The Land of the Rising Sun
In the first months of 2012 I was asked if I would consider a private commission from a company to write a report on the question of whether the nations surrounding China could resist Beijing’s pressure to advance its ambitions in the South China Sea, and a short preview of what my conclusion might be. My short reply is below and there the matter ended:
I think the short answer to the question you pose is “Yes, The Outer Asian shore—Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Philippines, Singapore—will be secure and more than capable of resisting Chinese attempts to pressure them one-by-one”. The reason for this, is in a nutshell — Japan, and to a similar extent, the United States. It’s is in Japan’s existential interest to keep China from being overly dominant, and it can and will play a role similar to that played by Britain during the Napoleonic wars; keeping the balance of power. The alternative is to submit to long-term Chinese dominance; and it will not do so without a fight.
The confirmation of this was captured in a New York Times article on Japan’s growing military and security role in Asia. It encapsulates the decline of America as the Pacific hegemon and Japan’s return to regional power.
“During the cold war, all Japan had to do was follow the U.S.,” said Keiro Kitagami, a special adviser on security issues to Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda. “With China, it’s different. Japan has to take a stand on its own.”…
“We want to build our own coalition of the willing in Asia to prevent China from just running over us,” said Yoshihide Soeya, director of the Institute of East Asian Studies at Keio University in Tokyo. …
The Japanese Navy took a big step toward opening up in 2009 by holding a joint military drill with Australia — its first such exercise with a nation besides the United States. It has since joined a number of multinational naval drills in Southeast Asia, and in June held its first joint maneuver with India. …
Under the decade-old civilian aid program to build up regional coast guards, Japanese officials say they are in the final stages of what would be their biggest security-related aid package yet — to provide the Philippine Coast Guard with 10 cutters worth about $12 million each. Ministry officials say they may offer similar ships to Vietnam.
Japan’s Ministry of Defense said it planned to double its military aid program next year to help Indonesia and Vietnam. Vietnam could also be among the countries that Japan would allow to buy its submarines, according to a former defense minister, Toshimi Kitazawa, who named Australia and Malaysia as other possible buyers.
Japan can no longer simply “follow the US”. The US is leading from behind.
This happens at a time when essential commodities like food and fuel are becoming more expensive than they have been in decades. Walter Russell Mead points out that China is now dependent on foreign food imports for survival, a trend that is increasing yearly. Nor is it alone. India is in the same boat. This increases the dependence of huge population centers on freedom of navigation and the availability of fuels. In other words, it relies upon elements of US capability that are either being sequestered or given over to the ‘Arab Spring’.
David Archibald is preparing a study on the world food and fuel situation and writes that things are getting tight, not just in places like Egypt, but all over the world.
Over the last decade, the oil price has been rising at fifteen per cent compound. There is no reason for that rate of rise to slow down soon. Just as having food prices double will be big suppressant of discretionary expenditure, higher fuel costs will also reduce what can be spent on things that aren’t transport fuels. If fact, fuel will be a double whammy in food prices. Energy costs are currently 60% of the cost of food production. A doubling of the oil price from here will increase food costs by a further 50% than what scarcity alone will do. …
As Australian oil production falls, Australian oil refineries close and we source more and more of our needs from refineries in Singapore, our defence capability decays super-linearly. How can anyone in their right mind think that we could fight in a war to protect ourselves when the fuel necessary for that is coming from the area where that war will be fought? There are only about two weeks’ worth of stocks in the Australian fuel system. As soon as a conflict starts in the Asian region, our economy will be paralysed.
The other way to put Archibald’s worry is the way the Gillard administration frames it on an Australian government website:
Projected reductions in our crude oil production and refining capacity will mean that demand will increasingly be met by imports of crude oil and refined product … This is not considered to affect our liquid fuel security because we have ready access to mature, diverse and reliable international supply chains and robust market governance and emergency response arrangements. Announced refinery closures will occur on the basis of an orderly transition to increase import capacity to ensure continuity of supply.
That’s right. Officially the liquid fuel shortage is a feature, not a bug.
What does this mean for international stability? President Obama offered his supporters a vision of world peace but at the same time he is knocking the props out from under the longest period of calm in modern history. The administration’s slogan should be: food stamps without food, prosperity based borrowed money and safety in a powder-keg.
Nearly a year after I was asked to predict the situation in the Pacific, maybe we have started a potentially catastrophic chain of events that should be watched carefully. But policy makers are increasing the risk by pretending — like the Gillard government — that warning signs are in fact symptoms of progress.
It’s almost as if a peculiar madness has taken hold. Just today Time Magazine discovered something: that UN Peacekeeping is a failure. “Defining Peacekeeping Downward: The U.N. Debacle in Eastern Congo”
Mandated to protect Congo’s civilians, with 19,000 men in uniform and costing $1.4 billion a year, the world’s biggest and most expensive peacekeeping operation was literally leaving its charges in its dust. Later in the day Monusco, far better armed and more numerous than the rebels, simply stood and watched as the M23 — easterners who oppose the central government in Kinshasa — took Goma almost without firing a shot. France called Monusco’s conduct “absurd.” The Congolese were less forgiving. Across the east of the country, angry mobs surrounded U.N. positions, threw stones at aid workers and burned U.N. compounds. Asked what they thought of Monusco, a group of young men standing by the shore of Lake Kivu in Goma cried out in unison: “Useless.” Amani Muchumu, 18, had a message for the peacekeepers. “You could not defend us,” he declared. “You are dismissed.”
No they are not dismissed. They’ll be back. In fact they have never left, even if they are not really there. Time describes the surprise of even hardened genocidaires at the UN’s complete insensibility.
Perhaps worse even than failing to keep or establish peace, Monusco has also failed spectacularly in its most fundamental mission: protecting civilians. In 2005, MONUC expelled 63 of its soldiers for paying refugee children for sex. A separate internal inquiry the same year found that Pakistani peacekeepers sold weapons to militias in exchange for gold …
Now TIME has learned from two NGO sources in eastern Congo about an incident that memorably illustrates Monusco’s callous ineffectiveness. In September the town of Pinga, west of Goma, was taken over by a private militia and protection racket called Mai Mai Cheka (after its commander Colonel Cheka). On capturing the town, Cheka ordered the decapitation of several civilians who were local notables from rival tribes. Then Cheka, wanting to force the peacekeepers to leave their base, resorted to the kind of barbarism he thought no U.N. force could ignore. On his orders, several heads were thrown at the base gates while Cheka shouted: Come out!” Cheka was also said to have paraded as many as seven severed heads on sticks in the town. “Do you think Monusco ventured out of the gate?” asks a senior aid worker with knowledge of the incident. “[They did] nothing. How safe did the population feel after that?”
Yet nothing is learned. Nothing will be changed. It is almost as if, having endured four years of unemployment, economic decline and international chaos, a US public decided to re-elect the administration responsible. The international institutional framework has become disconnected from reality. It is accountable to nothing and bids fair to keep going until it collapses from its own incompetence.
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The wheels within wheels question is who asked your opinion? When all the cut outs are peeled away was the ultimate customer for Richard Fernandez’s opinion China’s MFA or State Security?
Sounds like a very interesting and very relevant white paper.
Re Australia and energy-dont they have huge coal deposits?-which can be turned into liquid fuel
Australia must also have huge deposits of natural gas, it is also one of the few countries where solar energy makes sense.
Australia has enough uranium to fuel abundant nuclear power for centuries
The Rising Sun has been the ruin of many a young boy. Maybe this time.
But then, the U.S. is the Land of the Setting Sum.
uh Rick Santorum said in a interview with G. Beck, that if the US pull out from Germany and Japan, these two countries would rearm
http://www.glennbeck.com/2011/12/13/santorum-to-beck-gingrich-is-as-progressive-as-ron-paul-is-libertarian/
Japan’s economy has taken a huge hit due to the panic over Fukushima. Once again we have an example of how government is NOT the solution. By waiting for orders from the PM and Tepco headquarters, the on scene plant operators delayed taking adequate measures in real time to limit the damage by venting hydrogen gas. What they got was hydrogen explosions that damaged the secondary containment structures, the first step in a cascade of troubles.
It was when they FINALLY started injecting water (both fresh and sea water) into the pressure vessels and the spent fuel ponds that the Fukushima 50 finally got some level of control back.
So the key factor to improving nuclear safety is distributed control (not government regulation) combined with high speed connectivity to foreign sources of assistance (e.g. the U. S. Navy’s Supervisor of Salvage) which co-ordinated an emergency air lift of high pressure pumps. See details on pages 14-15 of the current edition of Faceplate http://tinyurl.com/c54xm4e
So now Japan is bleeding money importing LNG (and those dumkopfs in Germany are bleeding Euros) because functional nuclear power plants have been idled for political reasons. If both Japan and Germany re-started their nukes, the price of energy would CRASH!!!
How to undercut the various bad actors out there? CRASH ENERGY PRICES!
QED
OK, as usual you raise a couple of major and somewhat interlinked topics, China’s pressure on its neighbors for basic resources, and world madness and inaction in the face of problems up to and including atrocity. Yet you managed, six months ago, to come up with a bottom line. So, does it still maintain in the face of your second point?
