Are there any readers who have read Richard Rhodes’s famous The Making of the Atomic Bomb? I’ve never heard one bad thing about this book, but I haven’t read it, however, I saw it on sale at the bookstore today, so I think I’m very tempted to go and read it and add it to my collection.

Would anybody care to give me a brief review of it?

Feel free to use this as an open discussion thread on good books worthy of reading, especially good non-fiction works, and especially those about nuclear energy and related issues.

A beautiful analogy to explain why the LNT hypothesis seems like it might be something of a stretch:

DV82XL Says:
July 22nd, 2008 at 12:04 am

If the LNT were applied to falling as it is to radiation, we might note that 100 percent of those falling onto concrete from 100 feet are killed, but only 50 percent of those falling from 50 feet die. With these data we would linearly extrapolate to say that 10 percent falling from 10 feet and one percent of those falling from one foot would die. Armed with this “linear no-threshold falling theory,” we could confidently assert that jumping rope should be banned on all school playgrounds since statistically anyone making 100 one-foot jumps would die.

This post was inspired, in part at least, by Rod Adams’ post on NEI Nuclear Notes recently, asking about the georeactor theory. I hope you find it useful, Rod.

The “georeactor” hypothesis is a proposal by J. Marvin Herndon that a fissioning critical mass of uranium may exist at the Earth’s core and indeed that it serves as the energy source for the Earth’s magnetic field. You can read all about Herndon’s ideas at his website.

Herndon’s georeactor hypothesis is not widely accepted at all by the scientific community, outside of Herndon himself and a very small number of defenders.

Herndon’s georeactor hypothesis is sometimes confused with the existence of natural nuclear fission reactors in the Earth’s crust in rich uranium deposits at Oklo in Western Africa - however, it must be stressed that these are not the same thing - there is absolutely no doubt at all, scientifically, as to the occurrence of nuclear fission and the formation of natural nuclear “reactors” at Oklo approximately two billion years ago.

However, Rob de Meijer and associates at the Nuclear Physics Institute in Groningen, the Netherlands, are amicable towards Herndon’s theory, and have indeed proposed an experiment by which it should be somewhat falsifiable - involving measurement of the antineutrino flux from the Earth’s core which they believe will validate the georeactor hypothesis.

Fission reactors generate huge numbers of electron antineutrinos – about 10^26 per day from a typical manmade power reactor. Several thousand of these can be measured per day in a detector of modest size, outside the reactor, outside the containment, tens of meters away.

The antineutrinos resulting from each fission event from uranium and plutonium have different total count rates and energy spectra - the antineutrinos are not actually produced by nuclear fission itself, but rather by the beta decay of fission products. The antineutrinos therefore carry with them information about the amount and type of fissile material in the reactor core, and the rate at which it is being fissioned.

Because of this, incidentally, the use of neutrino detectors has raised considerable interest in recent times in the context of providing a real-time online and very simple measurement of the fuel burnup, operating status, power level, plutonium production and such characteristics of operating nuclear reactors, which is of considerable utility in enforcing non-proliferation safeguards.

(There’s more information on this application here if you’re interested.)

Personally, I don’t see why existing underground neutrino observatories, such as Super-Kamiokonde, the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory, and the IceCube experiment in Antarctica shouldn’t be sufficient to provide significant insights into the presence - or absence - of georeactor antineutrinos. Clearly all neutrinos from a “georeactor” come exclusively from exactly the centre of the earth as observed at every detector, and they should be detectable at all neutrino observatories worldwide with a similar flux everywhere.

Combining these simple pieces of information with the expected energy spectra of neutrinos from uranium fission, it seems extremely plausible that the georeactor hypothesis can well and truly be put to the test, using existing experiments, and probably even with existing collections of raw data from these experiments.

