Yes, media meltdowns occur much more often, and we have little in the way of containment vessels for them.
Category Archives: Technology and Society
Better Late Than Never
Steven Chu finally steps forward:
The Obama administration’s most vocal advocate for nuclear power said Tuesday that the nuclear disaster unfolding in Japan will eventually help the United States strengthen safety at its 104 reactors.
Energy Secretary Steven Chu told a House panel that “the American people should have full confidence that the United States has rigorous safety regulations in place to ensure that our nuclear power is generated safely and responsibly.” But he said that the administration “is committed to learning from Japan’s experience.”
It’s not just about improving existing reactors, but in designing the many new ones we will need. But I’m glad they’re not using this as an excuse to pander to their technophobic base, as they did in the Gulf mess with the moratorium.
Invincible Energy Ignorance
All together now: We are not going to end our dependence on foreign oil with wind and solar.
But math remains hard for some people.
How Did Japan’s Bullet Trains Fare?
Not all of them so well:
Clearly, some of the country’s slower commuter trains were caught in the tsunami. There are reports, again unconfirmed, that up to four of these trains were involved. Wading through photos on the Internet, I found at least three discrete shots of derailed trains, although it is possible the passengers survived.
If indeed a bullet train was lost, it will likely be the working of the law of unintended consequences. For the most part, bullet trains north of Tokyo run inland, so these were probably out of the tsunami’s range (see this map). However, there’s a small loop seaward to Sendai, among the hardest hit areas of the island. This is pure speculation here, but given the timing of the shock wave and the following tsunami, it is possible that safety systems stranded one or more trains in the path of the killer wave. Commuter trains follow a much longer stretch of coastline, and would have been particularly vulnerable.
…liberal planners just might want to reexamine their ideological yearnings for high-speed rail, namely their conviction that it is somehow “better” for people to live in concentrated urban clumps, connected by public transit, than in diffuse, sprawling suburbs. Densely populated Japan must rely on rails to get people to and from work. When centralized systems like these fail, they fail across the board and, as appears likely in Japan, will be out of commission for a long time; aside from the track damage, electrical shortages due to nuclear-plant shutdowns are forcing service reductions. Suburbs and cars, on the other hand, are distributed systems, with inherently redundant roads and vehicles that are more resistant to natural disaster. Rescue workers aren’t taking the train to succor tsunami victims, they’re driving.
This makes a lot more sense than rethinking nuclear power.
Passenger Rail Fantasies
Unfortunately, as already noted, math is hard. But they never let that get in the way of their romance. Particularly when it gets people out of those evil cars, with all their individual freedom and evil fossil fuels.
AWOL
Where is Steven Chu?
Americans expect leadership from their leaders. Chu has the track record to provide it in this case, yet he is failing to do so. If he is being hamstrung by special-interest pressure within the administration, one would expect that to be a resigning matter. I fear it is more likely that he has succumbed to pressure from his erstwhile allies, the greens, and is simply displaying a lack of backbone.
Yet he should consider what this means for his own plans. The administration’s energy plan, based on the EPA’s draconian regulations against greenhouse gas emitters, depends on a hundred new nuclear power plants being built. The administration knows that that powering America by wind and solar energy is as likely as extracting sunlight from cucumbers, which is why nuclear figures so heavily in the plan. If that option is now off the table — and the Left has been so successful in its opportunistic framing of this issue that it might well be — then there is a massive gap in the plan that can only be filled by coal or natural gas. Secretary Chu will be forced to argue that, if there is a nuclear ban, then the EPA’s beloved greenhouse-gas regulations will also have to be taken off the table. This is a circle that simply cannot be squared.
But then, leftists generally have no problem with unsquarable circles.
[Update a few minutes later]
Since he’s not up to the job, here’s a simple explanation of Fukushima.
The Valley
…remains uncanny. They’re certainly making a lot of progress in realistic androids, though. I suspect that at some point this technology is really going to be driven by the s3x toy industry.
The Paleo Rodeo
I’ve really got to start paying more attention to this stuff, because my blood pressure has gotten ridiculously high to the point where I need to be pretty drastic about it.
Bobby Braun
He’s NASA’s chief technologist. Very excited about the topic of this conference, and NASA wants to be a part of it and facilitate its success. His job is to reinvigorate a technology program at the agency. He wants to enable our future in space, and believes that technological leadership is the “space race” of the 21st century. Wants to support disruptive technologies that industry can’t. One of the reasons to have a federal government is to take those kinds of risks, and keep the nation at the cutting edge.
