Panos for Progress: Thoughts and Selections

  The September 7, 2024 issue of the Economist has this provocative title on its cover page.  Strong words but they back their statement up with substantial research: They used data from 7.5m crashes in 14 States for ten years (2013-2023. They found that "for every 10,000 crashes the heaviest vehicles kill 37 people in the other car, compared with 5.7 for cars of a median weight and just 2.6 for the lightest." Vehicles have been getting heftier over time, but a big culprit are pickup trucks, large SUvs and EVs. For example, ehe Ford F-150 Lightning weighs ~40% more than its gasoline version. EPA figures show that the average new car in the US weights 4,4000 lbs compared to 3,300 lbs in EU and 2,600 lbs in Japan. "Individually, it is rational for people to buy bigger cars. As Tony Soprano once said to his son A.J. when discussing SUVs, So you want to be the sucker in a regular car who gets decapitated? Yet the sum of those decisions is much more lethal roads, as well as

The main causes of disruptions in recent years include the following. 1. Panama canal throughput reduction due to a draught. Current situation, about 33% reduction . 2. Suez canal throughput reduction due to a hostile action by Huthis in Yemen. Current situation,  about 67% reduction . 3. Baltimore harbor complete blockage due to the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge . On April 26, 2024 the Dali containership lost all power and control, and collided with a bridge support. 4. Suez canal throughput reduction due to blockage. The 400 meter, 20,000 TEU containership EVERGREEN Ever Given was stuck for six days in 2021 . 5. Stevedore and other worker union strikes at ports, like the looming strike in September 2024 affecting 14 ports stretching from Maine to Houston. 6. Traffic congestion and other obstructions to access at major ports. (The most common disruption of transportation in rivers is drought and flooding.)

The Wall Street Journal reports that Columbus, OH, Memphis, TN., and Milwaukee. WI have some of the fastest commutes, about 22 minutes one way:  The Cities With the Fastest Car Commutes Ten years ago I had a similar plan for Honolulu! But its political leaders insisted on using 19th century technology and have been trying to plan-design-construct an elevated steel-wheel on steel-rail electric train since ... 2006.  After spending well over $10 billion only half of the 20 promised miles were opened in 2023 to abysmal ridership.  The forecast for the 20 mile line was for 105,000 daily boardings. The 10 mile line has a daily ridership below 5,000! The HART rail is located on Oahu in greater Honolulu area. If you thought that 105,000 trips a day is a big deal, you'd be wrong. About 4 million trips occur on Oahu every day. With the best conditions possible, HART rail will relieve traffic congestion by about 2%.  How about it... $16 billion of wasted public monies for a 2% improvement! 

Although cured expanding foam is not considered hazardous by the EPA, it needs to be disposed of properly . Apparently, the railroad ran rests with expanding foam and left several hundred cured "mushrooms" over a quarter mile stretch by Floriston, CA. The task of collection and disposal was avoided, and all those hard probes were left as trash right next to Truckee river. Terrible! Eventually all of these will pollute the nearby soil, the river and many will wound up in Pyramid Lake where the Truckee river terminates. After a while, sun exposure makes them brittle, so these become a form of microplastics pollution.  There are also several older and weathered expanding foam probes, which suggests that this is repeated practice. Both AMTRAK and freight railroads run on these tracks. I have no idea who owns the track, and who conducted these tests. I reported this environmental pollution incident to EPA’s Pacific Southwest (Region 9) office in San Francisco. 

While I do not follow a keto diet, I do like some of the offerings, like this almond flour bread . It is bready, a little spongy and you can't miss the egg in it. Easily done... 60 minutes from start to finish. 5 eggs 5 tbs olive oil 1 tbs maple syrup 1 tsp apple cider vinegar 1¾ cups almond flour, super fine 1/2 tsp baking soda 1/4 tsp salt Preheat oven to 350.  Line an 8" loaf pan with parchment paper. In a bowl, lightly beat the eggs. Whisk in the oil, maple syrup and vinegar until smooth.  Mix in the almond flour, baking soda and salt until the batter is uniform and thick.  Transfer to loaf pan and bake for ~35 minutes, until golden on top. Cool the loaf 10 minutes in the pan, remove to a cooling rack and cool another 20 minutes.

My article on Nuclear Fusion was printed in the  Reno Gazette Journal on September 6, 2024 ; it is copied below. Nuclear fusion energy is possible —the sun and the H-bomb prove it— but the engineering part for achieving commercial energy production is complicated. Proof of concept models are very expensive, but several exist by entities such as Commonwealth Fusion Systems, First Light, Helion Energy, National Ignition Facility, Tokamak Energy and several others. Earlier this year the Joint European Torus tokamak reactor near Oxford, England produced enough fusion energy to power about 12,000 houses; but it was a five second spurt using a tiny amount of fuel. The primary fuel, deuterium, can be readily harvested from the oceans, and the radioactive waste of nuclear fusion plants has a life of 50 to 100 years, compared to thousands of years for the waste from our current nuclear fission reactors. Can nuclear fusion power be sustained and scaled for mass, affordable production of electric

