Cowardice and Catallaxy

I used to read left wing blogs to laugh at extremists and get annoyed with their lack of common sense and pragmatism.

Now I just go to "centre right and libertarian" blog Catallaxy instead.

Over the weekend, for example, news of the appalling deaths in Afghanistan prompted by a grandstanding pastor of a trivially unimportant church in America, who the media should know better than give publicity to, was met by Catallaxy's nuttiest commenters (and, man, there's some competition) - CL and Michael Fisk - with calls for more Koran burning.

CL ends one comment with "More power to the Pastor’s right arm."

Fisk: " Burning the Koran will bring these issues to a head. We cannot afford to delay them any longer.

We must burn the Koran at once."

And, funnily enough, given that Yobbo (I forgot - he also likes the Koran burning idea) mentions it as being no worse than burning Mein Kampf, Fisk then goes on to use some distinctly Mein Kampf-ian terminology (you know, the parts that suggest that some people are "sub humans"):

That is the ethical response to the rioting of worthless sub-human animals who hate freedom.

Now, there are people in the thread calling them out (but in very mild terms, especially for that blog). In fact, you really know some at Catallaxy have gone berserk when JC starts sounding like the voice of moderation.

Yet, as far as I can see, there are no regulars there who have said the obvious - Fisk and CL are freaking nuts, and if their argument is so compelling, why weren't they taking the lead in organising Koran burnings in a public park yesterday, with media invitations to boot. (Even if the media wouldn't attend, why not post pictures on the internet?)

I mean, in this day and age, small scale protests are organised in the trivial amount of time it takes to post the time and date on a Facebook page.

I've suggested this to Yobbo some months ago when he first came up with the "burn more" idea: he said he didn't have police protection so it wasn't going to be up to him. (I think he suggested the Army could do it from their bases in Afghanistan, though!)

As for CL and Fisk: I don't know the reason for their craven cowardice in not taking the lead to organise Koran burnings. Fisk talks about the Afghanistan murders in the following context:

The first phases of any war, particularly an ideological one, will always have unfortunate victims who will be the first to fall.

There's ample opportunity to show solidarity with the victims, Fisky: why don't you go to it? Or are personally too valuable to the cause?

And as for the rest of the Catallaxy commenters - including blog controller Sinclair Davidson - no one has called out Fisk for the use of the "sub human" epithet.

And CL has the hide to suggest the fight against fundamentalist Islam is like the fight against 20th century fascism. Hey, CL, I would have thought the absolute worst aspect of some branches of 20th century fascism was not the subjugation of free speech: it was the adoption of a categorisation of some people into "sub human" - like your pal Fisky argues.

Go let us know when the Koran burning starts. It's a very Lenten thing, I'm sure.

PS - I'll delete whatever comment I like here. Offensive language is a guarantee of deletion.

I'm also still busy this week, so posts will probably be light.

PPS - Let's deal with the CL conundrum.

CL used to run his own, well written, blog, and there is no denying that he represents to me a deep psychological puzzle. His comments at Catallaxy are routinely couched in triumphalist, hyped up, quasi-violent terms - arguments or their proponents have always been "destroyed" or "demolished"; "beclowned" themselves, or been "humiliated". He doesn't just want to win arguments (and he is famously noteworthy for that); he wants to belittle opponents. He is always claiming a person has "lied" with no regard to whether a statement was made knowing that it was untrue; and often the very claim that it was an untruth is dependent on accepting his own skewed interpretation of facts.

As far as I can recall, he has indicated that he is in his 30's (late 30's, I think) and never talked of having travelled anywhere, even within Australia. Recently he has described a spartan bathroom suitable for a monk, and seems to have simple taste in beer and food. The impression I've often had is of a man in his (late) 50's in the body of someone younger. Certainly, his Catholicism seems to lean to a fondness for the old Latin mass. He does not claim to be a "good" Catholic, yet has a chip on his shoulder about any Catholic criticism about the same size as his head, as if he had actually experienced the sectarianism that started to fade in Australia in (I would say) the 1970's.

