Science And Society

Nevada Says Yuck to Yucca

I’ve been spending a few days up in the Reno area, and since the President’s decision to go ahead with the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository, it seems to have moved up in the local political agenda. Senator Reid is accusing Bush of “lying” and breaking his campaign promise, but of course, this is just demagoguery–Bush promised nothing except to make a decision based on “sound science.” Since most politicians wouldn’t know sound science if it came up and yelled in their ears, I’m not inclined to grant the Senator much credibility here–it’s really a judgment call. Mr. Bush may be mistaken, but he can’t be objectively accused of promise-breaking.

The Dems here are trying to leverage it as a campaign issue against Republicans, but the consensus seems to be that this won’t have much traction, because the local Republicans are opposed to the decision as well. It doesn’t seem to be a partisan issue here–it’s viewed more as Nevada against the rest of the country. It’s just the latest manifestation of the Sagebrush Rebellion, with which I am normally sympathetic.

Unfortunately, nuclear energy and nuclear waste are not issues amenable to decisions based on sound science–people tend to get too emotional about things that they don’t understand.

There aren’t any simple solutions to this policy problem. Nuclear energy is potentially the most environmentally benign source available in the near term (though the federal policy on it has been idiotic since the inception of the industry, making it much more hazardous and expensive than it need be, by mandating intrinsically bad plant designs).

But waste disposal is probably the most pressing problem, and it’s one that’s independent of plant design. And even if we were to renounce nuclear power today (with the attendant economic and environmental damage as we either destroy local economies from energy shortages, or increase production from much dirtier coal plants which produce the evil CO2, and actually put out more radiation than properly-operating nukes), we still have tens of thousands of tons of waste sitting in unsafe conditions at existing plants.

Every criticism of Yucca Mountain applies in spades to the available alternative–continuing to accumulate it at the plants in a wide range of conditions, few of them good. If Nevada wants to fight this decision, they’ll have to do more than simply naysay it and declare that, after over two decades and billions of dollars, it needs more study. They have to offer a viable alternative.

And any alternative should consider the following: one generation’s waste is another’s commodity. Before the invention of the internal combustion engine, gasoline was a waste byproduct of cracking oil for other purposes. Thus, one of the features of the Yucca Mountain solution is that the waste will be available to us in the future when we may find it useful, and any alternative should ideally have that feature as well.

But on the bright side, another feature (well, actually, it’s a bug) of the Yucca Mountain plan is that it will cost billions of dollars and take several years to implement. This effectively lowers the evaluation bar for competing concepts–they don’t have to be either cheap or fast, as long as they’re better.

Those of you who read my ravings regularly probably know where I’m going with this. Many eons ago, when I was an undergraduate, I took a course in aerospace systems design. The class project was to come up with a way to dispose of nuclear waste–in space. While it was (of course) a brilliant study, it has also been more recently analyzed by people who both knew what they were doing and got paid for it. It turns out to be (at least technically–politics are another matter) a non-ridiculous idea.

These are the basic options: dropping into ol’ Sol, which is really really expensive, and puts it totally out of the reach of our smarter descendents; lofting it out of Sol’s system completely, which is cheaper than putting it in the Sun, but still expensive, and practically if not theoretically out of reach of future recyclers; a long-term orbit, which is accessible, but long term can’t be guaranteed to be long-enough term; and finally, on some planetary surface, most likely the Moon because it’s the most convenient.

Lunar storage sounds like a winner to me. There’s no ecology to mess up there, the existing natural radiation environment will put that particular grade of nuclear waste to shame when it comes to particle dispensing, and we can retrieve it any time we want, while making it hard (at least right now) for terrorists to get their hands on it.

So, great storage location. Now, how do we get it there? Aye, there’s the rub.

The two problems, of course, are cost and safety. It turns out that both are tractable, as long as one doesn’t use Shuttle, or any existing launcher as a paradigm for the achievable. The key to both reducing cost and increasing reliability is high flight rate of reusable systems–what I call space transports.

Fortunately, like space tourism, hazardous waste disposal may be a large enough market to allow such a system to be developed. A thousand tons is a thousand flights of a vehicle with a one-ton payload. And there are many thousands of tons of nuclear waste in storage. And the tonnage will only increase if it’s further processed for safe handling and storage (such as vitrification, in which it is encased in glass).