In fact, in the face of the first point, just how much pressure do you think China can or would put on its neighbors? If they just say, “Surrender or be nuked”, is anyone going to resist? In conventional warfare terms, do any of China or its neighbors have significant capabilities to invade, compel, destroy? A full rearmament to war-fighting levels by China or Japan with anything like state of the art weapons would surely cost a trillion dollars each and take mumble years – the delay alone dictates inaction today. And with an entry cost so high, what rational agent would enter into it, with the crumbling mass of the US still on the horizon? In short, what of the post-modernist economic idea that war is just obsolete, trade a much easier way to get anything you want? Unless you want to engage in self-eugenics due to your excess population in the hundreds of millions, of course.
On the second point, actually the UN has basically zero track record of successful military engagements, except when it was used as a fig leaf for US actions in Korea or Iraq. The only reason to maintain it in Manhattan at all is the old principle of keeping your friends close and your enemies closer, I suppose it fills some functional need or other as a debating and chowder society.
Only the people who obey pay the consequences, no different here in the US, Murders, Theifs and Gangs, even Drunk drivers can get four or five chances to murder someone with their cars, illegal aliens can Murder Americans flee the country and come back numerous times… Only the Law abiding pay both ends!
I make four recommendations to the Japanese if they wish to maintain a viable parliamentary democracy whilst staving off China:
They must become more like Switzerland in their defensive capabilities in order to make Japan “impossible” to invade or occupy. The proven method of doing this is to place effective small arms into the hands of a decent proportion of the population. Based upon the law abiding nature of Japanese culture the Swiss or Israeli method of requiring reserve duty from every able bodied, mentally stable citizen at age 18 should work. Reservists would serve a year or eighteen months on active duty. A few would stay in the military and make it a career. Most would go back to civilian life with mandatory periodic reserve duty for the next ten or twelve years. The point is to properly train nearly every young person as a rifleman with decent practical knowledge of small unit tactics and send every reservist home with a complete personal kit for infantry combat including a accurate, effective “assault” rifle and sealed 500 round tin of ammunition (to be opened in case of a declared emergency). The government would further emulate the Swiss and provide frequent marksmanship training opportunities at government expense, awarding prizes for the best marksmen. This is a relatively quick and inexpensive undertaking. Creating the necessary cultural changes to maximize efficiency and effectivness of “citizen soldiers” may take a generation.
It was lack of Petroleum, Oil, & Lubricants, (POL) which were cut off by the Roosevelt administration in 1940-41 that precipitated the attack on Pearl Harbor. The Imperial militaristic fascists were undertaking the conquest of Asia. The POL embargoe was the reason d’etre for disabling the American Pacific fleet so that it could not interfere with the Japanese Imperial Army & Navy seizing the rich petroleum assets of Batavia that were necessary for continued military operations in China, Indochina and throughout the greater East-Asian prosperity sphere.
To minimize the impact of the lack of indigenous petroleum resources the Japanese should immediately undertake the “nuclearization” of all of their capital ships. The Japanese have sufficient experience dealing with nuclear power generation, and certainly the engineering expertise to build a fleet of destroyers, frigates, cruisers and especially submarines utilizing nuclear propulsion. Japan is obviously an island, and like Great Britain of yesteryear it must have the regions most effective (not necessarily largest) navy if it is going to maintain control of the high seas and it’s independence.
There are two kinds of ships, submarines, and targets! Japan should undertake a crash program to develop the worlds second largest and most effective nuclear submarine force. They could begin by purchasing some of the early Los Angelese class submarines we’re sending to be scrapped. They should quickly develop an indigenous production capacity and build a fleet of nuclear attack submarines large and capable enough to simultaneously control the sea-space around their territory, choke off all sea based oil deliveries to China, and undertake a maritime embargo / mining of Chinese ports.
To maintain independence in an era when the United States has proven itself to be a fair weather friend and sometimes backstabber of allies everywhere, an independent, effective nuclear deterent is a very high priority. Japan already has the requisit space launch / rocketry experience to build ICBMs, but what they really need are medium to long range submarine launch capable missiles to deliver nuclear warheads. The Japanese probably need nine or more “boomers” in order to have 3 or 4 on patrol at all times, capable of wiping the Chinese military & industrial complexes off the Earth without having to resort to a first strike.
Given the level of dependence on trade, if China starts a war it will starve itself. It is so dependent on imported fuel and food that the whole place will collapse if the sea lanes are shut down. Ditto for Japan and South Korea. Ditto in fact for Australia. Oz has got two weeks of liquid fuels. If the tanker routes get messed up, we walk.
The world depends on the continuation for the Pax Americana to go on living in its current state. And yet at the same time it undermines the hegemon. Not that the hegemon needs much undermining. It is dismantling itself.
We are running out of design margin everywhere and one can’t help but wonder what happens if? What happens if turmoil in the Middle East spike oil prices. What happens if Europe collapses? What happens if the dollar hits a crisis? What happens if instead of Global Warming we’re really watching Global Cooling?
David Archibald writes that it would have the effect of moving the entire Canadian and US agricultural areas north and cutting grain outputs. I’ve often pointed out that Egypt is running out of food. Maybe we’ve decided as a globe to keep them company.
Some nations, he writes (like China) are building plants to liquefy coal. They’re doing something. But Australia on the other hand, like a mad person, is imposing a “Carbon Tax” — its buying indulgences for Gaia. It’s spinning prayer wheels in the winds. That’s what it’s doing. Nothing but praying before the temple of political correctness.
I have this theory that Obama has noticed that he can sell packaging without anything in it. We are handed boxes called “Pivot to the Pacific”, “Ending the War on Terror Where it Began”, “Free Healthcare”, “Free Education”, “Government Cheese” and “World Peace”. And there’s nothing in them. We just put them on the shelf and congratulate ourselves on being so prepared.
Lies have consequences. The biggest consequence is a refusal to believe that that lies have consequences in the first place. We run off the cliff like Wile E. Coyote without the benefit of living in a cartoon.
I guess there ought to be an opportunity in here somewhere. But maybe it is the sort of opportunity that Harry Lime relished: profiteering, selling medicine to desperate people or fake passports to people eager to get away. To where? I wonder.
Wretchard @ 9 – Have you seen the POL development going on in Australia?
Try Chevron Australia’s website http://tinyurl.com/cfwkbq9
Gorgon
Wheatstone
Exmouth Plateau
Our Aussie friends will be okay! Fair dinkum!
They can readily achieve “energy independence” too.
W:
It sounds as if you gave too much information away for free: had your proposal been shorter perhaps there would have been a nice paycheck coming your way. Is it is, the person who approached you apparently felt they had all the information they needed just from your response. Their loss is our gain. Thanks for your insights, as well as those of the commenters.
The UN has the same function as Jesse Jackson in an international scale. They are a professional shake down organization designed to provide workfare for rapists, extortionists, and petty thieves to cowardly to operate on their own.
“Amani Muchumu, 18, had a message for the peacekeepers. “You could not defend us,” he declared. “You are dismissed.””
Poor Amani doesn’t understand. The UN is a funding vehicle for international leftists. They are enablers of genocide. If the UN shows up in your neighborhood, you already are a refugee. Better get packing.
My SWAG is that China’s food imports are a reflection of an improved diet.
If they were required to revert to a diet of rice and wheat, would they still need to import?
Suppose the world’s fiat currencies collapse? How will China feed herself then?
“uh Rick Santorum said in a interview with G. Beck, that if the US pull out from Germany and Japan, these two countries would rearm”
Oh by gosh let them rearm. We should send the copies of all of our weapons programs that were infiltrated by the China like the W88, et al. If we cannot rely on Russia and China to be partners in keeping Iran and North Korea from attaining nuclear weapons then let us see to it our friends are better armed. I would like to see Australia with a robust nuclear weapon program as well.
Armaggedon #8:
Why would anyone want to invade Japan? You would gain what, a whole bunch of hungry people to feed? There is nothing there that anyone other than the Japanese want. The only reason to go there is to sit on them and keep them from being a problem, and you don’t really have to go there to do that. We did not in 1945, but fortunately for the Japanese, we did anyway.
What Japan needs is an ability to defend not so much the home islands from invasion but its national interests, anywhere. Alliance with other people will be vital for that, as will the appropriate military technology. I can easily imagine Japan, S. Korea, Singapore, and Australia jointly designing and building advanced fighter aircraft and other such systems, with the Phillipines and Vietnam benefitting as well.
In short, they need to form the Greater Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere. But I guess they better use a different name this time.
Over the last decade, the oil price has been rising at fifteen per cent compound. There is no reason for that rate of rise to slow down soon.
,,,,,,,,,,,
Currently supply and demand are in balance. They are so finely balanced that any whiff of worldwide economic growth — immediately shoves the price of oil upward. Higher oil prices skims off the excess capital formed by growth that normally feeds further growth. As a result further growth is choked off and the world economy flatlines.
