Tag Archives: explosion

Chernobyl radiation appears to cure cancer

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In a recent post about nuclear power, I mentioned that the health risks of nuclear power are low compared to the main alternatives: coal and natural gas. Even with scrubbing, the fumes from coal burning power plants are deadly once the cumulative effect on health over 1000 square miles is considered. And natural gas plants and pipes have fairly common explosions.

With this post I’d like to discuss a statistical fluke (or observation), that even with the worst type of nuclear accident, the broad area increased cancer incidence is generally too small to measure. The worst nuclear disaster we are ever likely to encounter was the explosion at Chernobyl. It occurred 27 years ago during a test of the safety shutdown system and sent a massive plume of radioactive core into the atmosphere. If any accident should increase the cancer rate of those around it, this should. Still, by fluke or not, the rate of thyroid cancer is higher in the US than in Belarus, close to the Chernobyl plant in the prime path of the wind. Thyroid cancer is likely the most excited cancer, enhanced by radio-iodine, and Chernobyl had the largest radio-iodine release to date. Thus, it’s easy to wonder why the rates of Thyroid cancer seem to suggest that the radiation cures cancer rather than causes it.

Thyroid Cancer Rates for Belarus and US; the effect of Chernobyl is less-than clear.

Thyroid Cancer Rates for Belarus and US; the effect of Chernobyl is less-than clear.

The chart above raises more questions than it answers. Note that the rate of thyroid cancer has doubled over the past few years, both in the US and in Belarus. Also note that the rate of cancer is 2 1/2 times as high in Pennsylvania as in Arkansas. One thought is test bias: perhaps we are  better at spotting cancer in the US than in Belarus, and perhaps better at spotting it in Pennsylvania than elsewhere. Perhaps. Another thought is coal. Areas that use a lot of coal tend to become sicker; Europe keeps getting sicker from its non-nuclear energy sources, Perhaps Pennsylvania (a coal state) uses more coal that Belarus (maybe).

Fukushima was a much less damaging accident, and much more recent. So far there has been no observed difference in cancer rate. As the reference below says: “there is no statistical evidence of a difference in thyroid cancer caused by the disaster.” This is not to say that explosions are OK. My company, REB Research, makes are high pressure, low temperature hydrogen-extracting membranes used to reduce the likelihood of hydrogen explosions in nuclear reactors; so far all the explosions have been hydrogen explosions.

Sources: for Belarus: Cancer consequences of the Chernobyl accident: 20 years on. For the US: GEOGRAPHIC VARIATION IN U.S. THYROID CANCER INCIDENCE, AND A CLUSTER NEAR NUCLEAR REACTORS IN NEW JERSEY, NEW YORK, AND PENNSYLVANIA.

R. E. Buxbaum, April 19, 2013; Here are some further, updated thoughts: radiation hormesis (and other hormesis)

Link

Some 2-3 years ago I did an interview where I stood inside one of our hydrogen generator shacks (with the generator running) and poked a balloon filled with hydrogen with a lit cigar — twice. No fire, no explosion, either time. It’s not a super hit, but it’s gotten over 5000 views so far. Here it is

Nuclear Power: the elephant of clean energy

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As someone who heads a hydrogen energy company, REB Research, I regularly have to tip toe about nuclear power, a rather large elephant among the clean energy options. While hydrogen energy looks better than battery energy in terms of cost and energy density, neither are really energy sources; they are ways to transport energy or store it. Among non-fossil sources (sources where you don’t pollute the air massively) there is solar and wind: basically non-reliable, low density, high cost and quite polluting when you include the damage done making the devices.