As one of Herndon’s recent papers puts it:

Uranium, being incompatible in an iron-based alloy, is expected to precipitate at a high temperature, perhaps as the compound US. As density at Earth-core pressures is a function almost exclusively of atomic number and atomic mass, uranium, or a compound thereof, would be the core’s most dense precipitate and would tend to settle, either directly or through a series of steps, by gravity to the center of the Earth, where it would quickly form a critical mass and become capable of self-sustained nuclear fission chain reactions.

Of course, there is what seems like one significant problem with this theory - whilst several billion years ago, the portion of uranium-235 in natural uranium was much higher than it is today - equivalent to that of manmade enriched uranium, because U-235 decays faster than U-238, although a much larger ratio of U-235 was originally formed when the uranium was formed inside supernovae than is seen in the Earth today. That is why fission occurred at Oklo two billion years ago, but does not occur today - there is not enough of a concentration of U-235 in nature. Therefore, how can a “georeactor” exist?

Herndon explains away this question by postulating that the georeactor is something like a fast breeder reactor, started up aeons ago when the U-235 was more abundant, and today burning the abundant U-238 into plutonium-239.

However, if this is the case, couldn’t it be likely that we could observe plutonium-fissioning “breeder reactors” in rich uranium deposits in the Earth’s crust, like at Oklo, today?

Here’s an article that readers might be interested in taking a look at.

I can’t help but find the headline a little ironic.

I’m pleased to see many familiar names injecting some reason and fact-based analysis into the discussion thread, but by all means, pop over there and leave a comment if you feel so inclined.

Quite possibly a new level of nonsense from Amory Lovins, too:

“…about as fat a terrorist target as you can imagine. It is not necessary to fly a plane into a nuclear plant or storm a plant and take over a control room in order to cause that material to be largely released. You can often do it from outside the site boundary with things the terrorists would have readily available.”

Dare I ask, how?

An extract from the green paper:

The key supply-side factor to consider is the relative emissions intensity of different production processes. If all entities in an industry use similar technology, they will all face a similar increase in costs under the scheme and entities will be able to pass these costs through to consumers to the extent allowed by their price elasticity of demand.

However, if an entity is significantly more emissions-intensive than others that sell the same product, it will not be able to increase its prices without fear that its lower emissions competitors will undercut them.

Competitors for such emissions-intensive entities are not limited to existing producers, but include potential new entrants that can use less emissions-intensive technologies.

Demand for electricity is relatively inelastic. This is important, because it indicates that, absent particular supply side issues, the industry as a whole may be able to pass a large share of its carbon costs to consumers.

Some generators may be constrained in their ability to pass on carbon costs to consumers. Different technologies are used to generate electricity in Australia, and they vary significantly in emissions intensity. Highly emissions-intensive coal-fired generators compete with lower emissions (but still emissions-intensive) gas-fired generators, and with zero emissions electricity sources such as wind or hydro generation.

In the context of the competitive structure of Australia’s major electricity markets, this variability might prevent coal-fired electricity generators, in particular, from passing on a significant portion of their carbon costs, reducing their profitability.

The profitability of emissions-intensive generators could be reduced in two ways.

First, generators could lose market share to generators with lower emissions intensity.
A reduction in volume is particularly significant for coal-fired generators, because they need to sell significant quantities of electricity to cover their high fixed capital and maintenance costs.

Second, competition with less emissions-intensive generators could reduce the margins earned on electricity sold by more emissions-intensive generators.

I can’t help but think they’ve overlooked something here. Here’s a bit of a tip for the federal government: emissions-intensive generators losing market share to generators with lower emissions intensity results in a reduction of the GHG emissions intensity of the market.

We can’t have that now, can we?

Paul Howes, national secretary of the Australian Workers’ Union, is continuing to advocate taking a reasonable look at the role of nuclear energy as a means to achieve anthropogenic GHG emissions reductions. As you might expect from Australia’s largest trade union, their chief area of concern is the mitigation of GHG emissions, and the introduction of GHG emissions trading, without damage to Australian industries and industrial employment.

THE Rudd Government is being urged to embrace nuclear power as a source of clean energy, amid warnings its emissions trading scheme could result in desolating Australian mineral and metallurgy industries.

