NPYP – We were wrong, Busby is right!

April 1st, 2012
By Kazue Avril – Free Press

It has been a busy day here at the NPYP center, where the members of Nuclear Power Yes Please held a press conference. They recently discovered a devastating text by Professor Chris Busby, where he shows that their criticism of his research is completely unfounded. The NPYP Scientific Director Mattias Lantz had attacked Professor Busby's articles about Fallujah (here, here, and here), by making a comparison of the sex-ratio (i.e. the number of boys born vs number of girls born) between the Iraqi city of Fallujah and his own city of birth, Avesta in Sweden. According to Lantz the variations in Avesta were as large, or larger, than the ones in Fallujah, so he reasoned that one could not claim that the variations in Fallujah were due to depleted uranium (DU). Professor Busby turned the data from Avesta around, and showed that Lantz had used the data in a dishonest way, even trying to hide an obvious correlation between increased sex-ratio in Avesta and the 2003 war in Iraq. Professor Busby's eminent rebuttal can be found on the LLRC web site (here). Below is the figure made by Lantz, with Professor Busby's hand-written notes that give evidence of the dishonesty of Lantz.

The plot with sex-ratio for Avesta where Professor Chris Busby could reveal the scientific dishonesty of Lantz and his NPYP cronies.

 

– ”I never even thought of the correlation,” a humiliated Mattias Lantz said at the press conference, ”but Professor Busby clearly shows that the deviating sex-ratio in Avesta around 2004 is due to the DU-weapons used in Iraq. Furthermore,” Lantz continued, ”this means that all of our past criticism of Professor Busby falls apart, just like a house built from a deck of cards. I now realize what an omnipotent genius he is. He is right about everything, even when he cheats with statistics.”

– ”And he is a great musician!” Gender Issues Director Nils Rudqvist adds.

What does this mean for the future of NPYP?

– ”This changes everything.” says Policy Director and NPYP founder Michael Karnerfors, ”We have been wrong about all these issues; about radiation effects, nuclear power, cell phone radiation, chem-trails, dowsing, crystal healing and the HAARP experiment. Therefore, we will now turn sides in the debate on all these issues, and we will join Professor Busby, Mona Nilsson, Lennart Hardell and all the other serious researchers in their noble quests. From now on, scrutinizing alarmist claims, checking statistics, or asking the simple question 'Is this relevant?' has no place in what we consider to be a serious debate. Google was created to find the scary claims, not to scrutinize them. Many people are scared about radiation. From now on we will help them to maintain that status.”

 

What about your close ties to the nuclear industry?

– ”We will pay back every penny of the funding we got from those bastards,” says Financial Director Christoffer Willenfort, ”and those of us who are employed by the nuclear industry will submit letters of resignation today, we are all done with it.”

And the organization?

– ”The first reaction was of course that we should dismantle NPYP and join other groups, but after some intense brain storming we decided that it is better to continue, although under a different name.”

– ”Yes, from today we are Nuclear Power No Please,” confirms the Public Relations Director Johan Kreuger, ”and here is the new logotype!”

An embarrassing silence grew in the press room, until somebody in the audience dared pointing out an obvious error in the spelling.

The first version of the new Nuclear Power No Please logotype.

 

– ”C'mon people, give us a break!” Kreuger burst out. ”We have been wrong about so many things for years, so how can you expect us to get every tiny detail right immediately?”

What is Lantz' status within the organization, can he continue to be a member?

– ”Well,” says Karnerfors, ”at first we thought that he had to go. We were all very disappointed with him and felt that we needed to distance ourselves from him and the dishonesty that he brought upon us. But we are all to blame. It was certainly Lantz who would initiate the studies of Professor Busby's claims, but we all started to act like stupid physicists and make independent double checks of numbers and other details. That was of course foolish of us, we should have trusted Professor Busby from the beginning without asking any questions.”

So you now believe in Professor Busby's claims?

– ”How can you not, after what we have been through?” Reactor Technology Director Johan Simu says. ”Professor Busby has an expertise in so many scientific fields, not only in radiation effects. A few months ago he introduced a new definition of the term 'spontaneous fission', and with it he showed that TEPCO is lying about the status of the reactors in Fukushima. With the new definition, the reactors must clearly be active in a critical configuration. My personal reflection at the time was that this is utter nonsense. But now, after Professor Busby's proof of our dishonesty, I am all for it. The effects will be tremendous; all courses in reactor physics will have to be revised, and the commercial codes used today for criticality calculations have to be changed. But that is not all, recently he also showed that Einstein is wrong.”

