NNadir
NNadir's JournalThe kids got this.
Viewpoint: The importance of young people in nuclear
The President of the International Youth Nuclear Congress (IYNC), Lena Andriolo, explains what the organisation can do for its members - and what young people can bring to the nuclear sector.
IYNC is a global organisation of young nuclear professionals that supports knowledge transfer between generations and across international boundaries, promotes the peaceful use of nuclear science and technology, and communicates the benefits of nuclear power as part of a low carbon energy mix. IYNC is above all a global network relying on its national representatives and existing nuclear Young Generation Networks – the so called YGNs. Currently our network extends over 46 countries. We have several activities, our major one being the organisation of a biennial conference. This year’s conference in Koryiama in Japan, taking place from 27 November to 2 December, provides a forum for about 400 young professionals in the nuclear field to discuss and collaborate on knowledge transfer, nuclear science and technology research and implementation, professional development, and communication. In particular, the conference brings together young professionals looking to further their careers and senior leaders who are willing to share their knowledge and expertise with a younger generation.
The theme of this year's conference is "You are the core". Behind every technological innovation are personal stories, full of individual curiosity and commitment. The aim is to explore the human-driven narratives behind all that there is to nuclear...
...Do you see interest from youth around the world in the development of nuclear science and technology?
Definitely. Especially in the African region, youth is pushing to get nuclear into the discussion and to establish the right frameworks for its deployment. We have, for example, seen countries like Senegal establishing YGNs recently. Also, in countries where frameworks are already in place, youth has gained a renewed interested in nuclear technology development. One of the main reasons for it is the positive role nuclear plays in the fight against climate change - important information we got from our World Young Generation in Nuclear Thermometer project which is currently ongoing.
Finally, it is important to stress that the nuclear field is a very diverse one, meaning that we will not only need skilled engineers and scientists but also other professionals such as economists, managers, communication specialists etc. The diversity is what makes our field special and exciting for every age.
Every time I hear old farts pull out their stale and frankly toxic ideas about how "dangerous" nuclear energy is, (but climate change isn't "too dangerous" ) I think of the kids.
They will be a great generation because they have to be one.
We left them a mess, but in many cases the silver lining is education and information.
They got this.
An interesting reactor H2O free approach for the direct synthesis of the wonder fuel DME.
Regrettably I won't have much time to fully discuss this paper: Kinetics, Mass Transfer, and Reactor Scaling Up in Production of Direct Dimethyl Ether, Kainakhone Pathoumthong, Putong Ratanamalaya, Sunun Limtrakul, Terdthai Vatanatham, and Palghat A. Ramachandran Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research 2022 61 (46), 17077-17091.
I like it because it has a very nice summary of why DME is the perfect energy currency for the localized distribution of the energy of nuclear heat, since it is a drop in substitute, more or less, for the infrastructure built for the use of dangerous fossil fuels. In short it can replace diesel fuel, gasoline, LPG, methane in all applications without the use of extreme conditions, since its critical temperature is around 150°C, meaning it is easily liquified without the need for refrigeration.
From the text:
The authors discuss two reactor approaches commonly used in DME synthesis:
They then note that a problem in direct DME synthesis from syn gas (H2 + CO or H2 + CO2) is that the reaction is highly exothermic, it generates significant heat. The heat can lead to the deactivation of the catalyst, and thus an efficient means of temperature control is required. They then discuss and evaluate a biphasic bubbling reactor, where a liquid phase (typically molten wax) is used to control temperatures, presumably allowing for the recovery and use of the heat in process intensification settings.
The authors discuss issues in scaling these types of reactors to a required industrial scale.
The reactor schematic looks like this:
The caption:
What I find interesting, an issue that sometimes troubles me when I think about DME systems is that the water generated is consumed directly, avoiding the somewhat more difficult separation of DME and water for the easier separation of CO2 and DME, whereupon the CO2 can be recycled (perhaps by dry reforming of waste materials) back to CO for reuse.
The reactions in the continuous one step system are given as follows:
Again, I won't have time to go into more detail on this interesting and exciting paper, but this kind of chemistry can save the world, provided the primary energy source is nuclear.
Have a nice day tomorrow.
As of this writing, Germany has the second highest carbon intensity in all of Europe, 744 g CO2/kwh.
