International Topical Meeting on Probabilistic Safety Analysis - PSA 2011

The International Topical Meeting on Probabilistic Safety Analysis (PSA 2011), sponsored by the American Nuclear Society and Sandia National Laboratories, along with a variety of commercial sponsors, will be underway next week in Wilmington, North Carolina from March 13 to March 17, 2011. Dr. George Apostolakis of the US NRC is the Honorary Chair of the Organizing Committee, while the Technical Committee has four Co-Chairs, one each from the US, Europe, Japan and Korea.

A truly large number of technical sessions are planned, and include several sessions on PSA of New Reactors from internal initiating events (including a very interesting paper on incorporating PSA principles into fusion reactor design, and papers on both gas-cooled and sodium-cooled fast reactors). Also PSA of a variety of hazards including fire, seismic, and flood; as well as PSA of non-reactor nuclear applications. There are sessions on incorporating digital information & control (I & C) systems into nuclear plant PSA; sessions on dynamic PSA (incorporating the dynamic, i.e., changing aspects of a system in to the probabilistic safety assessment [including a very interesting paper using genetic algorithms to explore the space within the failure domain where at least one safety limit is violated].

Several sessions explore Ageing in PSAs - one very interesting paper interpolates state transition probabilities in a Markov Model for estimating reliability of passive components such as metal pipes using physics-based models of weld degradation, instead of in-service failure data for the entire piping component. The paper finds that incorporating such time-inhomogeneous and stochastic transition rates into the Markov Model causes it to become non-Markov.

Interesting panel discussions are planned on: Alternative Risk Metrics, which will consider, among other things, how the promised lower risk numerics for new reactors will be maintained over their reactor life; and how risk profiles will be affected by multiple units in a suite of SMRs (small modular reactors); PRA Standards Development (which will examine, among other things, how the regulatory endorsement of PSAs as a risk management tool impacts the development of risk informed applications).

The conference brings together practitioners of PSA from a variety of disciplines and countries, and promises to be very interesting indeed.

5th International Symposium on Supercritical Water-cooled Reactors ISSCWR-5 Vancouver

The 5th International Symposium on Supercritical Water-cooled Reactors (ISSCWR-5) begins on March 14 2011 in Vancouver. The conference gets underway with five plenary addresses by national and international program managers of respective SCWR/HPLWR programs on the morning of the first day, Monday, and then branches off into three parallel technical sessions in the afternoon: on SCWR Core Design; on Materials Issues and on General Thermalhydraulics and Safety, chaired by international authorities in these respective fields. The session on General Thermalhydraulics and Safety will be co-chaired by Sama Bilbao y Leon of Virginia Commonwealth University and Jovica Riznik of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission.

This pattern of technical sessions continues also on Tuesday; an important facet of the Tuesday morning sessions will be regulatory considerations: a talk by Alexandre Viktorov of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission will be on Regulatory Expectations for Advanced Reactors, while Ima Ituen and David Novog of McMaster University will present on Assessing the Applicability of Canadian Regulations to the SCWR.

On Wednesday morning, there are sessions on Safety Issues and non-Aqueous Fluid Heat Transfer, the latter referring especially to experiments on supercritical carbon dioxide, where considerations on fluid-to-fluid scaling are important in interpreting the results and applying them to the real working fluid, supercritical water. Of the many interesting papers, one which describes a supercritical loop for in-pile testing of materials seemed especially interesting.

On all three days, the pattern of three parallel technical sessions is maintained, testifying to the high level and quality of national and international participation in the conference, and the interesting work on the SCWR that continues apace through the Gen-IV International Forum (GIF). Canada, as the host country [and also the country that formally leads R&D on the SCWR under the GIF] has the highest number of papers - both established groups and newer ones, and both senior researchers and students are presenting papers. Importantly, the Canadian participation shows significant engagement with the SCWR concept, across all major stakeholders: by academic groups, by regulatory authorities, as well as by R&D Labs and industrial firms.

The conference closes on Thursday with a tour of TRIUMF, Canada's national laboratory for nuclear and particle physics, located on the campus of the University of British Columbia. The scenic locale of the conference in Vancouver, and the very interesting papers to be presented, and discussions to be had, plus the social and cultural programs and the tour of TRIUMF promise to make this a most memorable conference in the biannual ISSCWR series.

The Consortium for Advanced Simulation of Light Water Reactors

The Consortium for Advanced Simulation of Light Water Reactors (CASL), the US Department of Energy's (US DOE) Energy Innovation Hub specific to Nuclear Energy, has been formed, headquartered at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) with Dr. Douglas B. Kothe as Director of CASL.

The basic mission of the CASL is to create a virtual reactor (VR) to computationally model and predictively simulate the operation of light water reactors, with a view to (i) decreasing overall capital and operating costs associated with LWRs (ii) decreasing spent nuclear fuel volume generated by LWRs (iii) improving nuclear safety performance, especially by developing computational tools which better predict ageing, degradation and failure of LWR materials and components. The objective is both to impact the sustainability program for current generation light water reactors, as well as to impact the design of future generation nuclear reactors.

The Core partners in CASL are Oak Ridge National Lab (ORNL), Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), Idaho National Lab (INL), Los Alamos National Lab (LANL), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), North Carolina State University (NCSU), Sandia National Labs, Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), University of Michigan, and Westinghouse Electric Company.

The operational structure and mission statement of CASL explicitly incorporates the vision US Secretary of Energy Dr. Chu has articulated, for example, of 'Bell Labs-like institutions which are mission-driven but solve fundamental problems as well'. See here.

In CASL Director Dr. Kothe's words, (CASL):

• Focuses on a single topic, with work spanning the gamut, from basic research through engineering development to partnering with industry in commercialization
• (creates) Large, highly integrated and collaborative creative teams working to solve priority
technology challenges
• Embraces both the goals of understanding and use, without erecting barriers between
basic and applied research (emphasis added).

Link

To develop the VR, CASL has been organized into five technical focus areas (FAs) to perform the necessary work ranging from basic science, model development, and software engineering, to applications:

Advanced Modeling Applications (AMA) – The primary interface of the CASL VR with the applications related to existing physical reactors, the challenge problems, and full-scale validation. In addition, AMA will provide the necessary direction to the VR development by developing the set of functional requirements, prioritizing the modeling needs, and performing assessments of capability.

