One thing that certainly needs to be mentioned is that the campaign still is very much in need of donations.   We’ve received a few very generous contributions, but it has proven to be an extremely expensive endeavor.   If you can chip in a few dollars or a few hundred, it will help a great deal.   I cannot take any donations from those outside the United States (unless you’re a US citizen living abroad.)   That is simply federal election law.  There has always been concern that foreign interests could influence US politics, so it is illegal to in any way fund a US campaign.

There is now also a campaign store, where bumper stickers, shirts and so on can be purchased.  Because a portion of these purchases goes to the campaign, they can also only be purchased by US citizens.   If there’s a lot of demand for them from outside the US, we’ll consider allowing foreign citizens to buy them at cost, thus avoiding that problem, but as it stands that’s not currently being offered.  Really, I don’t see much reason why someone outside the US would want the campaign gear, anyway.

There are some things that anyone can do to help out, including foreign nationals and those who might not have a lot of money.  Some of the things that can be done are listed here.

The campaign needs help getting the word out on social media.   We also are trying to get news submitted to various sites to get more attention.  It helps a lot when such submissions come from multiple parties.

One thing we really need is a Wikipedia entry for the candidacy.  It’s really better if that kind of thing is done by a third party, not associated officially with the campaign.  It makes the article more credible and avoids it looking like it’s been written entirely by the campaign for good PR.   If it has multiple authors and editors, that is even better.  I certainly don’t want to write it myself, because that makes it look like little more than a self-produced advertisement.

We also need residents of Connecticut and especially the Third District who can help out in some other ways.

Via the Mail and Guardian:

Obama rescues the Grand Canyon

Barack Obama took a big step towards preserving one of the world’s natural wonders on Monday, banning uranium mining on 400 000 hectares of land around the Grand Canyon.

The move, announced by the interior secretary, Ken Salazar, at a film screening in Washington DC, bans new mining claims around the canyon for the next 20 years. The area is rich in uranium deposits.

“A withdrawal is the right approach for this priceless American landscape,” Salazar said. “People from all over the country and around the world come to visit the Grand Canyon. Numerous American Indian tribes regard this magnificent icon as a sacred place and millions of people in the Colorado river basin depend on the river.”

Environmental groups said the move, which was opposed by the mining industry and some Republicans, would secure the American president’s environmental legacy.

The measure does not affect about 3 200 existing mining claims around the canyon, however. The administration said there would be continued development of 11 uranium mines.

Conservation groups said Obama had shown political courage in going ahead with the ban in the face of opposition. “Despite significant pressure, the president did not settle for a halfway measure,” said Jane Danowitz of the Pew Environment Group. In the final years of the George Bush presidency, when uranium prices were rising worldwide, mining companies filed thousands of claims in northern Arizona on lands near the Grand Canyon.

They also proposed reopening old mines adjacent to the canyon.

Salazar ordered a temporary halt to claims in 2009 after Obama came to office. Government officials proposed the 20-year ban in October last year, after an environmental review calling for the preservation of an “iconic landscape”.

The reality is that the Grand Canyon was never actually in any danger of being torn up for mining. That’s because the iconic expanse of canyon of eroded sandstone and river bed is located within the Grand Canyon National Park. It might depend a little on how you define the beginning and end of the canyon, but in general, the expansive “grand” part is all within the national park. Because it is within a national park, there can be no mining claims. The area is permanently and unquestionably protected and the only development and construction allowed is limited infrastructure for the park itself. (things like visitors centers, hiking trails and such.)

The park is enormous. It’s 1,902 sq mi or 4,927 sq km. It includes the canyon itself and much of the surrounding area. It was established as a National Monument in 1906 and has enjoyed the protection from commercial development of a US national park since 1919. There is absolutely no way that any part of that massive area will be mined for uranium or anything else.

The park is in Arizona, in a relatively sparsely inhabited region. Much of the area around the national park is federally administered land. As such, claims can be staked for mineral recovery. It’s not actually in the park and it’s certainly not in the canyon. It’s many miles away, but in the general region of the Grand Canyon. More than two thousand potential mining sites have been staked, many for uranium, as uranium can be found in the sandstone of the area. This is normal. Mining companies can, depending on the circumstances, claim or lease federal land for mineral recovery.

In 2009, it was proposed that a massive area that is only remotely close to the Grand Canyon be closed to mining. Now that decision has been extended, at least for the next twenty years. Vague environmental concerns are cited as the reason. There are already some long standing hard rock mines in the area, which apparently will still be allowed to operate.

I have to admit that I don’t actually have any expertise on this area or the eco-systems or whether it’s so unique or amazing as to make it worthy of complete protection from mining and development.   However, it should be made clear that regardless of the validity of this decision, this is not the Grand Canyon and the Grand Canyon was never in danger of being destroyed by mines.

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.

Production of Plutonium-238:

The plutonium that can be extracted from light water spent fuel contains significant amounts of plutonium-238, but it’s combined with other isotopes of plutonium, making it unusable.  Separating out the plutonium-238 would require a complex plutonium enrichment system, which is far less practical than simply preparing the plutonium-238 on its own.

To produce plutonium-238, the first thing that is required is neptunium-237.  Neptunium-237 is produced as a byproduct of the reprocessing of spent fuel.   When a nucleus of uranium-235 absorbs a neutron, it will usually fission.  However, in a thermal spectrum reactor, some of the uranium-235 (about 18%) will absorb a neutron and not fission.  Instead, the uranium-235 becomes uranium-236.  Uranium-236 has a low neutron cross-section, so most of the uranium-236 generated in a reactor will just remain uranium-236, but a small amount of it does absorb a neutron and become uranium-237.  Uranium-237 has a very short half-life of only six days, decaying to neptunium-237.  Another source of neptunium-237 in spent fuel is the alpha decay or americium-241.

