A year with my car

It's been a year since I bought my 2001 Honda Civic.  Aside from some problems with the tires and a little routine maintenance, it's done very well.  Today I crunched some numbers regarding the cost to own the car and the fuel mileage it's been getting. Yeah, I keep all sorts of data when I fill up the car, get repairs, etc. I know, I'm a super-nerd.

So it's gotten an average of 35 mpg over the last year, which rocks. Also, including the purchase price of the car, inspections, insurance, gas, repairs, etc., it's cost me $0.80 per mile. That's not bad at all.

Centrifuge enrichment

So yesterday I had the probably-once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to visit a uranium enrichment facility, in Portsmouth, OH. It used to enrich with gaseous diffusion until the mid-80's when the slump in the industry caused it to shut down. At its peak, it was consuming 2500 MW of power, running up an electricity bill in the tens of millions per month.

Recently a company called USEC has leased the facility and classified centrifuge technology
from the Department of Energy. They have improved upon the centrifuge technology and set up a pilot cascade of about 12. Each centrifuge is about 45 feet tall, and has a capacity of around 350 SWU, around a factor of 10 larger than the european centrifuges. The centrifuges consume 5% of the power of the gaseous diffusion plants per SWU -- the technology level required (even if you had schematics you would still require high-tech materials and precision machining) is much higher than gaseous diffusion.

On the tour we got to see the outside of six of them assembled -- the inside of course is highly classified -- and walk through the building where they will work. (The part where their prototype cascade is built is sealed off from the area in which we were allowed to be escorted. There was a gate at the edge of the property, a fence around the whole building complex near the parking lot where we were badged, a fence inside the giant buildings where the centrifuges were to be housed, and finally the fourth covered fence inside of which only those with a Q clearance could enter.)

So this looks to be pretty promising. The main obstacle is that right now, enriched uranium imports are reduced by protective tariffs that will be disappearing at some point in the near future. It is unclear whether USEC can become operational before and cost-competitive at that time. If they are able to, then they will be making a lot of money, because once the megawatts-to-megatons program stops providing utilities with enriched uranium, and with the likely upsurge in nuclear power brought on by the impending energy crisis, the demand for enriched uranium will guarantee that these guys will be operating at full capacity.

Radium Ore Revigator

One thing I did while visiting Louisiana with family was go to a rural museum where they had lots of artifacts from the area from the '30s through the mid-19th century. There was one particularly interesting one (from a rad health point of view) was a "Radium ore revigator" which, according to this website, put vigor into "tired or wilted water," which, amusingly enough, isn't far from the modern-day quackery that you'll find in ads in the back of popular science.

Light pollution

Another issue that's been bugging me recently is the relatively great amount of light pollution that such a small town as College Station produces.

What is light pollution?

Light pollution occurs when an outdoor light shines not just at the ground but also into the air. An example would be the glowing spherical lights on a pole; roughly half of the light it emits goes straight up in the air.

What is wrong with light pollution?

Mainly two things.

1. It's a waste of energy. If the light pointed up were reflected down, that would increase the intensity of the light on the ground by roughly a factor of two; or, they could turn the power usage down to half and still get about the same brightness on the ground as the original lamp configuration.
2. It destroys the night sky. I'm not familiar with the exact numbers, but the magnitude of the stars that are visible in the sky drops dramatically. The weekend before last, I went to Enchanted Rock (a state park, plenty of distance away from bright cities), and when I took a look at the sky after it was dark, I was absolutely stunned by the sky (it had been a while since I had last been camping or far away from cities with a clear sky). At A&M, on the other hand, you look up on a clear night and you'll see a few stars and planets; on a cloudy day, you'll see a pink glow. From several miles away from the campus, you will still see a pink glow over where the lights are. This is not good.
   

What can I do to make light pollution go away?

Probably nothing. You could try petitioning the different people in charge, but sadly, chances favor their not caring. If they were to pay attention, you would tell them to modify their lamps so that they didn't shine straight up in the sky.

End of poorly assembled rant.