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The ABC has a post on the bizarrely (but not atypically, as it usually reads like a nuclear PR outlet) biased commentary coming out of Barry Brooks "Brave New Climate" on the Fukushima nuclear disaster - Experts protect a nuclear interest.

How have Australian scientists handled the difficult task of keeping us informed about the unfolding nuclear disaster in Japan?

The first thing to note is that precious few Australian scientists have featured in the media. The most prominent have been Professor Aidan Byrne from the Australian National University, RMIT Chancellor Dr Ziggy Switkowski, and Professor Barry Brook from Adelaide University.

A clear pattern is evident − those with the greatest ideological attachment to nuclear power have provided the most inaccurate commentary.

The best of the bunch has been Byrne. He has presented the facts as he understands them and has willingly acknowledged major information gaps.

Switkowski has been gently spinning the issue, repeatedly reassuring us that lessons will be learned, improvements will be made. However, history shows that nuclear lessons are not properly learned. The OECDs Nuclear Energy Agency notes that lessons may be learned but too often they are subsequently forgotten, or they are learned but by the wrong people, or they are learned but not acted upon. The Nuclear Energy Agency says the pattern of the same type of accident recurring time and time again at different nuclear plants needs to be "much improved".

The situation in Japan illustrates the point − it has become increasingly obvious over the past decade that greater protection against seismic risks is necessary, but the nuclear utilities havent wanted to spend the money and the Japanese nuclear regulator and the government havent forced the utilities to act.

Brook is a strident nuclear power advocate and host of the bravenewclimate.com blog, which has received an astonishing 500,000 web hits since the crisis in Japan began.

Brook has egg on his face. Make that an omelette. He has maintained a running commentary in the media and on his website insisting that the situation is under control and that there is no reason for concern.

His message remained unchanged even as it was revealed that efforts to cool the nuclear reactor cores were meeting with mixed success, even as deliberate and uncontrolled radiation releases occurred, even as the outer containment buildings exploded, even as 200,000 people were being evacuated, even as a fire led to spent nuclear fuel releasing radiation directly to the environment, and even as radiation monitors detected alarming jumps in radioactivity near the reactor and low levels of radiation as far away as Tokyo.

On Saturday Brook came out swinging, insisting that: "There is no credible risk of a serious accident".

Phew. That afternoon, after the first explosion at Fukushima, Brook made numerous assertions, most of which turned out to be wrong: "The risk of meltdown is extremely small, and the death toll from any such accident, even if it occurred, will be zero. There will be no breach of containment and no release of radioactivity beyond, at the very most, some venting of mildly radioactive steam to relieve pressure. Those spreading FUD [fear, uncertainty and doubt] at the moment will be the ones left with egg on their faces. I am happy to be quoted forever after on the above if I am wrong ... but I wont be. The only reactor that has a small probability of being finished is unit one. And I doubt that, but it may be offline for a year or more."

On Saturday night, Brook asserted that: "When the dust settles, people will realise how well the Japanese reactors − even the 40 year old one − stood up to this incredibly energetic earthquake event." The dust is (hopefully) settling and it seems likely that four reactors will be write-offs.

On Sunday morning, Brook said of the unfolding disaster: "I dont see the ramifications of this as damaging at all to nuclear powers prospects" and that "it will provide a great conversation starter for talking intelligently to people about nuclear safety."

But Fukushima will likely prove a great conversation starter for talking intelligently to people about nuclear hazards. Not recommended at parties.

On Sunday afternoon, Brook was congratulating himself on his just the facts approach in media interviews. He pondered: "What has this earthquake taught us? That its much, much riskier to choose to live next to the ocean than it is to live next to a nuclear power station."

Well, the lesson for people in Fukushima is that if you live next to the ocean and next to a nuclear power station, then youre really stuffed.

On Monday, when the second explosion at Fukushima occurred, Brook was still insisting that "the nuclear reactors have come through remarkably well". On Monday evening, half a dozen people were banned from posting comments directly on Brooks website. True, some of their comments were silly and unhelpful, but by that criterion Brook ought to have banned himself.

On Tuesday, with a fire at Fukushima spewing long-lived radioisotopes directly into the environment, Brook was rallying the pro-nuclear lobby, arguing that "now, more than ever, we must stand up for what we believe is right" while introducing a guest web post by someone who announced that Japan gets electricity "from y nuclear reactors at z locations".

But cracks were starting to emerge by Tuesday night, with Brook acknowledging an "ongoing crisis situation", banning another 40-50 "random nobodies" from posting comments directly on his website, and quoting Rudyard Kipling:

If you can bear to hear the truth youve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and buildem up with worn-out tools

Make of that what you will.

