From ITWire: CERN finds a boson, but not the Higgs boson
The Swiss particle physics organization European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) announced on Thursday, December 22, 2011, that the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has discovered a boson called Chi-b(3P).
Although the discovery was not the Higgs boson, it is in the right direction for eventually finding the elusive particle.
The discovered particle is called Chi-b(3P). It is a type of boson, meaning that it is a subatomic particle that carries force (and obeys Bose-Einstein statistics) – one that is called a force carrier particle.
And, while the Higgs boson is believed to not be made of smaller particles, the Chi-b(3P) does consist of smaller particles.
Specifically, Chi-b(3P) is made of the beauty (bottom) quark and its anti-bottom quark, and these two particles are held together by the strong nuclear force.
The Chi-b(3P) was predicted to exist a quarter of a century earlier, but until now, it had never-before been observed.
For more on this exciting story, please read the BBC News article “LHC reports discovery of its first new particle.”
In part, the BBC News article states, “The LHC is designed to fill in gaps in the Standard Model…. In particular, it is using the collisions to try to pin down the famous Higgs particle, which physicists hypothesize can explain why matter has mass. Discoveries such as Chi_b (3P) are an important part of this quest because they add to the wider background knowledge….”
Thursday, December 29, 2011
"God Particle" Search Narrows
From WIBC 93.1 FM (Indiana): "God Particle" Search Narrows
While Christians observe the birth of the son of God this week, scientists in Europe appear to be closing in on what's come to be known as the "God Particle."
This week, physicists working at the giant atom smasher operated by the European Organization for Nuclear Research say they reduced the window where they believe they will find the Higgs-Boson particle.
The Higgs-Boson is the particle some believe is the missing link, and would explain how the building blocks of matter fit together. Brian Murphy, a physics professor with the Holcomb Observatory at Butler University, says it's a misnomer to refer to it as the "God Particle", which actually comes from the title of a book by physicist Leon Lederman.
Murphy told Ed Wenck on Indy's Afternoon News that scientists believe Higgs-Boson is the particle that gives objects their mass by interacting with other particles. He says a good metaphor would be that the particle is the mortar as opposed to the brick.
"You have the force of gravity, but the particles actually have to have some interaction or communication between each other, and its believed the Higgs-Boson is what provides that," Murphy said.
Murphy says it is difficult to predict when the particle will actually be observed or what it will mean to humankind. He says years or decades sometimes pass before scientific discoveries pay off in observable dividends.
While Christians observe the birth of the son of God this week, scientists in Europe appear to be closing in on what's come to be known as the "God Particle."
This week, physicists working at the giant atom smasher operated by the European Organization for Nuclear Research say they reduced the window where they believe they will find the Higgs-Boson particle.
The Higgs-Boson is the particle some believe is the missing link, and would explain how the building blocks of matter fit together. Brian Murphy, a physics professor with the Holcomb Observatory at Butler University, says it's a misnomer to refer to it as the "God Particle", which actually comes from the title of a book by physicist Leon Lederman.
Murphy told Ed Wenck on Indy's Afternoon News that scientists believe Higgs-Boson is the particle that gives objects their mass by interacting with other particles. He says a good metaphor would be that the particle is the mortar as opposed to the brick.
"You have the force of gravity, but the particles actually have to have some interaction or communication between each other, and its believed the Higgs-Boson is what provides that," Murphy said.
Murphy says it is difficult to predict when the particle will actually be observed or what it will mean to humankind. He says years or decades sometimes pass before scientific discoveries pay off in observable dividends.
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
Calcutta, India: Indian duo find neutrino fault - Scanner on faster-than-light claim
From The Telegraph (Calcutta, India): Indian duo find neutrino fault- Scanner on faster-than-light claim
New Delhi, Dec. 24: Two Indian physicists have identified a problem in the experimental observations earlier this year that appeared to show that subatomic particles called neutrinos can travel faster than light, defying Albert Einstein’s special theory of relativity.
The physicists Ramnath Cowsik and Utpal Sarkar, collaborating with Shmuel Nussinov from Tel Aviv University, have used the laws of conservation of energy and momentum to show that the neutrinos claimed to be faster than light contradict the very observations that spotted them.
Scientists from the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) had reported earlier this year that neutrinos produced in high-speed proton-proton collisions in an underground laboratory near Geneva had travelled 730km to Italy about 60 billionths of a second faster than light.
Their findings had stunned the physics community because special relativity theory, which has survived every experimental test since Einstein proposed it a century ago, dictates that nothing can travel faster than light.
Cowsik, Sarkar, and Nussinov applied principles of conservation of energy and momentum to the neutrino production process in CERN. Their calculations, based on equations taught in masters-level physics courses, show that if the neutrinos detected in Italy had indeed travelled faster than light, they would have had much lower energies than observed. A paper pointing out this problem is published today in the journal Physical Review Letters.
“The conservation of energy and momentum laws are fundamental to physics. If we assume they apply to these neutrinos, the experiment should not be seeing the neutrino energies that it did,” Cowsik, professor of physics at the Washington University, St. Louis in the US, said.
The CERN neutrinos are produced in a step-wise process. The proton-proton collisions create subatomic particles called pions which decay into neutrinos and another type of particles called muons. The energy balance calculations show that if the neutrinos that are produced through such pion decays travelled faster than light, the neutrinos would carry a smaller fraction of energy that is shared between the neutrinos and the muons.
The calculations emerged from an informal chat about the CERN results the three physicists had when Nussinov and Sarkar, a senior physicist at the Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad, were visiting Cowsik’s office in St Louis about a month ago.
“This is a strong paper with well-articulated arguments,” said Amitava Raychaudhuri, Palit professor of theoretical physics at Calcutta University. “Their calculations show that faster-than-light neutrinos are inconsistent with the neutrino energies seen.”
Cowsik and his colleagues checked their calculations by analysing the neutrino energies seen in an observatory called IceCube buried in Antarctic ice that has been tracking neutrinos created when cosmic rays strike the Earth’s atmosphere. These neutrinos are also produced from the decay of pions and mimic the CERN production process. “The contradictions are exacerbated in the Antarctic experiment — we see neutrinos with extreme high energies,” Cowsik said.
The scientific teams from CERN and the neutrino detector laboratory in Gran Sasso in Italy, aware of the significance of their observations first reported in September this year, have thus far declined to speculate on the theoretical interpretation of their results.
In October, two US-based physicists Andrew Cohen and Sheldon Glashow had published a paper in the journal Physical Review Letters, in which they had shown that faster-than-light neutrinos would rapidly radiate energy in pairs of electrons and positrons.
“But even very strong theoretical calculations can be questioned because they make some assumptions,” Raychaudhuri said. “The feeling within the physics community is that we need another test — we’re all waiting for a second independent experiment to see how neutrinos behave.”
Cowsik said he has “great respect” for the experimental teams in CERN and Gran Sasso. “When physicists encounter such experimental results and they don’t find any obvious errors in their observations, they are compelled to publish and report their findings.”
But, he said, the theoretical calculations suggest that the experimental details need to be reexamined.
New Delhi, Dec. 24: Two Indian physicists have identified a problem in the experimental observations earlier this year that appeared to show that subatomic particles called neutrinos can travel faster than light, defying Albert Einstein’s special theory of relativity.
The physicists Ramnath Cowsik and Utpal Sarkar, collaborating with Shmuel Nussinov from Tel Aviv University, have used the laws of conservation of energy and momentum to show that the neutrinos claimed to be faster than light contradict the very observations that spotted them.
Scientists from the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) had reported earlier this year that neutrinos produced in high-speed proton-proton collisions in an underground laboratory near Geneva had travelled 730km to Italy about 60 billionths of a second faster than light.
Their findings had stunned the physics community because special relativity theory, which has survived every experimental test since Einstein proposed it a century ago, dictates that nothing can travel faster than light.
Cowsik, Sarkar, and Nussinov applied principles of conservation of energy and momentum to the neutrino production process in CERN. Their calculations, based on equations taught in masters-level physics courses, show that if the neutrinos detected in Italy had indeed travelled faster than light, they would have had much lower energies than observed. A paper pointing out this problem is published today in the journal Physical Review Letters.
“The conservation of energy and momentum laws are fundamental to physics. If we assume they apply to these neutrinos, the experiment should not be seeing the neutrino energies that it did,” Cowsik, professor of physics at the Washington University, St. Louis in the US, said.
The CERN neutrinos are produced in a step-wise process. The proton-proton collisions create subatomic particles called pions which decay into neutrinos and another type of particles called muons. The energy balance calculations show that if the neutrinos that are produced through such pion decays travelled faster than light, the neutrinos would carry a smaller fraction of energy that is shared between the neutrinos and the muons.
The calculations emerged from an informal chat about the CERN results the three physicists had when Nussinov and Sarkar, a senior physicist at the Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad, were visiting Cowsik’s office in St Louis about a month ago.
“This is a strong paper with well-articulated arguments,” said Amitava Raychaudhuri, Palit professor of theoretical physics at Calcutta University. “Their calculations show that faster-than-light neutrinos are inconsistent with the neutrino energies seen.”
Cowsik and his colleagues checked their calculations by analysing the neutrino energies seen in an observatory called IceCube buried in Antarctic ice that has been tracking neutrinos created when cosmic rays strike the Earth’s atmosphere. These neutrinos are also produced from the decay of pions and mimic the CERN production process. “The contradictions are exacerbated in the Antarctic experiment — we see neutrinos with extreme high energies,” Cowsik said.
The scientific teams from CERN and the neutrino detector laboratory in Gran Sasso in Italy, aware of the significance of their observations first reported in September this year, have thus far declined to speculate on the theoretical interpretation of their results.
In October, two US-based physicists Andrew Cohen and Sheldon Glashow had published a paper in the journal Physical Review Letters, in which they had shown that faster-than-light neutrinos would rapidly radiate energy in pairs of electrons and positrons.
“But even very strong theoretical calculations can be questioned because they make some assumptions,” Raychaudhuri said. “The feeling within the physics community is that we need another test — we’re all waiting for a second independent experiment to see how neutrinos behave.”
Cowsik said he has “great respect” for the experimental teams in CERN and Gran Sasso. “When physicists encounter such experimental results and they don’t find any obvious errors in their observations, they are compelled to publish and report their findings.”
But, he said, the theoretical calculations suggest that the experimental details need to be reexamined.
Pakistan: BB’s nuclear, missile programmes make country’s defence impregnable
From Associated Press of Pakistan: BB’s nuclear, missile programmes make country’s defence impregnable
By Muhammad Asghar
ISLAMABAD, Dec 26 (APP): In a bid to make country’s defence impregnable, former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto took aggressive steps and decisions to modernize and expand the integrated nuclear weapons programme founded and started by her father in 1972. During her first time, Benazir Bhutto established the separate but integrated nuclear testing programme while in her second term, she continued to modernize the programme into new heights despite the embargo imposed by Western world particularly the United States.
It was during her regime that Pressler amendment came in effect in an attempt to freeze the programme but she refused to compromise on the nuclear weapons programme and continued it under her watch.
Under her regime, the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC) had conducted series of improvised designs of nuclear weapons designed by Theoretical Physics Group (TPG) at PAEC.
Bhutto had appointed Munir Ahmad Khan as her Science Adviser who kept her informed about the development of the programme.
In all, the nuclear weapons and energy program remained Benazir Bhutto’s top priority as with the country’s economy.
During her first term, Benazir Bhutto had approved and launched the Shaheen programme as she had advocated for this programme strongly.
A vocal and avid supporter of the program, Benazir Bhutto also allotted funds for the programme, and strategic programs were launched under her premiership.
In January 1996, Bhutto publicly announced that if India conducts a nuclear test, Pakistan could be forced to “follow suit”.
Benazir Bhutto also continued her policy to modernize and expand the space programme and as part of this policy, she launched and supervised the clandestine project, Integrated Research Programme (IRP)- a missile programme which remained under her watch and successfully ended in 1996.
As part of her policy, Benazir Bhutto constituted the establishment of National Development Complex and the University Observatory in Karachi University and expanded the facilities for the space research.
Pakistan’s first military satellite, Badr-I was also launched under her government through China, while the second military satellite Badr-II was completed during her second democratic government term.
With launching of Badr-I, Pakistan under Benazir Bhutto leadership, became the first Muslim country to have launched and placed the satellite in Earth’s orbit, second only after India.
She declared the “1990”, an year of space in Pakistan and conferred national awards to scientists and engineers who took participation in the development of this satellite.
In 1988, Benazir Bhutto started aerospace projects such as Project Sabre II, Project PAC, Ghauri project under Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan in 1990 and the Shaheen programme in 1995 under Dr. Samar Mubarakmand.
