NNadir
NNadir's JournalI hope to bleed like hell on Saturday.
My life was saved in my 20s by an anonymous blood donor. I took a few pints to keep ticking.
For many years, in gratitude, I've been a donor. I'm sure Im a hundred pint guy after all these years.
In the last few years, I've been failing the hemoglobin test, the finger prick before donating, just marginally, and thus have been rejected. I'm wolfing down iron pills (safely, within reason) nightly hoping to make it this time.
Shortages show up during the holidays. Fortunately for me, I have fairly generic blood, A+, but I still think they might get low somewhere.
The sex questions are always fun. Trust me, no one is ever going to pay me for sex, not then and certainly not now.
They can keep the tee-shirt. I have too many already.
The donation will take place in a nearby Episcopal Church. My mother, a long gone Episcopalian, always hoped that I'd go to church on the holidays, since my atheism upset her enormously. Hopefully she'd approve of the compromise.
FRET in biochemistry, not guitars.
It's a good night, as I have learned of a widely used technique of which I have never before heard: FRET: Fӧrster Resonance Energy Transfer, a technique whereby one fluorescent molecule is stimulated in such a way that it causes another to fluoresce, the intensity of the second fluorescence varying with the sixth power of the distance. A means to measure protein-protein interactions.
I came across it in my general reading here: FRET Materials for Biosensing and Bioimaging Ruifang Su, Laura Francés-Soriano, P. Iyanu Diriwari, Muhammad Munir, Lucie Haye, Thomas J. Sørensen, Sebastián A. Díaz, Igor L. Medintz, and Niko Hildebrandt Chemical Reviews 2025 125 (19), 9429-9551.
From the introductory paragraph:
Because FRET can specifically and sensitively measure concentrations, distances, conformations, and kinetics in biomolecular binding and interactions, it is also widely used in biological and biochemical research in situ, in vitro, and in vivo, e.g., in DNA sequencing, structural bioanalysis, enzyme activity studies, or with intracellular fluorescent protein (FP) biosensors. Nanotechnology is another field in which FRET is frequently applied to analyze interactions of nanomaterials and the combination of biotechnology and nanotechnology (e.g., attachment and function of biomolecules on nanosurfaces) is yet another playground for FRET. Apart from sensing, FRET is also used for energy (or exciton) transport in photosynthesis, solar cells, light-emitting diodes, or photonic wires, the design of molecular logic gates, or the creation of physical unclonable functions. Independent of the keyword (e.g., “FRET” or “resonance energy transfer”), the category (e.g., “title”, “abstract”, or “topic”), or the database (e.g., PubMed, Web of Science, Google Scholar), one can find that FRET rapidly developed from a specialty subject at the end of the 1990s to a well-developed research field at the beginning of the 2010s within only ca. 15 years. For more than 10 years, FRET has constantly and strongly continued to populate the scientific literature with approximately four papers published on average per day that carry “FRET” or “resonance energy transfer” in their title or abstract (when performing a standard PubMed search). Many of the FRET application examples mentioned above are discussed in this review and specific references for both review and original research articles are provided throughout the various sections of this review. Over the years, the field has produced many FRET reviews (1−14) and books (15−18) that provide an excellent overview. Moreover, dedicated FRET conferences, (19) a FRET community, (20) and the many FRET research groups around the globe evidence the versatility and importance of FRET.
One thing that makes FRET particularly interesting and versatile is the almost infinite choice of donor and acceptor materials. FPs, organic dyes, or semiconductor quantum dots (QDs) are among the most prominent donors and acceptors but only make up the tip of the iceberg. Gold nanoparticles (AuNPs), which only function as acceptors and nanosurface energy transfer (NSET) rather than FRET should be used to describe the energy transfer mechanism, have also been widely used, especially for in vitro diagnostic applications. While both FRET and NSET abide by the rules of resonance energy transfer, their efficiencies depend on the inverse sixth (for FRET) or fourth (for NSET) power of the donor–acceptor distance. The FRET materials toolbox covers the spectral range from the ultraviolet (UV) to the near-infrared (NIR), excited-state lifetimes from picoseconds to milliseconds, concentrations from single-molecule to millimolar, and bioconjugation methods that provide donor/acceptor attachment strategies to almost any biomaterial imaginable. This unique versatility makes FRET adaptable to almost any environment and applicable for multimaterial and multiplexed biological, chemical, and physical analysis. We previously published a review (in 2006) (21) and a book chapter (in 2013) (22) about FRET materials but the field has been developing so rapidly that many new materials and concepts have been added and optimized over the last 10 years. Whereas this review also covers literature before 2015 and explains basic concepts that have existed for a longer time, we focus our discussion on material developments and applications in biosensing and bioimaging that have emerged over approximately the last 10 years...
