If anyone around today lives to see the dawn of the era of fusion energy, it will probably be because some exceptionally clever researcher has hoodwinked Mother Nature and discovered how to finesse his way past the Coulomb barrier that usually keeps atomic nuclei too far apart to come within the range of the fusion-enabling strong force. Several promising candidates are already in the field, and one of them, Tri-Alpha Energy, has apparently managed to attract $50 million in private research funding. The company hasn’t revealed the nature of its approach, but it is apparently inspired by the work of Prof. Norman Rostoker of UC Irvine. One can get a broad hint from this paper co-authored by Rostoker and Tri-Alpha entitled, “Colliding Beam Fusion Reactors.” Rostoker is an emeritus professor who has been publishing papers since the 50’s, some co-authored with fusion superstars such as Nicholas Krall and Marshall Rosenbluth. Octogenarian physicists don’t often pull off such miracles, but you never know.

If he or someone else ever does manage to pull the fusion rabbit out of the hat, it would potentially put an end to our worries about energy for a very long time. It could also enable pure fusion weapons. Let’s keep our fingers crossed that it doesn’t.

Fusion Reaction

The proposal has alarmed scientists, who say that it will rob researchers of vital funds at a time when governments are planning to scale back domestic research budgets in response to the global economic downturn.

This is surely an understatement.  If I were a European scientist, I would be screaming bloody murder.  Like the International Space Station, ITER is a white elephant whose potential benefits will never come close to justifying the cost of building it.  It’s projected cost has tripled since it was estimated in 2001.  The fond hopes of the aging scientists who have devoted their careers to the pursuit of magnetic fusion energy will not be realized.  Like the International Space Station, ITER’s real effect will be to serve as a huge financial vacuum cleaner, soaking up billions in research money that could be much better spent elsewhere, including in the field of fusion energy research itself.

The problem with magnetic fusion, at least in the form represented by ITER, is that, while it is scientifically feasible, it will never be able to compete with alternative methods of producing electric power in terms of cost.  There are certainly hundreds of reactor design studies out there that claim the opposite, but, as the future will demonstrate if ITER is ever built, they are all wrong.  Among other things, the cost of a tritium economy has been grossly underestimated.  Tritium is a heavy form of hydrogen whose nucleus contains two neutrons in addition to the usual single proton.  Mixed with deuterium, another heavy isotope of hydrogen with a single extra neutron, it will be an essential fuel material in reactors such as ITER.  Deuterium occurs naturally, and is relatively common.  In other than trace amounts, tritium does not.  It must be produced artificially.  In order to produce the quantities necessary to keep a reactor like ITER running indefinitely, it will be necessary to surround the burning plasma with a thick layer of lithium.  Fast neutrons produced by fusion in the burning plasma can then produce the necessary tritium in nuclear reactions with this material. 

However, there is a slight problem.  Tritium is highly radioactive, with a half-life, the time it takes for half of any given quantity to undergo nuclear decay, of something over 12 years.  In spite of the fact that hydrogen is a notoriously slippery substance, passing with ease right through some types of metal, it will be necessary to control and contain kilograms of this material in a working magnetic fusion reactor.  In addition to its intrinsic radioactive hazard, tritium must also be carefully guarded to keep it from falling into the wrong hands.  For example, if terrorists were able to secure enough special nuclear material to build a nuclear bomb, they could potentially greatly increase its explosive yield by using tritium in the process known as boosting.  All this, not to mention the legal challenges that NIMBY’s are sure to mount to avoid living next to such an objectionable material, is unlikely to be cheap.

This and other potential show stoppers will insure that magnetic fusion reactors like ITER will never be able to compete economically.  Don’t believe me?  Wait and see.  It would be much better to use the increasingly scarce research dollars now being used to fund this particular white elephant on smaller projects, including fusion research projects, where it could do some real good.  Who knows.  They might even result in the discovery of a way to finesse Mother Nature after all and build fusion reactors that don’t need tritium and are economically competitive.

ITER

It is unclear whether the new Swedish law will have concrete results. The situation there is similar in many respects to that in the United States where, in spite of the pro-nuclear stance of the Obama Administration, the ineptitude of government and the legal system and the short-sightedness of industry have combined to make the construction of new nuclear capacity prohibitively expensive. The “green light” also comes with many caveats. As Spiegel puts it,

The majority in favor was extremely thin, and came with any number of “whens” and “buts.” New reactors can only be built to replace one of the ten already in existence at the three Swedish nuclear plants at Ringhals, Oskarshamn, or Forsmark, and only then if one of them is taken off the net permanently. Government subsidies for private power companies are forbidden, and any approval of new construction will require demonstration of an increase in demand for electric power.