Virtual Reactor Integration (VRI) – Develops the CASL VR tools integrating the models, methods, and data developed by other Focus Areas within a software framework. VRI will collaborate with AMA to deliver usable tools for performing the analyses, guided by the functional requirements developed by AMA.

Models and Numerical Methods (MNM) – Advances existing and develops new fundamental modeling capabilities for nuclear analysis and associated integration with solver environments utilizing large-scale parallel systems. The primary mission of MNM is to deliver radiation transport and T-H components that meet the rigorous physical model and numerical algorithm requirements of the VR. MNM will collaborate closely with MPO for sub-grid material and chemistry models and will connect to VRI for integration and development of the CASL VR.

Materials Performance and Optimization (MPO) – Develops improved materials performance models for fuels, cladding, and structural materials to provide better prediction of fuel and material failure. The science work performed by MPO will provide the means to reduce the reliance on empirical correlations and to enable the use of an expanded range of materials and fuel forms.

Validation and Uncertainty Quantification (VUQ) – The quantification of uncertainties and associated validation of the VR models and integrated system are essential to the application of modeling and simulation to reactor applications. Improvements in the determination of operating and safety margins will directly contribute to the ability to uprate reactors and extend their lifetimes. The methods proposed under VUQ will significantly advance the state of the art of nuclear analysis and support the transition from integral experiments to the integration of small-scale separate-effect experiments

The European PERFECT Project shares many of the goals of the CASL, in developing 'virtual reactors', though the PERFECT project aims to develop 2, one each for the reactor pressure vessel and the internal structures. The first will concentrate on modeling irradiation degradation, while the second will concentrate on the corrosion faced by internal structures.

American Nuclear Society Annual Meeting - ANS 2010

The American Nuclear Society (ANS) will hold its 2010 Annual Meeting in San Diego later this month (June 13-17 2010). It will likely be the world's largest conference of nuclear science and technology professionals, and its packed program is breathtaking in the scope, breadth and depth of coverage it provides of the hottest current topics in nuclear science, technology and policy.

I will simply indicate a few of what I consider very interesting sessions and add a comment or two by way of context. As can be expected, most of these are in areas of my research or consulting interest.

First, the Conference will include an Embedded Topical Meeting on the Safety and Management of Nuclear Hydrogen Production, Control and Management - the second such (the first having been held at ANS 2007). Among other interesting papers in this session is one on Probabilistic Safety Analysis of a hydrogen production plant using the Sulphur-Iodine process, with process heat derived from a High Temperature Test Reactor by a Korean group. This directly relates to topics I have discussed in my earlier papers: Safety Issues in Nuclear Hydrogen Production with with the Very High Temperature Reactor and Nuclear Hydrogen Production: Scoping the Safety Issues.

Secondly, the Conference will include a Session on Key Licensing and Regulatory Issues for Small and Medium Reactors, followed by a panel discussion with panelists from INL and the US NRC - I have discussed this topic earlier in other blog posts, and its importance can scarcely be over-emphasized. A group from GE will be discussing the licensing strategy for the PRISM (Power Reactor Innovative Small Module) liquid sodium-cooled reactor, while a group from KAERI (Korean Atomic Energy Research Institute) will discuss the SMART (System-integrated Modular Advanced Reactor) - a water-cooled reactor with integral steam generators that is designed for power (about 100 MWe per module), seawater desalination, and process heat applications. A separate session on Safety Analysis and Licensing of non-LWR Reactor Concepts, should similarly be of strong interest - discussing gas-cooled and liquid-sodium cooled reactors from both an experimental and simulation perspective.

A related session will cover the Thermal Hydraulics of the VHTR (gas-cooled variant), relevant in the context of the licensing of the Next Generation Nuclear Plant. This session will cover ongoing experimental and computational/simulation of VHTR thermalhydraulics at the Oregon State University and INL - particularly on Loss of Flow and Pressurized Conduction Cooldown events in High temperature Reactors. The important issue of scaling - the ability to draw numerical comparisons and conclusions that are valid for real reactors from experiments and simulations done on smaller systems - will be the topic of a paper from Oregon State that should be of particular interest.

The issue of Scaling Methods will also be the topic of a special Tutorial Session, to be conducted by Dr. Pradip Saha of GE and Prof. Jose Reyes of Oregon State - that will discuss issues of scaling particularly with reference to LWRs - methods of dimensional analysis, method of similitude and normalization of governing equations will be discussed.

The topic of Nuclear Fuel and Structural Materials for Next Generation Nuclear Reactors will be the focus of another Embedded Topical Meeting, a topic I have worked on and discussed in several earlier papers and presentations (and blog posts: here, here and here).

I need hardly add that the Conference promises to be extremely interesting indeed!

Probabilistic Safety Analysis and Management Conference, PSAM-10

The 10th International Probabilistic Safety Analysis and Management Conference (PSAM10), organized by the International Association for Probabilistic Safety Assessment and Management (IAPSAM), begins in Seattle next month (June 7-11, 2010). The conference will deal with probabilistic safety analysis and risk assessment in a number of industrial settings, including aviation, maritime and space, as well as civil engineering applications such as water treatment facilities - but will have a particular focus on the nuclear industry. The conference is sponsored in part by Scandpower Risk Management, a major nuclear risk consultancy and division of the Lloyd's Register group.

The Plenary Speaker in the nuclear track will be Dr. George Apostolakis, the MIT Professor and nuclear PSA expert who joined the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission as a Commissioner last month. Dr. Apostolakis has done pioneering work on licensing issues and probabilistic safety analysis of gas cooled and fast reactors that is of particular relevance to the US Next Generation Nuclear Plant project. His group has also contributed a paper at PSAM10 on how the computational burden in estimating failure probabilities in a passive thermal-hydraulic system may be reduced using artificial neural networks (ANNs) and Quadratic Response Surface Models (that I find to be of particular interest, given my own past background in using similar techniques).

The Apostolakis group also has another contributed paper on a new class of importance measures for PSAs which they call the limit exceedance factor (LEF)- defined as the factor by which the failure probability of a given component in a nuclear plant must be multiplied so that it results in an end-state probability (such as the core damage frequency CDF) exceeding a specified limit, for example, 1E-6. This is shown to be particularly relevant in the technology neutral framework (TNF) for assessing reactors that the NRC has developed - where, rather than specific design basis events (DBEs) being considered, a set of licensing basis events (LBEs) is considered instead, whose frequency and dose must satisfy certain limits. This paper is particularly of interest, since it applies the methodology to sodium-cooled reactors, which are of interest both in the SMR and Gen-IV contexts.