One contributor to Brooks website said: "Unfortunately, Prof. Brook has really abdicated a neutral position on this event. His clear support of nuclear power seems to have impacted his critical thinking skills. ... Every time he states something in this crisis is impossible, it seems to happen the next day."

Andrew Bolt at the Herald Sun has been urging people to read the "marvellously sane and cool explanation" from "our friend Professor Barry Brook". Both Bolt and Brook claim that no more than 50 people died from the Chernobyl catastrophe.

More on that next month − the 25th anniversary falls on April 26.

The scientific estimates of the Chernobyl death toll range from 9,000 to 93,000.

Why Are Galaxies So Smooth? (5/1/09)

Using NASAs Spitzer Space Telescope, an international team of astronomers has discovered streams of young stars flowing from their natal cocoons in distant galaxies. These distant rivers of stars provide an answer to one of astronomys most fundamental puzzles: how do young stars that form clustered together in dense clouds of dust and gas disperse to form the large, smooth distribution seen in the disks of spiral galaxies like the Milky Way? ...

"When you look at the disks of galaxies in the infrared they are remarkably smooth. All of the older stars are evenly distributed. But stars arent born that way; theyre born in clusters and associations like the Pleiades cluster, or the association of young stars in the Orion constellation of our own Milky Way galaxy. So the question is - why are the disks of galaxies so smooth?" said team leader David Block of the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa.

"Our analysis now answers the grand puzzle. By finding a myriad of streams of young stars all over the disks of galaxies we studied, we see that the mechanism for pulling the clusters of young stars apart is shearing motions of the parent galaxy. These streams are the missing link we needed to understand how the disks of galaxies evolve to look the way they do," said Block.

NGC 2841 – click for 1750×940 image

More: here, here

Technology Review has an article on new solid-state power-management devices which "will charge cars fast and make the power grid more flexible and efficient" - A Way to Make the Smart Grid Smarter.

New semiconductor-based devices for managing power on the grid could make the "smart grid" even smarter. They would allow electric vehicles to be charged fast and let utilities incorporate large amounts of solar and wind power without blackouts or power surges. These devices are being developed by a number of groups, including those that recently received funding from the new Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy (ARPA-E) and the National Science Foundation.

As utilities start to roll out the smart grid, they are focused on gathering information, such as up-to-the-minute measurements of electricity use from smart meters installed at homes and businesses. But as the smart grid progresses, theyll be adding devices, such as smart solid-state transformers, that will strengthen their control over how power flows through their lines, says Alex Huang, director of a National Research Foundation research center thats developing such devices. "If smart meters are the brains of the smart grid," he says, "devices such as solid-state transformers are the muscle." These devices could help change the grid from a system in which power flows just one way—from the power station to consumers—to one in which homeowners and businesses commonly produce power as well.

Todays transformers are single-function devices. They change the voltage of electricity from one level to another, such as stepping it down from the high voltages at which power is distributed to the 120- and 240-volt levels used in homes. The new solid-state transformers are much more flexible. They use transistors and diodes and other semiconductor-based devices that, unlike the transistors used in computer chips, are engineered to handle high power levels and very fast switching. In response to signals from a utility or a home, they can change the voltage and other characteristics of the power they produce. They can put out either AC or DC power, or take in AC and DC power from wind turbines and solar panels and change the frequency and voltage to whats needed for the grid. They have processors and communications hardware built in, allowing them to communicate with utility operators, other smart transformers, and consumers.

The devices are so flexible that researchers are still working out how to make the best use of them. There are several possibilities. Today, charging an electric vehicle at home takes many hours, even if its plugged into a special charger with 220/240-volt circuits rather than more common 110/120-volt outlets. Direct-current chargers can cut the time for charging a 24-kilowatt-hour pack like the one in the new Nissan Leaf from eight hours to just 30 minutes, but theyre inefficient, wasting about 10 to 12 percent of the power that comes in to them. The new transformers could replace these special chargers, and theyre more efficient, wasting only about 4 percent of the power, says Arindam Maitra, a senior project manager at the Electric Power Research Institute, which is developing smart transformers.

Whats more, because the transformers have communications and processing capability, if several neighbors plug in their cars to charge at the same time, the transformers can prevent circuits from being overloaded by slowing or postponing charging based on consumer preferences and price signals from the utility. The same devices can also be used to send DC power from solar panels to the grid, eliminating the need for some equipment currently used to convert the power from solar panels and leveling out fluctuations in their voltage that could otherwise cause the panels to trip off and stop producing electricity.

