Here are some of the latest measurements of radiation levels in the Fukushima region of Japan, these were made just last month.

There is something very striking about this image even at first glance.  Notice that the no-entry zone has absolutely no correspondence whatsoever to radiation levels.  It’s simply a circle drawn around the nuclear plant.   Much of the area has quite low radiation levels and some of the area outside the exclusion zone has higher radiation levels than the area within it.  Since there’s now no real danger of the reactors being further damaged or experiencing uncontrolled discharges, there’s absolutely no reason to enforce a no-entry zone based on such a blind method of drawing the map.   If a no-entry zone is to exist at all (which it really, at this point, does not need to)

Actual Doses experienced:

Few areas exceed 20 uSv per hour by very much.  The red area signifies areas with higher than this level, but most of this area is only slightly above 20 uSv/hr.  Areas with 20 uSv/hr or more exist in a relatively narrow strip running northwest from the area of the nuclear plant.

A person lives in an area where the external radiation dose rate is 20 uSv/hr.    Of course, this is really only outdoors and inside there will be less contamination, but for the sake of argument, lets assume the worst:  They get 20 uSv/hr and they stay in that are all the time.  There are 8760 hours in a year, so if they spend all their time outdoors in the 20 uSv/hr area, they receive 175,200 uSv per year or about 175 mSv per year.

This is still a bit unreasonable for what a person would actually be exposed to because it assumes they are always outdoors and standing over ground that has not been in any way cleaned of contamination.  Indoors, the level will be a lot lower.  If they travel outside the area of highest radiation, their dose is also reduced.   As time goes on, both radioactive decay and natural weathering and erosion will reduce levels further.   Therefore, after a year in such an area, it’s more reasonable to expect a total exposure of something like 100-150 mSv and maybe quite a bit less.

Most of the no-entry zone is far bellow this.  The yellow areas would produce only about half the dose of the highest regions and the areas shaded green would result in an annual dose of only about 10-30 mSv her year.  That’s hardly a lot of radiation.

How much radiation a person is exposed to in a year from background sources varies greatly depending on things like location, diet, travel and things like whether they happen to cook with natural gas, live in a granite structure or have radon seeping into their home’s foundation.   About 3 mSv is a normal average for those living at sea level in much of the world.   Of course, it’s quite common for it to be much higher than this.   Areas with background radiation in excess of 10 mSv per year are quite common.  A few areas have much higher.   In the Guarpari region of Brazil, background levels can exceed 175 mSv per year due to local deposits of uranium and thorium.  Residents of Kerala India experience doses of over 70 mSv per year.   Ramsir Iran is famous for having some of the highest levels in the world at over 260 mSv per year.  Locations across Africa and Australia may produce levels above 40 mSv per year.

Studies have been done of the populations of these areas and no ill effects have been documented as a result of the high radiation exposure.   Of course, the expected radiation exposure from living in such an area for an extended period of time would be much higher than for those in the Fukushima area.   Since the radioactivity in the Fukushima region is mostly limited to the surface and includes many relatively short-lived radioisotopes, it will diminish significantly in the years to come.   Natural sources, on the other hand, are constantly replenished.  So a person who lives in an area with increased radiation levels as a result of the Fukushima incident will not experience the same dose next year as they will this year.  It will be less.

And no, there have been no calls that high background areas of the world be evacuated and declared off limits.

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My appeal to those who have the authority and credentials to refute some of the idiocy and harmful policies that have followed the incident at the Fukushima Dachi nuclear power plant nearly a year ago.

To the health physicists, radiation safety officers, radiologists, reactor operators and other radiation safety professionals of the world:

In most circumstances professionalism and a desire to remain impartial to political matters dictates that those who art part of highly scientific professions exercise a great deal of restraint while addressing pressing policy concerns.   Research scientists especially tend to be very tight lipped about policy matters and are not prone to engaging the media directly.   In many circumstances, there is no direct response from professionals, or if there is, it comes in the form of highly moderated and subdued official statements from organizations.

There is certainly good reason for this.  Science professionals must remain impartial and not risk having their loyalties called into question.   Strong statements about pressing issues of policy can result in criticism which degenerates to mudslinging.  Some experts would simply rather not have to engage non-professionals who are likely to respond with a frustrating lack of understanding of their fields and believe their talents are better utilized in the world of scholarly journals and professional research.  There is, of course, some risk to ones reputation and to the integrity of ones work that can come from becoming heavily involved in issues of advocacy and direct engagement of the government, media and public.