Preliminary estimates indicate that it can in fact be done economically in the context of the current nuclear industry operating costs; the major issue is safety. This issue has been addressed as well, and it’s something that Nevada (a state that also offers high potential as a home for rocket racing and the space tourism industry) should take seriously as a possible alternative to terrestrial storage.

If anyone in Carson City is interested, I’m available for consulting…

Popular Culture

Wild Horses Couldn’t Drag Me Away

Steven den Beste has an interesting post about feral horses. It’s particularly interesting to me right now, because I’m up in wild horse country.

He’s right. This isn’t an endangered species issue–it’s more of an emotional and cultural one. We’re read too many romantic stories about horses running free, unbound from bridle and fence. Wild horses are one of those “large charismatic animals” that get too much attention relative to smaller, less cute, but more endangered species.

And it’s a powerful emotion, too. I still vividly recall a time, over a decade ago, that I was driving in a remote valley on the California-Nevada border, population density .0001 per square mile, and I saw a small herd off in the distance. It was a stallion with three mares and a couple colts, running with the wind. They looked as though they belonged there.

But until I read Steven’s post, it hadn’t occured to me that they might have an inbreeding problem, and certainly, given the finite resource of the open sage, it would make more sense to use it for animals that are not raised by the millions domestically.

Popular Culture

Wild Horses Couldn’t Drag Me Away

Steven den Beste has an interesting post about feral horses. It’s particularly interesting to me right now, because I’m up in wild horse country.

He’s right. This isn’t an endangered species issue–it’s more of an emotional and cultural one. We’re read too many romantic stories about horses running free, unbound from bridle and fence. Wild horses are one of those “large charismatic animals” that get too much attention relative to smaller, less cute, but more endangered species.

And it’s a powerful emotion, too. I still vividly recall a time, over a decade ago, that I was driving in a remote valley on the California-Nevada border, population density .0001 per square mile, and I saw a small herd off in the distance. It was a stallion with three mares and a couple colts, running with the wind. They looked as though they belonged there.

But until I read Steven’s post, it hadn’t occured to me that they might have an inbreeding problem, and certainly, given the finite resource of the open sage, it would make more sense to use it for animals that are not raised by the millions domestically.

Popular Culture

Wild Horses Couldn’t Drag Me Away

Steven den Beste has an interesting post about feral horses. It’s particularly interesting to me right now, because I’m up in wild horse country.

He’s right. This isn’t an endangered species issue–it’s more of an emotional and cultural one. We’re read too many romantic stories about horses running free, unbound from bridle and fence. Wild horses are one of those “large charismatic animals” that get too much attention relative to smaller, less cute, but more endangered species.

And it’s a powerful emotion, too. I still vividly recall a time, over a decade ago, that I was driving in a remote valley on the California-Nevada border, population density .0001 per square mile, and I saw a small herd off in the distance. It was a stallion with three mares and a couple colts, running with the wind. They looked as though they belonged there.

But until I read Steven’s post, it hadn’t occured to me that they might have an inbreeding problem, and certainly, given the finite resource of the open sage, it would make more sense to use it for animals that are not raised by the millions domestically.

General

Blogs Want To Be Free

Joanne Jacobs has a new term for what we do–freeblogs. It’s not perfect, but I find it far preferable to “warblog,” which I’ve never considered this. I think that the warblog term gained currency because so many of them popped up in the wake of 911, but very few of them focus exclusively on the war, including this one.

BTW, Joanne had a great column at Fox News this weekend. In fact, all of the weblogs at Fox News last week (Will, Ken, Moira, and Tim) were great, with the possible (probable?) exception of my own.

Political Commentary

Back To Electoral College

Shiloh Bucher pointed me to an article on the electoral college, and why it would be a very bad idea to get rid of it. Over a year after the Florida debacle, it’s easier to discuss this a little more dispassionately, but I suspect that whatever hysterical movements were afoot at that time to abolish it are also much diminished, to the point of irrelevance.