Spent fuel contains about .7 grams of np-237 for every one hundred kilograms of fuel.  That might not seem like much, but fuel reprocessing operations routinely go through hundreds of tons of fuel.   Because Np-237 is the only isotope of neptunium present in spent fuel in any significant quantity, it does not require any enrichment.  Instead, simply chemically separating the neptunium out yields nearly 100% neptunium-237.

After removing the neptunium-237, it is fabricated into targets which are irradiated with neutrons in a high flux reactor.   The targets are then removed and processed to separate out the plutonium-238 that is produced.  The plutonium-238 is then fabricated into RTG fuel tablets.

The end of US production:

The United States ended the practice of spent fuel reprocessing in 1977 when it was banned by the Carter Administration because of “proliferation concerns.”  Since then, the ban has been lifted, but as all reprocessing operations were shut down in the 1970’s and little support can be found for restarting the practice, the US still has no capacity to reprocess spent fuel.  After 1977, some material from plutonium production reactors continued, which yielded some neptunium-237, but that also ended in 1992, with the end of the cold war.

Today, the United States reprocesses no fuel at all and therefore cannot produce any neptunium-237.  There may still be some of the material remaining, though it’s doubtful that very much is left.   It should still be possible to obtain Np-237, purchasing it from countries with major spent fuel reprocessing programs, such as Russia, France or Japan.   However, this depends entirely on the willingness of such nations to provide it and may be expensive, since additional steps beyond normal reprocessing are required to produce the highly concentrated neptunium necessary for plutonium-238 production.

Getting enough Np-237, however, is not the biggest problem that the United States faces in producing Pu-238, however.   The US has a shortage of suitable reactors where the neptunium could be irradiated to produce the final plutonium-238 product.  Irradiating the targets requires a reactor with a very high neutron flux and the ability to receive materials for irradiation.  During the Cold War, the United States operated reactors at the Hanford and Savannah River sites primarily for the production of plutonium for nuclear weapons.  These same reactors could be used to irradiate materials for the production of medical and industrial isotopes along with materials like plutonium-238.  Therefore, up until the late 1980’s, the US had ample capacity for plutonium-238 production.   In the early 1990’s, the United States shut down all such reactors over “proliferation concerns.”   Russia, on the other hand, converted theirs to the full time production of peaceful isotopes, which is why they have been the world source for plutonium-238.

There are other reactors in the United States that could potentially produce plutonium-238, but not many of them.   The US has seen an unfortunate reduction in the number of research and irradiation reactors available.  Many, such as the Fast Flux Test Facility were shut down due to “proliferation concerns.”  Others like the High Flux Beam Reactor were closed after celebrities lobbied heavily against them.  Many simply were closed due to age and have not been replaced, given the lack of construction of new research reactors in the US in recent years.

There are only two reactors in operation that might be usable for producing plutonium-238.  One is the High Flux Isotope Reactor at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.  However, the HFIR is already running at near full capacity for basic materials research and producing specialty isotopes.  It’s the only source of the vital isotope Cf-252 in the United States.  It also hosts a recently installed cold neutron source.   Because of this, the HFIR does not have enough available capacity to produce Pu-238.  That leaves one reactor: the Advanced Test Reactor.   The ATR is located at the Idaho National Laboratory.  It’s the only source in the US for production of cobalt-60, an isotope critical to medicine and industry.  It’s also one of only a few reactors that can be used to simulate extended fuel irradiation in a light water reactor, making it critical to fuel studies.  It’s not entirely clear to what extent producing Pu-238 at the Advanced Test Reactor might limit its capacity for other important functions.

The Advanced Test Reactor has been the focus of recent efforts to restart US Pu-238 production.   Several bills and proposals to begin production at the site have been floated, but funding has not been provided.  Most recently, a funding request for the relatively small amount of fifteen million dollars by the DOE was shot down by Congress.  No explanation was given, but it seems no US legislators are interested in restarting plutonoum-238 production, quite possibly because nobody’s spent any money lobbying for it and some have spent money lobbying against it.

Restarting production in the US may prove more difficult than simply finding a suitable reactor.   Producing the final Plutonium-238 tablets used for providing heat to RTG’s requires that the irradiated targets be dissolved, the plutionium-238 processed out and fabricated into the final RTG fuel.   The material is very hot, both in terms of radioactivity and literally.  Handling and processing it requires special facilities such as hot cells and plutonium chemical separation facilities.  The United States has limited capabilities in this area, with most of the facilities capable of fabricating special nuclear materials shut down over “proliferation concerns.”

That said, the US should have enough capacity for processing such materials to make at least a modest Pu-238 production program possible, if only funding is provided and the effort to do so is undertaken.   Ideally, enough would be made to allow for its use on spacecraft without extreme conservation measures taken, but that seems to be politically unlikely due to “proliferation concerns.”

In the end, we are left with a few options for the US space program, not all of them very appealing:

1. Restart domestic production of plutonium-238
2. Continue to rely on the limited Russian capacity to produce the material and hope they do not cut production or sales, as they seem to be indicating will happen.  Perhaps this could be avoided by paying an even more exorbitant amount to Russia for the material.  Continue with only limited deep space flights due to this limited source.
3. Hope that some other country steps up to the plate and starts making plutonium-238.  There’s a good chance that a country like China might start domestic production in the coming years, as they become more ambitious in their space program.  Whether they’ll share with the US is another issue.
4. Rely on another isotope that will result in less energy per kilogram, require greater shielding and therefore dramatically reduce spacecraft capabilities and increase launch expense.
5. Rely exclusively on solar power for space exploration.  Space exploration will therefore be limited to the inner solar system, out to about the orbit of mars and a little bit further, even out to Jupiter, although this will require very large solar arrays and will be restricted in capability due to very limited power capacities.   Beyond Jupiter, exploration by space probes will be impossible and will have to cease entirely.  And while exploration of the inner solar system will still be possible, landers that require significant amounts of continuous power will not be possible, thus making the Mars Science Laboratory the last of its kind.

