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NNadir
NNadir's Journal
NNadir's Journal
September 17, 2021
I added the bold, although the statement speaks for itself.
Note the Biden policy, an excellent policy.
JAMA Internal Medicine Editorial on Vaccination Rates Among Low Paid Nursing Home Workers.
I'm on the JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association) news feed. This editorial appeared this morning in my email:
COVID-19 Vaccination Coverage Among Nursing Home Staff (Eric Ward, MD1,2; Kenneth E. Covinsky, MD, MPH3,4 JAMA Internal Medicine, September 16, 2021, Editorial.)
It's two paragraphs long, and is produced in full:
In this issue of JAMA Internal Medicine, McGarry et al1 show that COVID-19 vaccination rates among nursing home staff are unacceptably low, falling considerably behind that of nursing home residents. At less than 50%, the rates are lowest among certified nursing assistants (CNAs), who provide the most direct care. Certified nursing assistants bathe, dress, and groom residents. They help them eat. Physical distancing is impossible. A CNA with a positive SARS-CoV-2 test result is highly likely to transmit COVID-19 to a resident. For this reason, nursing homes would be the most sensible place to introduce a vaccine mandate, because unvaccinated nursing home staff present an imminent risk to the vulnerable residents in their care. A recent Biden administration initiative that would make federal funding for nursing homes contingent on the vaccination of their employees is an important step.2
Certified nursing assistants work extremely hard and have an immense positive influence on the care of nursing home residents. In general, CNAs are sorely underpaid and receive inadequate benefits, including sick leave.3 We believe low voluntary vaccination rates among CNAs suggests a failure of nursing home owners to effectively partner with their most essential workers and provides one more indication of the need to improve the pay and working conditions of this group.
Certified nursing assistants work extremely hard and have an immense positive influence on the care of nursing home residents. In general, CNAs are sorely underpaid and receive inadequate benefits, including sick leave.3 We believe low voluntary vaccination rates among CNAs suggests a failure of nursing home owners to effectively partner with their most essential workers and provides one more indication of the need to improve the pay and working conditions of this group.
I added the bold, although the statement speaks for itself.
Note the Biden policy, an excellent policy.
September 16, 2021
I added the bold. There has been a lot of politically popular thinking that if we throw enough money at a subject and hire enough high powered scientists the result will be positive. Often the people who make these decisions based on politically popular ideology, for example that the world will run on electric cars powered by wind turbines - an official German policy throughout Merkel's tenure - are defeated by something called reality. This would make Merkel's comments in 2010 somewhat amusing were the consequences not so dire.
The editorial comments on her work as a scientist, before she became a politician:
A picture of Merkel when she was the Minister of the Environment and still a working scientist:
The caption:
However, and this certainly matters to anyone concerned about climate change reality, the reality being that nothing effective is being done to address climate change other than the failed and silly posturing represented by Energiewende.
From the editorial:
Unless Germany reverses the nuclear policy, it and every other nation following this awful lead, will fail miserably to address climate change.
There is one, and only one, form of energy that has the energy density to address climate change without ripping the land to pieces with mines, wires and waste. It is precisely the one Merkel chose to abandon, nuclear energy.
I suspect that for this, history will not forgive her, nor should it.
Nature Editorial Bemoans the Departure of the Scientist/Politician Merkel, With Some Caveats.
Angela Merkel, who will step down from the role of German Chancellor in less than two weeks, is a highly trained scientist, and holds a Ph.D. in Quantum Chemistry.
This editorial appears in the current issue of the scientific journal Nature: Politics will be poorer without Angela Merkel’s scientific approach
Subtitle: The departing German chancellor’s support for science and rigour in policymaking has proved transformative — except on climate change.
From the text:
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, a theoretical quantum chemist from the former East Germany, will stand down after federal elections on 26 September. This will mark the end of 16 years in the post and a 30-year political career.
Merkel leaves behind a powerful legacy for research and for evidence-based thinking. Over the years, her administration has strengthened and internationalized German science. Every government is imperfect when it comes to protecting peoples’ rights, promoting security and well-being, and administering justice, but Merkel brought compassion and an insistence — unusual among politicians, even in the time of COVID-19 — that decision-making benefits from evidence. All of this will make her a hard act to follow.
The secret to Germany’s scientific excellence
Merkel’s passion for science is spurred, in part, by her grasp of the value scientific research and innovation holds for societies and economies. In interviews with Nature, Germany’s researchers have talked about how, as chancellor, Merkel prioritized regular meetings with working scientists and research managers. Every few months, she presided over informal science soirées focused on different fields. She set the agenda for the sessions, with a particular interest in up-and-coming fields such as hydrogen technology, quantum computing and artificial intelligence.
Researchers were advised to prepare carefully for their presentations at these meetings, because Merkel would be ready with expert-level questions. These ‘innovation’ talks, as they became known, became the nucleus for initiatives such as a 2-billion (US$2.4-billion) programme for quantum computing and related technologies.
