‘Dirty bomb’ parts found in slain man’s home?

The Bangor Daily News reports that one James G. Cummings, who police say was shot to death by his wife two months ago, “allegedly had a cache of radioactive materials in his home suitable for building a “dirty bomb.””

According to an FBI field intelligence report from the Washington Regional Threat and Analysis Center posted online by WikiLeaks, an organization that posts leaked documents, an investigation into the case revealed that radioactive materials were removed from Cummings’ home after his shooting death on Dec. 9.

The report posted on the WikiLeaks Web site states that “On 9 December 2008, radiological dispersal device components and literature, and radioactive materials, were discovered at the Maine residence of an identified deceased [person] James Cummings.”

It says that four 1-gallon containers of 35 percent hydrogen peroxide, uranium, thorium, lithium metal, thermite, aluminum powder, beryllium, boron, black iron oxide and magnesium ribbon were found in the home.

Also found was literature on how to build “dirty bombs” and information about cesium-137, strontium-90 and cobalt-60, radioactive materials. The FBI report also stated there was evidence linking James Cummings to white supremacist groups. This would seem to confirm observations by local tradesmen who worked at the Cummings home that he was an ardent admirer of Adolf Hitler and had a collection of Nazi memorabilia around the house, including a prominently displayed flag with swastika. Cummings claimed to have pieces of Hitler’s personal silverware and place settings, painter Mike Robbins said a few days after the shooting.

Now, of course, this seems like a bit of a beat-up – but I’m not sure who’s to blame here, the newspaper, or the perhaps overly dramatic (internal) FBI report.

The memo leaked on WikiLeaks reports that:

“State authorities detected radiation emissions in four small jars in the residence labelled ‘uranium metal’, as well as one jar labelled ‘thorium’. The four jars of uranium carried the label of an identified US company.”

“Further preliminary analysis on 30 december 2008 indicated an unlabeled jar to be a second jar of thorium. Each bottle of uranium contained depleted uranium-238. Analysis also indicated the two jars of thorium held thorium-232.”

Now, regarding this US company. I have a pretty good suspicion who this company is – there aren’t too many companies that sell small samples of depleted uranium to the public – but I’m not going to mention the company by name, simply because they do not deserve to be unfairly tarnished or persecuted in relation to this incident.

This company provides quite a few products which are very interesting and very useful in scientific teaching, education and research, including some items which are extremely difficult to find on the market anywhere else, and they already cop enough persecution and flak as it is. Nothing they sell poses any special danger to the community at large, and small samples of uranium metal are, personally, one of the least dangerous things they sell.

The company in question, from what I recall, sells (depleted) uranium metal samples in 5 gram bottles, and used to sell thorium as one-gram samples.

If these samples were what these bottles possessed by this person were, then you’re talking about approximately 20 g of depleted uranium metal, and approximately 2 g of thorium metal. That’s about 10 microcuries of uranium, and about 0.22 microcuries of thorium.

There’s nothing that constitutes any radiological hazard to anybody. A bucket full of uranium-bearing rock picked up out of the ground would contain more radioactivity than this. Uranium-238 and thorium-232 are some of the least radioactive substances you can find that can still actually be called radioactive. They’re completely, utterly irrelevant to any threat of a radiological weapon, at all.

That said, however, I’m sure it is within the limits plausibility that this person was intent on trying to build a radiological weapon, he simply didn’t go about it in a particularly effective fashion.

Hacking up some Arduino-derivative hardware.

I was having a chat with some people the other week at linux.conf.au – I’m sorry, but I’m terrible at learning and remembering new names and faces, and I can’t remember who – about the idea of a future LCA workshop on the subject of the Arduino platform, where delegates are actually given their own kit that they can solder together – getting a little more hands-on with the hardware than using (the admittedly good) pre-assembled Arduino reference-design dev boards.

I mentioned the notion of having such a kit based exclusively on through-hole components, so that it’s easy to assemble by people with minimal experience with SMD soldering. However, the FTDI USB UART devices aren’t available as through-hole devices, only as SMD, so you’re going to need at least one SMD component. That is, unless you want to use RS232 as the interface to the PC, not USB. However, compared to RS232, USB is kick ass.

So, I thought, why not use a Arduino-style dev board that includes both RS232 and USB as well – so, you can have a fully functional board with USB interface if you’re brave enough to solder the SMD – but if you don’t, that’s OK, but you will need to use RS-232 as well as an external power supply.

