The news has been carrying stories of unprofessional conduct on the part of Obama appointed NRC chairman Gregory Jaczko. According to the Wall St Journal, Jaczko was appointed to kill off the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste depository. This was to make the Nevada greens happy and get them to vote Obama in 2008. Jaczko has been accused of various illegal and unethical actions by the NRC inspector general. The affair ought to be on TV this coming week as Congressional hearing get under way.
A couple of things one ought to know, that the MSM doesn't talk about.
First, the nuclear wastes, actually spend fuel rods from commercial power reactors, don't need a super expensive under mountain storage facility way out in the desert. Fuel rods removed from reactors are placed in pools of water (swimming pools essentially) on the reactor site. They are very happy there, and it's safe, and economical. They can stay there, just about forever.
Second, if we were to recycle the fuel rods, the problem would go away. The spent fuel rods are still 90% fissionable uranium. All that is necessary is to remove the 10% fission products and you have most of a new fuel rod, ready to go on producing more electricity. Most other nuclear countries recycle their fuel rods.
What we really have here is a political contest between the greenies who want to shut down nuclear power generation, and the NIMBY's who don't want Yucca Mountain to open up in their state.
Saturday, June 11, 2011
Thursday, June 9, 2011
Simvastatin will kill me?
NHPR got my attention this morning when it ran a piece about the FDA bashing the anti cholesterol drug Simvastatin. I happen to be on Simvastatin, so that story struck right home. The FDA spokeman was strongly against use of Simvastatin and said it should have been taken off the market years ago. There are many other drugs that are better. Well, yes there are, namely Lipitor. Trouble is, Lipitor costs $3 a pill, Simvastatin costs $0.13 a pill at Walmart.
So I googled to find out what is going on. FDA ran a big study, 6000 people using the big 80 mg dose of Simvastatin and 6000 people using the smaller 20 mg dose. Less than 1 percent of the 80 Mg users came down with a rare muscle ailment that I never heard of. Less than 0.1 percent of users of the smaller 20 mg dose suffered from the same ailment. Well, that's statistically significant. The FDA gave no information linking the difference in risk to the drug, as opposed to underlying conditions in the patient. Patients taking the 80mg dose are doing it 'cause their cholesterol counts were higher and needed a stronger dose of Simvastatin to control it. Could be that patients with higher cholesterol counts are more vulnerable to the rare muscle ailment, but we will ignore that.
Checking my medicine cabinet I find I'm taking the 40 mg dose, not the 80 mg dose, so I'm OK there. Plus, rare muscle ailment usually strikes within a year of starting Simvastatin and I've been on it for longer than that.
So I googled to find out what is going on. FDA ran a big study, 6000 people using the big 80 mg dose of Simvastatin and 6000 people using the smaller 20 mg dose. Less than 1 percent of the 80 Mg users came down with a rare muscle ailment that I never heard of. Less than 0.1 percent of users of the smaller 20 mg dose suffered from the same ailment. Well, that's statistically significant. The FDA gave no information linking the difference in risk to the drug, as opposed to underlying conditions in the patient. Patients taking the 80mg dose are doing it 'cause their cholesterol counts were higher and needed a stronger dose of Simvastatin to control it. Could be that patients with higher cholesterol counts are more vulnerable to the rare muscle ailment, but we will ignore that.
Checking my medicine cabinet I find I'm taking the 40 mg dose, not the 80 mg dose, so I'm OK there. Plus, rare muscle ailment usually strikes within a year of starting Simvastatin and I've been on it for longer than that.
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
CEO of Government Motors calls for gas tax hike
Story is here. Aren't you glad to have your tax dollars bail out this company? Also note the comments on this article, most of them are in favor of the proposed gas tax hike.
Pilot Error
Last year Air France flight 447 disappeared over the south Atlantic. No distress calls, just gone. After a year long search of deep sea bottom, the wreck was located and the flight recorders were recovered from 10,000 feet. They must build 'em right cause after a year on the bottom of the ocean, they still work.
The flight recorders reveal that the aircraft, cruising at 38 thousand feet, had the autopilot suddenly trip off line, leaving the pilot[s] to hand fly the aircraft. This they failed to do. The aircraft went nose up and stalled. And stayed stalled, the pilots never pushed the stick forward to put the nose down, gain airspeed and fly out of the stall. The stall warning horn went off, but the aircrew failed to put the stick forward. The aircraft, stalled, fell from 38 thousand feet (seven miles high) and hit the sea.
This is really hard to believe, 'cause everyone knows about stalls, and everyone knows you push the stick forward to recover from a stall. There were three pilots on the flight deck, and not one of them came up with the right answer.