Electricity Map Germany
The country is run by members of Greenpeace, not that this will stop journalists from referring to Greenpeace as an "environmental organization."
Really? No kidding? I just had the distinct impression, from a gleeful link to a journalist's...
...article that the protesters were the reason the plant shut, a mob of ignoramuses shouting the word "radiation" rather like antivaxxers shout about the "dangers" of RNA.
Of course, I have very little use for journalists, claiming that one can't be one if one has passed a college level science course with a grade of C or better, but nevertheless, there are, incredibly, people who take them very seriously. I don't, but people do.
"But her emails..."
As for providing an "excuse," that is the only thing at which anti-nuke "renewables will save us" types are successful, giving the companies selling dangerous fossil fuels an excuse to exist.
Case in point:
Germany which has engaged in a buffoon exercise in shutting nuclear plants, has the second highest carbon intensity in Europe as of this writing, 744 g CO2/kwh.
Electricity Map Germany (Accessed 23:23 German time.)
What's the "excuse" for this? Coal is "cheap?"
Antinukes are very Trumpian people; they deny responsibility for their actions. There is little difference between Trump announcing that a virulent anti-Semitic white supremacist at his lunch table only happened because "he didn't know" and anti-nukes saying that the closure of nuclear plants had nothing to do with their idiotic mobs screaming about subjects about which they know nothing at all, their generic swear word that is only a swear word for the ignorant: "Radiation!"
As for "cheap..."
I have zero respect for the "economic" reasoning of anti-nukes. I ask the question that they never ask - possibly because they just don't give a shit about the future and only care about their own fucking bourgeois accounts - cheap for whom? Dangerous natural gas isn't cheap for future generations. They will have to live with the external costs. There whole fucking planet lies at the precipice of becoming unlivable because there were people who cared more about the parts of decommissioned nuclear reactors than they did about climate change.
If you ask one of these types of people to demonstrate a death toll from reactor parts from decommissioned reactors over the 70 year history of commercial nuclear reactors that exceeds the death toll that will take in the next hour from air pollution, about 800 human lives, they change the subject to big bad gas companies, the companies whose products they have worked tirelessly to remain in use.
Let me give an example: I've heard anti-nukes who whine and whine and whine and whine about the cost of the Vogtle nuclear plants, which came in at 30 billion dollars owing to the long term activities of anti-nukes to destroy the nuclear manufacturing infrastructure in this country.
On the other hand, when Texas spends 30 billion dollars to build a wall to seal off Houston from storm surges because all the bullshit rhetoric about the solar and wind miracle and the expenditure of trillions of dollars did nothing to address climate change, the same people have nothing to say.
A plan to wall off Houston & industry from hurricane flooding will cost tens of billions of dollars. As the news article in the prominent scientific journal Science linked therein makes clear, most people don't even think the thing will work.
By contrast, Vogtle is likely to work until the end of the 21st century, a gift to future generations about whon bean counting anti-nukes couldn't give a shit.
Of course, the cost of climate change, the cost about which our dumb shit anti-nukes couldn't care less, is much higher:
Of course, I know that antinukes couldn't care less about the scientific literature, holding people who read "scientific screeds" in contempt. From what I hear, they'd rather talk about what Thomas Edison said about when he engaged in the sort of soothsaying that they love so much.
Understanding, as I do, this situation, I cannot help, nonetheless, referencing an open sourced scientific paper on the cost of climate change: Christopher W. Callahan and Justin S. Mankin , Globally unequal effect of extreme heat on economic growth, Science Advances, 8, 43, eadd3726, 2022.
One doesn't have to even go beyond the papers abstract, assuming one is not so lazy as to even go that far.
I quote:
I added the bold, in the perhaps futile hope this might cause an anti-nuke to read the words therein.
Of course, as the article points out, these costs fall disproportionately on the poor. I suspect the chief concern of our head in the ass braying bourgeois battery ballyhoo boosters is that the poor people remain available enough to function as cobalt slaves so they can dig cobalt for batteries so rich people can tell everyone they know how "green" they are.
By the way, no matter what the Germans think, coal isn't "cheap." It kills people. The cost is measured in the cost of human flesh:
Anil Markandya, Paul Wilkinson, Electricity generation and health, The Lancet, Volume 370, Issue 9591, 2007, Pages 979-990.