During her second term, Benazir Bhutto declared “1996”, a year of “information technology”, and envisioned her policy of making Pakistan a “global player” in the information technology.
During her first and second term, Benazir Bhutto issued funding of many projects entirely devoted to country’s national defence and security.
Saturday, December 24, 2011
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
BACKGROUND: Elite school shows Kim's nuclear legacy
M&C: BACKGROUND: Elite school shows Kim's nuclear legacy
Beijing - Kim Jong Il's old high school is often visited by the few tourists and even fewer journalists allowed to visit North Korea, giving them a rare peek into elite society in the secretive, Stalinist nation.
As North Korea's nuclear and missile programmes reflect its technological and military strength, alarming its neighbours and drawing international criticism, the Pyongyang school nurtures students aspiring to be top scientists.
'The students have learned how to clone a rabbit,' Kim Jong Hyun, the vice principal of the Number One Middle School in Pyongyang, said during a tour of a biology laboratory at the school in 2009.
The school focuses mainly on mathematics, biology, chemistry and physics, with most students going on to attend science universities, Kim Jong Hyun said through a government interpreter.
On the wall of a physics classroom were drawings and diagrams explaining surface-to-air missiles, planes, rockets and a magnetic levitation train.
Another diagram showed the basic principles of splitting the atom.
Nearby was a cutaway model of a submarine while other laboratories held high-technology equipment, such as an electron microscope.
'These were donated by Kim Jong Il,' the vice principal said as he showed off new machines in a chemistry laboratory.
'This school is a model school for our country,' he said. 'General Kim Jong Il studied here in this school.'
According to an official biography, the late North Korean leader attended the school from 1954 to 1960.
Kim Jong Il is said to have set out the idea for turning the school into a centre for excellence focusing on science after an April 1984 visit there.
'He decided that the school should be for very talented students, and they should concentrate on things like physics and biology,' Kim Jong Hyun said.
Portraits of Kim and his father, Kim Il Sung, were hung above the blackboards at the front of each classroom.
Kim Jong Hyun said about 1,000 children attended the school, with another 700 enrolled at the attached primary school.
Reports from Seoul said the school and 12 similar ones in North Korea were comparable to South Korean science high schools.
A guide for the dpa correspondent, who also acted as an interpreter and minder and identified himself only as Mr O, arranged the visit as part of a trip to report on a North Korean Asian regional qualifying match in the 2010 football World Cup.
Foreign journalists covering the World Cup qualifiers in North Korea were required to sign an undertaking only to report sports-related news.
But Mr O and the other officials made no attempt to hide the military and nuclear pictures at Kim's old school.
Mr O seemed most concerned about reports taking photographs of poor people and of the small-scale stallholders selling their goods in Pyongyang's streets and public parks.
He also fretted over pictures of North Korean police scuffling with Iranian football fans, probably from Iran's official delegation, as they stood on seats, beat large drums and hoisted huge national flags.
The most revealing warning came as Mr O followed the dpa correspondent around the stadium while he zoomed in on uniformed Public Security officers patrolling the 30,000-strong crowd in Pyongyang's Yanggakdo Stadium.
'Don't shoot them,' Mr O said with a grave look on his face. 'They might shoot us.'
Beijing - Kim Jong Il's old high school is often visited by the few tourists and even fewer journalists allowed to visit North Korea, giving them a rare peek into elite society in the secretive, Stalinist nation.
As North Korea's nuclear and missile programmes reflect its technological and military strength, alarming its neighbours and drawing international criticism, the Pyongyang school nurtures students aspiring to be top scientists.
'The students have learned how to clone a rabbit,' Kim Jong Hyun, the vice principal of the Number One Middle School in Pyongyang, said during a tour of a biology laboratory at the school in 2009.
The school focuses mainly on mathematics, biology, chemistry and physics, with most students going on to attend science universities, Kim Jong Hyun said through a government interpreter.
On the wall of a physics classroom were drawings and diagrams explaining surface-to-air missiles, planes, rockets and a magnetic levitation train.
Another diagram showed the basic principles of splitting the atom.
Nearby was a cutaway model of a submarine while other laboratories held high-technology equipment, such as an electron microscope.
'These were donated by Kim Jong Il,' the vice principal said as he showed off new machines in a chemistry laboratory.
'This school is a model school for our country,' he said. 'General Kim Jong Il studied here in this school.'
According to an official biography, the late North Korean leader attended the school from 1954 to 1960.
Kim Jong Il is said to have set out the idea for turning the school into a centre for excellence focusing on science after an April 1984 visit there.
'He decided that the school should be for very talented students, and they should concentrate on things like physics and biology,' Kim Jong Hyun said.
Portraits of Kim and his father, Kim Il Sung, were hung above the blackboards at the front of each classroom.
Kim Jong Hyun said about 1,000 children attended the school, with another 700 enrolled at the attached primary school.
Reports from Seoul said the school and 12 similar ones in North Korea were comparable to South Korean science high schools.
A guide for the dpa correspondent, who also acted as an interpreter and minder and identified himself only as Mr O, arranged the visit as part of a trip to report on a North Korean Asian regional qualifying match in the 2010 football World Cup.
Foreign journalists covering the World Cup qualifiers in North Korea were required to sign an undertaking only to report sports-related news.
But Mr O and the other officials made no attempt to hide the military and nuclear pictures at Kim's old school.
Mr O seemed most concerned about reports taking photographs of poor people and of the small-scale stallholders selling their goods in Pyongyang's streets and public parks.
He also fretted over pictures of North Korean police scuffling with Iranian football fans, probably from Iran's official delegation, as they stood on seats, beat large drums and hoisted huge national flags.
The most revealing warning came as Mr O followed the dpa correspondent around the stadium while he zoomed in on uniformed Public Security officers patrolling the 30,000-strong crowd in Pyongyang's Yanggakdo Stadium.
'Don't shoot them,' Mr O said with a grave look on his face. 'They might shoot us.'
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
Scientists ‘trigger’ high energy physics at CERN in India-UK collaboration
From PhysOrg.com: Scientists ‘trigger’ high energy physics at CERN in India-UK collaboration
The University of Birmingham is working with partners at Jammu University on particle physics experiments, including those at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the European Organization for Nuclear Research – CERN.
The project focuses on analysing collision data and the real-time selection or 'triggering' of the most interesting events from amongst very large backgrounds using state-of-the-art fast electronics. The researchers will analyse collisions between pairs of lead ions in the ALICE experiment at the LHC recreating the particle densities and temperatures which existed a tiny fraction of a second after the Big Bang. In addition, they are aiming to make improvements to the ALICE trigger capability, in preparation for the next, higher intensity, phase of the running of the LHC.
A further key area of focus for the collaboration will be the development of an optimised trigger for the new NA62 fixed target experiment, which will study very rare effects involving strange quarks which are highly sensitive to new physics.
This work will build on previous successful collaboration between University of Birmingham physicists and Professor Anju Bhasin from Jammu University, and her group, in the context of ALICE and earlier heavy ion collision experiments. It will widen the connections to NA62 which has no previous Indian involvement and will extend the ALICE work into the period of LHC operation where discoveries of previously unknown physics are to be expected.
Professor Paul Newman, Professor of Particle Physics, at the University of Birmingham, said: “We are delighted by this opportunity to build further on our collaboration with our Indian colleagues in Jammu. On top of all the recent talk surrounding the Higgs Boson question, this is such an exciting time for all of us involved in high energy physics at CERN.”
The project is funded by the UK-India Education and Research Initiative (UKIERI) as part of the Innovation Partnerships strand. This initiative aims to provide opportunities for UK and Indian universities and institutions to collaborate on thematic partnerships to enhance the innovation capacity of both India and the UK. It promotes partnerships between higher education institutions which focus on innovation and new areas of development in research, in areas relevant to both countries.
Provided by University of Birmingham
The University of Birmingham is working with partners at Jammu University on particle physics experiments, including those at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the European Organization for Nuclear Research – CERN.
The project focuses on analysing collision data and the real-time selection or 'triggering' of the most interesting events from amongst very large backgrounds using state-of-the-art fast electronics. The researchers will analyse collisions between pairs of lead ions in the ALICE experiment at the LHC recreating the particle densities and temperatures which existed a tiny fraction of a second after the Big Bang. In addition, they are aiming to make improvements to the ALICE trigger capability, in preparation for the next, higher intensity, phase of the running of the LHC.
A further key area of focus for the collaboration will be the development of an optimised trigger for the new NA62 fixed target experiment, which will study very rare effects involving strange quarks which are highly sensitive to new physics.
This work will build on previous successful collaboration between University of Birmingham physicists and Professor Anju Bhasin from Jammu University, and her group, in the context of ALICE and earlier heavy ion collision experiments. It will widen the connections to NA62 which has no previous Indian involvement and will extend the ALICE work into the period of LHC operation where discoveries of previously unknown physics are to be expected.
Professor Paul Newman, Professor of Particle Physics, at the University of Birmingham, said: “We are delighted by this opportunity to build further on our collaboration with our Indian colleagues in Jammu. On top of all the recent talk surrounding the Higgs Boson question, this is such an exciting time for all of us involved in high energy physics at CERN.”
The project is funded by the UK-India Education and Research Initiative (UKIERI) as part of the Innovation Partnerships strand. This initiative aims to provide opportunities for UK and Indian universities and institutions to collaborate on thematic partnerships to enhance the innovation capacity of both India and the UK. It promotes partnerships between higher education institutions which focus on innovation and new areas of development in research, in areas relevant to both countries.
Provided by University of Birmingham
Saturday, December 17, 2011
A nuclear solution ticks all our boxes
From Today Online: A nuclear solution ticks all our boxes
It is a devastating admission to have to make, especially during the climate talks in Durban. This year, the environmental movement to which I belong has done more harm to the planet's living systems than climate change deniers have ever achieved.
As a result of shutting down its nuclear programme in response to green demands, Germany will produce an extra 300 million tonnes of carbon dioxide between now and 2020. That is almost as much as all the European savings resulting from the energy efficiency directive.
Other countries are heading the same way. These decisions are the result of an almost mediaeval misrepresentation of science and technology. For while the greens are right about most things, our views on nuclear power have been shaped by weapons-grade woo.
ANTI-NUCLEAR MUMBO-JUMBO
A fortnight ago, the Guardian examined the work of a Dr Chris Busby. We found that he has been promoting anti-radiation pills and tests to the people of Japan that scientists have described as useless and baseless. We also revealed that people were being asked to send donations, ostensibly to help the children of Fukushima, to Dr Busby's business account in Wales.
We found that scientists at the National Health Service had examined his claims to have detected a leukaemia cluster in north Wales and discovered that they arose from a series of shocking statistical mistakes. Worse still, the scientists say, "the dataset has been systematically trawled". Yet Dr Busby, until our report was published, advised the Green party on radiation. His "findings" are widely used by anti-nuclear activists.
Last week in The New York Times, the anti-nuclear campaigner, Dr Helen Caldicott, repeated a claim which already has been comprehensively discredited: That "close to 1 million people have died of causes linked to the Chernobyl disaster".
The "study" on which it is based added up the excess deaths from a vast range of conditions, many of which have no known connection to radiation, in the countries affected by Chernobyl - and attributed them to the accident. Among these conditions was cirrhosis of the liver. Could it have any other possible cause in eastern Europe?
Earlier this year, when I asked Dr Caldicott to provide scientific sources for the main claims she was making, she was unable to do so. None of this has stopped her from repeating them, or has prevented greens from spreading them.
Anti-nuclear campaigners have generated as much mumbo-jumbo as creationists, anti-vaccine scaremongers, homeopaths and climate change deniers. In all cases, the scientific process has been thrown into reverse: People have begun with their conclusions, then frantically sought evidence to support them.
CHEAPER, AND WON'T MELT DOWN
But now, in the United Kingdom at least, we have an opportunity to make amends. Our movement can abandon this drivel with a clear conscience, for the technology I am about to describe ticks all the green boxes: Reduce, reuse, recycle.
Let me begin with the context. Like other countries suffering from the idiotic short-termism of the early nuclear power industry, the UK faces a massive bill for the storage and disposal of radioactive waste. The same goes for the waste produced by nuclear weapons manufacturing. But is this really waste, or could we see it another way?
In his book Prescription for the Planet, the environmentalist Tom Blees explains the remarkable potential of integral fast reactors (IFRs). These are nuclear power stations which can run on what old plants have left behind.
