Technology – Page 10 – Shall Not Be Questioned

What’s Going on with Japan’s Nukes?

Fears of another Chernobyl are greatly overstated. Chernobyl happened due to an inherently unsafe reactor design (RBMK), and some poor decisions on the part of an inexperienced work crew. Japan’s reactors are better designed. Unfortunately, the actual information coming out of Fukushima is scarce, and the media has been hysterically recycling the same information over and over again. I am not an expert on nuclear power, but I know a little of the principles involved. Some things are curious, and if anyone who knows nuclear power can explain, it might help put the pieces together:

Once a reactor scrams, there’s still a substantial amount of decay heat that needs to be removed from the reactor. Most nuclear plants have redundant systems to keep coolant flowing. Power was knocked out to the plant by the earthquake, which triggered all the reactors to scram. The redundant diesel generators kicked in for a few minutes, until they were taken out by the tsunami.
Without coolant circulating, it was inevitable that water in the reactor would heat up and pressure would build, causing engineers to have to vent pressure straight from the reactor vessel. This typically would release short-lived radiation (mostly radioactive Nitrogen isotopes with a short half life).
Radioactive isotopes of Cesium and iodine were detected around the plant, however, and we know from the hydrogen explosion of the containment building that the reactor was venting hydrogen gas as well. This is Three Mile Island territory, and is a strong indicator the reactor core has at least partially melted, probably due to water levels in the containment vessels dropping too low.
My guess would be that’s why they decided to pump in boronated water. Boron is aÂ nuclear poison, but wouldn’t do anything to get rid of decay heat (I believe,) so this is more evidence that engineers probably think they are dealing with at least a partial core meltdown. As far as I know, the insertion of the control rods should essentially shut down fission in the reactor core, leaving only decay heat remaining as a source of energy, which would be unaffected by boron. Anyone know why they’d pump boronated seawater into the reactor if there wasn’t fear of core melt?
We’re now learning of problems with other reactors. With functional cooling, decay heat is generally dissipated within a few days, after which the reactor should essentially be shut down thermally. Though the amount of decay heat that needs to be gotten rid of is a function of how hot the reactor was running before the scram. It’s possible some of the other plants were running at lower power, and thus did not find themselves in as much trouble so quickly? Or was the problem bigger than we were lead to believe, and now we’re just finding out about the other plants?

Fukushima is a boiling water type reactor, which is probably the most common type of nuclear plant in the world. One of the malfunctioning reactors is a GE design, and another is a Toshiba design. You can see from this list here how many other types of plants like thisÂ are in the world. One is right in my back yard. You can also see that the troublesome Fukushima reactors are second generation with varying levels of containment. Interestingly, it looks like they had this reactor scheduled for decommissioning at the end of this month. It looks like one of the troublesome reactors has an earlier generation of containment vessel. It’s not clear to me whether or not the hydrogen explosion destroyed all containment of the steel reactor vessel or only a secondary containment.

I understand that a China Syndrome type scenario is not really possible, and the worst that would happen here is the site is contaminated, with a billion or so dollars in cleanup costs associated with it. Three Mile Island’s core melted into the containment vessel, which it as engineered, and released next to no radiation to the outside. That still cost a billion dollars to clean up.

The worst aspect of this, I think, will be all the opponents of nuclear power jumping on this hobby horse and trying to ride it as far as they can. Fukushima I is an old reactor design. The new ones are safer, and wouldn’t exhibit the problems that are cropping up at Fukushima I. The solution here isn’t to abandon nuclear power, but to replace our aging nuclear power infrastructure with new, more modern plants.

What We’ve Been Up To

You might be able to guess by this conversation between my friend Jason and myself:

Jason: Doh! Had a catastrophic magazine failure.
Sebastian: What happened?
Jason: Body came apart and rounds went flying everywhere.
Sebastian: At the glue seams?
Jason: Yeah. But it wasn’t the glue. The plastic failed.
Sebastian: Ack
Sebastian: I wonder if painting some epoxy on the outside and letting it cure would strengthen the magazine body.
Jason: Maybe. I’m going to try making the walls a little thicker.
Jason: The failure was due to a mistake in the scad file. Its not a design problem.
Sebastian: Good to hear

In case you didn’t figure it out, we’re attempting to design a “high capacity” or “extended” magazine that can be printed on a 1200 dollar 3D printer. Whether we succeed or fail, I will report on the effort. Jason is doing most of the work, since he’s the one who owns the printer. My contribution to the project was designing the follower. Obviously we can’t print a spring with a printer that extrudes ABS plastic, so we won’t be making that ourselves. What are they going to do? Outlaw springs? A spring would not be remarkably hard to make, but just to save the frustration we’re going to use a spring from a broken magazine for the same gun.