There are several other contributed papers from the US NRC, of which a paper on the Standardized Plant Assessment Risk (SPAR) model, developed for the NRC by the Idaho National Laboratory (INL) detailing its application to the AP1000 Reactor, and planned extensions to the ABWR, ESBWR, US-EPR and US-ABWR reactor designs is of particular interest to me, and there are also papers from INL on other aspects of SPAR development.

Dr. Philippe Hessel of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) will present a paper on the methodology used by the CNSC staff to carry out safety assessments of reactor licensing submissions which contain both probabilistic and deterministic arguments.

A paper on preliminary design-phase Probabilistic Risk Assessment of The NuScale Reactor, a modular, scalable 45 MWe Light Water Reactor (SMR) - is also of great interest, given the current excitement in small and modular reactors. Of the many other interesting papers, there are also papers on risk analysis of a Mars base and another on risk analysis for a crewed Mars mission - from a group based at NASA Moffett Field.

In the session on Ageing Management of Nuclear Power Plants - a paper on a new class of PRA risk measures that are able to (i) overcome the limitation imposed by the current inability to use dynamic failure rate data on component failure rates, and (ii) the limitation arising from not including passive components in the PRA - by a group from the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory - seemed very interesting, because these risk measures are claimed to enable better plant ageing management, and also help prioritize directions in materials degradation research.

In addition to all these, the conference will also cover a multitude of risk analysis areas such as those in seismic or hurricane hazards, fire hazard, the hazard from lightning events (especially critical for electrical power distribution grids); as well as other energy sectors such as risk assessment for geological sequestration (both of spent nuclear fuel and carbon dioxide) as well as for the use of hydrogen as a fuel in transportation applications, and miscellaneous nuclear and non-nuclear applications in medicine.

What is remarkable about the meeting is that it brings together practitioners of Probabilistic Safety Analysis and Risk Management from a variety of disciplines, while retaining a strong emphasis on nuclear-related PSA applications, with the potential for the different application domains of PSA to cross-fertilize, as well as being an opportunity for the practitioners from each discipline to learn from each other.

2nd Canada-China Joint Workshop on Supercritical Water-cooled Reactors (CCSC-2010)

The 2nd Canada-China Joint Workshop on Supercritical Water-cooled Reactors was held in Toronto earlier this week. (The 1st workshop had been held in Shanghai, China in April 2008.) The Supercritical Water-cooled Reactor (SCWR) is a Generation IV water-cooled reactor concept that holds the most promise for higher efficiency, on account of its higher operating temperature range, the hoped-for single phase (supercritical) operation (i.e., not having to deal with two-phase flow), the thermophysical properties (especially thermal conductivity and specific heat) of supercritical water, and the resulting saving in balance of plant pumps and compressors and secondary loop tubing and systems. What adds to the attractiveness of the concept is the possibility of realizing it within the Pressure Tube (PT) reactor design envelope, and moreover, the possibility of advanced fuel cycles involving thorium fuel within the concept.

However, a number of challenges also exist, which must be resolved through R&D, before the concept can become a realistic design. Within the Generation IV International Forum, Canada leads R&D work on the SCWR concept, and the purpose of the workshop this week was for Canadian and Chinese researchers to share the results of their respective R&D projects on materials, thermalhydraulics, water chemistry, and fuel cycle issues, in addition to more explicit considerations involving safety and licensing related foresight.

Over the three days of the workshop, there were two broad parallel tracks - sessions devoted to (i) materials issues and chemistry; and (ii) sessions devoted to thermalhydraulics, with an interspersed session each on reactor physics, licensing and safety, and nuclear hydrogen production with SCWR heat. Much of the work presented at the conference comprised sharply focused investigations along pre-established R&D priorities that had been scoped out in the basic SCWR R&D plan - both experimental and simulational investigations were presented. 

A significant departure from standard PHWR (CANDU) design that is being considered in the PT-SCWR (CANDU-SCWR) concept involves vertical pressure tubes (as opposed to the horizontal pressure tubes that are standard in PHWRs). Thus, two papers comparing supercritical and subcritical heat transfer correlations and characteristics in vertical pressure tubes, one each from Canada and China, were of particular interest.

Since supercritical water presents significant operating challenges, experimental work often uses surrogate fluids such as supercritical carbon dioxide. An entire session on the thermalhydraulics track was therefore devoted to surrogate fluids. Use of surrogate fluids then necessitates an understanding of two kinds of scaling issues - between experimental loop and a real reactor; and between surrogate fluid and real supercritical water (the 'working fluid').

Two very interesting papers discussed these issues. One paper, from Canada, discussed the supercritical thermalhydraulic loop currently being constructed at the University of Ottawa, while the other, from China, discussed fluid-to-fluid scaling issues. In developing fluid-to-fluid scaling, similarity relationships are often employed, for example, by using dimensionless variables like the ratio of actual pressure to critical pressure - which directly scales with the ratio of temperature to critical temperature for the two different fluids - in the same way. Although the relevant ranges of temperature and pressure at which the behavior develops can be different - the dimensionless ratio behaves in the same way - thus the behavior of the fluid with more easily reachable temperature and pressures (the modelling fluid or surrogate fluid) can be used to perform detailed experimental studies, while the behavior of the fluid with the more stressful operating conditions (the working fluid) can be inferred from the similarity scaling relationship. (Such invariant scaling relationships occur quite widely elsewhere in physics also, with quantities like the magnetization or the superfluid density, for example, in spin glasses or superconductors.) More details are available here [1].

Prof. David Novog's group from McMaster University, and Prof. Guy Marleau's group from Ecole Polytechnique (Montreal) presented papers on safety issues for the Supercritical Water-cooled Reactor.

Overall, the conference covered significant ground in its three days and also included one side trip to NRCan's Material Technology Laboratory (MTL) at Ottawa and another to AECL's Chalk River Laboratories (CRL).