What?

– ”Yes indeed, Professor Busby's interpretation of the twin paradox is quite convincing. He has also promised to explain quantum mechanics on Youtube, something that we are all looking forward to. It is about time that somebody settles the issue whether that cat of Schrödinger is alive or not, the world deserves to know. Furthermore, this poor creature has been in this un-collapsed wave function state for so long, it is clearly a violation of animals rights that needs to be brought to an international court. Professor Busby's expertise also in legal matters will be very helpful in order to bring the perpetrators to justice.”

 

On the way out from the press room we manage to get hold of Mattias Lantz for a personal comment, he looks tired and stressed out.

Our reporter Kazue Avril gets a moment with a humiliated Mattias Lantz at the NPYP press conference.

Will you apologize to Professor Busby and the other people that you have attacked over the years?

– ”No, of course not!” Lantz responds rather agressively. ”Earlier we would have done such a thing, or corrected our statements if they were found to be in error. Now when we have changed sides in the debate we will follow the established customs of our new friends. Apologies or amends are out of the question. Instead we move on forward, though in the opposite direction as before.”

How did you react when it became clear that you had been so wrong about Professor Busby?

– ”I felt awful, of course. Not so much for my unfounded attacks on Professor Busby, but on a personal level it is devastating. In the plot that Professor Busby turned against me there is also a peak with high sex-ratio in Avesta during the 1970's when I was born. This puts the question about my gender at stake, maybe I was supposed to be a girl? This will take years of psycho-therapy to sort out.”

Then he excuses himself and pushes through the crowd towards the entrance, stopping every now and then, asking people if they know where he can get hold of a good beret.

 

We get a private interview with Industry Liaison Director Johan Kihlberg.

– ”Former Industry Liaison Director, if I may! The title does not exist any more now that we have severed the ties with the nuclear industry.”

So, what is your title?

– ”Alarmist Organizations Liaison Director.”

Ok, ok, so how was the error of Lantz discovered?

– ”We knew for a while that something was not right. Lantz has of course always been obsessed with Professor Busby. Certainly the money from industry and Socialstyrelsen kept him motivated, but there was also something else, some sort of...envy. And during the last few months he has become more and more deranged. You could find him at late hours in his office, but he would not deliver any new blog posts or forum entries. If you met him in the corridor you could hear him mumbling weird things for himself.”

Weird things?

– ”Yes, phrases like 'eminent scientists', 'Bramhall is not a pushover', 'ICRP doesn't get it', or 'there must be a third event' were often repeated. Things like that. Then, a few days ago in the coffee room he made no sense at all, trying to convince us that 'the alarmists get laid more often than we do' and that we should buy a boat, or two. Last Friday we discovered that he had asked the market analysis division for an evaluation about entering the field of anti-radiation pills, and there were follow up plans for major investments in this field. When this was found out we decided to check his computer. It turned out that for the last month he had used the computer for only one thing, to visit the 'Dishonesty' page on the LLRC web site, over and over again.”

So what did you do?

– ”It was the first time that any of us saw that web page, and after reading it we realized that it was all over. A crisis meeting was held, thereafter we summoned Lantz in order to have him explain himself. There was an intense discussion, with harsh words being exchanged in all directions, but finally we could agree on a strategy and decided to call for the press conference.”

These plans that Lantz had initiated for anti-radiation pills, how far had he gone with them?

– ”Actually, very far,” Kihlberg responds with some excitement.

So how did you stop it?

– ”We didn't. The analysis shows that we can make a huge profit even if we sell the pills at half the price compared to what Busby and his friends had in mind. We have some connections in Japan that will help us with the promotion, there are many ways to scare people into becoming your customers. For instance the Japanese TV-channel NHK has been very helpful by making an alarmist documentary in which the credibility of ICRP is undermined. We are also considering to buy the recently closed candy factory in Gävle. In that way we can have a local production directly in the areas that were most affected by the Tondel study.”

You mean the areas that were most affected by the Chernobyl fallout?

– "No, by the Tondel study."

