Super Kamiokande and Extremly Pure Water

This is a rather nice overview of Super Kamiokande, a neutrino detector in Japan. It has produced numerous ground-breaking discoveries, including the confirmation of neutrino oscillation many years ago. Unfortunately, the article omitted an important incident at Super-K several years ago when there was a massive implosion of the phototubes.

The article has an interesting information that many people might not know about extremely pure water, the type that is used to fill up the detector tank.

In order for the light from these shockwaves to reach the sensors, the water has to be cleaner than you can possibly imagine. Super-K is constantly filtering and re-purifying it, and even blasts it with UV light to kill off any bacteria.

Which actually makes it pretty creepy.

"Water that's ultra-pure is waiting to dissolve stuff into it," said Dr Uchida. "Pure water is very, very nasty stuff. It has the features of an acid and an alkaline."
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Another tale comes from Dr Wascko, who heard that in 2000 when the tank had been fully drained, researchers found the outline of a wrench at the bottom of it. "Apparently somebody had left a wrench there when they filled it in 1995," he said. "When they drained it in 2000 the wrench had dissolved." 

In other words, such pure, deionized water is not something that you want to drink.

And this leads me to comment on this silly commercial of PUR drinking water filter. It showed an ignorant public complaining about lead in the drinking water, even though he was told that the amount is below the safety level.



A drinking water contains a lot of other dissolved minerals, any one of which, above a certain limit, can be dangerous. Even that PUR commercial can only claim that it can REDUCE the amount of lead in the drinking water, not completely removed it. It will not be zero. So that guy should continue complaining about lead even with PUR filter.

If this person in the commercial is representing the general public, then the general public needs to be told that (i) you'll never be able to get rid completely of all contaminants in drinking water and (ii) pure water will dissolve your guts! This is why we set safety levels in many things (360 mrem of radiation per year, for example, is our acceptable, normal background radiation that we receive).

Zz.

T2K Finds Evidence For Muon Neutrino Oscillation

It is unfortunately that the recent earthquake in Japan disrupted the T2K experiment, especially at J-PARC, or they would have had an even stronger evidence for this. Still, based on what they already have, this collaboration found strong evidence for muon neutrino changing flavor into electron neutrino.

Now, researchers at J-PARC have made a step towards measuring the final mixing angle – theta-13 – by measuring muon neutrinos oscillating into electron neutrinos. From January 2010 until March this year, the SuperKamiokande detector observed 121 neutrinos that clearly originated from the J-PARC neutrino beam. The background signal, which could mimic a signal from electron neutrinos that are present anyway, was estimated to be around 1.5 events. However, over 13 months, researchers at T2K, which has more than 500 researchers from 12 countries, spotted six events arising from muon neutrinos turning into electron neutrinos. The probability of observing, by chance, six events when only 1.5 are expected is 0.7%, or a little less than 1 in 100.

Hopefully, they get back online at the end of the year as expected.

Zz.

Slow Recovery of Japanese Physics Facilities

I just found this report on the current recovery progress in Japan after the recent earthquake/tsunami. It looks like in some facilities, significant work still has to be done. This is discounting the infrastructure issues of the surrounding areas that provides water, electricity, and access/roadways.

The recovery will be very slow. I know of many colleagues who thought they would be busy with work and/or travel to Japan this summer who suddenly find themselves having a wide-open few months due to conference and work cancellations.

Zz.

Lessons from Fukushima

There will be a panel discussion on the Fukushima nuclear disaster today at 4:00 pm US CDT. The live webcast can be followed at that web link.

Japan's Tohoku earthquake and tsunami in Japan have caused the world to reconsider nuclear energy and its place in global energy policy. The University of Chicago Alumni Association, in conjunction with Argonne National Laboratory and the Harris Energy Policy Institute, invite you to join us for a live discussion and simultaneous webcast that will explore the impact of nuclear energy, now and in the future. The discussion will explore the topic from a variety of perspectives, including climate and ecology, economics, history, policy, safety, and science and technology. The panel includes:

* Mark Peters, Deputy Director of Argonne National Laboratory (Moderator)
* Kennette Benedict, Executive Director of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists
* Hussein Khalil, Director of the Nuclear Energy Division at Argonne National Laboratory
* Robert Topel, Isidore Brown and Gladys J. Brown Distinguished Service Professor in Urban and Labor Economics, Chicago Booth School of Business, and Director, University of Chicago Energy Initiative.

Zz.

Fukushima: Fact Versus Fiction

A video of a panel dialog on the nuclear disaster at the Fukushima nuclear power plant.



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Japan's Nuclear Crisis - Steven Chu Interview

Newsweek interviewed US Dept. of Energy Secretary, Steven Chu, on the aftermath of Japan's nuclear crisis. It didn't just cover his job, but also him being a physicist and still producing his own research work.

Last summer you wrote a paper called “Subnanometre Single-Molecule Localization Registration and Distance Measurements.” When asked about it, you said, “I consider it my equivalent of vegging out in front of the TV.”

The first 80 hours a week of my time go to my full-time job at the Department of Energy. But in the wee hours of the morning, on airplane trips, I can go back and forth. It doesn’t take much time, and it’s a good release.

Zz.

Traces of Radiation from Japan?

So I read this CNN news this morning about slightly higher radiation levels that could possibly come from Japan.

But, on a portion of its website dedicated to tracking such radiation, the Environmental Protection Agency noted Wednesday that these and other readings "show typical fluctuation in background radiation levels" and -- thus far -- "are far below levels of concern."

