Since nobody ever reads my posts, I'm sure this will go unnoticed.  But, on the off chance that someone does read this, here is a link to an article in my local newspaper that just floored me.  It's about the sentencing of a man who stabbed his young wife to death, and the reactions of his in-laws at the sentencing hearing.  I am a Christian, and I believe in forgiveness, but this couple's application of the command to forgive has humbled me, because I think I would have a very tough time doing this.  Please read the entire article.

Tri City Herald

I don't have much in common with Thomas Hembree, other than we both grew up in the same town in eastern Washington State.  His life was too short to accomplish much; in my 51 years I've graduated from college, raised two children, been married to the same woman for 26 years, and have had a satisfying career that is now in its declining years.

When I was 17 I was a junior in high school and attended the Washington State cross country championship meet, as an alternate, for my high school team.  When he was 17, Thomas Hembree joined the US Navy.  Since he was underage, he needed his mother's permission to enlist.

When I was 18 and a senior in high school, I ran the mile for the varsity track team and prepared for college.  Thomas Hembree never saw his 18th birthday.

I studied forestry in college.  I wonder what Thomas Hembree would have studied, had he been given the opportunity to continue his education.  In fact, I don't even know if he graduated from high school.  We'll never know what choices he would have made later in life.

After college I went to work (not in forestry, alas), married, and raised my family.  Thomas Hembree never got that chance.  I wonder if he ever had a girlfriend.

In the years since I've been working in the nuclear industry, I have had a small measure of professional success.  I have been privileged enough to present three papers in my field at meetings of the American Nuclear Society. Thomas Hembree's career in the Navy was cut short, and he never rose above the rank of Apprentice Seaman.

In 1941, presumably after finishing his basic training, Apprentice Seaman Hembree was assigned to the USS Curtis, based in Pearl Harbor.   Apparently he was homesick for Kennewick, WA.  He wrote his mother a letter expressing that homesickness sometime during his first week in Hawaii.

On December 7, 1941, shortly before 8:00 a.m., the crew of the USS Curtis was called to General Quarters in response to a Japanese Navy bombing attack on the naval base.  Approximately an hour into the attack a crippled Japanese plane crashed into one of the ship's cranes.  This caused minimal damage, but shortly thereafter another Japanese plane succeeded in striking the Curtis with a bomb.  This bomb caused severe damage and started an intense fire.  21 crewmen died, including 17 year old Thomas Hembree.  His body was badly burned and positive identification was not possible at the time.  He was buried in a grave marked "Unknown 7 December 1941", and he lay there unidentified until 2002.  His body was exhumed and positively identified by the U.S. Army Central Identification Laboratory.  Thomas Hembree was, in fact, the first unknown from the Pearl Harbor attack to be identified.  A military funeral was held for him on March 5 at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, Honolulu. 

I cannot comprehend what Thomas Hembree's last hour of life was like.  I am sure he was scared, but equally sure he did his duty to the best of his abilities.  A homesick 17 year old boy dying to protect his country.  Rest in peace, Tommy.

Yesterday I received a letter that opened with "Dear Fellow Democrat....".  It was from Rep. Chris Van Hollen, a Democrat congressman from Maryland's 8th district.  He is chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and he wanted my help in ensuring the Democrats maintain their majority in the House and prevent the Republicans from regaining their "stranglehold."

I couldn't figure out how Rep. Van Hollen determined I was a Democrat.  I live in Washington State, which, at least when I registered to vote some years ago, was one of the few states (if indeed there are any other) that does NOT ask for party affiliation when a voter registers.  Therefore, there is no record anywhere of me belonging to any party, be it Democrat, Republican, or Socialist Workers.

Rep. Van Hollen (who, by the way, looks like a nice guy going by his picture on his Wikipedia entry) proceeded to talk about the great progress the House has made since the Dems took power--improving ethics, raising the minimum wage, etc. etc.  He also went on at length on the evils of the Bush administration and its failed Iraq policy, and how the dastardly man has actually vetoed important legislation.  He wound up, of course, with a pitch for money to help increase the Democratic majority in the House next year (funny how he didn't call it a "stranglehold").

