Daily Archives: September 25, 2011
Humans, Nukes and Risk Assessment: A Dangerous Mix
Workers spray water to cool down the spent nuclear fuel in reactor No. 4 at Fukushima Daichi nuclear power plant, March 22, 2011.
An accident at a nuclear power plant is a little bit like driving your car over a cliff. The odds of it actually occurring are not high — what with all the guard rails and traffic laws and simple common sense keeping you safe. But if it does happen, you’re in very, very deep trouble.
Of all the varieties of risk humans assess poorly, it’s that kind — the improbable but disastrous — that flummoxes us the most. Even during the peak of the AIDS crisis, the odds of anyone outside of the high risk pools actually contracting the virus were comparatively low, but we reacted with hysteria and confusion and bias all the same. The same was true of mad cow disease (remember that?), and the same continues to be true of real but still manageable emergencies like the H1N1 flu epidemic of 2009.
The George W. Bush administration famously enunciated what it called “the 1% doctrine,” the idea that even a 1% risk of an attack by terrorists or weapons of mass destruction would be treated as a 100% certainty, simply cause of the enormous potential cost of inaction. But there’s a price for rash, wrongheaded action too — in lives, treasure, global credibility — and we paid it after the rush to war in Iraq in 2003.
The same fallible balancing of risks and probabilities is going on again, as countries around the world watch events unfolding in Fukushima and wonder just what the danger is of a similar disaster striking their own nuclear power plants and just what they should do to prevent it. In the U.S., with 104 active reactors — the most in the world by a large margin — the question is particularly pressing.
The truth of the nuclear equation is, in many ways, less scary than the headlines would make it seem. The reactors we have online provide 20% of the power we consume — no small thing — and while we have not built any new plants since the Three Mile Island disaster in 1979, we haven’t had any accidents even remotely like it either. Could the airline industry or the space shuttle program boast the same kind of safety record? The relative safety of America’s nuke plants is a credit to strict rules and good oversight — both mostly supplied by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) — so credit should be given where it’s due.
But so should criticism. The NRC’s response to Fukushima has been brisk and candid concerning events on the ground half a world away. It was NRC chief Gregory Jaczko who was the first to reveal that the coolant pool in reactor 4 had likely lost all its water — a very dangerous development and one the Japanese themselves had been dissembling about for a while. But the same American watchdogs have been more dilatory about stateside reactors. The NRC is set to vote on a 90-day review of the health of America’s entire nuclear grid, which is better than not conducting such a review. But it also has the feel of mere bureaucratic due diligence about it — as NRC spokespeople themselves have made clear.
Bill Borchardt, the commission’s director for operations made a fair enough point when he remarked to the Associated Press that he and other regulators have “asked ourselves the question every single day: ‘Should we take regulatory action based upon the latest information?'”
What he meant by that is should they take action based on the latest turns in the Japan accident in particular — and the smart answer to that kind of question is generally, no. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell made a similar argument when he observed that the middle of an environmental emergency is never a good time to make long term energy policy. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t a very good time to examine some of your bedrock assumptions. And here the NRC is falling down.
Borchardt recently — and alarmingly — told the Associated press, “I’m 100% confident in the review that we’ve done and we continue to do every single day that we have a sufficient basis to…conclude that the U.S. plants continue to operate safely.” Hundred percent doctrines are as foolhardy as the 1% kind, and the NRC’s own track record makes that clear.
As TIME’s Eben Harrell reported on Time.com, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) has issued a report of what it calls 14 nuclear near-misses in 2010 alone, all of which should theoretically have been prevented by the NRC. Flooding in a Joliet, Ill. plant; a roof leak leading to electrical shorts in an Annapolis, Md. plant; stuck valves in a Diablo Canyon, Calif. plant which went undetected for 18 months, were all among the commission’s white knuckle moments.
