randform

Unfortunately the laptop crash problem is still unresoved and blogging will stay retarded. Before the crash I edited already two posts.

This here is the first post it is about comments on nuclear energy which I left on other blogs. Moreover it gives a motivation why I wrote the second post which is an overview over the posts on nuclear energy on randform. (please see below)
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A short overview over posts on randform which deal with nuclear science, in
particular the ones including information about (new) nuclear power generation.

funding declaration: Me, the author of the posts was supported in the time of writing the below linked posts by no other source than personal income from teaching at Berlin high schools, working as a visiting assistant professor at the Department of Mathematics at Kyushu University (Fukuoka, Japan), as a wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter at the Department of Physics at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (Munich,Germany) and by my husband Tim’s income as a professor at Kyushu University and at the Technical University of Munich. The blog posts were written in my freetime, they are my private views and they have nothing to do with the above mentioned sources of income.
update July 25th, 2020: From 2015 until 2020 I worked part-time in a company which produces and provides IT services around the asset management of utility providers. The posts during that time were written in my free time and are still solely my opinion.

intention of posts:
The intention of the posts was to raise awareness about the problems of nuclear power generation and to gather scientific information about this issue. Last but not least it was arising from the wish to accumulate scientific facts which should serve to justify my claim that given todays situation one should better refrain from using commercial nuclear power generation. The claim was stated first in this post. Note that I do think that nuclear energy for medical applications should be supported. I think also that nuclear research in general should be supported, however not on the expense of research in more environmentally friendly technologies and basic research. Note also that nuclear science has not been my most favorite science topic, but that I regard it rather as my duty as a physicist to inform the public about the risks.

The intention of this overview is to link together the separate blog posts on randform in order to make the line of argumentation more visible.

I often cite information at the website of the world nuclear association, because this site is rather detailled and written by experts and because it is rather a pro-nuclear source. I think it is less helpful to use anti-nuclear resources (like Greenpeace etc.) if one wants to make a case against the use of commercial nuclear power generation.

A main topic in the nuclear discussion on randform is that I tried to explain that typical claims like “nuclear has been safe for a long time” are more or less void, since a lot of new and/or different nuclear technology than nowadays technology will have to be installed.

The question of the limited supply of Uranium 235 which amongst others makes the increased use of nuclear breeder reactors very likely (nuclear breeders are nuclear reactors, which may “breed” (i.e. produce) new material for nuclear power generation) had thus been discussed already in one of the first posts on that issue on July 17th 2007 (a birthday post):

http://www.randform.org/blog/?p=1336 “on nuclear energy”

Especially fast breeders are currently not as common as other types of nuclear power plants (according to world nuclear there have been altogether 20 fast neutron reactors since the fifties, very few of them for commercial power generation – as a comparision there are currently some 440 nuclear power reactors in use, I couldn’t find a number how many reactors were in use since the fifties, but according to world nuclear there are (as of today) 14170 reactor years of civil nuclear power and 390 reactor-years experience with fast reactors.

An introduction to the different materials used in breeders and the basic build-up of a breeder is given in that post, as well as an overview and calculation of how much nuclear energy may contribute and contributes to world energy production.

One distinguishes two main types of breeders: Fast breeder reactors (FBR) or short fast breeders and thermal breeders.

In the post “on nuclear energy” fast breeders are mentioned in particular and a link to a post about Russia’s nuclear energy plans (which includes FBRs) and climate change from May 9th 2007 at

http://www.randform.org/blog/?p=1156 “change” is given.

(short supplement on the “fast” and “thermal” in front of the word “breeder”: In a nuclear fission reaction a neutron splits an atom. In the reaction new neutrons are released (usually two to three new neutrons) . These new neutrons can again split an atom. Since the number of neutrons is approximately doubled after every split the number of neutrons involved in such a reaction grows rapidly. This is called a chain reaction. In nuclear reactors one manages to control a chain reaction by controling the number of neutrons, which may split atoms. In the control of such a reaction the velocity of the neutron plays an important role. Thus there are fast neutrons or neutrons which have been slowed down, called thermal neutrons. Fast breeders are fast neutron reactors which breed (sofar most conventional fast neutron reactors breed), thermal breeders are breeders with neutrons that had been slowed down. Different materials react differently upon wether a neutron is fast or thermal. The control of a chain reaction in a fast neutron reactor is harder than in a thermal reactor. A failure to control a chain reaction properly may result in a nuclear melt down )