Personally, I vote for choice 1.

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.

After bouncing around many times between different individuals and sub-departments, before I eventually got the answer:  No, I could not import the key chains and no I could not sell them and nobody was really supposed to have them at all.   They never would tell me why the answer was no.  I was not told what exact regulation or requirement they violated.  They never would give me a straight answer about whether I could appeal that decision, who had made it or on what grounds and whether there was any way of having it reevaluated.  The best they could give me was that I could try the expensive process of getting a new product approved, but they also warned me that to do that I first had to have some prototypes of the product to have inspected and it would be illegal for me to have those prototypes unless I first got yet another license, permitting me to possess otherwise illegal amounts of tritium.

So the next place I went was the Health Physics Society.   They managed to put me in touch with some radiation safety experts who had worked with the NRC and knew the right people to ask.   After several false starts, they did manage to track down an NRC official who would go on record and explain the policy.   This is the e-mail I eventually got:

In response to your electronic mail dated October 23, 2007, concerning
keyrings containing tritium, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has
determined that a license is required to distribute products similar to
the Traser “glowring” key chains.  Although the devices are allowed in
the United Kingdom, they are not licensed here.  NRC regulations [10 CFR
30.19(c) and 10 CFR 32.22(b)] and policy (Federal Register Notice of
March 16, 1965, 30 FR 3462) do not allow licensing toys, novelties,
adornments or any consumer product containing radioactive material
considered a frivolous use of radioactive material and where the end use
of the product cannot be reasonably foreseen.   Other consumer products
that are not frivolous use, but contain self-luminous radioactive
material, must go through a two step safety review process consisting
of:  (1) an engineering evaluation and registration for the device as
well as (2) a licensing review of the program involved in possession and
distribution of radioactive material.

In order for NRC to be sure consumer products containing radioactive
material are safe for distribution to the general public the product
must be below a certain activity and/or found to incorporate engineering
features making release of the radioactive material unlikely.  In
addition environmental studies must show that during the products life
from manufacture to disposal, no adverse impact will be caused on the
environment or on those who may come in contact with the radioactive
material.  Traser Glowrings contain about 400 millicuries of tritium as
indicated by the UK manufacturer.  In comparison, a tritium wristwatch
typically contains 5 millicuries of tritium.  Tritium produces beta
radiation that cannot penetrate the skin, however, tritium can be
absorbed through the skin.  Tritium can also be an internal hazard
through inhalation and ingestion, as well as being absorbed through the
skin.

Again, Traser glowrings, and similar products, are not legal to own or
possess in the U. S. without a Federal and/or State license.

So that’s the big problem?   It’s an adornment or a novelty and therefore frivolous?

My Response:

• The fact that an item may be used as a novelty, adornment or toy does not mean it is “frivolous.”  The definition of “frivolous” is “irresponsible, lacking due consideration, without due consideration, improper.”  I think I can see what they’re getting at.  They want any item that is considered radioactive to have a legitimate use and consider entertainment or novelty to not be legitimate.  I have to disagree on that.   It’s fine to use something for such purposes if there’s negligible risk involved.
• The end use of the product can be reasonably forseen: people will put it on their key chain and use it to help locate their keys.
• At least part of the appeal of glowing key chains may indeed be their novelty and fashion aspect, but the same can be said of a tritium-containing wristwatch.   Watches are absolutely and undeniably fashion accessories, in addition to being functional timepieces.  In the cases of watches, the fact that they have a tritium-illuminated dial is often a selling point because of the fact that it’s fashionable in and of itself.   It’s not the only way to illuminate a watch dial.  It can be done with an electroluminescent face or with long lasting phosphorescent material.
• Radiolumonescent key chains are not only fashionable or novel, but also are practical.  They are at least as functional as radiolumonescent watches.  It makes it very easy to find misplaced keys simply by turning off the lights in a room.  The glow of the keychain is obvious in the dark even at a distance.   The glow can even be seen if the keys are partially obscured, such as being under a desk or bed.  The glow of the keychain also provides just enough light to aid a person handling the keys in the complete darkness, making it easier to select the right key for insertion into a lock or automobile ignition.
• While the amount of tritium in a key chain may be greater than that found in most watches, it is still trivial and is less than that found in numerous other commonly available items that can be purchased by the general public.  These include radiolumonescent compasses, small self-powered flashlight-style illuminators, self-illuminating map readers and other luminous items.   These devices are perfectly safe and do not pose any hazard to public health or the environment.  The amount of tritium present is far too low to pose a significant radiation hazard to anyone, even in the wost case scenario, where it might all be released in a confined area.
• Key chains of this style are already available in numerous countries around the world.  They have been sold for years without incident.   They are so common that it’s impossible to keep them out of the United States and there’s no legitimate reason to try anyway.  They’re safe and proven safe and their existence in no way enables terrorists, compromises public safety or constitutes a hazard.

