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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)
(more…)
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:
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).
Last time when I was in Göttingen I found a poster at the math department documenting an art science collaboration between mathematics professors William Thurston, Kazushi Ahara and Sadayoshi Kojima on one side and a team around clothing designer Issey Miyake, notably including chief designer Dai Fujiwara of Issey Miyake (here a link to a partial version of the poster, see also absnews article by Jenny Barchfield). A result of this collaboration is that the Issey Miyake Fall-Winter 2010-2011 ready-to-wear collection is inspired by the geometrization conjecture.
From the poster:
In the mid-October of 2009, Prof. Thurston showed us the detail drawings of the “8 Geometry Link models as Metaphor of the Universe” They inspired us to make the collection based on them, accompanying design study with rope and toile. Considering the body itself as the Universe, we have added our own interpretation of beauty to them. The new perception of the body shared by all the members of the team resulted in the discoveries of new lines and forms, which were then applied to textile, color and detail studies. Thus the new collection has taken shape steadily, revealing its whole picture eventually. To sum up the exchange with Prof. Thurston led us to find a completely new kind of beauty and embody it in clothing. This mission was, as it were, an odyssee to explore the Universe with infinite imaginations.
The geometrization conjecture roughly says (I am not an expert on this) that a three dimensional volume form without boundary (a two dimensional analog of such a form would be for example the surface form (i.e. the “skin”) of a ball or the surface form of a doughnut) can be decomposed into “pieces” which have one of 8 characteristic “geometric structures”, which means roughly that in a small neighbourhood of any such “piece” there is – out of only 8 characteristic ways – one specific way to measure length. A theorem states that any three dimensional (oriented) volume form without boundary can be obtained by cutting a “thick” (that is instead of a rope take a ribbon) link out of a three dimensional sphere. Thus you can characterize special types of three dimensional volume forms (here: “the pieces”) by assigning a link to them. This is – by what I understood sofar- why there are 8 links (or link models) on the poster – they characterize the 8 types of possible “pieces”, which built up three dimensional volume forms without boundary.
Why do they call these 8 links “Metaphor of the Universe”? I can only make wild guesses, which sound rather like science fiction than science: Maybe if you imagine the space of the universe to be eventually such a three dimensional volume then by cutting it into pieces (may be along black hole horizons huh?!) and “measuring distances” (determine a metric) one could make deductions about the actual form of the universe? Or – reversely by making assumptions about the form of the universe (like e.g. that its space is a three sphere) one may get informations about what could be inside black holes…given that one finds all black holes…(this is just a funny joke).
But joking aside – I think they call it Metaphor of the Universe because these simple 8 links may be used to describe quite complicated things.
“Flautenkreuz” photography by Brad Löw
According to what I read in the study Ökonomische Auswirkungen einer Laufzeitverlaengerung deutscher Kernkraftwerke (in german) which was made on behalf of the BDI (the “umbrella organisation of german industries”) (BDI site) the operational life-span of nuclear power plants in Germany to
-40 years would lead to a financial gain (via cost saving) from:
extending the operational life-span to
-60 years would even lead to a gain from:
So on average one can roughly say that the life-span extension of nuclear power plants would lead -according to what I read in this study- to a financial gain of -very roughly averaged- at least 5 billion euros per year. Since it is expected that electricity prices will be made according to market value and not according to that gain which is due to unexpected life-span extensions one could infer that this gain will be the gain of the electricity industry. Consequently the german government (which is planning a life-span extension of nuclear power plants) is planning to demand a share of that prospected gain for their new cuts plans in the socalled “Sparpaket”. According to Spiegel Online the current plans are to ask the electricity industry for a share of 2.3 billion per year. Thus if I conclude rightly this means that the electricity industry may keep a gain of at least 2.7 billion per year (or up to 7.7 billion per year depending on life-span extension) . It is not clear how much of that would be reinvested into renewable energies. Social cuts according to Spiegel Online on that page.
I don’t know, wether the life-span extension of nuclear power plants means that this study is going to be extended.
I also don’t know wether inspection optimization is planned.
ranform wishes all its clients a happy new year and not a happy new ear !