One big problem with breeder technology -apart from e.g. safety problems- is amongst others that breeders may fuel a plutonium market. As was described in the post “on nuclear energy” plutonium 239 has to be bred in breeders. The post from Oct. 10th 2007 at

http://www.randform.org/blog/?p=1526 “nuclear energy in the US”

mentions that this plutonium can be used in other types of reactors, which are partly going to be newly built. These reactors are using MOX fuel – a mixture of Plutoniumoxide and other ingredients (there exists also Thorium-Mox). It is not mentioned in this post but should be mentioned that also existing reactor types may be (re)licensed to use MOX fuel. From the world nuclear association (see MOX use):

The use of up to 50% of MOX does not change the operating characteristics of a reactor, though the plant must be designed or adapted slightly to take it. More control rods are needed. For more than 50% MOX loading, significant changes are necessary and a reactor needs to be designed accordingly.

Even Thorium reactor types, which some people would like to dub “green” often include the use of plutonium, this was first mentioned at the example of India’s nuclear energy program, in a longer discussion with a randform reader:

http://www.randform.org/blog/?p=1841 “nuclear future-part II”

The first part of the discussion is at
http://www.randform.org/blog/?p=1840 “nuclear future.”
(see also the citation in the introduction to this post)

That is also these reactor types may fuel a plutonium market. Plutonium causes high proliferation problems, it is rather difficult to handle and transport, it causes more severe waste problems (like MOX fuel seems to be usually recycled only once).

According to world nuclear association:

Fast neutron reactors allow multiple recycling of plutonium, since all transuranic isotopes there are fissionable, but in thermal reactors isotopic degradation limits the plutonium recycle potential and most spent MOX fuel is stored pending the greater deployment of fast reactors.

Or in other words if you want to mitigate the waste problem then more fast breeders (FBRs) have to be built. And in the turn FBRs usually need to use highly enriched uranium or plutonium for operation, which fires again the plutonium market.

The motivation for the use of plutonium in the case of Indias nuclear power program are mostly economic ones. Economic considerations play also a role in the maintanance and safe-guarding of nuclear energy as is displayed in the post:

http://www.randform.org/blog/?p=2439 “about inspection optimization in nuclear energy”

Economical considerations are playing also a role in the operational life-span extension of nuclear power plants in Germany:

http://www.randform.org/blog/?p=2888 “national cuts”

(Not mentioned in the post: here the german electricity market has to compete with the european market which is under strong pressure last but not least due to the french electricity generation from nuclear power plants.)

Economic considerations play also a role in the use of breeders, since the availability of Uran 235 could be e.g. greatly enlarged via seawater extraction. They play also a role in research funding. (There are a couple of posts related to that issue, but I don’t list them here now).

Not only for this reason the role of economy, optimization and competition had been discussed in many separate posts on randform.

addition 26.02.2013: In particular, if there are no economic counter measures then it is not too unlikely that the nuclear waste problem may aquire similar dimensions as the CO2 problem (here CO2 is seen as a “waste product” from energy production). You may want to read about that problem at this post at the Azimuth project which is part of an article draft.

I haven’t written sofar much on nuclear accidents, dangers and the problems with nuclear waste however there is a bit on randform:

Nuclear energy generation is growing, see e.g. the articles about
Plans For New Reactors Worldwide or Nuclear Renaissance at the world nuclear association.
The above mentioned post “on nuclear energy” gives a calculation how an increase of nuclear energy looks like with respect to world wide energy production. It is also mentioned there that an increase of nuclear energy leads to a manifold increase of the nuclear waste problem, since nuclear waste is currently accumulating.

Thus this has been also pointed out as a special topic in the
Statement at International Conference on Management of Spent Fuel from Nuclear Power Reactors of the IAEA. Interestingly among others the statement says:

A key issue for storage is that the fuel (and facilities) must not deteriorate and that one must be sure of being able to remove the fuel (or sometimes the full cask) at the end of the storage period. Although the experience so far is very good, new challenges are connected to the trend of increasing burn-up. The IAEA SPAR projects are designed to collect information on fuel and facility behaviour.