That said, there exists a humanitarian crisis that is only getting worse due to a combination of unjustified fear of ionizing radiation and pressure to exploit this fear to advance a political or social agenda.   The result has been a enormous unnecessary human suffering.  Those with professional credentials and credibility in the field of radiation safety are in a unique position to help bring this crisis to an end, and, as such, have an ethical duty to do so.

Since the tragic earthquake and tsunami struck Japan almost a year ago, hundreds of thousands of Japanese remain in limbo due to unnecessary evacuations and continued restrictions on habitation or even visitation to the area around the Fukushima Daiichi power plant.   The earthquake and tsunami killed tens of thousands and left whole communities devastated.   In such circumstances, the survivors want nothing more than to recover what property they can and begin to rebuild their lives.  Yet this has not been allowed to happen.  Despite the fact that the radiation exposure in the exclusion zone is well within any reasonable safety limits, many have been bared from even visiting their homes.   In the time after the disaster, domestic animals needlessly starved, property that could have been recovered was lost and serious chemical and biological hazards were allowed to fester.   This continues to happen even as the reactors have been stabilized and the most worrisome isotopes have long decayed away.

In addition to this tragedy, the Japanese government continues to spend enormous amounts of money in the cleanup of areas where radiation “hot spots” would result in only the most minimal of exposure and in a policy of idling most of the country’s nuclear power plants, resulting in huge economic losses.   What the people of Japan sorely need is to have the damaged regions of their nation rebuilt.  Every Yen spent on the unnecessary removal of soil is one more Yen that cannot be spent on the necessary rehabilitation of the areas effected by the quake and tsunami.  The message being given to citizens is that they are in grave danger, especially their children.  Inconsistent information, panic and confusion have resulted in enormous psychological stresses to those who have already suffered from the terrible natural disaster.

I therefore ask all radiation safety professionals of the world to stop biting your tongues and speak out loudly and in no uncertain terms, engaging the public, the media and the Japanese government as directly and candidly as possible.  The Japanese people need to be told the truth, without the fear-based spin that politicians often use to try to scare their way into office or special interest groups try to exploit.   The Japanese government must be urged to begin a far more measured and scientifically consistent approach to resettlement and repair that is based on the anual exposure from living in a region as compared with normal background in locations around the world.   Resources should not be wasted in the removal of small “hot spots” which are no more radioactive than clusters of uranium-bearing rock.   All areas should be made accessible to visitation and most to resettlement.    Repairs to local infrastructure and economic assets must take precedent over concerns of radioactivity that have little or no basis in science.

As experts in this field, you are the only ones who can challenge these policies and overrule them by virtue of the authority you have gained through education and experience.   Doing so may well open you to the mud-slinging of certain groups, who would rather not face the truth.   Yet in the face of such suffering, caving to the fear of being attacked by dishonorable interests is the height of cowardice.

In conclusion, I once again ask that all professionals in this field take individual initiative to take a stand against these harmful policies and messages and that groups like the Health Physics Society and others step up to the plate and pull no punches in defense of the well being of the people of Japan.  Your field stands for the furtherance of human understanding and for improved human safety and health.  These ideals demand that you step up to the plate and fight for the refugees of fear who continue to suffer in Japan.

Respectfully,

Stephen M. Packard
depletedcranium.com

A lot has been made recently of a plan by the European Union to assess fees on airlines landing in EU airports for the carbon dioxide emitted by those aircraft.   Many countries outside the EU are not taking kindly to the proposal.   The US is one of them, but Russia, China and a few other Asian countries have gone even further in calling for an end to proposals of carbon fees on airlines. Officially the fees took effect on January first, though not all EU countries are expected to begin enforcing them right away.

Via the BBC:

Countries rally against EU carbon tax on airlines
Delegates from 26 countries opposed to a new EU carbon tax on airlines are meeting in Moscow to consider possible retaliation, amid fears of a trade war.

China, India, Russia and the US are among the countries opposed to the EU fee, which took effect on 1 January.

Critics say the EU has no right to impose taxes on flights to or from destinations outside Europe.

But in December the European Court of Justice ruled that the EU tax on CO2 pollution from aircraft was legal.

The Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) creates permits for carbon emissions. Airlines that exceed their allowances will have to buy extra permits, as an incentive to airlines to pollute less.

“Nobody has fought harder than the European Union over the years to get a global deal”

The number of permits is reduced over time, so that the total CO2 output from airlines in European airspace falls.