Ah, whatever. So you will manufacture and sell pills in order to raise money for the suffering children?

– ”What do you mean? We have to make up for the losses now that we have stopped the funding from the nuclear industry. We are the good guys now, we need to make a living. Just look at Green Audit, the Cancer and Birth Defects Organization, and so on. They are registered as companies, not as charities, why should we be any different? Why live on secret funding from evil companies when we can make as much money in the open by exploiting the gullible, the naive, and the vulnerable? To have funding from the industry in order to change people's opinion is a difficult task, it is much easier to get money directly from concerned citizens in order to help them preserve their already established views. Busby is of course a huge inspiration in these matters, but we are also looking at other options.”

What kind of options?

– ”For instance, Joseph Mangano and his Radiation and Public Health Project is a good example. They have managed to recruit celebrities like Alec Baldwin and Christie Brinkley for the fundraising. And they are very successful, just look at the suits of Mangano! So we hope to be able to do something similar from a Swedish perspective, if we can get stars like Manne the Clown and Solveig Ternström on our team, then we are all set.”

So the future is bright...?

– ”Yes, brighter than ever. This has been a severe crisis situation for us, but thanks to Professor Busby we are finally on the right track. An event like this does not happen every day, but today it did indeed happen.”

 

Dagen då 20 000 döda blev en fotnot

March 12th, 2012

Kommentarer överflödiga....

DN ”Kärnkraft självmord för Japan

SvD Sverige måste ta lärdom av kärnkraftskatastrofen

Aftonbladet Kärnkraftens pris är ohyggligt högt

UNT Forsmark som Fukushima

Utmaning till kärnkraftsmotståndare

March 2nd, 2012

Translation of the earlier post to Swedish

Det har alltid förbryllad mig (och jag tror att jag kan tala för oss alla inom NPYP) att någon kan vara anti mot någon energikälla. Anta till exempel att någon säger sig vara anti-kemisk energi, då skulle den logiska uppföljningsfrågan förstås vara "vilken typ av kemisk energi?". Helt enkelt eftersom det finns så många olika sätt man kan utvinna kemisk energi på, allt från att elda kodynga i hyddor till förbränningen av bensin i din bilmotorn till högteknologiska gasturbiner till dynamit. Snubben som yttrade påståendet har antagligen inte ens tänkt på de distinktionerna när han gjorde sitt uttalande. Men låt oss säga att han funderar lite grann och specificerar att han är anti-kol. Även detta uttalande kan ifrågasättas. Uttalandet måste följas av en hel del villkor för annars är det idiotiskt. Om han är anti-kol på grund av luftföroreningar, borde han då inte ändra sig om man blir kvitt föroreningarna? Om någon utvecklar ett filter som minskar utsläppen till obetydliga nivåer, är kol då ok enligt honom? Logiskt sett borde han tycka det. Om han är anti-kol på grund av den oerhört destruktiva kolbrytning, skulle han ändra sig om miljövänligare brytningsmetoder utvecklades? Killen är förmodligen egentligen "anti luftföroreningar" eller" anti smutsiga gruvor", inte anti kemisk energi eller anti kol. Han har bara aldrig brytt sig om att försöka specificera eller förstå vad för egenskaper hos kemisk energi han egentligen motsätter sig.

Detsamma kan sägas om vilken energikälla som helst, det finns det ingen rationell anledning att vara emot en energikälla i sig, snarare är man emot en viss oönskad effekt som uppkommer på grund av den nuvarande tillämpningen av en energikälla. Vi NPYPare är inga kolfantaster, men jag vågar svära på att om det fanns bra lösningar på problemen med kol, då skulle vi inte motsätta oss dess användning. Det finns ingen anledning att vara mot bruket av en energikälla om dess problem har lösts.

Fördelen med att gräva djupt och ange exakt vad man egentligen motsätter sig är väldigt konstruktivt, för det öppnar upp möjligheten att söka efter lösningar! Om någon bara säger att de är anti vindkraft så dör diskussionen ganska snabbt utan att ha kommit någonvart. Om personen i stället anger att buller från vindkraftverk är problemet, då kan diskussionen svänga in på möjliga lösningar för att minska buller. Alla vinner på det! Det finns ingen anledning att vara fruktansvärt känslomässig och klamra sig fast vid en "anti-något" idé så hårt att man blockerar alla slags givande diskussioner och blundar för lösningar.