You would assume that it shouldn’t be necessary to point out that storage facilities shouldn’t deteriorate, however the IAEA considers this to be necessary. In particular if you look on the IAEA website it looks like (at least to me, however not everything is open accessible) as if the IAEA is not getting very much information about the waste in the respective countries. As an example: if you look on Germany’s country waste profile report one sees that the description is not very detailled. (Apart from this fact the report is using a lot of unexplained abbreviations (page cannot be found), so I I couldn’t assess for example wether the dump site ASSE is included (it seems to me not).) I also couldn’t find a map, which shows the sites.

The problems of the documentation of dumb sites and information about the dump sites at Gorleben and ASSE had been adressed in the randform post:

http://www.randform.org/blog/?p=2018 “about gorleben”

In particular in this post it is described how new very small reactors are currently been constructed, which makes the problem of controling nuclear waste even worse.

Here some examples about leaking incidents:
A sodium leak at the breeder in Monju, Japan:

http://www.randform.org/blog/?p=1888 “nuclear bombs and Monju”

A problem with leaking waste in France:
http://www.randform.org/blog/?p=1875 “about the leakage at Tricastin”

A problem are also military sites, which are even more prone to be less documented. Here an example of a military dump site near San Francisco, USA and a discussion about at increased occurence of certain types of cancers:

http://www.randform.org/blog/?p=1832 “just waste”

However even the operation of current conventional types of nuclear reactors seems to be not so safe as one would think. Here a post about a study, which revealed that children who are living in the vicinity of a german nuclear power plant are more likely to die from childhood Leukemia:

http://www.randform.org/blog/?p=1629 “on a recent study of increased risk of cancer in the vicinity of german nuclear power plants”

This study has been supported by another study described in the randform post:

http://www.randform.org/blog/?p=2261 “On the socalled Greiser-study”

Since the german government just decided to extend the life-time of nuclear power plants there is probably more data to be gathered.

supplement 26102014: The post “remarks on latent nuclear risks in the vicinity of nuclear plants” gives mostly an update on childhood Leukemia studies in Europe.

supplement 05.10.10:

The randform post at http://www.randform.org/blog/?p=2023 “nuclear vehicles” contains an essay on electric cars and nuclear energy.

In the randform post http://www.randform.org/blog/?p=2023: “nuclear prognosis” further links for the assertion, that nuclear power generation is growing, are given.

supplement Jan 10 2012:
Although we were almost immediately very concerned when we heard about the disaster in Fukushima , we postponed to comment on it here immediately for several reasons.

The following posts deal not only of course also with the Fukushima disaster:

Fukushima, calculations and comments from march 14 2011 gives general information about the Fukushima disaster and in particular about the chances to induce artificial rain.

about the Fukushima plant from march 18 2011 links mostly to sites which monitored Fukushima.

criticality from march 29 2011 links to comments about possible criticality events in Fukushima

Fukushima and nuclear power from April 4 2011 links to a comment about Fukushima and Chernobyl.

power from where? from April 11 links only to a Geiger counter but provides a discussion about smart grids in Germany and a link to the role of economy in energy production.

25 years after the Chernobyl disaster from April 26 2011 commemorates Chernobyl and links to a discussion about Fukushima.

The post reactor reaction from July 27 2011 deals with the traveling wave reactor (TWR) and in particular that a critical randform comment to the reactor design seemed to have been quite right.

destructive sides of the power of science from August 7 2011 commemorates Hiroshima and contains a link to a comment where randform tries to explain some arguments that Germany’s renunciation of commercial nuclear power generation leads to more carbon output are flawed.

from the lost radioactive property office from Nov. 11 is a short post about an occurrence of a very small temporal radiation in Europe, where the source couldn’t be found

mini nuclear reactors from Jan 9 2012 gives an update about some small nuclear reactor types and their current developments.

update march 04, 2019:

mini nuclear wastes from Jan 21st, 2012 provides some links to some comments on a site run by John Baez. The discussions there have however terminated.

What’s Fukushima accident’s death toll? from June 1st, 2013 gives an overview about at what was known by then about the accidents death toll.

remarks on latent nuclear risks in the vicinity of nuclear plants from October 26th, 2014 give an update to the post about the KiKK study about Leukemia rates in the vicinity of nuclear power plants by reporting about a french study called geocap.