The EU’s Commissioner for Climate Action, Connie Hedegaard, said the opponents should work with the EU to create a global scheme to cut aviation pollution.

“Nobody would be happier than the EU if we could get such a global deal,” she told the Today programme on BBC Radio 4.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: This is just a bad idea. If you’ve concerned about pollution and especially greenhouse gasses, don’t go after aviation. It’s the smallest, highest hanging of the fruit you can pick from. Well under 1% of human generated greenhouse gases come from aviation and yet that relatively small percentage comes with enormous benefits to mankind.

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What if I told you that a material existed with the following properties?

• It is highly radioactive.  Because it is a very high energy alpha emitter, it is very radiotoxic.  It also produces a long decay chain of daughters that emit high energy gamma and beta particles.
• It has a half-life of over one thousand years, making it difficult to dispose of and requiring long term storage considerations.   Despite the relatively long half-life, it is still short enough to make it highly radiotoxic, especially because of the nature of the radiation it emits directly and through its daughters.
• It emits enough gamma radiation that a pure sample of the material can kill tissue on contact, after only exposure of a few minutes.
• The gamma radiation emitted by the material and its daughters is sufficient that if you sat next to a few dozen grams of the material, you could easily end up with acute radiation sickness in a matter of hours.   In less than a day it could kill you.
• A pure sample emits enough radiation to create significant amounts of heat.  The total decay heat is more than 100 watts per gram.
• It is chemically reactive, it forms compounds which readily dissolve in fresh and salt water.  It may be mobile in the environment, but it also may cling to materials, making decontamination of areas difficult.
• It has a high biological uptake in most of its chemical forms.
• It may be persistent in the body and has a tendency to be incorporated into bones, replacing calcium.  In such cases, it will not clear the body and has been associated with leukemia and bone cancer.

Such a substance does, in fact, exist:  radium-226.   Gram per gram it’s more toxic than plutonium-239, the isotope most common in spent fuel.   It’s a highly energetic particle emitter that does not decay to a stable isotope but rather to a long chain of other radioactive substances.   First it decays to radon-222, then to polonium-218, astatine-218, radon-218, lead-214, bismuth-214, polonium-214, thallium-210, lead-210, polonium-210 and finally lead-206, which is stable.   For this reason, a chemically pure sample will actually increase in radioactivity until it reached equilibrium with its daughter products.   Despite the relatively long half-life, it produces a great deal of radiation because for every decay of radium-226, there are decays of all the other daughters all the way down the line.  Some of these emit high energy gamma rays.   Radon poses some additional challenges.  Because it is a gas, it may not remain in place and can result in the area around a radium-226 sample accumulating potentially dangerous concentrations of radon.  The radon gas can also disperse, contaminating the area with further decay products.

Despite these dangers, radium-226 was once far more valuable than gold.  For the first half of the 20th century, radium and its decay products were the most widely used radioisotope source for any purpose that required radioactive materials.   It was used for cancer treatment, in the form of radium needles, external sources and devices that collected radon for use in irradiating tissue.  Radium was commonly used in any circumstance where calibration sources were required, with many earth geiger counters coming with a radium-based test source.   It was used in ion and moisture gauges, cold cathode vacuum tubes and combined with beryllium to produce small neutron sources.  Radium was well known for its use in radiolumonescent paints.  The paint was commonly used for clock and watch faces, allowing them to glow brightly without first having to be exposed to light.   Larger concentrations were used for aircraft instrument dials, illuminated markers and cords.  It was realized that the heat from radium could be used as a means of powering boilers or other thermal engines, but was far too expensive to ever be used in this capacity.   It also was experimented with in early “nuclear battery” designs.

Radium-226 exists in small concentrations in uranium ore.  To recover a single gram of the material, several tons of uranium ore must be processed.   Still, because the material had so many uses and was so valuable, large operations existed all over the world to produce it.   In the 1920’s, a gram of radium could cost as much as $120,000, (about 1.3 million USD in modern terms)  though the price later fell to $75,000 due to more efficient production techniques.  Radium needles could contain up to .1 grams of radium, making them worth more than ten thousand dollars.    Because of this, radium was also used as an investment commodity.  Radium needles and other radium sources were kept in bank vaults in the same way gold, silver and platinum might be kept.