This is a review article, and is thus very long. Just two early figures from the text are all I'll have time to post:
The caption:
The caption:
The seems like a wonderful way to monitor protein-protein interactions, albeit with a kind of chemical Heisenberg Uncertainty, since the labels potentially would induce steric effects.
Whenever I've been asked about this sort of thing, binding efficiency, being somewhat limited in scope, I always think of mass spec type approaches, HDX and click covalent binding. This technique, despite it's limitations, possible steric interactions, strikes me as superior since it can measure things mass spec can't, specifically distance, conformation, etc, possibly in real time.
Very esoteric, I know, but very, very cool.
I trust the holiday season is rewarding to you, irrespective of your faith or lack thereof.
Application of the Oak Ridge Super Computer to Streamline Document Access at the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Plant.
Under the theory that if anyone, anywhere, at any time, is injured by exposure to radiation ever, it's worse than the destruction of the planetary atmosphere, the nuclear industry is required to maintain ponderous documentation to prevent anything less than absolute perfection.
Perfection is expensive and labor intensive.
The Supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Lab - one of the most powerful computers in the world - has worked with a nuclear start up, to manage document access at the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Plant, the last nuclear plant in California.
Frontier supercomputer ushers in new era of nuclear AI
Subtitle:
From the text:
In an innovative new AI project, tech startup company Atomic Canyon and their partner, Diablo Canyon — California’s only operational nuclear power plant — used the Frontier supercomputer at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory to develop novel AI models based on the unique needs of the nuclear industry.
The AI models are designed to reduce the time, labor and resources the nuclear industry spends searching the millions upon millions of complex nuclear documents related to parts, maintenance records, engineering evaluations, regulations and plant procedures. The AI models are open-source and available to anyone in the nuclear industry. Once fully developed, the AI models could be used in plants all across the country.
“We need energy — period — and nuclear is an absolutely key component to enabling the energy we have today and building energy for the future,” said Trey Lauderdale, the founder and CEO of Atomic Canyon...
...Nuclear power is rising to meet the demand for American energy. But building new reactors or even renewing licenses of existing ones requires a tremendous amount of paperwork. Fortunately, AI is also on the rise, and paperwork is one of the things it does best.
In an innovative new AI project, tech startup company Atomic Canyon and their partner, Diablo Canyon — California’s only operational nuclear power plant — used the Frontier supercomputer at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory to develop novel AI models based on the unique needs of the nuclear industry.
The AI models are designed to reduce the time, labor and resources the nuclear industry spends searching the millions upon millions of complex nuclear documents related to parts, maintenance records, engineering evaluations, regulations and plant procedures. The AI models are open-source and available to anyone in the nuclear industry. Once fully developed, the AI models could be used in plants all across the country.
“We need energy — period — and nuclear is an absolutely key component to enabling the energy we have today and building energy for the future,” said Trey Lauderdale, the founder and CEO of Atomic Canyon...
... Zawalick said she estimates staff probably spend around 15,000 hours a year just searching for documents. Diablo Canyon’s databases contain about 2 billion pages of documents, which require a significant amount of institutional knowledge to navigate. She pointed to a recent example in which an issue with a single valve triggered a 6-month investigation that pulled staff away from their regular duties.
“A hundred and eighty-one working days if anyone was counting,” said Erin Bowe, Diablo Canyon nuclear innovation supervisor...
The full article is available at the link.
People are in general, suspicious of AI, but there are things it does well and this strikes me as an application that is meaningful.
The computational resources at Oak Ridge National Laboratory are capable of assisting not only in managing bureaucratic requirements of course, but also in addressing extremely demanding scientific calculations.
As for Diablo Canyon, my view is that it needs to stay on line far beyond 2030, if necessary, via refurbishment. It is an essential resource.
Oh shit, I just came across evidence of my youthful stupidity.
This might be a post more appropriate for the lounge, but it is a little bit political, so I'll put it here.
