Category Archives: Technology and Society

Space Nuclear Waste Disposal

When I wrote that piece about Three-Mile Island the other week, I forgot to mention my own recollections of the event. It was interesting timing, because it happened in the middle of a senior space systems engineering project that I was involved with at the University of Michigan. It was an annual course taught in the Aerospace Engineering department, required for Aerospace majors, which I took as an elective (though it wasn’t my major, I took many courses there, including several graduate ones, tailoring my own astronautical engineering degree, but without the emphasis on aeronautics). The course was taught by Harm Buning (who died only three years ago — I really ought to write about him some time). The project was to figure out how to dispose of nuclear waste in space. This was a couple years before the Shuttle had its first flight, and we still believed the hype about its cost and safety, so it was the assumed launch vehicle, but the question was what to do with the stuff once it was in LEO.

Having been pretty heavily involved with the L-5 Society (I had actually spent a semester the previous year volunteering at the HQ in Tucson, and had met people involved with the MIT mass driver work, including Henry Kolm and Eric Drexler — the people in that now-classic picture are, from right to left, a twenty-four year-old bearded Eric wearing a Maxwell’s equations teeshirt (one of which I also had at the time), Henry, Gerry O’Neill, someone unknown to me, and Kevin Fine — geek and space enthusiast city — I could write a sad book titled “We Were Space Enthusiasts, And Young…), I suggested that we use a linear synchronous motor to propel it out of the solar system. The class adopted the idea, and we came up with a crude systems design (about what you could expect from college seniors for such a complex project). It was in the middle of the project that TMI occurred, making it seem even more relevant.

The university seems to have put many of these older (typed by department secretaries– no word processors back then) reports on line, including this one. I’m sure I have a dead-tree copy somewhere, but it’s nice to see it on the web. It’s been a long time, and I was distracted at the time because my father had his second heart attack in April of that year, and died a few weeks later. Due to time missed, I had to finish up my sections early in the summer to avoid an Incomplete for the course, so I don’t remember how much of it and which parts I wrote, but it was quite a bit of it (at least the orbital mechanics and the dynamics of the payloads in the accelerator, and how much wall play they would have to have). Dave Steigmann wrote a lot of the structures section, I think. The report says that it’s authored by Kevin Blankinship, but he was probably just final editor, because he was officially the team project manager. One of the things that this course taught was not just engineering, but how to work as an engineering team (including managing with the politics and personal interactions). These were…interesting. I won’t say any more than that, to protect the guilty, whoever they all may be. 😉

Anyway, is it feasible? Probably not, but it was a good project for the purpose of learning how to consider all aspects of a space system, and project teamwork.

[Update a while later]

The project name was pretty good acronymery. I don’t recall whether it was mine, someone else’s, or the result of a brainstorming session. But it was Project NEWDUMP (Nuclear Energy Waste Disposal Using Mass-Driver Propulsion).

For anyone who is willing to read the thing, it is probably entertainingly rife with howlers, from the perspective of three decades later. This one on page four jumped off the page at me:

The Space Shuttle has substantially reduced the cost of space transportation since the Apollo project, with possible improvements for further economy.

Note the tense, and not also that this was written about two years before first flight.

How Do The Numbers Work?

Sorry, but I just can’t buy this:

PG&E is pledging to buy the power at an agreed-upon rate, comparable to the rate specified in other agreements for renewable-energy purchases, company spokesman Jonathan Marshall said. Neither PG&E nor Solaren would say what that rate was, due to the proprietary nature of the agreement. However, Marshall emphasized that PG&E would make no up-front investment in Solaren’s venture.

“We’ve been very careful not to bear risk in this,” Marshall told msnbc.com.

Smart move.

Solaren’s chief executive officer, Gary Spirnak, said the project would be the first real-world application of space solar power, a technology that has been talked about for decades but never turned into reality.

“While a system of this scale and exact configuration has not been built, the underlying technology is very mature and is based on communications satellite technology,” he said in a Q&A posted by PG&E. A study drawn up for the Pentagon came to a similar conclusion in 2007. However, that study also said the cost of satellite-beamed power would likely be significantly higher than market rates, at least at first.

In contrast, Spirnak said Solaren’s system would be “competitive both in terms of performance and cost with other sources of baseload power generation.”

