Keyword of the Day

The Nuclear Option

Is Nuclear Power Worth It? Link goes to a Scientific American article. It's definitely worth the read. Definitely some pro's and con's to this energy source.

A pro, as odd it may seem by reading this quote:

And nuclear power plants have been operating in the U.S. for 50 years without exposing workers or residents in surrounding areas to excessive radiation. "Radiation is mundane, it's a weak carcinogen," says Rod Reed, a senior health physicist at the NRC. "It leads to very mundane changes, not three-eyed fish."

In fact, a typical coal-fired power plant exposes local residents to as many as 18 millirems of radiation yearly, whereas a nuclear power plant emits less than six millirems per annum, according to researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Reed adds: "Radiation should be respected, not feared."

And a con?

At issue in the failure at Davis–Besse is the alloy metal used to craft the nozzles—known as Inconel 600 or Alloy 600. The alloy of nickel, chromium and iron is resistant to corrosion generally—but slowly cracks when exposed to boric acid and stress.

But it isn't just reactor heads that are made from the stuff. The steam generators that transfer the heat from the solution of water and boron, which comes into contact with the nuclear reactor, to the water heated into steam that turns the turbines to produce electricity also employ the alloy. "The tubes in the steam generators were susceptible to cracking," says Ken Karwoski, senior level advisor for steam generators and material inspection at the NRC's Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation. "It's a combination of the temperature and the water chemistry."

So is this an issue dealing with all nuclear power plants? Fortunately no.

As early as the late 1950s there was some suggestion that this metal would crack under pressure but "the decision was made to go with this material," Karwoski says. "The perspective was that it should last but it didn't." And, as of today, there are still 15 nuclear power plants, including Davis–Besse, employing their old steam generators made from the alloy.

The U.S. fleet of 104 nuclear reactors—most built in the 1960s and 1970s—produced 806.5 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity in 2007, a record, and ran almost 92 percent of the time.

Speaking of issues with nuclear energy infrastructure, here is another article from Sci Am about nuclear mishaps.

In all, there were 10 incidents at U.S. nuclear plants last year [2006] that merited ratings of 2—"significant spread of contamination / overexposure of a worker" and "incidents with significant failures in safety provisions," as the INES handbook puts it—or above, Jones says. "Two reactor events and eight nonreactor events."

Overall, I'm still of the opinion that nuclear energy is a reasonable source of energy for the United States.

More on ...

... the new process to create LED lights.

The cost of production has kept the LEDs far from homes and offices, however. Gallium nitride cannot be grown on silicon like other solid-state electronic components because it shrinks at twice the rate of silicon as it cools. Crystals of GaN must be grown at 1000°C, so by the time a new LED made on silicon has cooled, it has already cracked, rendering the devices unusable.

One solution is to grow the LEDs on sapphire, which shrinks and cools at much the same rate as GaN. But the expense is too great to be commercially competitive.

Now Colin Humphreys's team at the University of Cambridge has discovered a simple solution to the shrinkage problem.

They included layers of aluminium gallium nitride in their LED design. These layers shrink at a much slower rate during cooling and help to counteract the fast-shrinkage of pure gallium nitride. These LEDs can be grown on silicon as so many other electronics components are. "They still work well as LEDs even with those extra layers inside," says Humphreys.

Currently ...

Listening To

Well, that's thanks for ya

Woman saves bosses life, only to be "downsized" a couple of months later.

The firing comes just months after Hegyi, a registered nurse, saved the life of station finance manager David Breed, who suffered a severe heart attack at work in September.

Linkage

Astronomy
SEDS Messier Catalog
TUMOL - The Ultimate Messier Object Log (Software)
Stellarium - Open Source Planetarium (Software)
Astronomy POTD - NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day

Microbiology
The Microbe Zoo

Gah!

I hate the Steelers. Arizona should have had that game wrapped up. Too many penalties and bad plays cost them.

I wonder if the Jets will ever make the Super Bowl again. In my lifetime would be nice.