But Merkel was just as committed to curiosity-driven research. In a speech to London’s Royal Society in 2010, she urged her audience to be sceptical of politicians who claim to be able to predict the course of scientific discovery.
Merkel leaves behind a powerful legacy for research and for evidence-based thinking. Over the years, her administration has strengthened and internationalized German science. Every government is imperfect when it comes to protecting peoples’ rights, promoting security and well-being, and administering justice, but Merkel brought compassion and an insistence — unusual among politicians, even in the time of COVID-19 — that decision-making benefits from evidence. All of this will make her a hard act to follow.
The secret to Germany’s scientific excellence
Merkel’s passion for science is spurred, in part, by her grasp of the value scientific research and innovation holds for societies and economies. In interviews with Nature, Germany’s researchers have talked about how, as chancellor, Merkel prioritized regular meetings with working scientists and research managers. Every few months, she presided over informal science soirées focused on different fields. She set the agenda for the sessions, with a particular interest in up-and-coming fields such as hydrogen technology, quantum computing and artificial intelligence.
Researchers were advised to prepare carefully for their presentations at these meetings, because Merkel would be ready with expert-level questions. These ‘innovation’ talks, as they became known, became the nucleus for initiatives such as a 2-billion (US$2.4-billion) programme for quantum computing and related technologies.
But Merkel was just as committed to curiosity-driven research. In a speech to London’s Royal Society in 2010, she urged her audience to be sceptical of politicians who claim to be able to predict the course of scientific discovery.
I added the bold. There has been a lot of politically popular thinking that if we throw enough money at a subject and hire enough high powered scientists the result will be positive. Often the people who make these decisions based on politically popular ideology, for example that the world will run on electric cars powered by wind turbines - an official German policy throughout Merkel's tenure - are defeated by something called reality. This would make Merkel's comments in 2010 somewhat amusing were the consequences not so dire.
The editorial comments on her work as a scientist, before she became a politician:
Merkel obtained a PhD in quantum chemistry in 1986 from the Academy of Sciences in Berlin–Adlershof in East Germany. She worked in the Prague laboratory of quantum chemist Rudolf ZahradnÍk, studying the quantum mechanics of gas-particle collisions, and co-authored several papers (for example, A. Merkel et al. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 110, 8355–8359 (1988); Z. Havlas et al. Chem. Phys. 127, 53–63; 1988). “She was pushing the limits of accuracy using the data and computational tools available to researchers in the 1980s,” says Alán Aspuru-Guzik, a quantum chemist at the University of Toronto in Canada. “Merkel’s research was state of the art for its time.”
A picture of Merkel when she was the Minister of the Environment and still a working scientist:
The caption:
Angela Merkel, pictured in 1995, when she was Germany’s Federal Minister for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety.
However, and this certainly matters to anyone concerned about climate change reality, the reality being that nothing effective is being done to address climate change other than the failed and silly posturing represented by Energiewende.
From the editorial:
Although Merkel maintained close ties with the research world, there is one crucial policy area in which her decisions have not always been backed up by science. Germany is not a leader when it comes to phasing out fossil fuels. In the past, Merkel has even shown irritation at warnings of dangerous climate change from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. And she has stuck by the construction of Germany’s controversial gas pipeline from Russia, Nord Stream 2, which was completed just last week.
Moreover, Merkel’s decision, immediately after the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, to phase out nuclear power in Germany by 2022 has made decarbonization even harder to achieve. In April, Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court ordered the government to explain how it will reach its climate targets of cutting emissions by 88% by 2040 and becoming greenhouse-gas neutral by 2045.
Moreover, Merkel’s decision, immediately after the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, to phase out nuclear power in Germany by 2022 has made decarbonization even harder to achieve. In April, Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court ordered the government to explain how it will reach its climate targets of cutting emissions by 88% by 2040 and becoming greenhouse-gas neutral by 2045.
Unless Germany reverses the nuclear policy, it and every other nation following this awful lead, will fail miserably to address climate change.
There is one, and only one, form of energy that has the energy density to address climate change without ripping the land to pieces with mines, wires and waste. It is precisely the one Merkel chose to abandon, nuclear energy.
I suspect that for this, history will not forgive her, nor should it.
September 15, 2021
While many people turn into Ayn Rand when, and only when discussing nuclear energy, and whine insipidly about cost, please note that this scheme implies cost for no value added. Dumps are money holes. They provide no value, and in fact destroy value. The need for dumps is a hidden cost of the complete and total failure of the reactionary so called "renewable energy" scheme tp address climate change, just as the need to construct redundant systems is a hidden cost, while everyone carries on, again insipidly with very selective attention about how "cheap" so called renewable energy is. Energy prices in Europe hit record highs this week in mid September 2021 because the wind isn't blowing in the North Sea. Either they turn out the lights everywhere except France - which runs on nuclear electricity generally - or they burn dangerous natural gas and dump the dangerous natural gas waste, carbon dioxide, directly into the planetary atmosphere because they ignore the question of whether climate change is "too dangerous."