References

1. Groeneveld, D.C., Tavoularis, S., et al Nucl. Eng. Technology vol. 40 no. 2, 107-116, 2007.

Two Energy Materials Conferences in Karlsruhe

Karlsruhe, the Southwest German town, home to the Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe [The Karsruhe Research Center - a major German center for nuclear research) and the Karlsruhe Institut fur Technologie, will host two separate Conferences on Materials for Energy Applications this year - in July and October respectively.

The July Conference (EnMat 2010) will mainly deal with materials for non-nuclear energy applications - Hydrogen Storage, Fuel Cells, Thermoelectrics, and related topics (though there will also be a plenary talk on Fusion Materials - this is especially interesting since Fusion does represent, well, a fusion of hydrogen and nuclear technologies). Extremely interestingly, a Fusion plant can be conceived as a complete hydrogen economy - it uses two isotopes of hydrogen - deuterium and tritium as fuel, generates (or breeds) tritium as a byproduct, and the resulting fusion heat can be used to split water either thermo-chemically or electrochemically to yield molecular hydrogen - which can be used in fuel cells to generate electricity, or burnt in internal combustion engines directly. [I discussed this fascinating possibility in my presentation Nuclear Hydrogen Production: Re-examining the Fusion Option and the accompanying paper at the Canadian Hydrogen Association Meeting in 2007.] Fusion does indeed look even more interesting when viewed from the Hydrogen Economy prism.

The October Conference (NuMat 2010) will deal mainly with Materials for Nuclear Applications - fuel materials as well as structural materials for nuclear plants. NuMat 2010 will be a combined venue for several conferences on related topics which have previously been occurring separately, and there will be 6 major themes at NuMat 2010:
* Thermodynamics and Thermophysics of Nuclear Fuels
* Materials Models and Simulations for Nuclear Fuels
* Radiation Stability of Complex Microstructures
* Molten Salts for Nuclear Applications
* Structural and Functional Materials for Fission Reactors
* Structural Materials Modelling and Simulation

Small and Modular Reactors

Small and modular nuclear reactors (those with a thermal power output below 200 MWTh) have become of strong interest, both in Canada and worldwide for a number of reasons. In Canada, the interest arises from the following sources:
(i) The need to replace the NRU (National Research Universal) reactor with another multipurpose research reactor, as recommended by the NRCan Expert Review Panel on Medical Isotope Production last year [Recommendation I, p. xi Executive Summary; also on p. 73 of the main body of the report]
(ii) The interest expressed by energy providers (as well as industrial users such as in mining and tar sands extraction) in off-grid electric and/or thermal process power in modular and scalable units - partly from remote siting considerations and also from emissions reduction considerations
(iii) University nuclear reactors for training and research
(iv) Reactors for dedicated medical radioisotope production.

Separately of the off-grid power reactor interest from resource extractive industries, there is also interest in small reactors as a possible solution for developing countries and first-time nuclear countries who have small or under-developed electric grids. They are also an attractive option for small gas- or coal- fired generating units as a direct replacement, where grid and transmission infrastructure already exist, as in rural areas of developed nations.

As well, the lower up-front capital cost of the smaller power reactors is a motivating consideration for the increased interest, as is the potential for upward scalability in total power output by addition of more units in a more graded manner. Given the lower radionuclide inventory as well as some passive safety features in some of the small reactor designs, they become of additional interest from both the safety and the proliferation-resistance standpoints.

Although some reactors have a thermal output as low as 20 KWTh, the 200 MWTh threshold is chosen to define the upper limit of 'small reactors' from the point of view of accumulation of the radionuclide inventory - which is much smaller below a threshold of 200 MWTh. As well, given that some reactors may have passive safety features, the balance of engineered safety requirements that are imposed could be different for smaller reactors than for large reactors. Consequently, it is possible to justify what has come to be called a 'graded approach' in the safety assessment of small reactors - a smaller reactor will have safety requirements commensurate to the relative risk, compared to a larger reactor, and not necessarily identical ones. This graded approach could reflect itself, for example, in the containment structure requirement, or in extent of the exclusion zone, where the regulatory requirement may not necessarily be identical to that for large power reactors.

The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) is currently in the process of developing regulatory & licensing guides and related requirements for small nuclear reactors based on these considerations, and will be holding appropriate stakeholder consultations, information sessions and technical workshops during the course of this year to disseminate information and solicit feedback before finalizing the requirements.

Postscript
US Secretary of Energy Steven Chu outlined the interest in small and modular reactors in his Wall Street Journal op-ed on March 23, 2010, a summary of his Congressional testimony of 3-3-2010.

In his 2011 budget request, President Obama requested $39 million for a new program specifically for small modular reactors. Although the Department of Energy has supported advanced reactor technologies for years, this is the first time funding has been requested to help get SMR designs licensed for widespread commercial use.

Right now we are exploring a partnership with industry to obtain design certification from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for one or two designs. These SMRs are based on proven light-water reactor technologies and could be deployed in about 10 years.

Expanding on the likely advantages of small modular reactors, he said:

Small modular reactors would be less than one-third the size of current plants. They have compact designs and could be made in factories and transported to sites by truck or rail. SMRs would be ready to "plug and play" upon arrival.

If commercially successful, SMRs would significantly expand the options for nuclear power and its applications. Their small size makes them suitable to small electric grids so they are a good option for locations that cannot accommodate large-scale plants. The modular construction process would make them more affordable by reducing capital costs and construction times.

Their size would also increase flexibility for utilities since they could add units as demand changes, or use them for on-site replacement of aging fossil fuel plants. Some of the designs for SMRs use little or no water for cooling, which would reduce their environmental impact. Finally, some advanced concepts could potentially burn used fuel or nuclear waste, eliminating the plutonium that critics say could be used for nuclear weapons.
[...]
To achieve this potential, we are bringing together some of our nation's brightest minds to work under one roof in a new research center called the Nuclear Energy Modeling and Simulation Hub.

Update The Consortium for Advanced Simulation of Light Water Reactors (CASL), the Energy Innovation Hub specific to Nuclear Energy, has been formed, with Dr. Douglas B. Kothe as Director. The Core partners are Oak Ridge National Lab (ORNL), Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), Idaho National Lab (INL), Los Alamos National Lab (LANL), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), North Carolina State University (NCSU), Sandia National Labs, Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), University of Michigan, and Westinghouse Electric Company.