Turns out this is a lot harder than would have been anticipated. I had to make changes to the follower last night, and Jason has had to make several modifications to the magazine body. There’s also been modifications necessary on the printer. My feeling is this would be fairly easy to make work on an expensive commercial device, and that the limits of home 3D printing are being pushed to the limits on this project.

It is our intention to definitively show that banning magazines is a fool’s errand in a world where people have easy access to this kind of technology. Once we have a working design, anyone with the Makerbot printer, some glue, and a spring, could download our magazine design, print it, and have it work. I will publish the design here, because I want it to spread far and wide. I’d like to see Paul Helmke try to argue we need to ban CAD drawings too, or restrict 3D printing technology. You can’t put the genie back in the bottle. We’re going to do our best to prove that.

Stay tuned to this blog for further updates on our progress. I might invite Jason back to post on some of the stuff he’s worked on, since the last time readers here heard from him wasÂ in 2007 when his Calico M950 blew up in his face (both he and the gun are fine now). I have created a new category for this topic.

Fun with 3D Printers

There is currently a more serious project afoot in regards to this technology, which I’ll talk about when it’s better developed. but for now it’s just decorative items, like this one for my desktop:

It looks the shit attached to the case:

Million Dollar Garage

Marko and Miguel have their picks for what they’d fill a million dollar garage with. I’m boringly practical when it comes to automobiles, so even with a million bucks I’d doubt I’d drive something much different than I have now. Though I’d probably get leather seats. No, if I had a princely sum to spend on transportation, I’d getÂ one of these:

And no doubt many are fans of the Ford Mustang,Â but I’d rather have a Mustang made by Cessna:

Both of these, of course, are the Priuses (Prii?) of turbojet powered aircraft. Larger business jets will suck down jet-A like it’s going out of style. Regardless, the fuel economy on either aircraft would put your Ford Earthf**ker to shame. If the automobile is f**king the earth, private jets rape and pillages the earth, then murder its family.

Sadly, personal jets don’t quite have the hippy tear inducing effect as the automobile, because plenty of wealthy leftists fly in them, and this has never been about saving the earth. It’s been about saving your average dumb American from himself. Once average dumb Americans, who clearly need to be re-educated by their betters, start buying their own jets, you can bet the hippy tears will start flowing for mother Gaia, and planes will be just as bad as the automobile. I look forward to that day.

The New iPad 2

Not enough to get me to upgrade, but there’s some surprising features, namely that it’s thinner. The original device isn’t what I would consider overly thick. That’s being done with a CPU that’s twice as fast, and with, they are claiming, nine times the graphics performance. This still preserves a 10 hour battery life. Front and rear facing cameras were an expected new feature, as was a better speaker. The better speaker is welcome, because it is a serious deficiency of the iPad. Smart covers I could care less about.

When the iPad first debuted last year, I was skeptical of it, since it just seemed like it was a big iPhone. It wasn’t until I tried out a friends that I realized a big iPhone actually works pretty well as a device for consuming media. I tend to use it to catch up with blogs, Twitter, and Facebook. I also use it for watching Netflix and games. The shortcomings are mostly that it doesn’t give me a good way to keep my life integrated between devices. If Apple can create a way for me to access what I’m doing on each device (iPad, iPhone, MacBook, Desktop) seamlessly, that would be great for my work flow. MobileMe helps a lot, but it’s not nearly as smooth as it could be.