Of course, radium is also pretty dangerous for the reasons mentioned above.  Its chemical properties make it prone to contaminating areas and easily absorbed into the body, where it is distributed into bones and teeth, making it an especially persistent and damaging substance.   It produces a great deal of alpha, beta and gamma radiation, which is not desirable for most situations.  Its half life is inconveniently long for applications where disposal after a period of time is expected and the production of radon can be a danger and complicate its use.  For radiolumonescent items, gamma radiation is not desirable and the energy of the alpha particles emitted by radium has a tendency to degrade the phosphorescent compounds in the paint over time.  Radium was blamed for a number of deaths and illnesses, most notably in the “radium girls,” who worked in clock factories, painting the hands and numbers of clocks with radium paint.  Some were encouraged to lick their brushes to sharpen them, resulting in ingestion of large quantities of radium.

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Although the winter for much of North America has been mild this season, in Alaska it has been extremely harsh.  While those who live in the more remote parts of Alaska are used to dealing with the extremes of nature, this year they are facing the prospect of being cut off from vital supplies of fuel due to the extent of ocean icing and the harsh weather that has made even airlifting of fuel problematic.   This is not the first time these settlements have faced these kind of fuel problems, and it’s not likely to be the last.   In the past, there have been close calls and times when distant Alaskans have been left without fuel for periods of time.  Yet each time this happens, there is always the possibility that remote villages will suffer or even lose lives.

Remote areas of Alaska are off the wider electrical grid and are far from natural gas pipelines or railways to deliver coal.   Heat may be provided, at least in part, by wood burning stoves that can use local fuel, although wood supplies may also be limited.   However, by far the most important source of energy is oil.   Diesel oil is the only way for these communities to generate electricity and provides most of the heat.   Petroleum also powers local transportation and powers the vital systems of the communities, either directly or by generating electricity.   Communications, drinking water wells, sanitary systems, heat and lighting all require energy provided by oil.

These communities use a lot of oil, and although they may have large storage tanks, the energy density of petroleum means that they can’t go very long without replenishment.   Getting the supplies to these communities is never a sure thing.   When it does arrive it’s expensive and it’s rapidly becoming more expensive as petroleum prices go up.  Due to both the costs of oil as a commodity and the difficulty in delivering it, the final cost can be upwards of ten US dollars a gallon when it is delivered.

Via NPR:

Ultra-Harsh Alaska Winter Prompts Fuel Shortages

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — Living in Alaska’s outer reaches is challenging enough, given the isolation and weather extremes, but at least three remote communities also have experienced weather-related late deliveries of fuel so crucial to their survival during an especially bitter winter.

The iced-in town of Nome and the northwest Inupiat Eskimo villages of Noatak and Kobuk faced fuel shortages that illustrate the vulnerability of relying solely on deliveries by sea or air, potentially subjecting communities to the mercy of the elements. The villages, which just received their fuel, are especially vulnerable, unable to afford more additional storage tanks for gasoline and heating oil, which can run as high as $10 a gallon.

Compounding a problem with no easy answers, temperatures dipping as low as minus 60 over the past few weeks means air deliveries are delayed at the same time people are consuming more fuel more quickly. Some people in both villages also use wood-burning stoves for supplemental heat, but diesel is the critical commodity.

“It’s been pretty tough,” Noatak resident Robbie Kirk said of life in the community of 500, which finally received a fuel delivery on Tuesday, three days after the village store ran out of heating oil. “We usually have a nice reserve of fuel. Now we’re just playing catch-up.”

Nome missed its pre-winter delivery of fuel by barge when a huge storm swept western Alaska. In a high-profile journey, a Coast Guard icebreaker is cutting path in thick sea ice for a Russian tanker delivering 1.3 million gallons of fuel to the community of 3,500.

Without a fuel delivery, Nome would likely run out of certain petroleum products before the end of winter and a barge delivery becomes possible in late spring.

Until recently, the situation was much more dire for the smaller communities of Noatak and Kobuk, located farther north above the Arctic Circle, where relentless extreme cold prevented fuel deliveries by plane until this week, residents say.

Before the new supply of fuel arrived in Noatak, the village store borrowed some heating oil from the village water and sewer plant, said store manager Connie Walton. But filling the store’s two 23,000-gallon tanks has diverted any potential crisis.

“We’re good for another month and a half,” Walton said.

Residents in Kobuk also were highly relieved by an air shipment of heating oil that arrived Wednesday in the village of 150 people about 175 miles to the east. It’s been too cold for people to use their snowmobiles much, so gasoline isn’t as much of a concern, said City Clerk Sophia Ward. Running low on the diesel used to warm homes was another matter.

“I’m glad that it came in today,” Ward said Wednesday. “It’ll keep our elders warm.”