I am willing to acknowledge that there may be legitimate reason for the NRC to require that the product undergo some kind of review, as they state, an engineering evaluation of the product.   Hopefully that would not include an environmental study, because that would be pretty ridiculous to do a study from scratch when there are already products of a similar nature being sold and which would release an equal amount of tritium upon disposal.  I’m not sure why they can’t just use a general purpose tritium device disposal study.  Although knowing the agency, it’s entirely plausible that they will require a completely new study. They could simply apply the same standard for release into the environment as any number of products with the same amount of tritium.  The danger presented is zero, at least if they are evaluated fairly and reasonably.

There are many exit  signs sold in the US which have much more tritium in them than one of these and the tritium is stored in tubes of almost exactly the same type.  Tritium-containing self-luminous exit signs may contain upwards of 40 curies of tritium, one hundred times the amount of tritium in one of these key chains.   It should be noted that these exit signs are subject to some special restrictions.  Those who purchase them are technically also purchasing an individual license for the sign, which requires that they do not tamper with the sign or open it and that they dispose of it properly, usually by returning it to the manufacturer.   Yet this certainly does not always happen.  Despite the requirement, thousands of tritium-containing exit signs of various ages (and therefore with various amounts of tritium present) end up in landfills and incinerators every year.  Despite this, the sky has not yet begun to fall.

I would be more than willing to consider undertaking the necessary engineering review, although I’m sure it would be long and expensive.   The products would almost certainly pass it.  They’re very straight forward and the manufacturer can provide any data necessary.  If an environmental study were also necessary, it still might be worth perusing.

The problem is that even if the manufacturer and distributors were willing to go through that process, the NRC has already decided the key chains are “frivolous” and therefore won’t even entertain the notion of approving them.   So it is simply impossible and they seem to not have the slightest willingness to revisit the decision.  DAMN!

Shooting down an ICBM has always been an extremely challenging problem.  There is very little time to react to the missile and they travel at extreme speed.   The distances involved are enormous and because an interceptor must also travel at extreme speed, it can easily shoot right past the target.  This is made even more difficult by the fact that modern missiles have penetration aids and decoys that are hard to distinguish from the actual warhead.  Some also have the ability to maneuver and change course, making it difficult to plot an interception point.  The earliest systems addressed this in a simplistic, though likely effective way:  They would try to destroy the incoming warhead with a massive nuclear explosion.  For example, the Spartan missile carried a five megaton radiation-enhanced warhead that could destroy incoming missiles at a distance of 50 kilometers.   Another missile, the Sprint, used a much smaller explosive and was intended as a last line of defense for warheads that were entering their terminal phase.

Such systems, however, quickly fell from favor for a number of reasons.   For one, the massive blasts associated with them could have some catastrophic effects on the ionosphere and satellites in the area.  While this may have been considered preferable to absorbing an attack with nuclear missiles, it was still a major concern.   The use of high power nuclear explosives was also considered politically impalpable and the prospect of hundreds of nuclear-armed interceptors alarmed the Soviet Union.   The Soviets responded by designing new warheads that were radiation hardened and could withstand blasts up to as close as a few hundred meters.   They also threatened to build up their arsenal of nuclear missiles to include a large enough number to simply overwhelm any defense system

In the end, the US and Soviets both signed treaties to limit such weapons.   The US system, known as Safeguard, was only operational for a few months before being shutdown.   A similar Soviet system was dramatically scaled back and eventually had its nuclear warheads replaced with conventional explosives.

Today there are some interceptor systems that use missiles to intercept ICBM’s, although their effectiveness is somewhat limited.   One of the most notable is the US Aegis anti ballistic missile system. It’s quite effective against single warhead missiles that lack penetration aids and advanced features, but the effectiveness against a barrage of modern ICBM’s is questionable.

A separate approach developed in the 1980’s and focused on the use of directed energy weapons, especially lasers.   These would have a number of advantages over interceptor missiles.  They would be able to engage the target almost instantly and could track a fast moving and maneuvering target in ways that a physical interceptor never could.  The Strategic Defense Initiative was a program initiated by the Regan administration in the early 1980’s.   It studied a number of methods of intercepting missiles and warheads but focused especially on the use of high power lasers.   President Regan would say that one reason for pushing the program was the realization that even a single nuclear missile, perhaps launched by error, could not be stopped and would inevitably trigger a nuclear war.   Therefore, the ability to shoot down a missile quickly and effectively would be an important capability to help preserve world peace.

Whatever the motivation, the Strategic Defense Initiative had decidedly mixed results.  Huge amounts of money were expended and great strides were made in the development of high power lasers and remote sensing systems.   High speed interceptors were developed which eventually were incorporated into THAAD and the Aegis system.   High powered chemical lasers were developed and demonstrated to be capable of blinding satellites and tracking missiles, but showed limited potential against actual missile threats.   A few tests were conducted that showed the lasers could destroy the bodies of missiles, but this was generally limited to fairly thin-walled liquid fueled missiles, which were largely obsolete by the time.

The YAL-1:

After the close of the program in the early 1990’s, some attempts were made to find applications for the technology.   One was the YAL-1.  The YAL-1 is an attempt to make one of the huge chemical lasers developed for SDI into a viable weapon.   The mission of the YAL-1 is to shoot down ballistic missiles during the boost phase. This is a very short period of time during which the missile is just leaving the launch site on course for its target. It would be the ideal time to shoot down a missile, since it would avoid contamination of friendly areas with any materials on the missile and provide the quickest response to the threat.

The YAL-1 is a heavily modified Boeing 747-400, which has been used to house the massive laser.   The system is much more complicated than just cutting off the nose of a 747 and sticking a big laser in it, of course.   It involves a very precise system of tracking lasers, steering optics, sensors and support systems as well as the laser itself.   Engaging a target involves the use of a complex array of targeting optics and tracking lasers, which follow and illuminate the target.  Once acquired and tracked, the primary laser is fired through a stabilized turret containing adaptive optics which compensate for beam distortion caused by the atmosphere.

