The first question is why they are called eye teeth? The upper canine teeth, the relatively long pointed teeth, are said to be called that because they are positioned directly under the eyes (weird!). The second question is why would someone say they would give up their eye teeth for something they value more? The expression has been around for centuries, and World Wide Words explains losing them “…would cause one to be severely hampered…” Thus, that other thing you want must mean a great deal to you if you would be willing to give up your eye teeth to get it.
Building a Safer, Cleaner Nuclear Reactor
I had an opportunity to read a copy of Popular Science while waiting for a doctor appointment, and I had forgotten how much I had liked that magazine as a young adult. There were several interesting articles, but the one titled “Revive the Nuclear Dream” was fascinating. Two young scientists, Leslie Dewan and Mark Massie, have been working on nuclear power generation since they found articles about reactor research performed at Oak Ridge at an MIT library in 2009. One subject was molten salt reactors, and it intrigued them that using liquid uranium fuel instead of solid fuel eliminates the chance of a meltdown. “So they dusted off the Oak Ridge design and got to work. Today, their start-up, Transatomic Power, is poised to build a new, even better molten salt reactor.”
The idea has some very compelling possibilities. Fuel rods from light water reactors, the design used at existing U.S. nuclear power plants, have to be replaced when only four percent of the uranium has been converted to energy. The molten salt reactor will convert 96 percent of the uranium into energy and generates 75 times the amount of electricity per ton of uranium. Of course another advantage is there is less waste to manage. Even better is that their reactor could run on spent fuel from those other reactors.
The article describes how the reactor works. Uranium salt is liquefied by heating it to 500 degrees C, and the molten salt is pumped past zirconium hydride to slow down the neutrons and induce fission. The krypton and xenon that poisons light water reactor fuel rods is continuously off-gassed. “You basically simmer the reactor like a Crock-Pot for decades…The fuel salt flows through a loop with a drain that is blocked by a freezer plug, a chunk of electrically cooled frozen salt. If the reactor loses electricity, the plug melts, and the fuel drains into a tank where it cools and solidifies.” That feature makes the design “virtually accident proof.”
The big hurdle for the technology is that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission doesn’t have a framework for licensing “advanced reactors.” The coal and natural gas lobbies see nuclear as a threat and some environmental groups will fight anything labeled “nuclear.” The two young scientists want a regulatory pathway developed, but good luck with that. We may still be developing smart and ambitious entrepreneurs, but we haven’t found a way to make government bureaucracies lobby-proof, efficient, or courageous. China would probably welcome the technology, but Dewan says they want to succeed in the U.S. I think we should think of ways to help them. My first contribution is this commentary. Meet the two impressive people by watching the video on the home page of their web site.
US Nuclear Weapons: A Secret History
This book by Chuck Hansen is an encyclopedia of nuclear weapons, and I recommend it as such to anyone who would be interested in reading about that. The book is listed at $144 on Amazon, so I recommend trying the interlibrary loan system before you commit to a purchase. It had less information about the subjects in which I have as an interest, and the short review to follow is a reflection of that. It has great pictures of various nuclear blasts as well as pictures of various weapon bodies and various delivery systems. Hansen’s feelings about nuclear weapons are not subdued. He describes in the introduction that “…a vast empire has arisen largely unnoticed in the United States.” “The secret empire has cost taxpayers dearly: $89 billion in development costs since 1940, and $700 billion for delivery systems for its products. The sheer volume and number of these products is mind-boggling: between 1945 and 1986, the nuclear weapons complex in the U.S. manufactured approximately 60,000 warheads of 71 types for 116 different weapons systems.” “The U.S. government has always gone to extreme lengths to keep this orgy of nuclear self-indulgence hidden from public view.” There is a reference that “…tens of millions of documents chronicling this vast ‘black project’ remain locked away in vaults…” (It makes one wonder how the author was able to find anything to write about.)
Ironically, a discussion follows of how it had been thought the U.S. would maintain a nuclear monopoly much longer than what occurred. The Soviets were able to steal everything they needed by espionage to develop atomic bombs while bypassing the need to invent and test the design information developed by the U.S. Continue reading
Hit the Ground Running
There is no disagreement about the meaning of the expression, which is to seize an opportunity by beginning at full speed. However, Dictionary.com says the origin is disputed. “It may come from combat troops dropped into a combat zone, from stowaways jumping off a freight train as it nears the station, or from Pony Express riders avoiding delay when they changed mounts.” All create a vivid mental image, so I don’t have a favorite.
Another Unintended Consequence of Obamacare
The commentary posted last week was about the financial burden being placed on States by Obamacare. The article titled “Electronic care: Why doctors quit,” by Charles Krauthammer describes an even more important unintended consequence. Doctors who have small practices, often the doctors in rural communities, don’t have the financial resources or technology support to comply with the law. They are retiring because the law requires so much of their time is used for regulatory compliance rather than providing health care. According to the article, the law has created “…a deep erosion of their autonomy and authority, a transformation from physician to ‘provider’.”
The article says virtually every doctor expresses bitterness about the electronic health records (EHR) mandate that produces “…nothing more than ‘billing and legal documents’—and degraded medicine.” One doctor observed that “…introduction of the electronic medical record into our office has created so much more need for documentation that I only see about three-quarters of the patients I could before, and has prompted me to seriously consider leaving for the first time.” Medical practices that hadn’t gone electronic by January 1st have had their Medicare payments cut by one percent. That penalty increases to three to five percent in future years.
What has Obamacare accomplished? Many more people have Medicaid, and that means it takes weeks or months to get an appointment at one of the few places that still accept it. Fifty year old women had their health insurance declared “non-compliant” because they didn’t have maternity coverage. Obamacare has accomplished spending $27 billion on “going paperless,” although the promised $77 billion in savings is nowhere to be found. None of this will make an impression on those who believe government should be in charge of our lives because we and those who have the archaic attitude that they want to own a profitable business can’t be trusted.
America’s Plans for War Against the Soviet Union, 1945-1950, Vol. 14, Long Range Planning, Dropshot
A review was posted last week of Vol. 13 in the series of books edited by Steven T. Ross and David Alan Rosenberg. That book evaluated the military plan called “OFFTACKLE,” which called for being prepared to engage in war with the Soviet Union in the late 1940s to early 1950s with 220 atomic bombs dropped on Soviet targets followed by conventional bombing. Volume 14 carries the plan into the future with the Soviet attack into Europe expected to occur in 1957. The extra time allowed the planners to produce the war plan with the code name “DROPSHOT,” which expanded the scale of the attacks. DROPSHOT was being prepared when NSC-68 was written, which was a planning document calling for an extensive U.S. rearmament plan. The Korean War and the fall of China to the Communists reinforced belief that World War III with the Soviets was inevitable. This volume1 contains the declassified (from top secret) facsimiles of the Joint Chiefs of Staff document JCS 1950/5 prepared in three sections. The basic assumption is that “…war against the USSR has been forced upon the United States by an act of aggression of the USSR and/or her satellites.”
It was believed that the massive Soviet conventional forces would sweep into and through Europe when the Soviet leaders decided that war would be to their advantage. Their armies were expected to be in control of Western Europe in twenty days. The report indicates that there was more confidence in intelligence about Soviet capabilities that in previous war plans. For example, “The committee is now informed that the Joint Intelligence Committee has available a revised estimate of the 1957 Soviet atomic bomb stock pile.” One aspect of planning that didn’t change was that it was considered strategically important to hold the oil producing areas of the Near and Middle East. Continue reading