As power consumers such as big-box stores start to install more solar panels and energy-storage devices, smart transformers could be key to integrating power from these sources and the grid, Maitra says. Storage systems and distributed energy can allow stores to decide when to draw power from the grid and when to send power back to it, depending on the price of electricity at a given moment. Smart transformers could coordinate this potentially rapid change from buying to selling power, while keeping the grid stable and preventing neighbors lights from dimming. They could even allow people to buy electricity from their neighbors, Huang says. "If you plug in your electric car at night, you could charge it by negotiating with those in your neighborhood who have excess power," he says. "You actually pay him. You dont pay the utility."

Other kinds of devices can do many of the same things, but the idea of coordinating a large number and variety of consumer-owned devices makes utilities nervous about their ability to keep the grid stable. The new transformers would simplify the system and be utility-owned, making it easier for grid operators to keep the lights on, Maitra says.

Another potential benefit of smart transformers—or what the Electric Power Research Institute is starting to call smart-grid interfaces—is saving energy. For one thing, they can set the voltage of electricity at any given time so that it is at the minimum level appliances need to perform properly. One recent study suggested that doing this could reduce power consumption in the United States by up to 3 percent, which is equivalent to several times as much power as is now generated by all solar panels in the U.S. Even larger energy savings could be seen if smart transformers supplied DC power rather than AC to servers in data centers. Ordinarily, the servers convert the AC to DC themselves—and they do it inefficiently. (Other inefficient conversions, too, are involved in the uninterruptable power supply.) A recent demonstration of such a system by Duke Energy, a large utility company, and the Electric Power Research Institute found that supplying DC could cut power consumption at data centers by about 15 percent.

Whats a sirtuin protein? Perhaps this will jog your memory. Not quite two months ago I wrote about resveratrol – the trace ingredient in red wine that may (or may not) have longevity-extending effects. See the article for plenty of details, but there are a few summary points to repeat here.

First, resveratrol may not occur in sufficiently high concentrations in red wine to offer practical health benefits to humans. Second, there are other compounds in red wine (and red or purple grape skins) which may play a larger role than resveratrol in the reported health benefits of red wine. Third, it is suspected that some of the health benefits observed in experiments with mice fed diets having high concentrations of resveratrol may be a result of its activation of a gene that produces the enzyme called SIRT1, which is a "sirtuin" protein. But, fourth, the observed health benefits of resveratrol may also be due to other effects. In summary, that situation with red wine and resveratrol is still not very clear.

However, its specifically the sirtuin protein SIRT1 (and some closely related variants) were interested in here, for reasons well get to in a moment. But to set the stage a little further, SIRT1 itself (and related proteins) has been of interest to biologists for over ten years because SIRT1 and its relatives appear to affect the longevity (usually in a positive way) of individuals belonging to several diverse eukaryotic species, ranging from yeast and nematodes to mammals. And this effect seems to be closely related to the observed beneficial effects on longevity of calorie restriction – effects that have been observed for many decades.

Theres a little history behind the name of the protein SIRT1. It begins with certain proteins, which were observed in yeast, and which seemed to have something to do with the longevity of yeast cells. There were several of these proteins, which were called Silent Information Regulators. Three of them, in particular, known as SIR2, SIR3, and SIR4, seemed to be implicated in the longevity effect, although they are not structurally similar. Ultimately SIR2 proved to be the most important, and remarkably, a gene in the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans turned out not only to be a close analogue of SIR2 but also to have similar longevity-enhancing effects.

Because of their interesting effects, such proteins became known as "sirtuins" (get it?). It turns out that there are at least seven similar human proteins, named SIRT1 through SIRT7. Of these, it is SIRT1 that has (for good reason) attracted the most attention. It is an enzyme, in particular a histone deacetylase enzyme. Such enzymes are able to efficiently silence the expression of a variety of genes, so they are involved in a wide diversity of biological processes, as Ive written about before. (And as I hope to write much more about.)

There are all sorts of interesting things to note about the human sirtuins, but the most notable recent finding, which is very relevant to calorie restriction and was announced at almost the same time as my resveratrol post, is this:

Eat Less To Live Longer: Calorie Restriction Linked To Long Healthy Lives (9/26/07)

Now, reporting in the September 21 issue of the journal Cell, researchers from Harvard Medical School, in collaboration with scientists from Cornell Medical School and the National Institutes of Health, have discovered two genes in mammalian cells that act as gatekeepers for cellular longevity. When cells experience certain kinds of stress, such as caloric restriction, these genes rev up and help protect cells from diseases of aging.