I'm not going to discuss the cited paper in any great length. There is a nice discussion of the thermodynamics of this scheme and a few remarks on some tiny pilot programs that are very late in the game, since industrialization of the dumping scheme - assuming the money can be found for it, which it won't be - is sure to be way to late as climate change has arrived already, big time, not that this has had any effect on our belief that the return to the 18th century, where all the energy on Earth was allegedly "renewable," is a good idea.
The pilots discussed in the paper were in Iceland, where CO2 is released by the use of geothermal energy, and Wallula, Washington, where CO2 was injected as supercritical fluid, the creation of the supercritical fluid itself an energetically expensive proposition. One may refer to the paper if one has access.
Here's a nice little graphic from the paper about rocks used in the experiments to check out whether mineralization waste dumps would work, even if we could find the money to build them:
The caption:
60 °C, for those who don't know, is a fairly high temperature, 140°F, meaning one needs to find energy to use these temperatures, energy that does not come from dangerous fossil fuels, even though the use of dangerous fossil fuels as an energy source is rising, not falling, despite all those wind turbines and solar cells on which we've bet the planetary atmosphere, a bet we lost.
Before providing the conclusion of the paper, I note that "DAC" - direct air capture of carbon dioxide - is also energetically expensive, since it involves recovering a considerable portion of the energy produced when the carbon dioxide was dumped in the first place; we're talking at approaching on some level, a kind of perpetual motion machine, a perpetual motion machine being a violation of the immutable laws of thermodynamics.
The conclusion of the paper:
Oh well then.
The motivation for looking into this paper was the figure in the abstract in the text for the amount of carbon dioxide we add to the atmosphere each year while we all wait for the grand "renewable energy" nirvana that is not here and won't come. This figure is 51 Gigatons per year, higher than the working figure I often use, 51 Gigatons/year.
In the text of the paper it says:
Reference 43 is this one: 43. Christiansen, L.; von Kursk, O.; Haselip, J. A. UN Environment Emissions Gap Report; 2018. 2018
It is open sourced, anyone can read it: Emissions Gap Report 2020
The difference between my 35 gigaton/year figure and the 51 gigaton/year cited in the paper is that the UN authors used carbon dioxide equivalents as opposed to the fossil fuel waste that is carbon dioxide, which some people seem to think is not "too dangerous" even though in their ignorance, they claim that so called "nuclear waste" is "too dangerous" even though used nuclear fuel has had a spectacular record over half a century of killing very, very few people, if, in fact, anyone has died as a result of its accumulation as an object of fear and, again, ignorance.
For convenience, a graphic from the open sourced UN report, breaking down the carbon dioxide equivalents graphically:
I'd like to note the role of land use changes, which is a huge contributor, second only to dangerous fossil fuel waste (including methane), to climate change. As I noted earlier in another post in this space, just one of the California Wind Turbine Areas, the Tehachapi "Wind Resource Area" is spread over 800 square miles, laced with access roads for diesel trucks for the purpose of servicing the turbines over their 18 to 25 year lifetime.
Busbar Electricity Prices at the Tehachapi Wind Farm This Evening
In that post I compared land footprint of the Tehachapi wind turbine area with that of the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant, which is due to be shut in 2025, prematurely, as part of a vast crime against the future of humanity. I wrote:
I've been monitoring at the CAISO website the output of all the wind turbines in California, including but not limited to the Tehachapi Wind Resources area. All of them.
California has been experiencing, over the last week or so, an incident of wind Dunkelflaute. For a significant periods of this week, all the wind turbines in California have been producing less power than Diablo Canyon was producing in two buildings located on 12 acres of land.
I plan to discuss some of the data in a subsequent post, should I find the time to do so.
This dramatic information will not induce wisdom on the part people who even at this late date, with the coasts of major continents burning or burned, incredible weather events causing huge destruction and death, still think that wind turbines and solar cells will save the world. They haven't, they aren't, and they won't.
The power of ignorance is not limited to the anti-vax types. There are many other examples of similar rhetoric in other areas, and some of us need to take a good hard look in the mirror. I don't expect we will, but we need to do so.
Have a nice day tomorrow.
A Different Perspective on How Many Billions of Tons of CO2 Equivalents We Dump Each Year.
The working figure for CO2 emissions I often use in my posts is 35 billion tons per year dumped into the atmosphere while we all wait for the grand so called "renewable energy" nirvana that did not come, is not here, and won't come.
This evening, catching up on my reading - I'm way behind for various personal reasons - I came across this paper: Alkalinity Generation Constraints on Basalt Carbonation for Carbon Dioxide Removal at the Gigaton-per-Year Scale (Benjamin M. Tutolo, Adedapo Awolayo, and Calista Brown Environmental Science & Technology 2021 55 (17), 11906-11915.)