The operational structure and mission statement of CASL explicitly incorporates the vision Prof. Chu has articulated, for example, of 'Bell Labs-like institutions which are mission-driven but solve fundamental problems as well'. See here.

In CASL Director Dr. Kothe's words, (CASL):

• Focuses on a single topic, with work spanning the gamut, from basic research through engineering development to partnering with industry in commercialization
• (creates) Large, highly integrated and collaborative creative teams working to solve priority
technology challenges
• Embraces both the goals of understanding and use, without erecting barriers between
basic and applied research (emphasis added).

A second Energy Innovation Hub also announced is the Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis (JCAP), a partnership between Caltech and Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory:

JCAP research will be directed at the discovery of the functional components necessary to assemble a complete artificial photosynthetic system: light absorbers, catalysts, molecular linkers, and separation membranes. The Hub will then integrate those components into an operational solar fuel system and develop scale-up strategies to move from the laboratory toward commercial viability. The ultimate objective is to drive the field of solar fuels from fundamental research, where it has resided for decades, into applied research and technology development, thereby setting the stage for the creation of a direct solar fuels industry.

CNSC Presentations at NRC-RIC 2010

Two senior officials of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) made presentations at the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission Regulatory Information Conference 2010 (NRC-RIC 2010) last week. The President of the CNSC, Dr. Michael Binder, spoke at NRC-RIC-2010 on A Canadian Regulator's Perspective on International Cooperation. He noted that there were now 48 CANDU-type power reactors in 7 different countries (plus 3 reactors under construction - 1 in Argentina and 2 in India). Emphasizing that national regulators have responsibilities toward customer countries, which he considered an international extension of Canada's safety mandate, he outlined the three phases of Canada's current engagement with the regulatory mechanism in a customer country: (i) With the national regulating agency in the buyer country (ii) On-site, at the end-use location of Canadian-origin technology (e.g. at the site of a CANDU reactor). (iii) Training of regulators as well as interactions at the university level. As the Nuclear Renaissance unfolds, he also indicated that the pattern of Canadian inernational regulatory engagement might move beyond bilateral engagements and evolve to encompass more multilateral mechanisms such as the Multinational Design Evaluation Program (MDEP), with greater harmonization of codes and standards and perhaps including a code of conduct for vendors of nuclear technology.

The Vice President of the CNSC's Technical Services Branch, Terry Jamieson took the theme of International Cooperation in Nuclear Regulation forward, speaking on the MDEP's Role in Converging Codes and Standards. He outlined the efforts of the Codes and Standards Working Group (CSWG) of the MDEP, and indicated that the present focus of the group was on the pressure boundary components. Although different countries had their own codes and standards regarding pressure boundary components, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) codes were used as a basis for comparison, focusing first on Class I Pressure Vessels. The objective was to eventually evolve a harmonized set of standards (since full convergence was not found feasible). Next steps will focus on codes for Class I piping, pumps and valves, and later on codes for components beyond those at the pressure boundary.

Nuclear Regulatory Commission Regulatory Information Conference NRC-RIC-2010

The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) will be holding its annual Regulatory Information Conference (NRC-RIC) from March 9 to March 11, 2010. The conference will bring together a variety of stakeholders in the nuclear sector with regulators and technical specialists, both from the NRC and from US national laboratories. While most attendees will be from within the US, there will also be a large number of attendees from other countries, including Canada, who will share their own experiences and provide their own insights into nuclear regulatory affairs.

Apart from plenary sessions addressed by NRC Chairman and Commissioners, there will also be technical sessions on a number of cutting-edge issues at the interface of regulation and technology. These include a session on Materials Degradation at the Containment and Reactor Coolant System Pressure Boundary [Audio], which will discuss probabilistic analysis tools for carrying out the assessment of materials degradation at the pressure boundary, incorporating insights from investigations of the Pressurized Thermal Shock phenomenon. This is expected to contribute, for example, to better understanding of the probability of leak before rupture of piping systems. There are also at least two technical sessions on international issues: one on International Coordination between countries pursuing New Nuclear Power, another on International Cooperation on New Reactors [including the activities of the Multinational Design Evaluation Program (MDEP)]. Another session is devoted to discussing regulatory applications of International Experience in Operating Nuclear Reactors.

A technical session on Regulatory and Policy Issues for Small Modular Reactors should prove particularly interesting - since there is now great interest in the possibility of constructing small and modular reactors (including for isotope production; research; and local, off-grid power or heat applications). [Audio of event].

A separate session discussing the interest in Small and Modular Reactors will also be held [Audio].There will also be a session devoted to new developments in Probabilistic Risk Analysis (PRA) for nuclear power plants, including a talk on peer review of the US NRC's SPAR (Standardized Plant Analysis Risk) model. [Audio]

There is also a session on technical, policy and R&D issues related to the licensing of the Next Generation Nuclear Plant (NGNP), a gas-cooled reactor currently under development. [Session; Audio]. This includes a talk on the US NRC's efforts to develop an evaluation model(EM) for the NGNP. Other sessions of interest include a poster session on Central and Eastern US Seismic Source Characterization (SSC) model development, which may have implications for characterizing seismic sources in Canada as well.

Overall, the conferences promises to be quite interesting indeed.

Update: The US NRC published a Commission Paper (SECY-10-0034) on Potential Policy, Licensing, and Key Technical Issues for Small Modular Nuclear Reactor Designs on 3-28-2010.

Energy Secretary Chu on the Prospects for Carbon Sequestration

At the conclusion of the Carbon Sequestration Leadership Forum's 3rd Ministerial Meeting last week in London, the ministerial communique strongly endorsed the potential of carbon sequestration as a climate change mitigation technology, and urged member countries and other stakeholders to step up their efforts to research, develop and commercialize the technology on an aggressive timeline to 2020, calling for "many more" sequestration demonstration projects than are currently under way.

Carbon sequestration has unfortunately suffered from a rather narrow definition in the public perception, partly on account of one of its precursor technologies having arisen primarily in the oil sector, where enhanced oil recovery from existing fields was enabled by the injection of carbon dioxide directly into the oil fields. Being a heavier-than-oil supercritical liquid, carbon dioxide can force crude oil to the surface in oilfields where it would otherwise have remained trapped within geological formations. This version of carbon sequestration has come to be considered 'canonical' - while in truth, it is just a geological sequestration method, while there are also terrestrial-biologic and oceanic sequestration modes, among many others. Photosynthesis itself is a carbon dioxide sequestration technology (not yet mimicked effectively by human technology) and so are lungs, where gas exchange between blood vessels (alveoli) effectively separates carbon dioxide from blood supply and also replenishes it with oxygen!