It is hardly a sure thing that new nuclear power plants will ever be built on Swedish soil. Demand is on the decline, and the Swedes are getting a good look at everything that can go wrong thanks to their neighbors, the Finns. The new Finnish reactor at Olkiluoto, western Europe’s first new construction project since the Chernobyl catastrophe in 1986, is providing arguments for foes of nuclear power: a doubling of the original cost estimates, constant construction delays, and constant bickering between the government and the French consortium doing the work.

The basic propaganda line relating to DU weapons is that a) Great increases in cancer and other health problems are experienced in areas where they are used, and b) Most of these health problems are due to radioactivity from DU.  The professionally pious have devoted a great deal of webspace to the subject, typically short on facts but with lots of pictures of terribly deformed infants and, as usual, featuring themselves as noble saviors of humanity. Those with strong stomachs can find examples here, here and here. It’s all completely bogus, but the truth has never been more than a minor inconvenience for ideological poseurs.

The World Health Organization, public health arm of the UN, an organization that has not been notably chummy with the US of late, debunked the DU hysteria in a report that appeared in 2001 (click on the link to see the document). Quoting from the report,

For the general population it is unlikely that the exposure to depleted uranium will significantly exceed the normal background uranium levels.

Measurements of depleted uranium at sites where depleted uranium munitions were used indicate only localized (within a few tens of metres of the impact site) contamination at the ground surface.

General screening or monitoring for possible depleted uranium-related health effects in populations living in conflict areas where depleted uranium has been used is not necessary. Individuals who believe they have been exposed to excessive amounts of depleted uranium should consult their medical practitioner for examination, appropriate treatment of any symptoms and follow-up.

The potential external dose received in the vicinity of a target following attack by DU munitions has been theoretically estimated to be in the order of 4 μSv/year (UNEP/UNCHS, 1999) based on gamma ray exposure. Such doses are small when compared to recommended guidelines for human exposure to ionizing radiation (20 mSv/annum for a worker for penetrating whole body radiation or 500 mSv/year for skin (BSS, 1996).

Of course, the poseurs dismiss such stuff with a wave of the hand, claiming that, for reasons known only to them, the authors of the report suppressed damning evidence, or didn’t consider certain miraculous processes whereby the DU can be transported into the bodies of its victims without showing up in urine samples.  If one points out, for example, that natural background radiation in places such as Iran and India is much higher than any increase due to DU in the places where all the birth defects and illness is supposedly taking place, without ill effects to the local populations, they merely reply that the DU is carried on insoluble particles, that are infinitely more dangerous than natural uranium.  If it is pointed out that, in that case, it would actually be much more difficult for DU to cause birth defects because the rate at which the body carries insoluble compounds to the vicinity of the reproductive organs is an order of magnitude less than for soluble uranium compounds, or that it is much more difficult for insoluble compounds to get into the food chain, they quickly change tack.  Suddenly, the DU becomes soluble, and the circle is squared. 

A moment’s rational consideration of the facts demolishes the DU hype.  For example, it is claimed that 320 tons of DU were used in the Gulf War in 1991 and 1700 tons in the invasion of Iraq in 2003.  Those numbers pale in comparison to the approximately 9000 Tons of natural uranium and 22400 tons of thorium currently released each year from the burning of coal.  Much of this material is pumped directly into the atmosphere in the form of particulates that easily enter the lungs.  It is far more likely to contaminate nearby population centers in this form than the byproducts of DU munitions.  Coal consumption in China alone is over 2 million metric tons per year, resulting in the yearly release of about 3000 tons of uranium and 7450 tons of thorium.  There have certainly been health problems downwind of these plants, but they’ve been due to plain old-fashioned air pollution.  There have been no massive increases in birth defects or radiation-related cancer, flying in the face of claims about DU’s supposedly demonic power to sicken and kill.  Uranium absorbed in the body will show up in the urine, whether it is ingested in soluble or insoluble form.  Yet, despite massive screening of military veterans, ongoing studies find no persistent elevation of U concentrations beyond that found in the general population other than in soldiers actually hit by DU fragments or involved in friendly fire accidents.