It’s the California plants, of course, that cause the most worry, since the state’s sweeping coastline and extreme tectonic instability so closely mirror Japan’s. The state legislature is raising the pressure on utility companies to delay relicensing of any nuclear power plants until new, three-dimensional seismic mapping can be conducted of any relevant faults, including those off coast that could cause tsunamis. The plant operators themselves are resisting, which is certainly to be expected, but post-Fukushima, their arguments pack a lot less punch. Operators of the San Onofre plant near San Diego, for example, point to the towering 30-ft. seawall that should surely keep their plant safe from any monster wave they’re likely to get. That’s a fair enough assumption, except for the fact that it’s the same one the Fukushima designers made — until the very moment a 33-ft. tsunami overtopped their wall, washed out their back-up generators and set the entire long drama in motion.
“It’s time to revisit the safety of these plants in light of what we have learned from Japan,” Calif. State Senator Ellen Corbett understatedly told the AP. Corbett points to the 2-3% annual risk of a major quake in California and a 46% chance of one that exceeds 7.6 magnitude occurring sometime over the next 30 years.
Ultimately, that kind of cold number crunching has to be part of any long-term safety plan. But as the NRC begins its 90-day review — with periodic updates required at 30 and 60 days — they ought to keep in mind that common sense, cool heads and an utter absence of hubris must be equally big parts of the mix. Disasters go from being remote to real in an eyeblink. The key is to have the seawalls in place — both literal and regulatory — before the inevitable surprises happen.
Was Einstein Wrong? A Faster-Than-Light Neutrino Could Be Saying Yes
Albert Einstein.
Physicists have a stock phrase they trot out whenever someone claims to have made an astounding new discovery about the universe. “Important,” they say, “if true.”
It’s a tactful way of saying “Don’t bet on it,” and they’ve been saying it a lot over the past day or so. The reason: a team of European scientists has reportedly clocked a flock of subatomic particles called neutrinos moving at just a shade over the speed of light. According to Albert Einstein’s special theory of relativity, that can’t be, since light, which cruises along at about 186,000 miles per second (299,000 km/sec.), is the only thing that can go that fast.
If the Europeans are right, Einstein was not just wrong but almost clueless. The implications could be huge. Particles that move faster than light are essentially moving backwards in time, which could make the phrase cause and effect obsolete.
“Think of it as being shot before the trigger is pulled,” wrote University of Rochester astrophysicist Adam Frank on his NPR blog. Or, as Czech physicist Lubos Motl put it on his blog, “You could kill your grandfather before he had his first sex with your grandmother, thus rendering your own existence needed for the homicide inconsistent with the result of the homicide.”
The evidence for this complete upending of modern physics and cosmic decorum comes from an experiment involving two top-notch physics installations. The first is CERN, the European Center for Particle Physics, near Geneva, where a particle accelerator created the swarm of neutrinos in the first place. These bits of matter are bizarre no matter how you look at them: they’re so elusive that one of them could pass through a chunk of lead a trillion miles thick without a bump.
It’s no surprise, then, that the swarm created at CERN could fly out of the accelerator, zip right through the Alps and appear in the Gran Sasso Observatory, located in a tunnel deep beneath Italy’s Apennine Mountains. Most of the neutrinos kept on going, but just a few, by pure chance, were intercepted by one of the observatory’s neutrino detectors. And when the two labs synchronized their watches, it appeared that the particles had made the 450-mi. (724 km) journey 0.0025% faster than a beam of light would have (if light could travel through mountains, that is).
That splinter of a second isn’t much, but it’s enough to overturn a century of firmly established physics, rewrite the textbooks and throw the faculties at major universities around the world into a collective tizzy. In short, it’s really important.
If true.
No one is tearing up the Einsteinian rule book just yet. As physicists well know, astonishing results like this often turn out to be wrong, especially when they haven’t been double-checked. Sometimes that means the group announcing the big news has done shoddy work, like the Utah chemists who announced to great fanfare back in 1989 that they’d achieved controlled nuclear fusion on a tabletop — the cold-fusion kerfuffle — trumping the physicists who’d been struggling for years to do the same thing with billion-dollar machines. Sometimes it just means the researchers have overinterpreted what they’re seeing, as when NASA scientists said they’d found evidence of life in a rock from Mars.
