Monday Mop-Up: More on Genes, Carnival, Podcasts and Internet Privacy

A Retrospective About Posts that I Posted and Posts I Meant to Post

Grannies and Genes: A Set of Blogs

At various public meetings, the Vermont Yankee "Raging Grannies" hand out a quote from Alice Stewart. This quote is basically a summary of eugenics. Over the past week I have had four blog posts on the subject. The first post described the grannies. The next three posts talked about how the quote fits into the eugenics agenda, and why we should care.

My first post, Older and Unthinking, described the Grannies trespassing and arrest at Vermont Yankee. Some of the women have been arrested at the plant nine times, but charges are never brought against them. I suggested that being old shouldn't give you a pass on repeated lawbreaking.

My next three posts were about the Alice Stewart quote and its implications. The quote is distributed at public meetings by the grannies. Stewart claims that any mutation will spread through the population and contaminate the gene pool. A "bad seed" will build "defective genes into the population" and these will "never be rooted out."

This is the standard form of the eugenics argument: discrimination against people who are "defective" and have "defective genes." The argument has been used to forcibly sterilize imbeciles. Often, "imbecile" is defined as "person of another race" (such as the Abenaki First Nation in Vermont).

When I objected to receiving the eugenics handout at a Public Service Board meeting, I was roundly booed by the plant opponents.

My first post on this topic described the prinicples of eugenics: Grannies and Eugenics, the Cruelty of Ignorance.

The second post talked a little about Alice Stewart and her philosophy, and also explained why Vermonters, especially, should avoid making the eugenics argument. Eugenics frequently starts by trying to rid the world of "defective" genes and people, but it usually moves on to outright racism. That is what happened in Vermont with the Abenakis. My post: Alice Stewart's Work. Also, How Eugenics Affected Vermont.

My third post described modern genetics, and why "defective" genes don't actually build up in a population: Genes in Populations: A More Modern View.

The bottom line on all of this: The eugenics model is not how genes spread. Believing that eugenics is the correct model is cruel and eventually racist. The grannies should stop handing out eugenics literature at public meetings.

A Retrospective on the Posts: What About the Grannies Themselves?

There is another bottom line. Do I think the Grannies themselves are racist? No. I think they are ignorant of what they are doing, rather than racist.

They found a quote from Alice Stewart, and it fit with their ideas about how bad radiation is: "See, one bad gene can ruin the whole gene pool!"

I think that the Grannies:

• know very little about science (modern genetics)
• know even less about the history of science (the rise and fall of eugenics)
• know very little about many aspects of regular history (Hitler and eugenics, Vermont and the Abenaki and eugenics).

I think they simply don't know they are distributing a quote that summarizes the world-view of eugenics, from a person (born in 1906) who may have written these words during the hey-day of eugenics in the 30s. That's why I titled my first post: the cruelty of ignorance, rather than the cruelty of racism. That's also why I refer to them as the "eugenics grannies" not the "racist grannies."

Ignorance can lead to very bad results, however. Including racism.

Carnival

I announced the Fifteenth Blog Carnival of Nuclear Energy in one of the eugenics posts. It was pretty well buried in the post, so I repeat it here.

The Fifteenth Blog Carnival of Nuclear Energy is up at Next Big Future. Nuclear Townhall notes that the Bellefonte plant at TVA is set to move forward again (construction was stopped in the 70s). Dan Yurman discusses the license process for Small Modular Reactors, and Charles Barton has a post about Australian climate scientist Barry Brook and his move to nuclear. Steve Aplin reviews the movie Countdown to Zero, about nuclear proliferation, including important insights about Iran's program. Brian Wang has put together a very interesting and eclectic mix of blog posts. Thank you Brian.

Come to the carnival! You always learn something, and it's fun, too!

The Atomic Show Podcast

I was honored and flattered to be on Rod Adams Podcast yesterday evening. Three of us discussed various topics, including the slowdown of the nuclear renaissance in this country. The three participants were Rod Adams of Atomic Insights blog, Charles Barton of Nuclear Green Revolution blog, and myself.

Download Atomic Show Podcast #160, Bumps in the Renaissance Road to hear what we said about the Renaissance, nuclear art, and more.