We're getting a new furnace installed, which means we've had to move a bookshelf that was frankly, cluttered, with all sorts of, well, crap.
I have this bad habit of never throwing books away, although I am now old enough to realize that there are just some books not worth keeping. I mean, "Powerpoint for Dummies 2003," really?
(Did I really buy that book? I've never been a fan of "Dummy" books. I can blame my wife. She just agreed to throw out the once very expensive ICD coding 2016, a big deal for her. That was definitely a past life.
For my part, I threw away an old history textbook, and a copy of an edition of Morrison and Boyd's "Organic Chemistry," which some how actually got moldy. The probability that I would ever have needed to open that book again is zero.)
It turns out that there is a far worse example of having been, well, a dummy in the past and I certainly can't blame my wife.
On my bookshelf there's a book by, um, um, um - I almost can't say it - Ayn Rand. "Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal."
Um, um, um...
Look, back when I still had acne, I recall reading both "The Fountainhead" and "Atlas Shrugged." I've always been credulous and of course, and well, when you a kid with acne, well, you're a kid. I'm kind of glad I know what's in them, particularly since unlike the "hero" John Galt (and his creator) I spend a lot of time thinking about the laws of thermodynamics.
But really? Ayn Rand "Philosophy?" I acquired that?
Shit.
Is it possible that someone gave to me like people give out Bible tracts?
If not, I can only be thankful that eventually I grew up.
I certainly wouldn't want to interact with myself as a kid; I'd be filled with contempt. I'm sure there are other people who feel the same.
My Snow Blower Batteries Are in the Garage Recharging. Guess What Isn't Charging Them on the PJM Grid?
Solar cells.
We do have two functioning nuclear plants in New Jersey. As thermal plants, they are running at higher efficiency because of the cold heat sink, so that helps.
But for the most part on this grid, PJM, the batteries are charging on gas and coal. As of this moment, according to the Electricity Map the climate gas intensity of PJM is 445 grams of CO2 per kWh. This is, in "percent talk" 1780% higher than the 25 grams of CO2 per kWh of electricity in France as of this moment.
On our PJM grid as of this moment, 42.5% of our electricity is generated by combustion of dangerous natural gas, followed by nuclear 28.41%, followed by coal, providing 20.92%.
Happily our Democratic Governor Elect, Mikie Sherrill, supports another nuclear plant in New Jersey. So do I. I'd feel better about the damned magical lithium batteries for the snow blower if additional nuclear plants were operating.
Wait! Wait! There is solar on the PJM grid somewhere somehow despite being covered by snow!!!!! 2.6% of electricity comes from solar, probably down in Virginia. It's noon now, and the capacity utilization of solar on PJM is 16.13% in "percent talk." We're saved!!!!!!!
I'm an old man. I was half way through the sidewalk, with the batteries running out, my neighbor came by and graciously offered to finish the sidewalk portion of the job with his gasoline powered snow blower. I'm not sure, from a thermodynamic perspective, whether his snowblower has a lower carbon intensity than my battery powered one.
Well, it's done, switched the position of the lawnmower and snow blower in the garage for easy access. Sigh...
The first snow accumulations of the year are predicted here in New Jersey tonight, and the predicted totals keep going up.
I plugged in the battery chargers to make sure they're ready for tomorrow.
Sigh...
I'm in no position to whine. When we lived in San Diego, we got bored with the good weather on most days of the year. When the weather wasn't good it was just rain.
In life, one generally, not always, gets what one deserves.
I love New Jersey, and prefer it to San Diego, but now as an old man, with a sidewalk in front of his house, well, I don't love snow like I did when I was a kid.
(Being old, I finally indulged in an electric snow blower, an Ego.)
OK. I'm ready. Whiny but ready.
Strategies for dealing with an obese cat?
A few months back, my wife and I adopted a cat and her son from a shelter.
She was still nursing at the time, despite being spayed. As soon as she got here she forcefully weaned her son.
The thing is was that she was clearly way over weight when we adopted her; her son, Harry, is just fine.
We took her to the vet, as required by our adoption contract, and the vet said she was healthy, but overweight.
She is always trying to eat Harry's food. Harry is a diffident eater; he walks away and comes back, and if he walks away, and we don't take the dish away, his Mom will finish it off.
