See the Ayes and Noes (for Division Number 70) here in Hansard. (I tried to transcribe the lists but computers, you know.)
Sadly, as Autonomous Mind says, you can't necessarily read any good motive into a No vote; and the vote in the Commons nowhere near reflects the split in public opinion. All this has achieved is to highlight the disconnect between the electorate and their supposed representatives. However, I on this occasion I see an Aye vote as a slightly less ambiguous demerit.
And just as US Congress first voted the right way on the $700 billion bailout, and was then bullied by Paulson & Co. into voting again his way, I shouldn't wonder if Parliament has another go at this issue from another direction, perhaps after Obama sends in the drones.
And as for John Kerry's "proof" of Assad's guilt re chemical weapons, here's a pregnant snippet from John Ward:
At the website of French weekly Valeurs Actuelles, an interesting message from a threader mentions the arrest by the Turkish authorities on the 30th May 2013 of a dozen members of Al Nosra ( close to Al Qaida)*. The same also reports on a dispatch from Agence France Press regarding the recent seizure of ” a great quantity of gas masks” in South East Lebanon; According to an anonymous source these masks were to be delivered in Syria.
* Caught with, the threader says ("Jean Billet", 23:53), two kilos of Sarin.
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Saturday, August 31, 2013
Friday, August 30, 2013
The painful progress of fusion
I recently undertook my decennial scan of our latest efforts to extract useful amounts of energy from controlled nuclear fusion. It’s one of those subjects I feel a need to check up on every decade or so in case I miss an interesting new development.
Okay that may be a little cynical, but domestic electricity produced by nuclear fusion seems to have been thirty years away for my entire life and time is running out. My time at any rate, because I’ve finally reached an age where I may claim with some confidence that fusion power will never be viable. I mean – there is no longer much risk of my being proved wrong before coffin time is there?
So where are we now? Well iter.org is possibly the place to go for the upbeat, mainstream, big money view. Technically and as an example of human determination to succeed, it’s a mighty project. In spite of my crusty cynicism, I’m also something of a closet nerd. I simply can’t help but be impressed. I want it to work but that thirty year horizon is still with us.
ITER is not an end in itself: it is the bridge toward a first plant that will demonstrate the large-scale production of electrical power and tritium fuel self-sufficiency. This is the next step after ITER: the Demonstration Power Plant, or DEMO for short. A conceptual design for such a machine could be complete by 2017. If all goes well, DEMO will lead fusion into its industrial era, beginning operations in the early 2030s, and putting fusion power into the grid as early as 2040.
Okay that may be a little cynical, but domestic electricity produced by nuclear fusion seems to have been thirty years away for my entire life and time is running out. My time at any rate, because I’ve finally reached an age where I may claim with some confidence that fusion power will never be viable. I mean – there is no longer much risk of my being proved wrong before coffin time is there?
So where are we now? Well iter.org is possibly the place to go for the upbeat, mainstream, big money view. Technically and as an example of human determination to succeed, it’s a mighty project. In spite of my crusty cynicism, I’m also something of a closet nerd. I simply can’t help but be impressed. I want it to work but that thirty year horizon is still with us.
ITER is not an end in itself: it is the bridge toward a first plant that will demonstrate the large-scale production of electrical power and tritium fuel self-sufficiency. This is the next step after ITER: the Demonstration Power Plant, or DEMO for short. A conceptual design for such a machine could be complete by 2017. If all goes well, DEMO will lead fusion into its industrial era, beginning operations in the early 2030s, and putting fusion power into the grid as early as 2040.
As early as 2040? Almost a whole career from now, but one hopes that is merely a coincidence. Yet if nuclear fusion is ever to yield an unlimited supply of energy at an accessible cost, then we are surely entitled to be a little hard-headed as well as taking the long view. Take this on the Hot Cell Facility for example:-
The Hot Cell Facility will be necessary at ITER to provide a secure environment for the processing, repair or refurbishment, testing, and disposal of components that have become activated by neutron exposure. Although no radioactive products are produced by the fusion reaction itself, energetic neutrons interacting with the walls of the vacuum vessel will 'activate' these materials over time. Also, materials can become contaminated by beryllium and tungsten dust, and tritium.
The Hot Cell Facility will be necessary at ITER to provide a secure environment for the processing, repair or refurbishment, testing, and disposal of components that have become activated by neutron exposure. Although no radioactive products are produced by the fusion reaction itself, energetic neutrons interacting with the walls of the vacuum vessel will 'activate' these materials over time. Also, materials can become contaminated by beryllium and tungsten dust, and tritium.