However, that’s expected to change in roughly three years or 2015 when supply outstrips demand. Prices will then fall even when economies grow–enablling real growth…alas just in time for the 2016 election.
Already, US fracking technology has added over 100 years supply of oil and gas to US inventories. How much is an extra +100 year supply of oil and gas worth? Say 100 trillion. That’s extra backing for the US dollar that’s come from nothing. There is no more talk of the dollar imploding–even though the borrowing continues apace.
In 3-4 years the Chinese will get the fracking technology. They are reported to have even larger supplies of natural gas than the USA. Their reason for forming a greater China co prosperity sphere will be undermined. Of course when china become energy independent==it will likely make them more expansionist not less so. Its just that their reason for expansion will be mostly about greater Han beauty
The great Akira Ifukube actually composed an orchestral march in 1941 called “Sa Bago Filipinas” to commemorate the conquest of that archipelago which you can listen to on YouTube. The title is actually ungrammatical Tagalog, but ungrammatical in a caricature Japanese way. It should be “Sa Bagong Pilipinas”. The effect on a Tagalog ear is similar to “Gleat Amelika”.
But it’s a grand piece of music, foreshadowing the Godzilla March. Had our forefathers been so obstinate, what grandeur, what soaring cadences, what high culture we would have had. But it wouldn’t have been the one we wanted. And despite my admiration for Ifukube, people would probably have preferred Fred Panopio’s clownish Pitong Gatang to Ifukube’s masterpieces. There’s something wrong really with clapping to the equivalent of Gleat Amelika.
But the world moves on and who could have foreseen that in the term of Barack Hussein Obama we should be exhorted to seek shelter under the flag of the rising sun. But like someone said, maybe we’re just not used to quality.
“Yet nothing is learned. Nothing will be changed. It is almost as if, having endured four years of unemployment, economic decline and international chaos, a US public decided to re-elect the administration responsible. The international institutional framework has become disconnected from reality. It is accountable to nothing and bids fair to keep going until it collapses from its own incompetence.”
Is it true that the US willingly embraced Soviet Communism under Obama – or was it simply the most obvious vote fraud operation since 1960?
We won’t know what the American electorate actually wants until we have paper ballots, purple fingers, and picture IDs at every election.
And I’m not holding my breath.
Oh, and by the way…I would suggest that it is time for the people of Australia to wake up to the situation they are in with regard to Muslim immigration and infiltration, which is a far greater danger to them than the possibility of eventual Chinese hegemony. Get out from under the spell of the Red Witch, build up your NAVY fercryinoutloud, get yourself some NUKES and some nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers. You have a huge coastline and you need to protect the oceans around your country.
@15 RWE:
“Why would anyone want to invade Japan? You would gain what, a whole bunch of hungry people to feed? There is nothing there that anyone other than the Japanese want.”
The same could be said about Switzerland, but only the eventual expertise of citizen soldier halberdiers and crossbowmen eventually lead to the establishment of a free Swiss federal republic that wasn’t invaded by Italy, Germany and Austia in turns.
Thugs and bullies appear like magic in any gap where strength and fortitude are lacking.
It would have given North Korean infiltrators a great big case of the hebbie gebbies to have invaded Japan by submarine and inflatable boat in order to kidnap unsuspecting people in order to enslave them in North Korea knowing every 8th or 10th person had a automatic weapon in thier closet.
Japanese officials say they are in the final stages of what would be their biggest security-related aid package yet — to provide the Philippine Coast Guard with 10 cutters worth about $12 million each.
China has roughly 200,000 motorized fishing vessels. Every last one of them will be placed into service during a sea battle. Australian sailors will mutiny before firing on innocent fishermen who are only standing their fishing ground.
Do the math- to stand a prayer, the Philippine navy will require another 199,990 cutters, at a cost of exactly $2,399,880,000,000.
Has the world gone mad?
Before science and religion, people used magic to try and explain how the natural world worked. They devised rules for Imitative Magic and Contagious Magic. Paraphrasing George Frazier in “The Golden Bough”, when using imitative magic the magician infers that he can produce any effect he desires merely by imitating it. When using contagious magic he infers that whatever he does to a material object will affect equally the person with whom the object was once in contact, whether it formed part of his body or not.
The same principles which the magician applies in the practice of his art are implicitly believed by him to regulate the operations of inanimate nature; in other words, he tacitly assumes that the Laws of Similarity and Contact are of universal application and are not limited to human actions. In short, magic is a spurious system of natural law as well as a fallacious guide of conduct; it is a false science as well as an abortive art.
Now replace the word “magic” with “democratic socialism” and we have another spurious system of economic law and a fallacious guide of human conduct. In this second example of false science and abortive art, the magician has become the politician. The light worker has become President.
But practical magic never knew what its theoretical underpinnings were. The practical magician never analysed the mental processes on which his practice was based and never reflected on the abstract principles involved in his actions.
So the practical progressive politician will proceed like the practical magician. He reasons just as he digests his food in complete ignorance of the intellectual and physiological processes that are peculiar to politics. To him politics is always an art and the practical progressive politician, like the practical magician, will go on existing long after the theory of democratic socialism is dead and buried.
We live in a world where a fallacious system is in full flower and is believed to be true by billions of people around the world. The world hasn’t gone mad; it has just come to believe in magic. So we go imitating wealth, imitating love of mankind and believing that imitating wealth and merely touching paper money magically creates wealth.
The whole world is engaged in a delusional wealth dance.
Problem is, the wealth dance, like the rain dance doesn’t work. One day people will figure that out. Just as theoretical magic was replaced by science and religion, democratic socialism will be replaced by something else, something new.
Sheer numbers possess their own resolve and priorities. People who don’t think overpopulation and it’s overflow into the West is the world’s biggest problem are nuts. Dilute the West enough, reorient enough of its treasure to social programs to mitigate failure, and there will be no West to challenge China. Europe is already militarily irrelevant due to non-spending and now they’re too bankrupt to reverse the trend.
I guarantee you you will see war and empire-building in Africa, perhaps by Nigeria, in the coming decades. Perhaps later, Asia. Nigeria already plays the old role the Romans did as peacekeepers. The West will be too increasingly distracted to do anything about it. With current immigration patterns, I see the West being handed a number of fait accompli bogus non-intervention pacts they can do nothing about.
Political correctness says the American sons and daughters of Mayans and Somalis will build our future generations of fleet carriers with unprecedented innovation. History and reality say otherwise.
Population + political correctness + immigration = cultural suicide pact/war.
The Japanese response to Fukushima has been pathetic and suicidal. Certainly an important and expensive piece of infrastructure was destroyed but no deaths resulted, even as 20,000 lost their lives to the tsunami.
As Michiasprivateer points out, imagine Joe Biden calling the control room of a US reactor and giving orders to the operators! Ha ha.
The BIG downside of the Japanese political reaction has been to increase imports of LNG from Russia. Wonder what the the position of the FSB is on nuclear power in Japan?
As to how a remilitarized Japan would function, I can only speak from experience working for a Japanese conglomerate here in the US – I often wonder how the IJN functioned at all during WWII much less won battles.
I have this theory that Obama has noticed that he can sell packaging without anything in it.
Sell the sizzle babe, not the steak.
Sell the kids the band instruments and uniforms, and be on the next train out of town. Nothing new about that but the inability of the MSM to penetrate it. I guess they never had a newspaper, much less municipal web sites, there in River City, Iowa.
Back in the old Soviet Union the Journalists at Pravda would say something like: “Criticize but don’t generalize.” In other words they could do stories about problems or mistakes as long as they did not fault the system. I reckon that is the attitude at the NYT and Time as regards the UN and Obama’s policies more generally. The dots will not be connected. The problem is not in the policy premise. It’s just a thousand different things going wrong at the same time.
Romney promised to manage DC a little better. People who don’t simply want DC managed a little better didn’t turn out to vote. Those who see a better managed DC as a threat to their revenue stream did.
I think we need a party that argues for taking power away from DC (and the Cronies and special interest that flock there). Most people distrust DC. But if you are going to concentrate power in DC, they just as soon Democrats had it. When it comes to reducing power in DC (as opposed to favoring a different set of cronies) the Republicans have lost most of their credibility — and blaming the Tea Party for their problems won’t add to it.
For a good description of what the Middle East was like when Turkey controlled it, see Michael Korda’s recent bio of T. E. Lawrence. Without a Western influence, a return to tribalism and local despots controlling vast areas of N Africa and the eastern Med is an unpleasant possibility. Condi Rice was correct. Syria was the most important area before WW I and it is again. Lawrence made it his strategic target because it is in the middle of everything. We don’t seem to reconize that.
Wayne
Wayne @ 27:
The sad thing is that I think that we once recognized it. Iraq may have been seen as a good route to acheiving the objective of Syria and securing that regional keystone, at least in 2003. I think that subsequent events should force a reevaluation, but for the purposes of the current argument the premise still stands. Unfortunately, after tremendous sacrifice America has chosen to withdraw from that high ground of Iraq and pursue even more ineffectual policies with regard to the region.