Conventional nuclear power uses just 0.6 per cent of the energy contained in the uranium that fuels it. Integral fast reactors can use almost all the rest. There is already enough nuclear waste on earth to meet the world's energy needs for several hundred years, with scarcely any carbon emissions.
IFRs need be loaded with fissile material just once. From then on, they can keep recycling it, extracting ever more of its energy, until a small fraction of the waste remains. Its components have half-lives of tens, rather than millions, of years.
This makes them more dangerous in the short term but much easier to manage in the long term. When the hot waste has been used up, the IFRs can be loaded with depleted uranium (U-238), of which the world has a massive stockpile.
The material being reprocessed never leaves the site: It remains within a sealed and remotely operated recycling plant. Anyone trying to remove it would quickly die. By ensuring the fissile products are unusable, the IFR process reduces the risk of weapons proliferation.
The plant operates at scarcely more than atmospheric pressure, so it cannot blow its top. Better still, it could melt down only by breaking the laws of physics. If the fuel pins begin to overheat, their expansion stops the fission reaction. If, like the Fukushima plant, an IFR loses its power supply, it simply shuts down, without human agency.
Running on waste, with fewer pumps and valves than conventional plants, they are also likely to be a good deal cheaper.
SCIENCE, NOT SUPERSTITION PLEASE
So there is just one remaining question: Where are they? In 1994, the Democrats in the United States Congress, led by Mr John Kerry, making misleading assertions, shut down the research programme at Argonne National Laboratory that had been running successfully for 30 years. Even Ms Hazel O'Leary, the former fossil fuel lobbyist charged by the Clinton administration with killing it, admitted that "no further testing" is required to prove its feasibility.
But there is a better demonstration that it is good to go: Last week, GE Hitachi (GEH) told the British government that it could build a fast reactor within five years to use up the waste plutonium at Sellafield (a nuclear reprocessing site in northern England) and, if it does not work, the UK will not have to pay.
A fast reactor has been running in Russia for 30 years, and similar plants are now being built in China and India. GEH's proposed PRISM reactor uses the same generating technology as the IFR, though the current proposal does not include the reprocessing plant. It should.
If the government does not accept GEH's offer, it will, as the energy department revealed on last Thursday, handle the waste through mixed oxide (mox) processing instead. This will produce a fuel hardly anyone wants while generating more waste plutonium than we possess already. It will raise the total energy the industry harvests from 0.6 to 0.8 per cent.
So we environmentalists have a choice. We cannot wish the waste away. Either it is stored and then buried. Or it is turned into mox fuels. Or it is used to power IFRs. We should determine where we stand. I suggest we take the radical step of using science, not superstition, as our guide.
George Monbiot is the author of the best-selling books The Age of Consent: A Manifesto for a New World Order and Captive State: The Corporate Takeover of Britain.
Friday, December 16, 2011
Internal Dissension Unsettles the Nuclear Regulatory Commission
From the New York Times: Internal Dissension Unsettles the Nuclear Regulatory Commission
WASHINGTON — Another chapter is out in the continuing and very public story of conflict within the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which has now taken the form of a battle of snail mail.
A letter addressed to the White House chief of staff and signed by four of the five commission members was circulated Friday criticizing the fifth member, Gregory B. Jaczko, its chairman, and expressing “grave concerns” that his deficiencies as a leader could compromise nuclear safety. It was dated Oct. 13. A similar letter was sent directly to Dr. Jaczko.
And this week, a rebuttal letter from Dr. Jaczko, also addressed to William M. Daley, President Obama’s chief of staff, said the other four members were improperly trying to involve themselves in management affairs, which in a reorganization of the commission in 1980 became the chairman’s sole responsibility. Dated Dec. 7, the letter said that the rest of the commission had “taken an approach that is not as protective of public health and safety as I believe is necessary.”
Criticism of the chairman first became public in June when an inspector general’s report critical of him came out. The letters echoed similar themes of discord.
Dr. Jaczko is a White House appointee, confirmed by the Senate, who used to work on the staff of the majority leader, Senator Harry Reid of Nevada.
A split between Dr. Jaczko and his colleagues has been evident for some time and mirrors a division of opinion about him in nuclear circles, where some are suspicious of his credentials. Dr. Jaczko, who has been on the commission for seven years and its chairman for two and a half years, has a doctorate in physics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, but his background is in policy, not in the nuclear power industry or the nuclear Navy.
The situation is expected to get more charged next Wednesday when all five commissioners are expected to testify before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, which is led by Representative Darrell Issa, Republican of California. Mr. Issa, in his own letter to the White House, said “the public deserves to understand what actions have been taken and whether the president still believes that Chairman Jaczko is capable of leading the NRC.”
The other commissioners said that Dr. Jaczko “intimidated and bullied senior career staff to the degree that he has created a high level of fear and anxiety resulting in a chilled work environment.”
The staff of Representative Edward J. Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, used internal commission e-mails to argue that when the four complained to Congress that Dr. Jaczko had kept them in the dark about the commission staff’s activities related to the Fukushima Daiichi accident, they were not being truthful; in fact, Mr. Markey’s report argues, they were fully informed.
Dr. Jaczko previously worked on the staffs of Mr. Markey and Mr. Reid. Mr. Reid’s main activity relating to nuclear power has been to fight the establishment of a nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain, 100 miles from Las Vegas. Some nuclear power advocates say that Dr. Jaczko was too quick to kill the commission’s effort to evaluate Yucca, after Mr. Obama told the Energy Department to shut the program down.
WASHINGTON — Another chapter is out in the continuing and very public story of conflict within the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which has now taken the form of a battle of snail mail.
A letter addressed to the White House chief of staff and signed by four of the five commission members was circulated Friday criticizing the fifth member, Gregory B. Jaczko, its chairman, and expressing “grave concerns” that his deficiencies as a leader could compromise nuclear safety. It was dated Oct. 13. A similar letter was sent directly to Dr. Jaczko.
And this week, a rebuttal letter from Dr. Jaczko, also addressed to William M. Daley, President Obama’s chief of staff, said the other four members were improperly trying to involve themselves in management affairs, which in a reorganization of the commission in 1980 became the chairman’s sole responsibility. Dated Dec. 7, the letter said that the rest of the commission had “taken an approach that is not as protective of public health and safety as I believe is necessary.”
Criticism of the chairman first became public in June when an inspector general’s report critical of him came out. The letters echoed similar themes of discord.
Dr. Jaczko is a White House appointee, confirmed by the Senate, who used to work on the staff of the majority leader, Senator Harry Reid of Nevada.
A split between Dr. Jaczko and his colleagues has been evident for some time and mirrors a division of opinion about him in nuclear circles, where some are suspicious of his credentials. Dr. Jaczko, who has been on the commission for seven years and its chairman for two and a half years, has a doctorate in physics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, but his background is in policy, not in the nuclear power industry or the nuclear Navy.
The situation is expected to get more charged next Wednesday when all five commissioners are expected to testify before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, which is led by Representative Darrell Issa, Republican of California. Mr. Issa, in his own letter to the White House, said “the public deserves to understand what actions have been taken and whether the president still believes that Chairman Jaczko is capable of leading the NRC.”
The other commissioners said that Dr. Jaczko “intimidated and bullied senior career staff to the degree that he has created a high level of fear and anxiety resulting in a chilled work environment.”
The staff of Representative Edward J. Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, used internal commission e-mails to argue that when the four complained to Congress that Dr. Jaczko had kept them in the dark about the commission staff’s activities related to the Fukushima Daiichi accident, they were not being truthful; in fact, Mr. Markey’s report argues, they were fully informed.
Dr. Jaczko previously worked on the staffs of Mr. Markey and Mr. Reid. Mr. Reid’s main activity relating to nuclear power has been to fight the establishment of a nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain, 100 miles from Las Vegas. Some nuclear power advocates say that Dr. Jaczko was too quick to kill the commission’s effort to evaluate Yucca, after Mr. Obama told the Energy Department to shut the program down.
Higgs boson to be unveiled (possibly)
From Guardian.co.uk: Higgs boson to be unveiled (possibly)
This Tuesday is an important day at Cern, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research. The scientists at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will present the latest results on the search for the Higgs boson, the fabled particle with the big job of explaining how nature's elementary particles acquire mass. The collider has been built to teach us all about how the tiny particles that make up everything in the universe behave. At 27km in circumference it represents the biggest, most powerful, microscope in the world – zooming in to reveal the goings-on at distances tiny compared even to the size of a single proton. At these femtoscopically small distances, we have very good reason to expect great things: either we will see a Higgs particle or we will see something else. Seeing nothing new is simply not an option.
So what makes us so sure the LHC is in a win-win situation? The "standard model" theory of particle physics is as dazzlingly ambitious as its name is bland – its remit is to explain how every single particle in the universe interacts with every other (with the sad exception of interactions due to gravity) and it does so using some simple rules that can be sketched on the back of an envelope. The standard model reveals that apparently different phenomena are really different aspects of the same thing (radioactive decay and electricity are linked, for example). Thus it is that the world we see, with all its diversity and complexity, is made out of just a handful of elementary particles hopping around according to some simple rules.
Underpinning all of this is the notion of "symmetry". It is symmetry that allows us to specify the rules that constrain the behaviour of the particles and it is the presence of symmetry that often moves physicists to speak of beauty. Symmetry implies that there are underlying patterns in nature that constrain the way particles behave. Knowing the symmetries in nature is key to explaining how the particles move around.
How does this all relate to the Higgs particle? Well, the symmetries of the standard model have been tested to Nobel prize-winning accuracy over the past four decades. But there is a huge fly in the ointment because the simplest realisation of the symmetries does not allow particles to have any mass. The Higgs particle was introduced to solve just this problem – and it works by cramming empty space full of Higgs particles. As particles move through apparently empty space they bounce around off the Higgs particles, zig-zagging their way along – the more they zig-zag, the more mass they have.
So, the Higgs particle saves the day and allows us to understand why the universe is both beautifully symmetric and made of massive particles. It is wise to play the role of the cynic and we might take the view that mass "just is" and that all those wonderful discoveries built on symmetry were just good luck. In other words, we could ask what happens if we take the standard model and reject everything that relates to the Higgs particle. Crucially, doing that does not work – we would be left with a car-crash of a model whose predictions are gibberish at the sub-femtometre scales probed by the LHC. This means that whatever happens we are going to need to dream up something new about the world.
That is what it means to say that the LHC is in a win-win situation: experiments in science rarely get such comfort. This something new could be the Higgs particle. But really, that is only a guess as to how things might work out. It has the virtue of being economical (we get to explain the origin of mass using only one new particle) but economy isn't much of a virtue and nature could be different.
The LHC experimenters are closing in on the standard Higgs particle. We already know enough to say that the results on Tuesday will either reveal its existence or almost exclude it. "Almost" because there will probably not be sufficient data to rule out a Higgs particle with a mass not much larger than 120 times the proton mass. But even that hiding place will be eliminated in 2012 and, by the end of next year, we should have either discovered the standard Higgs particle or decisively excluded it.
I have been waiting more than 20 years for this. Personally, I am most excited by the possibility that there is no Higgs particle and that nature has chosen a different path. If that is the case, then we are going to have to be patient for a little longer. It will be worth the wait.
Jeff Forshaw is a professor of theoretical physics, University of Manchester, and co-author with Brian Cox of The Quantum Universe: Everything That Can Happen Does Happen (Allen Lane)
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
Among Gingrich's Passions, A Doomsday Vision
From New York TImes: Among Gingrich's Passions, A Doomsday Vision
Newt Gingrich, the Republican presidential hopeful, wants you to know that as commander in chief he is ready to confront one of the most nightmarish of doomsday scenarios: a nuclear blast high above the United States that would instantly throw the nation into a dark age.
In debates and speeches, interviews and a popular book, he is ringing alarm bells over what experts call the electromagnetic pulse, or EMP — a poorly understood phenomenon of the nuclear age.
¶ The idea is that if a nuclear weapon, lofted by a missile, were detonated in outer space high above the American heartland, it would set off a huge and crippling shockwave of electricity. Mr. Gingrich warns that it would fry electrical circuits from coast to coast, knocking out computers, electrical power and cellphones. Everything from cars to hospitals would be knocked out.
¶ “Millions would die in the first week alone,” he wrote in the foreword to a science-fiction thriller published in 2009 that describes an imaginary EMP attack on the United States. A number of scientists say they consider Mr. Gingrich’s alarms far-fetched.
¶ As Mr. Gingrich starts to surge in Republican primary states, voters are likely to get to know some of his many passions. He is an outspoken advocate for zoos. He has suggested overhauling child labor laws so that students can take jobs and learn good work habits. He also has a long interest in the space program, which Mitt Romney all but mocked at the Republican debate in Iowa on Saturday night.