That’s a pretty good idea, I thought. The people I mentioned it to agreed.
But no such hardware platform is available off the shelf anywhere.

So I created it.

This has been occupying my free time in between free moments for a significant part of the week at LCA
Doesn’t a conference such as LCA just totally put you in a hacking groove? It does for me. Of course, I’m a hardware, more so than software, hacker.

Please feel free to download and check out the schematic file and the PCB layout files.

Hardware IP released under the TAPR Open Hardware License (http://www.tapr.org/OHL).

These are CADsoft EAGLE files; they’re also sufficiently small such that the freeware licensed version of EAGLE is perfectly fine to work with them. Yeah, I know, I know, it’s proprietary software. I’ll have to learn gEDA and re-do the designs for extra FOSS satisfaction.

So, what hardware do we have?

The hardware is extremely close to the Arduino Duemilanove reference board schematic design, which it is based on. I’ve just added the MAX232A and D9 port for RS232, really. The UART connections are bought out to a 2×3-pin header block, so that jumpers can be used to patch the ATMega into either the FT232RL USB UART chip or the MAX232A level translator for RS232.

In theory, if you wanted to, for some strange reason, and you’ve populated both sets of interface components, you could have Tx routed to the USB UART, and Rx routed to the RS232 interface, or vice versa, if you wanted to. Also, you can, in theory, put the jumpers in to connect the hardware UART in the AVR to the USB port, and then code up a secondary UART in software using other DIO pins on the microcontroller, and then patch those DIO pins onto the UART select jumper block so that they’re connected to the MAX232, then you can plug the Arduino into the PC via USB, and then plug some completely separate RS232 peripheral into the microcontroller, too!
(Anyone for an OpenWRT router under microcontroller control?)

Additionally, all components are through-hole, except the FT232RL chip. Because through-hole components are used throughout, it’s a bit bigger than ordinary Arduino boards, and is physically not compatible in terms of form factor; that is, it is not (as the PCB currently stands) presently compatible with Arduino-compatible “shield” plug-in daughterboards. Perhaps somebody with elite PCB-routing skills could overcome that with a revised board layout?

The PCB as it currently stands maybe isn’t perfect. Perhaps it could be better. Perhaps you could make it better.
I’ve routed tracks on both layers so that there are no vias, instead, component leads are used as vias by soldering them to both layers – this can be difficult for certain types of components, and can affect the best component choices – eg. machined-pin IC sockets are easier to use. I find this method faster and easier when using home-fabbed PCBs, but if you can get professional PCBs fabbed inexpensively in China, then it might not be as important because you can get plated through-holes done at fab time for cheaper than you might think.

Unfortunately, I had to cave in in the end and include two conventional vias, near the FT232 chip, in order to route everything. Putting in manual vias with a bit of wire isn’t a big deal for just a couple of vias, anyway.

Some notes:
* You must use a MAX232A, not a MAX232, since the charge-pump capacitors are only 100 nF.
* Power input autodetection is implemented exactly as it is on the Arduino Duemilanove reference design.
* Most components are standard off-the-shelf things available from the workbench of the well-stocked hardware geek or the local Jaycar, with very few exceptions.
* Those exceptions include the ATMega168 itself, the FT232RL, the voltage regulator IC (If your input voltage is high enough I suppose you could use ye olde 7805 instead of the more exotic LDO regulator, but remember that it has a different pinout.) The FT232RL is available from DonTronics, in Australia.
* I wasn’t sure which P-channel MOSFET to use to switch the USB power rail – it probably doesn’t need to be a big honking TO-220 device, but I couldn’t find a more compact TO-92 device that I could confirm easy availability for (that is, from Jaycar or Altronics or whatever, in Australia). Finding a TO-92 packaged device that takes less board real estate would be nice.
* If you’re using the board as it stands now with the TO220 FET, don’t get the FET and the regulator swapped around! Also, all the capacitors are just identical 100 nF, with the exceptions of the two 22 pF crystal load capacitors and the two large electrolytics in the power supply.
* Also, there is the little fuse included in series with the USB power rail. The Duemilanove reference board includes some sort of little resettable polyswitch-style circuit breaker. I’m not sure where you could source one.

In any case, I hope you like it, I hope you find it useful, and I’d love you hear your comments.