Just days before the Government releases a discussion paper on carbon trading, a new report shows Australia’s aluminium industry - employing 35,000 people - could be devastated.

Challenging Professor Ross Garnaut’s preferred model, the Australian Workers’ Union wants the key metals sector to receive a partial reprieve from carbon trading.

The union has a powerful ally: respected business figure and Commonwealth Bank chairman John Schubert.

Mr Schubert, who also chairs the Great Barrier Reef Foundation, says Canberra should “definitely look at” nuclear power.

“It needs to be a real option… should absolutely be on the table“, Mr Schubert said.

Howes has just released a report from Per Capita consulting on the effects of the emissions trading scheme on Australian industry - specifically the aluminium industry, in this case.

It says the future for the aluminium industry is grim if the Government gets the design of an ETS wrong.

Union and business leaders fear an ETS will cause job losses and send investment offshore, with the aluminium industry particularly vulnerable.

The Per Capita report says jobs could be lost to Brazil, China and India if Canberra imposes tough new laws.

The study recommends the Government give the aluminium industry a “partial exemption” from carbon trading for up to five years and embrace nuclear power.

Mr Howes said the report would bring a “bit of level-headedness” to the debate over emissions trading and climate change.

Mr Howes said he was sick of hearing claims that workers in “heavy-polluting” industries, such as steel and aluminium, could be re-trained in “green” industries.

Instead, workers could be “left on the scrapheap of history” and enter the ranks of the long-term unemployed, Howes claims.

Personally, I don’t agree with the popular conception that aluminium production is an especially highly GHG emissions intensive industry.

Direct GHG emissions intensity for aluminium production in Australia was 2.0 tonnes CO2-e per tonne of aluminium production in 2007 — down from 2.1 in 2006 and 5.0 in 1990 — an improvement over the 1990 level of 60 per cent.

Indirect GHG emissions intensity from electricity consumption for aluminium production remained at the same level as 2006 at 14.1 tonnes CO2-e per tonne of aluminium production — down from 16.1 in 1990 — an improvement of 12%. This reflects both energy efficiency and changes in greenhouse grid factors.

Australian aluminium production in 2007 (i.e. aluminium smelting, not alumina production) contributed 31.6 mt (million tonnes) of GHG emissions (CO2-e), comprising 3.95 mt CO2-e of direct PFC emissions, direct carbon dioxide process emissions and other site-level emissions, and 27.69 mt CO2-e of indirect emissions from electricity consumption.

The Australian aluminium smelting industry consumed 29,500 GWh of electricity in 2007, corresponding to an average GHG emissions intensity of 939 g/kWhe for the electricity consumed by Australia’s aluminium smelters - consistent with Australia’s extremely GHG intensive, overwhelmingly coal based electricity generation capacity.

[These statistics are taken from the Australian Aluminium Council's 2007 Sustainability Report.]

Indirect GHG emissions from fossil fuel electricity generation - which aren’t really emissions from the aluminium production industry at all - hence comprise 88 percent of the GHG emissions intensity ascribed to the aluminium smelting industry.

If the overall GHG emissions intensity of the electricity supply of 939 g/kWhe was cut to, say, 100 g/kWhe through the replacement of coal fired generators with nuclear energy, geothermal, solar thermal, hydroelectricity or what have you, then the greenhouse gas emissions of aluminium production in Australia can be cut from 31.6 mt to 6.9 mt - 3.52 tonnes CO2-e per tonne Al, compared with 16.1 tonnes CO2-e per tonne Al at present - a 78% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions intensity, and that’s on top of any further improvement in energy efficiency and/or process efficiency, PFC emissions reduction and so forth, in the industry.

Aluminium smelters are not at all the cause for concern here. The burning of coal and fossil fuel for essentially all the country’s electricity generation is by far the foremost concern that we need to address.

The AWU’s press release, and the 32 page analysis commissioned by the AWU from Per Capita, are available here.