Whether in the Middle East or thge Pacific Rim, smart power is a good thing if one is a statesman and strategist. Unfortunately, neither is true of anyone calling the shots right now. Preening Western poker players versus the hard-eyed chess masters of the world. This is going to get interesting….
Cool resolve.
Wayne @27…
Lawrence famously attacked the Ottoman / Turkish railway.
The famous epic movie mis-portrayed his attacks: he went for the bridges almost every time.
Amazingly, those blown bridges still dotted the landscape years on end. ( They are tiny — typically spanning a dry, sandy gulch merely 50-150 meters wide. Rather than attempting soil modifications, the engineers just set a piling and carried on the good work. Upon damage, it would take more than trivial effort to restore such a bridge — minor though it may have been.)
It was a narrow gauge affair. Surprisingly, it was initiated at Haifa, 1900AD, IIRC. Somewhere out on the Web there’s an inaugural photo with all of the dignitaries lined up at the shoreline — where the whole system started — at the docks.
That leg went inland, rising up towards Daraa, which, because of its water supply, became the central node for the expanding network.
This is the reason why Lawrence was there. It was ground zero for his anti-mobility campaign. The system wide repair shops were in Daraa, guarded by a Turkish brigade, of course. While guarding home base, this formation provided details to protect rolling stock and essential facilities.
Famously, T E Lawrence received a severe beat-down for his impudence there.
This rail system had a profound effect upon the Sykes-Picot Treaty. Its rail lines were specifically mentioned as defining this or that border — from place to place. It made sense, other than the rail line there was no defining geography — and GPS was a generations into the future.
The original border between northern Israel and southwest Syria tracked the ascent of this narrow gauge line as it climbed up towards Daraa. ( In broad strokes — it was micro-amended by subsequent surveys so that the actual border didn’t actually hit the tracks. )
It was only after experience that the Jews realized that that particular line was wholly impractical. It left all of the high ground to the Muslims — who proceeded to make farming in the valley a living hell. (As a prequel to Sderot — so harassment fires are not a new thing to Israeli farmers. — Somehow, the boys would ‘slip-up’ and mortar shells would wander onto cropland just as the harvest was underway. Hence, the current Israeli sensitivity to sloppy shooting from Syria. Indeed, now even Turkey has discovered that Syria has poor fire discipline.)
========
As this snippet of history shows, proper farming will require displacement of hostile fires back and away from the current border.
The opfor just can’t stop themselves.
Just to add to Whitehall’s comments @ 24 note that Fukushima Daina was also hit by the earthquake and tsunami and while there were some dicey moments, it achieved cold shutdown of all four units four days later on March 15th. http://tinyurl.com/brx8dld
The sea water pump rooms here were also flooded, but were patched and put back into service. So with a good preventive maintenance and repair program, they could put these four units back on line to provide lots of zero carbon emissions nuclear power!!!
Where is Al Gore when we need him???
21. Baobo
always remember the PLA is the enemy of CPC and the Chinese people. It is the terrible problem with the party schools that the only part of Japanese history that is taught is the Japanese invasion of China. What’s not taught is how the Japanese militarists seized control of the Japanese civilian government and led that country to war.
You seem to think that it is a beautiful thing that the PLA seizes control of the Chinese government from the CPC and leads China to war. Just like the Japanese militarists. Remember that makes you an enemy of the CPC and the Chinese people.
MP @30…
The Fukushima facility was OLD. One of the units was scheduled to shut down within months — it was at the end of its original design life.
Thoughts were entertained that another ten-years might be had.
So, on the fateful day, the operator in charge should’ve simply pulled the plug on the 37+ year old units. Instead, he froze, waiting for Godzilla to show up.
=======
Worst of all: what really screwed up the works was the desire to avoid venting any radionuclides — to include the harmless, short lived Beta emitters. (e.g. Oxygen 19 )
Beta emitters are weakly penetrating. They are free-flying electrons, after all.
When the parent radionuclide has a half-life of only seconds, even high levels of radiation don’t reach the public.
So, the course of action should’ve been to dump pressure from the reactor core as soon as possible — including venting the steam to the air. The fastest way was to open up the turbine set and blow down the steam pressure.
That scenario should’ve been incorporated in the control scheme all these years. Astonishing that it was not. The rotational/EM energy should’ve been dumped into a resistor grid — something not in the original design, I suspect.
All of the pressure could have been bled off before the tsunami hit.
Then, even though the back-up generators were flooded, the reactor cores could’ve handled the residual cooking.
=========
I STILL see references to Hydrogen Explosions. That notion is pure bunk. It’s only ever been advanced by non-engineers / anti-nuclear fanatics.
Even though the operators explained it, the source of the explosions has not penetrated the MSM ‘brain.’
All of the explosions were Steam Explosions. Back in the 19th Century, such explosions were commonplace. Fear of them still abounds in our insurance codes and boiler standards. In every American jurisdiction I know of, any boiler operating past 60psi has to be inspected every two-years, if not annually, by a state inspector — with a fee attached.
Boiler explosions have done in many a moonshiner, too.
They were at the heart of the meaning of ‘train wreck.’ In the days of steam locomotion, a train wreck ALWAYS meant collision + steam explosion.
The largest detonations on Earth were meteorite initiated steam explosions. The Tunguska event was a steam explosion. The ice ball flashed to steam. It was bigger than the biggest nuclear blast.
The Chicxulub meteorite vaporized cubic miles of sea water — making it a steam explosion plus fireball that terminated the dinosaur age.
The Ahnighito meteorite (Greenland) — a fragment of the impacts that terminated the North American megafauna 10,000 ish years ago hit the ice sheet so hard it steam vaporized enough water to divert the Great Lakes zone off to the east. This was how the Hudson Valley was carved — and why debris from the coulee ended 500 meters up on the mountainside, here and there, across upstate New York.
That was some steam explosion.
========
Where did Fukushima get all of the water for its recurrent steam explosions?
I remember something about a tsunami that was, at the shoreline, 35 meters above normal sea level. I should think that water became trapped in soils and voids normally always dry. Don’t you?
As for the heat…
As the reactors cook down, they get hotter and hotter. Normal cooling is gone. Eventually, parts of the system that would/should never get well beyond boiling — get well beyond boiling.
At which point, water trapped in soils and voids, just like Old Faithful, geyser up and out — except that there’s no vent hole. So, they create their own, fresh hole — loudly and explosively.
======
Any hydrogen gas, in a radio active environment, is instantly inflamable in air. By instantly, we mean within micro-seconds, if not nano-seconds. It must BURN like a rocket exhaust — not detonate like TNT. It can’t accumulate. Its flame velocity is Mach 1.
So get the whole ‘hydrogen explosion’ meme out of your head. It’s from dunces. The fact that the idiots in the MSM keep repeating it does not ever make it true. When you track back their sources they are always nuke-nuts.
Tokyo Electric Power explained that these were steam explosions over a year ago — and explained that they were often triggered promptly after they, TEP, had reintroduced more cooling water into the containment zone.
Such statements went in the MSM ear and out the other.
Hydrogen explosions are Fake Science — and are of a kind with Truther idiocies per 9-11.
22. stevesmith
Has the world gone mad?
…………
All the bad spending by the federal government based on delusional programs and policies behind them will not take the USA off the cliff. not this time. The US is in the midst of several massive technological revolutions –that imho will quite simply sop up the worst effects of the mistakes at the top.
The sad thing is that the elites will think that their policies had something to do with the technological (and financial) successes of the USA when in fact the USA will have succeeded this next time despite them.
And of course in general as the technology gets stronger the people will be getting weaker.
Blert: Please e-mail me at docbill72@gmail.com. I am interested in your source of info. re. the Greenland meteriote impact effect to carve the Hudson valley and end the megafauna.
Thank. BB
blert, one of my classmates did a demonstration of a quart jar of hydrogen “burning” in my 8th grade science class, that blew his safety box to smithereens.
Try again.
Armageddon Rex
“The same could be said about Switzerland, but only the eventual expertise of citizen soldier halberdiers and crossbowmen eventually lead to the establishment of a free Swiss federal republic that wasn’t invaded by Italy, Germany and Austia in turns.”
except that Switzerland was hosting the Nazis coffers
Josh…
Was it radio-active?
Even seemingly trivial levels of radio-activity are enough to operate as a continuous ‘match-head.’
It is likely Obama does not run the Presidency. It would be useful to find out who is in charge.
Susan Rice is the UN ambassador and, by law, is a member of Obama’s cabinet. By law she has the highest possible security clearance. However, she testifies that she was not told the truth about Benghazi.
As we know from the Paula Broadwell case it is not enough to have the highest possible security clearance. A person must also have ‘need to know’.
President Obama says he did not know the truth about Benghazi.
It seems we must conclude that neither Rice not Obama had the “need to know” and therefore were both lied to by somebody other than Petraeus.
Or we could conclude that both Obama and Rice are liars.
Or maybe Obama is not running whatever it is that Presidents run. Maybe the golf course is the only place where he is allowed to make his own decisions.
China’s shale oil fields are real far from any source of water.