He's not wrong on every issue, yet even those opinions on which I would basically agree are now nearly always couched in terms in which it feels a tad embarrassing to acknowledge agreement. (It's rather the same with Andrew Bolt and his commentary on aboriginal issues.)

Also like Bolt, he is foolhardily certain of his opinion on the science of climate change. (This is another sign of having "older" attitudes than his chronological age.) Appeals to a Catholic sense of justice for future generations, such as those seemingly held by the Pope himself, fall on deaf ears, and in fact are routinely ridiculed. He is right to point out that it is not a matter of Catholic doctrine to believe in AGW; what he (and Cardinal Pell, for that matter) don't address is the question of how moral it is to continually advocate that the current generation do nothing to address what mainstream science expects to be a major problem for the coming generations. To trivialise concern for our children's future is to gamble that the handful of contrarian scientific voices in the field are right, but how is that morally appropriate when the stakes are so high?

Instead, he has been desperately, and laughably, keen to belittle my own engagement with, or understanding of, Catholicism. While I claim no deep involvement in a parish, I have routinely criticised liberal Christianity (and the expelled liberal South Brisbane Catholic priest Peter Kennedy in particular), and thus (I would have thought) have pretty mainstream views that you would think he could acknowledge. (The most I have advocated being the relaxation of celibacy for the priesthood.) But poor CL seems to think that Catholics should never criticise him from a Catholic perspective, otherwise they are not Catholics "in any meaningful sense." (He has claimed to detect lack of Catholic cultural knowledge in the way I have made comments. Corrections of the failings of his own interpretations are usually ignored.) He has set himself as sole arbiter of this; I suppose it is just another aspect of his hubris.

I always feel that his participation at Catallaxy is - literally - bad for his soul. It has allowed for an extremeness of expression, a serious lack of charity, and an obnoxious hubris to flow freely. I know that this makes me sound like a bit of a prig (and it's true I have said things there I shouldn't have at times too) - but it's a sincerely held view, and I have suggested as much to him before in comments, but to no obvious effect. The constant puzzle is whether he knows he is using misrepresentation and truth twisting of other's arguments with full knowledge that it is wrong (but, I am guessing, rationalised as part of a mere "game",) or whether he is psychologically incapable of recognizing wrongdoing in his tactics.

At the very least, his terminology and attitude to opposing views at Catallaxy constantly indicates a degree of combativeness that seems to show a certain bitterness of character, or perhaps frustration. A (possibly fictitious) character at another blog recently suggested he might be a wheelchair-bound invalid. Presumably, this is not true, as he has talked about swimming and jogging for fitness, but the funny thing was, I could understand where this amateur psychoanalysis came from. [Update: I forgot to mention: it recently occurred to me that, despite some at Catallaxy loving to accuse another blog identity of having "short man syndrome", I find it's actually a pretty good description of CL behaviour at Catallaxy.]

As with all attempts at character analysis from such material, there is a huge amount of guesswork involved here. It may also be that he's a regular saint in his private life. Difficult and prickly characters may be dislikeable yet achieve much that is very worthy. Yet it's hard to see why they can't do well without the baggage.

There: I have been meaning to deal with this ongoing puzzle here for some time. It's done.

Must do something else.

Update: noted at Catallaxy already. CL just latches onto the Catholic issue again. I'm starting to suspect he really is a monk.

It seems IT and Dover would like a character assessment. Maybe I should charge for it. Nah, it's free:

IT: a more-or-less harmless goose, who needs to be told every month or two that his gratuitous swearing and irrelevant sex and sexuality related insults to all and sundry that he disagrees with reflect more on his inability to mature past high school humour than his enemies. As with JC, part of his brashness at Catallaxy seems to be to compensate for having to be well behaved at home with a strict wife who knows how to keep him in line. In IT's case, it also seems to be part of a reaction against a conservative Christian upbringing. The fact that he sometimes uses moisturiser, has given up alcohol and (so he says) likes modern animated movies indicates he's not a completely insensitive twit; just primarily an insensitive twit.

dover-beach: relatively polite, shows signs of a reasoned conservatism on some issues, but also frequently the most incredibly, boringly, pedantic-yet-wrong debater since Steve McIntyre first made his tedious entry onto the internet. There's something about a girlfriend that Tal keeps mentioning, but I have absolutely no idea how old he is. I suspect he is another CL in that respect - sounds much older than he actually is.