This is a paper about the limits of one much discussed scheme for dumping the dangerous fossil fuel waste carbon dioxide in a way such as it doesn't destroy climatic stability, that is via mineralization, the formation of solid carbonates from rocks. This would be in lieu of not burning dangerous fossil fuels at all, something that has been difficult, not because it is impossible, but because we have lots of people running around saying that nuclear energy is "too dangerous" which implies that climate change is not "too dangerous" even though climate change is destroying vast areas of territory and causing untold economic destruction because...because...because...Fukushima.
History will not forgive us, nor should it.
From the paper's introductory text:
Synopsis
This study highlights the differing carbonation efficiencies expected during gigaton-per-year scale CO2 injection into basalts versus those inferred from lab and pilot-scale studies.
Introduction
Atmospheric CO2 concentrations are expected to double during the latter half of the 21st century unless aggressive action is taken to reduce anthropogenic emissions.(1) The 2015 Paris Agreement was set to curb greenhouse gas emissions and limit anthropogenic warming to 1.5–2 °C, which is the largely cited threshold above which many of the most severe consequences of global climate change would become inevitable.(2,3) However, the International Panel on Climate Change has noted that even if emissions are kept to the levels prescribed by the Paris Agreement, global temperature increases would still be expected to exceed 1.5 °C.(4) Thus, restricting emissions alone will likely be insufficient, and carbon dioxide removal (CDR) techniques such as mineral carbonation coupled to direct air capture (DAC)(5) of CO2 will be required to prevent the most dire consequences of global climate change.(2)
Mineral carbonation mimics Earth’s so-called silicate weathering “thermostat”, in which the weathering of silicate rocks converts atmospheric CO2 gas into carbonate minerals.(6) Mineral carbonation is thus a method for “mineral trapping”, which is the most stable CO2 trapping mechanism (in order of increasing stability, these are structural/stratigraphic trapping, residual trapping, solubility trapping, and mineral trapping(5,7)). The carbonation process is heavily dependent on the presence of divalent cations (Mg2+, Ca2+, and Fe2+) such that ultramafic and mafic rocks, i.e., peridotite and basalt, respectively, are ideal for mineral carbonation.(5,8,9) Due to their abundance on Earth’s surface (they underlay all of Earth’s oceans and are commonly exposed in continental settings), high concentrations of cation-rich silicate minerals and generally favorable porosity, permeability, and injectivity of basaltic rocks have become ideal target lithologies for the rapid injection and mineralization of large volumes of CO2.(5)
This study highlights the differing carbonation efficiencies expected during gigaton-per-year scale CO2 injection into basalts versus those inferred from lab and pilot-scale studies.
Introduction
Atmospheric CO2 concentrations are expected to double during the latter half of the 21st century unless aggressive action is taken to reduce anthropogenic emissions.(1) The 2015 Paris Agreement was set to curb greenhouse gas emissions and limit anthropogenic warming to 1.5–2 °C, which is the largely cited threshold above which many of the most severe consequences of global climate change would become inevitable.(2,3) However, the International Panel on Climate Change has noted that even if emissions are kept to the levels prescribed by the Paris Agreement, global temperature increases would still be expected to exceed 1.5 °C.(4) Thus, restricting emissions alone will likely be insufficient, and carbon dioxide removal (CDR) techniques such as mineral carbonation coupled to direct air capture (DAC)(5) of CO2 will be required to prevent the most dire consequences of global climate change.(2)
Mineral carbonation mimics Earth’s so-called silicate weathering “thermostat”, in which the weathering of silicate rocks converts atmospheric CO2 gas into carbonate minerals.(6) Mineral carbonation is thus a method for “mineral trapping”, which is the most stable CO2 trapping mechanism (in order of increasing stability, these are structural/stratigraphic trapping, residual trapping, solubility trapping, and mineral trapping(5,7)). The carbonation process is heavily dependent on the presence of divalent cations (Mg2+, Ca2+, and Fe2+) such that ultramafic and mafic rocks, i.e., peridotite and basalt, respectively, are ideal for mineral carbonation.(5,8,9) Due to their abundance on Earth’s surface (they underlay all of Earth’s oceans and are commonly exposed in continental settings), high concentrations of cation-rich silicate minerals and generally favorable porosity, permeability, and injectivity of basaltic rocks have become ideal target lithologies for the rapid injection and mineralization of large volumes of CO2.(5)
While many people turn into Ayn Rand when, and only when discussing nuclear energy, and whine insipidly about cost, please note that this scheme implies cost for no value added. Dumps are money holes. They provide no value, and in fact destroy value. The need for dumps is a hidden cost of the complete and total failure of the reactionary so called "renewable energy" scheme tp address climate change, just as the need to construct redundant systems is a hidden cost, while everyone carries on, again insipidly with very selective attention about how "cheap" so called renewable energy is. Energy prices in Europe hit record highs this week in mid September 2021 because the wind isn't blowing in the North Sea. Either they turn out the lights everywhere except France - which runs on nuclear electricity generally - or they burn dangerous natural gas and dump the dangerous natural gas waste, carbon dioxide, directly into the planetary atmosphere because they ignore the question of whether climate change is "too dangerous."