By the phrase components that have become activated by neutron exposure, they mean components made radioactive by the neutron flux from the fusion reaction. Although the deuterium/tritium fusion reaction is the most favourable fusion reaction energetically, it spews out a lot of neutrons which are bound to make containment materials radioactive.
So as well as the extreme technical difficulties in containing a fusion plasma at 150 million degrees, we have a radioactive waste problem which never goes away.
Not only that, but tritium is a rare isotope of hydrogen and about 300g of tritium will be required per day to produce 800 MW of electrical power. The plan is to generate this in situ via lithium and that neutron flux, but this too has yet to be tested on a sufficiently large scale. According to Wikipedia, commercial demand for tritium is 400 grams per year, costing about US $30,000 per gram.
So as ever, fusion power has many hurdles to overcome, but a serious fusion plant is being built and more lessons will be learned. Somehow though, it all sounds ominously expensive even though costs will be driven down if the technique ever goes commercial.
Will it ever go commercial though?
Something inside me says not, but maybe that’s because I’ve waited such a long time for this particular egg to hatch. For me it has acquired the queasy feel of a colossal vanity project.
Ho hum – maybe I’ll take another gander in 2023.
All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.
So as well as the extreme technical difficulties in containing a fusion plasma at 150 million degrees, we have a radioactive waste problem which never goes away.
Not only that, but tritium is a rare isotope of hydrogen and about 300g of tritium will be required per day to produce 800 MW of electrical power. The plan is to generate this in situ via lithium and that neutron flux, but this too has yet to be tested on a sufficiently large scale. According to Wikipedia, commercial demand for tritium is 400 grams per year, costing about US $30,000 per gram.
So as ever, fusion power has many hurdles to overcome, but a serious fusion plant is being built and more lessons will be learned. Somehow though, it all sounds ominously expensive even though costs will be driven down if the technique ever goes commercial.
Will it ever go commercial though?
Something inside me says not, but maybe that’s because I’ve waited such a long time for this particular egg to hatch. For me it has acquired the queasy feel of a colossal vanity project.
Ho hum – maybe I’ll take another gander in 2023.
All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.
Bumbleberries
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| http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Blackberry_fruits10.jpg |
That's what we heard a little girl call blackberries, or brambleberries, growing wild by the Wye at Tintern. Possibly it was a confusion with bumblebees, but we insist this goes into the dictionary.
Or be used as the proprietary name for a mobile phone for the elderly.
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A radical government without support is a dictatorship
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And so David Cameron becomes the first PM in over two centuries to fail to carry the House with him on war action. He gets little sympathy from Max Hastings, who is still seething over being prevented from having an interview with a British general on the ground that "there has been far too much military leaking to the media".
But it's not just Cameron who is displaying premature signs of the autocrat. Michael Gove appears to think that bovine party loyalty trumps the will and interest of the country he has a temporary part in governing: it is reported that he "had to be restrained by colleagues" as he repeatedly yelled "disgrace" at Conservative and LibDem MPs who voted against bombing Syria.
The UN inspectors' report on the alleged use of chemical weapons is not yet due and it is far from certain that the Syrian government is responsible for the attack that is supposed to form the pretext for another terrible Western military adventure. The allegation is hardly credible: how, knowing that it would trigger direct intervention by the USA, is Assad supposed to have believed launching a gas attack would serve his best interest, and even if he had thought that, why on earth bomb a school?
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| http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b038zlbl/BBC_News_at_Ten_29_08_2013/ |
In the midst of this information fog, we're told Gove "did not join colleagues in calling for MPs to vote on military action, saying he believed the appropriate response should be decided by the Prime Minister." Soldiers, who have to kill and die, are not so gung-ho. Hastings quotes a letter in yesterday's Times newspaper from General Sir Michael Rose:
"... the invasion of Iraq, initiated by Bush and supported so zealously by Blair, triggered the unravelling of the status quo in the Middle East, resulting in so much misery and death."
This is the same Michael Gove who is charged with directing the education of the young and during the brief reign of this minority government is nevertheless hurrying through radical change, and (I suspect) using Ofsted as his battering-ram to denigrate schools in areas of social deprivation and force their conversion into "academies". He and his colleagues remind me of the episode of "Bottom" in which Adrian Edmondson proposes to break into the off-licence and drink as much as they can before the police arrive.