Contributing factor to the accident, the pitot tube iced up, which caused the indicated airspeed to drop to 60 knots. This is why the autopilot dropped off line, it is smart enough to know that the plane won't fly at 60 knots, something must be wrong, and it wanted the pilot to take over. Unfortunately the pilots could not fly the aircraft either.
The flight recorders reveal that the aircraft, cruising at 38 thousand feet, had the autopilot suddenly trip off line, leaving the pilot[s] to hand fly the aircraft. This they failed to do. The aircraft went nose up and stalled. And stayed stalled, the pilots never pushed the stick forward to put the nose down, gain airspeed and fly out of the stall. The stall warning horn went off, but the aircrew failed to put the stick forward. The aircraft, stalled, fell from 38 thousand feet (seven miles high) and hit the sea.
This is really hard to believe, 'cause everyone knows about stalls, and everyone knows you push the stick forward to recover from a stall. There were three pilots on the flight deck, and not one of them came up with the right answer.
Contributing factor to the accident, the pitot tube iced up, which caused the indicated airspeed to drop to 60 knots. This is why the autopilot dropped off line, it is smart enough to know that the plane won't fly at 60 knots, something must be wrong, and it wanted the pilot to take over. Unfortunately the pilots could not fly the aircraft either.
Tuesday, June 7, 2011
Cybertage, large scale
Aviation Week has a couple of dramatic pictures. The first shows the new power room of the Shushenskaya hydro electric plant. Huge, slightly curved room, big windows, spotless concrete floor with eight turbines neatly set out.
Second photo shows the same room after the accident, the place is wrecked, concrete floor torn apart, turbines and generators ripped apart and hurled into corners.
How did this happen? A plant employee used a network to remotely and accidentally activate an unused turbine with a few errant keystrokes. This created a water hammer that flooded and then destroyed the plant and killed dozens of workers. This happened back in 2009 in Siberia.
The obvious conclusion is that cyber hackers could make the same thing happen deliberately.
Which is why control of electric power generators should NEVER be done over the public internet, and should NEVER rely upon Windows computers.
Second photo shows the same room after the accident, the place is wrecked, concrete floor torn apart, turbines and generators ripped apart and hurled into corners.
How did this happen? A plant employee used a network to remotely and accidentally activate an unused turbine with a few errant keystrokes. This created a water hammer that flooded and then destroyed the plant and killed dozens of workers. This happened back in 2009 in Siberia.
The obvious conclusion is that cyber hackers could make the same thing happen deliberately.
Which is why control of electric power generators should NEVER be done over the public internet, and should NEVER rely upon Windows computers.
Ads slowing the net
I click on a web site, and wait, and wait. Firefox flashes up a running display of all the websites visited on the way to the blog I clicked on. All ad sites. I gotta wait for all the ads to load before I get to see the content I cared about.
There is an opening here, for a web site to claim faster than the average site. All it has to do is display content first and ads second.
There is an opening here, for a web site to claim faster than the average site. All it has to do is display content first and ads second.
Monday, June 6, 2011
Development cost at SpaceX one tenth of NASA.
Aviation Week says SpaceX developed and launched the Falcon 9 heavy lift rocket booster for $390 million. For comparison NASA used the NASA-Air Force Cost Model computer program to estimate the same job and found the computer estimated cost to be $4000 million, ten times as much. The cost savings are attributed to SpaceX program management technique.
NASA administrator Charles Bolden said "They don't spread things all over the country the way that NASA and defense contractors tend to do. They're very focused in two locations in the country. They bring everything in-house. They have no subcontractors, so everything comes to them."
NASA post Shuttle plans are up in the air. They ought to just purchase the Falcon 9 off-the-shelf to boost crew and cargo to the International Space Station. Congress wants NASA to develop their own heavy lift booster to keep the vast Shuttle workforce employed. The Obama administration wanted to drop the NASA heavy lifter development and concentrate on deep space missions. So far the three sides have not agreed on a policy, so things are just drifting. Meanwhile the US is paying the Russians something like $25 million a ticket to take US astronauts up to the International Space Station.
NASA administrator Charles Bolden said "They don't spread things all over the country the way that NASA and defense contractors tend to do. They're very focused in two locations in the country. They bring everything in-house. They have no subcontractors, so everything comes to them."
NASA post Shuttle plans are up in the air. They ought to just purchase the Falcon 9 off-the-shelf to boost crew and cargo to the International Space Station. Congress wants NASA to develop their own heavy lift booster to keep the vast Shuttle workforce employed. The Obama administration wanted to drop the NASA heavy lifter development and concentrate on deep space missions. So far the three sides have not agreed on a policy, so things are just drifting. Meanwhile the US is paying the Russians something like $25 million a ticket to take US astronauts up to the International Space Station.
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