I just can’t see how. Unless there are going to be many satellites, the system has to be in GEO to provide baseload power to any given region on earth. They talk about putting up a 200 MW system with “four or five” “heavy lift” launches (where this is apparently defined as 25 tons).

Suppose the conversion efficiency of the cells is a generous 30%, the DC-MW conversion is 90%, the transmission efficiency is 90% and the MW-AC conversion efficiency is 90% (generous numbers all, I think). That gives an overall efficiency of 22% from sunlight to the grid. The solar constant in space is 1.4kW/m2, so that means you need 650,000 square meters of panels to deliver 200 MW to the grid. Suppose you can build the cells (including necessary structure to maintain stiffness) for half a kilo per square meter. That means that just for the solar panels alone, you have a payload of 325 metric tons. Generously assuming that their payload of 25 tons is to GEO (if it’s to LEO, it’s probably less than ten tons in GEO), that would require over a dozen launches for the solar panels alone.

That doesn’t include the mass of the conversion electronics, basic satellite housekeeping systems (attitude control, etc.) and the transmitting antenna, which has to be huge to get that much power that distance at a safe power density.

So even ignoring the other issues (e.g. regulatory, safety studies, etc.) that Clark mentions, I think this is completely bogus until I see their numbers. And probably even then.

What The Tea Parties Are About

This is both an interesting, and scary graph. The most important thing to me is not just the sheer magnitude of the Obama deficits, but the respective trends of both administrations.

Note that the Bush deficit was decreasing every year until 2008, when it got hammered by the TARP (at least I’m assuming that’s the cause, though it could also be a result of the slowing economy throughout the year, not to mention Congressional spending increases under the Democrats starting in late 2007). Note also that this was happening despite the evil Bush “tax cuts” (which obviously weren’t really tax cuts — they were just tax rate cuts that actually were reducing the deficit, despite the out-of-control spending by the Republican Congress).

In contrast note that the Obama plan is ever-increasing deficits after 2012, whether you believe administration or CBO projections. And though they decrease in the near term, they never get as low as the worst Bush deficit before they start to sky rocket in the teens. This, simply put, is fiscal insanity. And increasing taxes on “the rich” (as they’d surely love to do if they could get away with it) isn’t an option. There simply isn’t enough money there, and if there were, it would tank the economy even more, with even larger deficits from reduced tax receipts and automatic increases in non-discretionary wealth transfers. Also, estimate the integral under the curve. That’s an accumulating debt, with an ever-increasing proportion of the deficit going to interest, particularly when people become reluctant to loan money to a budding Weimar at low rates.

People who will be protesting on Wednesday won’t be protesting against a party. They’ll be protesting against a government completely out of control. But unfortunately for the Democrats and the left, they will be seen as the much larger part of the problem, because the Republicans are now at least giving lip service to reduced spending and reduced government. But they’re going to have to work very hard to live down their spending spree of the “compassionate conservative” (read, “progressive lite”) Bush years.

[Evening update]

“Liberal doughboys afraid of tea parties.”

Liberal bloggers and media groups can’t get the Tea Party phenomenon out of their heads. It wasn’t supposed to be this way, to them. Ordinary people getting together to protest against the liberal establishment. There is a cognitive disconnect. There must be a plot; the vast right-wing conspiracy at work.

So true to form, Media Matters sounded the horn that this was not a real protest, it’s a Fox News segment. Kind of a made for T.V. reality show, with a cast of tens of thousands. Think Progress joined in with “Spontaneous Uprising? Corporate Lobbyists Helping To Orchestrate Radical Anti-Obama Tea Party Protests.”

And the netroot blogosphere heard the call. FireDogLake proprietor Jane Hamsher posted “What Part of ‘FNC TAX DAY TEA PARTIES’ Don’t You Understand?” Hamsher also promoted “citizen-organized protests” which were unlike the “Fox-organized” Tea Parties; I guess she didn’t catch the irony of promoting counter-protests to protest other people promoting protests. Anyway, almost no one showed up for the counter-protests.

Gee, I think I have one of those in comments.

[Monday morning update]

More tea-party panic:

What’s the big deal? ACORN, MoveOn, and Soros get to pull puppet strings year after year, and that’s ok. But God forbid Fox News puts so much as its imprimatur on Tea Parties! No way! That’s too sinister, too insidious; and makes the whole movement illegitimate and inauthentic. Whatever…

Jane Hamsher and Oliver Willis are probably asking “Who the hell are this Tea Party bunch? Where did they come from?” I’ll tell you who they are, Jane and Oliver. They’re your worst nightmare: they’re small-governmenters first and party-loyalists second.