The laser used is itself a complex piece of equipment. A chemical oxygen iodine laser, it gets its power from a chemical reaction that produces an excited laser medium. The laser is fed by a combination of chlorine, iodine, hydrogen peroxide and potassium hydroxide. These highly toxic and reactive chemicals are stored on the aircraft in corosion-resistant tanks. The byproducts of the reaction are discharged by a specialized exhaust system.

Now I have to admit, a massive flying laser is pretty damn cool and I’d love to have one to shoot at various things with, but the program has not been cheap. It was started in the mid 1990’s and didn’t actually reach the point of being able to test fire the laser in flight until earlier this year. During that time, it has cost tax payers more than 5.2 billion dollars.

Worse, it has a number of major problems that may well doom the plane from using its laser to do anything more than obliterate taxpayer money.
The Effectiveness Is, At Best, Questionable – Despite what you may see in sci-fi films, lasers are not the ultimate in destructive weaponry.   A laser of the type in the YAL-1 only heats the surface of a missile and attempts to weaken the skin to the point where the physical stresses on the missile fail.   This is much easier with older liquid fueled missiles, which often have thin aluminum tanks which could rupture relatively easily.  Solid fueled missiles are much tougher.   A design goal of the YAL-1 has been to engage solid fueled missiles at a range of 300 km, but it’s not clear if it can achieve this.Even if it does, it’s possible to make a missile resistant to laser weapons.  Ablative coatings or shields can prevent the heat from compromising the missile’s structure, and using a highly polished material around the tanks can be a very effective means of simply reflecting most of the laser beam away.  Other relatively simple counter measures could be employed by a savy enemy.  For example, they could launch a barrage of several decoy missiles, perhaps only having small first-stage engines and no warhead, simply to draw fire from the YAL-1 and depleted the limited reserves of laser chemicals stored on-board.

It Has Limited Range – 300 kilometers is not a huge distance, assuming it can even work at that distance.   In order to be effective, the YAL-1 would have to be orbiting in the area in the immediate vicinity of the launcher.  Even in the best circumstances, it will need to be a few hundred kilometers from the missile launch.   If it were to defend against missiles from Iran, for example, it would have to fly within Iran’s airspace.That pretty much means that the airspace around the launcher would have to already be under the control of the US Air Force and that overflying the area was already permitted.  If that is the case, then why even bother with the YAL-1?   The easier and preferred method of preventing missile launches is to destroy the launchers on the ground before they get a chance to fire.  While they can sometimes be camouflaged, a system of good reconciles and rapid strike aircraft can be very effective in making sure none ever get the chance to launch.

We Only Have One and That’s Not Enough -If you want to be able to effectively suppress missiles being fired from an area, then you will need to blanket that area on a consistent basis.  In other words, you need at least one and ideally several YAL-1 aircraft constantly orbiting.   If you ever give the enemy a chance to launch while the aircraft is not patrolling, that is when they’ll fire their missiles.   It’s rather difficult to hide the presence of something as big and unstealthy as a Boeing 747.   Like all aircraft, the YAL-1 has limited endurance.  It can remain aloft for a while using in-flight refueling, but eventually the crew will need more food, the engines will need to be inspected and the aircraft will need to land.   If it fires the laser at all, this could happen even faster.   The on-board chemical tanks only have enough material for about 20 shots at most, and it must land to have the laser system refueled.

Realistically, to have a viable force to actually suppress missiles being fired from even a small region of the world, at least ten of these aircraft would be required.  That is in addition to the other aircraft needed to keep the big 747 fueled and secure.  Each plane is estimated to cost about one hundred million US dollars to operate each year and has a capital cost of about one and a half billion dollars.   In other words, the project cost is going to be at least fifteen billion dollars and cost over a billion dollars annually to operate.

To add to the problem, the facilities, chemicals and equipment needed to service the YAL-1 is unique to only this aircraft and would not be available at most air bases.  It would either have to be brought to the area of operation or the aircraft would have to fly all the way back to the United States every time it needed to be reloaded with chemicals or serviced.

It Has Limited Capabilities Beyond Shooting Down Ballistic Missiles – If you are going to spend such an enormous amount of money on a weapons system, it would seem logical to want to be able to use it in more than the most narrow of circumstances.  Most ballistic missile interceptors are designed to also have the capability to engage aircraft or even satellites.   Few aircraft in the US Air Force inventory are good for only one very narrow and relatively rare mission.   Unfortunately, that would seem to be the case with the YAL-1.  It could, at least in principle, be used against enemy fighter or bomber aircraft, although the effectiveness is unknown and the range would be considerably less than many existing and highly effective surface to air or air to air missiles.

It’s  not considered to be a very good platform for attacking ground targets.   The thicker atmosphere at low altitudes tends to absorb the infrared laser light, severely limiting range and effectiveness.The laser could be modified to engage ground targets, but range would be reduced because more energy is absorbed by the atmosphere at lower altitudes.   And while some targets would be susceptible, hardened structures like bunkers or concert structures would be all but impervious to a laser weapon.   It  would also be many times more expensive than attacks using more conventional methods like guided bombs.  Since the YAL-1 was not intended to engage ground targets, there would need to be some modification to the tracking systems of the aircraft.

The Technology May Already Be On the Verge Of Obsolescence – Chemical lasers like the one used by the YAL-1 remain of interest for military purposes because they can generate a huge amount of laser energy from reserves of chemicals, without the need for large amounts of electrical power.   However, in recent years, advancements in battery technology and solid state lasers have started to challenge the capabilities of chemical laser systems.  Chemical lasers are limited to the number of firings by the chemical reserves on hand.  Refueling of the laser can be complex due to the precautions needed when handling the highly reactive chemicals involved.  They also require complex systems for chemical storage and delivery.