As to the Japanese Naval Forces, They have a very large foot print of destruction. They have anti-missile capability, SAM-3 and Aegis, they are networked and linked through satellites and surveillance aircraft, and have both Tomahawks and Harpoons for ship killing and blowing land targets up. China’s aircraft carrier would last about 10 minutes if war started today.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=cHTu9g54WMA
b @ 37: Was it radio-active?
I hope not, but I cannot imagine how that would matter other than as a thermal heat point, do you have a link?
In case it does, remember the details of how this presumably worked, generated from a chemical reaction of water and zirconium which would shield it pretty well not to mention cool it and isolate it from any oxygen, bubbling up a hundred feet or so, mixing with air, and caught in hundreds of cubic meters in only millirem/hour environments.
Maybe something or other breaks the molecule which is then even more flammable … ? But remember, for all the panic, there really wasn’t that much radiation loose nor that much oxygen in the container, near the source it might just ignite and burn off all the oxygen and other than creating even more heat and pressure, not consume more than a trivial amount of the hydrogen generated.
Come to think of it, in my little demonstration, the plywood box and totally inadequate window screen were blown all over the room, miraculously the glass jar did not embed in any of the kids, and a mysterious white flakey substance filled the air … which was probably asbestos from the old WPA tile ceiling. In all it was quite memorable. Of course the science teacher should have been defenestrated for allowing it, but he was a prime dufus anyway. The kid whose demonstration this was went on to get a PhD from Stanford without blowing himself up, what happened to him later I know not.
The English speaking world has followed in the footstep of shell-shocked, post WWII Europe which only wanted the peace dividend of social democracy.
“War fatigue” with its attendant victimization pathologies exacerbated by the credit crisis, is now pandemic. Currently, the only war progressives will consider is class war. Only a third of the way into history’s latest thirty-years war, the west will tear itself apart even as fundamentalist Islam gathers and marches.
The world has turned upside-down and is blind to the prowling hegemon.
Wretchard wrote:
“Yet nothing is learned. Nothing will be changed. It is almost as if, having endured four years of unemployment, economic decline and international chaos, a US public decided to re-elect the administration responsible. The international institutional framework has become disconnected from reality. It is accountable to nothing and bids fair to keep going until it collapses from its own incompetence.”
—
Nothing could be further from the truth:
The admistration responsible was Bush II.
The People have spoken!
—
Japan is ageing faster than any country in history
FOR about 50 years after the second world war the combination of Japan’s fast-growing labour force and the rising productivity of its famously industrious workers created a growth miracle.
Within two generations the number of people of working age increased by 37m and Japan went from ruins to the world’s second-largest economy. In the next 40 years that process will go into reverse.
The working-age population will shrink so quickly that by 2050 it will be smaller than it was in 1950, and four out of ten Japanese will be over 65. Unless Japan’s productivity rises faster than its workforce declines, which seems unlikely, its economy will shrink.
—
A different view from Forbes:
Inaccuracies. However, the 15-64 age group describing the nominal workforce is suspect; it gives no weight to schooling beyond early high school and does not consider the possibility of working beyond 64.
——————————————————————————–
The declining actual dependency ratio tracks the extension of schooling throughout the 20th century:
–Education through university delayed the entry of the baby boomers and their successors into the labor market.
–Women entered the labor force in greater numbers in the post-1945 years. For example, women aged 25-29 increased their labor force participation rate from 43% in 1970 to 75% 35 years later.
–Many workers, especially men, continue to work beyond their nominal retirement years. Almost one-third of men 65 and older are in the labor force.
These behavior shifts mean that the actual dependency ratio has been below the seemingly significant figure of 1.0 for much of Japan’s modern history. Projecting participation rates forward at 2007 levels suggests that 2030 will not be much different from 1990.
Female participation. One change that could delay the decline is the increased participation of women. Despite their higher rate of working over time, their participation is less than in many rich countries, especially at higher level and executive jobs. Were Japanese women to work at the same rate as Swedish women, simulations suggest an almost 20-year delay in the effects of population decline and aging, not to speak of greater productivity and output.
Outlook. Japan’s aging and declining population will impose a smaller burden on middle-age workers than is commonly reckoned. If women participated more actively in the economy, the burdens would be further reduced.
20. Armageddon Rex – “Thugs and bullies appear like magic in any gap where strength and fortitude are lacking.”
Many ‘bullies’ are just scapegoats for every small bruise on the playground. Often they are misunderstood fat kids who never hurt anyone. Other kids tease him, yet if he fights back then he is blamed unreasonably.
I believe China resembles this overweight child whose metabolism is responsible… People aren’t fair to him…
Blert,
Your expositions as to Fukushima are largely incomprehensible and what I can comprehend are incorrect.
I’ve been working this problem of what to do with US reactors since the day after Fukushima. Some of my colleagues DESIGNED and BUILT those reactors.
You are correct that there was an incorrect standard procedure to NOT vent the containments. Containments are there to contain, after all. We are now moving to the realization that boiling water reactors need to be vented early on (4 to 6 hours) in certain scenarios and this need not result in significant offsite releases of radioactivity.
Hydrogen was indeed the cause of the explosions as seen on TV. I’m working on a plant in the US that is now realizing that their fuel handling building could go up like Fukushima is similar scenarios. Besides working out the details for this particular plant I’m the global product manager on the remedy. The explosions were the result, not the cause, of the real damage to the core.
This mistaken assumption of no venting is analogous to the mindset at Three Mile Island that one should never let the pressurizer go solid.
This time around, if China does indeed wake up the Japanese dragon, lets don’t start a world war to rescue them. Maybe we can negotiate a navy base in the PI again. Short term to calm down the Chinese, long term to discourage a resurgent Japan.
33. Charles
Re your point about technology saving the day.
I’m still dismayed at the re-election of Obama and amazed at how people think you can create wealth by borrowing money and pretending that you created it (imitating wealth creation). The other example of believing in magic is printing money and pretending that physical contact with that paper money will create wealth by contagion.
We need economic freedom to return to the world’s playbook. I don’t think technological revolution by itself can dispel the delusions of socialism. Real wealth creation by any method requires economic freedom – the very thing that democratic socialism is dead set against; partly because economic freedom is a necessary condition for political freedom. Political freedom is being painted as a bad thing nowadays.
The only thing cheering me up is that ski season is almost here!
I mind a conversation between my dad (who could be pretty insightful at times after many decades of practical experience with ordnance including nukes) and an engineer from a west-coast power company. He observed that in reactor cooling pipes which were eroding much more severely than had been anticipated, the super-heated steam was circulating within an intense magnetic field. The combination of high temperature and the magnetic field might enhance the water molecules’ reactivity with the metallic interiors of the pipes, especially at right-angle turns where the flow would exert even greater pressures than in the straight runs.
I wonder if someone could comment on this aspect of these systems – there are always unanticipated consequences in technologies that are extending the boundaries of what is known…
It seems reasonable to consider that water molecules and the various substances with which they mingle in a nuclear containment vessel at sufficient heat might have different electro-chemical properties than we think of in the “normal” range of temperatures. Aren’t the conditions would the oxygen & hydrogen split to combustible components pretty well known? Could they become ionized plasma inside a reactor?
For every action there is an opposite and equal reaction – old wives tale.
When China stirs ever so slight
Their neighbors look around in fright
To see if someone strong is standing by
And heretofore a strong man stood
Prepared to do the things that would
Dissuade the Chinese and they did not try
For in the distance they could see
That big gray ships kept others free
And so the region kept a wary peace
But now the big gray ships are gone
The sun sees now an empty dawn
And China sees its plans have a new lease
And so the Japanese must arm
And put their ships in way of harm
And gather little folks under their wing
Who looking ‘round in wonder hear
The Co-Prosperity East Asia Sphere
Is back as though the war meant not a thing
Baobo @43
Free Tibet?
Tiananmen Square, 4 June 1989?
Guo Quan?
Huang Qi?
Liu Xiaobo?
Well, now that the usual has been aired:
It’s a law of Reaction Kinetics that only a minor fraction of mixed compounds are actually reacting at an instant of time. Actual reaction speed when a molecule is converted to another is almost as fast as an atomic reaction — slowed down a thousand times.
That is, flame reactions occur in less than a microsecond — at the flame front.
In Otto cycle engines — your car — the reactions are so fast that they are considered detonations. In Diesel cycle engines — trucks — the reaction front is so slow that it’s considered deflagration. If hydrogen is burned in oxygen the flame front can deflagrate at supersonic speed. That makes it unique. Keep that figure in mind.
By experiment explosive mixture ratios have been discovered for most all of the inflammable compounds. The absolute worst of the worst is acetylene. It detonates as a gas — even on its own. This makes it worse than nitroglycerin. (!) The common welder’s acetylene is only safe because it’s dissolved in acetone.
Just behind acetylene for trouble is hydrogen gas. It has one saving grace: it promptly floats up into the sky. It’s really hard to build up hydrogen to explosive levels outside of test rigs.
