Radioactive coal?

Scientific American Newsletters scored in the department of misleading headlines with its recent article "Coal ash is more radioactive than nuclear waste." Read it here:http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste&sc=WR_20071218



Closer reading reveals neither anything that is not already well known, nor anything of any concern; though of course the intent I think is clearly otherwise. Coal contains small quantities of naturally occurring radioactive elements which become concentrated in the ash when the coal is burnt and released into the atmosphere. Because of this release, residents near coal-fired power stations are actually exposed to about four times more radiation than residents near nuclear power stations, from which, when properly managed, there are virtually no emissions of radioactivity (the odd tritium spill notwithstanding). This has been known for ages; the EPA website's online radiation exposure calculator contains the numbers. I have used it in my class to illustrate one of the myths about the hazards of nuclear power. Try it yourself at: http://www.epa.gov/radiation/understand/calculate.html And, as the article makes clear, even the radiation exposure from the coal burning poses no health risk; it is far less than what one gets from staring at a TV and so far I have not heard risk of radiation poisoning as a reason for rationing TV time in the young.



Of course the nuclear waste that the coal is being compared with is not the actual spent fuel, which is hugely radioactive and poses an ongoing challenge for its effective disposal - at least in this country. For whatever reason, the French, with their much higher penetration of nuclear power generation, don't seem nearly as agonized by the whole thing.

The radioactive coal article is a neat segue into the recent announcement that the Futuregen advanced coal power plant project has been awarded to little Mattoon, Illinois. Dulcie and I visited there once on the occasion of an Honors conference at which some of my students were presenting. Mattoon is close to Charleston, home of Eastern Illinois University. It is really a one horse town, the lone Sonic Burger by the highway representing perhaps the height of its gastronomic repertoire. We searched high and low before finding the single coffee shop in Charleston, albeit a rather interesting and idiosyncratic dive with all unmatching furniture but WIFI, welcomingly far removed from the scrubbed, sterile corporate cleanliness of your typical Starbucks. Overall a depressing place, although some beautiful old homes no doubt available at killer prices and horrendous heating bills (the wind blew cold when we were there). I left with the thought that I could never recommend EIU as a destination for students.

But that is all a bit of a digression from the main point: the significance of the Futuregen project. Will this be SSC-II? Back in the day the same two states (Illinois and Texas) battled it out to land the Superconducting Super Collider. It eventually went to Texas; but the project was subsequently killed for mammoth cost overruns. Already there are dark mutterings over the costs of Futuregen ($1.8 billion and climbing) which may cast a shadow over its future.

And what of the viability of the project? Clearly, the development of new/alternative energy sources must become a political matter and cannot rely on a few well-intentioned folks buying hybrids; but in so doing the process can become corrupted and perverted by political interests. To wit: Illinois possesses corn and coal. Local political interests will favour pushing these over other energy sources like wind and waves for example (Cs over Ws). Is that actually desirable? Skepticism abounds over the viability of corn (more on that later). Meanwhile, the Futuregen is based upon the mind-boggling idea that all the CO2 generated in the energy extraction from the coal will be buried deep underground (sequestration is the official term) and kept there for eternity. In other words, this once prime villain in the greenhouse gas department would become carbon-free. The project's champions like to call it clean energy. Others don't agree. Brian Urbaszewski from the Respiratory Health Association of Metropolitan Chicago (long-winded new name of what used to be the Chicago Lung Association), who had spoken at our Global Warming town meeting (and whose name no one seemed to be able to spell), wrote in the Tribune about the particulates that the Futuregen would still be producing. Still dirty after all these years. It will be interesting to see how the project goes. If it does, it will be banner days at Sonic Burger.

Trying to make sense of it all

Two weeks on from the "town meeting" on global warming solutions for Illinois I am encountering sensory overload from all the material about alternative energy and global warming washing over me from various sources: the Tribune (wind, coal, corn in recent weeks), New Scientist, Scientific American, podcasts, articles. I feel the need to process it all and respond to it, but it is a daunting task.