  “Nuclear energy accounts for 50% of the US’s carbon-free electricity” ( The Verge ). Four recent developments point to a renaissance. 1. Vogtle in Waynesboro, Georgia is the largest generator of clean energy in the US; it has two old (1980s) and two new nuclear reactors. Unit 3 entered commercial operation in July 2023, and unit 4 entered commercial operation in April 2024 . The combined power capacity is 4,536 MW! 2. The Diablo Canyon Power Plant near San Luis Obispo, CA was under closing procedures to conclude in 2025, but a $1.1 billion grant from US DOE to Diablo Canyon added to a $1.4 billion loan PG&E got from the state when Gov. Newsom signed a bill in September allowing the plant to stay open until 2030 . 3. A US DOE conditional commitment of up to $1.52 billion for a loan guarantee aims to bring back online the Palisades Nuclear Plant in Michigan, which ceased operations in May 2022, and upgrade it to produce baseload clean power until at least 2051. 4. Constellation En

It's fairly common knowledge that America's freight trains are long, but how long? Union Pacific railroad  runs some of the longest trains at 3.8 miles (or 6.1 km) long! Long trains are also slow. A 3-mile train traveling at 30 mph will take a full 6 minutes to clear a road/rail crossing. Wall Street Journal: These monster trains regularly cut off local roads, delaying residents, school buses and emergency vehicles. Some states have introduced bills to limit train length to 1.6 miles but can’t enforce them because they’re barred from interfering with interstate commerce. 

  Great coverage on the EV state of the art in China, by Michael Colias of the WSJ:  What Scared Ford’s CEO in China "For years, Tesla was the main source of consternation for auto CEOs trying to tackle a transition to electric vehicles. Now, it is the rapid rise of nimble automakers in China that have rattled executives from Detroit to Germany and Japan. Even Tesla’s Elon Musk recently called the Chinese the “most competitive” carmakers in the world." " BYD’s cheapest EV, the Seagull, starts around $10,000  [subcompact, pictured above] and features a fashionable cabin; a rotating, iPad-like touch screen; and more than 300 miles of driving range, comparable to EVs from legacy automakers that are priced three times higher. It is currently for sale in China and Latin America and BYD plans to start selling it in Europe next year for around $20,000." "Following early buzz for the F-150 Lightning pickup, which lifted the stock price, fading consumer interest in EVs

China's presence in commercial aviation was largely absent until fairly recently when COMAC manufacturer developed the C919 airplane which began selling to airlines in 2011. Given China's rapid technological evolution with competitive creations in several areas, including for example, electric vehicles and military equipment (including aircraft carriers), the July 27, 2024 issue of The Economist wonders whether  China can smash the Airbus-Boing duopoly . The short answer to this question is ... not in the near future. As the table below shows, the C919 is competent in its very popular class of short-haul airplanes, but it is not a class-leading airplane; it is less competitive in both passenger capacity and range. (Click on the table for a large format version.) COMAC plans to be building 150 copies of the C919 in a year before 2030. These are barely enough to satisfy the demand in China's domestic market. The annual worldwide demand for this class of airplane is about 180

SciTechDaily : Atmospheric river causes devastating landslide and 56 ft. tsunami in an uninhabited area of Alaska. Before and after satellite images captured the significant alterations in the landscape.

  AXIOS: Barely more than 1% of the 21 million kids who take the bus to school in the U.S. each day, but it's rising fast. The now closed  Clean School Bus Program , administered by the Environmental Protection Agency, prioritizes school districts in low-income, rural and tribal communities. The EPA has spent $2.8 billion on more than 8,000 electric school buses across nearly 1,300 school districts But the cost (burden to the taxpayer) is steep: An electric school bus costs about $370,000, more than three times the price of a traditional diesel bus! AXIOS: the lifetime savings on fuel and maintenance averages $100,000. Therefore, each bus comes with a lifetime loss of $150,000! The school districts pay none of this. The federal taxes do (i.e., adding to the deficit.)

I read a story about Saint Phanourios which mentioned that Greeks bake a special cake, called a Fanouropita, on August 27... hoping to harness the saint's powers and find lost objects. I haven't lost anything, but the cake's ingredients and vegan simplicity were attractive. Indeed, it was done in one hour. A very tasty option for breakfast! Here's is the recipe I used. Ingredients 3 3/4 cups all-purpose flour 1 cup brown sugar 1 tbs baking powder 1 tbs cinnamon 3 tbs sesame 2 tbs vanilla extract 1 tsp salt (or less) 3/4 cup fresh orange juice 3/4 cup vegetable oil Powder sugar Process Preheat oven to 350°F. Spray round or bundt pan with avocado oil and dust with flour; remove excess. Mix together flour, baking powder, cinnamon, salt, sesame seeds and sugar. Add oil, orange juice, and vanilla. Transfer the tick mix into pan and slowly kneed it in to take out air pockets. Bake it at the center of oven until golden, about 40 minutes for bundt pan. Insert a wooden too