"Weve reason to believe now that these two genes may be potential drug targets for diseases associated with aging," says David Sinclair, associate professor of pathology at Harvard Medical School and senior author on the paper.

The new genes that Sinclairs group have discovered, in collaboration with Anthony Sauve of Cornell Medical School and Rafael de Cabo of NIH, are called SIRT3 and SIRT4. They are members of a larger class of genes called sirtuins. (Another gene belonging to this family, SIRT1, was shown last year to also have a powerful impact on longevity when stimulated by the red-wine molecule resveratrol.)

David Sinclair, of course, has been heavily involved in research on SIRT1 and resveratrol, as discussed here. He is also co-founder of Sirtris Pharmaceuticals, which is investigating drugs that target sirtuins. Sinclair is a former student of Leonard Guarente, who is also very prominent in sirtuin research, and who had a great deal to do with investigation of the analogous proteins in yeast and nematodes.

One of the most interesting things about the longevity-enhancing effects of sirtuin proteins in yeast and nematodes is that they seem to achieve their effects by rather different means. In yeast, one cause of aging is the formation of "ribosomal DNA circles", and SIR2 (under appropriate conditions) can inhibit this. In C. elegans, on the other hand, the biological effect that retards aging is the inhibition of "insulin signaling". So what is it that SIRT3 and SIRT4 do in the cells of humans (and other mammals)?

In this paper, the newly discovered role of SIRT3 and SIRT4 drives home something scientists have suspected for a long time: mitochondria are vital for sustaining the health and longevity of a cell.

Mitochondria, a kind of cellular organ that lives in the cytoplasm, are often considered to be the cells battery packs. When mitochondria stability starts to wane, energy is drained out of the cell, and its days are numbered. In this paper, Sinclair and his collaborators discovered that SIRT3 and SIRT4 play a vital role in a longevity network that maintains the vitality of mitochondria and keeps cells healthy when they would otherwise die.

When cells undergo caloric restriction, signals sent in through the membrane activate a gene called NAMPT. As levels of NAMPT ramp up, a small molecule called NAD begins to amass in the mitochondria. This, in turn, causes the activity of enzymes created by the SIRT3 and SIRT4 genes--enzymes that live in the mitochondria--to increase as well. As a result, the mitochondria grow stronger, energy-output increases, and the cells aging process slows down significantly.

Other news stories on this research:

• Researchers Pinpoint Link Between Caloric Restriction and Longevity (9/20/07)
  
• New Clue To Why Eating Fewer Calories Can Help You Live Longer (9/21/07)
  
• Eat (Less) to Live (Longer) (9/20/07)
  
• U.S. study finds potential new ways to fight aging (9/20/07)
  

Tags: resveratrol, sirtuins, aging, longevity, calorie restriction, caloric restriction, SIRT1

Reuters has a report on interest in developing geothermal power stations in the Fukushima area - Japanese firms considering geothermal plants in Fukushima.

Japanese firms are looking at building several geothermal plants in a volcanic zone in the area worst hit by last years nuclear disaster, a project that could gain momentum after the government eased restrictions on drilling this week.

The head of a group of firms that have studied the potential of a geothermal project in Fukushima said on Friday a consortium of about 10 companies would meet local people by early May to explain their plans to build plants with a total capacity of 270 megawatts, which would be Japans biggest.

The consortium plans to work with local communities, including those who run hotels and inns at hot springs, to develop geothermal energy, Masaho Adachi, the chairman of Japan Geothermal Developers Council said.

The council has already held a meeting with local government officials in the central zone of Fukushima, home to the nuclear plant crippled by an earthquake and tsumani last year, he said.

Along with high costs, protests by local communities fearful of the impact of a geothermal plant on hot springs have prevented such projects from taking off in the past.

"We should spend together a period of more than 10 years before having geothermal plants running," he said in an interview with Reuters on Friday, referring to activities such as collecting data, test drilling and environment assessment. Adachi declined to name the companies forming the consortium.

The Nikkei newspaper earlier said that the Fukushima project by a consortium of companies including Idemitsu Kosan Co and Inpex Corp would cost around 100 billion yen ($1.2 billion), with operations set to start in 2020.

Since the crisis, interest in renewable energy has jumped and a government subsidy scheme, similar to those in many countries in Europe, to force utilities to buy renewable electricity is due to start in July. ...

Studies show Japan, a land of volcanoes, ranks as the worlds third-richest nation in geothermal power. A government study last year showed it has the potential for business to derive 14,000 MW of energy, but it currently has only 540 MW worth of commercial plants due to restrictions on development in national parks, where most resources lie.