Cavalcade of Mammals

With an announcement by the DOE, that they sorta think COVID-19 leaked from a lab, the discussion is back on. But there is no new evidence, just a mention of ‘intel’.

I am not an intelligence professional, but I have a few related
questions. US intel on this could come from phone intercepts, emails
collected in real time or hacked out more recently, or from chatting
up Chinese virologists at conferences, etc., but this will give the US
at best a more limited view than the Chinese govt has. No doubt there
were calls, emails, reports issued, panic and alarm as China became
aware of the outbreak and tried to contain it. But how likely is it
that the Chinese govt or scientific officials knew the origins of
COVID-19 early on, or worked it out later on? If Chinese officials
don’t know, an effective intelligence operation can’t extract an
answer.

How could China know? If one or more people at the Wuhan Institute of
Virology came down with COVID-19, passed it on to family and
acquaintances, and then COVID-19 spread more widely, they could track
these connections. Classic gumshoe epidemiology. But that did not
happen.

Chinese doctors only became aware of a new disease in Dec 2019, health
officials jumped in by the end of Dec, and samples were collected from
Jan 2019 – March 2020 in the Wuhan market. These samples and those
from early cases in the region have all been sequenced, published, and
shared. This was close to the origin of the pandemic, and it is
unlikely China has any better information on what happened than the
rest of us have. COVID-19 passing into humans much earlier and only
becoming pandemic in 2019 is ruled out by the analysis of COVID-19
sequences.

The best guess at the origin of COVID-19 remains a couple of papers looking at the evidence, the epidemiological evidence of when and where early cases arose, and how it was transmitted, and the genomic evidence from sequencing of COVID-19 in early patients, and comparing these to each other to make a tree of early -> later virus genomes, and to see how the early viral genomes in human patients differ from wild relatives and samples found in the Wuhan live animal market. This sort of analysis can also provide estimates of time–how long the virus has been circulating in human hosts. (ref1, ref2, ref3).

In the Marvel movie, where Thanos snaps half the universe to dust. Incredibly, inexcusably stupid. Let’s take Earth as representative, the population doubles in ~50 years. So Thanos worked for decades, centuries (longer?), with heroic effort, developed an army that destroyed planets, and his big effort bought the universe 50 years?! Do these people not know basic math? Can’t think at all about population dynamics?

If Thanos had dusted 99% of people, it would have bought the universe 400 years. If he dusted 99.999% of people, he would have bought the universe 1000 years, maybe more if too few people survived to keep tech civilization humming along. So it’s all marginal, hardly changes anything.

So maybe Thanos doesn’t dust people, he dusts entire civilizations. If Thanos destroys 99.999% of civilizations, they again bounce back in 1000 years, but takes potentially more time to spread from planet to planet, say 100,000 years. Not nothing, but not that many years, 1 part in 100,000 of the age of the universe.

Thanos really needs to give his ‘less crowded universe’ plan more thought than the two seconds the scriptwriters / comic writer gave this.

In discussions of wind and solar power, sensible centrists always pop up with, “We must build new nuclear power plants too!”. And then mumble on about how nuclear power isn’t really dangerous, especially new designs, and talk about how nuclear power provides steady base load power which is necessary because wind and solar are intermittent.

For example, see this Freakonomics Radio podcast hosted by Stephen Dubner, which is noteworthy for never meationing the cost or relative cost of nuclear power. No economics in Freakonomics! And in a more reasonable discussion between host Ezra Klein and Jesse Jenkins covering a host of energy / decarbonization topics, nuclear power is boosted as a necessary component, again without a discussion of costs.

But this idea that nuclear power is necessary and complementary is mostly nonsense. Yes, nuclear power has killed very few people, and compares favorably in overall safety to coal power plants which cause plenty of deaths due to air pollution. But this argument is almost entirely off target.

The intermittency of wind and solar power is a big issue. Working out solutions for providing steady power in a grid powered mostly by wind and solar is the challenge for the next generation or two.