The big question I’m facing right now is whether to get a Verizon iPhone 4 now, or wait for the iPhone 5, supposedly this summer. I’m trying to imagine what more I’d want a smart phone to do, and I’m hard pressed to come up with anything. Just about everything else I can think of is a software and integration issue. Though, I know if I go out and get the iPhone 4 right now, the iPhone 5 will debut with the ability to warp time and space, and I’ll be kicking myself for not waiting.

Biotech Industry Talk

Megan McArdle comments on this article that appeared in the economyÂ [link removed, here’s why]Â speakingÂ about how Big Pharma is destroying Biotech by pushing all the risk onto venture funded companies and then stiffing them when it comes to the reward side for all that risk.

I work for a Biotech, so I will get my bias out there, but this is absolutely true. As long as Venture Capitalists were willing to keep sheltering the risk, there was no reason for the Big Pharma to do anything other than let them. But the party is over, and with Big Pharma shedding R&D capability quite readily, and Biotechs running out of venture funding, who is going to be left to find new treatments?

I have personally witnessed every one of these tactics highlighted in the article. I think part of the problem is the “one product biotech” model is fundamentally flawed and unworkable, because the odds of any single program succeeding through to an approved drug, and then being a market success, are very small. Big Pharma would be far better partnering with many different biotechs with novel approaches to different parts of the drug discovery problem, and then figuring out what works and what doesn’t. They should be looking for innovation, and not necessarily programs. You can decide what innovation is worthwhile by what programs can be developed out of them.

Big Pharma is mostly good at regulatory compliance and marketing, and not so good at innovation. Biotechs are better at innovation, but don’t have the capital to do regulatory compliance or marketing. In order for this model to work, Big Pharma has to be willing to share risk and reward with investors. Until they figure that out, the industry is going to continue its downward spiral, and sadly, that’s going to mean fewer new treatments hitting the marketplace over the next decade.

P.S. – If any of my readers are venture capitalists with some money to spend on a Biotech with an innovative approach to drug discovery, let me know in the comments :)

First Foray into 3D Printing

The good thing was it got the basic shape of the Apple Logo correct:

The only problem is that this was supposed to be 7 centimeters tall. Pretty clearly we have some scaling issues to work out. Possibly the program outputted the wrong units. I’m a long way off from doing anything useful with this. I also think Blender‘s UI was designed by aliens. I did this with Google SketchUp, which unfortunately doesn’t output directly to STL format for printing.

Last Surviving Manhattan Project Scientist

Joe Huffman got a chance to exchange e-mails with the last surviving scientist on the Manhattan Project. Very cool. This was the guy who developed the detonators. In order to create an implosion type device that uses a plutonium core (Fat Man), you need to create a very precisely orchestrated conventional explosion to compress the core. Conventional detonators weren’t up to the task, which is where Johnson came in.

Transformative Technologies

I was quite interested to see this article that British engineers want to try to print an entire aircraft wing, rather than fabricating it through traditional methods. This is a technology that should revolutionize industries where the products being made don’t need to be produced in huge quantities. Aircraft manufacturing could be among those industries. But another is firearms manufacturing. I’m particularly fascinated by selective laser sintering technology, which has the ability to lay down metal, ceramic and glass, in addition to plastics.

A friend of mine just got one of these 3D printers that lays down ABS plastic:

The cost of these printers is under $1000 bucks. If you’re looking for objects to print for your personal 3D printer you can go to the Thingiverse. Obviously home 3D printing is in its very infancy, but these products are bound to get cheaper and more sophisticated. Commercial printers can already lay down different types of material at the same time.

So why do I bring this up? Because to the extent that CNC technology has made gun control an unworkable pipe dream, 3D printing technology makes it laughable. When anyone with four to five figures worth of machinery can download plans for a gun and mill/print it, there is no controls you will create that’s going to stop determined people from getting their hands on firearms in a world where you can print them in your basement, unless the Brady Campaign wants to campaign for control of CNC milling machines and 3D printer. And yes, once you can print and mill guns, you can print and mill ammunition and magazines too. We already know we can have polymer ammo cases.

If Airbus can produce an aircraft wing using this technology, the Brady Campaign’s only “faster and cheaper” away from having their positions about banning this or banning that being a laughable mockery.

The Internets Have Run Out

I look forward to being able to tell the grandkids about the time when people could remember their IP addresses.