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The Weekley News Digest, January 13, 2013 ___________________________________________________________________
M I S B E H A V I N G S U N D E L A Y S S PA C E S TAT I O N S U P P LY F L I G H T Although the solar storm barely rated moderate, some passenger jets were being diverted from the poles to avoid potential communication and health issues. GPS devices also were at risk. But the six men aboard the space station were safe from the solar fallout, NASA said, and satellites also faced no threat. The Cygnus cargo ship aboard the rocket, for example, is built to withstand radiation from solar flare-ups. The storm also will push the colorful northern lights farther south than usual to the northern U.S.
NASA shows the International Space Station with the Earth in the background made from the space shuttle Atlantis after undocking. On Wednesday, Jan. 8, 2014, NASA said the White House was poised to announce an extension of the space station’s lifetime until at least 2024. The previous end-of-life date was 2020
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) -- A strong solar storm is interfering with the latest grocery run to the International Space Station. On the bright side, the orbiting lab has won a four-year extension, pushing its projected end-of-lifetime to at least 2024, a full decade from now. “This is a big plus for us,” said NASA’s human exploration chief, Bill Gerstenmaier. On Wednesday, Orbital Sciences Corp. delayed its space station delivery mission for the third time. Another launch attempt will be made Thursday afternoon. The company’s unmanned rocket, the Antares, was set to blast off from Wallops Island, Va., with a capsule full of supplies and science experiments, including ants for an educational project. But several hours before Wednesday afternoon’s planned flight, company officials took the unusual step of postponing the launch for fear that solar radiation could doom the rocket. Orbital Sciences’ chief technical officer, Antonio Elias, said solar particles might interfere with electronics equipment in the rocket, and lead to a launch failure. After evaluating the situation all day Wednesday, Orbital Sciences decided to aim for Thursday at 1:07 p.m. EST. The solar flare peaked Tuesday afternoon and more activity was expected, but the company determined that the space weather was within acceptable risk levels. The sun is at the peak of a weak 11-year storm cycle.
The Cygnus was supposed to fly in December, but a breakdown in the space station’s cooling system required repairs by spacewalking astronauts. The repair job, which was completed on Christmas Eve, bumped the supply mission to this week. Then frigid temperatures forced a launch delay from Tuesday to Wednesday. Then came the sun - at full force. Frank Culbertson, an executive vice president for Virginia-based Orbital Sciences, said the delays can be frustrating, but he pointed out there’s nothing wrong with the rocket itself. “All we’re really delaying is the success that’s going to come when we execute this mission,” he told reporters. NASA is using two private companies - Orbital Sciences and the California-based SpaceX - to keep the space station stocked. The space agency turned to private industry for help following the space shuttle program; the last shuttle flight was in 2011. Russia, Europe and Japan also periodically launch supply ships. Russia corners the space station market, though, on astronaut travel.
That’s good news for scientific research aboard the orbiting lab, Gerstenmaier said. The first space station piece rocketed into orbit in 1998. Construction ended the same year the shuttle program did, allowing inhabitants to concentrate on research. The major partners in the station are the U.S., Russia, Canada, Japan and the European Space Agency.
Reactor 3 itself contained 566 fuel rods, and has experienced a complete meltdown. The location of the molten fuel, known as ‘corium’, is unknown, but it may have burnt its way through the reactor base and entered the underlying soil.
The Reactor 3 fuel storage pond still houses an estimated 89 tonnes of the plutonium-based MOX nuclear fuel employed by the reactor, composed of 514 fuel rods. Ever since the explosion Tepco has been concerned that if the spent fuel storage pond dries out, the intensely radioactive spent fuel rods would melt down and produce further significant radioactive emissions. One possibility is that this process may now be taking place. In the
When computer models estimated that the national average daily temperature for the Lower 48 states dropped to 17.9 degrees on Monday, it was the first deep freeze of that magnitude in 17 years, according to Greg Carbin, warning meteorologist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. That stretch - from Jan. 13, 1997 to Monday - is by far the longest the U.S. has gone without the national average plunging below 18 degrees, according to a database of daytime winter temperatures starting in January 1900. In the past 115 years, there have been 58 days when the national average temperature dropped below 18. Carbin said those occurrences often happen in periods that last several days so it makes more sense to talk about cold outbreaks instead of cold days. There have been 27 distinct cold snaps. Between 1970 and 1989, a dozen such events occurred, but there were only two in the 1990s and then none until Monday. “These types of events have actually become more infrequent than they were in the past,” said Carbin, who works at the Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla. “This is why there was such a big buzz because people have such short memories.”
The coldest day for the Lower 48 since 1900 - as calculated by the computer models - was 12 degrees on Christmas Eve 1983, nearly 6 degrees chillier than Monday.
Possibility 2: ‘corium’ has reached groundwater
Possibility 1: a meltdown is taking place
Until recently.
The White House, meanwhile, is poised to announce an extension of the space station’s lifetime until at least 2024, according to NASA. The previous end-of-life date was 2020.
This explanation appears to be relatively improbable, however, and no official warnings have been released on either side of the Pacific.