Also, in Canberra today, economist Professor Jeffrey Sachs warns that the world must embrace nuclear power as one of its options if it is going to win the fight against the potentially catastrophic damage of anthropogenic greenhouse effect forcing.

Professor Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University and author of the book The End of Poverty, warned that global warming had the potential to undo the progress being made in the war on global poverty, making the tropics hotter and arid regions even more arid.

In Canberra to give a keynote speech today at the Australian National University’s annual China Update, he said the world would need to use every available technology - and develop some more - to reduce anthropogenic greenhouse forcing at the same time as rapidly expanding its output.

Professor Sachs, who has not supported nuclear power in the past, said better technology was the key to breaking the link between economic growth and carbon dioxide emissions, and the world could not afford to do without either nuclear power or cleaner coal.

“I support the reintroduction of nuclear power”, he said. “It’s hard to see how we’re going to get enough energy with low carbon emissions without nuclear playing a significant role.“

“If Australia chooses not to go that way, it’s going to have to go even more aggressively towards solar energy and carbon capture and storage. My own feeling is that nuclear is safe and cost-effective.“

Professor Sachs, 52, played a key role in drawing up the Millennium Development Goals that are the targets for reducing global poverty.

Yesterday he said climate change was one cause of the steep rise in world food prices, which is making food unaffordable in some poorer areas.

If the world can not afford to do without either nuclear power or “cleaner coal”, and nuclear power is already a developed, mature, proven technology across the world, and “cleaner coal” is far from it, then it’s not much of a contest, is it?

Here’s a rather interesting news report.

Forty-three nations, including Israel and Arab states, pledged Sunday to work for a Middle East free of weapons of mass destruction at the close of a summit to launch an unprecedented Union for the Mediterranean aimed at securing peace across the restive region.

In a final declaration, Israel, Syria, the Palestinians along with countries across Europe, the Middle East and North Africa agreed to “pursue a mutually and effectively verifiable Middle East Zone free of weapons of mass destruction.”

So, does that mean that Israel is going to have Syrian inspectors allowed in there at Dimona, with freedom to inspect and independently verify that they have no nuclear weapons and no program for the development of same?

To be honest, I’m completely skeptical that that could happen. On principle, though, it sounds like a step in the right direction.

An update on the latest “breakthrough car that runs on water!”:

http://techon.nikkeibp.co.jp/english/NEWS_EN/20080616/153301/

Kiyoshi Hirasawa, president of Genepax Co Ltd, unveiled part of the reaction mechanism of the company’s new fuel cell system called “Water Energy System” in an interview with Nikkei Electronics.

The system, which is capable of generating power with water and air, was first presented June 12, 2008. As reported in our previous article, the system produces hydrogen through a chemical reaction between water and a metal (or a metal compound) on the fuel electrode side (See related article).

Genepax uses a metal or a metal compound that can cause an oxidation reaction with water at room temperature, the company said. Metals that react with water include lithium, sodium, magnesium, potassium and calcium. The main feature of the Water Energy System is that it can be operated for a longer period of time by controlling the reaction of the metal or the metal compound, the company said.

According to Genepax, the metal or the metal compound is supported by a porous body such as zeolite inside the fuel electrode of the membrane electrode assembly (MEA). The products of the hydrogen generation reaction dissolves in water, and the water containing them will be discharged with water inside the system. Upon the completion of the reaction, the generation of hydrogen and power stops.

There is nothing revolutionary here - nothing that violates the laws of physics. Rather than “running on water” the device if fuelled with chemical potential energy in the form of a reactive chemical - such as lithium metal - that will spontaneously reduce water to hydrogen gas on contact, consuming the lithium. Energy is “stored” in such a material, which requires considerable energy input to create, and does not occur in the free metallic form in nature.

This is essentially nothing more than a non-rechargeable chemical battery. When its chemical “fuel” is depleted, it doesn’t work, and the chemical material must be replenished.

The recording of ABC TV’s Q&A series this week, debating anthropogenic climate change, the mitigation thereof, and alternative energy systems to coal, featuring Craig Emerson, Helen Coonan, Christine Milne, Andrew Bolt and Linda Jaivine is available online now. It’s worth watching, if you’re interested.