We are trying to count calories, to limit her intake to 200 calories a day. It isn't working though. We're feeding her Purina One high protein, suggested by the vet, said to be good for obese cats, but we think she's even fatter now than when we got her.
We know from her history she'd been a street cat while pregnant, and maybe the memory of her hunger makes her gorge as she does.
I'd be interested in any advice from anyone with experience in this issue.
Formation of an Unusually Stable Crystal Found in the Ashes of a 1963 Nuclear Weapons Test in Australia.
I've been reading through my son's Ph.D. Thesis proposal - which he's been advised to narrow, although I think he should remember what he cuts - and in doing so, I finally understood some materials science issues in nuclear engineering to which he's been alluding all these years that kind of passed through my brain, one ear to another, without sticking.
Cool. Sometimes reading is better than listening. That little brat is a smart kid.
This set me off wandering around the internet thinking about certain types of crystal structures - he's focused on cubic symmetry crystal structures, for reasons I now understand - and I ended up thinking about hexagonal structures exhibited by certain metals including a metal I love, technetium - a fission product that does not otherwise exist (except on an atomic scale in uranium ores) naturally on Earth - that can be isolated from used nuclear fuel as a substitute for the applications of the rare metal rhenium, including improving the properties of tungsten as an alloy.
One thing I learned from reading his work is that it is possible to make alloys with structural features that are only accessible in additive manufacture (3D printing) procedures; it is too difficult to make some of them via another route.
Wow! That is interesting.
Well, one thing leads to another. Here's how I think I ended up at the paper I'll discuss in this post: Some interesting phases that offer a mixture of properties characteristic of ceramics - high melting points and chemical resistance - and metals - chiefly machinability are known as MAX phases, which exhibit hexagonal crystal structures. I'm sure I've written about them before. (The world leader in MAX phase chemistry is Michel Barsoum, who I once took to dinner, whereupon he told me that the industrial manufacture of these phases is problematic. He's a wonderful person, a very nice man.)
Since I am interested in certain properties of nuclear fuels, I recalled a long ago speculation I'd had - which I abandoned as ridiculous - about actinide MAX phases. I decided to check up on how ridiculous I was being and came across this open sourced paper:
Etschmann, B., Missen, O.P., Conradson, S.D. et al. Environmental stability of a uranium-plutonium-carbide phase. Sci Rep 14, 6413 (2024).
The paper is open for reading, but I'll point to some cool stuff in it anyway with a few excerpts:
A putative U–Pu-carbide phase was recently identified in a hot particle from the North-east plume associated with the Taranaki Test Site at Maralinga, South Australia. This particle, referred to as ‘Bruce’, was most likely from the Vixen-B sub-critical nuclear tests6,7, a part of the British nuclear weapon testing program conducted in Australia in 1952–1963. The Vixen-B trials (1960–1963) were ‘safety’ tests designed to investigate the performance of nuclear components subjected to a crash or a fire. This involved the use of conventional explosives (TNT) to detonate Pu-containing nuclear warheads, which resulted in over 22 kg of 239Pu being scattered over the area8. The U–Pu-carbide phase was identified on the basis of semi-quantitative Energy Dispersive Spectrometry (EDS) data showing U, Pu, Al, Fe, and C as major components, and X-ray Absorption Near-Edge Structure spectroscopy (XANES) results showing the presence of low valence (metallic-like) U and Pu6. Uranium, and by inference Pu, in carbide phases have metallic-like electronic structures as demonstrated by Butorine et al.9 using a combination of high-energy-resolution-XAS and the Anderson inclusion model.
Uranium- and Pu-carbides are usually pyrophoric at µm-grain size, i.e. they oxidise rapidly in contact with oxygen or water10,11; yet this particle survived in the regolith for approximately 30 years under near-surface semi-arid conditions before being collected by remediation crews in the 1980s7,8. Thereafter, the particle was stored under ambient conditions until it was examined with synchrotron radiation in October 2018, and sliced open with a focused ion beam (FIB) in May 2019, exposing the U–Pu-carbide phase (Fig. 1A). Further FIB-scanning electron microscope (FIB-SEM) investigations in March 2020 highlighted that this Pu–U-carbide phase showed no signs of oxidation upon direct exposure to atmosphere for approximately 10 months...
It was, in other words, surprisingly stable.