I'm not going to discuss the cited paper in any great length. There is a nice discussion of the thermodynamics of this scheme and a few remarks on some tiny pilot programs that are very late in the game, since industrialization of the dumping scheme - assuming the money can be found for it, which it won't be - is sure to be way to late as climate change has arrived already, big time, not that this has had any effect on our belief that the return to the 18th century, where all the energy on Earth was allegedly "renewable," is a good idea.
The pilots discussed in the paper were in Iceland, where CO2 is released by the use of geothermal energy, and Wallula, Washington, where CO2 was injected as supercritical fluid, the creation of the supercritical fluid itself an energetically expensive proposition. One may refer to the paper if one has access.
Here's a nice little graphic from the paper about rocks used in the experiments to check out whether mineralization waste dumps would work, even if we could find the money to build them:
The caption:
Figure 3. Masses of minerals present in the system during CO2-driven basalt dissolution into the Site 1301 aquifer fluids (Na+ = 463 mmol/kg) and into otherwise identical fluids with initial alkalinity adjusted by increasing the initial Na+ by 5 and 10% and charge-balancing on HCO3–. Calculations assume a constant fCO2 = 100 bar and a water-to-rock mass ratio of 100. Mineral abundances plotted at 25 °C (a, c, d) and 60 °C (b, e, f) demonstrate that aquifer alkalinity and temperature have a dramatic effect on the amount of carbonate (dolomite and ankerite) precipitated and thus the amount of CO2 mineralized. Note the differing y-axis scales at 25 °C versus 60 °C due to the larger amount of carbonate precipitation at 60 °C.
60 °C, for those who don't know, is a fairly high temperature, 140°F, meaning one needs to find energy to use these temperatures, energy that does not come from dangerous fossil fuels, even though the use of dangerous fossil fuels as an energy source is rising, not falling, despite all those wind turbines and solar cells on which we've bet the planetary atmosphere, a bet we lost.
Before providing the conclusion of the paper, I note that "DAC" - direct air capture of carbon dioxide - is also energetically expensive, since it involves recovering a considerable portion of the energy produced when the carbon dioxide was dumped in the first place; we're talking at approaching on some level, a kind of perpetual motion machine, a perpetual motion machine being a violation of the immutable laws of thermodynamics.
The conclusion of the paper:
If direct air capture (DAC) coupled to basalt carbonation is implemented at the gigaton-per-year scale, it is likely that many offshore CO2 injection operations would inject free-phase CO2 in order to maximize per-well capacity of CO2 injection. In these situations, our thermodynamic and kinetic calculations show that carbon mineralization will be less efficient than suggested by many published experiments and field demonstration projects due to the heightened solubility of carbonate minerals under free-phase CO2-buffered conditions. Simply put, more basalt will need to dissolve in order to yield comparable amounts of carbonation when free-phase CO2 sets the pH and solubility of carbonate minerals at representative values of solution alkalinity and water-to-rock ratio. Assuming similar rates of basalt dissolution, carbonation is likely to take longer in these systems because it will take longer to dissolve enough basalt to generate enough alkalinity to exceed the thermodynamic saturation of carbonate minerals. These results imply that serious consideration should be given to alternating CO2 injection with water injection (i.e., water-alternating-gas (WAG) injection), even if dissolved CO2 injection is not feasible, in order to promote CO2 dissolution and increase carbonation efficiency. Nevertheless, our simulations demonstrate that, given time and the ability of the impermeable sediments overlying subseafloor basalts to prevent leakage as the free-phase CO2 dissolves and converts to carbonates, significant mineral carbonation can be expected.
Oh well then.
The motivation for looking into this paper was the figure in the abstract in the text for the amount of carbon dioxide we add to the atmosphere each year while we all wait for the grand "renewable energy" nirvana that is not here and won't come. This figure is 51 Gigatons per year, higher than the working figure I often use, 51 Gigatons/year.
In the text of the paper it says:
The world adds about 51 billion tons (1 gigaton (Gt) = 1 billion tons) of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere each year.(43)
Reference 43 is this one: 43. Christiansen, L.; von Kursk, O.; Haselip, J. A. UN Environment Emissions Gap Report; 2018. 2018
It is open sourced, anyone can read it: Emissions Gap Report 2020
The difference between my 35 gigaton/year figure and the 51 gigaton/year cited in the paper is that the UN authors used carbon dioxide equivalents as opposed to the fossil fuel waste that is carbon dioxide, which some people seem to think is not "too dangerous" even though in their ignorance, they claim that so called "nuclear waste" is "too dangerous" even though used nuclear fuel has had a spectacular record over half a century of killing very, very few people, if, in fact, anyone has died as a result of its accumulation as an object of fear and, again, ignorance.