¶ Challenged to say where he and Mr. Gingrich differed, Mr. Romney replied, “We could start with his idea to have a lunar colony that would mine minerals from the moon.”
¶ But it is to the risk of an EMP attack that Mr. Gingrich has repeatedly returned. And while the message may play well to hawkish audiences, who might warm to the candidate’s suggestion that the United States engage in pre-emptive military strikes against Iran and North Korea, many nuclear experts dismiss the threat. America’s current missile defense system would thwart such an attack, these experts say, and the nations in question are at the kindergarten stage of developing nuclear arms.
¶ The Missile Defense Agency, an arm of the Pentagon that maintains an arsenal of ground-based interceptors ready to fly into space and smash enemy warheads, says that defeating such an attack would be as straightforward as any other defense of the continental United States.
¶ “It doesn’t matter if the target is Chicago or 100 miles over Nebraska,” said Richard Lehner, an agency spokesman. “For the interceptor, it’s the same thing.” He called the potential damage from a nuclear electromagnetic pulse attack “pretty theoretical.”
¶ Yousaf M. Butt, a consultant with Federation of American Scientists, who last year did a lengthy analysis of EMP for The Space Review, a weekly online journal, said, “If terrorists want to do something serious, they’ll use a weapon of mass destruction — not mass disruption.” He said, “They don’t want to depend on complicated secondary effects in which the physics is not very clear.”
¶ Mr. Gingrich’s spokesman, R. C. Hammond, did not respond to e-mails asking for comment. But the candidate, a former history professor and House speaker, has defended his characterizations as accurate. At a forum in Des Moines on Saturday for military veterans, Mr. Gingrich said an electromagnetic pulse attack was one of several pressing national security threats the United States faced. “In theory, a relatively small device over Omaha would knock out about half the electricity generated in the United States,” he told the veterans.
¶ He also referred to the apocalyptic novel “One Second After,” written by a friend and co-author of his historical novels, William R. Forstchen. The book describes an electromagnetic pulse attack on America, conjuring a world in which cars, airplanes, cellphones and refrigerators all die, and gangs of barbarians spring to life.
¶ In the book’s foreword, Mr. Gingrich calls the grim scenario a potential “future history” that should be “terrifying for all of us.” He says he knows its frightening plausibility from decades of personal study.
Electromagnetic pulse is a real phenomenon, though many scientists consider it yesteryear’s concern. It came to light in July 1962 when the American military detonated a hydrogen bomb high above the Pacific. In Hawaii, street lights suddenly went out.
The riddle got little direct investigation because in 1963 the superpowers agreed to end all but underground detonations of nuclear arms. But theoretical studies continued, and worries rose over the decades as electronic circuits became ever more sophisticated and fragile.
Mr. Gingrich is part of a conservative movement that calls EMP an underappreciated danger. In Congress, spurred by Representative Roscoe G. Bartlett, Republican of Maryland, members of the movement hold hearings and recommend new safeguards, especially for the nation’s power grid, for which protective steps could run into many billions of dollars.
In 2004, Mr. Gingrich appeared at a House hearing and said that not taking the EMP threat more seriously “is like going aboard the Titanic knowing it’s going to sink and not putting on the lifeboats.”
As the alarms grew, critics voiced skepticism. In 2004, Philip E. Coyle III, a former head of Pentagon arms testing, wrote that the EMP lobby seemed to “extrapolate calculations of extreme weapons effects as if they were a proven fact” and “puff up rogue nations and terrorists with the capabilities of giants.”
Of late, Mr. Gingrich has emerged as the most visible worrier, often raising the electromagnetic pulse issue in speeches and public appearances. In May 2009, he addressed the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s annual policy conference.
“We are on the verge of catastrophic problems,” he said of electromagnetic attack. “We have zero national strategy to respond to it today.” That is why, Mr. Gingrich added, “I favor taking out Iranian and North Korean missiles on their sites.”
Critics of such pre-emptive attacks say their advocates ignore, among other things, that Iran is having trouble keeping its missile bases from blowing up and that North Korea cannot seem to get a big rocket off the ground without it tumbling out of control.
To even begin to attempt to do what Mr. Gingrich fears, these rogue states would have to perfect big rockets, powerful bombs and surreptitious ways to loft them high above America, military experts say. And if they did — and there are much easier ways to deliver a nuclear bomb than by missile, these experts argue — United States defenses would spring into action.
Yet Mr. Gingrich’s warnings remain persistently urgent. “Without adequate preparation, we would basically lose our civilization in a matter of seconds,” he said in a 2009 video address for a conference held by EMPact America, a private group near Buffalo that seeks to promote political action on the issue.
Lately Mr. Gingrich’s presidential campaign has widened his audience and the visibility of his message. Late last month at an appearance in Bluffton, S.C., he was asked about EMP and called it “one of the most dangerous technological developments,” likening its destructive force to “a giant lightning strike.”
Some people praise Mr. Gingrich as an atomic visionary.
Last week, on the anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Warren Kozak, an author and journalist, wrote on the op-ed page of The Wall Street Journal that the electromagnetic pulse skeptics might be right. “But 70 years ago,” he added, “similar doubters believed Japan would never be so foolish as to take on the United States of America — until, of course, it did.
Newt Gingrich, the Republican presidential hopeful, wants you to know that as commander in chief he is ready to confront one of the most nightmarish of doomsday scenarios: a nuclear blast high above the United States that would instantly throw the nation into a dark age.
In debates and speeches, interviews and a popular book, he is ringing alarm bells over what experts call the electromagnetic pulse, or EMP — a poorly understood phenomenon of the nuclear age.
¶ The idea is that if a nuclear weapon, lofted by a missile, were detonated in outer space high above the American heartland, it would set off a huge and crippling shockwave of electricity. Mr. Gingrich warns that it would fry electrical circuits from coast to coast, knocking out computers, electrical power and cellphones. Everything from cars to hospitals would be knocked out.
¶ “Millions would die in the first week alone,” he wrote in the foreword to a science-fiction thriller published in 2009 that describes an imaginary EMP attack on the United States. A number of scientists say they consider Mr. Gingrich’s alarms far-fetched.
¶ As Mr. Gingrich starts to surge in Republican primary states, voters are likely to get to know some of his many passions. He is an outspoken advocate for zoos. He has suggested overhauling child labor laws so that students can take jobs and learn good work habits. He also has a long interest in the space program, which Mitt Romney all but mocked at the Republican debate in Iowa on Saturday night.
¶ Challenged to say where he and Mr. Gingrich differed, Mr. Romney replied, “We could start with his idea to have a lunar colony that would mine minerals from the moon.”
¶ But it is to the risk of an EMP attack that Mr. Gingrich has repeatedly returned. And while the message may play well to hawkish audiences, who might warm to the candidate’s suggestion that the United States engage in pre-emptive military strikes against Iran and North Korea, many nuclear experts dismiss the threat. America’s current missile defense system would thwart such an attack, these experts say, and the nations in question are at the kindergarten stage of developing nuclear arms.
¶ The Missile Defense Agency, an arm of the Pentagon that maintains an arsenal of ground-based interceptors ready to fly into space and smash enemy warheads, says that defeating such an attack would be as straightforward as any other defense of the continental United States.
¶ “It doesn’t matter if the target is Chicago or 100 miles over Nebraska,” said Richard Lehner, an agency spokesman. “For the interceptor, it’s the same thing.” He called the potential damage from a nuclear electromagnetic pulse attack “pretty theoretical.”
¶ Yousaf M. Butt, a consultant with Federation of American Scientists, who last year did a lengthy analysis of EMP for The Space Review, a weekly online journal, said, “If terrorists want to do something serious, they’ll use a weapon of mass destruction — not mass disruption.” He said, “They don’t want to depend on complicated secondary effects in which the physics is not very clear.”
¶ Mr. Gingrich’s spokesman, R. C. Hammond, did not respond to e-mails asking for comment. But the candidate, a former history professor and House speaker, has defended his characterizations as accurate. At a forum in Des Moines on Saturday for military veterans, Mr. Gingrich said an electromagnetic pulse attack was one of several pressing national security threats the United States faced. “In theory, a relatively small device over Omaha would knock out about half the electricity generated in the United States,” he told the veterans.
¶ He also referred to the apocalyptic novel “One Second After,” written by a friend and co-author of his historical novels, William R. Forstchen. The book describes an electromagnetic pulse attack on America, conjuring a world in which cars, airplanes, cellphones and refrigerators all die, and gangs of barbarians spring to life.
¶ In the book’s foreword, Mr. Gingrich calls the grim scenario a potential “future history” that should be “terrifying for all of us.” He says he knows its frightening plausibility from decades of personal study.
Electromagnetic pulse is a real phenomenon, though many scientists consider it yesteryear’s concern. It came to light in July 1962 when the American military detonated a hydrogen bomb high above the Pacific. In Hawaii, street lights suddenly went out.
The riddle got little direct investigation because in 1963 the superpowers agreed to end all but underground detonations of nuclear arms. But theoretical studies continued, and worries rose over the decades as electronic circuits became ever more sophisticated and fragile.
Mr. Gingrich is part of a conservative movement that calls EMP an underappreciated danger. In Congress, spurred by Representative Roscoe G. Bartlett, Republican of Maryland, members of the movement hold hearings and recommend new safeguards, especially for the nation’s power grid, for which protective steps could run into many billions of dollars.
In 2004, Mr. Gingrich appeared at a House hearing and said that not taking the EMP threat more seriously “is like going aboard the Titanic knowing it’s going to sink and not putting on the lifeboats.”
As the alarms grew, critics voiced skepticism. In 2004, Philip E. Coyle III, a former head of Pentagon arms testing, wrote that the EMP lobby seemed to “extrapolate calculations of extreme weapons effects as if they were a proven fact” and “puff up rogue nations and terrorists with the capabilities of giants.”
Of late, Mr. Gingrich has emerged as the most visible worrier, often raising the electromagnetic pulse issue in speeches and public appearances. In May 2009, he addressed the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s annual policy conference.
“We are on the verge of catastrophic problems,” he said of electromagnetic attack. “We have zero national strategy to respond to it today.” That is why, Mr. Gingrich added, “I favor taking out Iranian and North Korean missiles on their sites.”
Critics of such pre-emptive attacks say their advocates ignore, among other things, that Iran is having trouble keeping its missile bases from blowing up and that North Korea cannot seem to get a big rocket off the ground without it tumbling out of control.
To even begin to attempt to do what Mr. Gingrich fears, these rogue states would have to perfect big rockets, powerful bombs and surreptitious ways to loft them high above America, military experts say. And if they did — and there are much easier ways to deliver a nuclear bomb than by missile, these experts argue — United States defenses would spring into action.
Yet Mr. Gingrich’s warnings remain persistently urgent. “Without adequate preparation, we would basically lose our civilization in a matter of seconds,” he said in a 2009 video address for a conference held by EMPact America, a private group near Buffalo that seeks to promote political action on the issue.
Lately Mr. Gingrich’s presidential campaign has widened his audience and the visibility of his message. Late last month at an appearance in Bluffton, S.C., he was asked about EMP and called it “one of the most dangerous technological developments,” likening its destructive force to “a giant lightning strike.”
Some people praise Mr. Gingrich as an atomic visionary.
Last week, on the anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Warren Kozak, an author and journalist, wrote on the op-ed page of The Wall Street Journal that the electromagnetic pulse skeptics might be right. “But 70 years ago,” he added, “similar doubters believed Japan would never be so foolish as to take on the United States of America — until, of course, it did.
Monday, December 12, 2011
Physicists Anxiously Await New Data on ‘God Particle’
From New York Times Science: Physicists Anxiously Await New Data on ‘God Particle’
By DENNIS OVERBYE
High noon is approaching for the biggest manhunt in the history of physics. At 8 a.m. Eastern time on Tuesday morning, scientists from CERN, the European Center for Nuclear Research, are scheduled to give a progress report on the search for the Higgs boson — infamously known as the “God particle” — whose discovery would vindicate the modern theory of how elementary particles get mass.
The report comes amid rumors that the two competing armies of scientists sifting debris from hundreds of trillions of proton collisions in CERN’s Large Hadron Collider, or L.H.C., outside Geneva, have both finally seen hints of what might turn out be the elusive particle when more data is gathered next year.
Alternatively, the experimentalists say that a year from now they should have enough data to rule out the existence of the most popular version of the Higgs boson, sending theorists back to their blackboards in search of another explanation of why particles have mass.
So the whole world will be watching.
