuclear fuel and thorium.
  • CUBE is also so small that it can be transported to site on the back of a truck – a major advantage especially in remote regions.
  • Unfortunately none of this is going to happen tomorrow. The various MSR development companies are still refining their designs and the first prototypes won’t be running until at least the mid-2020s.
  • But perhaps the biggest, and most unpredictable barrier, is the public’s ingrained fear of anything labelled “nuclear”.
  • So developers have to keep stressing the why of nuclear power: to fight climate change, poverty and pollution. As well as the three big advantages of MSR: no meltdown, no proliferation and burning up nuclear waste
  • Apparently people are beginning, slowly, to listen – at least in the USA.

See also Molten Salt Reactors and Wikipedia.

medical

Vaccine Myths

Over recent months I’ve read several articles setting out to refute anti-vaxxer myths about vaccines, including:

Read these articles for further background and references.

Now I’m not going to recite all the arguments busting the myths, but I will highlight a few salient points.

Autism

  • The original paper by Andrew Wakefield on autism being caused by the MMR vaccine has been totally discredited due to serious procedural errors, undisclosed financial conflicts of interest, and ethical violations. The paper has been retracted.
  • Numerous studies have been conducted and none have found any evidence to support the notion that vaccines cause autism or other chronic illnesses.

Improved hygiene

  • While it is true that better hygiene, sanitation and nutrition are responsible for there being fewer infections, this is not the whole story. Antibiotics and similar drugs have clearly helped too.
  • However when these factors are isolated and rates of infectious disease are scrutinized, vaccines are also shown to have had a significant effect.

Vaccines are too risky

  • Children and adults have been being successfully vaccinated for decades.
  • This has provided ample opportunity for research studies and none has never found a single credible link between vaccines and long term health conditions.

Vaccination is not needed

  • This argument goes that we don’t need to vaccinate because infection rates are already incredibly low.
  • Yes, infection rates are low and this can be shown to be due toi the herd immunity from vaccination: with many people resisting infection due to vaccination even unvaccinated groups are provided some protection as diseases cannot get a foothold.
  • This level of “herd immunity” is important because there will always be a portion of the population – infants, pregnant women, elderly, those with weakened immune systems – that can’t be vaccinated.
  • Reduce that level of “herd immunity” and the infections do return.


Mercury in vaccines acts as a neurotoxin

  • Yes, some vaccines have contained the preservative thimerosal, which is a compound containing mercury. And yes, free mercury is a neurotoxin. But thimerosal does not produce free mercury in the body.
  • However both the USA’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the World Health Organization, have found no evidence that thimerosal in vaccines causes health problems in kids.
  • In fact in 2001 thimerosal was removed from all childhood vaccines in the United States except multi-dose vials of flu vaccine. It has also been removed in vaccines in the EU. As a result there was no drop in the incidence of autism; in fact the opposite. The same was found in Denmark.

Vaccine overload

  • “Vaccine overload” is the idea that giving many vaccines at once may overwhelm or weaken a child’s immature immune system and lead to adverse effects.
  • However there is strong scientific evidence to the contrary.
  • Despite the relatively recent increase in the number of vaccines, improvements in vaccine design have reduced the immunologic load from vaccines.
  • Moreover vaccines pose a very small immunologic load compared to the pathogens naturally encountered by a child in a typical year.

HPV vaccine

  • In some quarters the HPV vaccine, which is offered to pre- and early-teenage girls (and increasingly to boys) is controversial due to concerns that it may encourage promiscuity.
  • Even if this were the case (and I have seen no evidence) my personal view is that this would be preferable to cervical, throat and other cancers.
  • It is also quite baffling that anyone can oppose a vaccine which aims to reduce the incidence of cancer.

Flu Vaccination

  • It is a common misconception that you don’t need a ‘flu shot every year.
  • This is wrong. If you are eligible for a ‘flu shot you do need one every year.
  • Not only is ‘flu a highly dangerous disease, especially for the immunocompromised, but it mutates very rapidly. In consequence this year’s circulating ‘flu viruses will be very different to last year’s, and the vaccine is updated every year to take account of this.

So, in summary, vaccines prevent the outbreak of (often dangerous) diseases such as polio and measles which used to be widespread – and ‘flu which is still common. The scientific consensus strongly supports their safety.

environment

Urban Greening

Some weeks ago I read an article Urban greening can save species, cool warming cities, and make us happy. On an over-hot day in London it seems appropriate to give you the tl;dr version (edited quotes):

The current climate and ecological crisis demands a radical redesign of how we live and organise society. These urgent changes, although complex, are far from impossible.