Studies of uranium miners confirm the absurdity of the inflated DU claims.  Exposure to increased levels of uranium dust has not been associated with increases incidence of cancer, even in older miners.  Increased levels of lung cancer in such workers certainly have been detected, but it is associated with the breathing of high concentrations of radon in confined spaces.  The contribution of DU to radon gas concentrations in the atmosphere in Iraq is utterly insignificant compared to natural seepage from the earth and release by coal plant pollution.  Meanwhile, massive use of chemical weapons in the Iran-Iraq war, the sabotage and burning of hundreds of oil wells after the first Gulf War, and the release of a host of carcinogenic chemicals in the process of oil production are somehow never considered as possible contributors to illness and birth defects, unless, of course, they happen to fit another narrative.

In a word, the DU propaganda is nonsense, but that doesn’t keep it from being effective.  Other than that, because of DU’s potential value as a fuel in future breeder reactors that will be available to us without the environmental and health hazards of mining new uranium, we are almost literally shooting silver bullets.  Under the circumstances, one wonders what possible justification there can be for the claim that the advantages of continued use of DU munitions outweigh the drawbacks.  Why are we working so hard to confirm the familiar claim that “military intelligence” is an oxymoron?

The scary thing is that, just like in the fable, the wolf really is out there. With the world’s population nearing 7 billion and counting, he will eventually turn up at our doorstep in one form or another. No doubt when he does, the UN Convention on Biological Diversity will cry “wolf!” once again, but no one will listen. They will have heard it all too many times before. For that matter, in a world of nanny states, all up to their ears in debt, what could anyone do about it? Print more money, perhaps? It may be that the only really effective solution will be to launch World War III, but that doesn’t seem like a very attractive option.

For global warming alarmists, the pose is everything and the reality nothing. You can tell because they have no interest in solutions to the problem that happen to be unfashionable. Fast breeder reactors are an excellent example. They produce electricity without releasing greenhouse gases, and without releasing the particulates that kill tens of thousands of people every year, while representing a smaller radioactive hazard than coal fired plants. In that respect the pathologically pious saviors of the environment are more or less as irrational as our military. After all, the Lone Ranger only shot silver bullets. They shoot depleted uranium bullets that are worth their weight in gold as potential sources of energy. Allow me to explain.

Imagine dropping an iron ball into a deep well. What happens when it hits the bottom? It releases energy, right?  If the bottom of the well were a sheet of glass, that energy would probably cause it to shatter.  The ball releases the energy because it has been accelerated by a force. In this case, it is the force of gravity. However, there are other forces in nature. One of them is the strong nuclear force. It is vastly more powerful than gravity, but is only effective at distances on the order of the size of an atomic nucleus. At that distance, however, when an “iron ball” in the form of a neutron happens along, it can make the nucleus of a heavy element such as uranium look like a very deep well indeed. Just like a real iron ball, when the neutron falls into the well, it releases energy. If you think of the nucleus as a drop of water, that energy can cause the drop to start jiggling and stretching, just like a real drop. If the neutron releases enough energy, it can even cause the “drop of water” to break into two, smaller drops, releasing more neutrons in the process. That’s what happens in nuclear fission. The neutrons released in the process can drop into other “wells,” resulting in more fission, leading to a self-sustaining chain reaction, which can be used in controlled form to power a reactor, or in uncontrolled form to cause an atomic explosion.

When a neutron falls into a nuclear well, the energy released is only large enough to actually split certain very heavy atoms.  One of them is uranium 235, or U235 for short, which occurs in nature as 0.7% of natural uranium.  The rest is mainly uranium 238, which generally doesn’t split unless the neutron is going very fast to begin with, and therefore has some of its own energy to contribute when it falls into the well.  Another of the “fissile” heavy atoms that can split even when a slow neutron falls into its well is plutonium 239.  It can also be used to power nuclear reactors.  It doesn’t occur in any significant amounts in nature.  However, it is produced in nuclear reactors.  Interestingly enough, the “raw material” for its production is the  U238 which makes up the lion’s share of natural uranium.  When a neutron falls into a U238 “well,” the nucleus usually doesn’t split, but can capture the neutron, becoming U239.  This nucleus then releases an electron, resulting in its transmutation into neptunium 239. The neptunium nucleus, in turn, releases another electron, leaving Pu239. 

Now, if we’ve produced Pu239, and Pu239 is the fuel for nuclear reactors, we should simply be able to keep the reactor running, gradually converting the U238 to Pu239 and “burning” it right along with the naturally occurring U235, right?  Wrong!  In order to change to Pu239, U238 has to capture a neutron, but neutrons are what’s necessary to keep the nuclear chain reaction going.  Take away too many neutrons and the chain reaction stops, shutting down the reactor.  That’s where “fast breeders” come in.