Clean coal project ‘will fail’ under emissions trading scheme.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/01/19/2468820.htm

Opposition environment spokesman Greg Hunt says a major clean coal project in central Queensland will fail unless the Federal Government changes its emissions trading scheme.

ZeroGen is working to develop a low emissions plant but says under the proposed carbon pollution reduction scheme it may be forced to buy permits.

If this “clean coal” is so clean, and actually does not have any significant emission of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, why are GHG emissions permits any significant issue at all? Any and all technologies which are truly “clean” obviously have a competitive advantage under the emissions trading scheme – so how exactly is the coal industry able to complain about a financial disadvantage faced by “clean coal”?

Of course they should be forced to buy permits – as should every power station – corresponding to their quantitative greenhouse gas emissions. If you don’t want to sink money into GHG permits, then you deploy low-emissions or zero-emissions technologies.

Even after what is basically an admission that “clean coal” is still associated with very high emissions of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, more than natural gas and more than essentially any other energy generation technology with the exception of conventional coal-firing, the coal industry is still expecting even more handouts for the government for purported “clean coal” – and the government will probably give in, since “clean coal” is the only example the Australian Government has that they can try and meaningfully show as evidence of their supposed commitment to the management of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. If Big Coal threatens to walk away on the “clean coal” projects if they don’t get the additional taxpayer-funded pork they demand, the government is left with nothing to show off.

In a letter to Resources and Energy Minister Martin Ferguson the company said it should be exempted from buying carbon permits as it is a research and development project.

It has warned that if it has to buy permits the project may become unviable.

The Queensland Government has provided $100 million for the project and Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has voiced his support for it.
Mr Hunt has accused the Commonwealth of “turning its back” on clean energy.

“The project will fail under Mr Rudd’s regime,” he said.

“Very clearly ZeroGen, clean coal, the future of Australian clean energy will fail under Mr Rudd’s regime.”

What a bunch of ridiculous rhetoric.
Given that we’re seeing so much government money being handed out to the coal-fired generation industry in relation to coal and emissions trading, and so many exemptions from emissions trading and the issuing of free permits, it might almost come as a surprise that there is interest in “clean coal”, when there is no real significant economic disincentive to the use of conventional coal-fired technology. The answer does indeed seem to be that these mendaciously small-scale “clean coal” projects seem to be an attractive source of easy government handouts for Big Coal.

Mr Hunt says the Government’s stance on emissions trading has already hurt the company.

“We’ve learnt that there are already job losses at ZeroGen,” he said.

The entire business development and corporate affairs section has been sacked in the last few days, the company is already winding down.”

A spokesperson for Mr Ferguson says the minister will address the issues raised in ZeroGen’s letter in “due course”.

Last year the Government allocated $100 million to the formation of the Carbon Capture and Storage Institute.

About 80 per cent of Australia’s electricity is created by coal-fired power generators.

Under the proposed carbon pollution reduction scheme, all revenue from the sale of permits will be used to compensate households for rising costs.

The Government’s climate change adviser, Professor Ross Garnaut, had urged the Government to allocate about a third of collected revenue to clean energy research and development.

The environmental footprints of coal and uranium mining.

Here’s something worth thinking about.

This is a coal mine. Specifically, it’s the Blair Athol coal mine in central Queensland, Australia, but there’s no special reason why I chose this specific example of a coal mine. The mine produces 12 megatonnes of coal per year. (This is just a satellite image taken from Google Maps, which anybody can of course easily access.)

Coal has a thermal energy content of about 25 MJ/kg, and therefore 12 megatonnes of coal corresponds to a primary energy content of about 2.9 x 10¹⁷ J.

This is the Ranger uranium mine, near Jabiru in the Northern Territory of Australia. Again, nothing special about this specific uranium mine, it’s just an example.
All these satellite images are at a consistent scale factor, or zoom level/resolution.

In 2007-2008, Ranger produced 5273 tonnes of U₃O₈.

A conventional, relatively inefficient low-enriched uranium fuelled LWR with a thermal (primary energy) power output of about 3 GW requires approximately 200 tonnes of U₃O₈ to be mined to fuel it for one year, assuming that newly mined uranium is used for all its fuel.

Therefore, the annual uranium output from Ranger corresponds to about 2.5 x 10¹⁸ J of primary energy, or about 8.6 times the primary energy content supplied by the coal mine.