Among them will be Lisa Randall, a Harvard particle theorist and author of the new book “Knocking on Heaven’s Door: How Physics and Scientific Thinking Illuminate the Universe and the Modern World.” In an interview with Dennis Overbye of The Times, Dr. Randall provided this guide to the action for those of us in the bleachers.
Q. What is the Higgs and why is it important?
A. The name Higgs refers to at least four things. First of all, there is a Higgs mechanism, which is ultimately responsible for elementary particles’ masses. This is certainly one of the trickier aspects of particle physics to explain, but essentially something like a charge — not an electric charge — permeates the vacuum, the state with no particles.
These “charges” are associated with a Higgs field. As particles pass through this field they interact with the “charges,” and this interaction makes them act as if they had mass. Heavier particles do so more, and lighter particles do so less. The Higgs mechanism is essential to the masses of elementary particles.
The Higgs particle, or Higgs boson, is the vestige of the simplest proposed model of what created the Higgs field in the first place. Contrary to popular understanding, the Higgs field gives mass — not the Higgs boson. But a discovery of the Higgs boson would tell us that the Higgs mechanism is right and help us pin down the theory that underlies both the Higgs mechanism and the Standard Model.
In the simplest implementation of the Higgs mechanism, the experimental consequence is the Higgs boson. It is the particle that the experimentalists are now searching for.
Of course, Higgs is also the name of the person, Peter Higgs, who first developed the underlying theory (along with five others who will be in contention for the Nobel Prize if and when the Higgs particle is discovered.)
Q. How will we know it when we find it?
A. In the simplest implementation of the Higgs mechanism, we know precisely what the properties of the Higgs boson should be. That’s because of its connection to the Higgs mechanism, which tells us that its interactions with any particular particle are determined by that particular particle’s mass.
Knowing the interactions, we can calculate how often the Higgs boson should be produced and the ways in which it should decay. It can decay only into those particles that are light enough for energy to be conserved. Roughly speaking, the Higgs boson decays into the heaviest such particles the most often, since it interacts with them the most strongly.
What we don’t know, however, is the Higgs boson’s mass. The Higgs boson decays differently, depending on its mass, since a heavier Higgs boson can decay in ways that a light Higgs boson can’t. So when experimenters look for the Higgs boson, they look over a range of masses and employ a variety of search strategies.
Q. What do we know about it so far?
A. Experimenters have already ruled out a large range of masses. The Higgs boson, if it exists, has to be heavier than 114.4 giga-electron volts (GeV), which are the units of mass that particle physicists use. By comparison, protons, the bedrock of ordinary matter, are about 1 giga-electron volt, and an electron is only half a million electron volts.
Based on recent searches by the L.H.C., the Higgs boson is also excluded between about 140 GeV and 500 GeV. This makes the most likely region for the Higgs mass to be between about 115 and 140 GeV, which is the range Tuesday’s results should focus on, although in principle heavier Higgs boson masses are in contention too.
I don’t want to shatter hopes, but don’t count on Tuesday’s results being definitive. This is the toughest range of masses for the L.H.C., and detection is tricky for this range. I suspect they will have enough evidence not to exclude the Higgs, but too little to fully pin it down without next year’s data.
Q. What difference does its mass make?
A. Actually, as far as matter’s properties go, it doesn’t really make a great deal of difference. As long as the Higgs mechanism is in place, elementary particles that we know about will have the masses that they do.
But no one thinks the Higgs is the final word about what underlies the Standard Model of particle physics, the theory that describes the most basic elements of matter and the forces through which they interact. Even if the Higgs boson is discovered, the question will still remain of why masses are what they are.
According to quantum field theory — the theory that combines quantum mechanics and special relativity — masses would be expected to be ten thousand trillion times bigger. Without some deeper ingredient, a fudge of that size would be required to make it all hang together. No particle physicist believes that.
We all expect a richer theory underlying the Standard Model. That’s one reason the mass matters to us. Some theories only accommodate a particular range of masses. Knowing the mass will give us insight into what that deeper underlying theory is.
Q. Is the L.H.C. a flop if we don’t find the Higgs boson?
A. The great irony is that not finding a Higgs boson would be spectacular from the point of view of particle physics, pointing to something more interesting than the simple Higgs model. Future investigations could reveal that the particle playing the role of the Higgs has interactions aside from the ones we know have to be there for particles to acquire mass.
The other possibility is that the answer is not the simple, fundamental particle that the Large Hadron Collider currently is looking for. It could be a more complicated object or part of a more complex sector that would take longer to find.
Q. Does this have anything to do with neutrinos — specifically, the ones that were recently reported as having traveled faster than light on a journey that originated at CERN?
A. Neutrinos have tiny masses. The Higgs mechanism is probably partially responsible for those, too. Just nothing that encourages them to go faster than light (which they most likely don’t).
Q. In 1993, the U.S. Congress canceled a larger American collider, the superconducting super collider, which would have been bigger than the CERN machine. Would it have found the Higgs particle years ago?
A. Yes, if it had gone according to schedule. And it would have been able to find things that weren’t a simple Higgs boson, too. The L.H.C. can do such searches as well, but with its lower energy the work is more challenging and will require more time.
Saturday, December 10, 2011
Time Keeps On Slipping Into the Future
Sorry for the dearth of posts recently...I've been working on a project, wanted to devote all my time to it, and kept telling myself...it'll be done today so I can get back to blogging here tomorrow.
The next day it was... okay, it's definitely going to get done today....
Well, today it is done... so back to posting here on a daily basis tomorrow. (With the first post appearing tomorrow afternoon while I'm watching football!)
Thanks for your patience.
The next day it was... okay, it's definitely going to get done today....
Well, today it is done... so back to posting here on a daily basis tomorrow. (With the first post appearing tomorrow afternoon while I'm watching football!)
Thanks for your patience.
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
Wales should be behind the development of nuclear power -says top scientist Read More http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/2011/11/16/wales-s
From WalesOnline: Wales should be behind the development of nuclear power -says top scientist
Wales should be the motor behind the development of nuclear power in the UK and Europe, one of the country’s most prominent scientists has claimed.
Dr Lyn Evans, Large Hadron Collider project leader
Dr Lyn Evans – the Aberdare scientist at the head of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) project in Switzerland – told the Western Mail Wales should look to emulate France in developing nuclear power and selling on the energy.
He also said the Welsh Government should not “put windmills all over Wales” in a bid to fulfil its green quota when nuclear power could still be in the mix.
Dr Evans – who studied Physics at Swansea University – was in Cardiff to address students from Cardiff University’s School of Engineering on the construction of the 27km-long LHC, running under the Franco-Swiss border near Geneva.
He was also due to talk at the Welsh Centre for International Affairs on international scientific collaboration.
“I think that Wales could be the motor for nuclear power, like France is on continental Europe,” he said.
“They are selling their power all over Europe. Whereas in Italy there is no nuclear industry anymore, in Germany now they’re going in completely the wrong direction as far as I can see.
“The Fukushima disaster [in Japan] of course teaches us some lessons – there were just too many massive things that went wrong there.
“But even then it would’ve survived if it hadn’t been for some small things, such as the back-up generators being the basement.
“The most important thing for me, is that there is not a knee-jerk reaction and that the public can be informed and can make an informed opinion.”
He said that climate change and energy security remained the two “most crucial questions” to be answered in Wales and that the public needed to be engaged in the debate.
He also said that Wales should not be emulating the “catastrophic” situation in Germany, where they are looking to close down their nuclear stations and buy energy generated by nuclear power from elsewhere.
“I think it has got completely irrational in Germany,” he said.
“Now they are closing down all their nuclear power stations and buying their nuclear power from France, which is totally irrational and we shouldn’t go down that way.
“I hope the Welsh Government really actively do not get too ‘green’ – in that we should be rationally green.
“Putting windmills all over Wales is not the answer, not the solution.
“It is part of the solution, wave power is part of the solution, but I think what is not part of the solution are massive, coal-burning power stations.”
Dr Evans also made a call for the Welsh Government to prioritise spending on education in science.
“It is well-known we need more scientifically-educated people,” he said.
“Especially in Wales which is a small country with no natural resources left.
“We’ve got to have an educated workforce that can attract the hi-tech people.”
He said the project itself had entered “very serious” science and the likelihood was the Collider could answer whether the so-called “God Particle” – The Higgs Boson – exists within a year.
The project which looks to re-create the conditions a billionth of a second after the Big Bang could help answer questions on the fundamentals of physics and the origins of the universe.
“Now it is serious science, things are not going to pop out overnight,” he said.
“I think it’s difficult and complicated science.
“It has taken a very long time – a very large part of my professional life has been working on the design, the construction and the commissioning of that machine.
Doctor Lyn Evans claimed yesterday that the LHC project was around a year away from proving or disproving the existence of a theoretical particle that could unlock the secrets of the universe.
He told students at Cardiff University that scientists should be able to prove or disprove the existence of the Higgs Boson particle – the so-called “God Particle” – which could hold the key to the origins of the universe.
The Higgs particle was first predicted around four decades ago – and is believed to have given shape to the universe after the Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago.
The project created a mini-Big Bang in order to recreate the conditions immediately after the beginnings of the universe.
He said that the team behind the project could be confident where the predicted Higgs particle was – but stressed that it would be in the region “most difficult to find”.
“There is a window now that is open – exactly where Higgs is predicted to be, in the preferred range,” said Dr Evans.
“But it is exactly the range where it is most difficult to find. But we have narrowed it down to a window, a very small window. If it exists, it will be found.
“I think there is no doubt that by the end of next year, we will have certainty enough with the data to either discover the Higgs in this region, or exclude it. But to find that standard-model Higgs doesn’t exist [would be] an enormous upset.”
The LHC – a particle accelerator measuring 27 km (17 miles) in circumference – has already broken the record for the highest-energy man-made particle collisions after the first proton-proton colliding experiments were started in 2009.
It created mini Big Bangs last year after colliding lead ions at close to the speed of light, generating temperatures millions of times hotter than the sun.
The powerful explosions that followed they created a soup of sub-atomic particles last seen just after the Big Bang.
Wales should be the motor behind the development of nuclear power in the UK and Europe, one of the country’s most prominent scientists has claimed.
Dr Lyn Evans, Large Hadron Collider project leader
Dr Lyn Evans – the Aberdare scientist at the head of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) project in Switzerland – told the Western Mail Wales should look to emulate France in developing nuclear power and selling on the energy.
He also said the Welsh Government should not “put windmills all over Wales” in a bid to fulfil its green quota when nuclear power could still be in the mix.
Dr Evans – who studied Physics at Swansea University – was in Cardiff to address students from Cardiff University’s School of Engineering on the construction of the 27km-long LHC, running under the Franco-Swiss border near Geneva.
He was also due to talk at the Welsh Centre for International Affairs on international scientific collaboration.
“I think that Wales could be the motor for nuclear power, like France is on continental Europe,” he said.
“They are selling their power all over Europe. Whereas in Italy there is no nuclear industry anymore, in Germany now they’re going in completely the wrong direction as far as I can see.
“The Fukushima disaster [in Japan] of course teaches us some lessons – there were just too many massive things that went wrong there.
“But even then it would’ve survived if it hadn’t been for some small things, such as the back-up generators being the basement.
“The most important thing for me, is that there is not a knee-jerk reaction and that the public can be informed and can make an informed opinion.”
He said that climate change and energy security remained the two “most crucial questions” to be answered in Wales and that the public needed to be engaged in the debate.
He also said that Wales should not be emulating the “catastrophic” situation in Germany, where they are looking to close down their nuclear stations and buy energy generated by nuclear power from elsewhere.
“I think it has got completely irrational in Germany,” he said.
“Now they are closing down all their nuclear power stations and buying their nuclear power from France, which is totally irrational and we shouldn’t go down that way.
“I hope the Welsh Government really actively do not get too ‘green’ – in that we should be rationally green.
“Putting windmills all over Wales is not the answer, not the solution.
“It is part of the solution, wave power is part of the solution, but I think what is not part of the solution are massive, coal-burning power stations.”
Dr Evans also made a call for the Welsh Government to prioritise spending on education in science.
“It is well-known we need more scientifically-educated people,” he said.
“Especially in Wales which is a small country with no natural resources left.
“We’ve got to have an educated workforce that can attract the hi-tech people.”
He said the project itself had entered “very serious” science and the likelihood was the Collider could answer whether the so-called “God Particle” – The Higgs Boson – exists within a year.
The project which looks to re-create the conditions a billionth of a second after the Big Bang could help answer questions on the fundamentals of physics and the origins of the universe.
“Now it is serious science, things are not going to pop out overnight,” he said.
“I think it’s difficult and complicated science.
