One of the frustrating and intriguing things about nuclear energy is that there is no standard design that is essential. For example, if you want to build a motorcar, you need to start with the idea that it will have four wheels; three is less effective, and two with gyroscopes is something else again.

But when it comes to nuclear reactors, there are seemingly no limits. There are literally hundreds of reactor designs and possibilities. The moderator, which acts like a shock absorber to the reaction, varies too. It is nearly always water, but it can be gas, salt or a liquid metal.

The end, though, is to use fission to produce power to turn a generator to make electricity or to propel a ship, like a submarine or aircraft carrier.

So far, so good. But the limit is that the reactor only produces heat, which then must be converted, through steam or some other medium, into shaft horsepower to make electricity or to drive the submarine.

In my many years of writing about nuclear and chronicling its ups and downs, I have always been aware of the apparent weakness here: Huge, sophisticated power plants are only giant kettles; their purpose is to boil water, albeit very effectively.

Periodically, scientists have tried to tackle this issue with thoughts on a direct conversion of heat to useful work in turning a drive shaft for whatever end use.

There have been theoretical attempts to make the leap to the direct use of nuclear heat for work without a transfer agent. The great nuclear theorist Leo Szilard, according to his biographer William Lanouette, toyed with an idea but abandoned it.

But there is a way, says Mark Adams, an MIT-educated physicist and former staff member at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. He has designed an engine that he calls an “internal” rotary engine, rather like the kind of Wankel engine that has been around since the 1950s. Instead of pistons going up and down, the engine has a rotor that rotates around a crank shaft.

The rotary engine that Adams envisions looks diagrammatically very like a schematic of the rotatory engine that Mazda introduced to varying degrees of success in its cars in the 1970s.

It works like this: A small amount of gasified “nanofuel,” which contains nuclear material mixed with hydrogen, is ignited by a neutron source to set up a controlled fission reaction, creating heat and propelling the rotor forward and driving the crank shaft. The fuel can be derived from the transuranic parts of spent conventional nuclear fuel or can be created separately.

A company dedicated to energy innovation, Global Energy Research Associates (GERA), is working on design and raising money. The Department of Energy has held back.

Adams, 45, explains his engine this way, “Much like the way your car converts chemical energy into mechanical work, our engine converts nuclear energy directly and safely into useful mechanical work. This eliminates a lot of expensive reactor equipment and paves the way for low-cost nuclear power plants.”

He says his engine would produce 340 megawatts of electric power, if deployed in a combined-cycle configuration. The radioactive byproducts are only cesium and strontium with half-lives of about 30 years — a great improvement on the nuclear waste from conventional reactors. It would be a high-level waste burner as well as an energy source. Tests to prototype engine components are underway at the Idaho National Laboratory in Idaho Falls.

The nuclear engine would shut itself down automatically if things went wrong. A meltdown accident of the kind seen at Three Mile Island and Fukushima is not possible, according to GERA, which Adams formed to demonstrate and market the engine.

One must have, as one must with all futuristic, high-technology designs, a healthy skepticism and a lot of excitement.

Just when you think President Trump couldn’t sink any lower, he astounds. He’s bewildering in his ability to sink and then sink further — and all the while to claim success, rectitude and leadership.

This week’s plumbing of the sewers of conduct came in two Trump specials.

First, there was the unbecoming amount of presidential time spent on denigrating Omarosa Manigault-Newman. He knew her well — knew her propensity for infighting, exaggerating and lying — when he hired her on at the White House.

The question is, what was a reality show contestant of no particular ability doing in the White House to begin with?

Whether the president fired her, or his chief of staff did, doesn’t matter. Clearly, there was merit in getting her out of there. That’s now more than clear, when we learn that she was taping conversations in the Situation Room, the sacred heart of the White House.

After a firing, there’s a kind of protocol: You don’t litigate the issue ex post facto, especially in public. You let it rest; those who have been fired anywhere are usually aggrieved and angry.

The executive who did the deed doesn’t then sink into verbal mud wrestling with the dismissed person. One doesn’t do that. But Donald Trump does do that — with relish.

More egregious was his yanking the security clearance of former CIA chief John Brennan. This is vicious, petty, vengeful and strikes at the very basis of civil respect in America.

Security clearances are, at the least, a kind of badge, a medal, a recognition that you have served the country at the highest level of trust.

I’ve known four secretaries of defense, five secretaries of energy, three CIA directors and 12 national laboratory heads. I’ve seen how those now carrying the burden of office have consulted with those who had carried it.

Those who have security clearance, even if they aren’t called upon to use their knowledge often, are a kind of national reserve of expertise in sensitive matters, ready when needed. Others may need security clearance in defense contracting jobs when they leave their government service.