Some more stuff:
In June 2022, a FEI Quanta 3D FIB-SEM was used to extract a ~ 32 µm3 ‘chunk’ of phase-A from Bruce (Fig. 1B,D). This sample was stored under ambient conditions for 3 months before access to synchrotron beamtime, and again there was no discernible oxidation of phase-A during this time. The single-crystal X-ray diffraction study was carried out at the micro-focus macromolecular MX2 beamline of the Australian Synchrotron13. Crystal data and details of data collection and refinement are given in Table 1. The crystal was maintained at 100(1) K in an open-flow nitrogen cryostream during measurement. The crystal structure refinement indicates that the phase has the structural formula (U,Pu)(Al,Fem3C3. The final model converged to R1 of 0.0297 for 288 independent reflections (1747 measured reflections), and chemical formula (U0.59(5)Pu0.41(5))(Al0.54(2)Fe0.46(2) 3C3 (Table 1)...
A little further on:
And for a last excerpt, that I find really cool:
(U,Pu)(Al,Fe)3C3 and UAl3C3 are “derivative-MAX phases”, with the general formula (MC)n(Al3C2)m and n = m = 1. Derivative-MAX phases contain metal ions (M) in [6 + 6]-fold coordination (e.g., MC6Al6), compared to sixfold coordination in MAX phases. As a result, derivative-MAX phases frequently contain high-Z metals on the M-site, including Y, Gd-Tm, Yb, Lu and U14,18,19. The Al layers in MAX phases can be described as centred hexagonal rings, but the Al3C3 layers in derivative MAX phases lack centring.
An interesting thing about these phases, described in the paper is that in general, pressure is not required to make them, they can be made apparently only by heating - which suggests to my mind wonderful possibilities.
It appears from the paper as well that depleted uranium tank shells of the type we all hate around here from the days of the Iraq oil wars, also can give rise to interesting phases.
This is, I know, esoteric, and while I hate weapons of war as a conditional pacifist - if that's not an oxymoron I don't know what is - it is wonderful that despite the moral hollowness of such efforts, there are scientific silver linings.
These things, I believe, have implications of special types of nuclear fuel that can help save the world.
Have a nice weekend.
A BOE Estimate of Deaths Connected with Coal Combustion in Wyoming.
There's something I really, really, really like about the head rote antinuke at the so called "Union of Concerned 'Scientists.'"
His name.
He's Edwin Lyman, or as I like to put it, Ed LIE-man.
As for the "Union of Concerned 'Scientists,'" I'm a former member, from a long time ago, which probably allows me some room to justify placing the word "Scientists" in internal quotes.
When I was a young antinuke myself, participating in an admittedly small way to murdering the planetary atmosphere, and tens of millions of people killed by air pollution, actually well over 100 million people, since I was an antinuke until my private analysis of the explosion of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor, which I compared with my ill thought out expectations. These expectations were guided by rather credulous acceptance of the claims about the "danger" of nuclear energy, provided to me by my membership in the "Union of Concerned 'Scientists.'" The Chernobyl reactor blew up (a hydrogen explosion) in 1986. I spent the next two or three years trying to understand the situation, whereupon I suspended my "concerns" about nuclear energy and became pronuclear. Kiev, which is about 100 km (60 miles) from Chernobyl, is still there. It doesn't appear that the death toll from Chernobyl, after 39 years of angst, is anywhere near the values Ed loves so much to calculate for, say, a terrorist attack on Indian Point, or any of the other more than 100 commercial nuclear reactors that have operated in the United States.
Kiev is, of course, repeatedly bombed these days by fossil fuel weapons of mass destruction, including those that shelled the Chernobyl sarcophagus. The funding for these weapons of mass destruction was provided by German antinukes with the aid of Gazprom employee and close friend of Putin, former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, the antinuke responsible for initiating the German nuclear phase out, in part motivated by, um, Chernobyl.
Let's be clear on something, OK?. In Kiev, fossil fuel powered weapons of mass destruction killed vastly more people in Kiev than the hydrogen explosion of the Chernobyl reactor killed in Kiev.
Anyway.