The meeting itself was a pleasing success despite an almost complete lack of publicity. I understand that the Campus Greens were the real organizers, but they seemed to have omitted a key component: advertising. Thanks to the efforts of a few faculty members (like me) who bribed/strong-armed their students into attending with incentives of extra credit, the meeting was standing room only - the sort of cosy crush one rarely, if ever, experiences in the rather sterile wastes of the SRC. Thanks to the largess of my department, we had proper amplification and the whole event was recorded, hopefully for wider dissemination at some not-too-distant future. The rent-a-crowd was suitably educated by a diverse panel. To me the most interesting address came from a pastor from United Methodist Church, Downers Grove. It has been my sense that the church (if one can use such collectives meaningfully) has tended to drag its feet vis-a-vis the environment, thinking perhaps that it was identified too closely with the left and all that entailed. The speaker gave an enlightened and spirited call to arms that could speak to all faiths that stewardship of creation is a responsibility borne by all.

Attendees were invited to create a video postcard to send to our representative and many responded. I sensed that many of my students felt better off for having gone, extra credit or no. It is encouraging that many will talk earnestly about buying those CFLs and recycling more and maybe riding a bicycle, and yet a part of me wonders if all those good intentions are misplaced. The issue is much bigger than light bulbs, but I did just buy some myself.

Celebrity haircut #3 and meeting the top Floyd

Looking at the date of the last post, I can't believe it has been two weeks already. There is so much to say, but alas too little time to say it all; and perhaps there are many who are thankful for that. If CNN can devote several minutes this morning lingering on the story of the size of some actress' bottom, then I think I am entitled to place a high priority on describing our latest adventure to deepest Indiana in search of haircuts and beer. On Saturday we set off once again to Griffith, Indiana for an appointment with our very own celebrity hair stylist Ben Mollin. Since it was also Dulcie's birthday, it was determined that we would all repair to the Three Floyds afterwards to celebrate with Dreadnaught. With typical bravado we ignored dire warnings of snow storms and set off in a very grey, damp and cold December afternoon.

Almost inevitably it seems the conversation descended into the colon. Was it I that brought it up? More than likely, but, though we are highly sceptical about the whole business, we learned that our Ben is quite a devotee; he even engages the services of a consultant to dissect the outworkings. Ben's assistant chimed in with her own advocacy for positive ion therapy. I learned that this involved putting one's feet in a bucket of water containing some mystical substance and having a potential applied. As she describes, positive ions serve to eliminate the toxins through the soles of the feet; she observed that one can feel the process working its way up the body step by step. The water, initially clear, becomes increasingly cloudy during the treatment. There is clearly money to be made peddling "scientific" health procedures, though I'm not sure I would want to be too closely associated with the colon, even for ready money.

Hair suitably restored, it was to the Floyds. It was slightly incongruous for an aging (let's say into the advanced stage of late youth) chemistry professor to be sharing pints with a tattooed hairdresser almost half his age. The excitement wasn't over though because the senior Floyd made an appearance. It turns out he hails from Northumberland and is/was a kidney specialist (huge irony here for Dulcie). We were introduced and exchanged a few pleasantries. He went to Cambridge and likes to sport a modest ponytail and an Ascot. Later his wife appeared - a much younger woman that he might well have found on the internet.

White asparagus: definitely not green

While in Wholefoods (AKA Foulfoods) before Thanksgiving, my eye fell upon some white asparagus. In an experimental mood, encouraged also by the price reduction, I made a purchase of said vegetable. It is blessed with an exquisitely gentle phallic form, as befits its reputation, real or imaginary, as an aphrodisiac (as to that I can provide no evidence either way). On further reading I learned that my purchase originated in Peru. I have not knowingly dined on Peruvian produce previously (how is that for alliteration?). As it was undergoing preparation for the Thanksgiving Day repast, I was given to musing to what extent the purchase of the white asparagus had expanded my carbon footprint: after all, the stalks would have to have been chopped by some exploited peasant no doubt, driven by truck to some far-flung airport, flown to another airport in the U.S., and finally another truck drive to Foulfoods. Dulcie chimes in with some mention of locavores, about which of course I knew nothing. What does she listen to I wonder?

Locavore, it turns out, is not only a new word, but the Oxford Word of the Year. It's origin is a group of women in San Francisco (where else?). There is a website now, and the following is what I retrieved from there:

"We are a group of concerned culinary adventurers who are making an effort to eat only foods grown or harvested within a 100 mile radius of San Francisco for an entire month. We recognize that the choices we make about what foods we choose to eat are important politically, environmentally, economically, and healthfully."