The availability of low cost, light weight lithium ion batteries and highly efficient solid state lasers is beginning to make it possible to achieve sufficient power from lasers that avoid the problems inherent to chemical lasers.  Already smaller solid state laser systems are appearing on the battlefield.  These systems are powered by generators with battery banks used to provide the brief pulses of extremely high power needed for the lasers.    For the time being, chemical lasers still seem to have the edge for super high power applications like the YAL-1, but solid state laser systems are progressing rapidly and may become the choice for applications of this power level in the near future.  In such an application, an APU and battery bank would take the place of the huge and hazardous chemical tanks.

Now, the big question:  What do we do with this thing?

Developing and building the YAL-1 has taken a huge amount of national treasure.   It is undoubtedly one of the most unique aircraft in the world, with capabilities no other has and technology that represents the cutting edge of laser weaponry.  Considering how much has been put into this thing, there must be something useful that can be done with it.

It could certainly be used for some research applications.  Testing a laser of this wavelength at various altitudes and conditions, determining the ability of various weapons to survive attack by a high energy laser is another application.  It might even be useful for certain atmospheric and meteorological research or in using lasers as part of a space propulsion system.  However, most of these could be done much more easily and at a lower cost in the laboratory or on the ground.  The amount of money spent would hardly be worth it if the YAL-1 only sees use as a very limited application scientific experiment platform.

As a weapon or defensive system, the YAL-1, realistic uses are harder to think of.   A fleet of ten of these is just not going to happen given the cost.  It’s possible one or two more might be built, if a viable use could be found for such a small fleet.

About the best I can think of would be to retain the anti-ballistic capability, but with the understanding that it will be pretty limited in coverage and to make the modifications necessary for engage targets on the ground.  For ground targeting, the YAL-1 could be useful for destroying targets where extreme levels of precision are required, far beyond what could be achieved with even the best guided bombs and missiles.  This might work for targeted assassinations of enemy leaders or if a vital target like a communications exchange is located right near a hospital or school.

But damn, that’s a lot of money for a weapon with no real deterrent value and little chance we’ll ever use.

Via HealthCanal:

New Take on Impacts of Low Dose Radiation
Berkeley Lab Researchers Find Evidence Suggesting Risk May Not Be Proportional to Dose at Low Dose Levels

Researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), through a combination of time-lapse live imaging and mathematical modeling of a special line of human breast cells, have found evidence to suggest that for low dose levels of ionizing radiation, cancer risks may not be directly proportional to dose. This contradicts the standard model for predicting biological damage from ionizing radiation – the linear-no-threshold hypothesis or LNT – which holds that risk is directly proportional to dose at all levels of irradiation.

Imaging of a cell’s DNA damage response to radiation shows that 1.5 minutes after irradiation, the sizes and intensities of radiation induced foci (RIF) are small and weak, but 30 minutes later damage sites have clustered into larger and brighter RIF, probably reflecting DNA repair centers.

“Our data show that at lower doses of ionizing radiation, DNA repair mechanisms work much better than at higher doses,” says Mina Bissell, a world-renowned breast cancer researcher with Berkeley Lab’s Life Sciences Division. “This non-linear DNA damage response casts doubt on the general assumption that any amount of ionizing radiation is harmful and additive.”

Bissell was part of a study led by Sylvain Costes, a biophysicist also with Berkeley Lab’s Life Sciences Division, in which DNA damage response to low dose radiation was characterized simultaneously across both time and dose levels. This was done by measuring the number of RIF, for “radiation induced foci,” which are aggregations of proteins that repair double strand breaks, meaning the DNA double helix is completely severed.

Berkeley Lab biophysicist Sylvain Costes is generating 3D time lapse of DNA repair centers in human cells to understand better how cancer may arise from DNA damage. (Photo by Roy Kaltschmidt, Berkeley Lab)

“We hypothesize that contrary to what has long been thought, double strand breaks are not static entities but will rapidly cluster into preferred regions of the nucleus we call DNA repair centers as radiation exposure increases,” says Costes. “As a result of this clustering, a single RIF may reflect a center where multiple double strand breaks are rejoined. Such multiple repair activity increases the risks of broken DNA strands being incorrectly rejoined and that can lead to cancer.”

Costes and Bissell have published the results of their study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in a paper titled “Evidence for formation of DNA repair centers and dose-response nonlinearity in human cells.” Also co-authoring the paper were Teresa Neumaier, Joel Swenson, Christopher Pham, Aris Polyzos, Alvin Lo, PoAn Yang, Jane Dyball, Aroumougame Asaithamby, David Chen and Stefan Thalhammer.

The authors believe their study to be the first to report the clustering of DNA double strand breaks and the formation of DNA repair centers in human cells. The movement of the double strand breaks across relatively large distances of up to two microns led to more intensely active but fewer RIF. For example, 15 RIF per gray (Gy) were observed after exposure to two Gy of radiation, compared to approximately 64 RIF/Gy after exposure to 0.1Gy. One Gy equals one joule of ionizing radiation energy absorbed per kilogram of human tissue. A typical mammogram exposes a patient to about 0.01Gy.

Corresponding author Costes says the DNA repair centers may be a logical product of evolution.

“Humans evolved in an environment with very low levels of ionizing radiation, which makes it unlikely that a cell would suffer more than one double strand break at any given time,” he says. “A DNA repair center would seem to be an optimal way to deal with such sparse damage. It is like taking a broken car to a garage where all the equipment for repairs is available rather than to a random location with limited resources.”