Det viktigaste att diskutera är alltså vilka egenskaper hos en viss energikälla som gör att du motsätter dig den och och hur den kan förbättras så att du inte längre har några invändningar. Det mest frustrerande med kärnenergidebatten är att man aldrig tycks nå den punkten. Fråga ledande miljöaktivister den frågan och de kommer att häva ur sig 58 olika ursäkter utan att vara det minsta intresserade av eventuella lösningar.

Om någon är mot kärnkraft på grund av avfallsproblem så säger vi "Ok, men vad menar du exakt med avfallsproblemet och vad är det med avfallet som du anser vara så destruktivt?" Om du besväras av möjligheten att avfallet kommer att skada framtida generationer så kan vi börja diskutera hur man säkert kan förvara eller förstöra avfallet. Om du är anti kärnkraft eftersom du besväras av säkerheten, då är vår motfråga "hur säkert är säkert nog och hur ska vi uppnå det?". Uppenbarligen måste det finnas en nivå där en verksamhet anses vara tillräckligt säker, annars skulle personen i fråga aldrig kliva ur sängen och gå till duschen av rädsla för att halka och dö.

Men diskussionen slutar alltid som sagt innan den nått denna punkt. "Anti-personer" verkar i regel aldrig vara intresserade av lösningar på de problem de nämner och för det mesta kan de inte ens specificera vad problemet är från första början. Det gäller inte bara för kärnkraftsdebatten, man ser precis samma tendenser i alla typer av diskussioner där det finns en tydlig anti-sida. Anti genteknik, anti bilar, anti kött, anti utforskning av rymden, anti vad som helst! Det verkar vara väldigt svårt för människor att släppa den trygga känslomässiga bindning som uppkommer när man är kraftigt mot något och istället inleda en meningsfull diskussion om problemen och lösningar. Det är alltför lätt att bara vara emot något, det är väldigt mycket svårare att faktiskt söka lösningar!

Så för att försöka vrida kärnenergidebatten i en mer givande riktning så skulle det vara fantastiskt om några kärnkraftsmotståndarna kunde ange vilka villkor kärnkraft måste uppfylla för att vara en godtagbar energikälla. Tro det eller ej så har även vi sådana villkor. Jag tror till exempel inte att någon av oss vill se fler RBMK byggas (den typ av reaktorn som Tjernobyl tillhörde) och personligen har jag ganska högt ställda krav på hur kärnenergi ska utvecklas på lite längre sikt för att vara en acceptabel energikälla. Jag är inte anti kärnkraft, men jag är verkligen anti mot vissa sätt att utvinna kärnenergi.

För att sammanfatta utmaningen:

Vilka villkor måste kärnkraften uppfylla för att du ska godta kärnkraften som en acceptabel energikälla?

 

Examining some old Fukushima news

February 26th, 2012

An old news article is circulating around that states that 68 tons of fuel has melted in reactor number 1 and that it was close to breaching the bottom of the containment. The article is several months old but for some reason I have seen it pop up again on facebook so I though it is worth examining the article briefly. In particular I want to examine this statement.

Only 37 centimeters of concrete remains between the fuel and the vessel's outermost steel wall in the most damaged area, TEPCO said.

This wording is repeatedly used by anti nuclear sources to imply that a much worse disaster was very close to happening. What the articles fail to mention however is that there is A LOT more concrete between the ground and the molten core. The reactor building itself is a very thick concrete structure. Will Davis, on his excellent blog Atomic Power Review, talked about this the first time the news about the number one vessel failure showed up last November. Some of what he wrote is worth repeating and I hope he doesn't mind me repeating it here and also posting a picture from his blog.

The NHK report indicates a melt depth of about 2.1 feet(64 cm, my note /Johan). The distance to the ground is roughly eighteen times this depth from the dry well interior floor to grade. Below is a drawing from WASH-1082 which I've marked to show the distance from the dry well floor to the grade outside, which on the particular plant shown is 39' 0"(11.8 meters, my note /Johan). I do not presently know the exact measurement at Fukushima Daiichi No. 1 but it is likely within ten percent of this measurement... meaning that in the worst case that TEPCO is describing, by its own data, the core material may have melted only about as much as 5% of the distance to the grade.