And sometimes, the researchers have gone about things the right way, carefully checking their equipment and their calculations to make sure they aren’t being fooled by some mundane, potentially embarrassing glitch. The Grand Sasso scientists have done just that kind of due diligence here, and you know what? They still can’t find any evidence that they’ve missed anything.
But that doesn’t mean they haven’t. It’s always possible that their instruments are misbehaving in too subtle a way for anyone to detect at this point. Given the stakes if the equipment is right — if neutrinos really can move faster than light — nobody’s buying the shocking result until another set of researchers, using another set of instruments, gets the same answer. Indeed, that’s exactly what Antonio Ereditato, of the University of Bern, leader of the Gran Sasso end of the experiment, is hoping for. He told the BBC: “My dream would be that another, independent experiment finds the same thing. Then I would be relieved.” This very willingness to be double-checked — and proved wrong — gives the scientists greater credibility, even if the jury is still out on their findings.
A second opinion may be coming soon. A group at the Fermilab accelerator complex, near Chicago, says it’s preparing to do just the follow-up round of studies Ereditato welcomes. As it happens, Fermilab physicists made their own faster-than-light neutrinos claim back in 2007. It too would have been important if true, but on closer analysis, the evidence went away. The Fermilab scientists immediately accepted the verdict that time, just as the Europeans undoubtedly will if this new “discovery” goes up in smoke, as physicists everywhere are betting it will.
Or maybe it won’t: the history of science may be littered with claims that were ultimately proved false, but some outrageous ideas turn out to be true in the end. Take dark matter, the mysterious, invisible stuff that outweighs the visible stars and galaxies by a factor of 10 to 1. When it was first proposed in the 1930s, nobody believed it. When it reappeared in the 1960s, everyone laughed. Now it’s firmly accepted as a fundamental part of the universe.
That kind of thing just might happen again. “Based on past experience, these results are probably wrong,” writes Adam Frank at NPR.org, “but it sure would be a wild ride if they prove correct.”
Peace Hopes Grim as Abbas, Netanyahu Clash at U.N.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas was never going to come away from New York as the head of a new member state of the United Nations — aggressive U.S. lobbying ensured that the Palestinian membership bid would not even muster the nine yes votes at the Security Council that would have prompted Washington’s promised veto. But even as the membership bid is effectively put on hold by the Security Council’s technical process, his decision to approach to the U.N. has broken the mold of the failed peace process as we’ve known it, drawing a growing international consensus that the file can no longer be left exclusively in Washington’s hands and centering his appeal to the U.N. the basis of the grievances of occupation.
Abbas handed his request for U.N. membership to Secretary General Ban ki-Moon on Friday, knowing a response would be deferred. The proposal will be studied by a technical committee, which could take quite some time, although that may have saved Abbas from a humiliating defeat if the issue had gone to a vote: Failure to record nine ayes in the 15-seat Security Council would have killed it right there — and the U.S. and Israel were confident of mustering two no-votes and six or seven abstentions.
The Palestinian leader then delivered a blistering denunciation of Israel’s ongoing occupation in a speech designed to reconnect with his own base, raise international pressure on Israel, and burnish a legacy besmirched by years of failure in his preferred strategy of waiting for U.S. diplomacy to deliver a Palestinian state. He insisted that the Palestinians are ready to negotiate a peace agreement based on internationally agreed parameters — the 1967 borders, a capital in East Jerusalem, an agreed solution to the rights of refugees — but that Israel refuses to accept those parameters, and continues to expand settlements built, in violation of international law, on territory designated for a future Palestinian state.
“The occupation is racing against time to redraw the borders on our land according to what it wants and to impose a fait accompli on the ground that changes the realities and that is undermining the realistic potential for the existence of the State of Palestine,” he said, demanding a settlement freeze as essential for any negotiations to proceed.
Abbas blamed the stalemate on Netanyahu’s refusal to embrace the international parameters, and used the word “apartheid” three time in his speech — a coded signal that the Palestinians intend to press for international sanctions of the sort that faced the South African regime in the 1980s if the status quo persists. He also vowed continued diplomatic pressure and “popular peaceful resistance” to the occupation.