However, when cells are exposed to ionizing radiation doses large enough to cause multiple double strand breaks at once, DNA repair centers become overwhelmed and the number of incorrect rejoinings of double strand breaks increases.

“It is the same as when dozens of broken cars are brought to the same garage at once, the quality of repair is likely to suffer,” Costes says.

You can read the rest of the article here. The level of the data available is new, but the conclusion is not. The available data that has been collected for decades on both a microscopic and macroscopic level clearly shows that radiation dose does not produce a linear level of dna damage until it reaches a relatively high exposure level.

Unfortunately, this has never seemed to unseat the suborn linear non-threshold model, which continues to be the standard for most radiation exposure policy. I also doubt that this new data will do much to change that, although when studies like this do come out, it is certainly worthwhile to try to raise as much publicity as possible for it.

From the standpoint of nuclear energy policy, this data almost seems moot. The actual radiation level that the public is exposed to from nuclear energy is so tiny that even if LNT is used as the standard for exposure limits, one comes to the inevitable conclusion that it is more important to tear down all the granite buildings than to stop using nuclear energy. Therefore, no scientific data is ever likely to unseat the radiation argument against nuclear energy, because it was never based on science to begin with.

I am about to launch a website for my bid for the US Congress.   However, I’m sure it has spelling errors in it and I can’t find them alone.   Paying for editing would be expensive and likely delay things even more.   That’s why I am asking to crowd source it from anyone kind enough to point them out.  I can be e-mailed or you can just point them out in the comments here.

The website (which is still not up as the main page) can be found at http://www.packard2012.org/test/

Once I am pretty sure there are no horribly embarrassing spelling errors I’ll move it to being the main page of the site.

I know that there are also parts of it that are lacking.   It does not have a full photo gallery yet, the donations service is still pending on having the account finalized.  The “policies” section needs a few additional ones added.  I’m aware of that and working to add them.  Right now what I need help with is spelling.

Thanks to anyone who will help out.

Now there has been a turn toward trying to blockade ports.   I’m not sure what the reasoning is.  Perhaps it’s a hatred of imports or a belief that blocking trade will somehow undermine the big businesses.  Regardless of their goals, it seems that some of the tactics have gone far beyond just getting in the way to the point of absolutely astounding danger.

Here is an amazing example of how bad it has gotten.

Faith in humanity? Okay, that’s fine. I really don’t think that any train driver wants to blow through a crowd or run over a toddler. I’ll even go so far as to say that the majority of the evil corporate executives at a railroad or transportation company would be horrified by the idea of a young child being torn apart under the wheels of a massive locomotive. I’m sure that the train driver, upon realizing that there is a child in the track will do everything possible to avoid running them over, which, unfortunately, is not much.

Perhaps this is just evidence that the educational system is failing, because in addition to humanity, there are some things you should always count on because they always work.

Inertia – It’s the property of an object to resist any change in its motion. It’s directly proportional to mass. In other words, heavy objects are more difficult to get moving that light objects. Makes sense, right? Well, conversely, once you get them moving, they’re also hard to stop.

Ever try pushing a car because it wouldn’t start? It’s hard to get it going but once you do it’s also hard to stop, which is why you need someone inside it to push the brake when it needs to. A two ton car has too much inertia for a human to easily stop it, even when it’s moving quite slow.

Trains have a lot more. A locomotive can weigh over one hundred tons. Fully loaded, each of the additional cars weighs anywhere from fifty to one hundred or more tons. So even a small freight train weighs thousands of tons. The ones that are used for transporting containers to and from ports are not small, however, and weigh a real real lot. They have a lot of inertia. When they get going, even at slow speed, it’s not easy to stop them.

Friction – It’s the property of two solid surfaces to resist motion against each other.  With wheels, it’s often considered to be synonymous with traction, the ability of the wheels to “grip” a surface and provide control and acceleration or stopping ability.   When you hit the brakes in a car, it’s the friction of a surface that keeps the car from just sliding away forever.

Not all surfaces have the same friction.  You will notice this if you are driving in different conditions.   Dry asphalt against rubber has quite a lot of friction, so if you hit the brakes on an asphalt road, you’ll stop pretty fast.   You may skid a bit, but it won’t be that much because the road provides plenty of friction against your wheels.   Now if you do the same on a wet road, which has less friction, you’re going to skid a lot farther.  Do it on an icy road and you’ll skid further still.  If you hit your brakes on a patch of smooth ice you will keep going almost like you didn’t hit them at all, although your car may also spin out.   One thing that will not happen on ice is a nice sudden stop, because there’s not enough friction.

You know what else doesn’t have a lot of friction?   Smooth steel rails against steel wheels.

And this is why, regardless of the humanity of a train driver, the train is not going to stop unless it has a good mile or so of warning that you’ve put your kid on the track.  It will keep going and kill you and your child.

For those interested in what actually happened: The original story can be read here. While it’s pretty clear from the video that the idiots were in the track right in front of a train, there are no reports of any deaths. Either the train was already coming to a stop and was light enough to not kill them all, or they realized it was not going to stop before it ran them over. Note that they are on the tracks but not chained to the tracks.

Just the same, this is one of the worst parents I have ever seen. It makes not vaccinating your children seem rather mild.

In the meantime, I have a temporary page up that has little more than a logo, but just the same, if you’d like to bookmark it and admire the logo you can do so at:

packard2012.org

If that sounds stupid, you have not heard anything yet.

The multi-billion dollar Apollo Program brought back about 382 kilograms of lunar material (rock and soil samples).   Soviet unamanned sample-return missions brought back less than a third of a kilogram of material. There are also lunar meteorites, which are composed of material blasted off the moons surface by impact events, which eventually made their way to earth.  Although these meteorite samples do have scientific value, they events that brought them to earth combined with contamination and weathering means they do not have the same value as rocks collected on the actual surface of the moon.