We’ve all seen the Space Shuttle launches. NASA has plenty of slow motion launch footage on Youtube. In it you can see how the SSMEs are fired up. First, sparkers are lit off — showering the engine zone with sparks in great quantities. Next, hydrogen at modest pressure is bled into the engine — to establish a steady flame front. This takes but moments. Once achieved, the LOX and LH are ramped up by the world’s most astounding flight rated turbo-pump. No matter how fast the flow, the flame is never in any danger of blowing out the nozzle.
When/ should any radio-active hydrogen gas ever be vented from a reactor containment it will be larded with Oxygen-19 and other such isotopes. That is, the gas will be saturated with steam, too. Some of which will have a trivial fraction of beta-emitting oxygen atoms.
Now, while the total partial pressure of such an isotope will be trivial, its radio-activity will be profound. Such atoms have a half-life measured in seconds. Each emission of an electron (Beta emission) — just ONE — is enough to fire off a flame front when hydrogen is in the presence of air. For a single Beta ray has enough energy to cut loose thousands of activated complexes in H and O … starting with the oxygen atom itself. It being transformed into a F ion at atomic speed.
You can set your mind to rest. That’s the most reactive critter in the chemical kingdom. There’s nothing it won’t rip to pieces — and vent staggering energies. The multiplication factor is through the roof. Such a beast will start a cascade of energy release — moving beyond Mach 1 through the mixed gases.
It’s the fastest match in the universe — this side of atomic reactions.
You can put aside all comparisons to any other chemical reaction. ( Well, perhaps H + F )
The upshot: however it occurs any venting of radio-active hydrogen gas will self ignite MORE surely than the SSMEs do. And they fire off first time, every time. No exceptions.
======
For those interested in Reaction Kinetics you can thumb through:
http://www.amazon.com/Reaction-Kinetics-Volume-Keith-Laidler/dp/0080098339
A careful reader can follow my footsteps, partially, towards my rationale for insisting that my Professor investigate Fluorine compounds (Freons, particularly) all those decades ago.
I told him he’d, “You’ll win a No…, You’ll be world famous.”
And so he is:
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/1995/rowland.html
Somehow he’s managed to omit my role….
It would be embarrassing to admit one was handed ‘it’ on a platter.
[ At the time he acknowledged that he'd ENTIRELY overlooked Freons in the atmosphere. They previously had simply not come up on the radar. I'd spent countless hours tracking ALL Fluorine research in Chemical Abstracts going back years. Trust me, it's tedious. It was not a database back then.
It was I who informed him -- he was shocked -- that NO-ONE was conducting pure research on Freons -- and that EVERY researcher was financed to make more and sell more -- industrial chemists, to the man. ]
=========
As a coda: EVERY reactor had explosions. Yet only one or two have ever been acknowledged to have been so damaged as to permit oxygen attack of the zirconium.
Every reactor surface, at the time of the explosions, was above the ignition temperature of hydrogen gas in air, which is not that high.
So the gas either burns like a Bunsen or, being so hot — low density, it shoots straight up out of the buildings, which, BTW, were not exactly built like homes — more as a gasoline garage would be.
Lastly, whence did the spark occur to cause the detonation on a delayed basis?
The entire hydrogen explosion theory requires one to entirely overthrow modern chemistry.
To repeat, it’s a theory that originated as far back as Three-Mile Island… by anti-nuke fanatics — never by engineers. No matter how many times it gets knocked down it pops back up — just like Truther fantasies.
Lastly, the internal pressure of the GE Boiling Water Reactor system needed to start dropping without delay after the control rods dropped. Think minutes, not hours.
The crew HAD to beat the obviously on coming tsunami — the only known source for Japanese quakes that strong. And the quake in question had thrown the personnel clean off the floor. It was a Godzilla quake — and they froze at the controls.
Super scale sea quakes are entirely to be expected for Japan. Making their positioning of back-up diesel sets odd in the extreme. It reflects very, very badly upon GE and the American regulators, too. No-one has any record of anyone crying alarm — across a forty-year design and operation period. Astounding folly!
That the operators — anywhere — would expect replacement water to remain on tap after a profound earthquake is equally bizarre. Whatever clean water they had was tossed right out of the pools. All normal supply was hopelessly cut-off — something that should have been anticipated — and certainly should have been monitored as a critical sub-function no less than voltage and hertz.
======
Of course, now Japan is destroying their economy. Only oil imports are able to step up quickly enough to replace the lost capacity. Converting over to imported Australian coal will take some time, probably two-years at a minimum.
Which brings us to German folly. No tsunamis are possible for her. She doesn’t hardly have earthquakes. Apparently, the Alps can grow without too much trauma. (They’re still creeping up.)
Blert – You keep seem to be proposing a BLEVE explosion http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UM0jtD_OWLU
But the primary containment of the pressure vessels is intact. It did not rupture the pressure vessels.
So what you need to consider is that as the water level dropped within the pressure vessels, the fuel rods would be exposed, but still in contact with water vapor (and without oxygen present). This would allow the zirconium cladding on the rod to oxidize by dissociating the oxygen atom from the hydrogen atoms in the water molecules leaving oxidized zirconium and free hydrogen gas. With the rod much above the boiling temperature, you would create a de facto superheater in the head space of the pressure vessel. This could cause the hydrogen to heat above its autoignition temperature (AIT). As that hydrogen gas leaked through the gasketing etc into the secondary containment building, its concentration would increase until it exceeded the lower explosive limit (LEL). Mix hydrogen above the AIT with oxygen in the air in the secondary contaiment building and it goes BOOM! The Hindenburg on steroids within an enclosed space so that a deflagration could become a detontation.
The key remediation would have been to vent the hydrogen so as to keep the concentration below the LEL. But the PM and Tepco HQ in Tokyo would not allow the operators to vent the hydrogen early enough in the process. The result was exploding secondary containment buildings.
If you do the research (!!!) you will find that the AIT of hydrogen is 932 F http://tinyurl.com/2n6gcb So getting enough superheat to form free hydrogen and then raise its temperature above the AIT within the pressure vessels is certainly possible. Mix with oxygen in the air and you do indeed get a hydrogen explosion.
MP…
It’s my contention that:
1) The massive presence of radio activity eliminates consideration of the classic auto ignition scenario. Emissions are constantly promoting molecules up into the ignition/ activated complex state even at temperatures well belows the AIT. It’s like there are a billion matches being constantly lit. It’s not just the entrained radio-nucelides — think of all of the nearby radiation sources — kicking off a steady stream of gamma rays.
2) Unlike contained propane, hydrogen gas dissipates like crazy — and this is REALLY hot hydrogen gas. So you don’t have a cloud of vapor — it’s a jet of hot gas — heading straight up.
3) Unlike the BLEVE, the pressure vessel is holding, on balance, a fantastic bucket of super steam at super pressure. IIRC, the containment is designed to run at around 400 atmospheres. The slightest crack, open to 15psi would generate a supersonic jet of gas. So much for a vapor cloud. It would resemble the back end of the SSME. And like the SSME, you have deflagration — not detonation.
BTW, Tokyo Electric Power did admit that their gear was locking up at the valves when they tried to vent. The fools never considered that, per their protocol, they’d ever be venting at pressure differentials of up to 800 atmospheres — a point, BTW, at which steam is starting to breakdown into hydroxyl and atomic hydrogen. (This last being promoted by the nearby emission of ‘hot atoms’ creating a truly evil brew.)
All theories have to deal with the fact that the eruption zone for zirconium oxide produced hydrogen is fuller with ‘sparks’ than a SSME during start up. They may not be visible — but there’s enough radio activity to have promoted hydrogen atoms aplenty.
BTW, a flame front = activated complexes propagating through space. It’s the flow of fuel that makes this propagation appear to be steady to the human eye.
=====
Tokyo Electric Power did, in fact, identify the explosions as steam explosions — and stated that they were occurring after fresh cooling water was being introduced to the OUTSIDE of the containment structure — but inside the overall building.
But the MSM didn’t run with it. Such statements simply fell off the table. The fact that fresh coolant created popping pipes and steam flash explosions within minutes never seems to have grabbed the public consciousness.
Even scientifically minded souls just skip on by it — remembering only the quick pitch from the MSM.
That’s the LAST thing you can do when media meets science.
You’re better off betting that they’ve got it entirely backwards — and that their sources are anti-technology fanatics and such. Those are the players that they run with — and smoke pot with.
They speak feelings to power — and nonsense to the proles.
Richard, call your prospective client and tell him you have changed your mind. Take the money.
If 0bama and Susan Rice can swing like a gate on Benghazi and hoodwink an entire nation then you can do the same – on a smaller scale.
You can lace your report with qualifiers, excuses, and unforeseen information. You could even publish your report in the NYT and be next in line for a Noble Prize.
Who cares if it is wrong? People are buying BS by the long ton. Ethics are so last century. Con-men and BS are king these days.
What happens if Europe collapses…?
Europe has already collapsed, morally.
What Japan needs is an ability to defend not so much the home islands from invasion but its national interests, anywhere.
Actually, what Japan needs is (as was implied above) to start producing lots of Japanese babies. (Or clone ‘em.)
We now return to our regularly-scheduled programming on nuclear and non-nuclear explosions.
“You don’t know how difficult it is to type this after nine hours of drinking.”