In the discussion of anthropogenic greenhouse forcing and the international political efforts to respond to it, there isn’t much of an opportunity for discussion before somebody brings up the issue of the rising economic powers like India and China. I agree that there is a very large base of emissions in China and other developing economies - they’re building the equivalent of one large power plant every 10 days or whatever it is, but they’re building all the nuclear power and hydro that they can as part of that - but if they need coal fired plants as well in this early stage of their industrialisation, then they will build those, too.

Considering that energy consumption in most developed countries has usually grown faster than GDP during the early stages of industrialization, it is to China’s credit that although its GDP has grown by 9.5% per year over the last 27 years, their carbon intensity per unit of GDP has decreased during that time, rather than increasing along with the GDP. The reduction in carbon intensity for China has meant that its CO2 increase of about 5.4% per year has amounted to a little over half of its GDP increase during the same 27 years. [1] They’re doing a far better job than was done in the industrialisation of the Western societies.

Only one seventh of the population of China has access to constant reliable electricity. Are we to stop those Chinese having that access to electricity? They want to have a prosperous, developed, first-world standard of technologically developed society for all the Chinese people - who the hell are we to say that they shouldn’t, or can’t?

They want to have the same opportunity for industrialisation that the West has had - even if that means pollution first, and clean up later, exactly like it was done in the Western societies.

If the Australian government[s] were in charge of China, you can be sure they’d be doing a far worse job in managing the rate of increase greenhouse gas emissions whilst allowing economic development.

In discussions of the politics of responding to anthropogenic greenhouse forcing in the Western world, you’ll often hear the “Blame China - it’s all their fault, not ours!” position. So, what to do?

Is the anthropogenic forcing of climate change such a pressing, important issue that suppose we’re going to tell the Chinese, no, you’re not allowed to industrialize right now - maybe in 50 years or 100 years when everyone else has slashed their CO2 emissions? You’re joking, clearly - what are you going to do, go to war to stop them from having the same standard of living that we have?

Or, perhaps, we can give them as much aid as possible to build clean alternatives to coal fired power plants while they’re industrialising?

Chinese officials claim that they are doing a great deal that is often not visible, especially for a country as large, populous, and rurally undeveloped as it is.

But working against that, and equally non-visible, is the role of multinational ventures in China in contributing to its greenhouse gas emissions. As of 2004, 23% of China’s CO2 emissions were coming from China’s manufacturing of products destined for the West, providing an interesting perspective on China’s large trade surplus. [1]

Over half of those emissions driven by demand from the West are from multinationals and foreign owned factories in China, suppling all the crap that is destined for Wal-Mart and department store shelves in Australia, the US, and other western nations. It is pointed out that China is being demonised for having become the place where the western world effectively outsources much of its pollution.

Do we have a responsibility to deal with this in China, instead of just blaming them and refusing to do anything ourselves since they’re supposedly the problem?

We could fully encourage and support the export of all nuclear power, wind turbine, solar, hydro, etc technologies from the Western nations into China - and, given the seriousness with which anthropogenic greenhouse forcing is viewed as a grave issue, give them as much direct financial aid as we can to build these technologies as an alternative to new coal fired power plants.

Instead of, say, building a nuclear power plant in Australia, Germany, Italy, the US or UK or where ever to replace a coal fired power plant, what if we could just give the money to China and they will build them instead of coal plants - talk about an emissions trading scheme! That way, we’re making the same mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions, we’ve silenced the “It’s all China’s fault, not our problem” talk, and we’ve also dealt with the political bickering in Australia (and a few other Western countries) over acceptance of nuclear power.

(Of course, this is a little hard to reconcile with the usual Western approach where power plants, nuclear, fossil or otherwise, are built and operated by corporations who can sell their electricity for profit - it really only makes sense in the context of nations operating under state ownership of power plants, like, say France.)

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming_in_China