For convenience, a graphic from the open sourced UN report, breaking down the carbon dioxide equivalents graphically:
I'd like to note the role of land use changes, which is a huge contributor, second only to dangerous fossil fuel waste (including methane), to climate change. As I noted earlier in another post in this space, just one of the California Wind Turbine Areas, the Tehachapi "Wind Resource Area" is spread over 800 square miles, laced with access roads for diesel trucks for the purpose of servicing the turbines over their 18 to 25 year lifetime.
Busbar Electricity Prices at the Tehachapi Wind Farm This Evening
In that post I compared land footprint of the Tehachapi wind turbine area with that of the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant, which is due to be shut in 2025, prematurely, as part of a vast crime against the future of humanity. I wrote:
The Diablo Canyon Nuclear Plant operates as a physical plant, on 12 acres, (0.018 sq miles or 0.049 sq km) on a plot of around 700 acres (1.1 sq miles or 2.2 sq km), most of which is undisturbed marine chaparral. The plant has been producing between 2261 MW (low) and 2267 MW (high) consistently and reliably all day long, as of 18:30 PDT, July 12, 2021. In other words, the land footprint of the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Plant is 0.1% that of the Tehachapi Wind Resources Area.
I've been monitoring at the CAISO website the output of all the wind turbines in California, including but not limited to the Tehachapi Wind Resources area. All of them.
California has been experiencing, over the last week or so, an incident of wind Dunkelflaute. For a significant periods of this week, all the wind turbines in California have been producing less power than Diablo Canyon was producing in two buildings located on 12 acres of land.
I plan to discuss some of the data in a subsequent post, should I find the time to do so.
This dramatic information will not induce wisdom on the part people who even at this late date, with the coasts of major continents burning or burned, incredible weather events causing huge destruction and death, still think that wind turbines and solar cells will save the world. They haven't, they aren't, and they won't.
The power of ignorance is not limited to the anti-vax types. There are many other examples of similar rhetoric in other areas, and some of us need to take a good hard look in the mirror. I don't expect we will, but we need to do so.
Have a nice day tomorrow.
September 14, 2021
Trinidad and Tobago For the Love of the Music.
September 14, 2021
Sixteen tons
September 12, 2021
Dr. Kathryn Huff
Meet Dr. Kathryn Huff, The 1st Biden-Harris Administration Appointment to DOE's Nuclear Dept.
Dr. Kathryn Huff
September 12, 2021
So called "renewable energy," despite the expenditure of trillions of dollars on it, has had absolutely no effect on climate change. The rate of increases in the concentrations of the dangerous fossil fuel waste carbon dioxide in the planetary atmosphere, after half a century of loud cheering for wind and solar, is accelerating, not decelerating.
Minds like Dr. Huff are the last, best chance we have to save what still is left to save, and perhaps even restore some of what has been lost.
I trust you're having a nice weekend.
Viewpoint: Kathryn Huff, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Nuclear Energy at the US DOE
The Biden administration, while engaged in a reactionary enthusiasm for highly popular but completely ineffective so called "renewable energy," is, I think, quietly aware of reality. That is, at least, how I interpret the remarks of the curiously bureaucratically titled "Principle Deputy Assistant Secretary for Nuclear Energy," Dr. Kathryn Huff.
Dr. Huff, who received her Ph.D. in Nuclear Engineering at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, was most recently an Assistant Professor Department of Nuclear, Plasma, and Radiological Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she did research on advanced reactor designs and fuel cycle innovations.
This picture accompanies the viewpoint article:
The viewpoint can be found here: Viewpoint: Demonstration AND test reactors: both are necessary for innovation
An excerpt:
"The impacts of climate change are playing out in real-time all over the world, including in the United States. Oppressive heat domes have blanketed most of the country, severe flooding and storms continue to grow in intensity, and forest fires on the West Cost are ripping through acres of dry land with smoke that can been seen all the way on the East Coast.
We simply can't wait any longer and Secretary Granholm has made it crystal clear that we need to deploy all existing and new technologies NOW in order to temper these impacts - that must include innovations in nuclear energy.
The United States is fortunate to have some of the best nuclear innovators on the planet developing new reactor technologies that will expand access to reliable, clean energy all over the world.
Many of these US vendors are planning to demonstrate their reactors within the decade, but in order to innovate faster and improve upon these designs over time, we also need the necessary infrastructure to support their development and, more importantly, their commercial deployment.
This unique challenge is both a sprint and marathon at the same time, which is why we need reactor demonstrations AND a new test reactor to facilitate the future growth of these technologies.
The purpose of a demonstration is to prove that a technology works as intended. New innovations stem from these successful demos to improve the future generations of that product. Think of the latest version of your cell phone or the clever features in next year's new cars.
