Wednesday, May 29, 2019

Nuclear for Coal to Oil in Australia

Nuclear for Coal to Oil in Australia

Australia lacks oil reserves, and this is a security issue. A solution is the conversion of coal to oil. The carbon atoms in that oil do not lead to extra CO2 emissions. Oil from elsewhere would otherwise be used.

However the process of converting the coal to oil requires a lot of process heat, which is traditionally provided by burning half of the coal. However to do that would inevitably breach Australia's commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The alternative is to use nuclear power. The conversion process is cheaper and more efficient if done at very high temperatures, over 900 degrees C. It turns out that there are modern passively safe reactor designs which provide that level of industrial process heat.

Doing this will be politically very favourable for the current government:

  • Every voter can understand the need for secure access to oil for transport fuels.
  • Many on the Left now understand the need for nuclear power to reduce CO2 emissions, so the introduction of nuclear power will wedge the opposition.
  • Indonesia is making tentative steps towards nuclear power, and many Australians will think that is a good reason for us to do the same.

There are various options to site nuclear power far from most voters. Perhaps the Bunda Cliffs on the southern edge of the Nullabor, which is close to water, but high above a low risk coastline.

Monday, May 27, 2019

Boom, Bust and DNA

Imagine it is boom time for a group of humans. There's lots of food, and time for recreational and romantic activities. What behaviour will favour our genes?

There's no reason to worry about competition from strangers. And strangers are attractive. We plan to have 10 children and 100 grandchildren. If we mix in some slightly different genes then we might produce some offspring that combine good genes of ours with their good genes and make individuals with an advantage. So we're tolerant of strangers, and looking to have offspring with more than one partner.

Now imagine things are bad. Life is a struggle. The population is falling. What behaviour favours our genes now?

People that are like us share more of our genes. People who are different probably don't. And they're competing with us for the limited resources. Maybe we should cooperate with similar people and make sure we get our share relative to those who are different. And note that deaths from fighting are less of a loss to our DNA because deaths are common and it at least leaves more resources for other copies of our DNA. We now hope to have 2 children and 4 grandchildren, or maybe less. And it makes sense to marry our 2nd cousin, or even our 1st cousin.

Wednesday, May 8, 2019

Obvious Things: Nuclear Power for Climate

There are a lot of problems with relying on renewables to cut CO2 production:

But we come back to the fact that the voters hate nuclear power. 

We are currently addressing this by exporting high energy activities (manufacturing) to non-democratic places, i.e. China. But despots have their own fears, and also don't like to annoy their citizens too much. So this may not continue to work. And the rise of robots means that manufacturing may become more uniformly distributed.

The solution has to be:
  • We tell the electorate that we have to do nuclear to address the climate emergency.
  • We are going to do it in a safely remote location and use it to make liquid fuels for transport (hydrogen would be good, ammonia is ok) and/or pump the electricity a long way.
  • We are going to be very open about the planning. No secret stupidity like Fukishima.
And then let's throw a lot of money and expertise at it. Not in the Chinese way where all the eggs are in one basket. Multiple large competing projects. Plus let's start building reactors that are known to work just in case none of the advanced plans work out.

We've been asleep at the wheel. Time to get moving.

Tuesday, May 7, 2019

Obvious Things: Type 2 diabetes

We know that type 2 diabetes is associated with processed food.

We know that type 2 diabetes is associated with the top section of the gut. How do we know this? A treatment for obesity is to do surgery that bypasses that part of the gut. The intention was just to reduce the total size of the gut. But a miracle occurs: if the patient has type 2 diabetes (raised blood sugar), then they are instantly cured! No need to wait for them to lose weight.

So what is the role of the top section of the gut in a normal human primitive diet?

Normally primitive food will come in with the cell walls intact. So it is obvious that the first job, the job done by the top section of the gut, will be to deal with those cell walls. And it will be no surprise if it expects to see cell walls, and uses them to self regulate, and fails to function correctly without them.

And, of course, the characteristic property of processed food is that the cell walls have already been destroyed by industrial processes.

This ain't rocket science. (Whatever happened to "ain't").