Internet Privacy

Yes. I'm off topic and talking about our daughter again.

In a previous post I noted that our daughter Julia Angwin is a Wall Street Journal tech editor. She just finished spearheading a major WSJ investigative project on "What They Know." This project explores what Internet marketers know about you. The WSJ web site for the project has databases and interactive graphics so you can explore your own experience.

Since then, Julia has been on several radio and television programs, talking about the project. Here is a link to see her on C-Span (forty minute interview). And here's a link to her appearance on the the NPR radio show On Point. This episode had the intriguing title of Creepy Commerce. In this program, Julia was on a panel that included an internet advertising executive. Nothing like controversy to make a show exciting!

Mop Image from Wikimedia

Carnival Image is the Carousel in the square at Avignon.

Genes in Populations: a More Modern View

Quicktime Oversimplified Genetics: So What Happens to Genes in Populations?

Since I have spent so much time on eugenics and Alice Stewart and the eugenics Grannies, I want to spend a little time on real genetics. As I mentioned in earlier posts, we all contain less-than-ideal genes. However, such genes don't "build up in the gene pool" as eugenics and Alice Stewart believe. Here's a part of Stewart's quote: It's the genetic damage, the possibility of sowing bad seeds into the gene pool from which future generations are drawn. There will be a buildup of defective genes into the population. It won't be noticed until it is too late.

To understand why defective genes don't build up and fill the gene pool, we have to talk about genes a bit.

Full disclosure: the following sections are oversimplified.

Recessive Genes

Some genes are recessive. They only express themselves when two people carrying the same gene have a child. For example, two people carrying Tay-Sachs gene could have a child who dies young of Tay-Sachs, but if only one parent is carrying the gene, the child will not have the syndrome.

Aside: If the gene leads to a visible result in the child, such as a child afflicted with Tay-Sachs syndrome, it is said that the gene is "expressed" in the child. This is an oversimplification of the term "expression" for genes, but I can't think of a better term. I could begin referring to genotypes and phenotypes, but that would make this post completely unreadable. End aside.

Since there are so many genes, we are all carrying some bad recessive genes. The way to avoid having these genes expressed in the children is to marry someone who doesn't share lots of genes with you. This is why first-cousin marriage is illegal in some states. The two cousins share so many genes that negative recessive genes are more likely to be expressed in the child.

Anthropologists have found many example of matrimonial moieties in societies. The society is divided into two kinship groups by descent (two moieties), and it has a marriage rule that everyone must marry someone from the other kinship group. This type of rule lessens the number of children with a double dose of a negative recessive gene. Other societies have other types of exogamy (marrying out) rules. Not all societies have these types of rules.

Negative recessive genes have been with the human race for a long time, and society has found some ways to mitigate the problems they cause. The usual method of mitigating recessive gene problems is to avoid inbreeding.

Dominant genes

What about negative genes that are "dominant?" A dominant gene expresses itself in the child, even if only one parent has the gene, and gives it to the child. In general, dominant negative genes do not spread widely because they decrease the fitness of the person to have children. They certainly don't cause a "buildup of defective genes in the population" as Alice Stewart claimed. As a matter of fact, negative dominant genes usually die out very quickly in the population because they decrease biological fitness.

Some negative dominant genes remain, however. Huntington's Disease, which killed Woody Guthrie, is caused by a dominant lethal gene. Only one gene from one parent is enough to cause the syndrome and eventually cause death.

However, since the Huntington's gene often doesn't express itself until the affected person is middle-aged (Guthrie died in his fifties), a person with the Huntington's gene can still live to have children. Therefore, the gene continues in the gene pool. It certainly doesn't spread and "contaminate the whole gene pool" and so forth, but it does remain in the population.

I am grateful for music written and sung by Woody Guthrie and his son Arlo. I am glad that no eugenicists were around to make sure that people with Huntingtons didn't contaminate the gene pool!

Dominant lethal genes are just as bad as it gets, genetically. Yet people with such genes can contribute to the strength and joy of society.

To prove it, this video of a song from the man with Huntingtons.

Another aside: Of course, what is positive and what is negative in a gene is not as clear as it used to be, either. Sickle cell disease is caused by a double dose of the sickle cell gene. However, a single dose of the gene, sickle cell trait, is protective against malaria. Modern genetics is not as simple as eugenics, which may be why the Grannies don't quote it. End Aside.