In Noatak, residents once had fuel shipped by barge on the Noatak River, but that has long been impossible since the river shifted and became shallow there.

Two years ago, residents began tapping into another source of fuel, thanks to the Red Dog zinc mine 40 miles to the northeast. The mine in 2009 began a program to sell gasoline and diesel to Noatak and another close neighbor, the village of Kivalina. The fuel is sold at cost, said mine spokesman Wayne Hall.

“This is strictly for what we can do to help out our closest community members,” he said. “Energy and heating costs are one of the biggest costs to families in this region.”

The program lets individuals buy fuel on Saturdays every three weeks at a staging area about 23 miles from the village. This winter, they can buy gas in 55-gallon drums calculated at $4.89 a gallon. Villagers also bring their own drums to fill with diesel fuel at $4.35 a gallon.

The latest Red Dog fuel day for Noatak took place on the day the village store ran out of diesel. So villagers formed a convoy of about 30 snowmobiles and freight sleds, and headed out in weather marked by temperatures of 47 below and, for the first 10 miles, dense fog, said Kirk, who regularly takes advantage of the sales.

“It basically cuts my heating fuel in half,” he said. “It’s pretty critical for me.”

The state also helps lower the soaring cost of electricity in Alaska’s rural areas, spending almost $32 million in fiscal year 2011 through its Power Cost Equalization program, which subsidizes residential electric rates and the power bills of community buildings. Power in most villages is diesel-generated.

With so many scattered settlements of a few hundred or less, the logistics of keeping them all supplied is daunting. The very fact that oil would be brought in by air should drive home just how difficult and expensive an operation this is. Even when the system works and fuel and electricity are available, it’s always extremely expensive. The cost may be offset by subsidies, but that only shifts the burden to the government and tax payers. Ultimately, there’s no getting around the fact that getting hundreds of thousands of gallons of diesel to remote settlements is a costly undertaking.

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When spacecraft are sent to explore the inner solar system, solar cells are usually the choice to provide power.  However, when venturing out past the orbit of mars, the intensity of sunlight available makes it increasingly difficult to obtain sufficient amounts of power.  Past Jupiter, it’s virtually impossible to power a space probe with solar cells as they would need to be enormous to gather enough sunlight.   Even within the inner solar system, where sunlight is reasonably intense, solar cells provide limited energy for probes that explore the surface of planets, such as the mars exploration rovers.   Sunlight is also problematic for places like the earth’s moon, where spacecraft would sit in complete darkness for days.

The solution to this problem has been the radioisotope thermal generator.   An RTG is a simple device, consisting of a strong particle-emitting isotope that produces heat and a thermoelectric generator which converts that heat into electricity.   The heat can also be used to keep vital components of the probe warm.  Unlike nuclear reactors, radioisotope thermal generators are extremely simple, have no minimum critical mass, produce little gamma and almost no neutron emissions, which could blind scientific instruments, and therefore require little or no shielding.  Modern RTG’s can provide hundreds of watts of reliable electrical power for years on end in a small, durable package.

The choice of isotope for space missions has always been, and continues to be plutonium-238. Plutonium-238 is a powerful alpha emitter which produces enormous amounts of heat energy.  Plutonium-238 produces only a small amount of low energy gamma emissions, making it easy to shield.  It’s easily prepared into ceramic oxide pellets that are chemically stable and have good thermal transfer.   With an 88 year half-life, plutonium-238 is short lived enough to be a good energy producer yet long lived enough to allow for missions of many decades.

All radioisotope thermal generators used for deep space missions have used plutonium-238.   RTG’s were also used to power the Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments Packages left by astronauts on the moon.    The RTG used for the Mars Science Laboratory provides 110 watts of electricity and uses about 4.5 kilograms of plutonium-238.  Larger RTG’s have been built for deep space probes, which provide up to 300 watts of power and use 7.8 kilograms of plutonium-238.  Some spacecraft have used multiple RTG’s, for example, Cassini was equipped with three RTG’s which provided a total of 900 watts of power to the spacecraft.

There are other isotopes that can also be used to provide power for RTG’s, but none are as desirable as Pu-238.   Strontium-90, a high energy beta emitter, which can be extracted from spent fuel, also produced significant amounts of heat, but would require substantially more shielding and produces less power per gram of material.  Isotopes of Curium have been studied as well, but also provide much less power and require greater shielding.  Americium-241 has also been considered, but at least four times as much material would be needed to produce the same amount of power, and greater shielding would also be required. Still, Am-241 is regarded as being the second most well suited fuel for RTG use.