I encourage everyone to read the rest of his blog as it is by far the best information source for the Fukushima accident.

 

I also want to add this picture of the mark I containment that schematically shows the thick concrete even more clearly! Picture found at the blog "The capacity factor".

So we see that there is a tremendous amount of concrete below the shell of the containment structure. The hints and suggestions that the core would only have to melt another 37 centimeters for a unnamed disaster to take place is obviously false. In reality the shell of the containment is integrated into a thick concrete structure and the molten core would have to melt through several more meters, likely around 10 meters, to get out of the reactor building itself.

The cleanup of the containment is going to be a very hard and messy job, much worse than the cleanup of TMI was. But the core is still a long long way from the ground.

 

/Johan

 

Challenge to nuclear opponents

February 23rd, 2012

It has always mystified me (and I think I can speak for all of us in NPYP) that someone can be anti-something when it comes to energy. Lets suppose for instance that someone declares himself to be anti-chemical energy, the logical follow up question to the fellow would of course be "what kind of chemical energy?". The question is logical because there are so many different ways one can extract chemical energy, everything from burning cow dung in huts to the engine in your car to high tech gas turbines to dynamite. Our friend there probably didn't even think of those distinctions when he made his statement, but what if he did? Let's say he rebukes by stating he really means that he is anti coal. Even that statement can be challenged, it must by necessity be conditional otherwise it is moronic. If he is anti coal because of air pollution, then would he change his mind if there was a solution to the pollution? If someone developed a filter that reduced pollution levels to insignificant amount is fossil fuels then ok? Logically he should think so. If he is anti coal because of the immensely destructive coal mining, would he change his mind if environmentally sound mining practices where developed? The guy is presumably actually anti air pollution or anti dirty mines, not anti chemical energy or anti coal. He just never bothered to go through the chain of reasoning to understand what he really opposes in chemical energy.

Same can be said of any energy source, there is no rational reason to be against the energy source itself, rather one is against some undesirable effect due to the present application of the energy source. NPYP are not fans of coal by any means, but I dare say that if there was solid solutions to its problems, then none of us would oppose its use. There just isn't any justifiable reason to oppose it if the problems are solved. There is no other way to rationally look at energy production.

The advantage with digging deep and specifying exactly what one is actually opposed to means opening up to the possibility of finding solutions! If someone simply state that they are anti windmills then the discussion pretty much ends right there. If the person instead states that the noise from windmills is disturbing then the discussion can turn to possible solutions to reduce noise. Everyone wins on that! There is no reason to be horribly emotional about the whole thing and cling to an anti-something idea so hard that one blocks any fruitful discussion and becomes blind to solutions.

A discussion goes no where until one gets to the core of the argument, which is, what properties of a specific energy source makes you oppose it and and how can it be improved so you no longer oppose it?

The frustrating thing in the nuclear debate is that the discussion never seems to reach that point. Ask leading environmentalists that exact question and they will squirm like a worm on a hook.

If someone specifies that they are opposed to nuclear energy due to the waste problem. Fine we say, but what exactly do you mean by the waste problem and what effect does the waste have that you find repulsive? If you are bothered by the possibility that the waste will hurt future generations, then lets discuss how to safely dispose of the waste. If you are anti nuclear because you are bothered by the safety of nuclear installations, then specify what level of safety is safe enough (obviously there must be a level where an activity is considered safe enough, otherwise the person in question would never get out of bed to shower for fear of slipping and dying) and lets discuss how to reach that.

But the discussion always ends before reaching that point because the "anti person" generally never  seems to be interested in solutions to the posed problems and they are usually not even able to state clearly why they consider the issue as a problem in the first place. This is not only valid for the nuclear debate, one sees the same tendencies in all kinds of discussion where there is a clear anti side. Anti genetic engineering, anti cars, anti meat, anti space exploration, you name it! It seems very hard for people to go past the simple emotional attachment of being against something and instead engage into a meaningful discussion about the issues. It is too easy to just be opposed to something, it is damned much harder to actually find solutions.