This same innovation cycle happens in nuclear energy.
Many of the advanced reactors in the demonstration pipeline right now are incorporating innovative fuels, materials, and technologies into modern concepts that build upon more than 50 reactor demonstrations at our national laboratories.
And, while these reactors will soon be ready to demonstrate their enhanced features over today's reactors, they will also continue to evolve and improve over time, which is why it's essential for our nation to expand our R&D infrastructure accordingly.
Since the 1960s, nuclear innovation has been fuelled by world-class nuclear R&D infrastructure at our labs and universities, including many campus Test, Research, and Training Reactors and the Advanced Test Reactor (ATR) at Idaho National Laboratory. ATR is the world's premier thermal neutron test reactor and enables nuclear fuel and materials testing for our military, federal, university, and industry partners.
While ATR and other US Department of Energy (DOE) test reactors will continue to provide this important capability, these thermal neutron reactors are not capable of sustaining neutrons at concentrations and speeds high enough to perform accelerated testing of innovative nuclear technologies. Faster testing will allow scientists to test multiple ideas quickly, identify what works, and make refinements that yield innovations to support the safer and more economical operation of nuclear power plants...
We simply can't wait any longer and Secretary Granholm has made it crystal clear that we need to deploy all existing and new technologies NOW in order to temper these impacts - that must include innovations in nuclear energy.
The United States is fortunate to have some of the best nuclear innovators on the planet developing new reactor technologies that will expand access to reliable, clean energy all over the world.
Many of these US vendors are planning to demonstrate their reactors within the decade, but in order to innovate faster and improve upon these designs over time, we also need the necessary infrastructure to support their development and, more importantly, their commercial deployment.
This unique challenge is both a sprint and marathon at the same time, which is why we need reactor demonstrations AND a new test reactor to facilitate the future growth of these technologies.
The purpose of a demonstration is to prove that a technology works as intended. New innovations stem from these successful demos to improve the future generations of that product. Think of the latest version of your cell phone or the clever features in next year's new cars.
This same innovation cycle happens in nuclear energy.
Many of the advanced reactors in the demonstration pipeline right now are incorporating innovative fuels, materials, and technologies into modern concepts that build upon more than 50 reactor demonstrations at our national laboratories.
And, while these reactors will soon be ready to demonstrate their enhanced features over today's reactors, they will also continue to evolve and improve over time, which is why it's essential for our nation to expand our R&D infrastructure accordingly.
Since the 1960s, nuclear innovation has been fuelled by world-class nuclear R&D infrastructure at our labs and universities, including many campus Test, Research, and Training Reactors and the Advanced Test Reactor (ATR) at Idaho National Laboratory. ATR is the world's premier thermal neutron test reactor and enables nuclear fuel and materials testing for our military, federal, university, and industry partners.
While ATR and other US Department of Energy (DOE) test reactors will continue to provide this important capability, these thermal neutron reactors are not capable of sustaining neutrons at concentrations and speeds high enough to perform accelerated testing of innovative nuclear technologies. Faster testing will allow scientists to test multiple ideas quickly, identify what works, and make refinements that yield innovations to support the safer and more economical operation of nuclear power plants...
So called "renewable energy," despite the expenditure of trillions of dollars on it, has had absolutely no effect on climate change. The rate of increases in the concentrations of the dangerous fossil fuel waste carbon dioxide in the planetary atmosphere, after half a century of loud cheering for wind and solar, is accelerating, not decelerating.
Minds like Dr. Huff are the last, best chance we have to save what still is left to save, and perhaps even restore some of what has been lost.
I trust you're having a nice weekend.
September 12, 2021
Criança morta (Dead Child) Candido Portinari, Brazilian, 1944, At the Museum of Art of São Paulo, Brazil.
Crianca morta
Criança morta (Dead Child) Candido Portinari, Brazilian, 1944, At the Museum of Art of São Paulo, Brazil.
September 11, 2021
Personally I disagree with Xu Xin, with all due respect, with his work on hybrid nuclear energy, something I enthusiastically support.
The problem that many people have with nuclear energy is that it makes wind, solar, and other "renewable" energy unnecessary and redundant. The quotation marks are mine. I am a dissident when it comes to the highly popular claim that so called "renewable energy" is sustainable. The material costs, primarily in metals, means that the program means mining the effort to make this junk work will involve tearing the earth to pieces as we, and more dolorous, future generations, work ores of continuously decreasing grades.
So called "renewable energy" didn't work, isn't working, and won't work to address climate change. People however have a hard time giving up their unsupportable faith.
To steal lines from Macbeth, so called renewable energy advocates are all full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. With them it's always, "tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, and all their yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death."
Every year seven million people die from combustion waste, aka "air pollution," while we all wait for the grand renewable energy nirvana that never comes.
I am very pleased that young nuclear professionals are raising their voices. I have enormous respect for the rising generation, which I expect to be a much greater than generation than mine. They couldn't be worse.