The Conversation is Private Now

In the days when eugenics was popular, the right of a person to reproduce was considered subservient to more important goals of society. This was reflected in the Stewart quote about "genetic damage" and the "buildup of defective genes in the population." At that time, society's goals were stated in terms of protecting the gene pool, ridding society of imbeciles, and so forth. Often, as in Vermont and the Abenakis, the definition of imbecile was "people from another ethnic group." The Stewart quote above and the Oliver Wendell Holmes ruling quoted in earlier posts exemplify this world-view.

Now, things are different. Genetic testing is common. While it is common to abort fetuses that have genetic problems, it is not universal to do so. (I am not arguing for or against abortion here, just pointing out that debates about the subject are NOT debates about saving society and the gene pool from defective genes.) Special-needs children are not called "imbeciles." They are not warehoused in institutions until they die. They are treated as the human beings they are.

In other words, the conversation about genetics has changed. It's a private conversation nowadays, a conversation about individuals. It's a kinder conversation, too. Society has grown in thoughtfulness and compassion as our knowledge has grown. For most people, the cruelty embodied in the early 20th century views of genetics is a thing of the past. Human dignity is now considered more important than protecting society from "defective" genes.

I hope the eugenics Grannies will soon join the twenty-first century, at least in terms of genetics and human dignity.

Alice Stewart's Work. Also, How Eugenics Affected Vermont

In the previous post, I wrote about eugenics in general and how the Grannie's handout expressed the eugenics worldview. In my opinion, the post was not specific enough in some areas.

This post includes more detail about two topics:

1) Alice Stewart herself: who she was and what she did

2) Why people in Vermont should be particularly concerned with avoiding support of the eugenics agenda.

The topics fill in the gaps of my previous post. I do not mean to imply that Stewart directly practiced eugenics in Vermont.

Alice Stewart

Alice Stewart is the author of the eugenics material handed out by the anti-nuclear grannies at a recent Public Service Board (PSB) meeting. I described this in a post about anti-nuclear activists and eugenics.

A little about Alice Stewart. She was born in 1906, and Stewart's biography in Wikipedia tells us that she was a physician who studied the effects of radiation. She started off by doing good things: for example, her work encouraged pregnant women to avoid x-rays. As I read it, later in her life she began to allow ideology to dominate her science. She apparently allowed a co-worker to fudge data about excessive cancers in workers at Hanford. This whole matter is still highly controversial: what she knew, what the co-worker did, and so forth.

In the Hanford work and other work, Alice Stewart was defending the linear non-threshold model of radiation damage. Her work (her error?) shows radiation to be more damaging than other studies reported. She is a hero to those who are opposed to nuclear power. For example, she received the Right Livelihood Award, an award also given to Armory Lovins.

As the quote distributed by the Grannies illustrates, Alice Stewart was also a follower of eugenics. Her concern was:

It's the genetic damage, the possibility of sowing bad seeds into the gene pool from which future generations are drawn. There will be a buildup of defective genes into the population. It won't be noticed until it is too late. Then, we'll never root it out, never get rid of it. It will be totally irrevocable.

Vermont and Eugenics

Eugenics was popular in Vermont, to the everlasting shame of the state. In the twenties and thirties, the indigenous Abenaki Indians were targeted for sterilization because of their "defective genes." According to their enemies, Abenaki were trying to disguise themselves as French Canadians, but they were actually degenerate "river rats." Hundreds, possibly thousands, were sterilized. Being identified as an Abenaki was dangerous. For example, playing the drums at home could bring the police, and the household might be added to a list of "degenerates."

The Ndakinna Cultural Center encourages Native American Culture in Vermont. Its website includes an excellent summary of the situation on the page: Eugenics in Vermont and the Hidden Lives of the Abenaki.

In 1999, UPNE (University Press of New England) published Breeding Better Vermonters, an important book by Nancy Gallagher about this history. Tara Marshall, an Abenaki, reviewed the book on Amazon. Some excerpts from her review:

It affected many Vermonters, including my grandmother's cousin, who was seized, put in a mental institution, and sterilized. The reason. He was Abenaki....the surviving victims of the Vermont Eugenics society (have not been) recompensed in any way for the pain and suffering they've been through.