That is, that one uranium mine supplies the same amount of energy content as nine of the coal mines – one seemingly quite small uranium mine, which is about a third of the size of the coal mine, supplies the same amount of primary energy content as this. (I won’t embed that image in the post, since it will probably completely destroy the formatting of the page.)

The Australian Government’s domestic solar PV subsidy…

The federal government has recently announced it will scrap the unpopular means test for the federal subsidy for domestic solar PV arrays, which restricted the rebate to households earning less than $100,000.

The size of the rebate was, formerly, $8 per watt of installed nameplate capacity, up to a maximum of $8000. The rebate will now be smaller; $5/W, up to a maximum of $7500.

Sounds good, right? But it’s horrendously expensive – the government is in effect paying $5/W for the cheapest, nastiest polycrystalline silicon PVs on the market.

There are scores of companies jumping on the bandwagon to sell these little 1-1.5 kW rooftop PV systems, advertising and promoting and installing them – because they’re making a fortune from the increase in business resulting from the subsidy.

The government rebate does not cover the full cost of such a system – therefore, in order to get as much interest as possible, the vendors are trying to keep the costs of such systems as low as absolutely possible, so that the cost that the customer pays is as small as possible. Therefore, all such systems are exclusively cheap, inefficient, basic polysilicon devices. After all, an advanced solar-concentrating collector with a high-efficiency CdTe cell or stacked heterojunction cell or sliver cell or whatever does not attract any higher subsidy than the basic polycrystalline Si device.

Advocates such as the Australian Greens say that such a scheme “supports the solar industry” – but all it does is supports the environmentally-damaging low-cost manufacturing of polycrystalline silicon in China, and doesn’t support innovation in advanced PV technology or anything like that.

What if the same amount of subsidy might be better spent elsewhere? Here’s a hypothetical idea to think about.

1. Go and find a suburb or a city or a community which has about 31,000 households. I’m certain there are 31,000 households in this country who support what I’m about to elucidate.

2. Get each household to put up AUD $1200 or so, temporarily.

3. Take that 25 million US dollars and purchase a 25 MWe Hyperion Power Module, or something similar.

4. At 25 MWe divided between 31,000 households, that’s a little over 25 GJ per year, which is a little more than Australia’s present average household electricity consumption. This doesn’t just generate a fraction of your household electricity needs – it generates 100% of it, and there will be no more electricity bills.

5. That corresponds to a nameplate capacity of 807 watts per household. Since the government hands out a subsidy of $5/W for solar photovoltaics with a 20% capacity factor, they should hand out $22.50/W for nuclear energy with a 90% capacity factor, right?

6. Collect your $18,157.50 rebate from the government. Less the $1200 investment, that’s $16,957.50 immediate profit in your pocket. This is exactly the same rate of payment per energy produced that presently exists in the form of the PV subsidy.

7. Go to the pub. Got to stimulate that economy, you know.

I wonder how many ordinary Australian households would support nuclear energy if you paid them $17,000 for doing so?

To replace one Loy Yang type coal-fired power station* with solar cells, we would need 6,082,342 homes equipped with 1.5 kW solar photovoltaic arrays.
With an $7500 rebate for each one, that would cost the government 45.6 billion dollars per each large coal-fired power station.

* (Loy Yang generated 15,995 GWh in 2006.)

Solar photovoltaics typically have a capacity factor of about 20%, and we’ll suppose the panels have a lifetime of, say, 30 years.
Therefore, this scheme costs the government 9.5 cents per kWh generated.

If the government purchases nuclear power plants, they will cost, say, 10 billion dollars (let’s be conservative) for a nuclear power plant with two 1100 MW nuclear power reactors which will operate with a 90% capacity factor and a lifetime of 50 years. The capital cost of plant dominates the overall cost of nuclear energy.

Therefore, the nuclear power plants would cost the government 1.15 cents per kWh – 12% percent of the cost of the solar rebate scheme. That’s the government’s rebate alone – without the rest of the price of these systems.

All this solar rebate is is another mendacious political enterprise involving renewable energy which can’t be scaled up, which hands out free money to the public, makes a bunch of money for the solar panel vendors (including many dangerous fossil fuel vendors such as British Petroleum), and mendaciously makes the government look like they’re actively getting the country running on clean energy.

ASIDE: I’m going to start cross-posting some blog content on the Daily Kos. I think it’s a nice site to engage with many, many readers – many of whom perhaps aren’t already so convinced of the virtue of nuclear energy – so, there’s plenty of engaging, active discussion, and the opportunity to maybe convince some people – even if that’s just a few people it’s still a very positive thing.