Back soon (-ish)

Good for a giggle

Argentina gives Hugo Chavez press freedom award

An Argentina University, that is.

The university said it was giving Mr Chavez the Rodolfo Walsh award for "his commitment to defending the liberty of the people, consolidating Latin American unity, and defending human rights, truth and democratic values".

Update: as prompted by Jason, here's my animation of a key passage from the Gandhi letters in the news. (If anyone can suggest what an "eternal toothpick" is, I'm happy to hear it):



Update: I created two versions of this, and it's the first time I have tried using xtra normal. The second version had better timing in the dialogue, and I changed over to it here. But then the "camera angles" were worse. It seems you have no control at all over the angles that are used each time xtra normal "renders" the final product. I've therefore gone back to the first version. Meanwhile, I should be working. Oh well.

Happy place unhappy

All's not well at Tokyo Disneyland after quake

Tokyo Disneyland has not re-opened since the quake, not because of damage, but uncertainty over power supply. It remains unclear when it will be able to start up again.

Futurepundit wrote about Japanese power supply issues a couple of days ago. As he notes, this summer may not be the best one to be visiting the top half of Japan.

Not eBay, I trust

Used aircraft carrier up for sale

Britain has put aircraft carrier Ark Royal, the former flagship of the Royal Navy, up for sale on a military auction website.

Evolving delusions

Psychosis keeps up with the times � Mind Hacks

Well, we all knew this was true, didn't we? Still, it's an interesting enough topic (namely, how the content of delusions of those with psychosis tends to change with the type of technology and social concerns of the day.)

I remember thinking about this years ago when reading Evelyn Waugh's The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold, which was based on his own psychotic episode.

Answer: a definite "maybe"

Can caffeine make us healthy? - Features, Food & Drink - The Independent

The article talks about lots of different possible health effects of caffeine, and is quite interesting.

A good news, bad enough news, story

Radioactivity spreads in Japan : Nature News

This is a really good article at the link on the amount of radiation fallout from the Fukushima nuclear accident.

The good news: as everyone said from the start, it's not another Chernobyl:

Initial estimates suggest that Fukushima's reactors have emitted one-tenth of all the radioactive material released during the Chernobyl disaster in 1986, and prevailing winds have swept most of the radioactivity over the Pacific Ocean.

The bad news, however, is that there does seem to be a band of particularly heavy contamination in a path to the north-west of the reactors, extending well outside the 20 km evacuation zone:

The survey showed that the highest radioactivity doses on the ground (greater than 0.125 millisieverts per hour; mSv h⁻¹) were restricted to a narrow band within 40 km of the plant, stretching to the northwest (see 'Fukushima's fallout'). No values anywhere exceeded 0.3 mSv h⁻¹, a dose likely to cause adverse health effects in anyone continually exposed for a few months. Still, doses at some sites over the course of a year would top 1,000 mSv, enough to cause symptoms of radiation sickness, including nausea, hair loss and reduced white-blood-cell counts.

Much of the 20-km evacuation zone around the plant had far lower dose levels, below 0.012 mSv h⁻¹. Nevertheless, that corresponds to a potential annual dose of more than 100 mSv, more than five times the annual limit permitted for UK nuclear-industry workers. The patchy distribution of fallout reflects the role of wind patterns and rainfall in washing out radio­isotopes to the ground. Overall, Smith says he was "relieved" by the data, as they suggest that contamination around Fukushima will be much lower than that seen around Chernobyl.