Table 2 therein:
I do understand that it comes from a "scientific screed" that some people read all day and will thus not move a single anti-nuke, but I couldn't care less.
I know how anti-nukes think. To my great shame, there was a time in my youth I walked among them. I was, of course, abysmally ignorant then, but having recognized that ignorance kills, I worked to disenthrall myself.
I fully recognize that there are people who will never do as much.
"To believe that Trump's presidency came out of nowhere, without warning, is the political...
...version of creationism. I, on the other hand, believe in devolution. The election of a serially bankrupt, functionally illiterate reality TV show host was the logical consequence of the five decades preceding it, which, with apologies to Edith Wharton, I'll call the Age of Ignorance..."
A sentence from Andy Borowitz's "Profiles in Ignorance."
Borowitz writes the hilarious satiric "news" stories in the New Yorker.
I just got this out of the library, but it deserves a place in my permanent home library. I'm just a few pages into it, and I recognize some real serious profundity.
How the Great Depression shaped people's DNA
From my Nature News Feed: How the Great Depression shaped people’s DNA
Subtitle:
It may be open sourced, but if not, some excerpts:
The study authors measured these changes in the cells’ epigenome — the collection of chemical markers attached to DNA that determines when, where and by how much genes are expressed in each cell. And they think the pattern of markers that they uncovered could be linked to higher rates of both chronic illness and death.
The work, published on 8 November in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences1, adds to a cache of studies indicating that exposure to hardship such as stress and starvation during the earliest stages of development can shape human health for decades. The findings highlight how social programmes designed to help pregnant people could be a tool for fighting health disparities in children, says co-author Lauren Schmitz, an economist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
Although the study is far from the first to link big historical events to changes in the epigenome, the fact that the signal appears in data collected from people in their seventies and eighties is “mind-blowing”, says Patrick Allard, an environmental epigeneticist at the University of California, Los Angeles.
“It’s definitely something that will make its way into the textbooks,” he says...
...The alterations made during this key window can last a lifetime. In 2008, researchers found2 that people conceived during a famine in the Netherlands at the end of the Second World War had different epigenetic markers compared with siblings born outside this time frame. Those born during the famine had higher rates of metabolic illness later in life, leading scientists to suspect that their exposure to malnutrition during early development permanently shaped how their bodies processed food3.
Since then, a slew of animal studies have linked early exposure to pollutants, stress and poor diet to a wide variety of epigenetic alterations that can shape everything from hair colour to brain development4,5. But only a handful of studies have succeeded in finding these trends in humans, says Ainash Childebayeva, a biological anthropologist at the Max Plank Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.
The article makes a point about the consequences of the reactionary highly politicized thug Samuel Alito - a religious bigot fond of the era of the Inquisition - and his fellow highly politicized unqualified illegitimate thugs installed on the US Supreme court, decimating its legitimacy, suspending human rights in the United States:
Although both health care for pregnant people and economic theory have evolved since the 1930s, Schmitz thinks that studies such as this one can shed light on societal issues today. For instance, earlier this year, the US Supreme Court revoked the federal right to an abortion. Decades of research have shown that people who are denied abortions are more likely to experience financial hardship after an unwanted pregnancy than are those who can access abortions...
The full scientific article is here: Lauren L. Schmitz, Valentina Duque In utero exposure to the Great Depression is reflected in late-life epigenetic aging signatures, PNAS 119 (46) e2208530119.
The authors tracked methylation sites in DNA as obtained from public databases as well as restricted databases. The methylation of DNA is a way of tracking biological aging as opposed to chronological aging.
I trust you're having a nice weekend.
Occupational Threat of Recycling Spent Lithium-Ion Batteries by Vacuum Reduction.
Here's a fun paper I came across this morning: Occupational Threat of Recycling Spent Lithium-Ion Batteries by Vacuum Reduction, Keyi Lin, Mi Lin, and Jujun Ruan ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering 2022 10 (46), 15297-15304
An excerpt of the introduction is kind of fun, although we should be clear that the theory that we will someday recycle all the batteries we keep hyping (when we're not hyping hydrogen) is largely just that, theoretical. Right now the bulk of the world's growing inventory of batteries is electronic waste, rather problematic electronic waste at that. Don't worry. Be happy. There's lots of talk about recycling batteries, just like there is lots of talk - more than half a century of it - about how solar and wind will destroy the nuclear industry while providing 100% of the world's energy someday after we're all dead and done with our personal consumption.