The scientific value of moon rocks is enormous.  Analysis can help determine the composition of the moon, the age of the moon, the formation of the earth-moon system, the composition of the solar system and the levels and types of particles emitted by the sun.   The study of moon rocks is also critical to determining how future lunar missions might be carried out and to what extent the moon might be able to provide some of the resources necessary for such missions.  Analysis of moon rocks resulted in the giant impact hypothesis becoming the most accepted scenario for the formation of the moon.

While the material brought back from the moon has been subject to analysis and experimentation for more than forty years, there’s still much to learn.   Since the samples and the areas they were gathered from is relatively limited, many of the rocks are very unique in composition.   For example, the “Genesis Rock,” which was recovered during Apollo-15 appears to be the oldest rock of its type ever recovered.  At more than 4.5 billion years old, the rock dates to the very early days of the solar system.  It is possible that other samples may contain tiny fragments of the moon’s primordial crust, which would be even older.

It’s also possible that we won’t ever know if any of the samples do, because it seems NASA has lost track of at least a portion of the lunar samples in its custody.   Despite being the most prized samples ever collected, the samples have not been guarded as well as one might think.   A few of the rocks and fragments were given away as “goodwill rocks” to foreign heads of state.  Others were given to astronauts or other dignitaries as mementos, although NASA states that they still own the actual rocks and just lent them out.  Some went to museums and other public displays.  A few are though to have been stolen or were sold without authorization.   All in all, NASA only has about 295 kilograms of the samples left in its own custody.

A new report, however, indicates that the problem of missing moon rocks may be even worse than thought.   As one might expect, NASA has routinely allowed the samples to be sent out for analysis and study by third parties.   One might expect that this would also include some very well maintained documentation and security.  After all, the library seems to know when a book is overdue and moon rocks are a lot harder to replace than a missing book.   Unfortunately that would not appear to be the case.

Via Space.com

NASA Has Lost Hundreds of Its Moon Rocks, New Report Says

NASA has lost or misplaced more than 500 of the moon rocks its Apollo astronauts collected and brought back to Earth, according to a new agency report.

In an audit released Thursday (Dec. 8), NASA’s Office of Inspector General states that the agency “lacks sufficient controls over its loans of moon rocks and other astromaterials, which increases the risk that these unique resources may be lost.”

The report stresses the importance of maintaining stricter guidelines for the release of lunar materials to researchers, and more meticulous inventory procedures for their storage and return.

“NASA has been experiencing loss of astromaterials since lunar samples were first returned by Apollo missions,” inspector general Paul K. Martin detailed in the report. “In addition to the Mount Cuba disk, NASA confirmed that 516 other loaned astromaterials have been lost or stolen between 1970 and June 2010, including 18 lunar samples reported lost by a researcher in 2010 and 218 lunar and meteorite samples stolen from a researcher at [NASA's Johnson Space Center] in 2002, but since recovered.”

….

Martin’s office audited 59 researchers who had received samples from NASA, and found that 11 of them, or 19 percent, could not locate all of the borrowed materials.

The report also found that the Astromaterials Acquisition and Curation Office at the Johnson Space Center in Houston had records of hundreds of samples that no longer exist, and loans to 12 researchers who had died, retired or relocated, sometimes without the office’s knowledge and without returning the samples.

“According to the Office of Inspector General, out of the 26,000 samples NASA has on loan, it has lost just 517,” Pearlman told SPACE.com. “That’s not to excuse the space agency and its curators, but with so many samples spread across the globe, some losses are probably to be expected.”

Still, the misplaced moon samples are truly regrettable, he added, and could be an indication of a broader issue within the public psyche.

“Maybe it is a sign of the times that some scientific researchers and educational organizations that were loaned samples and then lost them would no longer recognize the rarity and historical significance of the lunar material,” Pearlman said. “It seems that the moon, or at least its exploration by humans, has lost some of its shine over the past four decades.”

Regardless of how long it has been since man walked on the moon, it would seem we are not going to be headed back there for at least a few years and probably quite a lot more, so these samples are not easily replaced!  Not only that, but allowing such loose control of these samples really does not help the public perception of NASA’s competence.   Furthermore, if they don’t even know what is going on with these samples, how can they possibly know if some have been contaminated or even replaced with some other material?

I would not imagine that most people would treat a multi-million dollar gemstone with such carelessness.   Anyone in their right mind would keep close tabs on it and, at the very least, store it in a safe when not being used or displayed.   At the very least, NASA should regularly check with researchers who borrowed lunar material to make sure it’s secure, and also to see if they still need it.   It seems some just about forgot that they had the stuff.  If they are no longer actively using it for research, it needs to be returned so it can be used by others or stored properly.   Whoever the 11 are who misplaced it, they shouldn’t be getting any other NASA samples any time soon, or at least not until they figure out what happened to their lunar samples.

I am also perplexed by how the death of researchers could end up compromising the samples.  Samples of this type should never be handed over to the custody of a single person.  The loans should be made directly to the research institutions and they should be kept on sight in common areas, not in some scientist’s night table or glove compartment.

This really is a big problem and it needs to be addressed, not only because of what it means for the study of lunar material but also other materials NASA may lend out for study.  NASA has conducted sample return missions of comets and of the solar winds and is planning on someday gathering samples from the surface of mars and beyond.  It also has numerous materials that were grown in microgravity, exposed to conditions in space or created by elaborate processes.  Allowing other research institutions access to these materials is important, but accountability is critical.