But some areas of high contamination seem to lie outside the exclusion zone. Soil samples taken on 20 March from a location 40 km northwest of the plant showed caesium-137 levels of 163,000 becquerels per kilogram (Bq kg⁻¹) and iodine-131 levels of 1,170,000 Bq kg⁻¹, according to Japan's science ministry. Acceptable contamination levels for areas used to grow crops are much lower, typically in the range of a few hundred Bq kg⁻¹. "If there are significant areas of caesium-137 soil concentration of the order of 100,000 Bq kg⁻¹, evacuation of these areas could be effectively permanent," says Smith.

Apart from the still very unclear issue of whether workers on site have received (or will receive) very dangerous doses of radiation, if anyone thinks that the need to permanently evacuate patches of land up to 40 km away is not a serious issue, they want their head read.

Update: an article at Physorg discusses how serious seawater contamination may be. Short answer: well, it shouldn't spread much, but expect some exclusion zone for quite some time:

the contamination from iodine 131 is short-lived because the element has a half life -- the pace at which it loses half of its radioactivity -- of only eight days.

"This means that after a few months, it will be harmless, basically," said Simon Boxall, a lecturer at Britain's National Oceanography Centre at the University of Southampton, southern England, who praised early measures to stop fishing around the plant after the March 11 disaster.

"What worries me more is if caesium and plutonium get into the system," he said, referring to two radioactive heavy metals whose half-lives are around 30 years and potentially thousands of years respectively.

"That's more concerning, because that can build up in the sediments" of the sea bed at Fukushima, said Boxall.

At high levels, this could lead to the imposition of an exclusion zone of catches of fish and seafood, a measure that could last "years and years," he said.

"It's hard to know (how long) until they start taking measurements and determine how extensive the pollution is.

"You would basically not fish in an exclusion zone, period. And beyond the exclusion zone there would be an additional zone where you would come from time to time and see if there's any radioactivity."

Latham on climate change

I would not have picked Mark Latham as a climate change believer, but that seems to be the message from this report in the SMH:

If the ALP is to be rescued, Mr Latham's view is that it needs to improve its "abysmal" understanding of the Greens and to realise that climate change will be the major electoral issue for the next 100 years.

On the same subject, he is disparaging of Ms Gillard's performance and of her ability to tackle climate change with conviction.

"It's too late," he said.

"Conviction comes from believing in something.

"If you believed in action on climate change you wouldn't have advised Kevin Rudd to drop the emissions trading scheme.

"And if she believed in climate change and carbon tax she wouldn't have promised not to introduce it during the election campaign.

"Conviction politics is not something you can invent or find at the bottom of the garden.

"You've actually got to believe it and do it from day one."

I suppose I should be pleased, but with Latham, it's hard to tell if that is the appropriate response.

Great entertainment families

Salon features a review of a new biography of Edith Piaf. I didn't see the movie about her a couple of years ago, but the article notes that, if anything, it underplayed the turmoil of her life.

But my favourite little bit of information is in the middle of this bit about her show biz family origins:

The singer was born Edith Giovanna Gassion, in 1915 -- and not on the city pavement, as she claimed, but in the Tenon Hospital in Belleville, a working-class area in eastern Paris.... Her father, Louis Gassion, was an acrobat (just 5 feet tall, he passed on his diminutive form to his daughter); her mother, Annetta, was a would-be singer whose own mother presided over a flea circus. As if this background wasn't disreputable enough, the feckless Annetta, an alcoholic and drug addict, abandoned the child when she was still a baby and went on to pursue an independent singing career under the name of Line Marsa. As in the vast majority of such cases, Edith never got over this primal rejection.

Louis Gassion was slightly more dependable. His own life was not stable enough to include a baby, so he took Edith to live with his parents in the town of Bernay in Normandy. Her grandmother, known as Maman Tine, was the manageress of what was euphemistically known as a maison de tolérance, essentially a whorehouse with legal standing.

Unbalanced?

I was just reading a Pajamas Media article on radiation doses which I didn't find particularly helpful, only to note in comments, following one that says Fox News on politics is generally fair and balanced:

I don’t find FOX fair or balanced. they do have a strong liberal / socialist bias in many of the programs. all in all they are not that conservative.

there are a few that are ..but they are in the minority.

There you go.