Recall that, if the neutron that falls into the well is going very fast, then it can add a substantial amount of its own energy to that which is released when it falls to the bottom of the nuclear well.  In some cases that can cause even U238 to split, or fission.  More importantly, however, when such a fast neutron causes an atom of “fissile” material, such as U235 or Pu239, to split, the number of neutrons released in the process goes up.  If enough extra neutrons are released, the chain reaction can keep going even if many of them are captured by U238 to produce Pu239.  This is what makes it possible for a fast breeder reactor to produce more fuel than it consumes.  In the process, it gives us access to the massive amounts of energy locked away in the U238.  Instead of wastefully burning up the U235 in natural uranium and throwing away the rest by, say, shooting it out of gatling guns, we can now burn a large proportion of the U238 as well. 

Under the circumstances, does it make much sense for the military to be turning this potentially invaluable material into projectiles?  Apart from being a grotesque waste of a potentially valuable resource, it also releases radiation into the environment.  Granted, the amount of radiation will be very low.  It takes over four billion years for half of the atoms in a chunk of U238 to decay, and since there are many other natural sources of radiation in the environment, it is generally difficult to detect its presence above the background noise.  That fact, however, has hardly prevented legions of freeloaders and their professionally virtuous advocates from pretending that any number of ills from hangnails to heart disease are all directly caused by that radiation, and getting gullible politicians to believe it.  Apart from the waste, is it worth the grief?  I think not.

If fast breeder reactors can vastly increase the amount of energy available from the limited quantities of uranium available to us, what is the point of building more conventional reactors that waste most of the available fuel?  If global warming is really such a terrible threat to mankind, and the environmental alarmists are really more concerned about actually doing something to address the threat than in striking heroic poses from the moral high ground and pretending to do something about it, why aren’t they on board as well?  Whatever the severity of the threat of global warming, fast breeder reactors, along with solar, wind, hydroelectric, and other sources of energy that do not emit greenhouse gases could substantially end that threat.  Why, then, aren’t we building them?

Japan's Monju Fast Breeder

The article on which the Spiegel account was based was entitled “Changes in Tropical Cyclone Number, Duration, and Intensity in a Warming Environment.” It had appeared in the prestigious journal “Science,” where its authors were listed as P. J. Webster, G. J. Holland, J. A. Curry, H.-R. Chang. Apparently the source of Spiegel’s “doubling of dangerous hurricanes” claim was included in the paragraph,

Examination of hurricane intensity (Fig. 4) shows a substantial change in the intensity distribution of hurricanes globally. The number of category 1 hurricanes has remained approximately constant (Fig. 4A) but has decreased monotonically as a percentage of the total number of hurricanes throughout the 35-year period (Fig. 4B). The trend of the sum of hurricane categories 2 and 3 is small also both in number and percentage. In contrast, hurricanes in the strongest categories (4 + 5) have almost doubled in number (50 per pentad in the 1970s to near 90 per pentad during the past decade) and in proportion (from around 20% to around 35% during the same period).

The articles basic conclusions can be found in the last two paragraphs:

We deliberately limited this study to the satellite era because of the known biases before this period, which means that a comprehensive analysis of longer-period oscillations and trends has not been attempted. There is evidence of a minimum of intense cyclones occurring in the 1970s, which could indicate that our observed trend toward more intense cyclones is a reflection of a long-period oscillation. However, the sustained increase over a period of 30 years in the proportion of category 4 and 5 hurricanes indicates that the related oscillation would have to be on a period substantially longer than that observed in previous studies.

We conclude that global data indicate a 30-year trend toward more frequent and intense hurricanes, corroborated by the results of the recent regional assessment. This trend is not inconsistent with recent climate model simulations that a doubling of CO2 may increase the frequency of the most intense cyclones, although attribution of the 30-year trends to global warming would require a longer global data record and, especially, a deeper understanding of the role of hurricanes in the general circulation of the atmosphere and ocean, even in the present climate state.

The authors have included all tropical hurricanes in their conclusions.  However, as I have a day job and can’t do climatology full time, I will focus on the largest single region studied; the west Pacific Ocean.  This seems reasonable to me, as it had 201 hurricanes during the period studied compared to 85 in the region with the second largest number of occurrences.  Anyone who cares to do so is welcome to check the other regions as well.  I will gladly post the results if they are substantially different from mine.

First, let’s consider the “doubling of powerful hurricanes” claim.  It is based on a comparison of five year periods, or pentads, in the 1970’s versus the decade 1995 to 2005.  And, sure enough, if one compares the 19 cat 4 and 5 hurricanes in the pentad 1974 to 1978 with the 44 in the pentad 2001 to 2005, we can go the Science article one better.  The number has more than doubled! 