The thing is, nuclear power doesn’t help with that. Nuclear power plants are run full out except for maintenance (a capacity factor of 92%). What’s needed to complement solar and wind are power sources that are dispatchable and can be ramped up and down quickly. Hydroelectric power provides that in places like the US’s northwest that have lots of dams. And today gas peaker plants and coal plants provide fast and slow power that can be ramped up and down as needed.

And nuclear power is expensive, very, very, expensive. Today nuclear power costs 3-4X as much as solar and wind power. And that is market cost, excluding the subsidies provided by the federal government for nuclear power. Nuclear plants are insured by the US government. The costs of a meltdown are immense, from billions to hundreds of billions, and with a chance of a nuclear plant disaster of at least 1 in 165 over the life of a plant, the risk is substantial. Long term high level nuclear waste disposal has not been paid for or figured into costs–US nuclear plants store high level waste on site, along rivers and coasts, with the US government expected to handle final storage. And nuclear plant decommissioning will likely cost more than the collected funds account for.

So nuclear plants don’t make economic sense on their own and they do not complement wind and solar power generation.

What is needed to make a power grid with wind and solar the primary power sources able to provide reliable power? There needs to be ways of meeting short term (minute to minute), medium term (hourly and daily), and long term (days and weeks) interruptions in wind and solar power production. Short term irregularity can be met today with small grid storage and hydropower.

Dealing with the daily cycle of solar power production requires much larger grid storage, generally not available today, and/or large scale demand shifting not done today. Short periods of low wind are fairly common, and week- or month-long regional low wind is known to occur. Solar power production is lower on cloudy days, and varies seasonally.

It is not clear today what solutions will be used. Grid scale power storage is an active and promising R&D area. Over-capacity–having more solar and wind capacity than is needed will help, and solar and wind are already cheap enough for it to be economic, but this creates a new problem–what to do with the excess power generated during high periods.

Demand-shifting has a lot of promise, and will help with hourly and daily power demand balancing. Residential and industrial power use modulated by utilities is already in widespread use, mainly used to shave off peak demand and do modest demand shifting today, but there is much more potential, especially as electricity gets used more widely for heating water, cars, and homes.

For long periods with low wind and solar power production, other strategies are needed. Today, fossil fuel plants are used. Grid interconnects able to transfer substantial power between regions can be part of the solution–areas with low wind and heavy cloud cover are typically regional. Long-term, there is also potential for storage of energy in other forms–compressed air, hydrogen, or hydrocarbons. A round trip efficiency of ~25% is enough to make this practical.

So there are challenges to powering the grid mainly with wind and solar power, but nuclear power doesn’t help with solve them. If nuclear power with lower, competitive costs can be developed, then it is safe enough to use.

Several times I’ve run into the argument that renewable energy can’t supply enough energy, because it will take too much land and other resources to build. For example, “The most cost-effective of our net-zero scenarios, [wind] spans an area that is equal to Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee put together. And the solar farms are an area the size of Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts.” link.

That sounds off, so let’s check it out. The US has a total energy production capacity of 1.2 TW (2022). The US used about 4,000 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh) in 2022 (link). That works out to 38% utilization of the power generation capacity. Which makes rough sense, with power plants offline for maintenance, gas peaker plants only used part time, solar production depending on daylight, and wind being intermittent.

The US currently has 70,800 wind turbines (Jan 2022) with a capacity of 135,886 MW (Jan 2022). And the US has 120,503 MW of installed solar panels (2021). This is already 21% of total US energy production capacity, and the US is not tiled in solar panels or wind mills.

Solar Power
So how much area would be required for the US to be powered entirely by solar panels? Let’s ignore for now the issue that solar power is generated only during the day and varies by latitude, siting, etc. Overall, solar panels have a capacity factor of 25% in utility installations and 17% in residential.

Solar panels are rated at 200W / m2, so a capacity of 1.2 TW requires 6e9 m2 of solar panels. With 1e6 m2 per square kilometer, that works out to 6,000 km2. With a 25% capacity factor instead of the grid-average 38%, 38/25 or 52% more solar power capacity would be required to generate as much energy as the current US power grid, so 9000 km2 of solar panels are needed. The continental US has a area of 8.5 million km2, so about 0.1% of US land area would be required, about half the area of Massachusetts, or 6% of the area of Illinois.