Let me tell you how I became a "Concerned Scientist." I wrote a check. I put it in the mail - in those days we only had snail mail - and back came my membership documentation placing me on the mailing list. There was no application form by the way. No one asked me about whether I had exposure to courses in the matrix formulations of quantum electrodynamics using Dyson series, or whether I had any insight to the genetics responsible for the proteome of Castanea dentata (American Chestnut) providing no resistance to Cryphonectria parasitica for which the proteome of Castanea mollissima, the Asian Chestnut, renders it immune. I wasn't asked for insights to string theory - the subject in which Ed Lie-man earned his Ph.D. at Cornell. No one inquired whether I knew anything about the Kohn-Sham equations underlying density functional calculations, or even if I had taken a high school class in Earth Science in the 9th grade. There was none of that. I wrote a check and I was a "Concerned Scientist."
And here we are in a world where people are required to get formal educations, often at considerable expense in tuition, books and time, to become "scientists."
Who knew it could be so easy, not just to be a "scientist," but even better, a "concerned" scientist?"
So what about Ed, antinuke?
Well, Ed, it appears, is "concerned" about the Terrapower nuclear reactor for which ground has been broken in Wyoming.
Ed is always "concerned," when the word "nuclear" is raised. As far as I can tell, he doesn't give a flying fuck about how many people die from air pollution about which he is apparently less concerned. (I always cite the following article to describe annual deaths from air pollution: ] (Lancet Volume 396, Issue 10258, 17–23 October 2020, Pages 1223-1249). Global burden of 87 risk factors in 204 countries and territories, 1990–2019: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2019. (There are updates, but they require a bit more effort to parse, which my former status as a "concerned scientist" notwithstanding doesn't allow for simplicity in translation.)
I consider myself - one can judge for one's self if I am justified in this - something of an autodidactic expert in nuclear engineering. This should be allowed I think, because Ed Lie-man does not have a degree in nuclear engineering, although his fellow former antinuke "Concerned Scientist" David Lochbaum, was a nuclear engineer with a bachelor's degree from the University of Tennessee. Before the explosion of the Chernobyl reactor, I assumed these guys must know something I didn't. (Credulity is easily dismissed by education, autodidactic or otherwise.)
I have developed over the 39 years since Chernobyl blew up, routine familiarity with the wide array of nuclear power designs and I have opinions about most of them.
Let me tell you about what I know about the Terrapower reactor. It uses a coolant that has been problematic in a wide array of fast breeder nuclear reactors, liquid sodium (or perhaps, I confess ignorance, a sodium potassium alloy). It features a molten salt reservoir designed to store energy in the best thermodynamic state industrially available, heat. This allows for load following. It's an interesting design, but whether it is an excellent design remains to be seen. I am a fan of liquid metal reactors, but not sodium cooled liquid metal reactors. If I were investing in a nuclear power plant, I would not choose to invest in the Terrapower reactor. There are no nuclear reactors, even the worst nuclear reactors, like say, the RBMK (the Chernobyl design) that are as dangerous as the best fossil fuel power plants. Zero. None. Zip. This said, I'm sure the Terrapower engineers are smarter than I am; I expect the reactor to be a success, despite Ed Lie-man's "concerns."
Sodium cooled fast reactors have operated in France (Phoenix and SuperPhoenix) and in Japan (Monju) and both the SuperPhoenix and Monju were highly problematic and were shut down after short periods of operation. On the other hand, the Russian fast breeder reactors have a more successful history. The BN-600 fast breeder reactor in Russia came on line in 1980 and was recently licensed to continue operations until 2040. Russia is planning on building another, larger, fast breeder reactor the BN-1200. (India is expected to finish its sodium cooled fast breeder reactor in 2026.)
Now let's turn to Ed Lie-man's "concerns." Ed is "concerned" that the Terrapower reactor lacks a containment building. (So does the BN-600.) This he says is, as I learned here, NRC's Rushed Approval of Bill Gates' Experimental Wyoming Nuclear Reactor will Imperil Public Health, the Environment
Notice the verb. It's not "may." It's will.
Ed is very good at soothsaying, I guess, or at least thinks he is.
Of course, soothsaying is not required to consider whether the practices of generating electricity in Wyoming imperil public health and the environment.
Let's look at Wyoming's electricity supply, using the figures provided by the EIA and estimate, BOE, back of the envelope, the number of people killed by the generation of electrical power in Wyoming, the largest source of which is powered by the combustion of coal.
The source of the data I will use here can be found by poking around here, downloading a few Excel files and playing with the functions in Excel, like, say, adding and subtracting. (Matrix algebra functions which you wouldn't need to become a "concerned scientist" are not necessary, adding and subtraction are enough. In a little bit, I'll turn to, gasp, multiplication.)