Commemorating the Chernobyl disaster from Tuesday, April 26th, 2016 commemorates the Chernobyl disaster by investigating the role of the WHO in relation to health hazards due to radioactive sources like from Chernobyl or from radioactive ammunition.

About maldeformation in Fallujah April 30th, 2016 finds that some reported numbers in BBC and Guardian articles about certain elevated occurences of severe health defects allegedly due to radioactive ammunition in Fallujah are different from numbers as given in corresponding scientific articles.

What’s going on in Fukushima? from February 3, 2017 finds that some given radiation data of the destroyed Fukushima plants doesn’t point to ongoing bigger fission processes.

energy prospects
from February 25th, 2018 compare the development of commercial nuclear power and other commercial energy “productions”.

Work-to-rule? from June 30th, 2018 investigates Werner Heisenbergs role in the german nuclear science project during WWII.

supplement 04.01.22:

focus and context, part IIIp: evaluation and the consciencement provides an update about the costs of a nuclear accident (January 4, 2022).

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In todays nature magazine there was an article about the “Global phytoplankton decline over the past century”. I have no access to the article however in an article by Markus Becker – a reporter from the german news magazine Spiegel Online – it was reported that since 1950 on average the mass of phytoplankton declined globally by 40%. Since phytoplankton are amongst others a major food source for food webs this affects e.g. the abundance of fish. Moreover phytoplankton are responsible for much of the oxygen present in the earth’s atmosphere. A main reason for the decline of phytoplankton is climate change.

-> related article on randform about oceans and climate change
->related article on randform on microorganisms and oxygen supply
-> see also here
update 30.7.10: You might also want to kick into the subject by reading
about the decline in fish occurence:
->Elizabeth Kolbert on overfishing on Azimuth
-> randform post about fish consumption and nutrition

some koi after the click
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BerliNordik is a rather new forum for sustainable design, it is

“an international platform that brings together young talented designers from Berlin with their colleagues from the Nordic countries on the subject of sustainable design. “

The berliNordik blog informs amongst others about activities of BerliNordik. Recently BerliNordik coorganized an exhibition called “Bright green design” where I attended the opening. For the exhibition few product design objects were chosen. I actually had also sent in a proposal but unfortunately –again– it wasn’t chosen (maybe I write later about that project in product design). Below some images from the opening.

There are images from three projects in the images. One project is featuring a partially wooden bike called “Holzweg”. Here I was asking myself how good the different material components can be dissassembled. Another project is the Yellowone Needle Cap – a protective cap that turns an empty soft drink can into a safe depository for used needles, by Hân Pham. The third project is “Spot on the BUOY” by Adrian Paulsen. In this envisaged project a buoy is supplied with a paper towel for oil spills and e.g. lights so that the buoy acts as a kind of sensor for oil spills. Clearly the buoy would only be appropriate for rather “light” spills it would certainly not be addaped for the recent oil spills in the gulf of Mexico. Any paper would be totally overstrained with this spill.

(Images of the other projects from create berlin )

In the below images you can see also the discussion of jury members and organizers about “what is green design“. One key issue here was the quandary of eco-designers, which is that to a great extend the task of a designer is to communicate a product and thus in part to encourage more consumption, which is against sustainability. It is also in part the task of an eco-designer to greenwash a product. Last but not least sustainability is often in conflict with economic interests, i.e. due elaborate production methods and materials and e.g. longer durability often only small profits can be made which is a problem in our economic system. Moreover next to the demand of incorproating new green technologies, questions about certification of eco-efficiency, compliance to new standards etc. are making the design process difficult.

->Video of the opening
Interview by Lilli Green with visitors of the exhibition about “what is green design” (-> video)

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A reader commented to the post dripping pains:

It is quite arrogant to say that such a design is bad – just because you have other criteria! You say your comment shouldnt be seen as an insult, but of course it is an insult! Even worse you discredit the makings of a different country than your country of origin, you should have a better respect of other cultures! Your comment may sound very disheartening!

My reply to this and some more photos from the Juno oven (see above) which works without dripping pans (the drip goes onto the outer surface and is not collected in a dripping pan) after the click.
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A reader called Silvia Hossfehler asked about a statement I made in a blog post, in which I described a design of a chair that I had subbmitted to a competition. My statement there was “I do not like competitions.” And Silvia Hossfehlers question was:

Are you sure that you do not like competitions? So why did you then send in your suggestion?