This is a controlling government that is out of control, and the sooner it goes, the better.
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Thursday, August 29, 2013
China is the whale of shale
As I was reading Richard Heinberg's "Snake Oil" the following jumped off the page: "shale gas resources in China exceed even those of the United States".
An article from Caixin Online reproduced on MarketWatch agrees:
"A 2011 report by the U.S. Energy Information Agency estimated total world shale gas reserves that are exploitable using today’s technology at 189 trillion cubic meters. Of that, 36.1 trillion cubic meters are in China, making it the world leader in shale gas reserves.
All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.
An article from Caixin Online reproduced on MarketWatch agrees:
"A 2011 report by the U.S. Energy Information Agency estimated total world shale gas reserves that are exploitable using today’s technology at 189 trillion cubic meters. Of that, 36.1 trillion cubic meters are in China, making it the world leader in shale gas reserves.
"In 2011, the MLR launched an investigation into potential
shale gas reserves. The results indicated China had 25 trillion cubic meters of
developable reserves, slightly more than the United States’ 24 trillion."
Heinberg distinguishes between "resources" (what is there) and "reserves" (what can be physically and profitably recovered). There are sharp differences of opinion about the latter - the US EIA estimated last year that there were 482 trillion cubic feet (=13.65 trillion cu. m.) of "technically recoverable" gas in the United States. Not 24 trillion, then - but the economics may change as demand increases and stocks are used up.
Still, China has a massive amount to exploit and this is on top of having the world's third-largest proven recoverable reserves of coal.
Per capita, China's coal and gas are much less than America's, since the former's population is four times larger. Nevertheless, she is motivated to develop these resources, given the high cost of global energy prices compared to her domestic wage rates, and her desire for greater energy security. China is also more likely to be able to exploit these resources quickly, given relatively less stringent environmental protection. Further, I understand from other reading that the way the carbon trading market has been set up makes it easier for China to get credits for reducing pollution from energy plants, since she starts from a lower basis than is expected from already-more-efficient Western nations; and she will quickly acquire the knowhow, one way or another.
Another point Heinberg makes is that energy-exporting nations begin to use more themselves as their economies become wealthier, so that if global energy reserves fail to increase in line with global demand, the USA and UK (and others) are likely to suffer supply problems and rising costs. As the ancient Greek saying goes, "There is no borrowing a sword in time of war."
By the way, I shouldn't be surprised to learn sometime in the future about regional unrest in China as well-connected cliques seize or swindle mineral rights from villagers, just as they have grabbed land for the crazy speculative residential and leisure developments of the past few years.
Per capita, China's coal and gas are much less than America's, since the former's population is four times larger. Nevertheless, she is motivated to develop these resources, given the high cost of global energy prices compared to her domestic wage rates, and her desire for greater energy security. China is also more likely to be able to exploit these resources quickly, given relatively less stringent environmental protection. Further, I understand from other reading that the way the carbon trading market has been set up makes it easier for China to get credits for reducing pollution from energy plants, since she starts from a lower basis than is expected from already-more-efficient Western nations; and she will quickly acquire the knowhow, one way or another.
Another point Heinberg makes is that energy-exporting nations begin to use more themselves as their economies become wealthier, so that if global energy reserves fail to increase in line with global demand, the USA and UK (and others) are likely to suffer supply problems and rising costs. As the ancient Greek saying goes, "There is no borrowing a sword in time of war."
By the way, I shouldn't be surprised to learn sometime in the future about regional unrest in China as well-connected cliques seize or swindle mineral rights from villagers, just as they have grabbed land for the crazy speculative residential and leisure developments of the past few years.
All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.
The bacterial threat to civilisation
Archdruid Report writer John Michael Greer highlights another major threat to our way of life - the evolution of bacteria (emphases and paragraphing mine):
"In the case of the spread of antibiotic resistance among microbes, there are at least three patterns at work.
"First, microbes are being selected for their resistance to individual antibiotics.
"Second, as new antibiotics are brought out to replace old ones, microbes are being selected for their ability to develop resistance to one antibiotic after another as quickly as possible.
"Finally, the pressure exerted on the entire microbial biosphere by the pervasive presence of antibiotics in the modern environment is giving a huge selective advantage to species that have the ability to exchange genes for resistance with other species."