Again on new years eve we will try to avoid the inner districts of Berlin since the roads in Berlin usually feel almost like being in a war at that evening.
Below are some images from the Nishinihon firework show in Ohori Park, Fukuoka from over a year ago. Here firework specialists are creating an amazing firework with high precision. The specialists are even able to rather scientifically predict the height and time of detonation in such a way that they are able to create little images like a smilie or a heart (please see below). Where it should be said that a heart which is poetically dropping down from the skies is of course hilarously kitchy.
Remark: The images were made with a small canon without a tripod.
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.
In an earlier randform post about scaling factors in nuclear power generation I tried to explain what is implied if nuclear power generation is going to be increased. Among others I was talking about the risk of a nuclear accident which is going to rise by scaling things up. An important quantity in risk assessment in nuclear power generation is the core damage frequency. The corresponding Wikipedia article links to a ressource by the Electric Power Research Institute by which the probability of a damage of the nuclear core was in 2005 (i.e. the more dangerous type of fast breeder reactors, which will dominate in the future is included in this average only to a small amount) at 2*10^(-5)=0.00002 per reactor and year (there seem to be ressources which indicate that this frequency may be higher though).
This means that is if one has approx. 500 reactors worldwide the likelihood of a core damage somewhere in the world was in 2005 one damage in 100 years, if we take again a factor ten as in the randform post about scaling factors in nuclear power generation then this would rise to one core damage every 10 years. If we include an higher risk for fast breeders (which is a technology, which hasnt been tested exhaustively) then this likelihood rises again. Core damages are quite crucial because they can lead to a nuclear meltdown.
Other risks are therefore often calculated in relation to the core damage frequency. While answering to a comment about Leukemia I stumbled upon the “Studies on Applying Risk Informed In-Service Inspection for Indian Nuclear Power Plant and Heavy Water Plant” by G. Vinod from the reactor safety division at the indian Babha Atomic Research Centre in which probabilistic safety assessment techniques for indian nuclear power plants which among others are using the core damage frequency are discussed in particular with regard to optimizing inspection. A citation from the article
An optimum plan should be devised subjected to constraints such as risk to plant, cost of inspection and radiation exposure to workers, if the component is in radioactive area.
Its not clear to me to what extent inspection optimization may lead to an increase of the core damage frequency.
In a comment about a recent study whose neutrality was not so clear I was asked by a reader:
If there is all this data as you say on the internet then why do you need this reputation thing at all, i mean can’t you just check wether this Greiser person is right?
The study which the reader meant to be checked used data about leukemia occurences in children who lived in the vicinity of a nuclear power plant. This data was -to a great extend- gathered together via the internet and was then statistically evaluated. So the reader assumed that -given that all the necessary information is available- that one could just check wether the study is right.
My answer:
In principle -given that all information is provided in the study- and – given that oneself can access all data (this is unfortunately not always that easy) one can check wether all the in the study given data was correctly evaluated, one can follow the statistic reasoning and the methods which were used a.s.o. The question wether the study is correct or not should thus not be expected to be answered plainly with a yes or no, but at least include explanations about the involved methodology. All that takes a lot of knowledge and experience which is -for an outsider- not so easy to acquire. That is even though I am a mathematician it would take me probably quite some time to understand and evaluate the involved reasoning (it is not exactly my field), it is quite likely that I would end up with open questions and thus would need to consult other people.
One can compare this a little bit with a medical diagnosis, that is in principle all the medical information is available in text books, articles etc. and without having studied medicine one can have a “feeling” about how correct a diagnosis is, however – depending on the symptoms and ones own knowledge- people usually prefer to see a doctor instead of feeling inclined to cure themselves. The craftmanship of a mathematician -although this may not be so obvious- is comparable to that of a physician.
Nevertheless it happens that people won’t go see a doctor. This may happen because people can’t afford to pay a doctor and/or because they are convinced that their methods (or those of a non-medical-doctor) are better. And there are indeed cases were non-doctors may have better results. Nevertheless the typical scenario is that a learned doctor knows more and can help you better than a non-doctor. This holds also true for “crowd knowledge” that is you may ask around in fora about what to do with what symptoms, but typically you wouldnt like to rely on them completely.