And we’re not laughing with you, Jane and Oliver. We’re laughing at you.

[Bumped]

[Update a few minutes later]

More on Crazy Jane and the other panicked and paranoid leftists (like my commenter):

She’s implying because freedomworks listed the Texas Tea parties and Dick Armey is part of freedomworks that the Tea Parties, Houston in particular, are being organized by “Corporate lobbyists”. Houston Tea Party has never spoken with Freedomworks or Dick Armey, though we do know that Freedomworks has offered legal advice to different Tea parties, we’ve not sought it. None of that should imply they are running the show unless you go to the point of just making stuff up.

The “Corporate lobbyist” line is a laugh. Felicia is a local Mother of two who worked with some local grassroots groups like Raging Elephants. I was someone who was trying to be apolitical the past 4 years until I took a good look at was going on, and I was laid off last week and currently unemployed. There are other organizers and volunteers with us. None of them come close to the description “Corporate Lobbyist”.

And no, this woman is nuts, Fox News is not organizing the Tea Parties, they’re just jumping on board (like a lot of people are trying to). But she’s seeing Dick Armey and Fox News as the boogeymen in the closet…

So… I’ve had my LMAO moment for the day. How about you? 🙂

Edit: More on this silliness:

If we’re being organized by “corporate lobbyists” then where the heck is my check?

Yeah, me too. How do I get in on this hot “corporate lobbyist” action?

An Attempt At Common Sense In MO

The Missouri House has passed a bill allowing concealed carry on college campuses in the state. Of course, the universities (or at least U Missouri) respond with the usual idiocy:

“Missouri’s college students should be allowed to learn and exchange ideas in an environment free from the threat of concealed guns,” University of Missouri System President Gary Forsee said in a news release Thursday. “It is hard to imagine that such a proposal could gain support given the magnitude of gun-related tragedies experienced on college campuses across the country.”

Yes, it is hard to imagine, given the illogical hysteria on the subject, much of it fed by the media. And of course, the police are unhappy:

MU Police Chief Jack Watring said at the MU Faculty Council meeting Thursday that he was opposed to the legislation.

“I don’t think most students in an educational environment need a weapon,” he said.

Well, you know what? Most students wouldn’t have one. Most students won’t bother to get the permit. But they’ll be free riders, and safer, because of the few who have one now, or will get one in the wake of this law passing, because they’ll now be able to use it. As Eugene Volokh notes, not allowing students to carry on campus effectively prevents them from carrying much of anywhere, and it’s a violation of a fundamental human right:

Many universities ban firearms, but some research I’ve been doing reveals that some universities ban firearms and stun guns and chemical defensive sprays, either in dorm rooms or in the university as a whole. This basically leaves students entirely without any defensive weapons, and also has the effect of disarming dorm residents when they go off campus property, since they have no place to store the defensive weapons when they’re back on campus.

This strikes me as quite shocking, especially with regard to women students who are in the age range where the danger of rape is at its highest. The university basically leaves them as sitting ducks, unless they’re willing to violate the university policy. Even if the university tries to compensate by offering a good deal of on-campus policing (some do and some don’t), it surely can’t protect the students when they leave campus.

It should be shocking, but it isn’t. And listen to this next excuse:

Watring said…that the biggest concern with the concealed carry provision is the tactical problems it would create, such as the ability for police to identify a suspect in a situation where many people are carrying weapons.

That’s not an argument against allowing guns on campus. There is nothing unique about a college campus in that regard. It’s an argument against allowing concealed carry anywhere. Which is, of course, what many law-enforcement types would like, because it gives them more power over the sheep.

And it’s a stupid argument, to boot. I’m pretty sure that if there’s a mass shooting, it’s not that hard to figure out who the suspect is — it’s the guy shooting lots of people. And if this law passes, in most cases, if history is any guide, by the time the police arrive the shooting will be over, and the suspect subdued or dead, as was the case at the Appalachian University Law School, or the Colorado Springs church shooting, or the numerous other times when there were armed law-abiding citizens present. The only time that the police have to deal with a live, armed shooter is when everyone else has been disarmed (Columbine, Virginia Tech, etc.), because that’s the only circumstance in which he can continue the murder spree for the many minutes that it always takes police to arrive.