In his letter to his ministerial colleagues, Secretary Chu further endorsed and encouraged the adoption of an aggressive timeline, importantly lending his considerable scientific prestige to a technology that so far had been viewed as somewhat tentative even by its proponents, going so far as to call for a deployment timeline to begin 10 years from now; cautioning also that success will not come easily, asking for a strong, highly focused R&D program, and making a 'call to action' to all US Department of Energy laboratories, as well as to corresponding organizations around the world. Secretary Chu's letter to his ministerial colleagues around the world follows his Oct 2, 2009 editorial in Science Magazine, where he outlined the arguments supporting a stronger push toward carbon sequestration technology directed to a scientific audience.

While work on carbon sequestration projects has been going on for the past while, it has so far been occurring on a more relaxed timeline and with a much greater degree of tentativeness. Secretary Chu's strong endorsement will undoubtedly increase the level of near-term effort and activity in the area, and spur the technology forward in the medium term, bringing it into the forefront of climate change mitigation options for the world community. Secretary Chu's letter also places sequestration technology in the middle of the power generation cycle - rather than at the very end. He formulates sequestration as a technology alongside such related others as cleaner oxygenated combustion as well as ultrasupercritical technology which, by using steam at higher temperatures and pressures, raises the thermodynamic efficiency of the power generation process, thus producing more power per unit of coal used, and contributing to a decrease in carbon emissions.

Secretary Chu also situates carbon sequestration more properly within the suite of climate change mitigation options - which would include economy-wide improvements in energy efficiency, conservation, as well as carbon-free generation of energy. Part of the challenge of assigning priorities (and funding) to different R&D options is also assessing the urgency of the sub-problem that the technology is designed to solve, relative to the intrinsic merit and state of development of the technology itself. What carbon sequestration can do, if successfully developed and deployed, is to cut the flow rate of carbon dioxide emission into the atmosphere drastically, even while the energy generation mix remains roughly the same as now (as it will for at least the next couple decades). Deployment timeframes for energy generation options that significantly reduce emissions relative to the current mix are all a decade or more beyond (with the possible exception of wind turbines). Therefore, a technology that promises to cut the net emissions from the existing generation mix must be moved up the priority, effort and funding list. This is the judgment call that I see Secretary Chu as having made. The subtext is the realization that Climate Change itself is in the here and now; arresting the net flow of carbon dioxide is urgent; even while technologies such as solar or fusion that promise to reduce the gross flow in the future are aggressively developed. What this endorsement will also do is make the entire field of sequestration science more 'sexy', attracting physicists, biologists and chemists into the field, that is otherwise dominated by petroleum geologists or engineers.

Just prior to the Ministerial meeting, the Carbon Sequestration Leadership Forum added ten new R&D Projects to its portfolio, including one each in Texas, British Columbia and Alberta.

Postscript: After I wrote this post, I discovered a presentation by Prof. Sir Christopher Llewellyn Smith, FRS, on Energy Options. One of his slides particularly well illustrates the point I make above on carbon sequestration not being just a post-combustion technology, but being a suite of technologies potentially applicable before, during and after the actual combustion:

Canada: Nuclear Renaissance or Nuclear Vita Nova?

The Nuclear Renaissance has been a much-awaited thing in Canada, for at least the last four years, if not longer. Renaissance, of course, suggests the idea of 'rebirth', a beginning anew of a life once lived; with the subtext that things in this rebirthed life will be much the same as before, only newer.

Over the last several decades, the Canadian nuclear industry evolved to encompass three main sectors: Uranium Mining, Reactors for Power Production, and Radioisotopes for Medical Uses. Of these three, the reactor segment has had the greatest visibility, while, on a worldwide basis, it was actually the uranium mining and medical radioisotope segments which had the greatest relative market share. A 'renaissance' in the Canadian nuclear sector therefore came to be understood primarily in terms of new reactors, and new reactors essentially of the same CANDU pressure-tube configuration that Canada pioneered and which now are operating in many other countries as well.

But in his speech at the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Annual Regulatory Information Conference in March 2009, NRC-RIC-2009, the Deputy Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Mr. Tomohiro Taniguchi of Japan, speaking at the session on Global Perspectives on the Nuclear Renaissance, introduced a new phrase that he hoped would refocus the emphasis on new ways of doing things in the new nuclear age: Nuclear Vita Nova:

I, on the other hand, view this reality as a Vita Nova, or new life, because the nuclear community needs new ideas and innovative thinking to address new challenges, rather than a simple revival of the "good old days."

At the current juncture, when Nuclear New Build - which seemed imminent just a few months ago - has been indefinitely postponed in the main Canadian province; when the main Canadian reactor builder faces an uncertain future; and when the main private reactor operator in Canada has withdrawn its license applications for new nuclear reactors - it is certainly worth pondering what is in store for the Canadian nuclear sector - a Renaissance, or a Vita Nova? And if it is to be the latter, might the relative (and perceived) importance of the three main sectors change from what it was in the past? At the moment the answer is not clear, but the singular salience of the question must certainly be recognized.

(Dr. Taniguchi took care to mention at the end of his talk, for the benefit of those who might have missed the allusion, which, given his audience, was probably everybody - that his neologism 'Vita Nova' was actually the Latin form of the Italian La Vita Nuova, the title of a collection of verse that Dante Alighieri wrote in 1295, being an expression of the medieval genre of courtly love. Incidentally, the incoming Director General of the IAEA, beginning 01 December 2009, is also from Japan - Yukiya Amano. He will be taking over from Dr. Mohamed El-Baradei of Egypt, who has been named Director General Emeritus, an honor he shares with Dr. Hans Blix. Dr. Amano's appointment to the Director-Generalship of the IAEA will be ratified during the 53rd General Conference of the IAEA in Vienna, 14-18 September 2009. Like Dr. El-Baradei and Dr. Blix, Dr. Amano is also a lawyer. By coincidence, the current Director-General of ITER, Mr. Kaname Ikeda, and the current Executive Director of the International Energy Agency (IEA), Mr. Nobuo Tanaka, are also Japanese.)