A Question, dear readers…

I’m currently interested in trying to find an example of any kind of scholarly paper or article published by Helen Caldicott, which has been published in a peer-reviewed journal, which is not just the usual “nuclear power bad” stuff we’ve all heard before. For example, any example of an article dealing with research into or treatment of cystic fibrosis, which was her area of professional expertise. Given that Caldicott was “Researcher in Cystic Fibrosis, Boston Clinic; formerly Director of Cystic Fibrosis Research, Adelaide Children’s Hospital, Adelaide. Australia.”, or at least so I’m reading, I’m surprised to find that despite running a few search queries through Elsevier, Medline, Web of Science and so forth, I’ve not been able to find any such example of any published works. I’d like to see a kind of baseline example of what her grasp of critical thinking, science and scholarly research was like, before it was swamped by this fervent dogma and drowned out.

That seems strange. Can anybody else find any such articles, or published works?

The footprints of coal and nuclear fuels.

In 2007, coal consumption in the United States – just for electric power generation – was 1.046 billion tons (1,046 million tons).

That’s a lot of coal.

Crushed bituminous coal has a bulk density of about 833 kg/m³, so therefore, that coal occupies a total volume of one cubic kilometer.
(1.046 billion tons / 833 kg/m³)^1/3 = 1.04 km.)

Combustion of coal produces carbon dioxide at a rate of about 1.83 kg CO₂ per kg coal.
Of course, CO₂ is just one particular component of the stream of dangerous waste output from coal combustion – there’s the particulate matter, the SO₂, the NO₂, the fly ash, the polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, and so forth.

So, each year, the use of coal for electricity generation in the United States generates 1.91 billion tons of CO₂ output to the atmosphere.

Applying the ideal gas equation, we can find the volume that this CO₂ occupies, assuming that it’s at a temperature of 300 K and a pressure of one atmosphere.

(T = 300 K is very frequently used as the value of “room temperature” or “ambient temperature” when performing scientific or engineering calculations in the Kelvin scale, since it’s a nice round number.)

(1.91 x 10⁹ tons * R * 300 K / (44 g/mol * 1 atm))^(1/3) = 9.90 km.)

The volume of CO₂ produced each year from coal-fired generators in the United States corresponds to a cube of CO₂ with a dimension of just under 10 kilometers on a side. Over the course of a decade, that adds up to a column of CO₂ which is 9.90 km on a side and occupies the entire thickness of Earth’s atmosphere.

But what about nuclear fuels?

Coal yields an output of thermal energy when it is combusted of about 24 MJ/kg – therefore, 1.046 gigatons of coal corresponds to about 2.28 x 10¹⁹ J of energy.

One atom of fissile nuclear fuel like uranium-235 generates about 200 MeV of energy in a nuclear fission – and of course, that atom of ²³⁵U has a mass of 235 u (atomic mass units).

So, to generate 2.28 x 10¹⁹ J of thermal energy, we need to fission about 277.7 tonnes of ²³⁵U.

((2.28 x 10¹⁹ J / 200 MeV) x 235 u = 277.7 tonnes.)

(By the way, did I ever mention that I really like Google calculator?)

Uranium is quite a dense material – metallic U has a density of 19.1 g/cm³.

Therefore, the amount of uranium required to replace that billion tonnes of coal is only a volume of uranium metal corresponding to a cube measuring about 2.44 meters, eight feet, on a side.

(((2.28 x 10¹⁹ J / 200 MeV) x 235 u / 19.1 g/cm³)^1/3 = 2.44 m.)

Now, I know what you’re probably thinking. That assumes that we’re using pure ²³⁵U as a nuclear fuel, and that it’s consumed in fission with 100% efficiency, and that is not the case with real, practical nuclear fuels in existing nuclear power reactors.

OK, so let’s revise the calculation a little to reflect the characteristics of a typical, existing light-water reactor more realistically.

A light-water reactor typically uses low-enriched uranium dioxide (UO₂) fuel, and a modern power reactor typically achieves a burnup of something like 50 GWd (thermal energy) per tonne U.

Therefore, the generation of 2.28 x 10¹⁹ J of thermal energy from a conventional, once-through, inefficient LEU fuel cycle in a light-water reactor requires the use of 5987.4 tonnes of low-enriched UO₂ fuel.