And of course, as always, we have the usual slander against CCW permit holders:

But Rep. Chris Kelly, D-Columbia, said he was worried about the possible combination of drinking and weapons on college campuses.

“College boys who round up 25 opossums half drunk can do amazingly interesting things with fireworks, bottles of gasoline, with all kinds of interesting devices,” Kelly said.

“Fraternity boys are a very inventive lot, let’s make sure we give ’em guns to play with too,” he added with sarcasm.

I wonder if Rep. Kelly can put together a correlation matrix between people who have been diligent and responsible enough to go through the process of getting a concealed weapons permit, and inebriated pyromaniacal frat boys? Because I’ll bet it’s pretty damned negative. I also wonder why he thinks that people who would engage in such drunken antics would have any qualms about possessing illegal guns on campus?

Stupidity and illogic continues to abound. And if this bill fails, and there is a mass shooting on a Missouri campus, we’ll know just who to blame this time.

[Sunday morning update]

A commenter indicates that I probably painted law enforcement types with too broad a brush, and he’s probably right:

I am a police officer and I would like to clarify a few misconceptions. If you ask any police chief about their position on concealed carry legislation you will get the same answer that you would get if you ask a political appointee. This is because most are elected or appointed by and serving at the pleasure of a politician. Most officers, myself included, support concealed carry. We know better than most how long it takes for us to arrive and just how long each second is in a tragedy such as a school shooting. We also understand that the sick and twisted out there among us won’t leave their weapons at home before a killing spree because they might get in trouble for concealing.

My apologies to any other officers who think I mischaracterized their position on the issue. Most probably are sensible on this issue, even if they can’t publicly say so.

[Update in the afternoon]

Oh, and my answer to frequent inane commenter “jack lee”‘s question is “…none of your goddamned business.”

Pirate Defenses

So, I was thinking about this while driving to the post office and back. It seems to me that the hardest part of defending a large vessel with a small crew is the inability to detect them before boarding. If the ships don’t show up on radar, the crew needs some other warning system, with a proximity alarm that gives them time to demand hail friend or foe, or blow them out of the water (or off the side of the ship if they’re already climbing). Assuming that they are willing to arm themselves (it doesn’t really take that much to take out one of these pirate boats give sufficient warning), and it’s legal, the only missing element would be the warning system.

So how hard and expensive would it be with today’s technology to rig cameras around the ship with motion detectors, and software to filter out waves? It seems like a pretty easy problem to me. I’d think that most modern digital cameras are smart enough. Give them IR capability, and they’d work through fog.

Geoengineering

I have to say that I’m (slightly) encouraged that the new science advisor is willing to consider planetary modification as a solution to global warming, in the event that it actually turns out to be a problem bigger than the current preferred cure. But I think that Mickey Kaus infers too much, unless he’s seen more specific proposals than appear in the WSJ piece:

If shooting particles in the air can semipermanently change the climate of the entire planet … well, in the hands of well-meaning people it would be a risky, last-ditch policy to combat global warming. In the hands of less benevolent people it could become a heavy duty terrorist weapon, no? … If you have the missiles, is it that much easier to develop nukes?

Well, first of all, having missiles doesn’t help at all with developing nukes. They are entirely independent technologies. It might help in delivering nukes, if (as I pointed out in the New York Times) you can build the nukes small enough to fit on the missiles, and if you can also build an entry vehicle that can deliver it to a desired target (and yes, I know that the guidance doesn’t have to be that precise to simply take out a city, as opposed to a silo).

But even more to the point, nowhere did I see the suggestion that it would be done with “missiles.” I had an argument with an idiot at Free Republic a year or two ago when this notion (putting particulates in the upper atmosphere to block the sun) came up. He pooh poohed it, on the basis that rockets cost far too much, and made a stupidly ridiculous cost estimate based on Titans (which no longer even exist).

But if this were to be done, it wouldn’t use missiles. As I point out in the previous linked post, this would be an excellent market for reusable suborbital transports. And if you’re worried about suborbital transports as terrorist or rogue-nation weapons, you don’t understand their nature (at least for the short distances that satisfy either tourism or seeding particulates in the upper atmosphere). They would actually be less useful than aircraft, as a result of their limited range and payload.