Space Technology is a budget line in the budget request (both 2011 and 20112). Includes partnership programs, cross-cutting technologies and exploration technologies. 2012 request is about a billion dollars. Formed three divisions: early-stage innovation, game-changing technology and cross-cutting capability demos. Includes CRuSR program for suborbital. Program acts as a “funnel,” taking broad range of ideas from industry/academia/government, filtering them to see if they will work, then filtering further to see if they’re ready to fly as demos. SBIR/STTR, space technology grants, Centennial Challenges and NIAC in early-stage division. Game changers focus on dramatic new high-risk approaches that can improve performance, decrease cost or create whole new capabilities. Part of it is a home for smallsat technologies. Cross-cutting demos is a processing of maturing technologies to flight readiness (TRL 7) includes flight opportunities on FAST programs and CRuSR, which were merged for management reasons.
Have already made awards to Masten and Armadillo for “engineering payloads” to characterize the environment for operational payloads. Goal is to continue to competitively procure development suborbital flights, with focus on payloads that reduce risk for technology infusion in future missions. Will expand to other platforms and test environments in 2013. There is an open call for payload opportunities that was released in December, though there are no funds yet for 2011. A number of Space Act agreements have been signed.
Jeff Greason
US government space efforts in difficulty if not crisis. Could be talking about almost anything in space — reconnaissance satellites, human spaceflight BEO. Long-time problem, growing in severity, and it’s a crisis because legacy systems being called on to do things that they were never designed to do in terms of lifetime, but every time we try to replace, go over budget or get cancelled or reduced in scope, so that they never serve as replacement for what we used to have. When you find time and again that goals exceed resources, you can either downscope goals, get more resources, or change the game. Human spaceflight is not a luxury — need a frontier, need a place to maintain dynamism, and find elbow room. DoD is definitely not a luxury when it comes to recon, but all replacements are not working. Scaling back goals is not an option. Financial crisis is now upon us. Non-defense discretionary is going to stay flat at best and probably go down. If NASA is going to even maintain flat budgets it will have to show more for the money (need more Buck Rogers for the bucks in order to get the bucks). Technology isn’t “ten times better this or stronger that”). It’s just a fancy word for knowing how to do something. One of the root causes of our current problems was the submergence of the NACA, and then Apollo, when NASA started to focus on technologies for its own needs rather than those of industry. ITAR has been another problem crippling our industry, and one of the more pernicious effects has been to starve the industry of funding for its own research. This conference is a small part of the problem, but it will play a key role in solving it. Suborbital vehicles will add a lot of technologies. Learned from Augustine that the addition of just a few key technologies can enable NASA to do a lot more with a lot less. Many of those technologies can be demonstrated suborbitally. Won’t get all the way where you need to be for human exploration, but can provide a critical foundation, and the more we can have had experiments on suborbitally, the more that the expensive orbital tests will be successful. Examples: cryo quick-disconnects, propellant acquisition and gauging in weightlessness, crucial for orbital propellant storage and transfer. Real pieces of hardware are sitting in real labs sitting at as far a level of maturity as there can be sitting in a lab, gathering dust, waiting for flights to mature in the environment. Frightening overruns in military satellites arise from untried tech in the satellite, but no ongoing efforts to mature those technologies in non-critical systems, and many of them can be tested suborbitally. ISS also provides excellent testbed (as will Bigelow) for longer-duration technology tests.
Pure science also important, but in doing science, they also push technology. At low flight rates, expendable launch systems are most cost effective, but as rate goes up, we want reusability. Shuttle demonstrated that a vehicles that requires so much effort to turn around have no advantage over and expendable. Suborbital flight is the “school” where we will learn how to do orbital reusable right. Most of those lessons will drive the recovery of a reusable upper stage. We have to return to the kind of environment we had between the Wright brothers and WW II, but it’s hard because of the government domination over the past half century. Have to develop environment in which many approaches are tried at hight rates. Science missions are a significant market segment for suborbital, and government is most substantial funding sources for science, so government policy is important. CRuSR important, but execution has been slowed with management changes and direction changes, and lack of current budget doesn’t help. Don’t expect to see the government become the lion’s share of an market segment, but it’s needed as an initial anchor to help overcome “wait and see” attitude from other customers. Availability of of government funds critical to prime the pump through transitional period. That’s the great value of government funding. Initial payloads can fly at considerable risk, and there should be no additional hurdles for this, and modest investments needed to encourage this industry could be the most important money spends in this decades in terms of technology payoff that allows us to open up the solar system.