Conspiracy corner

I've never bothered reading much of anti climate change activist Jo Nova's blog: she has always struck me as dishonest and simply interested in disinformation.

Lately, however, she has been mentioned more often at Catallaxy, with links to her blog from the (generally gentlemanly in tone) Rafe. She has frequently had a mention at Andrew Bolt's blog too.

What I did not realise til now (or had forgotten?) is that she is married to the other climate change figure David Evans. And, it turns out, both of them are into financial market conspiracies. Evans ends a 2009 article with this (copied from a lengthy post on Watching the Deniers which is well worth reading in full):

“…There are a small number of families who, over the centuries, have amassed wealth through financial rent seeking. They are leading members of the paper aristocracy. For example, the Rothschild’s are the biggest banking family in Europe, and were reputed to own half of all western industry in 1900. That sort of wealth doesn’t just dissipate, because unless the managers are incompetent the wealth tends to concentrate. The banking families don’t work for a living in the normal sense, like the rest of us. They avoid scrutiny and envy by blending in and make themselves invisible. Since they own or influence all sorts of media organizations, it isn’t too hard. There are unsubstantiated rumors and conspiracy theories, but nobody can really credibly say how much wealth and influence they have…

…Perhaps today’s fiat currencies—the US dollar, pound, yen and so on—will go up in smoke in an inflationary crescendo in the next few years, perhaps as planned by the paper aristocracy. Maybe they will reintroduce an asset backed currency. And guess who has all the gold? Those banking families have been salting it away for years. Possibly a global currency, so one cannot escape the predations of the paper aristocracy. This is not just about money, but about power, of course. Anyway, these are only unsubstantiated rumors. We shall see.

Well, there you go. This is the dog whistling that goes on in the Jo Nova household. Does Rafe know about this type of stuff?

I had not understood the League of Rights apparent interest in the No Carbon Tax rally last week. Now I do.

Quite true

How to tweet bile without alienating people. Or making 13-year-old girls cry | Charlie Brooker | Comment is free | The Guardian

I usually only check in on Twitter if there is a breaking big news story to see if anyone close to the scene has anything useful to add, and suspect that, along with Facebook, it is a social communication method that probably causes more harm than good. Brooker is quite correct when he discusses the Twitter attack on that Rebecca Black (the girl with the crook song):

Not so long ago, if you wanted to issue a 13-year-old girl with a blood-curdling death threat, you had to scrawl it on a sheet of paper, wrap it round a brick, hurl it through her bedroom window, and scarper before her dad ran out of the front door to beat you insensible with a dustbuster. Now, thanks to Twitter, hundreds of thousands of people can simultaneously surround her online screaming abuse until she bursts into tears. Hooray for civilisation....

Twitter is great for disseminating news, trivia and practical instructions on when and where to meet up in order to overthrow the government, but it also doubles as a hothouse in which viral outbreaks of witless bullying can be incubated and unleashed before anyone knows what's happening. Partly because it forces users to communicate in terse sentences, but mainly because it's public. Many tweeters end up performing their opinions, theatrically overstating their viewpoint to impress their friends. Just like newspaper columnists – but somehow even worse because there's no editor to keep their excesses in check or demand a basic level of wit or ability.

And unlike columnists, they often aim their comments at an individual by addressing their username directly: the equivalent of texting hate mail straight to their phone.

White haired jerk

There was an interesting interview with journalist Andrew Fowler on Radio National Breakfast about Julian Assange. (Fowler has a book out about him.)

I don't recall reading before that Assange has at least two children by two different mothers, both of which he refuses to talk about (citing "security"), yet it also seems a very good bet that he has nothing to do with them. Fowler believes that although Assange is quite a hit with the ladies, so to speak, Julian does not understand them. More likely he's just too arrogant to believe it's ever worth wearing a condom.

The New York Times last weekend featured a slightly amusing Youtube video built around the story of a couple who had Julian as a house guest who would not leave until he was literally thrown out. Many in the comments pointed out that the video was not really done that well (true), but more interesting were those who saw this as part of a campaign against a hero.

I can't see it that way. Julian loves openness; the openness to understand him as a complete jerk is just collateral damage from his views.