The speech may well turn out to have been a valedictory address for a Palestinian leader expected to retire in the next year or two, and who is not optimistic about a deal being concluded before he does. Instead, he appeared to be opening the way for others, brandishing a copy of the Palestinian request for U.N. membership to raucous cheers from the gathered diplomats.
Abbas’ week at the U.N. has been a repudiation of the Obama Administration’s efforts, making clear that the Palestinians are no longer willing to sustain the illusion that a peace process is currently underway. “It is neither possible, nor practical, nor acceptable to return to conducting business as usual, as if everything is fine,” he said. It is futile to go into negotiations without clear parameters and in the absence of credibility and a specific timetable. Negotiations will be meaningless as long as the occupation army on the ground continues to entrench its occupation, instead of rolling it back, and continues to change the demography of our country in order to create a new basis on which to alter the borders.”
But Netanyahu was having none of it. In a belligerent speech that made clear he didn’t set much store by any U.N. consensus, he depicted Israel as the rebuffed peacemaker, whose concessions have been met by violence and which faces growing threat from all sides.
“The truth is that so far the Palestinians have refused to negotiate,” Netanyahu insisted. “The truth is that Israel wants peace with a Palestinian state, but the Palestinians want a state without peace.” He argued that Israel’s security concerns precluded a withdrawal to 1967 lines, raising the danger of a West Bank being turned into a hostile enclave like Gaza, but from which Israel’s major cities are threatened. Abbas, he said, had refused to accept Israel’s security needs, which questioned his readiness to make peace. He said the Palestinians refused to recognize Israel as a Jewish state, which implied that they still sought to reverse that which was created in 1948.
“The Palestinians should first make peace with Israel and then get their state,” said Netanyahu, summing up his basic point. And, of course, Abbas’ was just the opposite: That ending the occupation was the only basis for peace. The combination of the two speeches made clear how grim the prospects for any breakthrough are, despite the hopes of restarting talks
Abbas’ lack of confidence in a U.S.-led effort — based on a belated recognition of the depth of unconditional support for Israel in the U.S. political system that trumps even the preferences of the White House — is shared by many (probably most) in the international community, with French President Nicolas Sarkozy making the same point in his own speech. And President Barack Obama’s own address will have done little to change that perception
But just how the diplomatic burden might be shared by others in the months ahead remains unscripted. Both Abbas and Netanyahu made speeches their domestic constituents could get behind, and as such, bought themselves more time and political space: The Palestinian leader spoke of the suffering of his people, and then deferred the question of what to do next to a U.N. process that’s unlikely to produce an answer any time soon. But Abbas’ message to his people is that the application has been filed, and they should wait for a response.
Netanyahu, on the other hand, insisted on the paramountcy of Israel’s security needs, and warned that any solution that didn’t begin by addressing those was a non-starter. He’ll return home on a high, telling his doubters who’d warned of isolation and a diplomatic tsunami that he’d stood firm and seen off the threat, telling Israel’s truth in a hostile environment.
Both sides will bask in their claimed success, and wait for a new international game to take shape. It could be a long wait.
Hail the new and improved Premiership!
I am immensely pleased that the English Premier League Week 6 has continued the whirlwind start to this season’s top-tier footballing action.
Yesterday, there were eight matches scheduled, and with the exception of a scoreless draw between West Bromwich Albion and Fulham, a total of 22 goals were shipped in the remaining seven ties.
True it doesn’t come close to the goal-packed action that was Week 5, featuring 38 goals in total. Only one match then – Aston Villa vs Newcastle United – saw a measly two goals, shared one apiece.
But I know not every day is a Sunday. So, I would’ve been happy if this weekend was half as good as the last.
So, it still is a good show for this weekend, relatively speaking. Well, unless the two remaining ties to be played for the weekend – Queens Park Rangers vs Aston Villa and Norwich City vs Sunderland – can produce two 8-goal thrillers between them.
I have no complains either way.
The football has been of better quality this season and not surprisingly, the weekend threw up some high-scoring matches.
However, the first game of the night, the early-kickoff featuring Manchester City and Everton did not produce the walkover many had expected. Not a surprise there.