Update: After I wrote this post, I discovered that on the TV Ontario program The Agenda, the season-opening episode on 8th September had been on Canada's Nuclear Future. I am pleased to embed the video, featuring an extremely spirited discussion (in which, as Steve Paikin, the host, quipped, they ran out of time but clearly not energy. The astute physicist reader of this blog will immediately see Steve Paikin's probably unintended pun here - since energy and time are classically canonically conjugate variables, they are related through a quantum uncertainty principle - the more precisely you bound one of them [in this case, time], the more uncertain the other will be!):

The Other Chandrasekhar Limit

As a schoolboy in India, one couldn't help knowing of the Chandrasekhar mass limit. I distinctly remember being challenge-quizzed by fellow schoolmates about it - as early as the sixth grade. That an Indian-born astrophysicist had discovered a fundamental limit - the stellar mass, that, if exceeded in a white dwarf, could lead to gravitational collapse - was something every Indian schoolboy in the 1970s seemed to know (at least in the schools I went to!). Later, in high school, I remember doing an elementary calculation, and later still, at college and university, more detailed calculations were done. Chandrasekhar himself became an idol of sorts, and his benign gaze, from a picture portrait framed on the wall above my desk, was deeply inspiring in the last two years of my university career. In the very last year - 1983-84, he was also awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics, for, it turned out, the very work he had done, as a nineteen-year old, in calculating his Mass Limit. [This seemed to ignore his work of a lifetime since, which did not sit at all well with him - but be that as it may for now, it can be the subject of several blog posts.]

That, apart from Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, there were other Indian physicists named Chandrasekhar as well, I also knew. One of them, who also shared his first initial, was Sivaramakrishna Chandrasekhar, a liquid crystals specialist, who was at the Raman Research Institute in Bangalore (which I visited often as an undergraduate, since my family happened to live near by). [The two were actually first cousins, both also being nephews of C.V. Raman.]

But it was Professor B.S. Chandrasekhar, (Bellur Sivaramiah Chandrasekhar) formerly of Case Western Reserve University and now at the Walther Meissner Institut at Munich – like me, a Delhi University alumnus (M.Sc. 1949) and a Rhodes Scholar as well - passing through some 35 years before me - for whom another Chandrasekhar limit is named. In 1962 (the year of my birth) he wrote a paper in the very first issue of the journal Applied Physics Letters: A Note on the Maximum Critical Field of High-field Superconductors. This paper defined a natural upper limit on the ambient Magnetic Field which, if exceeded, causes a complete loss of superconductivity. Independently, the idea was also suggested by A.M. Clogston, and has ever since then been known as the Chandrasekhar-Clogston (Field) Limit.

For reasons I cannot fathom, this limit on the upper critical field of superconductors has not received the type of (er ahem) critical acclaim that the first Chandrasekhar Limit received - not even noticed in the Delhi University Physics Department, of which Prof. B.S. Chandrasekhar, is a distinguished alumnus! He was felicitated for a lifetime of work in superconductivity and condensed matter physics, with a special award at the American Physical Society March Meeting in Indianapolis in 1992 (where I was fortunate to be present). I remember seeing him from afar but being too intimidated to approach him directly and introduce myself!

Professor B.S. Chandrasekhar has continued to work on superconductivity, and still does, at the Walther Meissner Institut (the Institute is of course named for the discoverer of the famous Meissner Effect - which describes the exclusion of magnetic flux from the interior of a superconductor below its critical temperature). He has worked on the critical field of Niobium, and on magnetic fields created by superconducting solenoids. As it happens, the magnetic fields required by the ITER tokamak - both the central solenoid and the toroidal field - are created by superconducting Niobium-Tin alloy - of which some 750 tons (seven hundred fifty tons) of wire, 200 km (two hundred kilometers) long will be required. Thus, considerations following from the Chandrasekhar-Clogston Limit are relevant to ITER design and operation. What is really interesting is that the other Chandrasekhar - Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar - worked on the theory of fusion - especially laser fusion (or inertial fusion) - using the pressure of light to push two hydrogen atoms close enough that they fuse. (This is not the approach at ITER, which is a magnetic fusion reactor). Prof. B.S. Chandrasekhar has also written a popular book, Why Things Are The Way They Are.

Today, the Chandrasekhar-Clogston limit occurs most often in the physics literature in descriptions of work relating to spin-polarized fermionic atomic fluids - which display both superfluidity through a BCS-like pairing, as well as a Bose-Einstein Condensation (BEC) after dimerization (which makes them bosons) at ultra-low temperatures. A group at the University of Trento (Italy) and, appropriately, the Walther Meissner Institut (where Prof. Dr. B.S. Chandrasekhar is a 'Permanent Guest') is active in the field. The Chandrasekhar-Clogston limit appears in that context as a critical value of the ratio of up-and-down spin polarizations in a dilute fermionic atom gas, and determines phase separation of the dilute gas into a superfluid phase and a 'normal phase'.

Whether and how the two Chandrasekhar limits, in speaking of different aspects of a gas of fermions (dilute in one case, and degenerate in another) are actually (or at all) related are interesting questions I might explore in a subsequent blog post.

Fusion Through a Hydrogen Economy Prism

Fusion has long suffered from the unfortunate impression of being a technology that is always 'thirty years into the future'. Reality has always been more complicated, even if sometimes the impression seems to ring true. Since nuclear fusion has been understood for longer than nuclear fission, the seeming lack of progress in commercializing fusion has appeared especially frustrating. While technical issues certainly remain to be addressed, the lack of a compelling future scenario within which nuclear fusion could be seen as a 'natural' energy solution has also been a barrier in the techno-scientific as well as policy discourse surrounding fusion.

If seen merely as an attempt to extract energy by fusing deuterium and tritium atoms (in the simplest conception), fusion appears less compelling than when seen as a natural part of a future carbon-free hydrogen economy. Deuterium (D) and tritium (T), after all, are isotopes of hydrogen, and the energy they yield on fusion is usefully seen as nuclear hydrogen energy. But what if the heat yielded by the neutrons in D-T fusion were further used in thermochemical schemes to create molecular hydrogen, from which chemical or electrochemical hydrogen energy could be extracted? If this is successfully done, the transportation sector of the future could well come to be powered indirectly by fusion.