Impressive!
Blert
Stop. Seriously. Just stop.
DA @ 55:
“You don’t know how difficult it is to type this after nine hours of drinking.”
How dipsocentric of you!
“That’s right. Officially the liquid fuel shortage is a feature, not a bug.”
The tight integration of formerly-national economies will make war between peoples impossible.
Gales of riotous laughter.
Which nations have political parties capable of campaigning on a platform of preparing their nation to fight in vastly destructive wars against unknown (but not unforeseeable) enemies? Everywhere Leftism is ascendent; it has even imposed a vision of Christian pacifism on Christian peoples, who in ages past were more able and capable of defeating Islam.
The best weapon in the USA’s arsenal may be agricultural productivity, if its peoples can persuade Californians to grow food with their water instead of filling the banks for the delta smelt.
blert and DA @ 55-
1) The video does show the brief emission of color indicating combustion.
2) Any escaping hydrogen gas through tiny cracks would be as flow through a nozzle with the peak velocity at the narrowest point where the velocity equals Mach 1. From that point it would expand and cool via Joule-Thomson effect. So you could have tiny leaks that would slowly feed hydrogen into the secondary containment building until the concentration reached the LEL. All it takes then is a tiny spark (even static electricity would do) to complete the Fire Triangle and blow things up.
3) TEPCO has not dealt with the issue of whether there were emmissions from the spent fuel pools, particularly from Unit 4, which is the one where CNN video showed a “glint” which was supposed to “prove’ that the pool was full of water. http://tinyurl.com/bm994hl Note that later inspection of the wall of that unit has a huge crack. Have you ever heard of water seeping out through a crack? Did you notice the Chinook helicopter vainly trying to drop water into the spent fuel pools of units 3 & 4? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxI_Qn3cAy0 Or the later provision of cement pumping trucks to put water into the pools?
The underlying reality is the govt/management decision to not allow any venting for a “feed and bleed” operation while the public had not yet evacuated started the cascade of problems. The top brass would not allow release of even a small level of radionucleides, though even a small release would have reduced the pressure.
If Chaucer didn’t say it, he would understand the premise. Go ahead and fart in public! There may be a brief unpleasant aroma, but it is the lesser of two evils.
No one in this comment stream seems to be talking about the imminent collapse of Egypt into food riots.
It’s been mentioned in other Belmont discussions that (1) Egypt is one of the world’s largest importer of food, and (2) the country is within weeks of utter bankruptcy.
Even if those two statements are not precisely true – if, for instance, Egypt has enough in its coffers to continue bringing in shipments of grain and rice for another year, that would NOT guarantee stability.
(How many Arab Islamic nations are actually solvent AND self-sufficient in food production????)
There is some speculation that the Obministration is pursuing an actually intentional policy of forcing Iran to discount its petroleum. (Such alleged intentionality is more than a little hard to believe, considering the present prolonged amateurish fustercluck…)
Consider that assertion in the context of Obama’s decision to provide the bulk of logistical and tactical support of the Libyan “kinetic action.” I recall a couple of news items in the days before that military assault was initiated – among a lot of toplofty pronouncements about the “Responsibility to Protect” the Libyan population from the Monster Ghaddafi (What about the first three decades of his reign?)
Those two bitty little news items basically indicated that a shudder of dread had reverberated across Europe just days before, after Mouammar Ghaddafi had threatened to stop accepting US Dollars in payment for Libyan Petroleum, intending to demand payment in GOLD. That shudder must also have been keenly felt by Mssrs. Geitner, Bernanke, Obama, and Soros.
Background: For decades Europe had been content to tolerate occasional outrages by terrorists supported by Colonel Ghaddafi, so long as he kept the Libyan petroleum flowing through the undersea pipeline from near Tripoli. I’ve read that Libyan Oil accounted for one third of Italy’s entire energy budget. Further, because it is the low-sulfur (“sweet”) and high in volatile components (“light”) it is inherently cheaper to refine. Its easy availability in southern Europe over many decades has allowed their petroleum industry to refine all they need without constructing refining capacity for “sour crude” petroleum – the relatively high sulfur – low volatiles petroleum of the sort that comprises most of Iran’s reserves.
The upshot of all that being that the NATO adventure in Libya likely had a lot more to do with preventing Ghaddafi’s precedent-setting rejection of USDollars from starting an avalanche, than with all the posturing about a suddenly-manufactured conscience over Ghaddafi’s abuse of his people. (And when did Obama and the entirety of living Progressives forget that it has ALWAYS insisted Amerikkka has no business imposing its will on other countries for any reason?)
Evidently, Iran’s oil is so cruddy, the country has a glut it can’t sell. Reports indicate that the Islamic Revolutionary Republic of Iran has filled its land-based storage capacity, and has had to tie up a substantial number of freighters with additional Iranian crude. (Of course there must be other factors contributing to Iran’s glut…)
It would be wonderful to think that someone – ANYONE – in the current regnant asylum could have the analytic power and presence of mind to formulate and prosecute such a coherent scheme.
There hasn’t been much evidence of that level of intellect anywhere in the plague of mental pygmies in D.C.
So, back to my opening line: Considering the internal crises galloping headlong toward the fragile infant Islamic tyrannies spawned by the “Arab Spring,” I have to wonder how long Israel’s adversaries can resist the rising pressure to DO SOMETHING.
If only to distract their populations from the increasingly acute shortages of every conceivable thing at home.
46. stevesmith
33. Charles
Re your point about technology saving the day.
I’m still dismayed at the re-election of Obama and amazed at how people think you can create wealth by borrowing money and pretending that you created it (imitating wealth creation). The other example of believing in magic is printing money and pretending that physical contact with that paper money will create wealth by contagion.
…………….
I agree with your points.
My point is only that that the various technological revolutions now forcing their way forward will will force the USA off the financial rocks in the next couple years and toward financial success. The real problem will be that the liberals will think that their programs will have had something to do with it. When in truth the USA will succeed despite their best efforts at sabotage.
( I was just reading the other day that another big innovation will be that all machines will be have sensors on them that will enable their performance to be monitored remotely so that maintenance people can repair them before they actually crack up. this one is expected to yield about a 1% productivity gain.
Mad Fiddler @ 61 – You should be aware that ENI is in the process of converting its Venice Italy refinery to the production of bio-fuels http://tinyurl.com/bo9lwaz
This is a result of technologies growing out of Dick Cheney’s energy summit upon taking office in 2001. The Bush/Cheney energy policy included supporting research such as that by UOP http://tinyurl.com/buem3fu which is now beginning to bear fruit. The strategic benefits are obvious.
BUSH/CHENEY DID IT!
Meanwhile, Obama continues to try and destroy the domestic oil industry. http://tinyurl.com/coxveeu
Or as I have said before
CHU LIED, DOLPHINS DIED!
Wretchard – Maybe a siimple way to describe the elemental battle between good and evil would be to harken back to those old movies etc. that dealt with the Japanese (or more broadly Asian) desire to save “face”. Americans looked down on such a state of affairs preferring “Truth, Justice and the American Way”.
Obama has such a face-saving modus operandi. Perhaps he learned it as a kid in Indonesia. Those nations that were conquered by the USA in WW II have largely assimilated the American Way from their occupiers. Japan, Taiwan, the phillipines all have largely shifted over to being seekers of “truth”. But the assimilation is not yet complete. The unassimilated are “bitter clingers” to their world view of the need to save “face”.
Do you remember Obama’s historically incorrect description of the Emperor of Japan being “humiliated” by the surrender in Manila Bay? Pure poppycock from an historical perspective.
So the battle generally pits America and her allies committed to “truth’ and the others committed to “spin”.
Just remember that
THE TRUTH SHALL SET YOU FREE!
“… the NATO adventure in Libya likely had a lot more to do with preventing Ghaddafi’s precedent-setting rejection of USDollars from starting an avalanche, than … over Ghaddafi’s abuse of his people.”
No kidding. But as part of the theater of the absurd, the protests that led up to the war were originally scheduled to protest the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons, giving some credence to the theory that a poorly produced video was responsible for Benghazi.
[]
Speech to the U.N. General Assembly
On 23 September 2009, Muammar Gaddafi addressed the United Nations General Assembly in New York, … Gaddafi criticized the United Nations’ inability to prevent wars, saying that “sixty-five aggressive wars took place without any collective action by the United Nations to prevent them.”
Gaddafi also demanded a thorough re-investigation of the assassination of John F. Kennedy as well as the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.
…
Gaddafi praised the idea that the United States had elected Barack Obama president, whom Gaddafi referred to as a “son of Africa”. Gaddafi said, “Obama is a glimpse in the darkness after four or eight years. We are content and happy if Obama can stay forever as president of the United States.”
Wiki
[]
Gadaffi was also spreading around campaign money to different European officials and intimated that he would expose them if attacked.
The Gadaffi episode reminds me of “who shot C. Montgomery Burns” when everybody had a reason to do so. Gadaffi had his finger in everyone’s eye at one time or another. One thing that remains sure, Responsibility to Protect had nothing to do with it.