Here's some battery recycling talk, unusual inasmuch it actually raises issues of human and environmental health in doing so:
However, it is irresponsible to blindly issue an environmentally friendly definition. The interior of the spent LIB is not entirely composed of metal elements; it has binders and conductive agents. (19) Polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) is a common organic binder, which has chemical stability and excellent thermal, so it is widely used in the attaching the cathode to the Al foil of LIBs. (25,26) However, fluoride was added to PVDF to improve its performance. In the process of battery treatment, it is inevitable that fluoride (such as HF) will leak, (27) which is an environmental problem that needs high attention. (28,29) In addition to the binder, halogen elements are also added to the conductive agent inside the spent LIB, for example, LiPF4, LiPF6, and LiClO4. (30) The decomposition of these substances will not only cause irreversible damage to the battery but also damage the ecology when released into the environment. (31) The organic electrolyte in the spent LIB will react quickly when it comes in contact with the water molecules and releases toxic gases (such as aldehydes, ketones, and phosphorus pentafluoride) in the atmosphere. (32,33) Hence, it may cause environmental pollution inadvertently.
Some studies have focused on the possible pollution caused by spent LIBs. Due to improper supervision, spent LIBs have caused serious environmental problems and are considered as “hazardous wastes.” Spent LIB contains “toxic” elements [such as Li (5–7%), Mn (5–11%), plastic diaphragm (7%), electrolyte materials (15%), Ni (5–20%), and Co (5–25%)]. (34) When exposed to the environment, these substances will enter the water environment, soil environment, and atmospheric environment, causing irreversible effects on human beings and ecology. (35,36) There is pollution when the spent LIB is naturally exposed, and it will also bring pollution during its recycling process. (37) For example, in the process of LIB discharge, toxic and harmful substances will be produced. (38) The released substances will corrode the iron shell outside the spent LIB, leading to electrode leakage and seriously threatening the environment and human health. (39) Some directly released toxins can directly damage human nerves and induce body problems. (40) Because the original intention of LIB design is convenient to use, (41) it is inevitable that there will be many problems when recycling. However, few people pay attention to the specific threats of the recycling process.
The purpose of this study is to evaluate the possible pollution in the process of vacuum reduction of spent LIBs, conduct an occupational threat assessment, and study the pollutant generation pathway. Occupational threats refer to the threats that occur with a certain frequency in the work process and that the professional practitioners are exposed to. This paper mainly studies the threats caused by occupational exposure. In this paper, the following experiments were carried out: (1) The particulate matter 10 (PM10) of vacuum tube furnace accessories was collected and analyzed to assess the threat of exposure to heavy metals. (2) The gas produced in the process of vacuum reduction of spent LIBs and the organic residues after the reaction were collected to determine the pollutants in gas and organic residues and analyze their exposure threat. (3) The process of vacuum reduction of spent LIBs was simulated by molecular dynamics to analyze the formation principle and pathway of pollutants. (4) Through the analysis of the experimental results, the corresponding occupational threat control measures were formulated. This experiment will help to make up for the blank of risk assessment of vacuum reduction spent LIB technology, improve the defects of this technology, and promote the popularization and industrial application of this technology...
I added the bold and italics for some excerpts I found particularly juicy, in particular to "Few people pay attention..."
Of course, few people pay attention to the second law of thermodynamics, which is why we hear so much bullshit rhetoric about how energy storage, which always wastes energy is supposed to be "green."
What we call "green," is mining poor people to mine (or recycle) so we bourgeois types can declare ourselves "green."
"Blessed are the oblivious, for they shall inherit the Earth..."
Well they have inherited the Earth, and frankly, to state it baldly, they're fucking it up, speeding, accelerating, toward making it unlivable.
Some figures from the text:
The caption:
The caption:
The caption:
The authors of this paper are Chinese, and of course, back when the Chinese were poor, Westerners mined poor people there to "recycle" our stuff. There are lots of interesting papers in the literature about the concentration of heavy metals and swell flame retardants in the plasma of Chinese children as a result.