“It has taken a very long time – a very large part of my professional life has been working on the design, the construction and the commissioning of that machine.
Doctor Lyn Evans claimed yesterday that the LHC project was around a year away from proving or disproving the existence of a theoretical particle that could unlock the secrets of the universe.
He told students at Cardiff University that scientists should be able to prove or disprove the existence of the Higgs Boson particle – the so-called “God Particle” – which could hold the key to the origins of the universe.
The Higgs particle was first predicted around four decades ago – and is believed to have given shape to the universe after the Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago.
The project created a mini-Big Bang in order to recreate the conditions immediately after the beginnings of the universe.
He said that the team behind the project could be confident where the predicted Higgs particle was – but stressed that it would be in the region “most difficult to find”.
“There is a window now that is open – exactly where Higgs is predicted to be, in the preferred range,” said Dr Evans.
“But it is exactly the range where it is most difficult to find. But we have narrowed it down to a window, a very small window. If it exists, it will be found.
“I think there is no doubt that by the end of next year, we will have certainty enough with the data to either discover the Higgs in this region, or exclude it. But to find that standard-model Higgs doesn’t exist [would be] an enormous upset.”
The LHC – a particle accelerator measuring 27 km (17 miles) in circumference – has already broken the record for the highest-energy man-made particle collisions after the first proton-proton colliding experiments were started in 2009.
It created mini Big Bangs last year after colliding lead ions at close to the speed of light, generating temperatures millions of times hotter than the sun.
The powerful explosions that followed they created a soup of sub-atomic particles last seen just after the Big Bang.
Former Soviet Scientist Denies Helping Iran's Nuclear Program
From Radio Free Liberty: Former Soviet Scientist Denies Helping Iran's Nuclear Program
By Heather Maher, Mykola Zakaluzhny
By Heather Maher, Mykola Zakaluzhny
If you believe the United Nations' nuclear agency, Vyacheslav Danylenko is a weapons scientist who for six years used his knowledge of explosive detonators to help Iran move closer to its long-held, secret goal of developing a nuclear warhead.
If you believe Danylenko, he is a "computer dummy" who merely taught Iranian students how to create tiny synthetic diamonds for use in industrial grinding and polishing.
Danylenko, who was born in Russia but holds a Ukrainian passport, recently emerged as a key figure in the latest report on Iran's clandestine nuclear program from the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
He is, according to UN investigators and a prominent nonproliferation NGO, the "foreign expert" cited in the report whose lectures on explosion physics and its applications helped Iran develop a nuclear weapons detonator that was tested in 2003.
Danylenko(also spelled Danilenko) has not denied that his work at the Soviet-era Chelyabinsk-70 nuclear weapons facility was "highly classified" or that he lectured Iranian students on subjects related to explosive detonation.
But he told RFE/RL in a phone interview from Kyiv that the IAEA's description of him is "black PR."
"They have attached the label of a nuclear scientist to me, which I have never been. I understand absolutely nothing in nuclear physics," he said. "They also said that I created programs to model warheads. As any old man, I'm a computer dummy and I'm not familiar with any modeling programs. So there are tall tales that I'm a nuclear scientist and practically the founder of the Iranian [nuclear] program. It's just ridiculous."
Danylenko's relationship with Iran began four years after the fall of the Soviet Union, in 1995, after a 30-year career at a secret Soviet nuclear weapons installation that specialized in making smaller versions of nuclear weapons.
There, he became an expert in creating high-precision detonators that could send a massive shock wave through a ball of weapons-grade uranium or plutonium, causing it to explode on cue.
The fact that the same type of blast, if directed at graphite, created a synthetic diamond that had industrial applications meant that Danylenko had a commercial skill after the Cold War ended and his services were no longer in demand by Moscow.
A new report by the Washington-based Institute for Science and Security (ISIS) details how in 1995, Danylenko, who was searching for work, contacted the Iranian Embassy and offered to use his highly specialized skill in the country's production of nanodiamonds.
Danylenko said the Iranians "proposed that [he] write a series of lectures on the dynamic detonation synthesis of diamonds." He said he spent the next six years doing that, and nothing more.
"If I had had any connection to the [Iranian] nuclear program -- and I have strong doubts it existed at that time, most probably there was no such program -- if I had known any of Iran's top state secrets, I wouldn't have been allowed to leave Iran so freely. But I just said goodbye and left," he said.
But the IAEA's report says the agency confirmed, in multiple ways, that Danylenko's abilities were put to use in the development of a highly precise detonator that could trigger a nuclear warhead. Some of that information came from interviews with Danylenko himself, according to the report.
Evidence of his work was used to support the IAEA's conclusion that Iran has pursued the development of a nuclear weapon during the last decade.
Former UN nuclear inspector David Albright says it's "preposterous" to think that Danylenko was just some "ignorant guy helping on nanodiamonds." He says Danylenko's identity as a key player in Iran's nuclear weapons ambitions was an open secret among diplomats and experts close to the IAEA, which named him directly in its internal documents.
"I can understand why the IAEA decided to, in essence, name him in the report, because his story is not very credible. That's Danylenko's No. 1 problem: He hasn't convinced the IAEA that he didn't provide more information than he says he did," Albright says.
Danylenko's expertise in "shock compression" and his years of experience made him irresistible to the Iranians, says Albright, who now heads the ISIS. Judging by the person who replied to Danylenko's 1995 offer, he says, the Iranians knew just how valuable he was.
"He was contracted to do this work by a very senior Iranian who headed the Physics Research Center, which at that time was in charge of the entire secret nuclear sector, and so why would Dr. [Seyed Abbas] Shahmoradi bother to hire this guy to [make nanodiamonds]? It just doesn't hang together."
The IAEA's investigation turned up evidence of equipment bought by Shahmoradi for Danylenko to use in his work. It also discovered a connection that it said links Danylenko directly to the Iranian weapons program: a 2003 test of an instrument that measures shock waves as they impact a sphere. Danylenko co-authored a research paper describing the same instrument more than a decade earlier.
"So here you had a direct connection between one of his areas of expertise, which was diagnosing what happens when high explosives go off and an actual experiment done in Iran that's related to a nuclear weapon," he said, adding, "And he's refused to answer any questions about that, publicly."
Danylenko told RFE/RL that he was "waiting for all this to end" and doesn't want to speak to anyone further about it.
Staying silent might be his safest choice, for if he did use knowledge he picked up during his Soviet-era work to help Iran with its nuclear weapons program, Albright says he risks arrest.
"Russia has very tight security laws," he says. "If he admitted it, he could be in big trouble."
Monday, December 5, 2011
Rutgers Receives $1.5 Million Pledge for Physics Faculty Position as Part of ‘Our Rutgers, Our Future’ Campaign
From Rutgers Media Relations: Rutgers Receives $1.5 Million Pledge for Physics Faculty Position as Part of ‘Our Rutgers, Our Future’ Campaign
NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. – The Rutgers University Foundation has received a $1.5 million pledge to fund a new faculty position in the Department of Physics and Astronomy – the first gift toward a $27 million challenge grant to establish 18 new endowed chairs at the university.
The pledge was made by Claud W. Lovelace, professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy in the School of Arts and Sciences and a world-renowned expert in the field of physics known as string theory. The position will be named The Professor Claud Lovelace Endowed Chair in Experimental Condensed Matter Physics.
“Because I feel I’ve done enough for theory, I decided to establish a chair in experimental solid state physics – that’s the opposite extreme from my work,” said Lovelace. “The experimental physicists at Rutgers are very practical, and I felt they needed to be strengthened. They produce things which are of immediate practical use.”
The 18 chair challenge is funded by an anonymous gift – the largest in the university’s history – to recruit and retain outstanding faculty in a wide range of academic disciplines, including business education and the sciences. For every $1.5 million raised for an endowed chair that meets the donor’s criteria, the donor will match the gift with an additional $1.5 million. A total endowment of $3 million is needed to create an academic chair.
“We are honored that Professor Lovelace, a longtime and valued member of the Rutgers’ physics faculty, wanted to make a meaningful contribution to his department,” said Rutgers University Foundation President Carol P. Herring. “The challenge made it possible for him to establish this profound symbol of his dedication and career.”
The challenge grant and Lovelace’s gift are part of the university’s historic seven-year, $1 billion “Our Rutgers, Our Future” fundraising campaign.
Lovelace, who joined Rutgers in 1971, is one of the world’s original experts in string theory, a branch of physics that aims to provide a unified understanding of the basic forces and fundamental particles in nature. These include gravity, electromagnetism and forces responsible for the stability and decay of atomic nuclei. He was instrumental in the founding of the Rutgers New High Energy Theory Center, which turned Rutgers into an internationally recognized leader in the development and exploration of string theory.
Before joining Rutgers, he was a theorist at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research. CERN today operates the world’s largest particle accelerator, known as the Large Hadron Collider, or LHC. A study published in 2009 ranked him as the 14th most influential physicist in the world for the period 1967-73.
A native of England, Lovelace attended high school in Switzerland and did his undergraduate work at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. He returned to London in 1958 to pursue graduate studies at Imperial College. He cites two Nobel Prize winners as influencers of his career: Allan Cormack, his physics lab instructor at Cape Town who shared the 1979 Nobel Prize in Medicine for developing computer assisted tomography, or CAT scans; and Abdus Salam, his mentor at Imperial College who shared the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physics for theories of subatomic particle interactions.
His early grasp of physics, however, was mostly self-taught.
“I used to go to Zurich for orthodontist appointments,” he said. “I would buy graduate-level physics books there and read them on my train trips home.”
NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. – The Rutgers University Foundation has received a $1.5 million pledge to fund a new faculty position in the Department of Physics and Astronomy – the first gift toward a $27 million challenge grant to establish 18 new endowed chairs at the university.
The pledge was made by Claud W. Lovelace, professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy in the School of Arts and Sciences and a world-renowned expert in the field of physics known as string theory. The position will be named The Professor Claud Lovelace Endowed Chair in Experimental Condensed Matter Physics.
“Because I feel I’ve done enough for theory, I decided to establish a chair in experimental solid state physics – that’s the opposite extreme from my work,” said Lovelace. “The experimental physicists at Rutgers are very practical, and I felt they needed to be strengthened. They produce things which are of immediate practical use.”
The 18 chair challenge is funded by an anonymous gift – the largest in the university’s history – to recruit and retain outstanding faculty in a wide range of academic disciplines, including business education and the sciences. For every $1.5 million raised for an endowed chair that meets the donor’s criteria, the donor will match the gift with an additional $1.5 million. A total endowment of $3 million is needed to create an academic chair.
“We are honored that Professor Lovelace, a longtime and valued member of the Rutgers’ physics faculty, wanted to make a meaningful contribution to his department,” said Rutgers University Foundation President Carol P. Herring. “The challenge made it possible for him to establish this profound symbol of his dedication and career.”
The challenge grant and Lovelace’s gift are part of the university’s historic seven-year, $1 billion “Our Rutgers, Our Future” fundraising campaign.
Lovelace, who joined Rutgers in 1971, is one of the world’s original experts in string theory, a branch of physics that aims to provide a unified understanding of the basic forces and fundamental particles in nature. These include gravity, electromagnetism and forces responsible for the stability and decay of atomic nuclei. He was instrumental in the founding of the Rutgers New High Energy Theory Center, which turned Rutgers into an internationally recognized leader in the development and exploration of string theory.
Before joining Rutgers, he was a theorist at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research. CERN today operates the world’s largest particle accelerator, known as the Large Hadron Collider, or LHC. A study published in 2009 ranked him as the 14th most influential physicist in the world for the period 1967-73.
A native of England, Lovelace attended high school in Switzerland and did his undergraduate work at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. He returned to London in 1958 to pursue graduate studies at Imperial College. He cites two Nobel Prize winners as influencers of his career: Allan Cormack, his physics lab instructor at Cape Town who shared the 1979 Nobel Prize in Medicine for developing computer assisted tomography, or CAT scans; and Abdus Salam, his mentor at Imperial College who shared the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physics for theories of subatomic particle interactions.
His early grasp of physics, however, was mostly self-taught.
“I used to go to Zurich for orthodontist appointments,” he said. “I would buy graduate-level physics books there and read them on my train trips home.”
Basic physics distilled
From The Tartan (Carnegie Mellon's Student Newspaper Since 1906): Basic physics distilled
Energy, power, climate change, atomic explosions — what scientific concepts should any future president of the United States be familiar with? One course at Carnegie Mellon aims to address exactly that.