I had never heard of these sterilizations until about a year ago, when I went to a booksigning by local authors. That day, Beth Kanell read from her young adult book, Darkness Under the Water. The School Library Journal description of that book begins with the following words:

Grade 8 Up—Molly and her Abenaki family get caught up in a government eugenics project set to rid Vermont of "weak links" in the genetic code.

At the booksigning, I liked Ms. Kanell and I liked her writing style. I didn't buy the book because the subject felt too dark for me. I feel bad about that. I didn't want to contemplate the painful past.

Vermonters Today

As humans and as Vermonters, we can not allow the cruelties of the past to become the way of the future. We must avoid supporting the agenda of eugenics. Obviously, this starts with refusing to distribute or support eugenics literature.

The Eugenics Grannies should be ashamed of themselves.

(I will post about modern genetics soon.)

------------------------------------------------------------------------

And now...for something really different....

It's Blog Carnival Time Again!

The Fifteenth Blog Carnival of Nuclear Energy is up at Next Big Future. Nuclear Townhall notes that Bellefonte plant at TVA is set to move forward again (construction was stopped in the 70s). Dan Yurman discusses the license process for Small Modular Reactors, and Charles Barton has a post about Australian climate scientist Barry Brook and his move to nuclear. Steve Aplin reviews the movie Countdown to Zero, about nuclear proliferation, including important insights about Iran's program. Brian Wang has put together a very interesting and eclectic mix of blog posts. Thank you Brian.

Come to the carnival! You always learn something.

DNA image from Wikipedia

Abenaki First Nations, 18th Century Image from Wikipedia

Grannies and Eugenics: The Cruelty of Ignorance

Racism and the "Raging Grannies"

In July, the Public Service Board (PSB) held a meeting in Brattleboro. At that meeting, one of the "Raging Grannies" handed a copy of the document below to everyone in the crowd. (Double-clicking on the image will enlarge it.)

This is a quote from Alice Stewart, born in 1906, a pioneer against misuse of radiation. She sees mutations caused by radiation as the worst scenario possible. Mutations (any mutations, she doesn't mention radiation in this quote) lead to

It's the genetic damage, the possibility of sowing bad seeds into the gene pool from which future generations are drawn. There will be a buildup of defective genes into the population. It won't be noticed until it is too late. Then, we'll never root it out, never get rid of it. It will be totally irrevocable.

Stewart was an early pioneer in radiation research. She was born in 1906, and spent her youth and young adulthood during the heyday of eugenics. Her quote above is a clear statement of the all-too-common Eugenics view, which was widely held in the early to middle of the 20th century.

(In order to not get sidetracked, I plan another post about Alice Stewart and genetics in general.)

The Eugenics View

According to eugenics, any negative change to a gene would propagate through the population, driving down the level of human beings. The eugenics model for the spread of negative genes is exactly as Stewart states it above. (Of course, the top people in society had the privilege of deciding what a negative gene was and who belongs to a lower level of humans.)

As science, this is complete bunk. We know a great deal about how genes propagate in populations. Eugenics is wrong. Eugenics is just a stupid incorrect model, based on fear and prejudice, and pushed for a political agenda. After WWII, eugenics went out of fashion, having reached its zenith under Hitler.

By the way. Hitler didn't go after the Jews first. He went after the retarded, the ones with "defective genes" that had to be "rooted out." Hitler started with eugenics, sterilizing and euthanizing retarded German children. With this success behind him, he later expanded his reach.

America, Forced Sterilization, and Buck vs. Bell

Wouldn't it be nice if it was just evil Mr. Hitler who followed Eugenics? It wasn't. America and Britain were at the forefront of the movement. People in America sterilized the retarded at a great rate: 20,000 sterilizations in California alone. Buck vs. Bell was a Supreme Court case in 1927 about whether the retarded could be sterilized by the state. The answer: They could be sterilized without their consent. As Oliver Wendell Holmes, Justice of the Supreme Court, wrote in his opinion on Buck vs. Bell: "Three generations of imbeciles is enough."