No doubt about it

The reaction by AGW inactionists to Tim Flannery's comments about the Earth not cooling for hundreds of years even if all CO2 production stopped tomorrow shows absolutely, positively, without any doubt at all, that they are contemptibly thoughtless on the topic and doggedly dishonest.

This includes Tony Abbott, quoted in the press as saying in Parliament yesterday:

"It will not make a difference for 1000 years," the Opposition Leader told parliament. "So this is a government which is proposing to put at risk our manufacturing industry, to penalise struggling families, to make a tough situation worse for millions of households right around Australia. And for what? To make not a scrap of difference to the environment any time in the next 1000 years."

If anyone is in any doubt at all how this is a clear misrepresentation of Flannery's words, have a read of the quote from the scientifically ignorant, routinely offensive, misrepresenting and absurd commenter CL* at the blog the "centre right" has when it doesn't want to be taken seriously. He thought the quote supported his earlier claim that Flannery was saying that nothing humans did would influence the temperature at all for 1,000 years. (I give credit to Ken n and Jarrah for attempting to correct him, but really, this thread is like the rolled gold proof that it is entirely useless to engage at that blog in any debate at on climate change.)

Malcolm Turnbull and his supporters must really be grinding their teeth at Abbott's buying into populist misrepresentation.

* I suppose, however, I have to give him credit on another thread for arguing against the death penalty in Australia. I hate it when commentators who are wrong most of the time are right about something!

More to be said later

Jury in Darcey Freeman bridge murder trial struggling for verdict | News.com.au

I find this very surprising, but given my famously widespread influence (ha) I guess I should not talk about it yet.

Update: so he's been found guilty.

Given all the usual cautions that it is hard to judge a trial from media reports, I have to say I found it extraordinarily hard to believe that the jury could have members who would be swayed by the one psychiatrist in six who examined Freeman long after the events and found that he was acting in a "dissociative state" at the time of the offence. Here's one of the longer reports of that evidence:

Earlier, Professor Burrows told the court that when he first met 37-year-old Arthur Freeman at the Melbourne Remand Centre last year he thought "this man may have a defence".

Professor Burrows told the jury that after examining Freeman twice more, he came to the conclusion he was in a "dissociative state" caused by depression.

Arthur Freeman does not dispute he threw his daughter off the bridge, but he has pleaded not guilty to murder by reason of mental impairment.

Professor Burrows told the court "we're talking about a man who was at the severe end of the condition" and that Freeman "didn't know what was going on".

He told the court that Freeman still does not believe he threw his daughter off the bridge, but that other people have told him he did it, so "he accepts that".

As far as I know, Freeman did not give evidence himself.

As against the dissociative state, there was this evidence:

Dr Skinner told the jury Mr Freeman's phone call to his former wife Peta Barnes, in which he said she would never see her kids again, suggested he knew what was happening and showed his intentions.

"There is no evidence to suggest that Mr Freeman was incapable of forming intentions," she read. "He was able to organise packing his car, to drive to Melbourne and to make phone calls."

The method of killing was far from spontaneous, and with the telephone call to his wife to "say goodbye to the kids", how is it that the jury had any member who believed he was not capable of forming intention?

I presume someone on the jury must have been persuaded by his apparent breakdown at the court afterwards. If anything, I think the evidence of that showed he was in no dissociative state at all: he knew what had happened and was already appalled at what he had done.

The more worrying possibility is that some jury members simply could not credit that any father not in a state of mental illness could kill his child in such a fashion. In fact, this defence by incredulity, as it were, was specifically run by his Counsel:

"Doesn't his act, don't all his actions, scream at us madness? What we say to you is, his impaired mind caused him to do this."

What an amazingly glib and convenient argument this is, yet it looks as if had a chance of working.

Jury trials can be a worry.

Talking iPad

I liked James Lilek's recent post about conversations concerning his iPad.