Markus Deserno, a professor in the department of physics, teamed up with department head Gregg Franklin to teach a course titled “Physics for Future Presidents,” in which students learn science fundamentals pertaining to global scientific issues that hold social and political importance. For example, to learn about nuclear energy, students studied the basics of atoms, chain reactions, and energy. An intelligent conversation about global warming calls for a few basics on radiation and light.
“There’s a lot of stuff out there which you can’t really have a sound opinion on if you completely lack the science,” Deserno said. “So what you instead do is just listen to the sound bites of people telling you stuff. And it’s not really that hard to have an opinion on this stuff once you know a couple of basics.”
The class, which was offered for the first time in the fall 2009 semester, is open to all students and majors. There are no prerequisites, and the professors like it this way. “I think that we just want to enable our students to become more educated citizens — it doesn’t necessarily have to be for the next future president, but any voting citizen should know a couple of these things,” Deserno said.
The course had its beginnings just over 10 years ago at University of California, Berkeley. A physics professor named Richard Muller was asked to teach a qualitative physics course that covered a very wide range of topics as effectively as possible. His vision was to create a course that taught scientific fundamentals that addressed some of the most important global issues while avoiding some technical aspects such as calculus that might confuse students. Thus, Physics for Future Presidents was born.
“Can real physics be taught without math? Yes! Math is a tool for computation, but it is not the essence of physics,” Muller explained in a 2010 newsletter for the Forum on Physics and Society. “So many people in our government have a poor grasp of science, and yet if they misjudge the science, they can make a wrong decision.” After a few years of teaching the course, Muller published the textbook Physics for Future Presidents: The Science Behind the Headlines. Similar courses have spread to other universities, including Carnegie Mellon.
Franklin, who teaches the course with Deserno, believes the students are gaining a lot from the course. In one instance, the students viewed a three-minute video clip of a politician speaking to Congress about carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. “When [Deserno] was showing that three-minute clip, one of the students shouted out, ‘Where is she getting her numbers?’ That’s a successful class!” Franklin said.
The course has received positive reviews from students as well. “The professors have done an excellent job of finding realistic ways to clearly present the basic physical phenomena we all should understand,” Tyler Rice, a sophomore English major, said in an email. “This is important for students who are in fields which don’t require the in-depth study and rigorous mathematics of your typical physics class at CMU, but who still want to learn about the big picture.”
In the end, making judgments on the credibility of scientific decisions and statements is up to the students, and Deserno and Franklin hope the students have gained some tools to help them make good assessments based on scientific fundamentals.
“In recitation, [the students] were asking, ‘How do we find out the truth on some issue?’ ” Franklin said. “That’s the best but hardest question. But the fact that they’re asking that is good.”
Energy, power, climate change, atomic explosions — what scientific concepts should any future president of the United States be familiar with? One course at Carnegie Mellon aims to address exactly that.
Markus Deserno, a professor in the department of physics, teamed up with department head Gregg Franklin to teach a course titled “Physics for Future Presidents,” in which students learn science fundamentals pertaining to global scientific issues that hold social and political importance. For example, to learn about nuclear energy, students studied the basics of atoms, chain reactions, and energy. An intelligent conversation about global warming calls for a few basics on radiation and light.
“There’s a lot of stuff out there which you can’t really have a sound opinion on if you completely lack the science,” Deserno said. “So what you instead do is just listen to the sound bites of people telling you stuff. And it’s not really that hard to have an opinion on this stuff once you know a couple of basics.”
The class, which was offered for the first time in the fall 2009 semester, is open to all students and majors. There are no prerequisites, and the professors like it this way. “I think that we just want to enable our students to become more educated citizens — it doesn’t necessarily have to be for the next future president, but any voting citizen should know a couple of these things,” Deserno said.
The course had its beginnings just over 10 years ago at University of California, Berkeley. A physics professor named Richard Muller was asked to teach a qualitative physics course that covered a very wide range of topics as effectively as possible. His vision was to create a course that taught scientific fundamentals that addressed some of the most important global issues while avoiding some technical aspects such as calculus that might confuse students. Thus, Physics for Future Presidents was born.
“Can real physics be taught without math? Yes! Math is a tool for computation, but it is not the essence of physics,” Muller explained in a 2010 newsletter for the Forum on Physics and Society. “So many people in our government have a poor grasp of science, and yet if they misjudge the science, they can make a wrong decision.” After a few years of teaching the course, Muller published the textbook Physics for Future Presidents: The Science Behind the Headlines. Similar courses have spread to other universities, including Carnegie Mellon.
Franklin, who teaches the course with Deserno, believes the students are gaining a lot from the course. In one instance, the students viewed a three-minute video clip of a politician speaking to Congress about carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. “When [Deserno] was showing that three-minute clip, one of the students shouted out, ‘Where is she getting her numbers?’ That’s a successful class!” Franklin said.
The course has received positive reviews from students as well. “The professors have done an excellent job of finding realistic ways to clearly present the basic physical phenomena we all should understand,” Tyler Rice, a sophomore English major, said in an email. “This is important for students who are in fields which don’t require the in-depth study and rigorous mathematics of your typical physics class at CMU, but who still want to learn about the big picture.”
In the end, making judgments on the credibility of scientific decisions and statements is up to the students, and Deserno and Franklin hope the students have gained some tools to help them make good assessments based on scientific fundamentals.
“In recitation, [the students] were asking, ‘How do we find out the truth on some issue?’ ” Franklin said. “That’s the best but hardest question. But the fact that they’re asking that is good.”
Friday, December 2, 2011
Book Review: Fission by Tom Weston
From Seattle PI: Book Review: Fission by Tom Weston
Fission by Tom Weston is a very inspiring story that will stay in your mind long after reading. The main character, Lise Meitner, has a PhD in Physics, which was quite an accomplishment during the early twentieth century. At that time, women scientists really were ignored in Vienna (where she lived) as well as throughout Europe, and only thought of as marriage material. A brilliant woman scientist like Lise was considered quite an anomaly. While this story is somewhat fictional, it is based on the true story of Lise's life.
Lise was born on November 7, 1878, in Vienna, Austria. She was the third of eight children born into a Jewish family. She attended the University of Vienna in 1901 and studied Physics under Ludwig Boltzmann, a fantastic teacher and loved by many in Austria. When Lise received her PhD, she went on to Berlin to study with Max Planck. Her family was against this as they wanted her to stop her education and get a job teaching or get married and give them grandchildren. But Lise was adamant about studying in Berlin and wanted to work with Otto Hahn, who was a chemist at the University. They worked together for many years and developed the Hahn-Meitner Research Department at Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry in Berlin. They studied radioactivity and, with her knowledge of physics and his of chemistry, discovered a new element; protactinium. During World War I, Lise found herself working as an X-Ray technician. When she came back to the Institute at the end of the war she discovered that many of her scientific accomplishments were not recognized -- she didn't even get credit for being the assistant on some of these projects.
When Austria was taken over by German troops in 1938, Lise was forced to leave the institute because of Germany's bias against Jewish people. She thought she had immunity from this prejudice because she was born in Austria, but Hitler's government didn't agree. She was smuggled out of Germany and into Denmark and then had to flee to Sweden when the Germans entered Denmark. She continued her work in Stockholm but had little or no support because of the prejudice that existed against women working in the scientific fields. She and her old partner, Otto Hahn, met secretly in Denmark to plan a new round of experiments. Lise came up with the solution that explained nuclear fission but because the experiments were done at Hahn's lab in Berlin, again she lost credit while Hahn published the results in the year 1936.
In February, 1939, Lise published the physical explanation for the experiments along with her nephew, Otto (Robert) Frisch, and called the discovery nuclear fission. When this process became known in the scientific community, Albert Einstein wrote a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt warning him of the devastation this discovery could cause. As is well known, it resulted in the Manhattan Project that built the atomic bomb. Hahn was awarded the Nobel Prize for nuclear fission in 1944 but Meitner was never recognized for her work even though her nephew hounded the committee for years asking them to honor Lise.
In 1992, the heaviest known element in the universe was named Meitnerium (Mt) in Lise Mitner's honor. This woman scientist gave her whole life to the study of physics and always tried to think of all the good her discovery could do in spite of the horrendous use that it was put to in war time. Fission is a story of danger and desire for power that took the lives of many innocent people. In the center of all this was a little woman with a big brain who was ignored by many, including family and friends. The author does a fantastic job of writing about Lise's life and adding many personal notes without suggesting that physics was the only thing she thought of. For readers who shy away from scientific books, take note -- this is not a story bogged down in technical jargon but an exciting story of discoveries as well as the hardships of war. In short, Fission is a compelling story about one woman's dedication to science.
Quill Says: A larger than life story of a real person who made a real difference and, as her headstone reads: "Lise Meitner: a physicist who never lost her humanity."
Thursday, December 1, 2011
CERN purchases multi-user licenses for COMSOL Multiphysics
From CAD CAM News: CERN purchases multi-user licenses for COMSOL Multiphysics
CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research and the world’s leading laboratory for particle physics, has purchased a multi-user license for COMSOL Multiphysics and a number of its add-on modules. Through this licensing agreement, this software is now available CERN wide for engineers and researchers. COMSOL Multiphysics enables them to conduct real-world simulations of any physics-based system during research, system design and development.
CERN is run by 20 European Member States, but many non-European countries are also involved, and scientists come from around the world to use CERN’s facilities. The Laboratory’s scientific and technical staff design and build particle accelerators and ensure their smooth operation; they also help prepare, run, analyze and interpret the data from complex scientific experiments. CERN has a permanent staff of 2500 researchers along with some 9500 visiting scientists who represent 608 universities and 113 nationalities.
“CERN attracts the world’s top scientists and researchers, and we are extremely gratified that these experts recognize COMSOL as one of the leading modeling codes and have asked to have CERN add this software to its arsenal of tools,” says Dr. Sven Friedel, Managing Director of COMSOL’s Zurich office, which handled the transaction. “This purchase clearly confirms the value of our software in assisting in the development and running of the world’s largest scientific experiments.”
COMSOL has enjoyed a growing interest at CERN. Pierre Baehler, Manager of the CAD/CAE Support Team for the organization, notes that “the use of COMSOL products started in 2007 when one user purchased an individual license. He was very successful with it, his colleagues got interested in it and not long thereafter a few more licenses were acquired. Meanwhile, though, we see graduate students and researchers who have worked with COMSOL products at their universities coming to CERN for their research. Following an increasing number of requests from them and CERN researchers, our engineering software selection committee decided to purchase concurrent network licenses which allow a wider access to the tool. COMSOL clearly has the potential to become an important tool for engineering applications at CERN.”
“One aspect that makes COMSOL so attractive to these users is its flexibility,” so explains Bernardo Bordini, a researcher who previously used the software while at Fermilab (Chicago, IL) was also the first COMSOL license at CERN. “Here at CERN we’re dealing with very non-conventional problems. For instance, in my studies of the magneto-thermo stability of superconductors, we are pushing the Maxwell Equations into a very nonlinear region. We thus need to modify the standard equations, and COMSOL allows me to do exactly that. In addition, we strongly rely on the software’s multiphysics capabilities. For example in some of our systems where we are sending current from room ambient temperature into a cryogenic environment, we have to closely examine the interplay of heat transfer, structural dynamics and electromagnetic effects. It’s not easy to find other software that can do it this well”.
The multiphysics capabilities of COMSOL are also attractive to Rob Veenhof, who is a Convenor of the simulation group of RD51, an international consortium of 73 universities and research laboratories from 25 countries working on the study of gas-based detectors. Besides research, the group also conducts courses around the world that introduce simulation tools to PhD students and postdocs within the collaboration, and such a course was recently conducted at CERN. Says Veenhof, “COMSOL is one of the finite-element packages we use to produce field maps that we then input into our own Garfield simulator. Further, COMSOL makes it far easier to study the onset of ‘streamers’. Here we work with some differential equations, which we can input directly into the software.” Veenhof adds that they are also studying very damaging gas discharges in the detectors and look forward to using the Plasma Module, which he now has access due to the new licensing agreement.
Yet another CERN experiment where COMSOL was of benefit is CMS, one of the particles detector in the Large Hadron Collider, an underground particle collider with a circumference of 27 km. Here, Bertrand Baudouy of CEA (the French Atomic Energy Commission) used the software to help design the cryogenic cooling system that keeps the magnet of CMS at -269°C (4 K). Baudouy notes that “I can now design the cooling tubes for a superconducting magnet in a week or so, work that previously took two to three months.”
No limit on the number of cores
Returning to CERN’s decision to purchase the software, Pierre Baehler adds, “Another factor that was attractive was the fact that a single network license allows CERN to run a COMSOL job on any number of cores or a compute cluster. This contrasts to many other products with a per-core licensing scheme. Not having a limit to the number of cores is extremely convenient for us because we are constantly upgrading and expanding our compute resources. There’s no need to acquire more licenses, we can instead run the software on new hardware and make use of the full compute capacity as soon as the hardware is installed.”