According to the Wikipedia article about this case, the woman who was sterilized was an avid reader, and her only daughter (a girl who died young of measles) was an honor student. When you are sterilizing imbeciles, I gather you also get to choose who is an imbecile.

There's an extremely disturbing video of the Buck vs. Bell case, with footage from 1927. I decided not to embed it. I'll add a picture of Frances Galton, the father of Eugenics instead. Handsome guy, yes? Let's have some eye-candy.

I Speak at the Meeting. People Boo.

Back to Alice Stewart and the PSB meeting. At meeting where this yellow sheet was handed out, we could sign up to give two minute opinions about Vermont Yankee. I spoke briefly about Yankee. Then I objected to being handed racist eugenics material at a public meeting about a power plant.

I was roundly booed as I spoke. People hissed that I should learn some history. They shouted that Alice Stewart was not a racist. It was all very upsetting. The opponents of the plant simply could not see this handout for what it was.

Ignorance is Ignorance. Ignorance is Cruelty.

I'll write a in another post about how our knowledge of genetics has grown. Right now, I just want to say that in their eagerness to show what immense, irreparable harm nuclear plants do, the Grannies ignore modern biology. They have chosen eugenics as the biological model that better suits their needs to bash the power plant. They have gone too far for me.

Let me address the Grannies here. Stop handing that Alice Stewart statement out. Okay? Stop using those eugenics arguments. Can't you read that statement? Can't you read how the same words are about Defending the White Race and rooting out defects? Just stop it. Bash nuclear power some other way. As I said above: Eugenics is wrong. Eugenics is just a stupid incorrect model, based on fear and prejudice, and pushed for a political agenda.

And be a little humble, my friends. We are all carrying less-than-perfect genes, and the more we learn about genetics, the more we begin to know about our own genes. People have genes that carry higher risks of breast cancer, alcoholism, autism, you name it. You begin talking about "never being able to root out bad genes," and you are forgetting the part about genetic heritage that can be described as "for whom the bell tolls."

It tolls for thee. And for me. And for all of us.

Photograph of Francis Galton, the Father of Eugenics, from Wikimedia.

A Thoughtful Post About Excess

Karen Street blogs at A Musing Environment. The subtitle of her blog is A Friend looks at (mostly) the environment. Karen blogs from the somewhat unusual perspective of a member of the Society of Friends who is not opposed to nuclear power. The Friends do not take "creedal" positions. However, as a practical matter, the Friends emphasis on Christian pacifism has (mostly) spilled over into an anti-nuclear stance.

A few days ago, I posted It's the Energy,Why I Love Nuclear about the importance of electricity to the third world. Karen commented as follows:

One of your graphs shows among countries with GDP per capita over $30k, kWh per capita is >2.5x for some than others.

I add this because it can sound as if people advocating for the poor are also advocating for my right to waste. A lot more people will agree with you if you make this point.

I think that energy gives us choices, no matter how rich we are, and I answered Karen's comment in my post Prosperity for Rich Folks. Late last night, Karen commented upon that by sending a link to her most recent post, a very thoughtful essay about the environmental and spiritual dangers of excess.

I have another post about those grannies scheduled for later today, and a very busy morning ahead of me. I couldn't reply immediately to Karen's post anyway; I need to do some thinking about it. However, I didn't want the link to her post to remain buried deep in the comments of an older post on my blog. So here's the link and I encourage you to read it.

Are we richer if we make perceived convenience the priority?

The image is a painting by Albert Anker: "Excess" From Wikimedia.

Older and Unthinking: The Grandmas at Yankee

The video above is not from the most recent arrests of elderly women at Vermont Yankee. It's about a year old, from the Rutland Herald covering the September 2009 arrests of the same elderly women at Vermont Yankee.

They were arrested again at Vermont Yankee just a few days ago. The Rutland Herald article describing the more recent arrests notes that charges are never filed. Some of these women have been arrested nine times at Yankee, without any charges as follow-up. The self-named "Raging Grannies" are okay with that. The Rutland Herald reported:

Nestel said she didn't at all feel frustrated by the lack of prosecution, and she said the act of civil disobedience was a profound experience for the protesters.

(Hattie Nestel is featured in the video above.)