Sampling from a monitor in Colorado -- part of a national network of stations on the lookout for radioactivity -- detected miniscule amounts of iodine-131, a radioactive form of iodine, the state's public health and environmental department said Wednesday in a press release.

On the same day in Portland, Oregon, tiny quantities of iodine-131 were also detected by an Environmental Protection Agency air monitor, Oregon public health officials said.

Now, the physicist in me started asking "It's one thing to detect slightly higher-than-normal radiation, it is another to actually know the source of such radiation." How can one verify a statement that says ".. trace amounts of radioactive particles that have likely drifted about 5,000 miles from a quake and tsunami-damaged nuclear power plant in Japan.. " Is the detection of such iodine isotopes rather uncommon, so much so that their detection now can be plausibly linked to the nuclear accident in Japan? Can someone who is an expert in this field clarify this?

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Rush Holt On Japan's Nuclear Crisis

His win over Watson made him a household name among the public. So hopefully, the voting public in the US knows enough about him (and the fact that he is a physicist) to at least pay attention to what he has to say.

And being a nuclear physicist and someone who knows about nuclear reactions intimately (certainly more than the talking head Michio Kaku on TV), he has an expert and unique perspective on the nuclear crisis going on in Japan, and the whole idea of energy source and consumption. This is what we get in this news article. So read it while you have a chance.

Zz.

High Energy Physics Experiments in Japan

Ah, it is with great relief that we get good news like this for a change out of the disaster in Japan. It appears that many of the major high energy/particle physics facilities in Japan survived relatively unscathed.

During an earthquake, tsunami, or nuclear meltdown, the safest place to be is in a mine.

So says Stuart Freedman, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's spokesperson for the KamLAND neutrino experiment, whose 1879 glass photomultiplier tubes emerged from the earthquake unscathed. Both KamLAND and the Super-Kamiokande experiment, which contains 11,146 glass bulbs each 20 inches in diameter, are ensconced 3300 ft underground in the Mozumi mine. This is to protect both American-Japanese collaboration experiments from solar radiation that would obscure their data.

Unfortunately, it appears that the KEK-Tsukuba facility may have suffered extensive damage. The article further reported on J-PARC facility that survived the earthquake and the tsunami.

Zz.

What Happened at the Fukushima Reactor?

With all the media hoopla surrounding the nuclear incident in Japan after the earthquake, the media, as expected, bungled on a lot of accuracy regarding the physics and engineering of such a thing. And the use of talking heads (Michio Kaku, really?) to discuss what essentially required a nuclear engineer to elaborate is beyond comprehension.

So it is nice to find an article like this, written by a nuclear engineer. It also reflected what I had gathered from the news article about the incident. The FACT here is that all these reactors SURVIVED the devastating earthquakes! Let's not for this important point. The structural integrity was maintained at all the nuclear reactors. What happened subsequently is the inability to maintain power to the pumps to continue the cooling process in the core, due to the flooding.

There's a tremendous amount of lessons that the nuclear industry can learn from this, and this can only make these things even safer. But the public also need to pay attention to the details and where nuclear industries got it right! For once, don't be swayed by the bells and whistles, but really, really look at the facts as they are!

Zz.

Japanese Physics Labs Affected By Earthquake

It is not surprising that scientific endeavor, including physics research and facilities, are severely affected by the Japanese earthquake and subsequent events. This report reveals how it affects a couple of facilities, including the neutrino T2K experiment.

The T2K neutrino experiment was just about to announce important new results when the earthquake struck. A series of planned seminars around the world has been postponed until the results can be announced first in Japan as planned. Here's a UK site with some background information about T2K itself. Apparently all the people from the neutrino experiment hall of T2K were evacuated safely, though it is very hard to confirm anything at the moment.

With Japan hosting a number of major research facilities, and the Japanese being involved in many experimental effort, the effect of this disaster will surely be directly felt in many scientific efforts around the world. But right now, we can only hope that everyone there is safe.

Zz.

An Inquiry Into the Reproduction of Physics-Phobic Children by Physics-Phobic Teachers

I know! I was intrigued by the title as well! :)

First of all, this is a paper that was originally published in Japanese, and this English version is, what appears to be, an almost direct translation. So there will be some awkward passages here and there. If you keep that in mind, everything should be OK (just think of literal translation and you'll be fine).

The authors studied the effect of teachers who themselves have little understanding or interest in physics on students. Somehow, the teachers disinterest in physics can (surprise!) transfers itself to the students.

It is interesting to note that, with the budget crisis in physics in the US and UK, we tout the high investments in science in Europe and Asia, particularly Japan, China, and Korea. But it is obvious from this report that even in Japan, they also face, to a lesser degree, problems in getting students to do physics, not just as a career, but in terms of being educated or literate in it.

Zz.

Japanese Particle Physics Is In Good Health

At least we have some positive news for the high energy physics community. The Japanese high energy physics lab, KEK, has revealed its future roadmap that certainly is more optimistic than what is going on with the UK and US budget debacle.

The 20-page roadmap report outlines an ambitious five-year plan that includes a major upgrade to KEK’s flagship "B-factory" and a strong commitment to the proposed International Linear Collider (ILC) — two areas that have suffered greatly as a result of the recent cuts in the UK and US.

I'd say along with China that continues to pour money into various areas of physics, that part of the world may end up with future high energy physics projects (ILC anyone?)

Zz.