However it does not know the cause of the steam. Lethal levels of radiation and the physical damage to the structure have so far made entry and inspection impossible.
As the world warms, the United States is getting fewer bitter cold spells like the one that gripped much of the nation this week. So when a deep freeze strikes, scientists say, it seems more unprecedented than it really is. An Associated Press analysis of the daily national winter temperature shows that cold extremes have happened about once every four years since 1900.
Said Jeff Masters, meteorology director of the private firm Weather Underground: “It’s become a lot harder to get these extreme (cold) outbreaks in a planet that’s warming.”
event of water loss from the pond, the water would begin to overheat and produce clouds of steam, prior to a complete meltdown. If this is the case then a second major nuclear disaster at Fukushima is in the making.
And now fresh plumes of steam have been seen coming out the structure. These have now been confirmed by Tepco, the owner of the nuclear plant, from 19th December onwards. The company believes the steam is coming from the fifth floor of the building.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- We’ve become weather wimps.
NASA astronauts are hitching rides on Russian Soyuz capsules until American companies are ready to launch human crews. Gerstenmaier said that should happen by 2017. NASA will evaluate the proposals again this spring before deciding whether to buy more Soyuz seats for that year and beyond, he said. Each seat costs many tens of millions of dollars.
The Mystery Plume Rising Over Fukushima’s Reactor 3
Fukushima’s Reactor Building 3 exploded on 13th March 2011 as a result of a hydrogen buildup, breaching the building’s containment and emitting a huge plume of radiation. The reactor itself is in meltdown.
S C I E N T I S T S : AMERICANS ARE B E C O M I N G W E AT H E R
This would also produce steam as the hot corium came into contact with groundwater, while also releasing radioactive contamination to make its way into the Pacific Ocean. Possibility 3: rainwater on stray fuel elements / Reactor An alternative explanation is that the steam plumes could be caused by stray fuel pellets and reactor rod fragments – which themselves produce significant amounts of heat – coming into contact with rainwater percolating through the damaged and roofless structure. And of course the same water could be reaching the hot reactor vessel. According to a Fairewinds Energy Education posting on Facebook, the reactor is currently producing about 1 MW of heat, equivalent to 1,000 1KW electric fires, so enough to produce plenty of steam. This would provide the least worrying explanation for the steam, in that as the radioactivity continues decline so will the heat production and the volume of steam produced. If this explanation is correct, there is no reason expect any catastrophic outcome. However the steam is carrying considerable amounts of radiation into the atmosphere and represents an ongoing radiation hazard. Oliver Tickell edits the Ecologist, where this article originally appeared.
And Monday’s breathtaking chill? It was merely the 55th coldest day - averaged for the continental United States - since 1900.
The average daytime winter temperature is about 33 degrees, according to Carbin’s database. There have been far more unusually warm winter days in the U.S. than unusually cold ones. Since Jan. 1, 2000, only two days have ranked in the top 100 coldest: Monday and Tuesday. But there have been 13 in the top 100 warmest winter days, including the warmest since 1900: Dec. 3, 2012. And that pattern is exactly what climate scientists have been saying for years, that the world will get more warm extremes and fewer cold extremes. Nine of 11 outside climate scientists and meteorologists who reviewed the data for the AP said it showed that as the world warms from heat-trapping gas spewed by the burning of fossil fuels, winters are becoming milder. The world is getting more warm extremes and fewer cold extremes, they said. “We expect to see a lengthening of time between cold air outbreaks due to a warming climate, but 17 years between outbreaks is probably partially due to an unusual amount of natural variability,” or luck, Masters said in an email. “I expect we’ll go far fewer than 17 years before seeing the next cold air outbreak of this intensity. And the scientists dismiss global warming skeptics who claim one or two cold days somehow disproves climate change. “When your hands are freezing off trying to scrape the ice off your car, it can be all too tempting to say, `Where’s global warming now? I could use a little of that!’ But you know what? It’s not as cold as it used to be anymore,” Texas Tech University climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe said in an email. The recent cold spell, which was triggered by a frigid air mass known as the polar vortex that wandered way south of normal, could also be related to a relatively new theory that may prove a weather wild card, said Rutgers University climate scientist Jennifer Francis. Her theory, which has divided mainstream climate scientists, says that melting Arctic sea ice is changing polar weather, moving the jet stream and causing “more weirdness.” Ryan Maue, a meteorologist with the private firm Weather Bell Analytics who is skeptical about blaming global warming for weather extremes, dismisses Francis’ theory and said he has concerns about the accuracy of Carbin’s database. Maue has his own daily U.S. average temperature showing that Monday was colder than Carbin’s calculations. Still, he acknowledged that cold nationwide temperatures “occurred with more regularity in the past.” Many climate scientists say Americans are weather weenies who forgot what a truly cold winter is like. “I think that people’s memory about climate is really terrible,” Texas A&M University climate scientist Andrew Dessler wrote in an email. “So I think this cold event feels more extreme than it actually is because we’re just not used to really cold winters anymore.”