By trespassing on the plant grounds, the older women play chicken with the guards, disrupt the plant, and make sure Vermont Yankee gets negative publicity. If a guard actually shot them, Vermont Yankee would get even worse publicity. It's a good thing the guards are well trained to safeguard the plant while avoiding the use of force. I know some people who work at the plant who might well say: "Oh, don't tempt me!"

However, the protesters do have a profound experience when they protest. That's got to be worth something.

Older But Not Wiser

If the plant and the prosecutor feel like pressing charges, I think they should press charges. If they decide that pressing charges will just clutter up the court system, they shouldn't press charges.

However, as a grandma myself, I believe very strongly that this decision should be made without respect to the age of the law-breakers. I don't believe people should get a free pass to disobey the laws because they are older. If I broke a law, I would expect Bad Things might happen to me. If I broke laws repeatedly, I expect that Bad Things (like jail time) would certainly happen to me.

I learned cause and effect about law-breaking back in civics class, in sixth grade. They didn't have these new-fangled horseless carriages back then, but us kids really learned.

Oh. Okay, I'm not that old. I'm basically a Boomer.

My opinion. Trespassing and tempting people to shoot you is not funny. I think that someone should bring charges. Let's not have a tenth set of arrests and get-out-of-jail-free cards.

Zirconium and the Future: Why Research is Important

An Expected Ruling

On Friday, August 6, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) turned down a request for enforcement against Vermont Yankee by the New England Coalition (NEC). In June, the NEC had asked that Vermont Yankee be required to operate its core at a much lower temperature. The NEC claimed that zirconium alloy (zircaloy) cladding is a fire hazard at Vermont Yankee's current operating temperatures.

Why all the concern about zirconium cladding? Fuel pellets are made of oxides (mostly uranium oxide) and can't burn. However, the fuel pellets are encased in zircaloy, which is metallic. Metals don't generally burst into flame. However, unlike oxides, metals can burn. So it is reasonable to be concerned about the temperature at which zircaloy will burn.

The NRC regulation for maximum temperature of light water reactor fuel cladding is 2200 F, while Vermont Yankee plant operates at 2060 F or below. However, NEC asked the NRC to rule that Vermont Yankee must operate with fuel cladding temperatures no higher than 1700 F. Naturally, the NRC turned down this request. No reputable regulatory agency is going to tell a plant that is in compliance with regulations: "Sorry. You think you are in compliance, but you aren't in compliance. We have changed the regulations and made them far stricter, just for you."

Besides being unfair, this would be a great way for a regulatory agency to get itself sued. Of course the NRC didn't do this. After several conference calls with people from NEC, the NRC sent NEC a letter basically saying: No. We're not going to tell Vermont Yankee to operate at a lower temperature. Your concerns are more generic than anything specific to Vermont Yankee. Your concerns will be forwarded to our area for general rulemaking.

You can download the letter the NRC sent NEC here, and also read the Brattleboro Reformer article on the ruling.

But Wait, There's More!

The request above was specific to Vermont Yankee. It was filed by NEC in June of this year, and turned down at the beginning of August, as described above.

However, there was an earlier request by Mark Leyse, a nuclear engineer and the son of Robert Leyse, also a nuclear engineer. Mark Leyse lives in New York city. Mark Leyse has made many requests to the NRC for re-evaluation of safety measures. He is particularly concerned with fuel cladding, apparently believing that the NRC has ignored his father's research results on this issue.

Mr. Mark Leyse's November 2009 request for lower temperature operation of all reactors has become an NRC rulemaking docket. Leyse's November 17, 2009 petition to the NRC is the first item in this docket. Leyse claims that oxidation of cladding became a self-sustaining reaction at around 1800 degrees, and that the NRC has ignored this situation for forty years. In the petition asking for rulemaking, Leyse quotes his father's test results from forty years ago. Mark Lesye includes a letter from his father Robert Leyse about tests dated 1970 on pae 116 of his petition. Throughout the petition, Leyse also extensively discusses the test, Flecht Run 9573, reported in 1973. (For simplicity, I am referring to these references as "forty-year old data." Strictly speaking, some of the quoted data is only thirty-seven years old.)

The consequences of all this, as always, are assumed to be dire. Here's a quote from the Rutland Herald article:

The NRC earlier in spring had already agreed to consider the matter raised by Mark Leyse of New York City, but in a review track that will take years, not months. The New England Coalition wants the margin of safety increased immediately.