Worldwide production of Am-241 is only a few kilograms per year, with US production capacity standing at only 500 to 750 milligrams annually.   Most of this material is already used to fill demand for smoke detectors and moisture gauges.  In order for the US to have a viable chance of using Am-241 as an RTG fuel, production would have to be ramped up significantly.

At one time, plutonium-238 was relatively cheap and easily available.  The United States had large stocks of the material and used it for numerous space missions.  Yet since the early 1990’s, that has not been the case.  Since then, only Russia has had the capacity to produce plutonium-238 and the price has skyrocketed.   US missions have been entirely dependent on plutonium-238 purchased from Russia at the cost of hundreds of millions of dollars.  Yet now even this limited supply is threatened, as Russia has begun to signal that it will no longer be able to provide the quantities of Pu-238 that the US (or potentially other nations) would require for continued space exploration.

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The item shown bellow is a tritium-containing radiolumonescent key chain.  It’s basically a small glass vial containing radioactive tritium gas and coated with a phosphorescent compound and placed in a clear plastic case.   Tritium is a weak beta emitter with a half life of 12.3 years.  Because the beta particles are very low in energy, they are entirely blocked by the glass and are not detectable on the surface of the key chain.  The beta particles ionize the phosphorescent compound and produce a steady glow, most often in green (the brightest and most visible color) but also available in other colors.  Because of the 12.3 year half life of tritium, these key chains can be used for several years before there’s any noticeable reduction in brightness.

They’re really great little items and the perfect gift for just about any occasion.   For one thing, they’re an interesting conversation piece and a very good example of a practical application of radioactivity.   They demonstrate that you can indeed keep something radioactive in our pocket and be quite safe and they’re very eye-catching.

They also have quite a bit of practical value.  Finding your keys in the dark is very easy with one of these key chains.  In fact, it’s so easy that if you happen to misplace your keys, the easiest way to find them is to turn off the lights.  When entering your home or starting your car in complete darkness, the glowing key chain provides just enough light to easily select the correct key and use it without fumbling.   If you happen to drop the keys on the dark floor of your car, you can find them very quickly and without effort.   You can even see the glow of the keys if they are under a seat or somehow otherwise obscured from direct view.  You can get different colors and use them to mark different key chains, making it very easy to grab the correct one, even in complete darkness.

I’ve had these key chains before (and broken a couple by mistake).  I can attest to just how useful they are.   There’s also no other way of getting this same value without using radioactive material.  An electrically illuminated key chain could not provide such continuous periods of glow without the batteries quickly running out.   Standard phosphorescent glowing items are limited to a few hours of illumination and must be exposed to light first in order to glow, making them useless for something like a key chain, which is often kept in one’s pocket.

There’s only one problem with these amazing little glowing key chains:  nobody in the US sells them, at least not directly.   Technically, these are not approved for sale or ownership in the United States, although I’ve never heard of anyone getting in trouble for owning one.  Many people do own them and talk about them openly online and elsewhere.  It might just be one of those things that hasn’t shown up on the radar of a bureaucrat who was asinine enough to bother to do something about it.

Still, there are stories about their thugs stopping sales of these key chains on sites like eBay.  It seems that these days most of those sold on eBay are coming from sellers who are not located within the United States.  Exactly how much trouble you could potentially get in for these remains unclear, but it appears to be a case of selective enforcement.  (So if you have one, don’t ever leave the federal government looking for an excuse to call you a terrorist.)

Yet while the government may tolerate people owning them, you can’t buy them from any major retailer.   They can be purchased on the “grey market,” imported in relatively small batches or sold over the internet.  They can be bought from foreign retailers, like those in the UK, who will generally ship to the US without problem.   The best place to buy them, however, tends to be eBay, where numerous sellers will sell to US customers.

That, however, was not good enough for me.  I know a great product when I see one and these things are inexpensive, extremely useful and very easy to sell.  I had bought one and people were constantly asking me about it and where to get one.   I wanted to sell these, and not just by keeping it on the down-low, selling them on auction websites or to friends.  I wanted to really sell them, importing them wholesale and selling them openly and in quantity.

I also didn’t want even the slight potential to have the NRC knocking at my door, which does occasionally happen when someone tries to sell them in the US.   One would think that the government has better things to do, but of course, they don’t.