Radiation confusion

The stoic James Annan in Tokyo, who has not been inclined to worry about Fukushima unduly, is nonetheless sounding irritated with the TEPCO and Japanese government handling of information about radiation leaks around Fukushima. You can also learn a bit about how unclear the issue is by reading his previous post (and comments) about radiation here.

The news this morning does little to encourage faith in how TEPCO is handling it all:

THE company responsible for the Fukushima power station evacuated it again after immense levels of radiation were detected in the cooling system of one reactor.

At one point radiation of 1000 milli-sieverts per hour - a potentially lethal level said to be 10 million times higher than normal - was measured, although the Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) later said that the reading was a mistake, which had not been double-checked because workers had then fled the building.

It was nevertheless clear that the situation remains unstable and that radiation continues to escape from the reactor containers.

There's clearly a need for robust, radiation reading robots.

No name too silly

The BBC has an interesting story up about the extraordinary popularity of odd names in the Philippines.    Funny isn’t it:  when Australians do it, it seems all precious and (often, but not always) rather “bogan”;  somehow, when it’s the Philippines, it just seems wryly amusing.   I was most surprised at this bit:

But the main thing Spain gave to the Philippines was Catholicism, and with it, tens of thousands of newly-christened Marias and Joses.

With the Americans came names like Butch, Buffy and Junior - and the propensity to shorten everything if at all possible.

Perhaps it is the combination of these two influences which has led to names like Jejomar - short for Jesus Joseph Mary.

The current vice president is called Jejomar Binay.

Wow.

Passive safety in the news

I posted very quickly on the importance of passive safety designs for future nuclear after the Fukushima accident, and now I see there is a fair bit of media talk on the subject (including about my old interest – pebble bed reactors.) Here are some articles:

* the New York Times talks about China pressing ahead with pebble bed. Lots of good points in a straight forward explanation. (It notes that the South Africans got stuck on using turbines that were to use the helium coolant directly. China is using the helium to boil water for less sophisticated steam turbines.)

I see that the Chinese program director is quoted as saying that pebble bed is yet to prove itself as cost effective as old style nuclear:

“The safety is no question,” Dr. Xu said, “but the economics are not so clear.”

Um, I think nuclear has to give safety the absolute priority at the moment, if its to go anywhere at all.

* Bloomberg had a longer article looking at passive safety generally. Pebble beds get a good mention too. It notes the passive safety in the new Westinghouse model:

The new Westinghouse AP1000 (the AP stands for Advanced Passive), for example, has a huge emergency water reservoir above the reactor vessel that’s held back by valves.

If the cooling system fails, the valves open and a highly reliable force takes over: gravity. Water pours down to cool the outside of the containment vessel. Then another highly reliable force, convection, kicks in. As the water turns to steam, it rises. Then it cools under the roof, turns back into a liquid, and pours down again.

Westinghouse estimates that the pool contains enough water to last three days, after which pumps operated by diesel generators are supposed to kick in and add water from an on-site lake.

Hmm. Doesn’t sound anywhere near as good as a pebble bed to me: get a crack in the vessel, and there goes your passive safety in a long stream of steam. Still, better than the older models, of course.

* Some in South Africa seem to be regretting that they gave up on pebble bed, just at a time it suddenly looks very attractive again:

Analysts have said the pebble-bed option is one the state and industry should reconsider on safety and other grounds.

"The reactor would not need any external cooling. It would cool itself. It's walk-away safe," said Kelvin Kemm, a Pretoria-based nuclear physicist.

But he said the programme may need to be industry-led, after South Africa invested nearly 10 billion rand in developing it over a decade before putting it on ice as it lacked a clear business case.

"There is lots of merit for the technology, specifically for building power plants away from places where you could potentially have tsunamis," said Cornelis van der Waal, an analyst at consultancy Frost & Sullivan.

Pebble-bed reactors are modular in nature and as they do not need a lot of water can be built away from coastal areas.

This modular nature, and the ability to not site them near major water bodies, seems to me to be a very important feature for Australia, where every bit of coast line any where near population centres is loved and used by someone.

Ah well, I’m feeling some vindication for saying for years that they sound like a good idea. (And cue music for “If I Ruled the World”.)