This fits in with Greer's long-running theme, which is that when "Man" sets himself against Nature, Nature will win. Whether we consider antibiotics or fossil fuels, quick fixes are not permanent fixes. All we have done is multiplied our numbers and developed a style of living in a way that is unsustainable.
We need to balance the principle of efficiency with that of ability to survive. Crowding into cities and depending on resource distribution grids overseen by computers makes us increasingly vulnerable to natural and man-made catastrophe.
All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.
"In the case of the spread of antibiotic resistance among microbes, there are at least three patterns at work.
"First, microbes are being selected for their resistance to individual antibiotics.
"Second, as new antibiotics are brought out to replace old ones, microbes are being selected for their ability to develop resistance to one antibiotic after another as quickly as possible.
"Finally, the pressure exerted on the entire microbial biosphere by the pervasive presence of antibiotics in the modern environment is giving a huge selective advantage to species that have the ability to exchange genes for resistance with other species."
This fits in with Greer's long-running theme, which is that when "Man" sets himself against Nature, Nature will win. Whether we consider antibiotics or fossil fuels, quick fixes are not permanent fixes. All we have done is multiplied our numbers and developed a style of living in a way that is unsustainable.
We need to balance the principle of efficiency with that of ability to survive. Crowding into cities and depending on resource distribution grids overseen by computers makes us increasingly vulnerable to natural and man-made catastrophe.
All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.
Wednesday, August 28, 2013
Nick Clegg is a balloon without the rubber
Imagine that you are a senior officer in HM Armed Forces, seated with your colleagues around the table in the war room. The agenda is to discuss the following brief, assigned to you by Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg:
"The murder of innocent men, women and children through the use of chemical weapons is a repugnant crime and a flagrant abuse of international law, and if we stand idly by we set a very dangerous precedent indeed, where brutal dictators and brutal rulers will feel they can get away with using chemical weapons on a larger and larger scale in the future. These are weapons which were used on a large scale in the First World War, banned back in the 1920s, so all we're considering is a serious response to that.
"What we're not considering is regime change, try [sic] to topple the Assad regime, trying to settle the civil war in Syria one way or another. That needs to be settled through a political process. We're not considering an open-ended military intervention with boots on the ground like we saw in Iraq.
"What is being considered is measures which are legal, which are proportionate, and which are specific to discouraging and sending out a clear signal that the use of chemical weapons in this day and age is simply intolerable."
You have not yet been shown any evidence that the recent gas attack was in fact initiated by a brutal dictator / ruler, and you are not required to determine the matter.
You are now tasked with discouraging further such attacks, by anyone, without taking sides in the Syrian civil war, or in any way helping to overthrow the present government of Syria. You may not permit British "boots on the ground" there, and must at all times ensure that your interventions are legal and proportionate, so that HMG and yourselves personally can avoid being prosecuted afterwards. The committee is expected to submit detailed proposals to the Cabinet with the utmost despatch. Biscuits are limited and there will be no refills of coffee.
The use of deniable irregulars, such as Tinker Bell, may be considered.
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"The murder of innocent men, women and children through the use of chemical weapons is a repugnant crime and a flagrant abuse of international law, and if we stand idly by we set a very dangerous precedent indeed, where brutal dictators and brutal rulers will feel they can get away with using chemical weapons on a larger and larger scale in the future. These are weapons which were used on a large scale in the First World War, banned back in the 1920s, so all we're considering is a serious response to that.
"What we're not considering is regime change, try [sic] to topple the Assad regime, trying to settle the civil war in Syria one way or another. That needs to be settled through a political process. We're not considering an open-ended military intervention with boots on the ground like we saw in Iraq.
"What is being considered is measures which are legal, which are proportionate, and which are specific to discouraging and sending out a clear signal that the use of chemical weapons in this day and age is simply intolerable."
You have not yet been shown any evidence that the recent gas attack was in fact initiated by a brutal dictator / ruler, and you are not required to determine the matter.
You are now tasked with discouraging further such attacks, by anyone, without taking sides in the Syrian civil war, or in any way helping to overthrow the present government of Syria. You may not permit British "boots on the ground" there, and must at all times ensure that your interventions are legal and proportionate, so that HMG and yourselves personally can avoid being prosecuted afterwards. The committee is expected to submit detailed proposals to the Cabinet with the utmost despatch. Biscuits are limited and there will be no refills of coffee.
The use of deniable irregulars, such as Tinker Bell, may be considered.
All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy.
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