Some are simple, beautiful, and beneficial to all. By greening our cities with street trees, urban parks, and community and rooftop gardens, we can keep ourselves cool amid rising temperatures, reverse the steady erosion of the rich tapestry of life on Earth, and foster happiness and social connection in the process.

Greenery in urban spaces helps improve city microclimates. While hotter cities compel urbanites to increase air conditioning in order to stay cool, on a sunny day, a single healthy tree can have the cooling power of more than ten air-conditioning units.

Plants also help keep harmful pollutants such as microscopic particulate matter at bay. While some vehicles are needed in city centres, mass greening can help negate their pollution and keep cities cool.

Evidence shows numerous social, psychological, and health benefits of human exposure to green spaces, including: stress and anxiety reduction, improved cognitive functioning, lowered risks of depression, and overall greater mental and physical well-being; involvement in community gardening can increase social cohesion and social bonds.

Human socio-economic activities, especially those of the world’s rich, have destroyed natural habitats, consumed vast tracts of forest, polluted waterways, and disrupted the seasonal rhythms on which life depends. But (re-)establishing wild meadows and native plant and tree communities provides essential pollinators with new spaces to thrive, while creating spaces to reintroduce keystone species.

Mass greening and rewilding of our cities is already happening in many urban spaces around the world. The Mayor of Paris has ambitious plans to “green” 100 hectares of the city by 2020 and London’s Mayor hopes to make London the world’s first “National Park City” through mass tree planting and park restoration.

Urban greening alone will not be enough to meet the daunting challenges ahead; we also need to fundamentally transform our growth-oriented economies and massively reduce global inequality.

beliefs, current affairs, personal, thoughts

On Protest

A few days ago one of our favourite Zen masters, Brad Warner, wrote a blog post under the title What You Don’t Speak Out Against You Co-sign? He was responding to a comment that “what you don’t speak out against you co-sign” and taking him to task for not openly campaigning against Donald Trump and all that he stands for. Needless to say Brad disagreed, as I do too.

Let’s start off being clear. “What you don’t speak out against you co-sign” means “If you don’t speak out against something then you are supporting, aiding, facilitating, even encouraging it”.

As Brad says, this is a very common way of thinking. It goes along with the “if good men do nothing …” trope. But it isn’t true and it is (designed to be) divisive and create factions. It is nothing short of moral blackmail.

Many people see their target as some variant of evil. So if you don’t campaign, demonstrate or protest against Donald Trump, Boris Johnson, Brexit, pervasive CCTV, fossil fuels, or whatever, then you condone them and you are the work of the Devil. Not so.

In Brad’s words:

If someone characterizes you as evil, do you want to be friends with them? Do you want to support the things they support? Do you want to listen to their reasons for calling you evil? Or are you more likely to say, “Well screw you!” and deliberately support whatever it is they’re against?
… …
The stance that [such people] are taking will only drive more people to support the [cause] they hate.

So their efforts become a self-denying ordinance.

Also implicit in this is (a) that there is one right and one wrong answer, and (b) that there is only one way to protest. Some must choose to refrain from joining in with the noise everyone else is making. Protesting noisily is seldom effective. In general, protests and petitions work only to reinforce the determination to do whatever is being protested against. They may convince those who are already of like mind to join your bandwagon, but to many, like me, they are annoying and pointless – even if I agree with the sentiments.

Don’t get me wrong. I object just as strongly to the same things (see list above) as anyone else. But I choose not be be mouthy about it or jump on bandwagons. Like Brad I am not skilled in political rhetoric, and whatever I might wish to say has already been said a thousand times over by those more skilled (and likely more knowledgeable) than me. So I would largely be wasting my breath.

Everything goes through cycles and fashions; always has, always will. Ultimately “we are where we are” and “what will happen will happen” – although by “right action” we can indeed hope to affect the outcomes. But what is “right action” for you may not be so for me.

Essentially it doesn’t matter what I say. Brexit will happen or it won’t happen. North Korea will blow us all sky high, or it won’t. Rinse and repeat, with your cause du jour.

That’s not to say that we shouldn’t speak out about things we fundamentally disagree with, but there won’t be thousands not speaking out because I keep quiet: there is already plenty of discussion and debate. Your mileage may vary.

Like Brad, I believe there is a better way, at least for me. First of all staying silent (or maybe just quieter) helps protect my sanity – something which is precarious enough for most of us at the best of times. The Dalai Lama always talks about compassion, and self-care is only having compassion for oneself. Without self-compassion and self-care you are not able, and not there, to show compassion for others.