((2.28 x 10¹⁹ J / (50 GW days/tonne)) x (270/238) = 5987.4 tonnes.)

UO₂ has a density of 10.97 g/cm³.

Therefore, the amount of LEU uranium oxide fuel required to replace that billion tonnes of coal is a volume corresponding to a cube measuring about 8.17 meters, 27 feet, on a side. The used, irradiated fuel – even before any recycling or recovery of unused uranium and actinides is performed – occupies about the same volume. Yes, you can put it in a garage, or put it in a basement, or something.

(((2.28 x 10¹⁹ J / (50 GW days/tonne)) x (270/238) / 10.97 g/cm³)^1/3 = 8.17 m.)

Perhaps soon I certainly shall download SketchUp and have a play around with it in order to make some visualisations of these quantities.

Finally, a hat tip to Jason at Pro Nuclear Democrats for an interesting and very educational post which was my inspiration in creating this post.

Fischer-Tropsch fuels and carbon dioxide mitigation.

“The good news is that there is no need to build new nuclear power plants to provide for the projected energy needs of the future. Indeed, it would be possible, using other forms of electricity generation, to close down most of the existing nuclear reactors within a decade. Many kinds of alternative solutions are currently on the drawing board because of the extreme urgency of countering global warming. For instance, the conversion of coal to a synthetic fuel, which can be used for transportation and which would contribute much less to global warming than petroleum, is actively being championed by Governor Brian Schweitzer of Montana.”

That’s a quote from the perhaps infamous Nuclear Power is Not the Answer. However, this post isn’t really a criticism directed at Caldicott, specifically. The bold is mine.

The production of synthetic of petroleum-like liquid hydrocarbon fuels through Fischer-Tropsch synthesis using coal as a feedstock is not environmentally sound at all, it is not an efficient use of energy resources and it is not at all a useful technology in the slightest degree to contribute towards the mitigation of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions from energy systems.

The first step in Fischer-Tropsch synthesis of liquid fuel from coal is the reaction of coal, which is mostly carbon, with steam under elevated temperatures and pressures, to yield a mixture of gaseous carbon monoxide and hydrogen, known as synthesis gas. This requires mining the coal, adding water, and supplying a significant input of thermal energy, intrinsically reducing the efficiency with which the energy content of the coal can be utilised – where does the thermal energy come from?
From burning more coal?

C(s) + H₂O(g) –> CO(g) + H₂(g)

We may wish to consider the small amount of hydrogen, about 4% by mass in typical bituminous coal, giving the coal an empirical chemical formula of something like C₂H. However, the presence of this small amount of hydrogen in the coal makes essentially negligible difference, other than to marginally increase the H₂:CO ratio in the synthesis gas mixture.

2 C₂H(s) + 4 H₂O –> 4 CO(g) + 5 H₂(g)

It’s essentially the same as the previous reaction, above.

For the sake of simplicity, we might ignore, for now, the presence of sulfur, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, metals and heavier elements in the coal, and focus on the carbon content. One notable advantage of Fischer-Tropsch fuels, however, is that the sulfur content of the fuel can be removed altogether, resulting in a fuel, such as diesel fuel, with negligible sulfur content, and hence with negligible emissions of sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere when the fuel is burned.

At the heart of the Fischer-Tropsch process is the use of an appropriately engineered catalyst and reaction conditions to convert the synthesis gas mixture back into a mixture of liquid hydrocarbons with an average molecular weight and composition which is usable as a fuel for vehicles. Suppose, for example, that we’re interested in the production of petrol for passenger cars – however, you could apply the same analysis equally to diesel fuel, for example, or any other particular kind of liquid petroleum fuel that you’re interested in.

Typical liquid hydrocarbon fuels, such as petrol or diesel fuel, contain about 13-15% hydrogen by mass – significantly greater than any possible abundance of hydrogen in the coal. As such, the addition of additional hydrogen into the reaction is necessary. Suppose that we’re interested in the production of petrol for passenger cars. For the sake of simplicity we can say that octane, C₈H₁₈, is representative of the overall chemical composition of the petrol.

When the coal is reacted with water to form synthesis gas, the synthesis gas is then reacted with more steam in order to increase the H₂:CO ratio in the gas mixture, using water as the source of hydrogen, and producing carbon dioxide. This gas mixture can then be used to form the desired heavier hydrocarbons, using a Fischer-Tropsch catalyst.