Well, I took exception to the arrogant assumption that I was a fellow Democrat (dear or otherwise).  In any case, it's also a rather dubious assumption given that my congressional district (Washington's 4th, represented by Doc Hastings, R, since 1995) is very conservative.  Even when we've had a Democratic representative (the last one was Doc's predecessor, Jay Inslee, who now represents Washington's 1st Congressional district) the guy's been fairly conservative, primarily being strongly pro-nuclear, an important consideration in an area built on the Manhattan Project..  (Totally off-topic aside....Doc, Jay, and I all have birthdays within three days of each other.)  Inslee, however, did lose his re-election bid in part because of his vote to ban semi-automatic firearms, which serves to prove my point--this is a conservative area and assuming someone is a "fellow Democrat (dear or otherwise) without any supporting evidence is dubious.

Well, I could have thrown that letter away, along with its postage-paid return envelope, but that would be no fun.  So, I wrote a letter back to Rep. Van Hollen (another useless aside...we both have red hair, at least going by his picture on Wikipedia) detailing my Presidential voting history (Ford, Reagan, Reagan, Bush, Bush, Dole, Bush, Bush), my senatorial voting record (last Democrat was Scoop Jackson, who would probably be run out of the party now), etc.  I suggested that both he and I would be happier if my name was dropped from his mailing list.  I mentioned that although I once voted for a Democrat for Congress (yes, Jay Inslee, curse me forever), I'd only vote for one now if the Republicans nominated Joseph Stalin.  Finally, I did agree to compensate the DCCC for its postage....I put about 40 pennies in the envelope, and mailed it back.  At their expense, of course.

I sure feel good today.

I saw three interesting bumper stickers in the past couple of weeks.  The first was in Vancouver, WA in a parking lot.  As I walked by the words "I'm already against the next war" caught my eye.  Now, I agree that reasonable people may disagree with me about the value of the current war.  But a blanket statement that the person will automatically be against the next war?  Does this mean he/she is against any war, at any time, or that he/she assumes the next one will be started by the Evil Bush, or anyway an Evil Republican, but a war started by a Saintly Democrat would be okay?  I suspect the person is probably against any war any time, though it wouldn't surprise me if he/she is just against Evil Republican wars.  I'd like to ask that person to find out...would he/she have been against WWII?  I suppose with most wars you could find someone who had a rational reason to oppose it (even if you disagree with that reason) but WWII is one war that it seems really hard for anybody from one of the Allied countries to oppose.

The next sticker showed an American flag and said, "These colors don't run....the world."  Just another liberal paranoid fantasy about the Evil Bush trying to take over the world.

The last one I saw at a gas station.  The car at the pump in front of me had a bumper sticker that read, "Want higher gas prices?  Vote Republican."  Very amusing, I thought.  I'm pretty sure one of the current crop of Democrats running for President is calling for a 50 cent increase in the Federal gas tax.  I'm also pretty sure that John Kerry called for the same thing in 2004 to force Americans to conserve.  It's ironic because the Dems were whining when gas prices went up recently that this was hurting poor Americans and "something must be done."  After one of those periodic market adjustments my Senator, Maria Cantwell, sent me an e-mail complaining about price gouging.  I wrote back that if she was concerned about price gouging, perhaps she should work to roll back the Federal gas tax and maybe encourage her own state to cut back too.  I haven't gotten an e-mail from her office since.

Today I donated my 76th pint of blood.  It's been quite a few years getting there, and in less than eight months I'll be able to get a ten gallon pin from the Red Cross.

While I was lying in the chair squeezing my O+ blood into the plastic bag, I looked around and noticed a nice cross section of Americans doing the same thing or preparing to do the same thing, or just finished doing the same thing.  There was the girl with hot pink streaks in her bleached blond hair.  There were the two 20-something men with saggy pants.  There was the 60-something lady, the middle-aged man (me), the 30-something man, etc.  It was nice to see so many different people with one goal in mind--helping someone else who might need that blood.

I'll be back in late November for pint #77.

Much has been made of Iran's uranium enrichment program.  One side claims that Iran is attempting to produce an atomic bomb, and the other side says Iran's word should be taken that the enrichment program is for the purely peaceful reason of making reactor fuel for a nuclear power program.  In this, my first blog entry, I will attempt to explain why we should distrust the Iranians, and worry that they are indeed attempting to make an atomic bomb.

First, I believe it is likely that most Americans do not really understand what "enrichment" means, nor do they understand how it is accomplished or how much enrichment is needed to make weapons grade uranium.  I'll answer the last question first--uranium must be enriched until the U-235 content is about 93 percent by weight of the total mass of uranium.  Did that help?  Probably not.