Keeping silent has other benefits too. It provides quiet space where other topics, perhaps of more immediate personal importance or urgency, can be discussed. And, when appropriate, it also allows controversialists and facilitators (as I like to think I am) help others see the wood for the trees and take an appropriately thoughtful and nuanced approach, rather than jumping on some blinkered, raucous bandwagon.

There’s more than one way to stop the crocodile running off with the sausages.

For another perspective on this see Silent Protests Are Still Protests.

amusements, arts, personal, pleasures

100 Days of Haiku, Episode 3

Weekly update on my 100 Days of Haiku challenge. Not such a good week, this wek, as I’ve struggled much more for inspiration, but here’s this week’s selection (one a day).

Monday 15 July
Small roach, I feared!
Closer look in shower shows
just a tiny moth.

Tuesday 16 July
Grey shape, movement in
silver birch. Camouflaged
squirrel eating shoots.

Wednesday 17 July
Red golden glows the
moon eclipse through lacy trees.
Such speechless beauty.

Thursday 18 July
A lady’s pretty
cunt glimpsed beneath a skirt.
Such rare delight.

Friday 19 July
Bold Samuel Pepys
much drinking and wenching did;
but bad boy done good.

Saturday 20 July
Soft rain, heavy rain:
wring out the returning cats
many times today.

Sunday 21 July
Flashing red and white:
a Red Admiral supping
Buddleia’s nectar.

And the tally of progress by week:

Week Haiku
1 16
2 28
3 33

More next week.

amusements, quotes

Monthly Quotes

In between everything else this month, I’ve still managed to spot quite a few interesting or amusing quotes …

A stupid person is more dangerous than a bandit … Stupid people cause losses to other people with no counterpart of gains on their own account. Thus society as a whole is impoverished.
[Carlo Cipolla, essay “The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity”]

Treat yourself the way you would treat a small child.
Feed yourself healthy food.
Make sure you spend time outside.
Put yourself to bed early.
Let yourself take naps.
Don’t say mean things to yourself.
Don’t put yourself in danger.
[unknown]

Jim Hacker: “I know exactly who reads the papers. The Daily Mirror is read by people who think they run the country. The Times is read by people who actually run the country. The Guardian is read by people who know they don’t run the country but think they ought to. The Daily Mail is read by the wives of the people who run the country. The Financial Times is read by people who own the country. The Morning Star is read by people who think the country ought to be run by another country and the Daily Telegraph is read by people who think it is.”
Sir Humphrey: “What about the people who read the Sun?”
Bernard: “They don’t care who runs the country as long as she’s got big tits.”
[Yes Prime Minister]

A cover up? Certainly not! It is responsible discretion exercised in the national interest to prevent unnecessary disclosure of eminently justifiable procedures in which untimely revelation could severely impair public confidence.
[Yes Prime Minister]

Bernard, a good speech isn’t one where we can prove the minister’s telling the truth. It’s one in which nobody else can prove he’s lying.
[Yes Prime Minister]

“We don’t think our study is practically useful for society, but we hope that it will contribute to our understanding of the symmetric beauty in nature.”
[Munetaka Sugiyama quoted in Smithsonian Magazine]

By upholding international human rights principles, the rule of law is key to closing the gap between human rights aspirations and human rights realities, and to promoting and protecting human rights. We see how the rule of law operationalises human rights through constitutional and legal protections of human rights, an independent and impartial judicial system, effective legal remedies, and competent, accountable and inclusive institutions.
The rule of law has a role in preventing violence … as well as protecting human rights. We are mindful that societies in which human rights are valued, and people are empowered and listened to, are more likely to be just, fair, stable and free from violence. In this session … we take the opportunity to stress the importance of the rule of law in enshrining equality before the law, access to justice, and participation in decision making on the basis of equality, thereby empowering the whole of society.
[UK government statement (19 June 2017) to the 35th Session of the UN Human Rights Council. I just wish they behaved as if they believed it.]

Unexpected guests
receive unexpected views.
(Who wears pants at home?)
[Courtney Symonds]

Or just be a decent person first because that’s like literally the first requirement for anything at all. Be it just friendship, a nice conversation with a stranger, a night of fun, a serious relationship, a not serious relationship. They all start with being a decent human.
[@Suhaila]

In the later stages of its natural career, the academic will sometimes leave their pack without warning, find a obscure hill, and choose to die on it in defiance of all reason. Scientists are uncertain if this tragic death ritual serves any adaptive purpose.
[Danielle Navarro]

When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace.
[Jimi Hendrix]