Compared to these, I’m happy to report that the methanol used to make hydrogen in our membrane reactors can come from trees (anti-polluting), even tree farming isn’t all that energy dense. And then there’s uranium: plentiful, cheap and incredibly energy dense. I try to ignore how energy dense uranium is, but the cartoon below shows how hard that is to do sometimes. Nuclear power is reliable too, and energy dense; a small plant will produce between 500 and 1000 MW of power; your home uses perhaps 2 kW. You need logarithmic graph paper just to compare nuclear power to most anything else (including hydrogen):

log_scale

A tiny amount of uranium-oxide, the size of a pencil will provide as much power as hundreds of train cars full of coal. After transportation, the coal sells for about $80/ton; the sells for about $25/lb: far cheaper than the train loads of coal (there are 100-110 tons of coal to a train-car load). What’s more, while essentially all of the coal in a train car ends up in the air after it’s burnt, the waste uranium generally does not go into the air we breathe. The coal fumes are toxic, containing carcinogens, carbon monoxide, mercury, vanadium and arsenic; they are often radioactive too. All this is avoided with nuclear power unless there is a bad accident, and bad accidents are far rarer with nuclear power than, for example, with natural gas. Since Germany started shutting nuclear plants and replacing them with coal, it appears they are making all of Europe sicker).

It is true that the cost to build a nuclear plant is higher than to build a coal or gas plant, but it does not have to be: it wasn’t that way in the early days of nuclear power, nor is this true of military reactors that power our (USA) submarines and major warships. Commercial nuclear reactors cost a lot largely because of the time-cost for neighborhood approval (and they don’t always get approval). Batteries used for battery power get no safety review generally though there were two battery explosions on the Dreamliner alone, and natural gas has been known to level towns. Nuclear reactors can blow up too, as Chernobyl showed (and to a lesser extent Fukushima), but almost any design is better than Chernobyl.

The biggest worry people have with nuclear, and the biggest objection it seems to me, is escaped radiation. In a future post, I plan to go into the reality of the risk in more detail, but the worry is far worse than the reality, or far worse than the reality of other dangers (we all die of something eventually). The predicted death rate from the three-mile island accident is basically nil; Fukushima has provided little health damage (not that it’s a big comfort). Further, bizarre as this seems the thyroid cancer rate in Belarus in the wind-path of the Chernobyl plant is actually slightly lower than in the US (7 per 100,000 in Belarus compared to over 9 per 100,000 in the USA). This is clearly a statistical fluke; it’s caused, I believe, by the tendency for Russians to die of other things before they can get thyroid cancer, but it suggests that the health risks of even the worst nuclear accidents are not as bad as you might think. (BTW, Our company makes hydrogen extractors that make accidents less likely)

The biggest real radiation worry (in my opinion) is where to put the waste. Ever since President Carter closed off the option of reprocessing used fuel for re-use there has been no way to permanently get rid of waste. Further, ever since President Obama closed the Yucca Mountain burial repository there have been no satisfactory place to put the radioactive waste. Having waste sitting around above ground all over the US is a really bad option because the stuff is quite toxic. Just as the energy content of nuclear fuel is higher than most fuels, the energy content of the waste is higher. Burying it deep below a mountain in an area were no-one is likely to live seems like a good solution: sort of like putting the uranium back where it came from. And reprocessing for re-use seems like an even better solution since this gets rid of the waste permanently.

I should mention that nuclear power-derived electricity is a wonderful way to generate electricity or hydrogen for clean transportation. Further, the heat of hot springs comes from nuclear power. The healing waters that people flock to for their health is laced with isotopes (and it’s still healthy). For now, though I’ll stay in the hydrogen generator business and will ignore the clean elephant in the room. Fortunately there’s hardly any elephant poop, only lots and lots of coal and solar poop.

 

Purifying the Hydrogen from Browns gas, HHO, etc.

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Perhaps the simplest way to make hydrogen is to stick two electrodes into water and to apply electricity. The gas that is produced is mostly hydrogen, and is sometimes suitable for welding or for addition to an automobile engine to increase the mileage. Depending on the electrodes and whether salt is added to the water, the gas that is produced can be Browns gas, HHO,  town gas, or some relative of the three. We are sometimes asked if we can purify the product of this electrolysis, and my answer is typically: “maybe,” or “it depends.”