There is without doubt much merit in this initiative. Easy for them, you will say, in San Francisco, surrounded by a bounteous ocean and productive, diverse agriculture. Imagine being a locavore in Chicago in winter, consigned to a steady diet of rutabagas and turnips.

My white asparagus exposes the difficulties of being green. Foulfoods is all over the business of greenness, sustainability, organic, ethics and so on; its website positively swells with noble sentiments about "Holistic Thinking." And yet here it is, in reality, enabling the upper middle classes to indulge their insatiable lust for exotic produce, at the cost of using precious fossil fuels to import an unnecessary vegetable from halfway round the world.

In closing I note that "locavore" has not yet found its way into the blogger.com spellchecker.

Going Green - In Full Reverse

One of the sections of the paper last Sunday featured the new subdivisions sprouting up far west of Aurora - some forty six miles from Chicago. The structures of the farms into which these developments are encroaching are still visible beside the voluminous drafty boxes. The folks moving in are regarded as the new pioneers; the article made comparisons with the development of the western suburbs some fifty or more years ago. There were some similarities: the land around Schaumburg and so on was largely farmland. There are also substantial differences: the houses back then were about one third the size; the developments were also closer to mass transit.

I really want to know when it was, and how it was, that people were hood-winked into believing that they "needed" more space. A family with one small child "needs" a triple garage, a family room with cavernous ceilings and a master bathroom of such formidable dimension that the very private personal functions must be akin to doing them in a center of a shopping mall. Whatever happened to the concepts of intimacy and coziness, a quiet nook to read with dimensions on a human scale?

Well I suppose these new pioneers are all suckers for marketing ploys and getting "more" for your money. In the context of going green, reducing one's carbon footprint and so on, it is completely in the wrong direction. It is not a matter of rocket surgery (or brain science for that matter) to show that the costs of heating huge volumes of dead, wasted, unnecessary space are higher; that the costs of transportation from these rural ghettos are far higher (even for the simplest errand to find a grocers); that there are no alternatives of public transportation available nor likely to be any time soon.

Which brings me to my next point. While the odious Daley poses and preens and waxes lyrically (no he never does that - mumbles incoherently is better) about bicycles and green roofs and all the other myriad ways in which Chicago is a world leader in greenness, the public transportation system, already an embarrassment, is about to dive into the malebolge as funding for it falls apart. Is it not completely obvious that for any serious attempt on reducing carbon emissions to be successful, efficient and widespread public transportation must be a number one priority, regardless of alternative fuels, hydrogen cars and so on? Meanwhile, the already pathetic mess that is public transportation has priority zero. The bumbling Blago - oh how poorly we are served by elected men - learns of the funding demise while watching an ice hockey game.

We are having a town meeting next week at the COD on Global Warming Solutions for Illinois. Some politicos are going to be in attendance I think. It could be an interesting evening.

An Incomprehensible Truth

Riding the wave of publicity generated by the Nobel Peace Prize announcement, (a bit of a stretch I say to characterize a scientifically inaccurate, alarmist, albeit influential film about climate change as a peace-making activity), the climate change brigade are certainly pumping up the jam on the airwaves of the intelligentsia. Over the last couple of weeks I have listened to several broadcasts on NPR covering rising CO2, alternative fuels and "cars of the future." Another on the Scientific American podcast dealt with the "ethics" of global warming. This coincided neatly with a piece in the Tribune that was a perspective on the guilt induced by the relentless and largely alarmist media blitz. Now New Scientist is in the act with two thought-provoking articles on the point of going green (?) and the danger of over-doing the fear-mongering.

The Tribune article was a somewhat light-hearted take on the guilt induced by the Go Green movement and how all our activities lead to agonizing over their impact on our carbon footprint. The author's own footprint came out to be a shrieking "LARGER THAN AVERAGE" at a weighty 7.5 tons. Many acts of eco-consciousness can be undone at a stroke by a single plane trip; and yet, in many instances, what choice do we have? Plane trips are sometimes unavoidable.