“I have to wonder how long Israel’s adversaries can resist the rising pressure to DO SOMETHING.”
and this, brought to you by Gadaffi himself; Gaddafi repeated his longstanding proposal that Israel and the Palestinian territories be combined into one state called Isratine. There’s something for ya.
“another big innovation will be that all machines will be have sensors on them that will enable their performance to be monitored remotely”
Been done for decades. Called SCADA.
THE TRUTH WILL SET YOU FREE!
Yes, and arbeit macht frei as well.
Two things that liberals are adverse to.
Re. # 62. Charles
“My point is only that that the various technological revolutions now forcing their way forward will will force the USA off the financial rocks in the next couple years and toward financial success.”
this is an optimistic view. The reality might be darker: despite the super-exponential innovations grows, the parasitic class will manage to squander still faster. Just consider that about half of the USA population is already living in a communist “paradise”: from each by ability to each by need.
“The real problem will be that the liberals will think that their programs will have had something to do with it. When in truth the USA will succeed despite their best efforts at sabotage.”
They will not do it only if they succeed in stopping innovation and than blame everyone else. It is a win-win for them in every possible case. They will be defeated only when they will die out. Unfortunately we are chained to them. When the SU collapsed almost all suffered EXCEPT party jokers and their fellow travelers.
c @ 62: My point is only that that the various technological revolutions now forcing their way forward will will force the USA off the financial rocks in the next couple years and toward financial success. The real problem will be that the liberals will think that their programs will have had something to do with it. When in truth the USA will succeed despite their best efforts at sabotage.
Well, which? Obambus is dead set against more hydrocarbons even free and clear, because burning them emits CO2 that he believes causes apocalyptic global warming (AGW, forget that old “anthropogenic”). Plus he wants all energy prices much, much higher so that renewables can compete. Which is swell for renewables, but depresses the rest of the economy completely unacceptably.
(Obambus economics are that cost never matters because you can always print and/or borrow more money, and then hand it out in free bundles to all comers. Apparently 52% of the public now agrees with him and we can only speculate what it will take to convince them otherwise. OTOH, I continue to raise the possibility that we are in a New Economy already and that this, basically, can actually work after all, at least for a while)
3D printing? I’m dubious about the net value of that near-term. LED lighting? Late arriving. Meanwhile businesses of all sorts are going Galt. Thorium? When I hear Obambus use the word, I’ll buy you a beer. Meanwhile Obambus is going to turn over the Internet and civilian guns to UN blue helmets and black helicopters. Meanwhile the budget will show trillion-plus dollar deficits, taxes will rise on the rich, and they will all depart US jurisdiction, I mean even more than previously.
So when China fires on a couple of Vietnamese boats, and Iran shuts down the straits, Greece, Spain, Argentina, and California default on bonds, and Obambus makes the Hajj, well, none of that will really matter, cuz the real technology of the day is after all Facebook.
That should be the new seal of doom, not blacking out the lights of Manhattan, we already had that last week, but the day Facebook shuts down, then we can start the New World!
49- I don’t have time to answer those questions. Maybe some other time.
THE TRUTH SHALL SET YOU FREE!
Only rarely. Being in prison for a crime you know you didn’t commit really doesn’t get you much of anywhere. And speaking the truth can be very dangerous; typically it tends to get you indicted or crucified.
Its sort of like letting your thoughts roam free. There’s no harm in that at all, until that point where they start leaking out of your mouth. That can cause intense trouble. I know that from personal experience.
@68 Baobo:
“I don’t have time to answer those questions. Maybe some other time.”
How convenient for you! When you are confronted with well documented historical and contemporary examples, clearly disproving your supposition, you don’t have time to respond.
I suppose I should be grateful you chose to fold instead of resorting to ad hominem as is common throughout the blog-sphere.
Please consider your statements rationally before you post them in order to ensure you are not carrying water for one of the more repressive governments on earth, unless that is your intention.
@60 Mad Fiddler: “No one in this comment stream seems to be talking about the imminent collapse of Egypt into food riots.”
That’s Spengler’s shtick. He’s been promoting the imminent collapse of Egypt for at least a year now. Hasn’t happened despite his constant “three months from now” prediction. If he’s right any more often he’ll be as accurate as Michael Mann.
Intellectuals, it seems, are in the business of making predictions to draw attention to themselves as farsighted, knowledgeable, etc., but they’re more often no better than astrology.
I know it’s entirely counterintuitive, but hydrogen gas does NOT obey the Joules-Thompson cooling effect for the situation at hand.
It’s too hot.
Helium and hydrogen are truly weird cryogens that will not exhibit Joules-Thompson cooling until they are chilled by other means down to cryogenic regimes. ( liquid nitrogen)
Otherwise, they actually heat themselves up. (!)
[ They also don't turbo-compress well -- instead, they have to be compressed with pistons and sleeves. Such units are at every significant oil refinery. ]
But, in any event, the micro-second the hydrogen contacts outside air it’s going to light off. There can be no delay. The oxygen zirconium reaction requires the reactor system to be far, far above the auto-ignition temperature of hydrogen. With the atomic core cooking everything, there is no way for any hydrogen bubble to cool down.
To restate: it’s not a bit different than injecting hydrogen into the SSME at blast-off.
BTW, when the idea was first advanced back in the 1970′s the fanatics thought that the hydrogen gas itself would blow up — an atomic-hydrogen bomb, if you will. Yes, it’s pure idiocy. But THAT’S where the whole assertion started. Yes, it’s as old as Three Mile Island. Even back then, chemists realized that it was nonsense.
Even the Hindenburg disaster at Lakehurst, N.J. has been studied/ modeled. It is now accepted that the SKIN of the dirigible was the primary source of the burns. Hydrogen doesn’t even burn — to speak off — in the visible spectra. Aluminum, magnesium and carbon are, by contrast, violent emitters of visible radiation.
The dirigible’s gas can be seen venting straight skyward — as the fabric and chassis fall down upon the burn victims. Hydrogen, when released, just doesn’t go up gently… it zooms straight up on its ‘wings.’
This is in total contrast to propane — famed for its extreme hazard. For, it will sink low, concentrate, and hang on to build up to very, very dangerous levels.
Nothing about the hydrogen explosion theory stands up. It’s right there with the Truthers. For them, fire can’t melt iron or steel.
It’s easy enough to test. By some hydrogen gas, pre-heat it with a torch to 1,600 F — within a suitable pipe — and vent it into the atmosphere. You just know it’s going to auto-ignite.
(As light as it is, there’s no way to make it climb down into the lower piping, either.)
Lastly, super-heated steam, from whatever source is going to elevate every manner of ordinary materials above THEIR ignition temperature. Lubricating greases and cleaning solvents that might well be stored within the general area would be candidates. At the temperatures under discussion, all manner of previously normal materials become inflammable.
( c.f. house fires )
Blert,
Wrong, wrong, wrong.
An oxygen/hydrogen mixture requires an ignition source for combustion. That’s why we’ve installed numerous “ignitors” (converted diesel engine glow plugs) in many of of our nuclear reactor containments.
Other readers – please ignore these rantings or at least check them against an independent source(s).
Whitehall…
I’m going to have to give you an F.
Read up on auto-ignition temperatures…
Google away WRT Reaction Kinetics.
Get a degree in chemistry.
Whitehall jumps to post without reading the material at hand, in which all such issues are trashed about.
On the subject of auto-ignition temperatures:
The common Diesel Cycle engine — used by trucks and buses all over — has no spark plug.
At ordinary temperatures the temperature rise gained by compression is more than enough to surpass the auto-ignition temperature for Diesel fuel.
When the outside temperature drops, a switching sensor activates a relay to heat up either a massive pre-heating element for the intake air (Cummins engines) or cylinder specific glow plugs. (Automobile sized Diesel motors)
So much for a spark being required for ignition.
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Such engines will also burn methane/ CNG — without much modification — as long as at least a squirt of liquid Diesel fuel is still there to initiate combustion. There are Youtube videos showing just such modifications.
And such Diesel engines can, with substantial modifications, run on pure hydrogen gas — no other fuel required at all. Yes, Whitehall, it’s been done.
It’s not economic, though. For such engines must inject the gas at substantial over-pressures to top-dead-center cylinder pressures. That’s just too much of a headache.
So the only test rigs I’ve ever seen were where hydrogen replaced methane — and the liquid injection scheme was maintained. This approach does not require pumping the gas at high pressures through the injectors. It’s merely metered into the intake manifold — one way or another.
So, the next time you hear a Diesel running, remember: it’s auto-igniting the liquid fuel — having absolutely no spark plug at all.
The afore mentioned glow-plugs only succeed when surrounded by compressed air — itself much denser and hotter than anything a human body can tolerate. At ordinary pressures, such devices, no matter how modified, are just not going to do the trick.
A better bet would be simple exhaust fans. They’d actually work. If located anywhere near the high points, hydrogen gas would be vented so fast it could never reach explosive concentrations.
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1600 F is w a a a y past the auto-ignition temperature for hydrogen gas. It’d look like rocket exhaust the second it hits fresh air.