Wyoming produced In 2024, 29,675,757 MWh of electricity, 25,860,576 (87.14% in “percent talk” ) from coal, in its six coal plants, Jim Bridger, Laramie River Station, Dave Johnston, Naughton, Dry Fork Station, and Wyodak; 838,081 (2.82%) with its loan gas plant, Shute Creek, and 1,595,044 MWh (5.37%) in its two wind plants, Roundhouse Wind Energy Project, and Cedar Springs Wind Energy Plant LLC.
There's an old paper, from 2007, highly cited, also from Lancet that makes an estimate of the death toll associated with generating electricity with various sources, this one: Electricity generation and health Markandya, Anil et al. The Lancet, Volume 370, Issue 9591, 979 - 990. I'm sure one could go through the 588 citations Google Scholar reports for updates, but this is a BOE calculation, probably somewhat more accurate that Ed Lie-Man's predictions of how many people would have been killed in New York City if terrorists drove tanks up the New York Thruway to blast Indian Point before it was closed, thus raising the carbon profile of New York State's electrical generation, about which Ed Lie-Man apparently isn't "concerned."
Here's a table from the paper just cited:
We are now in a position to calculate the number of deaths associated with the combustion of coal in Wyoming to generate electricity.
25,860,576 MWh is equal to 25.86 TWh. With a mean estimated death toll of 25.5 deaths per TWh of coal combustion, this suggests that in 2024 roughly 630 people were killed by the normal operations of the coal plants there. No accident, no explosion was required.
Now Ed Lie-man, who wanted you to know what would happen at Indian Point if terrorists drove up the New York State Thruway to blow up the containment building at Indian Point, although that didn't happen and was, clearly - at least to anyone with a modicum of rationality - this was very unlikely, is concerned that the Terrapower reactor is sure to explode. He has wonderful faith in his soothsaying, even though the BN-600 reactor has operated for 45 years without exploding and is licensed to run another 15.
I note that 2024 was just one year, out of decades, of coal burning in Wyoming. Every ten years we can estimate that 6000 people die in Wyoming from coal related combustion, although we should allow for some reduction in the estimate to account for the low population density of Wyoming, although it is likely that coal plants are not far from supporting cities to maintain the toxic infrastructure. Suppose it's only 5000 deaths every ten years, or 4000. Is this comforting?
Note that the health consequences of combustion of coal are not limited to air pollution. Coal contains heavy metals, notably the neurotoxic elements mercury and lead, as well as uranium and its decay daughters. Neither mercury nor lead exhibit half-lives. They don't decay at all.
There is, by the way, very little evidence that Chernobyl killed, over a period of close to 40 years, 6000 people. The reactor, even with the breeched sarcophagus does not kill 600 people per year, nor 24,000 people over 40 years. The most volatile and problematic fission products, 137Cs and 90Sr have decayed to less than half the load released in 1986. The most problematic nuclide, 131I, with a half-life of 8 days is completely decayed. None of this, of course, will keep people from carrying on about Chernobyl, in which they show far more interest than the roughly 7 million people killed each year by combustion products, air pollution.
Here, by the way, is what I said in the DU post about Ed Lyman's "concern" about the lack of a containment building on the Terrapower reactor:
Poke an antinuke, any time anywhere, and one finds an apologist for fossil fuels.
There are no exceptions.
The planet is dying, soaked in dangerous fossil fuel waste, in flames, and still we hear antinukes shouting about radioactivity, with which the planet formed, exists and has always existed.
When I was a young man, I worked with radioactive 125I and did so for a number of years. At that time it was the only tool for analyzing important biomarkers associated with serious human diseases, a now historical technique known as RIA, radioimmunoassay.. My work helped save lives. I am now an old man, proud of having has a radioactive thyroid gland four decades ago.
Nuclear energy saves lives on balance, millions of lives. It follows that on balance, antinukes whining about radioactivity in isolation kill people.
In this post, I did what the author of that post did not do, estimate the deaths associated with coal burning in Wyoming.
The Terrapower reactor is small, much smaller in terms of power output than any coal plant in that benighted State. It will not save very many lives from coal combustion, but that said, a rational person, as opposed to terrified and concerned Ed, it is not clear that it will kill anyone, his bizarre certainty that it will do so notwithstanding.