Since I think this is a more general issue, I decided to make a blog post out of this.

There are three major aspects of a competition. One is filtering, one is evaluation and one is motivation. A competition is filtering since it is making a choice between the objects/subjects under competition. A competition is evaluating since this choice is usually done with respect to some “value scale” that is for example in the olympic games the value could be e.g. “high velocity” and the filtering is thus to filter out the fastest. However in an art competition for example the “value scale” is not so obvious, people may talk about “quality”, as a possible value, but usually in an art competition, the filtering is mostly subject to a quite unspecifyable/predictable “value scale”. The third aspect is that a competition may serve as fostering motivation, it may make people increase their commitment to a certain task. That is for example the runner in the olympic games may be running faster and giving his/her best due to the “competition”.

Likewise in the working world a competition may filter out “the most efficient/capable”, moreover usually competition is regarded as a necessary condition for motivating people to work hard enough. Efficiency and a motivated workforce is usually essential to make profits and since competition solves all these demands all at once it therefore is a kind of “must-have” for “capitalists”. Often enough the principles of evolution (“survival of the fittest”) are taken as a justification of these paradigmas. However it should be noted that there there are enough examples, which display that in evolution things are more complicated, in particular the “survival of the fittest” may not hold for the individual but for a group of species.

Nevertheless as a result our western society is highly “competition-oriented”.

In my point of view – especially by looking at the odd sides of competition, like for example where it is leading to things as exploitation or monoculture – this can be very problematic and I think a more critical view on competition as such may be at place.

It is of course more or less unavoidable to take part in competitions and unfortunately one has to go through quite some competitions in order to have a saying. Grades in school already constitute a “competition”. And again in this example a competition serves as an agent for “evaluation”.

On the other hand this example already makes it also clear that the above mentioned major aspects of a competition can at least partially be transferred to other means. That is an evaluation can also be done by purely measuring capabilities/competences, i.e. the competitive aspect of being compared to others can be reduced. Likewise motivation can be driven by interest, social connectivity etc. In short competition may not even be a necessary condition for efficiency. On the contrary if the competition and “optimization of efficiency” is too strong competition can be counterproductive (see e.g. the last Toyota crisis). Last but not least the “filtering” aspect of competitions may lead to a blindness for other “filtering” criteria. Thus if for example “fast profit” dominates the “value scale” for a competition other possible criteria, like social conditions etc. are going to be neglected. Moreover the conditions for filtering may be unfair/too restricted etc. (read also this randform post about competition in the academic world).

So yes my comment in the blog post was referring to all that but it was also expressing a subjective discomfort with competition, in particular for me competition is usually not the most motivating force. For example in school sports I was especially slow if I had to run with others. I do not object to evaluation, on the contrary a regular feedback is important for me, however I do not always need the comparision to others. The comparision to others may impose quite an extra stress, rather than motivation. This can go as far as this: If I notice that someone wants to challenge me for a competition I sometimes prefer to completely step back. In particular there are people who want to make everything into a competition. I find that unpleasant, since in these cases one has not only to decide about the issue in question, but also about the aspect, wether one is up for a competition.

I took part in this design competition mentioned in the blog post, because I actually would have liked to discuss my chair with others and get critics about the design etc. and eventually connect to people who might be interested in building a prototype (if you put your design just into a forum or on your blog than the response is usually not very big). So unfortunately in this competition nothing like that happened. Thats in part what I do not like about these usual competitions. Moreover there are more and more competitions, where you have to pay an entrance fee (apart from postage etc.) in order to present your work. I think this is crazy. Who is taking part in these competitions?

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On monday a study by the Convention on Biological Diversity in collaboration with the UNEP World Conservation Monitoring Centre was released (->press release). The study with the title “Scientific Synthesis of the Impacts of Ocean Acidification on Marine Biodiversity” is a survey on the current results in the investigation of ocean acidity. It is thus a follow-up study to studies initiated e.g. by the global network of science academies (see IAP statement on ocean acidification ) or like the ones which led to the Monaco Declaration.