IAEA Pre-COP26 Event Showcases Young Nuclear Experts Driving Innovation for Climate Change
I'm on the mailing list for the International Atomic Energy Agency and this came through on the newsfeed:
IAEA Pre-COP26 Event Showcases Young Nuclear Experts Driving Innovation for Climate Change
Showcasing the power of youth in forging nuclear energy innovations to mitigate climate change, the IAEA kicked off a series of events on 1 September held in connection with the Pre-COP26 climate meeting to be hosted by Italy later this month, the final ministerial gathering before the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) in November.
Young professionals engaged in cutting-edge nuclear power projects supporting net-zero efforts in China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom (UK), United States and United Arab Emirates (UAE) gathered virtually for Youth Engagement on the Road to Decarbonization – the first of three events the Agency is hosting as part of the All4Climate initiative launched by COP26 co-host Italy.
“Whether it’s melting ice caps or historic flooding, signs of the climate crisis are unfolding before our eyes, underscoring the need to address the climate crisis with proven, effective technologies,” said Mikhail Chudakov, IAEA Deputy Director General and Head of the Department of Nuclear Energy. “Nuclear power, in partnership with other low-carbon energy sources, can accelerate the transition to net zero emissions.”
In China, the Guohe One+ project is aimed at demonstrating how one nuclear reactor can not only produce electricity free of greenhouse gas emissions, but at the same time in partnership with other low-carbon sources, how it can also provide a variety of products to help decarbonize other sectors, including heat for homes and water desalination.
“The hybrid use of nuclear power – a combination of nuclear, wind, solar and other renewable sources – will be a key force in meeting the challenges of climate change,” said Xu Yin, Project Management Engineer for the Guohe One+ demonstration project at the Shanghai Nuclear Engineering Research and Design Institute (SNERDI).
Emerging nuclear power technologies such as small modular reactors (SMRs), whether based on land or sea, can help provide the reliable backbone for future clean energy systems that integrate nuclear power with variable renewables, said Arina Samkova, a specialist for Rusatom Overseas. The world’s first advanced SMRs were recently deployed in Russia, aboard the Akademik Lomonosov floating nuclear power plant that provides electricity and heating to the local community...
Young professionals engaged in cutting-edge nuclear power projects supporting net-zero efforts in China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom (UK), United States and United Arab Emirates (UAE) gathered virtually for Youth Engagement on the Road to Decarbonization – the first of three events the Agency is hosting as part of the All4Climate initiative launched by COP26 co-host Italy.
“Whether it’s melting ice caps or historic flooding, signs of the climate crisis are unfolding before our eyes, underscoring the need to address the climate crisis with proven, effective technologies,” said Mikhail Chudakov, IAEA Deputy Director General and Head of the Department of Nuclear Energy. “Nuclear power, in partnership with other low-carbon energy sources, can accelerate the transition to net zero emissions.”
In China, the Guohe One+ project is aimed at demonstrating how one nuclear reactor can not only produce electricity free of greenhouse gas emissions, but at the same time in partnership with other low-carbon sources, how it can also provide a variety of products to help decarbonize other sectors, including heat for homes and water desalination.
“The hybrid use of nuclear power – a combination of nuclear, wind, solar and other renewable sources – will be a key force in meeting the challenges of climate change,” said Xu Yin, Project Management Engineer for the Guohe One+ demonstration project at the Shanghai Nuclear Engineering Research and Design Institute (SNERDI).
Emerging nuclear power technologies such as small modular reactors (SMRs), whether based on land or sea, can help provide the reliable backbone for future clean energy systems that integrate nuclear power with variable renewables, said Arina Samkova, a specialist for Rusatom Overseas. The world’s first advanced SMRs were recently deployed in Russia, aboard the Akademik Lomonosov floating nuclear power plant that provides electricity and heating to the local community...
Personally I disagree with Xu Xin, with all due respect, with his work on hybrid nuclear energy, something I enthusiastically support.
The problem that many people have with nuclear energy is that it makes wind, solar, and other "renewable" energy unnecessary and redundant. The quotation marks are mine. I am a dissident when it comes to the highly popular claim that so called "renewable energy" is sustainable. The material costs, primarily in metals, means that the program means mining the effort to make this junk work will involve tearing the earth to pieces as we, and more dolorous, future generations, work ores of continuously decreasing grades.
So called "renewable energy" didn't work, isn't working, and won't work to address climate change. People however have a hard time giving up their unsupportable faith.
To steal lines from Macbeth, so called renewable energy advocates are all full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. With them it's always, "tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, and all their yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death."
Every year seven million people die from combustion waste, aka "air pollution," while we all wait for the grand renewable energy nirvana that never comes.
I am very pleased that young nuclear professionals are raising their voices. I have enormous respect for the rising generation, which I expect to be a much greater than generation than mine. They couldn't be worse.
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