COMSOL’s Friedel, who has been assisting CERN researchers in fully exploiting the software, summarizes the collaboration this way: “At CERN, the world’s leading researchers are pushing the state of the art in a number of disciplines and in modeling. It’s clear that COMSOL is a technology enabler that allows them to truly unleash their creativity. This fits in exactly with COMSOL’s culture of intensively working with its users to drive innovation on both sides. We look forward to seeing more CERN researchers joining our very active community.”
CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, operates the world’s leading laboratory for particle physics. Its business is fundamental physics, finding out what the universe is made of and how it works. Founded in 1954, CERN has become a prime example of international collaboration, with currently 20 Member States. Additional nations from around the globe also contribute to and participate in the research programs.
CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research and the world’s leading laboratory for particle physics, has purchased a multi-user license for COMSOL Multiphysics and a number of its add-on modules. Through this licensing agreement, this software is now available CERN wide for engineers and researchers. COMSOL Multiphysics enables them to conduct real-world simulations of any physics-based system during research, system design and development.
CERN is run by 20 European Member States, but many non-European countries are also involved, and scientists come from around the world to use CERN’s facilities. The Laboratory’s scientific and technical staff design and build particle accelerators and ensure their smooth operation; they also help prepare, run, analyze and interpret the data from complex scientific experiments. CERN has a permanent staff of 2500 researchers along with some 9500 visiting scientists who represent 608 universities and 113 nationalities.
“CERN attracts the world’s top scientists and researchers, and we are extremely gratified that these experts recognize COMSOL as one of the leading modeling codes and have asked to have CERN add this software to its arsenal of tools,” says Dr. Sven Friedel, Managing Director of COMSOL’s Zurich office, which handled the transaction. “This purchase clearly confirms the value of our software in assisting in the development and running of the world’s largest scientific experiments.”
COMSOL has enjoyed a growing interest at CERN. Pierre Baehler, Manager of the CAD/CAE Support Team for the organization, notes that “the use of COMSOL products started in 2007 when one user purchased an individual license. He was very successful with it, his colleagues got interested in it and not long thereafter a few more licenses were acquired. Meanwhile, though, we see graduate students and researchers who have worked with COMSOL products at their universities coming to CERN for their research. Following an increasing number of requests from them and CERN researchers, our engineering software selection committee decided to purchase concurrent network licenses which allow a wider access to the tool. COMSOL clearly has the potential to become an important tool for engineering applications at CERN.”
“One aspect that makes COMSOL so attractive to these users is its flexibility,” so explains Bernardo Bordini, a researcher who previously used the software while at Fermilab (Chicago, IL) was also the first COMSOL license at CERN. “Here at CERN we’re dealing with very non-conventional problems. For instance, in my studies of the magneto-thermo stability of superconductors, we are pushing the Maxwell Equations into a very nonlinear region. We thus need to modify the standard equations, and COMSOL allows me to do exactly that. In addition, we strongly rely on the software’s multiphysics capabilities. For example in some of our systems where we are sending current from room ambient temperature into a cryogenic environment, we have to closely examine the interplay of heat transfer, structural dynamics and electromagnetic effects. It’s not easy to find other software that can do it this well”.
The multiphysics capabilities of COMSOL are also attractive to Rob Veenhof, who is a Convenor of the simulation group of RD51, an international consortium of 73 universities and research laboratories from 25 countries working on the study of gas-based detectors. Besides research, the group also conducts courses around the world that introduce simulation tools to PhD students and postdocs within the collaboration, and such a course was recently conducted at CERN. Says Veenhof, “COMSOL is one of the finite-element packages we use to produce field maps that we then input into our own Garfield simulator. Further, COMSOL makes it far easier to study the onset of ‘streamers’. Here we work with some differential equations, which we can input directly into the software.” Veenhof adds that they are also studying very damaging gas discharges in the detectors and look forward to using the Plasma Module, which he now has access due to the new licensing agreement.
Yet another CERN experiment where COMSOL was of benefit is CMS, one of the particles detector in the Large Hadron Collider, an underground particle collider with a circumference of 27 km. Here, Bertrand Baudouy of CEA (the French Atomic Energy Commission) used the software to help design the cryogenic cooling system that keeps the magnet of CMS at -269°C (4 K). Baudouy notes that “I can now design the cooling tubes for a superconducting magnet in a week or so, work that previously took two to three months.”
No limit on the number of cores
Returning to CERN’s decision to purchase the software, Pierre Baehler adds, “Another factor that was attractive was the fact that a single network license allows CERN to run a COMSOL job on any number of cores or a compute cluster. This contrasts to many other products with a per-core licensing scheme. Not having a limit to the number of cores is extremely convenient for us because we are constantly upgrading and expanding our compute resources. There’s no need to acquire more licenses, we can instead run the software on new hardware and make use of the full compute capacity as soon as the hardware is installed.”
COMSOL’s Friedel, who has been assisting CERN researchers in fully exploiting the software, summarizes the collaboration this way: “At CERN, the world’s leading researchers are pushing the state of the art in a number of disciplines and in modeling. It’s clear that COMSOL is a technology enabler that allows them to truly unleash their creativity. This fits in exactly with COMSOL’s culture of intensively working with its users to drive innovation on both sides. We look forward to seeing more CERN researchers joining our very active community.”
CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, operates the world’s leading laboratory for particle physics. Its business is fundamental physics, finding out what the universe is made of and how it works. Founded in 1954, CERN has become a prime example of international collaboration, with currently 20 Member States. Additional nations from around the globe also contribute to and participate in the research programs.
Study Shows Worse Picture of Meltdown in Japan
From New York Times: Study Shows Worse Picture of Meltdown in Japan
By HIROKO TABUCHI
TOKYO — Molten nuclear fuel may have bored into the floor of at least one of the reactors at the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, the complex’s operator said Wednesday, citing a new simulation of the accident that crippled the plant in March.
The simulation suggested that the meltdown may have been more severe than had previously been thought.
Soon after an earthquake and a tsunami on March 11 knocked out cooling systems at the power plant, nuclear fuel rods in three of its six reactors overheated and slumped, the operator, the Tokyo Electric Power Company, has said.
In the No. 1 reactor, the overheated fuel may have eroded the primary containment vessel’s thick concrete floor, and it may have gotten almost within a foot of a crucial steel barrier, the utility said the new simulation suggested. Beneath that steel layer is a concrete basement, which is the last barrier before the fuel would have begun to penetrate the earth.
Some nuclear experts have warned that water from a makeshift cooling system now in place at the plant may not be able to properly cool any nuclear fuel that may have seeped into the concrete. The new simulation may call into question the efforts to cool and stabilize the reactor, but the Tokyo Electric Power Company, or Tepco, says it is not worried more than eight months after the accident.
The findings are the latest in a series of increasingly grave scenarios presented by Tepco about the state of the reactors. The company initially insisted that there was no breach at any of the three most-damaged reactors; it later said that there might have been a breach, but that most of the nuclear fuel had remained within the containment vessels.
“This is still an overly optimistic simulation,” said Hiroaki Koide, an assistant professor of physics at the Kyoto University Research Reactor Institute, who has been a vocal critic of Tepco’s lack of disclosure of details of the disaster. Tepco would very much like to say that the outermost containment is not completely compromised and that the meltdown stopped before the outer steel barrier, he said, “but even by their own simulation, it’s very borderline.”
“I have always argued that the containment is broken, and that there is the danger of a wider radiation leak,” Mr. Koide said. “In reality, it’s impossible to look inside the reactor, and most measurement instruments have been knocked out. So nobody really knows how bad it is.”
Still, a spokesman for Tepco, Junichi Matsumoto, said Wednesday that the nuclear fuel was no longer eating into the concrete, and that the new simulation would not affect efforts to bring the reactors to a stable state known as a “cold shutdown” by the end of the year.
“The containment vessel as a whole is being cooled, so there is no change to our outlook,” Mr. Matsumoto said at a news conference.
The nuclear accident at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, the worst since Chernobyl, triggered fuel meltdowns at three of its six reactors and a huge radiation leak that has displaced as many as 100,000 people. The Japanese government has said some areas around the plant will be uninhabitable for decades.
Tepco based the simulation on projections of decay heat released by the nuclear fuel and other estimates. The results suggest that the uranium fuel rods at the No. 1 reactor were most badly damaged, Mr. Matsumoto said, because it lost cooling water before the other two reactors did. The fuel rods were exposed for several hours before fire trucks could pump in emergency seawater.
Because the simulation suggests that heat released as a result of radioactive decay “far overwhelmed” the effect of the cooling water, he said, and because temperatures in the inner pressure vessel that originally housed the fuel are thought to have dropped quickly, Tepco now assumes that “100 percent of the fuel at Unit 1 has slumped” into the outer primary containment vessel.
In addition, the simulation suggests that the fuel bored more than two feet into the concrete, Mr. Matsumoto said.
At Units 2 and 3, the initial cooling efforts were more successful, he said, and a smaller amount of fuel is thought to have escaped the pressure vessels and into the primary containment vessels.
By HIROKO TABUCHI
TOKYO — Molten nuclear fuel may have bored into the floor of at least one of the reactors at the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, the complex’s operator said Wednesday, citing a new simulation of the accident that crippled the plant in March.
The simulation suggested that the meltdown may have been more severe than had previously been thought.
Soon after an earthquake and a tsunami on March 11 knocked out cooling systems at the power plant, nuclear fuel rods in three of its six reactors overheated and slumped, the operator, the Tokyo Electric Power Company, has said.
In the No. 1 reactor, the overheated fuel may have eroded the primary containment vessel’s thick concrete floor, and it may have gotten almost within a foot of a crucial steel barrier, the utility said the new simulation suggested. Beneath that steel layer is a concrete basement, which is the last barrier before the fuel would have begun to penetrate the earth.
Some nuclear experts have warned that water from a makeshift cooling system now in place at the plant may not be able to properly cool any nuclear fuel that may have seeped into the concrete. The new simulation may call into question the efforts to cool and stabilize the reactor, but the Tokyo Electric Power Company, or Tepco, says it is not worried more than eight months after the accident.
The findings are the latest in a series of increasingly grave scenarios presented by Tepco about the state of the reactors. The company initially insisted that there was no breach at any of the three most-damaged reactors; it later said that there might have been a breach, but that most of the nuclear fuel had remained within the containment vessels.
“This is still an overly optimistic simulation,” said Hiroaki Koide, an assistant professor of physics at the Kyoto University Research Reactor Institute, who has been a vocal critic of Tepco’s lack of disclosure of details of the disaster. Tepco would very much like to say that the outermost containment is not completely compromised and that the meltdown stopped before the outer steel barrier, he said, “but even by their own simulation, it’s very borderline.”
“I have always argued that the containment is broken, and that there is the danger of a wider radiation leak,” Mr. Koide said. “In reality, it’s impossible to look inside the reactor, and most measurement instruments have been knocked out. So nobody really knows how bad it is.”
Still, a spokesman for Tepco, Junichi Matsumoto, said Wednesday that the nuclear fuel was no longer eating into the concrete, and that the new simulation would not affect efforts to bring the reactors to a stable state known as a “cold shutdown” by the end of the year.
“The containment vessel as a whole is being cooled, so there is no change to our outlook,” Mr. Matsumoto said at a news conference.
The nuclear accident at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, the worst since Chernobyl, triggered fuel meltdowns at three of its six reactors and a huge radiation leak that has displaced as many as 100,000 people. The Japanese government has said some areas around the plant will be uninhabitable for decades.
Tepco based the simulation on projections of decay heat released by the nuclear fuel and other estimates. The results suggest that the uranium fuel rods at the No. 1 reactor were most badly damaged, Mr. Matsumoto said, because it lost cooling water before the other two reactors did. The fuel rods were exposed for several hours before fire trucks could pump in emergency seawater.
Because the simulation suggests that heat released as a result of radioactive decay “far overwhelmed” the effect of the cooling water, he said, and because temperatures in the inner pressure vessel that originally housed the fuel are thought to have dropped quickly, Tepco now assumes that “100 percent of the fuel at Unit 1 has slumped” into the outer primary containment vessel.
In addition, the simulation suggests that the fuel bored more than two feet into the concrete, Mr. Matsumoto said.
At Units 2 and 3, the initial cooling efforts were more successful, he said, and a smaller amount of fuel is thought to have escaped the pressure vessels and into the primary containment vessels.
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