The real point of this article, which is echoed very much by the New Scientist commentary, is that there is a real danger of over doing the alarum bell ringing on the part of the environmental activists. The consequence will be that the general gender will tune it out, much in the same way that I would tune out the odious, carping of Rush Limbaugh. Then, far from mobilizing people to take action, the movement will have mobilized them into complete inaction. This was the subject of a very interesting and provocative essay by John Lanchester called Warmer, Warmer, published earlier this year in the London Review of Books. Now that makes it sound like I am spending my hours nobly in self-betterment, but I actually came across it quite by accident when looking for something else. The theme of the article addressed the difficulty of dealing with global warming from the individual perspective. Since it appears to be so large (global in fact) and so bad (if you believe what they all say), then the response is really to ignore it (what after all can I as an individual do?) and go on as if nothing was amiss. This only makes the activists even more incensed of course.

Now we have the ethics of global warming to contend with. Piling on the guilt trip, a professor at the University of Wisconsin, a medical practitioner as opposed to a scientist, was expounding on this topic on Scientific American (Science Talk November 7). The dreaded carbon footprint featured prominently - exhibit A in fact. We denizens of the USA boast a footprint of 6 tons per year on the average. I forget what the global average is, but I was told that huge amounts of the world population have a footprint below 0.1 tons. Furthermore, I am told, there is an almost complete mismatch between the carbon producers and those that will suffer the terrible consequences. This is something that I should be feeling guilty about. My reckless and selfish car driving is bringing global-warming-induced disease and devastation to the poor folks of Africa. So their plight is all my fault. I'm sorry but I'm not quite ready to plead guilty and promise to abandon the good life and return to the simple ways of the peasant on that account. Their plight is the responsibility of the corrupt leadership of those nations that has singularly failed to advance their citizens' status by continued misuse of resources both their own and what has been given in aid over the decades. I am sure that the ambition of each citizen would be to burn as much carbon as I do. Look at China, from bicycles to SUVs in a single generation.

My final comment is directed towards one of the NPR Talk of the Nation pieces on climate change. One of the guests was Elizabeth Kolbert, author of Notes From a Catastrophe. A loaded title by any measure. I have read some of her stuff in the New Yorker. Here's one thing that needled me. She has repeatedly said things like the modern car gets no better gas mileage than the Model T Ford. The obvious inference there is that the greedy, lazy car makers have done nothing over the years regarding fuel efficiency, and that they are all embroiled in an evil conspiracy with oil companies to keep cars inefficient. It is not helpful to the case at all because it is completely disingenuous. For one thing, there are fundamental limitations to the efficiency of a heat engine (see Carnot). For another, the modern car is far safer (for safer read heavier), larger and faster. For yet another, the complex emission control systems imposed by environmental legislation cost energy to run, thereby reducing efficiency. Is Ms. Kolbert suggesting the T is really equivalent to the modern car? I'm all for a legitimate debate on the future of transportation, but let's talk constructively.

Living Genius

I am in possession of the results of a list of the "Top 100 living geniuses" as compiled by a panel of six "experts" (my quotes) in "creativity and innovation" from Creators Synectics - a self-styled global consultancy. Now, it turns out the source of the names was in fact 4,000 Britons who were solicited to nominate up to ten geniuses. Each nominee was then ranked according to some nebulous criteria like "paradigm shifting" and "cultural importance." Okay, you are saying, the slightly snide attitude here is entirely because I am not on it. Perhaps in part that is true, but aren't all such things manifestly ridiculous?

Interesting to note though that two chemists are in the top six and one of them, Albert Hoffman, is number 1 overall. For those who don't know who Albert Hoffman is, and I admit I had to look it up for he is not the same man as the legitimate genius Roald Hoffman that bestrides organic chemistry like a colossus, he is the chap who discovered the singular properties of LSD. Further reading revealed that he adopted the old-fashioned approach to chemical research by experimenting on himself with the material. Aside from that he has contributed nothing. Does this mean the 4,000 Britons or the Creators Synectics are all latter-day acid heads? Down in fifth equal is Frederick Sanger, one of only a handful of dual Nobel prize winners (and the only one with two in chemistry) so that is perhaps well deserved. Surprisingly, Steven Hawking comes in a comparatively dismal eighth, for he always seems to be synonymous with genius. My rectum clenched slightly at the sight of Richard Dawkins in 20th equal; evidence indeed that being clever with the pen and adopting edgy and controversial attitudes is far more likely to get you noticed than genuine scholarship. And he is a New College man! I am slightly envious of Sebastian Thrun's (32nd equal) given occupation as "probabilistic roboticist:" hard enough to say, let alone do. Wait, did I read this correctly? Osama Bin Laden in 43rd equal! Occupation given as "Islamicist." Enough said.