So not “an area the size of Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts” along with a larger area for wind power, a list meant to sound impressive and discouraging. But the listed states are tiny, with a combined area of 35,000 km2. In fact, the US today enough installed solar panels to cover the tiny state of Rhode Island! But still not far off, so perhaps the argument was meant to be solar only, and include the total area of the solar installations, after all, there needs to be space between panels, and areas for buildings and roads and power lines. Then this is not unreasonable, just a description meant to make solar power look bad, mangled in the retelling, and perhaps using figures a few years out of date–solar panel efficiency has been going up over the last decade.

Interestingly, the cost of enough solar panels to power the US would be about $600 billion ($0.33/W), or $4 trillion ($2.25/W) for complete solar installations. The US currently spends $400 billion / year on electricity.

Interestingly, the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory may a detailed study of how much solar power could be generated just from rooftops, and estimated rooftop solar has the potential to generate 40% of US electric power (link).

Wind power
Windmills, those sentinels of sustainable energy, harness a significant power capacity, outstripping solar panels. In the U.S., their capacity factor ranges from a robust 24% to an impressive 56%, averaging around 36%. Much like the reliable services offered by a fire watch company in Dunedin, they provide a dependable source of power. Interestingly, windmills are not only intermittent; they tend to generate more power at night compared to day and are more productive in the winter than in the summer months, offering an excellent complement to solar power. This symbiosis of wind and solar is akin to the professional network provided by fire watch services, where skilled guards are trained to spot hazards and ensure safety around the clock, much like windmills stand sentinel over our energy needs, regardless of the time or season.

Let’s do some estimates using wind mills of a typical size, 3 MW. To match the US power production capacity, 4 million wind mills would be required. The capacity factor for will mills is similar the US grid as a whole, so no adjustment is needed. Wind mills need to be spaced out so they don’t block each other’s wind. Minimal spacing (link) works out to one per acre or 250 per km2. So 4 million wind mills will require 16,000 km2. Not even a fraction of an “area that is equal to Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee” of 553 km2. Which is 3/4 the area of Massachusetts, or 11% of the area of Illinois. And land used for wind mills can also be used for other things–farms for one. The ground footprint of wind mills is only a fraction of their spacing.

The US grid already includes 6.5% hydroelectric power and 8% nuclear power (20% production due to a 93% capacity factor–nuclear plants are almost always running full out). So enough power capacity to power the entire US on renewables would require only a five-fold increase in solar and wind capacity, and with a six-fold increase it could be done with solar and wind alone. This seems eminently doable.

Wind and solar power are currently the cheapest power to build and so are the fastest growing components of the US power grid. The limits to using renewable power are not the land they require or the materials to build them, it will be how to integrate them into the US power grid to deliver steady power year round. Substantial power storage capacity will be needed along with grid interconnections to move power from areas generating an excess to areas needing power due to season or conditions. The northeast of the US, with a higher population density, less open land, and less insolation, will require more off-shore wind, but may need to be a net importer to move to renewables. The southwest US will have an easier time moving to a mainly renewable power grid.

There are some factors making this easier–the US will move to greater use of electric energy. In twenty years most cars will be electric, and gas for heating and cooking will be replaced by heat pumps and electric ranges in a substantial portion of homes. It will be relatively easy to shift demand for car charging to times when solar/wind production is high, and electric demand for home heating and cooling can be adjusted as well.

David Brin, in a comment on his blog describes Elon Musk as a ‘successful innovator’ rather than an investor or government subsidy truffle pig. Brin seems to be under the impression that Solar City “put up 2 million solar roofs”.

As best I can find, Tesla has only installed a few thousand ‘Solar Roofs’. Electrek reported in 2022 that Tesla was doing 23 installs / week, and was pausing installations. Tesla started mass market deployments of the product in 2020.