A main message of these studies and statements is that Carbondioxide i.e CO2 (a major greenhouse gas) has increasingly been taken up by the worlds oceans and thus reduced the effects caused by an increased CO2 level in the athmosphere like e.g. the greenhouse effect. This may on the first sight sound good to climate sceptics since it means that there are processes which act naturally against higher CO2 levels. Unfortunately there are now plenty of measurements which indicate that the uptake of CO2 has been slowing down in the last years, i.e. that it seems that a kind of saturation has been partially/will be reached soon. Due to this the
accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere may accelerate rather soon.

A second main message/problem with this uptake of CO2 is ocean acidification. If CO2 reacts with water this gives carbonic acid , which dissolves mostly to HCO3- and hydrogen ions H+. Thus after CO2 has been taken up by the ocean waters it will give to a smaller amount carbonic acid H2CO3 and carbonate ions CO3^2- and for the most part bicarbonite ions HCO3-. The hydrogen ions decrease the PH level – (you may sometimes find information of PH levels on your liquid soap) that is – the PH gives an indication of the concentration of hydrogen ions H+ via the concentration of Hydronium and it is thus a measure of the acidity or basicity of a solution.

Furthermore the carbonate ions CO3^2- form together with H+ again bicarbonate HCO3-. A higher concentration of H+ (“the acidity”) thus decreases the availablity of carbonate. But carbonate is necessary for producing calcium carbonate (CaCO3) which is essential for shell formation in marines organisms such as corals, shellfish and marine plankton. In other words the increasing acidification of the oceans is harmful to a lot of marine creatures. Since this process is very fast and the fast increasing acidification is clearly measurable this will lead to a rapid change in the composition of the oceans with more or less forseeable consequences. In particular it is very likely that this will have an impact on fish consumption.

update addition Jan, 28. 2017:
Here is more on how the composition of oceans may change, which indicates that at least some of the marine creatures which build shells might still keep their ability to create shells despite increasing acidification. There is a new study:
Proton pumping accompanies calcification in foraminifera (via wattsupwiththat.com) which indicates that amongst others a species called perforate foraminifera Ammonia sp. seems to be able to do so and the amount of perforate foraminifera is not too small:

“A large portion of open ocean calcium carbonate production, between 20 and 50%, derives from perforate foraminifera. Despite its clear importance for the global carbon cycle, the physiological processes responsible for calcification in foraminifera are poorly understood. The key to understanding foraminiferal calcification centres on the relation between carbon speciation in seawater and preferential uptake of these chemical species (CO2, bicarbonate and/or carbonate ions)”

The mechanism is roughly the following. Foraminifera are massively pumping protons (i.e. H+) into their local environment and so make the surrounding waters even more acidic (i.e. lower PH values). This however means that on average less CO2 is dissolved in water, i.e. some of the protons will recombine with HCO3- to H2O and CO2:

Karbonatsystem_Meerwasser_de.svg by Wikipedia User:BeAr, public domain

It seems an enzym called V-type H+ ATPase is responsible for the proton pumping.
While the protons are pushed out, there is an “inside” location in the forminifer (the socalled site of calcification (SOC)) which is less acidic and so shell formation can take place. For this the CO2 is “sucked into the foraminifer”, i.e.: “As CO2 diffuses easily across cell membranes compared to HCO3−, the large pCO2 gradient results in a flux of carbon dioxide into the foraminifer.” And so shell formation can take place at the SOC via the in the blogpost described process.

How acidic is the corresponding pumped microenvironment? The researchers write:

The foreseen reduction in pH (from 8.1 today to ∼7.8 at the end of the twenty-first century36) by increased oceanic CO2 uptake is relatively small compared with the pH decrease in the foraminiferal microenvironment (down to 6.9 in Fig. 1) during calcification.

and so

Hence, a relatively moderate decrease in pH may not impair foraminiferal calcification, especially as DIC increases at the same time. Ocean acidification may still affect calcification indirectly (for example, through altered metabolism).

where DIC is “dissolved inorganic carbon” i.e. all those bi,di, etc. carbonates.