Leyse and Raymond Shadis, senior technical adviser to the coalition, say Vermont Yankee’s peak cladding temperature of 1,960 degrees Fahrenheit only gives the plant operators 30 seconds to react during a loss-of-coolant incident scenario.

Thirty seconds. Sounds terrible, doesn't it? And "takes years, not months" sounds perfectly awful.

But Wait, There's Less!

I decided to review Mr. Leyse's letter, because I couldn't figure out some of the comments in the press. What does reactor operating temperature have to do with loss-of-cooling accidents (LOCA)? Of course, to some extent, a hotter reactor is slower to cool, but everything about a LOCA analysis is built with huge margins of error. And how could forty-year-old lab data be ignored by everybody, when zircaloy must be one of the most-studied compounds in the world? Zircaloy it has been used for cladding since the very first reactors, and people have been studying it forever. Just Google "Zircaloy" to see the endless lists of papers and references.

And, of course, my major question. If zircaloy bursts into flame in water above 1700 Fahrenheit, and reactors routinely operate at 1900 Fahrenheit, how come they haven't all burned up already?

I reviewed the document to the best of my ability, and I welcome comments that will improve my review. Here's my analysis, with some quotes from Leyse's letter to NRC.

The Leyse request doesn't just refer to the temperature at which zirconium might burn in water. Instead, it also says that the modeling of loss of cooling accidents, the flood rate of water into the core, and the Baker-Just and Cathcart-Pawel equations non-conservative for calculating the temperature at which an autocatalytic (runaway) oxidation reaction of Zircaloy would occur in the event of a LOCA. .....Additionally, it can be extrapolated from experimental data that, in the event a LOCA, a constant core reflood rate of approximately one inch per second or lower (1 in./sec. or lower) would not, with high probability, prevent Zircaloy fuel cladding, that at the onset of reflood had cladding temperatures of approximately 1200F or greater, from exceeding the 10 C.F.R. § 50.46(b)(1) PCT limit of 2200 F.

In other words, this is not just about zircaloy. In this petition. Mark Leyse claims that just about every model used in the nuclear industry is inadequate. Zircaloy properties, LOCA calculations, reflood calculations--all wrong. In 2002, his father, Robert Leyse, said the same thing. The elder Leyse petitioned the NRC for rule-making about the Baker-Just and Cathcart-Pawel equations and LOCAs, and the NRC found his contentions to be not scientifically valid and wrote him to that effect in 2005.

This latest contention by Mark Leyse is a replay of this 2002 petition by Robert Leyse. Unfortunately, the NRC cannot just say: "Hey, we did this before. These contentions were made in a petition in 2002, and we settled these points in a ruling in 2005." No, they have to look at it again. This gives the opponents of nuclear power the opportunity to complain that it takes the NRC three years to look at anything.

Conspiracies Not Research

Robert and Mark Leyse seem to believe that all the research that has been done over the past forty years on LOCA modeling, zircaloy properties, and pretty much everything else....is part of a vast conspiracy to provide just the results the utilities want. The Leyses, and the Leyses alone, have the real facts, the true equations, the correct models. They discovered these "facts" forty years ago and have been ignored ever since.

I call this a conspiracy theory, decked out in scientific trappings.

Of course, once you buy into the idea that everything known about nuclear is wrong, then you can come up with scenarios where the entire core bursts into flame in thirty seconds and there is nothing anybody can do about it and so forth. This plays well with the anti-nuclear groups.

It doesn't play well with me. In science and technology, everything builds on what has gone before. Even the Einstein's famous breakthroughs were built on the past. He reviewed experiments that could not be explained without new ways of thinking about the speed of light. Einstein was attempting to explain the very latest experiments when he wrote his breakthrough papers.

I've done research, supervised research, and I deeply value research. Conspiracy theories that decide to ignore forty years of research should be called exactly what they are. Conspiracy theories.

I prefer science.

Update: NRC review of CORA tests, interim ruling now available here. Simplistic summary of NRC ruling: these results are in line with our other tests, and no rule changes are necessary.

Zirconium rod (not zircaloy) from Wikimedia.