Tesla bought SolarCity in 2016. SolarCity does mainly ordinary solar panel installations, and Tesla uses combined figures to make it seem like the ‘Solar Roof’ product is more successful. The Tesla ‘Solar Roof’ costs several times more per watt that ordinary solar panels, and doesn’t make economic sense.

profiles status -type enrollment

A Tale of Two Telescopes: WFIRST and Hubble

How much economic growth is necessary to reduce global poverty substantially? by Max Roser
“Adjusted for the purchasing power in each country, 85% of the world population live on less than $30 per day.

Why Does It Take So Long to Count Mail Ballots in Key States? Blame Legislatures: The slow count of mail ballots has been used to cast doubt on election results, but these delays are a deliberate choice by lawmakers in battleground states.

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A Deepness in the Sky (1999) by Vernor Vinge. The Emergent mindrot virus, a tech of neurotoxins and a device that induces obsession with a single idea or specialty, called Focus, turning people into brilliant appliances.

“I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream” (1967) is a post-apocalyptic science fiction short story by American writer Harlan Ellison. The AI “AM” tortures the last surviving humans.

The Jesus Incident (1979) by Frank Herbert and Bill Ransom. Sequel to is Destination: Void. Ship develops super intelligence, the ability to manipulate space and time, and demands WorShip.

Stand on Zanzibar (1968) and The Sheep Look Up (1972) by John Brunner. Overpopulation and resource depletion have degraded life. Explores all the little ways the breakdown affects the characters and compounds.

Venus of Dreams (1986) and sequels by Pamela Sargent. The world government, a bureaucracy that sees social order as its prime goal, is a bleak but depressingly plausible future. The government suppresses individuality, initiative, and change. Strong resonance with the historic Chinese empire and current Chinese efforts to use technology to control and channel society.

The Space Merchants (1952) by Frederik Pohl and Cyril M. Kornbluth. Also The Merchants’ War (1984). Hyper-consumerism and advertising have destroyed society. Businesses run everything, run the political system as a product line. Through advertising, the public is deluded into thinking that the quality of life is improved by all the products placed on the market. Some products are highly addictive. The most basic elements of life are incredibly scarce, including water and fuel.

Broken Earth series: The Fifth Season (2015), The Obelisk Gate (2016), The Stone Sky (2017) by N.K. Jemisin. The system used to control the orogenes is brutal.

Xenogenesis / Lilith’s Brood series: Dawn (1987), Adulthood Rites (1988), Imago (1989) by Octavia E. Butler. Dystopic series starts with Lilith is held captive by strange aliens and interbreed with an alien of the ‘third sex’.

Classic stories

Make Room! Make Room! (1966) by Harry Harrison.

A waterjet is fast moving water:
waterjet water speed at 40,000 psi = 680 m/s
waterjet water speed at 60,000 psi = 1021 m/s

A pressure washer gives water a speed of 110 m/s.

How fast can a centrifuge spin? Ultracentrifuge speed:
centrifuge spins at 1e5 rpm, has a 10 cm radius rotor.
This give a speed at the rim of:
45 cm rotor circumference at the bottom of the tube
1e5/60 rotations / sec
0.45m/60 x 1e5 = 7.5e2 m/s
So a centrifuge does get water moving fast enough to act as a waterjet.

To turn the rotor spin into a line of water drops, open a door in the bottom of the rotor as the rotor passes a certain point in every spin (1000-2000 times / sec).

If the door is open for 10 us, the rotor will spin 1.5mm.
If the door is open for 1 us, the rotor will spin 0.15 mm.
The water stream will come out in a line, so the resolution in the other dimension can be finer, with the waterjet spread out along the direction of the cut.

A door can’t be mechanically opened and closed that fast, 1 ms is likely the limit.

But a reasonable solution is a rotating (or vibrating) plate with a hole, say spinning 1000/s (or 100/s, opening only every tenth pass), and synchronized with the main rotor spin so opening appeared at the same point along the edge. This would tend to torque the main rotor, but it might be tolerable.

This would give a waterjet with slower cutting–the drop density is 1:1000 or 1:10,000 of a stream.

The rotor would need to be refilled and have enough power to accelerate the new water, and solidly built enough to overcome vibration/torque. And fast centrifuges are expensive.

A micofuge will only give a water speed of 125 m/s.