The Energy Question - Part 2

In the previous post, I had signed out saying that I preferred nuclear fusion to the solutions being bandied about. Nuclear fusion, even though it has the N-word, and even though it IS a radioactive waste emitter, still trumps as a better energy source. Since I am not a nuclear physicist, so please feel free to correct me if I have made a mistake, but from the literature I have read, I have become convinced that nuclear fusion is the fuel of tomorrow.

First, the statistics. The total water on earth is about 326 million trillion gallons. And lets assume that we will go for the deuterium cycle. Going for the deuterium-deuterium cycle has several advantages. 

1. We do not have to perform tritium enrichment from lithium, which is not a very widely available metal. And as Li-ion batteries gain in prominence, lithium is increasingly expected to become dearer.
2. The emitted radiation spectrum is softer, and can be more easily contained than the deuterium-tritium cycle.

However, the energy yield for deuterium-deuterium cycles are 68% less than that for the deuterium-tritium cycle. Higher pressure and temperature conditions are also needed, making it technologically challenging in the first place, but because of the wider availability of deuterium, more sustainable in the long run. Deuterium is an isotope of hydrogen and while the normal, garden variety hydrogen is devoid of neutrons, deuterium on the other hand contains a neutron in addition to the proton and the electron. Tritium is another isotope of hydrogens with two neutron compared to deuterium's one. Deuterium, tritium and hydrogen are almost chemically indistinguishable from each other, so wherever you collect a naturally available sample of hydrogen, expect to find some deuterium atoms in place of hydrogen. Thus water can be an excellent source of deuterium, with 5000 lires of water containing approximately about a liter of D20. Since the total water available on earth is about 326 million trillion gallons, we thus get 65200 trillion gallons of D2O approximately. Even at 10% efficiency the deuterium-deuterium fusion cycle gives 2000 GJ of energy per liter of D2O. At 100 times the current global energy consumption, fusion sources should last us out at least 10000 years. The average person in developed countries consumes around 10 times the energy of an average Indian, and as advanced technologies make processes increasingly fuel efficient, a 50000 year timeline for fusion to last us out is neither an impractical or improbable idea. 

The main bone of contention for environment groups is radiation. First of all remember that the process of fusion itself does NOT produce radioactive wastes. However due to neutron radiation being emitted the material surrounding the fusion core would become radioactive. However quoting Wikipedia,

"The half-life of the radioisotopes produced by fusion tend to be less than those from fission, so that the inventory decreases more rapidly. Unlike fission reactors, whose waste remains radioactive for thousands of years, most of the radioactive material in a fusion reactor would be the reactor core itself, which would be dangerous for about 50 years, and low-level waste another 100. Although this waste will be considerably more radioactive during those 50 years than fission waste, the very short half-life makes the process very attractive, as the waste management is fairly straightforward. By 300 years the material would have the same radioactivity as coal ash." 

In fusion the chance for catastrophic accidents like the Three Mile Island incident is inherently low. Fusion requires delicately calibrated and difficult to achieve conditions of heat, magnetic field and pressure to happen, and a slight change would just kill the reaction. Similarly after the reactor is stopped, the heat production stops immediately, unlike fission where the background reactions would continue for hours, generation heat. The plasma is burnt in near-optimal conditions, so any disruptions or accidents would actually cause the reaction to cool down or cease, instead of heating up. The fusion reactor is loaded with very small amounts of fuel thus making it inherently more safer, than the fission reactor.

And the benefits?

1. Energy deficiency a problem of the past.
2. Energy significantly cheaper
3. Nobody controls the oceans. So nobody controls the deuterium supply. No more oil embargoes or future "Iraq"s over oil.
4. Run cars on electricity, the technology for this is now remarkably developed, with electric cars available in the market. No more pollution too. Deuterium production will generate hydrogen too. Hydrogen technology too is developed enough to be put into production reality.
5. The problem of potable water can be translated to a problem of energy. So a sweet goodbye to water woes.
6. And last but not the least, another sweet goodbye, this time to petro-dollars, which would translate to a goodbye to terrorism, especially of the Salafist kind.

The good news is that several multi-billion dollar projects are underway to exploit fusion as a power source, like ITER, Joint European Torus or the National Ignition Facility. For future world peace and prosperity, we need fusion. Investing in fusion research is thus a must for us now. If due to distorted notions of political correctness or due to an irrational fear of anything nuclear, we do not seize this moment, then neither the history nor our environment will ever forgive us.

The Energy Question - Part 1

If you stay in a moderately big city and just  look around yourself, will understand that we humans are addicted to energy. We need it in almost every step of our life and in fact our whole economy is underpinned by energy. Remove the source of energy and our whole economy will come crashing down like a pack of cards which no amount of bailout packages will be able to revive. At current rates of consumption our oil sources may last us out a hundred years or so. But the problem with fuel burning is the question of greenhouse gases and global warming. We may have the oil, but who is going to take care of the fumes? Several armchair intellectual organisations have proposed quite a wide array of solutions, with a wide range of practicalities, but none in my honest opinion, is practical enough. 