I thought it would be easy to do.  After all, these things are very readily available in other countries, and by “other countries,” I don’t mean just Russia, Zimbabwe and Cuba.  They can be bought in the UK.  They are brought into the US all the time.  They’re also perfectly safe.   Of course, I assumed wrong, but this was a few years ago, long before I had gained a full understanding of the bureaucracy that is the NRC.

I e-mailed, called and faxed the NRC several times about this matter.  I cannot even begin to explain how difficult they were.   First, nobody at the agency seemed to understand what I wanted to do or what the devices were for.  They told me that if I wanted to start the process of getting a consumer product containing radioactive material approved, I could get some paperwork to start the ball rolling, but it would be several thousand dollars just to begin and would take more than a year.  I told them I believed the items qualified as being license-exempt, since other items of comparable function and contents, such as illuminated watches are.   They didn’t seem to understand what I was getting at.

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When nuclear fission was first discovered in the laboratory, in 1938, it was seen as a relatively strange reaction, resulting from humans taking a sample of the heaviest known element and shooting artificially-generated neutrons at it until some of the atoms absorbed a neutron and split.   While the experiment provided enormous insight into the nature of atoms and helped provide early confirmation of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, by demonstrating the release of energy from an observable change in atomic mass, it was regarded as something that occurred in the laboratory.

Fission was recognized as a potential energy source after the possibility of a fission chain reaction was realized.  A chain reaction occurs when neutrons produced by nuclear fission strike other fissile nuclei, releasing more energy in a self-sustaining reaction.   In 1942, an experiment at the University of Chicago proved that nuclear fission could indeed produce such a chain reaction.   The first artificial fission reactor was created by piling large amounts of uranium together with ultra-pure graphite blocks.  The graphite slowed neutrons, making them easier to absorb by the uranium nuclei, resulting in the fission chain reaction.  In 1945, the first artificial fission chain reaction to occur without the aid of a moderator when the first nuclear weapon detonated in the Trinity test.  The Trinity device used plutonium as the fissile material, an element produced in nuclear reactors at the Hanford site.   Plutonium is too short-lived to be found in large quantities in nature.  Another bomb, fueled by uranium was the result of years of painstaking isotope separation, which increased the amount of fissile uranium-235 available to far beyond what is found in natural uranium samples.

For many years, it was believed that such fission reactions were always limited to these artificial circumstances.   Nuclear fission, it was thought, was the result of painstaking efforts by mankind to gather up the necessary materials, enrich beyond their natural concentrations and either bring them together rapidly in large quantities or place them in the special conditions inside a reactor, where neutron moderators make it possible to sustain nuclear fission.

In 1940, Russian scientists observed the phenomena of spontaneous fission, where heavy elements like uranium split on their own without the need for a neutron to cause the event.  It was also known that uranium atoms could split as the result of a neutron generated by cosmic rays.   However, such events are uncommon and produce little energy.   They are distinct from the chain reactions that had only been observed in human-created nuclear reactors.

All this changed in 1972, when an unusual discrepancy in the concentration of uranium-235 from a mine in Gabon Africa was detected.  Chemical analysis of a unique uranium deposit  indicated that the formation had sustained a fission chain reaction at one time.   The possibility of a natural nuclear reactor of this type had been suggested as early as 1956, but the Gabon discovery was the first time that such an event was confirmed to have happened.  Further investigation of the site identified at least sixteen regions of the deposit where the concentration of uranium and lighter elements clearly indicated that significant amounts of nuclear fission had occurred.

The reactor at Gabon operated about 1.7 billion years ago, producing chain reactions for at least hundreds of thousands of years.   It was remarkably similar to modern, artificial nuclear reactors.   Fission occurred when water seeped into cracks and pores in the deposits of extremely high grade uranium ore.   The water acted as a moderator, causing the chain reaction.   In modern times, water can only be used as a moderator in reactors where the uranium has been slightly enriched to contain more uranium-235 than found in nature, but because uranium-235 has a half-life of about seven hundred million years, there was a great deal more when the Gabon reactor was critical.

Exactly how long the Gabon reactor was critical or how much energy was released is not known.   Scientists have estimated that it probably generated about 100 kW of power and likely operated intermittently due to the buildup of neutron poisons and variations in the water levels in the rock.   It also generated some amount of plutonium-239 and other heavy isotopes, which would have added to the available fissile fuel.