So ...

... what do people think of the new background? Yucky? Worth keeping? Needs a touch-up or two?

Cheaper LED's coming soon

LEDs now grown on silicone vs. sapphire wafers.

GaN, grown in labs on expensive sapphire wafers since the 1990s, can now be grown on silicon wafers. This lower cost method could mean cheap mass produced LEDs become widely available for lighting homes and offices in the next five years

Energy resources are going to improve in typically one of two ways. First is to find new sources of energy. Second is to find better ways to conserve. LEDs fall into the second category.

First sign of the Apocalypse

Currently ...

Listening ToBest song on the album: Six Days (Soulwax Mix)

The song was originally sung by Colonel Bagshot back in 1971, under the title Six Day War, and was remixed by DJ Shadow in 2002.

Six Days
At the starting of the week
At summit talks you'll hear them speak
It's only Monday
Negotiations breaking down
See those leaders start to frown
It's sword and gun day

Tomorrow never comes until it's too late

You could be sitting taking lunch
The news will hit you like a punch
It's only Tuesday
You never thought we'd go to war
After all the things we saw
It's April Fools' day

Tomorrow never comes until it's too late
Tomorrow never comes until it's too late

You hear a whistling overhead
Are you alive or are you dead?
It's only Thursday
You feel a shaking on the ground
A billion candles burn around
Is it your birthday?

Tomorrow never comes until it's too late
Tomorrow never comes until it's too late
Make tomorrow come I think it's too late

Netbooks and Linux

This article makes no sense to me. Rather, the opinions of the users of netbooks, makes no sense to me.

“Linux just isn’t a platform for the mass market,” he said. “All the early reports of lots of returns of Linux netbooks were because people bought them with that and didn’t know what to do with it.”

Say again? What's so difficult about Linux? I have an Asus EEE Pc (900 model) which has Linux on it. It's a sweet little machine. 20GB flash drive, with an additional 16 GB in the SDHC slot that comes standard on the side (the 16GB SDHC card cost me ~$16 dollars from Amazon ... not a bad price to effectively double the memory of the machine). Oh, and I haven't had a single problem with it, especially when all I'm doing is surfing the net, or taking down quick notes with the Open Office software which comes installed. Yes, it take a bit of brain power to get full functionality, but it really does come with time and use.

Are people just lazy, or do they rely on "Windows for Dummies" books more than I realize?

How are you going to spend your ...

... extra five months?

Between 1978 and 2001, Americans’ average life span increased almost three years to 77, and as much as 4.8 months of that can be attributed to cleaner air, researchers from Brigham Young University and Harvard School of Public Health reported in Thursday’s New England Journal of Medicine.

I guess this means we'll all live longer, allowing us to see global warming armageddon. w00t!

You said it Jack Cafferty!

Stimulus package is loaded with crap. The link is mostly about how Limbaugh is a loud-mouth, but read the last paragraph.

The stimulus package is not going to be a walk in the park either. Republicans are yelling it's too costly and doesn't stimulate enough. And they might have point. It's at $825 billion now and could go higher. Hundreds of millions for condoms and other contraceptives doesn't belong in there either, unless it's for what's about to happen to the American taxpayer.

So ... who's ready for "what's about to happen"? I'm not.

Synthetic Biology

I'm not a Craig Venter fan, but you have to hand it to him, he's motivated and doesn't back down from a challenge. Here is a talk of his on his quest to create life. It's a 15 minute video. The organism he plans on creating is Mycoplasma laboratorium.

Currently ...

ReadingThe best portable star atlas in production (IMNSHO).

Listening To

Nuclear Power

I'm not sure that many people actually consider this, but ... nuclear power is going to be as finite as fossil fuels are. Current estimates peg nuclear power as being capable of powering the world at current rates for the next 200 years. Then, that's it folks.

According to the NEA, identified uranium resources total 5.5 million metric tons, and an additional 10.5 million metric tons remain undiscovered—a roughly 230-year supply at today's consumption rate in total.