We don’t have civil honors as in Britain. Those with security clearances carry a little honor, a little recognition — and a lot of pride.

While Trump was baring his teeth against the defenseless, like a hyaena afraid of losing its prey, big stuff at home and abroad was what one would’ve thought might have been of commanding interest to the president, including:

• A red tide was damaging the ocean life of Florida while hurting its tourism.
• California was burning up with the worst fires in history.
• The mayhem was continuing in Yemen.
• Turkey, a NATO member, was being driven into the arms of Russia, while its failing currency was roiling world markets.
• Russia was believed to be preparing to knock out the U.S. electric grid; and it was legitimizing its grasp on Crimea.
• China was seizing the South China Sea.

Against these, and other domestic and world crises, Trump was lost to bile and spite.

A friend, a lifetime Republican (small government, fiscal restraint, free trade, strong defense) suggested in conversation this week that the Trump legacy would cost us a generation of lost opportunity in the world. He said it would take that long to get back to old alliances and to the position of respect we have enjoyed in the world.

I disagreed. I think it could take 100 years, perhaps. The rub is one never returns to the status quo ante after upheaval. The earth moves, so to speak.

Consider two historical events with 100-year legacies. The first is the Congress of Vienna, which mapped a peace in Europe that lasted nearly a century. The second is the ill-conceived Treaty of Versailles, the peace document signed at the end of World War I. It led to World War II; and, to this day, it’s at the root of much of the trouble in the Middle East.

Tweeting isn’t communicating, settling scores isn’t governing, handing the world over to Russia and China isn’t what we expect of any president, even a petty one awash in bile.

 

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Photo: NEW YORK, USA – APRIL 13, 2016: Omarosa Manigault speaks at the National Action Network 25th Annual Convention. A former apprentice that has now joined the Administration of President Donald Trump. Evan El-Amin / Shutterstock.com

 

Cities are getting smarter. It’s happening right now, and it isn’t much short of a revolution.

Whole cities are incorporating the Internet of Things (IoT) into their daily life, changing the way the cities and towns live and breathe. The idea is to improve the quality of life for the billions who now live in cities or will as the relentless urbanization of the world continues.

Some are more advanced than others, but the revolution is afoot across the globe. Experts can’t explicitly say which communities are leading the pack but, expectedly, Singapore and Dubai are in the front row, and so are New York and San Antonio.

The goal is to make cities, as old as civilization, more citizen-friendly and more efficient and to ready them for further electrification in transportation — and, one day, for autonomous vehicles.

Clint Vince, chairman of the U.S. Energy Practice of the world’s largest law firm, Dentons, tells me that the firm is so involved with smart cities and communities that it has established a not-for-profit think tank to work on smart city issues within it. He said the think tank has determined 14 “pillars” of the smart city, from obvious ones like transportation, water, electricity and sewage to less obvious city functions like health and recreation.

Vince has represented New Orleans and San Antonio for many years, but he now sounds more like a city visionary than a lawyer. “Take the electric grid: It has to go from a single-direction flow, taking electricity from the point of generation to the point of consumption, to a two-way flow,” he said. “Eventually, it has to have multi-directional flows.”

Vince is talking about the effect of microgrids and dispersed electric generation, such as rooftop solar. One day, this grid flexibility may lead to innovations such as electric cars “lending” electricity to the grid when prices are favorable.

Electricity and smart meters, which are the key to what is known as the smart grid, began the revolution. Now the surge is joined by telephony in connecting, managing and directing the smart city infrastructure, and in trouble shooting it.

Tony Giroti, chairman of the Energy Blockchain Consortium, says smart installations aren’t just for monitoring and metering electricity and water consumption, but also play a prime role in bridging the divide between the old infrastructure and the new information-driven one. Smart city sensors will advise before there is a problem with an old pipe or compressor, so that proactive intervention can avert breakdowns.

Cities such as New York and Washington have underground pipes and wires that are past their prime, but they needn’t pose the threats they used to: The cities can cry out electronically when their physical plant is hurting. The New York Power Authority, a state agency, is credited with a leading role in smart cities, but the rush is on across the country and around the world.

As the information-driven city takes hold, so do questions ranging, for example, from where will autonomous ride-share cars loiter when not booked to where will they park?

I was leaving an interview about the future of cities when I fell over it. Literally. One of those scooters that are now part of the urban transportation mix had been left on the sidewalk. Because of the use of internet technology and GPS, riders can leave them anywhere when they get to their destinations. The scooters are picked up and recharged at night, signaling to the company where they are via GPS.

Creating new, more livable cities is exciting; dealing with the unexpected consequences, as always, is challenging. When no one is looking, I’m going to try one of these scooters. I may be in traction when I write my next column, but don’t worry — it’ll be delivered electronically.

 

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Photo by Sven Scheuermeier on Unsplash