But it’s worth making one more point about it, that was never really discussed at the time. Many bemoaned the fact that Bush was elected with less than fifty percent of the vote (though he got a higher percentage than Bill Clinton in either election), and more legitimately, that he got a lower percentage than Gore. But you can’t change the rules after the election. I know for a fact that in my case, had the election been predicated on the most popular vote, I would have voted differently.

I wanted Bush to win, given the realistic alternatives, but because I am a Wyoming voter, I knew that it was safe to vote for someone else, because Bush was going to win Wyoming handily anyway. I also knew that the popular vote could be close (though I expected Bush to win it with margin to spare). As it turned out, I voted for Nader (holding my nose) just on the theory that if he got enough votes he would be eligible for future public funding, which would make him an ongoing thorn in the Democrats’ side, and I was confident that he had no chance of winning, especially in Wyoming. But if it was to have been solely decided on the popular vote, I certainly would have voted for Bush.

That’s just one reason why attempts to change the rules after the election were just…wrong.

Uncategorized

America Going Down

I know that I’m a little behind the curve here, having been traveling, but I can’t let this article from Down Under pass without comment.

Speaking at the 2002 World Congress on the Peaceful Reunification of China and World Peace in Sydney, Mr Clinton said this “brief moment in history” when the US had pre-eminent military, economic and political power, would not last.

“This is just a period, a few decades this will last, and I think that all of us who are Americans should think about this and ask ourselves how do we wish this moment to be judged 50 years from now,” he said.

Well, Bill, you certainly did everything that you could to make it end sooner, rather than later.

But even assuming that he’s correct, just what is his point here? That because some other country might (he says that it’s foreordained, but it’s in actuality entirely up to us and our policies, and whether or not we elect any more Bill Clintons) become more economically, militarily, culturally powerful than us sometime in the future, that we should now grovel before those who despise and terrorize us?

The former president said he did not want to be critical of the current US Administration.

Of course, he didn’t want to let bin Laden get away, or take campaign donations from the PRC, or get hummers from Monica, either. The man just can’t help himself.

“I certainly have no illusions about the North Korean Government,” he said.

A statement that is contradicted by his very next sentence, vis:

“. . . But the fact is they ended their nuclear program in 94, in 98 they ended testing of long-range missiles and in 2000 we had the elements of an agreement with them to end their entire missile program.”

Look out whenever the guy who reinvented the word “is” says “the fact is.” The fact is Bill Clinton has no clue as to whether or not North Korea ended its nuclear program, its missile program, or any other program in those, or any years.

[Update at 5:04 PM PST]

Reader John Thacker points out this editorial in the Taipei Times commenting on this speech. The Taiwanese aren’t very happy with Mr. Clinton either. I didn’t address this point, but as John points out, the “World Congress on the Peaceful Reunification of China and World Peace” is an organization that accepts as a premise that Taiwan will be reunified with the mainland, and the “Peaceful” part is just a euphemism for “by whatever means necessary.” So Mr. Bill didn’t just sell us out for Chinese money, he’s continuing to do the same to Taiwan.

Uncategorized

Free-Enterprise-Space Media Watch

Professor Reynolds helpfully points to an article in the National Review Online by someone named Eli Lehrer, of whom I had previously never heard. There’s little new here for those who’ve been reading my rants on the subject of government vs private space for the last few months, but it’s nice to see these themes being picked up by the general media, particularly in a conservative journal, because space has been one of those policy areas in which many conservatives tend to check their brains at the door, often defending this particular government program even as they assail others.

Also, there is one blooper in it (with a confusing, and probably mistaken, link). He states that there is a company in Virginia offering orbital flight for $98,000 dollars, but simply points to the home page for the X-Prize Foundation, which makes no such mention of such a project. I suspect that he meant to refer to Space Adventures, who I believe are taking deposits for sub-hundred K$ trips, but for a suborbital flight, not an orbital one (i.e., a ride that goes up a to a hundred kilometers or more, spends several minutes in weightlessness, and then returns to earth, but does not make a full orbit). I believe that we will eventually be able to offer orbital flight for this amount of money or less, but not in the next few years, and anyone who is actually offering it for that price is a fool or a charlatan, or both.

His X-Prize Foundation link is screwed up as well, because it points to a NASA press release from December 26, 2001 that seems to have nothing to do with the point of his article, particularly in the context of the link.

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!