Here one should note an important feature: Among others a doctor is someone who was evaluated by a certain group of people who know the subject. That is professional organisations, universities etc. hand out certificates which should give you some trust that this person knows what he/she is saying and doing. This is mostly what reputation is about. It is a guideline. Or put differently: Given a specified task the chance that you will end up with a completely incapable person which had been certified for this task by a respectable institution should be smaller than the chance that an uncertified person is incapable. This doesnt exclude the case that there are uncertified persons with a better knowledge than certified ones. This is just -at the moment- on average less likely.
I wrote “at the moment”, because there are unfortunately tendencies which dilute this rather helpful feature, as can be seen e.g. in the certification problem in the already mentioned outsourced learning environments/online classes. Certification problems can also be found in “cheap education” e.g. by certifying large amounts of students, which makes cheating easier (for example by handing in essays, which were not authored by oneself), academic misconduct and/or corruption e.g. due to financial interests etc. Moreover the possibilities for free autonomous learning are much, much better than before (which is good), so the number of highly trained individuals without a certificate are most probably on the rise. Traditional systems of evaluation may thus be loosing their influence. Personal recomendations would thus become more important, which makes it on the other hand harder to enter a foreign field as an outsider.
The above (unemployed) patient in the foto had a bad bike accident, which resulted unfortunately not only in a torn muscle. Thanks to a “still” rather good medical care in Germany within one week and with the help of several specialists and MRI a not so common injury could be diagnostized fastly and within 2 months the patient should be able to walk properly again….
Why do I write “still”?
Because in Germany the costs for health care are on the rise. This is not only due to an aging population but also to a great extend due to rising costs for pharmaceutical products, where new, patented products play a major role. According to this article in Berliner Zeitung on total the costs for physicians in Germany are meanwhile smaller than the costs for pharmaceutical products. Nevertheless suggestions of politicians which are about to form Germanys new government suggest to cut down on health care on the whole and instead secure a socalled “basic care” for the masses which could be supplemented by additional care – if you have the money. As a result the stockmarket for certain pharmaceutical companies soared right after the elections.
historical reading: -> hippocratic oath
There had been some uproar in mediascape-Germany about a study with the title “Konzept für ein integriertes Energieforschungsprogramm für Deutschland” (“Concept for an integrated energy-research program for Germany”). According to Financial times Deutschland” (FTD) the study was commissioned by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research however the study had been withheld from the public for 3 months.
The study is now -after the uproar- openly available. The reasons for the ministries policy of secrecy gave of course way to speculations in the press. So among others the study suggests that besides studying halite rock formations as a suitable geological formation for a final nuclear dump site, like the one in Gorleben it is meanwhile scientifically established that also Claystone formations may provide an alternative for a final nuclear waste repository. Since most of these rock formations can (according to FTD) be found in the current ministers “electoral homeland” Baden-Würtemberg and since the german elections will take place in about one and a half weeks it is understandable that the press identified this fact as a possible reason for the withheld (i.e. nobody wants a nuclear dump site in ones own backyard).
Another possible reason why the study was withheld was seen in the fact that the study suggests that an enforced research in nuclear power generation – and in particular in new nuclear fission technology could be a politically desired pathway in energy research (note the subtlety: the study does not suggest to pursue enforced research in nuclear energy, but states that enforced research in nuclear energy, in particular in new reactor types, may be a political request). This is in contrast to the current official political line of the minister and chancelor Angela Merkels party the CDU. Their official line (towards voters) is basically that power genration via nuclear fission should play NO role in Germanys future energy generation.
I have unfortunately currently not the time to study the study in full detail but nevertheless – here are some remarks to the study:
The study was made under the auspices of two german science/humanities academies, namely the National academy of science and the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities a third collaborator was the German Academy of Science and Engineering (Acatech), which claims itself to be a non profit agency, which represents the interests of German sciences and technology. Acatech has a strong connection to business, last but not least via funding. This has advantages and disadvantages.