Hence in the abstract they conclude:

…total dissolved CO2 may not reduce calcification, thereby potentially maintaining the current global marine carbonate production.

which I find a bit too optimistic in view that only between 20 and 50% calcium carbonate production derives from perforate foraminifera and not much is known about the other species apart from the fact that some seem definitely not able to maintain shell formation:

Results from culturing experiments mimicking ocean acidification showed contrasting responses of calcification: calcification was reduced in some species, whereas others were not affected.

Moreover the proton pumping mechanism may not work if acidification levels lower beyond 6.9.

update 9.12.09: I just appended the above illustration to belows post and the post
before in order to draw more attention to it.

In an article “Strahlender Abfall von Öl und Gas” by Juergen Doeschner of the public TV station WDR it was reported that the Oil and Gas industry kept quiet about the problem of nuclear waste occurring in oil and gas extraction. Here radioactive waste is due to naturally occurring radioactive materials which are surfaced from subsurface formations.

citation from the article: “Strahlender Abfall von Öl und Gas”

“Der Branchenverband begründet dieses Vorgehen mit der vermeintlichen Ungefährlichkeit der kontaminierten Rückstände. “Wir haben es hier mit natürlicher Radioaktivität in einem relativ geringen aktiven Bereich zu tun, der im Bereich der natürlichen Radioaktivität auch unserer Umgebung liegt”, sagt Verbandssprecher Pick.
[Hartmut Pick, Sprecher des Wirtschaftsverbandes Erdöl- und Erdgasgewinnung (WEG)].

Diese Aussage ist falsch und widerspricht den eigenen Angaben des Verbandes. Denn danach ist die durchschnittliche Belastung der radioaktiven Öl- und Gasabfälle fast 700 mal höher als die durchschnittliche Belastung des Erdbodens. Dem WDR liegt ein Papier der Firma Exxon vor, wonach die mittlere Belastung der Abfälle sogar 3000 mal höher ist.”

translation without guarantee: The business association justifies this approach with the putative innocuity of the contaminated residues. “We are dealing here with naturally occuring radioactivity which is in the range of naturally radioactivity as it occurs in our environment.”, says spokesman of the association Pick.
[Hartmut Pick, spokesman of the business association/Wirtschaftverband Erdöl- und Erdgasgewinnung (WEG)]

This statement is wrong and it is in contradiction to the information given by the association, according to the which the average contamination of radioactive waste from Oil and Gas is about 700 times bigger than the average contamination of the soil. WDR has a document from the company Exxon, according to which the average contamination is even 3000 times bigger.

For comparision a citation from world-nuclear.org of today:

In the oil and gas industry radium-226 and lead-210 are deposited as scale in pipes and equipment. If the scale has an activity of 30,000 Bq/kg it is ‘contaminated’ (Victorian regulations). This means that for Ra-226 scale (decay series of 9 progeny) the level of Ra-226 itself is 3300 Bq/kg. For Pb-210 scale (decay series of 3) the level is 10,000 Bq/kg. These figures refer to the scale, not the overall mass of pipes or other material (cf. Recycling, below). Published data (quoted in Cooper 2003) show radionuclide concentrations in scales up to 300,000 Bq/kg for Pb-210, 250,000 Bq/kg for Ra-226 and 100,000 Bq/kg for Ra-228. In Cooper 2005, the latter two maxima are 100,000 and 40,000 respectively.
->Cooper M.B. 2003, NORM in Australian Industries, report for Radiation Health & Safety Advisory Council.
->Cooper M.B. 2005, NORM in Australian Industries – Review of current inventories and future generation, report for Radiation Health & Safety Advisory Council of ARPANSA.

I understand (?) the citation from nuclear.org as that the australian threshold for contamination with Ra-226 is 3300 Bq/kg, the found value however 250,000 Bq/kg in the first cited report or 100,000 Bq/kg in the second cited report. That would mean that the values for radium 226 (which has a half-life of 1602 years) according to these reports in hard scale are roughly 75 times or roughly 30 times higher than they should be according to australian standards.

So alone by looking at the contamination with radium it seems there is a rather expensive nuclear waste problem in the oil and gas industry. Thus as the Strahlender Abfall von Öl und Gas”-article by Juergen Doeschner also reports the radioactivity threat from this kind of waste is in Kasachstan meanwhile bigger than the threat which stems from earlier nuclear bomb tests, furthermore in the US contaminated pipes where donated to preschools and Britain is spilling its corresponding problematic waste into the north sea.