Foremost, among their plans is to decrease the average per capita energy consumption, and that too drastically. All this sounds quite noble but the majority of the world's population is located in the continents of Asia and Africa, and there too a significant proportion live in abject poverty. With an optimistic eye towards the future, I believe this population would within the next fifty or so years reach the status of developed nations. What does this entail? An exponential increase of energy demand. The global projected energy consumption is likely to shoot up by maybe an order of magnitude or more. The currently developed nations have hogged the energy resources of the world for more than three centuries now and even today contribute to the bulk of global pollution and global warming. India, with a population five times that of USA, consumes half as much as energy. This means that the average US citizen consumes almost 10 times as much energy as the average Indian. Most development projects in the modern world are energy dependent. As more and more agriculture will be mechanised to increase productivity, and larger tracts of lands are to come under irrigation, energy demands are bound to increase. Moreover, countries like India have still predominantly a rural agrarian population. This leads to significant underemployment in the agriculture sector. The economic condition of India cannot be improved without creation of a large number of jobs in the secondary, tertiary and quaternary sectors which necessarily entails a shift of the demographics from the rural to the urban, which again requires increased energy. It has been noted by several economists that as per capita income rises, if it outpaces inflation, then consumption also rises. A very poor man does not need anything, but a moderately solvent person will require a fan, while raise the income a bit higher, he demands an AC. Implicit in all these long-winded arguments is the increase of energy consumption. So, asking these nations to suddenly decrease their energy consumption even below their current consumption, smacks of downright neo-imperialism. And why will these countries agree to it also? Why will these countries sacrifice their progress in the altar of global good, when the priests themselves are the worst sinners? Hoping for a decrease in consumption thus to me is pure daydreaming with no grounding in practicality at all.

The second point raised by the green brigade is that we can switch over completely to non-conventional sources of energy. Quoting Greenpeace, "They are abundant, and we can obtain them now only." Both points are technically right, feels politically very correct yet stands on very weak operable principles. Just from the tone of their voice you can feel this was uttered by a history graduate whose knowledge of the energy problem starts and ends with some web surfing and whose contribution has mostly been sloganeering. Even though this solution appears quite practical at first, it however suffers from several fatal flaws in its reasoning. First of all is the implicit point is that non-conventional energy is cheap. This is quite wrong. Yes, they are damn cheap to run, but not to install. They have very high starting costs, and since they give typically far lower yields than most conventional sources you have to operate them for a period of hundred years or so before you can say they are cheaper. Second is another implicit assumption that global energy consumption will remain mostly the same, or will increase slightly. I have already refuted this in the previous paragraph and won't waste time by repeating myself. The third point of abundance is basically a half-truth. Global incident solar energy will cover twice your energy bills if harnessed by current technologies. But people forget that solar energy is a fickle source, that is not available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. You would thus need appropriate storage systems, driving up costs and wastage. Also it's energy density per unit area is very low, you would again drive up costs in building elaborate distribution systems, not to mention increased transmission losses. And finally to cover even our current energy bill, we need to cover almost 50% of the surface of the earth with solar cells! Thats almost laughable in its impracticality. Most of these arguments can be extended for wind, tidal and geothermal energy too. Except geothermal, almost all are fickle. And too little in amount to be the primary source. You may shout out "Iceland!" but the population of Iceland and India can never be compared. Such non-conventional sources can never be the primary source for large, populous nations. 

What we need now, even though it ticks all the right boxes, is nuclear fusion, the anathema of Greenpeace. Why we need urgent research on this topic and why the eco-political hijacking of anything nuclear must stop I will expand in my next post.

The Problem of IIT

I study at IIT. And being an IITian the default Indian assumption is that I get the best education India can possibly offer. Well yes, actually. I think the claim's quite correct, this is quite possibly India's best. But is it the best of India's potential? NO. Is it utilizing the best of students and professors? NO. Is the whole thing a big disappointment? A big yes.

Whats wrong?

Several things in fact. First and foremost is the fixation of the IIT system with mugging, means this is a system that rewards fighters a lot more than the genuine concept-oriented studs. Unfortunately, this tendency, aided and abetted by the semester style of learning, makes you forget what you learnt ultra quickly. So whats the use of cramming, or learning, or spending money if you truly don't learn anything. One of the most laughable excuses regarding this I had once heard from an IIT Kharagpur professor who told, "Well you see IIT students are all intelligent, it's not the learning that matters, what matters is these students can adapt to any corporation and can work in any field." IF, intelligence, not knowledge are what IIT students are famous for, then why create these institutions in the first place? Rather hold a PCM exam every year and declare the top 1000 or so students as winners. Track them 30 years later and beat your own drums.

Second is the over-emphasis on theoretical knowledge. By this I do not want to criticize theory in the slightest way, but to me it seems that the application component should be equally or even more important to an engineer. But sadly, application is severely neglected in several courses I know of.

The first time I came to IIT it was something of a culture shock. I had somehow during my IIT-JEE phase idolized IIT and when I finally came here the bitter realization dawned upon me that my idol did ultimately have clay feet. Over the last three years I have had several long discussions with my friends, and some of our grievances translated to solutions would be like the following:

• Make term papers must for every subject taught
• Abolish midsems. Instead use that time for holding term paper seminars where the whole department along with external evaluators attend. 
• Wherever possible, emphasize the industrial aspects of the course, and include industry visits.
• A good step taken has been to delink laboratories from their theory components and hold them as separate 2 credit courses but its still not enough. Make them 4 credit courses where the evaluation will not be through a viva-voce at the end, but continuous and throughout the semester.
• Make the students DO something in the lab. Make them do with their own hands. I cannot overemphasize this point. Its no use taking them to the AFM laboratory, show them a shining machine, while a PhD will talk about it for four hours. The very very serious students take notes at the front, most doze off at the back. And what do the students learn? Zilch. After all it ceases to become a decent lab, its just a guided tour of the Institute's experimental facilities.
• In the end semester exams, make every exam open-book. Set conceptual questions, not questions which will only test rote learning. If you can't set a decent open-book exam at the end it just shows that you have to either change the course or the teacher.
• Finally, do not teach courses that are fast becoming obsolete just for the historical necessity of it. Look forward. Don't keep the cutting-edge research topics at just graduate levels. Introduce their wonders to the BTechs too. They more than deserve it.

The First Post

Finally, after months of dilly-dallying I overcome my laziness to start a blog. This is more of a test post. Will start seriously soon.