There are a couple more options though ...

Two technologies could greatly extend the uranium supply itself. Neither is economical now, but both could be in the future if the price of uranium increases substantially. First, the extraction of uranium from seawater would make available 4.5 billion metric tons of uranium—a 60,000-year supply at present rates. Second, fuel-recycling fast-breeder reactors, which generate more fuel than they consume, would use less than 1 percent of the uranium needed for current LWRs. Breeder reactors could match today's nuclear output for 30,000 years using only the NEA-estimated supplies.

That's a bit more comforting. The question is ... would future developers actually develop these technologies sometime other than the 11th hour like we're currently experiencing with oil?

If you talk to someone in the know ...

... when it comes to environmental issues, and you ask them what the next "Big Deal" is, they'll tell you "Water". Water is a hot commodity, and we totally take it for granted. I mean, admit it ... you literally flush drinking-grade water down the toilet every day without even drinking it. I've blogged about it before. However, despite our cavalier attitude about water, it really is a finite resource. One only need look at Atlanta of last year to realize that, and farmers in California this year are going to be squeezed very tightly thanks to new regulations.

So? We need more water, and we need is yesterday. And scientists may have stumbled upon something which may help us achieve that goal. Desalination done cheaply, also an item I mentioned in that blog entry I linked to earlier in this entry.

National Food Poisoning Death Toll At Seven

Salmonella is to blame.

A seventh death was linked Friday to a nationwide outbreak of salmonella associated with tainted peanut butter and paste sourced to the Peanut Corp. of America's plant in Blakely, Ga., authorities confirmed.

Although their exact causes of death have not been determined, all seven people have died after being infected with the bacterial strain Salmonella Typhimurium, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on its Web site.

Actually, it's Salmonella typhimurium (note capitalization/italicization), but who's counting?

At any rate, the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) agency has a FAQ sheet on salmonellosis. Here is a sample from the FAQ.

Q. What are the symptoms of salmonellosis?
A. Most people experience diarrhea, abdominal cramps, and fever within 8 to 72 hours after the contaminated food was eaten. Additional symptoms may be chills, headache, nausea, and vomiting. Symptoms usually disappear within 4 to 7 days. Many people with salmonellosis recover without treatment and may never see a doctor. However, Salmonella infections can be life-threatening especially for infants and young children, pregnant women and their unborn babies, and older adults, who are at a higher risk for foodborne illness, as are people with weakened immune systems (such as those with HIV/AIDS, cancer, diabetes, kidney disease, and transplant patients).

As you can see, it can be a nasty bug, especially those who do not have a strong immune system.

The FDA also has Salmonella listed in their "Bad Bug Book". According to the chapter on Salmonella, the infectious dose is only about 15 to 20 cells, so this is a very contagious organism.

Unfortunately, with this case in particular, give its ubiquitous nature (found in a variety of non-cook ready-to-eat food items) it's very hard to suggest a method to ensure that if you eat some of this food, what you can do to avoid getting sick. In this case, just avoid these items for the foreseeable future.

Currently ...

Listening ToU.N.K.L.E. - War Stories

Burn My Shadow
I have burned my tomorrow
And I stand inside today
At the edge of the future
And my dreams all fade away

I have burned my tomorrows
And I stand inside today
At the edge of the future
And my dreams all fade away

And burn my shadow away
And burn my shadow away

Fate's my destroyer
I was ambushed by the light
And you judged me once for falling
This wounded heart will rise

And burn my shadow away
And burn my shadow away

An' I see the light, too light for love
An' I see the light, too light for love
An' I see the light, too light for love
An' I see the light, too light for love

An' I see the light, too light for love
Burn my shadow
An' I see the light, too light for love
Oh...
An' I see the light, too light for love
Burn my shadow
An' I see the light, too light for love
Away

And burn my shadow away
And burn my shadow away
Oh, how I loved you