It's not my favorite design, but I am very, very, very, very happy it is being built, and "concerned" assholes, I mean "concerned scientists" can take their "concern" and shove it.
Have a nice day tomorrow, and I wish you the happiest and healthiest holiday season.
First Fuel Produced for the Idaho National Lab's Experimental Molten Salt Reactor.
First fuel produced for molten salt reactor experimentThe Molten Chloride Reactor Experiment (MCRE) project - a public-private collaboration between Southern Company, TerraPower, CORE POWER, and the US Department of Energy (DOE) - is planned to be the first reactor experiment hosted at the Laboratory for Operation and Testing in the United States (LOTUS) test bed being built at the lab by the DOE's National Reactor Innovation Center. It uses liquid salt as the fuel and the coolant, allowing for high operating temperatures to efficiently produce heat or electricity.
The Molten Chloride Reactor Experiment will need 72 to 75 batches of fuel salt to enable it to go critical - giving Idaho National Laboratory (INL) its largest fuel production challenge in 30 years, according to the DOE Office of Nuclear Energy. The fuel salt production process began in 2020, but early attempts yielded far below the goal of 90% conversion of uranium metal into uranium chloride and production of 18 kg of fuel salt per batch. But a breakthrough in 2024 - when the team developed a new step to improve uranium utilisation - eventually led to the achievement of 95% conversion and full-batch production. They have since demonstrated they can produce a batch in as little as one day, according to INL.
The first fuel salt production batch was delivered at the end of September, with four further batches to be produced by March 2026...
The orange pedophile apparently supports this effort, which has no bearing on whether or not it is a good idea. If the orange pedophile supports the statement that water is wet - although it's possible, being senile, he might not - that does not make water dry.
For molten salts, I am personally a fluoride kind of guy because of the nuclear reaction 35Cl[n, gamma]36Cl will take place in chloride salts. Removing 35Cl to prevent this reaction, and using a pure 37Cl salt requires expensive isotopic separations. (I doubt the INL fuel is isotopically separated pure 37Cl) This said, it is unlikely that given its mobility and the solubility of most of its salts, it is doubtful that released 36Cl could ever be present in concentrations that would engender significant health risks, even at a point where secular equilibrium was reached even with it's long half-life, 301,000 years.
(BNL does not give capture cross sections for 36Cl; I'm sure it's somewhere in the literature, but I'm too lazy to look.)
I have, for the record, proposed to my son a control salt, an iodide salt made from fissiogenic iodine, a mixture of 127I and 129I for a special type of reactor, however this type of salt that I proposed will shut a reactor down, not operate it. (It's a very, very, very esoteric system.)
Bromine has the same problems as chlorine, only worse. A bromide molten salt will not support fission.
I fully understand some rationale for chloride, inasmuch as chlorine is earth abundant and there is a risk of fluorine depletion. It may not affect nuclear salts all that much because of the high energy density of nuclear fuels, which makes them environmentally superior to all other fuels and all other systems for producing energy.
Very few of the concerns raised by antinukes about radioactive materials hold much water against the alternatives, one of which is the destruction of the planetary ecosystem from fossil fuel waste, but that said, in concert with an ignorant media, selective attention, and a poorly educated public with respect to nuclear issues, the war on nuclear energy has been highly successful, something I regard as a reason behind the collapse of the planetary atmosphere. To my mind, as often stated, nuclear energy is the only workable tool we have to ameliorate - as much as is possible at this late date - the aforementioned collapse. I regard it as impossible to accumulate enough 36Cl to represent a real risk under any circumstances. This also said, one only has to look at the carrying on about Fukushima tritium to recognize how these silly objections result in paroxysms of stupidity. The number of people harmed, the number of fish, harmed by Fukushima tritium is effectively zero.
This INL molten chloride reactor will, in any case, be the third molten salt reactor to operate to my knowledge, the first being the original MSRE at Oak Ridge which operated with a FLIBE salt, a version of the same reactor built and now operating in China without much difference apparently from the Oak Ridge original.
These reactors, if the materials science holds up, offer the prospect of doing a hell of a lot more than simply and merely generating electricity, to which the article alludes.
Have a nice day.
Profile Information
Gender: MaleCurrent location: New Jersey
Member since: 2002
Number of posts: 37,163