I sketch out and elaborate this vision for a fusion-driven hydrogen economy of the future in my paper Nuclear Hydrogen Production: Re-examining the Fusion Option. I discuss more generally a vision for a Fusion Island (first sketched out by Nuttall & Glowacki), in which a complete hydrogen economy is envisaged - a scheme which uses all the isotopes of hydrogen (protium, deuterium, tritium) in all forms of matter (solid, liquid, gas, plasma). I discuss the new perspective in which fusion appears when seen through such a hydrogen economy prism, the policy implications thereof, and the likely present-day economic actors who might find such a vision of the future hydrogen economy sufficiently compelling to begin more actively participating in and funding fusion R&D today. Such a new perspective on fusion also sees both fusion and fission as complements instead of substitutes, and offers novel possibilities such as fusion breeders of fission fuels, as well as, for example, fusion-fission hybrids, and fission breeders of fusion fuels.



Update Presidential Science Adviser John Holdren, giving the Rose Lecture at MIT on 25 October 2010, discussed the role of fusion and fission in providing future energy options that would mitigate climate change. He mentioned that both fission and fusion represent energy sources with 'nearly inexhaustible' fuel supplies, and though the fusion fuel supply was 'much more inexhaustible' (paraphrasing), that was not much of an advantage over fission since fission was 'quite inexhaustible already'! However, he also stressed that he personally was in favor of funding fusion R&D, since the number of such 'nearly inexhaustible' fuel options was so small. However, this funding could only be sustained if the overall funding pie for energy R&D of all kinds was increased. Here's the video of part of his talk where he discusses this issue:



Dr. Holdren also presents a number of quantitative projections for the future of nuclear power that are worth summarizing in brief. The world currently has about 440 nuclear reactors which produce a total of 375 GWe of electrical energy, constituting about 13% of world total electricity supply, a percentage that is declining even as new plants are being built - since other sources of supply are growing faster in the aggregate. He feels that in the next 90 years, that is, out to the year 2100, the world total supply of nuclear power would fall considerably short of the 3500 GWe total that some analysts have hoped for [and which would have been an order of magnitude larger than current capacity].

He feels, however, that by the year 2050, a rough quintupling of current supply, to about 1700 GWe could happen. However, I found the most remarkable figure in his talk to be the estimate of Remaining Ultimately Recoverable Uranium (RURU) as 100 Million tons, based on a recent MIT study. What this means is that a once-through fuel cycle option using natural or lightly enriched uranium will remain competitive, and that reprocessing and breeding options may not need to be commercialized for several decades yet. Of course, the issue of how this recoverable uranium is actually distributed throughout the world, as well as how widely the technology of extraction will become available, remains. Different countries who feel uranium-constrained may still very well choose to pursue fuel cycle options that include reprocessing and breeding technologies.

US Energy Secretary Steven Chu Speaks at MIT 12 May 2009

MIT President Susan Hockfield introduces US Energy Secretary Steven Chu, who gave the Karl Taylor Compton Lecture at MIT, one of its most prestigious invited lectures. MIT's blurb to the video quotes Steve Chu in this talk: "Can we design a modern-day equivalent of Lincoln Labs or Los Alamos, focused on mission driven research, but also connected to fundamental research and the industrial world?". Steve Chu shows how all the great Nobel Prize winning work that was done at Bell Labs - all the people whose names you grew up hearing - Nyquist, Shannon, Penzias, Anderson, Bardeen, and many more - were actually trying to solve problems of quite an applied nature, but ended up revolutionizing their fields, making fundamental lasting contributions, that in most cases has been recognized by a Nobel Prize. (Chu himself was at Bell Labs at the beginning of his career, joining in the intake year 1977-78. Five people hired that year, including himself, are now Nobel Laureates.)

The talk is well worth hearing in its entirety. I really enjoyed it. There's both wit and wisdom in it, and aplenty. At one point Chu asks, for example: What does a Boeing 777 have in common with a Bar-tailed Godwit? A: They can both fly 11,000 km nonstop. (The B-t G is a bird that annually migrates from Alaska to New Zealand in the winter, and has 55% of its weight in body fat. Likewise the Boeing has 45% of its weight in jet fuel. The factoid is relevant to a point he makes about synthetic biology - using nature as an inspiration, but going beyond.)



One of the most impressive things about Chu is not only that he refocused his research toward Climate Change mitigation beginning 2004, but, partly in response, he has also increased his knowledge base in biology very significantly. Today, from biologically created fuels on the one hand, to artificial photosynthesis on the other, solutions to Climate Change mitigation inspired by biology are being actively researched. Chu emphasized in his talk that one of the reasons for the success of Bell Labs was the 'scientist-manager', who could quickly decide whether a given idea had merit or not - because he was a often a hands-on practitioner of the field himself. Chu clearly embodies this ideal.

Chu is an active Facebooker, and I salute him not only for the content he personally uploads there, but also for the infectious enthusiasm and compelling sense of mission he communicates to the world at large and to technically literate and younger audiences in particular.

Here's an earlier talk by Steve Chu when he was Director of the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, from back in 2005, on the same general subject of climate change science, possible biomimic solutions (both to sequestration and to energy production), and the culture of Bell Labs in the 1940s-1980s period:







And an even earlier talk given at UC Berkeley in May 2004, when he was still a Professor of Physics at Stanford: 'What can Physics say about Biology?'. This one is more technical, and is about how RNA transcription works at the sub-molecular scale. It is also about emboldening physicists to attempt answers to biological questions, and how ultimately, it might well be possible to explain life in terms of the 'jiggling and wiggling of atoms and molecules' (an old quote from Feynman that Steve Chu cites in the talk). Physics, he points out, is still young (only 400 years since Galileo) and the future of physics may well lie in biology. There is also the very faintest hint that climate change may be ultimately be stabilized by a biological solution, because he points out that the amplitude of temperature fluctuations on earth dropped markedly after agriculture was introduced. Cause and effect is not fully clear: for example, it could be that the temperature stabilization was exogenous, but made agriculture possible as a result. Equally, it is also possible that agriculture was a form of biological anthropogenic intervention that, operating on a large scale, stabilized climate, making life and civilization (and physics) possible. Here is the hint that if photosynthesis was properly understood as a 'physics problem', then an 'artificial photosynthesis' could be designed that could sequester (fix) carbon dioxide from the atmosphere more efficiently.