CLERKENWELL.
FISHING WITHOUT A ROD OR NET. Edward White, 15, a blindmaker’s apprentice, of Victor-road, Holloway, was charged, before Mr. Hosack, with fishing with a hook and line in the lake at Finsbury Park, contrary to the bye-laws of the Metropolitan Board of Works. It was stated on behalf of the Board of Works that the boy was charged under the 7th bye-law, which forbids fishing in the lake. A Park Constable proved having seen the lad fishing with a line which had a hook at the end of it. In answer to the Magistrate, the Witness admitted that the Defendant had neither a rod nor a net. Mr. Hosack said the bye-laws said nothing about fishing with a line, but only with a “rod or net”. The contrivance used by the Defendant did not therefore, come within the bye-law. The boy was then discharged, amid considerable laughter.
[Press report; source & date unknown. H/T @IanVisits]

It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.
[Upton Sinclair, 1934]

Norman saw on English oak.
On English neck a Norman yoke;
Norman spoon to English dish,
And England ruled as Normans wish;
Blithe world in England never will be more,
Till England’s rid of all the four.
[Sir Walter Scott]

You can lead a horse to water but you can’t climb a ladder with a rabbit in each hand.
[Bob Mortimer]

amusements, arts, personal, pleasures

100 Days of Haiku, Episode 2

As promised, a weekly update on my progress through my 100 Days of Haiku challenge.

My target is to write at least one haiku each day. In week one I churned out 16, although not all were good. This week, week two, I’ve written 28 – again not all good – and I have a few ideas on the stocks. Here is a selection, one a day, from this week.

Monday 8 July
Always branded bad:
erotic, pornography,
essential for life.

Tuesday 9 July
Sunny windowsill;
solar-charging cat dozing.
Night out spent mousing.

Wednesday 10 July
Dryad of wormwood,
halucinogenical.
Fay green absinthe.

Thursday 11 July
Awakening to
pigeon’s morning serenade.
Warm snugly lover.

Friday 12 July
Foot pain go away
though treatment more painful.
Attractive masseuse.

Saturday 13 July
Cool evening breeze
wafts away humid summer
sunshine and warmth.

Sunday 14 July
Catnip stuffed fish.
Hallucinogen causes
spaced out pussy.

So let’s keep a tally of how many we write each week:

Week Haiku
1 16
2 28

We’ll have another instalment next week.

personal, ramblings

Ten Things, July

This year our Ten Things series is focusing on each month in turn. The Ten Things may include facts about the month, momentous events that happened, personal things, and any other idiocy I feel like – just because I can. So here are …

Ten Things about July

  1. Start of UK school holidays
  2. The month was renamed by Roman Senate in honour of Julius Caesar
  3. Annual Swan Upping to count the Queen’s swans on the River Thames
  4. St Swithin’s Day
  5. Whitstable Oyster Festival
  6. Fence Month: the closed season for deer in England
  7. In 1799 a French soldier discovers Rosetta Stone
  8. Bikini first showcased in Paris in 1946 (right)
  9. First Moon walk in 1969
  10. Birth of Dr John Dee, Elizabethan scientist and magician
amusements, arts, memes, personal, pleasures, thoughts

100 Days of Haiku

2 Comments

As I have nothing else to do (joke!), and wanting to add something to my woeful practice of mindfulness, I have set myself a little challenge:

To write at least one haiku a day for 100 consecutive days.

What are haiku? Haiku is a Japanese verse in three lines with 5, 7 and 5 syllables respectively. Traditionally haiku are mood poems and don’t use any metaphors or similes; however beginners, like me, are usually start with just the restriction of the number of lines and syllables. There are many online collections of haiku, for example here, including those of the Japanese master Matsuo Basho.

I started this challenge last Monday, so I’m now seven days in and it is time to record the first results. In total I have written 16 haiku in the seven days – some good, many not so good. Here is one from each day showing a variety of ideas and subjects.

Monday 1 July
Cicadas singing
Long through sultry summer nights.
Thunder before dawn.

Tuesday 2 July
Sunshine streaming in
windows open wide for air.
Why such depression?

Wednesday 3 July
Hickory dickory dog,
rough enough through cough, lough and chough.
Cork works porky quark.

Thursday 4 July
Useful man, Paddy:
Build, fix, repair, recycle.
Moonshine of the bog.

Friday 5 July
Wispy cirrus cloud
Against Dutchman trouser blue.
Metal bird glides by.

Saturday 6 July
Sticky, sticky day
Energy drained away.
Starry, starry night.

Sunday 7 July
Seven round a table;
Friends’ dinner party makes mirth.
Mountainous paella.

Well no-one said that haiku had to make sense – at least not modern haiku; the traditional style seems more rigid!

I’m not going to post an offering every day, as some proponents of 100 day challenges do, but I shall attempt to post at least weekly updates. And I’m logging all the output, whether posted here or not, so who knows what might happen at the end.