Uranium atoms, as they occur in nature, consist primarily of U-238 and U-235.  This simply means that a U-238 atom consists of 92 protons and 146 neutrons.  The U-235 atom consists of 92 protons and 143 neutrons.  However, U-238 is much more prevalent in nature--more than 99% by weight of all uranium is U-238.  Only about 0.75 percent by weight (wt%) is U-235.

This by itself is meaningless unless you know that, by a peculiarity of nature, U-235 atoms, if struck by free neutrons, can fission (split), and release more neutrons.  Under the right circumstances, this can lead to a self-sustaining "chain reaction" where each fission causes at least one more fission.  Although U-238 can also absorb neutrons and fission (though much less likely than U-235), it cannot sustain a chain reaction.  If it does absorb a neutron, it is more likely to be transmuted to element 93, neptunium, which itself quickly transmutes to plutonium, but that's another story for another time.

The problem is that the probability of a U-235 atom absorbing a neutron and fissioning is much greater with "slow" neutrons than the "fast" neutrons that arise from the fission process or are sometimes spontaneously emitted from heavy atomic nuclei.  By point of reference, fast neutrons are indeed fast as they are traveling at nearly the speed of light.  "Slow" neutrons are only slow in a relative sense because they are still traveling at several thousand miles per hour.  In order to sustain a chain reaction with natural uranium, the neutrons must be "moderated" to the slow speed by a suitable substance.   The neutrons collide with lighter atomic nuclei and transfer most of their energy to the moderator atoms, eventually slowing down to the point where absorption in a U-235 atom becomes very likely.  The uranium has to be very carefully arranged to enhance the probability of absorption (and fission) and the resulting nuclear reactor is generally very very large.  Not any moderator will do either--you need either very pure graphite (carbon) or heavy water in order to sustain a chain reaction with natural uranium. 

In order to make a smaller reactor (using, for example, ordinary water as the moderator, which also makes for a nice coolant), or to make a bomb, the percentage of U-235 must be increased to the point where the likelihood of fission is increased just because there are more U-235 atoms present.  Typical commercial reactor fuel is 2 to 3 wt% enriched.  So how is this done?  Because the U-238 atom is slightly bigger than the U-235 atom, a gaseous form of uranium can be passed through many successive barriers which essentially filter out the larger particles.  At the end of the stream you end up with more U-235 atoms in proportion to U-238 than you started out with--enriched uranium.  This is the gaseous diffusion method, and requires HUGE plants and lots of electricity.  Another, more modern, method, is to centrifuge the uranium gas.  The heavier U-238 atoms are thus separated from the lighter U-235 atoms and you end up, again, with enriched uranium.  This requires HUGE plants and lots of electricity.

Now, this is why we need to worry that Iran is not simply enriching uranium to about 2 to 3 wt% for reactor fuel, and instead is working towards that 93 wt% weapons grade level.  Quite simply, it's because the technology is very complex and as mentioned the enrichment plants are very large and expensive to build and operate.  After the uranium is enriched, it is not in a form suitable for reactor fuel.  It generally is in the form of UF6 (uranium hexafluoride), and must be converted to U03, uranium oxide.  Thus yet another large, expensive manufacturing facility is needed to do the conversion, and then to press the oxide into pellets, clad the pellets to contain the uranium, assemble the pellets into fuel pins, and assemble the fuel pins into reactor fuel assemblies.  Yes, Iran could be doing this...but why, when they could simply buy the fuel from any number of commercial fuel manufacturers, who sell their product all around the world?  Not only would Iran avoid the expense of the enrichment facility (figure a cost of about 1.5 billion dollars, which is what a centrifuge plant being built in the US is projected to cost, according to the September 2007 issue of Nuclear News) but they would also avoid all the pratfalls involved in engineering a system from scratch without benefit of prior experience (either theirs or, say, ours, since we are most definitely NOT exporting this technology to countries such as Iran!).

So this boils down to a simple question--why would Iran spend all that money and go through all those growing pain headaches to produce fuel for a power reactor when they could buy the stuff much cheaper from a commercial fuel manufacturer, and on a much quicker time frame?  If I had to bet money on it, I'd bet they are not so interested in 3 wt% uranium but are very interested in 93 wt% uranium.