But wait!  The authors limited themselves to the “satellite era,” beginning in 1975, because, as they put it, “because of the known biases before this period.”  The nature of these biases are made clear in a book by Jack Williams of USA Today, who writes,

Until weather satellites began “seeing” eastern Pacific hurricanes in the 1970s, meteorologists had underestimated how many occur because many storms never come near land and fewer ships sail the eastern Pacific than the Atlantic, Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico. The eastern Pacific hurricane season runs from May 15 through Nov. 30.

Assuming a similar bias applies to the western Pacific, then it resulted in under- and not overestimation of the frequency of storms.  How very odd, then, that if we push our study back another fifteen years and include the decade of the 1960’s, the “pentads” tell an entirely different story.  The largest number of storms in any five year period in that decade was 48, from 1961 to 1965!  If pentads are really a compelling argument for a “doubling of powerful hurricanes,” as the authors and the editors of Spiegel claim, than they can all rest easy.  The data from the 1960’s “proves” we have nothing to worry about.

According to the authors, they deliberately limited their study to the satellite era, which began in 1975, to avoid the bias referred to above.  How very convenient, then, that according to a report of the Naval Pacific Meteorology and Oceanography Center, “1975 saw a sharp decrease in tropical cyclone activity from last season.”  How very convenient as well that 2004, the last year cited in their study, had 12 powerful storms in the western Pacific, matching the highest number ever recorded in a given year.  Can you say “cherrypicking?”  Interestingly, since 2004, the numbers have begun to drop off.  For the pentad 2005 to 2009 they are 9, 9, 8, 5 and 7.  Presumably the authors, who put such faith in pentads, must be forced to conclude that their conclusions were wrong, and the trend for powerful storms is actually on the decline. 

In fact, the pentad numbers that inspired Spiegel’s alarmist headline demonstrate nothing, one way or the other.  As anyone can see who cares to actually check the data for the last 50 years, they are dominated by statistical noise. 

Let’s take a look at the number of powerful storms in the western Pacific during those years, including the “under-respresented” ones before the satellite era.  They are:

1960 to 1969:  7, 9, 8, 10, 9, 12, 5, 7, 8, 3

1970 to 1979:  8, 8, 6, 3, 2, 4, 8, 3, 2, 4

1980 to 1989:  4, 4, 6, 4, 7, 1, 4, 8, 6, 8

1990 to 1999:  7, 9, 10, 6, 11, 6, 8, 12, 4, 2

2000 to 2009:  7, 5, 9, 9, 12, 9, 9, 8, 5, 7

Pretty bumpy data, isn’t it?  According to the authors, “There is evidence of a minimum of intense cyclones occurring in the 1970s.”  That’s certainly an understatement, and one that the editors of Spiegel predictably didn’t even bother to mention.  Include the data from the 1960’s and early 70’s, and the “long term trend” starts fading into the mist.

Tell me, who peer reviews stuff like this, and how does it get published in a journal like “Science?”  Here’s what I think:  It is likely that global warming is real, and it represents a significant threat.  Under the circumstances, scientific integrity is essential to establish the credibility of the danger, and certainly outweighs the need of professors X, Y and Z to pad the list of publications in their CV’s with junk science like this.  Surely the authors of the paper were aware of the data from the 1960’s.  Was it too much to ask that they at least mention it?  Was it too much to ask for them to give a more convincing reason than “the beginning of the satellite era” for cherrypicking a minimum and maximum for their starting and ending dates in accordance with what has now apparently become, as Voltaire put it, “a mere matter of tradition” among environmental scientists?   

What can I say?  Chalk up one more data point for Bjorn Lomborg. Let’s lighten this post up a bit with a bit of humor in the form of psychobabble from the pages of The Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.  Here’s the abstract:

Despite extensive evidence of climate change and environmental destruction, polls continue to reveal widespread denial and resistance to helping the environment. It is posited here that these responses are linked to the motivational tendency to defend and justify the societal status quo in the face of the threat posed by environmental problems. The present research finds that system justification tendencies are associated with greater denial of environmental realities and less commitment to pro-environmental action. Moreover, the effects of political conservatism, national identification, and gender on denial of environmental problems are explained by variability in system justification tendencies. However, this research finds that it is possible to eliminate the negative effect of system justification on environmentalism by encouraging people to regard pro-environmental change as patriotic and consistent with protecting the status quo (i.e., as a case of “system-sanctioned change”). Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.

There you go, Luboš.  Any time you’re in the market for more psychoanalysis, just slip a nickel in my tip jar