So to move the nuclear discussion into a more fruitful direction it would be enlightening if some nuclear opponents could specify what conditions nuclear would have to fulfill to be an acceptable energy source. Believe it or not even we have such conditions. I don't think for instance anyone in NPYP wants to see more RBMK reactors built (the type of reactor at the Chernobyl plant) and just to speak for myself I have quite strict demands on what nuclear energy should be in the long run to be an acceptable energy source. I am not anti nuclear, but I am certainly anti towards some ways of extracting nuclear energy.

To summaries and to state the challenge again clearly.

 

What conditions would have to be fulfilled for you to consider nuclear an acceptable energy source?

 

The world has forgotten the real victims of Fukushima

February 21st, 2012

I just had to make a quick post about this excellent article.

The world has forgotten the real victims of Fukushima

It was at this point, at around day three, that I realised that something had gone seriously wrong with the reporting of the biggest natural disaster to hit a major industrialised nation for a century. We had forgotten the real victims, the 20,000-and-counting Japanese people killed, in favour of a nuclear scare story.

/Johan

Kernenergie? Ja, graag!

February 21st, 2012

For our dutch friends the Smiling Atom logo is now available in nederlands/dutch. :)

Kernenergie? Ja, graag!

Kernenergie? Ja, graag!

Head on over to our downloads page for more.

 

Weekend reading

February 17th, 2012

Activity is not very high here lately so I though I would provide you all with some nice weekend reading material.

First is the article "Energy as the ultimate raw material" by the nuclear energy pioneer Alvin Weinberg. Weinberg used to think of the big picture and this article showcases that. He outlines a few approaches to a asymptotic state of civilization, a state where humanity is using resources at a rate that is practically infinitely sustainable. In such a state humanity uses a lot of energy in order to produce the necessary raw materials from common rock, seawater etc.The article is from 1959 but well worth reading even today.

The second article is a blog post from Will Davis over at Atomic Power Review, "Vogtle COL approval vote indicates perspective on "nuclear renaissance". I selected it because in it Will describes some the various reactors that where developed during the first decades of nuclear energy. In my opinion it speaks volumes of how restricted the view of nuclear energy has become, nuclear power today is pretty much identical to light water reactors, but that is just a fluke of history and some day tinkering with other designs will charge on at full speed again.

As the third article I give you Gismags "Feature: Small modular nuclear reactors - the future of energy?". Aside from a few glaring technical errors or statements that doesn't make a whole lot of sense, it gives a good overview of the developments going on with small modular reactors.

I also end the post with a small section from Freeman Dysons book "Disturbing the universe". A fantastic book by a fantastic scientist! Any spelling errors are mine since I wrote out the paragraphs below.

The fundamental problem of the nuclear power industry is not reactor safety, not waste disposal, not the dangers of nuclear proliferation, real though all these problems are. The fundamental problem of the industry is that nobody any longer has any fun building reactors. It is inconceivable under present conditions that a group of enthusiast could assemble in a schoolhouse and design, build, test, license and sell a reactor within three years. Sometime between 1960 and 1970, the fun went out of the business.

The adventurers, the experimenters, the inventors, were driven out, and the accountants and managers took control. Not only in the private industry but also in the government laboratories, at Los Alamos, Livermore, Oak Ridge and Argonne, the groups of bright young people who used to build and invent and experiment with a great variety of reactors where disbanded. The accountants and managers decided that it was not cost effective to let bright people play with weird reactors. So the weird reactors disappeared and with them the chance of any radical improvement beyond our existing systems.

We are left with a very small number of reactor types in operation, each of them frozen into a huge bureaucratic organization that makes any substantial change impossible, each of them in various ways technically unsatisfactory, each of them less safe than many possible alternative designs which have been discarded. Nobody builds reactors for fun anymore. The spirit of the little red schoolhouse is dead. That, in my opinion, is what went wrong with nuclear power.

- Freeman Dyson

 

/Johan

NPYP i Aftonbladet: Avstängda reaktorer får elpriset att skena

February 4th, 2012

En debattartikel från Nuclear Power Yes Please finns nu tillgänglig i Aftonbladets nätversion, fredag 3 februari 2012:

Avstängda reaktorer får elpriset att skena

Reason 1 to love nuclear power: it saves lives

February 2nd, 2012

The first part of our new year's resolution for 2012 is published. Reason 1 for loving nuclear power is: it saves lives.

Reason number 2 will be published March 1. Its headline is: "Nuclear power is sustainable development".

See you then. :)