China is now a wealthy country of course, so they're well on their way to restricting the mining of its population to bear the health and environmental costs of making Americans green through recycling.
Don't worry. Be happy.
The world, led by the racist fascist Elon Musk, is successfully mining cobalt slaves in the "Democratic Republic" of Congo to make our batteries, and there's no reason we can't mine them to recycle them for us. As for the "think only happy thoughts" belief that recycling cobalt will make cobalt mining obsolete, I note that everyone is happily carrying on about how the battery industry is expanding. I attended a lecture recently which made a point that should have been obvious, but somehow isn't: You cannot rely on recycling for material supply when material is in use, particularly when use is increasing. Moreover, even with infinite energy, which we don't have, recycling always involves material loss, and the other word for material loss is "pollution."
I trust you're enjoying a long weekend.
Parasite gives wolves what it takes to be pack leaders
This came in on my Nature News Feed:
Parasite gives wolves what it takes to be pack leaders
Subtitle:
It's probably open sourced, but if not, some excerpts:
The parasite, Toxoplasma gondii, makes its hosts bold — a mechanism that increases its survival. To reproduce sexually, T. gondii must reach the body of a cat, usually when its host is eaten by one. That becomes much more likely if the parasite alters the host’s behaviour, making it foolhardy. Research results are mixed, but in rodents, infection generally correlates with decreased fear of cats and increased exploratory behaviour. Physical and behavioural changes have also been found in people: testosterone and dopamine production is increased and more risks are taken.
Warm-blooded mammals can catch the parasite by eating an infected animal or ingesting forms of T. gondii shed in the faeces of infected cats. After a period of acute infection, semi-dormant cysts form in muscle and brain tissue, and persist for the rest of the host’s life. Up to one-third of humans might be chronically infected.
Unique data set
T. gondii is known to infect wildlife, but few studies have examined its behavioural effects. In one work, infected hyenas in Kenya became more likely to be eaten by lions2. Connor Meyer and Kira Cassidy, wildlife ecologists at the University of Montana in Missoula, thought of a rare opportunity to link infection with behaviour in wild wolves: data on grey wolves (Canis lupus) collected intensively in Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, over nearly 27 years. Some wolves in Yellowstone live near, and sometimes steal prey from, cougars (Puma concolor), which are known to carry the parasite. Wolves could become infected by eating the cats — or their faeces.
The team looked at 256 blood samples from 229 wolves, which had been carefully watched throughout their lives, and had their life histories and social status recorded. Meyer and Cassidy found that infected wolves were 11 times more likely than uninfected ones to leave their birth family to start a new pack, and 46 times more likely to become pack leaders — often the only wolves in the pack that breed...
...Wolves are known for killing cougars, however, so even bold, risk-taking wolves infected with the parasite are not likely to end up as lunch for the cats, Meyer says. He speculates that in the past, infected wolves could have been more likely to be preyed on by American lions (Panthera atrox), massive feline predators weighing around 200 kilograms, which prowled North America until they went extinct over 11,000 years ago.
The full original article is definitely open sourced:
Meyer, C.J., Cassidy, K.A., Stahler, E.E. et al. Parasitic infection increases risk-taking in a social, intermediate host carnivore. Commun Biol 5, 1180 (2022).
Note that this behavior is slightly different than in American politics. In 2016, a minority of American citizens managed to promote a parasite into a de facto leader, with the result that the country was almost eaten by wolves.
A little different, I think.
I hope you're enjoying the holiday break.
I had a video call with an old friend in France, with whom I haven't spoken for about 20 years...
...or more. We reconnected on Linkedin and made arrangements to connect by Zoom.
He married a German woman, but confessed he forgot how to speak German (as have I).
He was a excellent business associate - we worked together on many important projects in drug development. Beyond business grew into a great friend; I actually had a jam session with his band when they were playing American rock songs in a Paris bar filled with Japanese tourists (who knew all the songs). Somehow though, we fell out of touch.
It was really a joyous moment to connect again; just like all these years hadn't passed, that my sons, babies when we last met, were not men, and his daughter, for whom we bought (unavailable in France back then) baby socks wasn't now a 27 year old woman, his younger son now an IT professional.
It was a wonderful morning; very happy.
I should visit France again sometime before I die. I loved that country.
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