If the electrode was made of stainless steel and the water contained only KOH or baking soda, the gas that results will be mostly hydrogen and you will be able to purify it somewhat with a polymer membrane if you wish. The gas isn’t very explosive generally, since most of the oxygen that results from the electrolysis will go into rusting out the electrodes. The reaction is thus, H2O + Fe –> H2 + FeO. To see if this is what you’ve got, you can use determine the ratio of gas production with a simple version of the Hoffman apparatus made from (for example) two overturned glass jars, or by separating the electrodes with a paper towel. You can also determine the H2 to O2 ratio (if you know a bit more physics) from a measure of the amperage and the rate of gas production. The hydrogen you form with steel plates will always contain some oxygen though, as well as some nitrogen and water vapor. While a polymer membrane will remove most of the oxygen and nitrogen in this gas, it won’t remove all, and it will not generally remove any of the water. With this gas, I suspect that you would be better off just using it as it is. This is particularly so if the fraction of oxygen is more than a few percent: hydrogen with more oxygen than this becomes quite explosive.

Since this gas will contain water, you probably don’t want to store it, and you probably don’t want to purify it over a metal, either, There are two reasons for this: the water can condense out during storage, and will tend to rust whatever metal it contacts (it’s often alkaline). What’s more, the small amount of oxygen in the hydrogen is likely to react over a hydrogen storage metal to form water and heat. This may give rise to the explosion you were trying to avoid. This is clearly the quick a dirty approach to making hydrogen.

Another version of electrolysis gas, one that’s even quicker and dirtier than the above involves the use of table salt instead of KOH or baking soda. The hydrogen that results will contain chlorine as an impurity, and will be quite toxic, but it will be somewhat less explosive.The hydrogen will smell like bleach and the water you use will turn slightly greenish and quite alkaline. Both the liquid and gas are definitely bad news unless your aim was to make chlorine and alkali; this is called the chlor-alkali process for a reason. On a personal note, as a 12 year old I tried this and was confused about why I got equal volumes of gas on the cathode and anode. The reason was that I was making Cl2, and not O2: the chemistry is 2 H2O + 2 NaCl –> H2 + Cl2 + 2 NaOH. I then I used the bromide version reaction to make a nice sample of bromine liquid. That is, I used KBr instead of table salt. Bromine is brown, oily, and only sparingly soluble in water.

Another version of this electrolysis process involves the use of graphite electrodes. If you are lucky, this will give you a mix of CO and hydrogen and not H2 and O2. This mix is a called “town gas.” It’s a very good welding gas since it is not explosive. It is, however, quite toxic. If you begin to get a headache using this gas stop immediately: you’re experiencing CO poisoning. The reaction here is H2O + C –> H2 + CO. CO headaches just get worse and worse until you die. If you are not lucky here you can get HHO instead of town gas, and this is quite explosive: H2O –> H2 + 1/2 O2. The volume ratio will be a key clue as to which you are making; another clue is to put a small volume in a paper bag and light it. If the bag explodes with a terrific bang, you’ve made the wrong gas. Stop!

With all of these gases I would recommend that you add a polymer of paper membrane in the water between the electrodes. Filter paper will work fine for this as will ceramic paper; the classic membrane for this was asbestos. If you keep the two product gas streams separate as soon as they are formed, you’ll avoid most of your explosion-safety issues. Few people take this advice, I’ve found; they think there must be some simpler way. Trust me: this is the classic, safe way to make electrolysis hydrogen.

A balloon filled with pure hydrogen will not ignite. To show you, here is a 2.5 min long video where I poke a lit cigar into a mylar balloon filled with hydrogen from my membrane reactor generators. Note that this hydrogen does not even burn in the balloon because it is oxygen free. As a safety check try this with your hydrogen, but only on a much-smaller scale. Pure hydrogen will not go boom, impure hydrogen will. My advice: keep safe and healthy. You’ll feel better that way, and your heirs will be less inclined to sue me.

In case you are wondering how electrolysis hydrogen can add to the gas mileage, the simple answer is that it increases the combustion speed and the water vapor decreases the parasitic loss due to vacuum. I’ve got some more information on this here. I hope this advice helps with your car project or any other electrolysis option. In my opinion, one should use a membrane in the water to separate the components at formation in all but the smallest experiments and with the smallest amperage sources. Even these should be done only in a well-ventilated room or on a car that is parked outside of the house. Many of the great chemists of the 1800s died doing experiments like these; learn from their mistakes and stay among the living.