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The following article ran on the front page of the New York Times just a few days ago. I’m hoping very much that this might actually start to get people questioning the wisdom of spending huge amounts of money on energy sources that can’t and won’t deliver. This is especially true in the current economic climate. The US government can’t afford to waste money and as many suffer without jobs, the issue of “corporate welfare” and handouts that benefit the rich while doing little for society as a whole has become a major issue.

Yet these subsidies and mandates are exactly the kind that create the worst social inequalities. Those rich enough to invest in the government-backed and subsidized businesses are given a golden opportunity to make more money with less risk than could ever be had in a fair market. At the same time, the general public pays for it through higher electric rates and taxes. Despite the claims that these programs exist to create jobs, the higher cost of energy that results hurts industry and ultimately can cost jobs. The enterprises that take advantage of these subsidies are incapable of ever being self-sustaining and could not survive without these direct and very expensive incentives by the government.

Via the New York Times:

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It’s an age old question:  What’s better for the environment?  Smaller and less prone to consuming fuel or large and more sophisticated and controlled.  Many seem to think that smaller is inherently better and advocate everything from smaller power plants to smaller farms, and in both cases, more of them.

An obvious area of debate is transportation, especially in terms of cars versus motorcycles.   There’s no doubt that motorcycles are smaller, with smaller engines and less dead weight being hauled around to carry a single passenger.   They use less fuel than cars.

So are they better for the environment?   The Mythbusters take on this question in an episode that will be airing some time in the upcoming season.

Via the LA Times:

‘MythBusters’ asks: Are motorcycles greener than cars?
A trend is afoot, according to “MythBusters” television host Adam Savage: “People are trading in their cars and driving motorcycles instead because they believe that’s the more environmentally friendly choice,” Savage said in Wednesday’s season opener of the popular Discovery Channel show. “The logic is because motorcycles are generally more fuel-efficient than cars, they burn less gas and thus they must be better for the environment.”

The question is: Are they really? As the MythBusters have done with each of the show’s previous seven seasons, Savage and his co-host Jamie Hyneman set out to test the theory.

Selecting three motorcycles and three cars that represented popular models from the ’80s, ’90s and ’00s, they put the six vehicles through a 30-minute, 20-mile course. Seventy-five percent was freeway driving; the other 25 percent was in the city. Savage drove the three cars. Hyneman trailed him at speed on each of the three bikes. None of the vehicles’ makes and models were disclosed.

All of the vehicles were equipped with portable emissions-measuring systems that took exhaust gases from a probe in the tailpipe and engine information from the engine control unit. The devices determined the vehicles’ fuel economy and emissions profiles while the vehicles were running on the real-world course in California’s Alameda County earlier this year.

The upshot? Motorcycles were indeed more fuel-efficient than cars and emitted less of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, but they emitted far more smog-forming hydrocarbons and oxides of nitrogen, as well as the toxic air pollutant carbon monoxide. For the most recent model year vehicles tested — from the ’00s — the motorcycle used 28% less fuel than the comparable decade car and emitted 30% fewer carbon dioxide emissions, but it emitted 416% more hydrocarbons, 3,220% more oxides of nitrogen and 8,065% more carbon monoxide.

The MythBusters’ conclusion: “At best, it’s a wash. Motorcycles are just as bad for the environment as cars,” Savage said on the show. “At worst, they’re far worse.”
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In the 2011 American Lung Assn. State of the Air report, eight of the top 10 cities for ozone pollution were in California. Los Angeles ranked first.

Despite the MythBusters’ findings, emissions are only part of the story of a vehicle’s true greenness. According to the Motorcycle Industry Council, motorcycle manufacturing requires thousands fewer pounds of raw materials than automobiles. They require less fossil fuel, so they require less energy to pull that fossil fuel out of the ground. They use fewer chemicals and oils than cars. And motorcycles produced today are 90% cleaner in California than they were 30 years ago.

Note to MythBusters: How about a cradle-to-grave life cycle assessment for cars and motorcycles for the Season 9 opener?

It’s definitely a complicated issue, especially when one considers the issue of the actual resources that go into one of these vehicles, what impact they may have in terms of displacing other vehicles and how they are driven. Given the differences in driving habits and engine types and efficiency, it’s very difficult to make a one-to-one comparison between motorcycles and automobiles.

Motorcycles are certainly smaller and have a lot less metal in them. However, motorcycles don’t generally age gracefully, especially if they are driven often and therefore may need more frequent replacement. Additionally, many of those who own a motorcycle feel the need to also own a car, since cars have greater utility and can be used when the weather precludes the use of a motorcycle, so owning a motorcycle does not really displace the resources that go into a car.

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