25 C(s) + 25 H₂O(g) –> 25 CO(g) + 25 H₂(g)

9 CO(g) + 9 H₂O(g) –> 9 CO₂(g) + 9 H₂(g)

16 CO(g) + 34 H₂(g) –> 2 C₈H₁₈(g) + 16 H₂O(g)

Hence, we have an overall chemical reaction which is equivalent to this:

25 C(s) + 18 H₂O(g) –> 2 C₈H₁₈(g) + 9 CO₂(g)

Traditionally, we extract crude oil from the ground, fractionate and refine the oil into products like petrol, and run our cars on the petrol. If we combust 2 mol of octane in an engine, we’ve emitted 16 mol of fossil-fuel-derived carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. However, if that 2 mol of octane is produced from coal via a Fischer-Tropsch process like we’ve elucidated above, then 25 mol of fossil-fuel-derived carbon dioxide is emitted into the atmosphere, for the same amount of energy output in the car’s engine. Does this “contribute much less to global warming than petroleum”?

Absolutely not – quite the opposite, in fact.

Even if all the carbon dioxide created during the synthesis was captured at the Fischer-Tropsch plant, liquefied, and sent to geological sequestration – which assumes that geological sequestration of the enormous quantities of carbon dioxide associated with fossil fuel energy systems is practical, which is extremely doubtful indeed and is at best completely unproven – then, at best, assuming that none of the additional energy inputs into the process come from fossil fuels, then the combustion of the synthetic fuel is associated with exactly the same quantity of carbon dioxide emissions as the
combustion of fuel derived from petroleum.

Synthetic fuel production, as exemplified by the Fischer-Tropsch process, is not advocated for reasons of the mitigation of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions – it is advocated by people including but not limited to Brian Schweitzer as a means to contribute to a secure domestic supply of liquid petroleum for the United States – helping to end the United States’ present dependence on foreign oil.

Fischer-Tropsch chemistry provides a particularly attractive means to keep our petroleum-fuelled vehicles in operation, using abundant, ubiquitous and secure domestic supplies of coal, where the security of foreign oil supplies are threatened by strategic or geopolitical considerations – as was the case in Nazi Germany and in South Africa under Apartheid, where Fischer-Tropsch fuel production was first well developed on a large, industrial scale.

Of course, perhaps it’s also possible Schweitzer also wants to see Montana’s abundant lignite coal utilised for the production of these synthetic fuels – bringing income into the state, and perhaps helping to keep the coal extraction industry in business in a society where it is increasingly widely accepted that coal is our number-one environmental enemy. That’s no secret.

Thought for the day.

Of all the G20 nations, there are only a few without nuclear power. There is only one nation among the G20 which has no nuclear power reactors, and has no active interest in implementing them.

Western Australia lifts uranium mining ban.

Western Australia has lifted the previous Labor government’s effective ban on uranium mining, with immediate effect. The Government’s decision, which has been fully expected ever since the change of government in WA, makes way for the potential exploitation of dozens of uranium deposits across the state.

“It is now open to the mining industry in this state, if they wish to proceed with plans to develop the uranium industry,” Premier Colin Barnett said today.

“It’s significant that Australia has the largest reserves of uranium of any country in the world and is second only to Canada as the major producer and exporter.”

The move would not require legislation because Labor’s previous ban on uranium mining was only administrative, he said. “Both Geoff Gallop and Alan Carpenter talked about a ban on uranium and the like but never introduced any legislation to do it”.

“They simply put in place that administrative caveat on a mining lease; now we are removing that.

“The one practical difficulty we face is that 1475 mining leases have been issued since June 2002 which exclude uranium mining, so the department is now seeking some legal advice.”

Uranium prices have fluctuated over recent years, with a spot price of $US135.00 per pound in June 2007 to $US46 last Friday.

Australia produced and exported just 20 per cent of the world market and demand would continue to rise strongly, Mr Barnett said.

West Australian Mines and Petroleum Minister Norman Moore said he had met with uranium producers since the state election but would not say which companies had shown an interest in mining.

He said proper processes needed to be put in place first.

“The department (of minerals and energy) has met with … counterparts from South Australia and the Northern Territory and the commonwealth and we will put in place quickly the regulatory regime for the mining and transport of uranium,” Mr Moore said.

“There’s a lot of benefits to be had for Western Australia if we have a uranium industry and I’d like to see it happen sooner rather than later.”