The boys from the city of Liverpool were not going to travel to Manchester to just roll over and play dead.
Still, the class from the Manchester City players was enough to hand them a hard-fought two goals to nothing victory. And who would’ve thought Mario Balotelli would make the difference, coming on after 60 minutes and scoring the first a few minutes later.
At the Emirates, the Gunners were facing more pressure from their own fans than anything the Bolton Wanderers lads could throw at them.
The already nervous players made it through 90+ minutes unscathed though.
Owen Coyle was definitely not intending to make this match a showcase for his star defender Gary Cahill to impress potentially future employers, so he left him out of the squad altogether.
The manager still managed to get a solid performance from his defence to leave the Gunners desperately without a goal in the first half.
But it didn’t take Arsene Wenger’s boys too long to carve out the opener after the restart . . . about 35 seconds to be precise. Bolton going a man down not long after sealed the deal for the biggest win (3-0) of the season by the Gunners.
Still in London, over at Stamford Bridge, Chelsea overcame the frustration of last week’s loss to Manchester United by handing new Premiership boys, Swansea City, a 4-1 lesson.
Anyone who had hoped for an upset would do well to realise that the Welsh outfit’s big win (3-0 over WBA) last weekend was just a one-off. Chelsea are definitely in a different class altogether over the likes of WBA.
Fernando Torres proved he could forget the super-blunder last week and notched another goal to add to his measly record at Chelsea.
Meanwhile, his former club Liverpool had two consecutive weeks of referee-bashing encounters, so the necessary calm was expected to return with an easy win at home to Wolves.
Wolves had lost their fangs of late and the hunt was made all the more easier for the Reds courtesy of an 11th-minute own goal.
Still, it was not all going Liverpool’s way and Luiz Suarez’ first half goal (Liverpool’s second of the night) made Wolves’ early reply in the second half somewhat irrelevant – albeit nervous for Liverpool fans – to the final outcome of the game.
Now, here’s a riddle. What goes “Ba, Ba, Ba . . . Blackburn”?
It’s the sound of Newcastle United’s Demba Ba scoring a hattrick at the expense of Blackburn Rovers at St James Park.
The fourth-placed Magpies deserved all three points against the Lancashire club who just couldn’t put the shutters up as I had hoped they would.
The central midfield duo of Yohan Cabaye and Chiek Tiote delivered again as they have continued to be the cornerstone to Newcastle’s great start to the season.
Alan Pardew has developed a formidable fortitude among his players and this has helped them to be one of only four teams still unbeaten this season – the others being the two Manchester clubs and Aston Villa, who play tonight at Loftus Road.
About Blackburn, well, they just couldn’t continue to ride on the good luck from the 4-3 win at home to Arsenal last week.
Over at the Britannia, the ultra-defensive Stoke City did not buckle under intense pressure from a seemingly-unstoppable Manchester United side, despite going a goal down after 27 minutes to a Nani strike.
Peter Crouch proved he was a most worthy buy by manager Tony Pulis by pulling back a goal for the Potters in the second half, and this made the last 40 minutes of the game some of the most exciting (but nerve wracking) ever played in front of the Stoke faithful.
Crouch also proved he had some great skills in ball control despite his lanky frame. He is definitely a player who could prove one of the bargains of the season.
Now, let’s move on to the remaining matches for Week 6.
At 11pm tonight (Malaysian time), the over-hyped QPR take on Aston Villa with the Villans quite unpredictable at the moment. Their defence should be able to cope with the Rangers attack if they shut out Adel Taarabt from creating too much from midfield. A point a piece and both teams should not be disappointed.
Then, on Monday night (Tuesday, 3am), Norwich City, who had a difficult win at Bolton last time out, will host a Sunderland team fresh from a 4-0 win over Stoke City.
Will both teams keep up that form or will the consistently inconsistent form be the serving of the day?
Either way, this could make for an interesting game of football with the only certainty being that there will be a penalty kick awarded. Somehow, the Black Cats should not lose this game to the newly-promoted Canaries.
Happy watching.
barackjagson 