Responsible for the text of the study are Prof. Dr. Frank Behrendt (Institut für Energietechnik, TU Berlin), Prof. Dr. Ortwin Renn (Abteilung für Technik – und Umweltsoziologie, Universität Stuttgart), Prof. Dr. Ferdi Schüth (Max- Planck-Institut für Kohlenforschung, Mülheim/Ruhr) and Prof. Dr. Eberhard Umbach (Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe), however the study encompasses contributions from numerous individuals (p.58 of the study) which are researchers from universities but also representatives of companies such as Siemens. As a remark: the company Siemens seems to intent to terminate its engagement within the french nuclear company AREVA, however according to this article it may replace its french engagement with a cooperation with the russian nuclear company Atomenergoprom. This should put the neutrality at least of parts of the study -namely those concerning nuclear power generation- under scrutiny.
A main argument of the study is that the challenges of Germany’s future power generation can only be dealt with in a – what the authors call- “systemic perspective” that is with an approach which integrates not only the scientific and technological demands of power generation but also the juridicial, sociological etc. aspects which are connected with it. The arguments are similar to the IPCC conclusions. For accomplishing this integration approach the study suggests among others to establish energy research clusters (similar to the US american Energy Frontier Research Center (EFRC), public-private partnerships like the british Energy Technologies Institute (ETI) and one central german energy research center which bundles the research activity and which serves as an outside representative for Germany’s energy research. The tasks and concrete realizations of such a center havent been yet not very much specified, however integrating and coordinating energy research is in my opinion definitely sound.
Moreover the study collects “no-regret” research options, like research in insulation improvements, energy efficiency, research in how necessary behavioural changes may be adressed appropriately, in how international agreements could be furthered etc. At this place I would have liked to see a stronger discussion of the problems related to patents/intellectual property rights obstructing technological development and international agreement processes.
Within the technological component the study identifies three main research sectors according to which politics can choose to put emphasis on. These are: regenerative energies, carbon based energies and finally -although as pointed out above there is currently no official political backing for this- nuclear energy. The technological aspects of each sector are introduced in the study in a socalled module.
I’d like to concentrate a bit on the nuclear energy module, since the text of the nuclear energy module is mildly put indeed controversial.
As already indicated the aspect that nuclear fission research may be pursued only with the goal of securing its safe pullback (which is the official political line!) is just a little side remark in the text.
In particular it is argued that in order to keep a fall back option on nuclear (fission) energy, Germany could feel strongly advised to support research in new fission technology and thus could feel the need to support the development of fast breeders and in particular in 4’th generation reactorsystems:
Deutschland kann sich aufgrund seiner Expertise hier an vorderster Stelle beteiligen, um unter anderem höchste Sicherheitsstandards zu etablieren.
(translation without guarantee: Germany may – based on its expertise – take part in this in the front row in order to establish among others highest security standards.)
The option that a fallback option on nuclear fission technology could also exist without a german research effort or accomplished with just a small german contribution like within an international noncommercially oriented community research project (my favoured option) is not mentioned.
The study mentions the necessity to keep a fallback option on nuclear fission due to the reason that climate change could have more dramatic consequences than expected, this was also annotated in an earlier randform post.
However the study suggests that such a fallback option may also be justified by the strong pressure which may be due to an international renaissance of nuclear fission technology and which may be due to raising energy needs (p.15) especially in regard to financial feasibility (p.12).
Yet the most problematic part of the nuclear module was the sentence:
“Außerdem müssen bei einer Wiederaufnahme der Forschungsarbeiten zu neuen Reaktoren bereits frühzeitig Ansätze entwickelt werden, mittels derer die Technologie gegebenenfalls umgesetzt werden könnte, ohne Widerständen zu begegnen oder – für den Fall, das dies nicht möglich ist – mit diesen Widerständen konstruktiv umzugehen.”
(translation without guarantee: Furthermore in case of a resumption of the research efforts concerning new reactor types one has to develop at an early stage approaches with which the technology could be realized without encountering resistance or – if this is not possible – develop approaches on how to deal with this resistances in a constructive way.)
I hope this sentence was a very unfortunate phrasing accident and that the authors do not really mean what they write here.