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You are here: Home / Healthcare / COVID-19 Coronavirus / A Couple Of Articles

A Couple Of Articles

by Cheryl Rofer|  June 15, 20216:42 pm| 50 Comments

This post is in: COVID-19 Coronavirus, Excellent Links, Open Threads, Rofer on Nuclear Issues

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I’ve been quoted in two news articles yesterday and today. I’m reasonably pleased with both of them.

Exclusive: US assessing reported leak at Chinese nuclear power facility

Zachary Cohen called me with not enough information on this reported leak. The odd thing about it was that France had notified the United States, and high-level US meetings were reported. So: secretive country, nuclear leak. Hard for me, even, not to feel resonances with Chernobyl. My early guess from the information we had was that it was a broken fuel element, and that’s what it turned out to be. The reason France contacted the US had to do with sharing nuclear information. When a country gets nuclear technology from the US, restrictions are attached about sharing it.

The Lab Leak Theory Doesn’t Hold Up

Justin Ling covers the major claims about a laboratory escape being the route of the SARS-CoV-2 virus into humans and finds them wanting; further, that a natural pathway from animals to humans is more likely. Long article and may have a paywall. This one should become the standard reference for refuting the lab leak bros.

Open thread!

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Reader Interactions

50Comments

  1. 1.

    Elizabelle

    June 15, 2021 at 6:51 pm

    Good for you, Cheryl. Reading the second article (Foreign Policy about the lab leak) now.

    And just in time. Jon Stewart has waded in, apparently he finds the lab leak theory plausible. Le sigh.

  2. 2.

    Mathguy

    June 15, 2021 at 6:52 pm

    I was looking at Scott Aaronson’s quantum computing blog this morning, and if you want to go down the rabbit hole of nonsense on the lab leak theory, complete with Wade’s BotAS piece referenced, check out this post and the comments. Ugh.

  3. 3.

    OzarkHillbilly

    June 15, 2021 at 6:53 pm

    IIRC you were also mentioned in a Guardian article recently (a few days ago). I quoted and linked to it here (AM thread for sure) but TBH that was several days ago and my brain doesn’t hold onto such minor bits for more than a day or 2. I’m not even sure what the article was about anymore.

  4. 4.

    sab

    June 15, 2021 at 6:56 pm

    OT neighbors put out their guys’ walker. I hope the scavengers get them. I would hate for them to go to the landfill

    2 walkers, not one.

  5. 5.

    MisterForkbeard

    June 15, 2021 at 6:58 pm

    Regarding #1 – is this a big deal? It doesn’t seem like it, but I know nothing about nuclear tech.

    As for #2 – This is what I keep hearing from the experts, that natural pathways are just more likely. But I think we’ve hit some critical point where people have decided it’s a lab leak based off of… what, hyperventilating news articles that aren’t by virologists?

  6. 6.

    MisterForkbeard

    June 15, 2021 at 6:58 pm

    @sab: Who would throw out a perfectly good All-Terrain Armored-Transport? That’s just wasteful :)

  7. 7.

    Cheryl Rofer

    June 15, 2021 at 6:59 pm

    @Mathguy: Yeah, no.

    The lab-leak furor hit me out of left field. I’ve assumed all along that both laboratory escape and natural routes would be investigated, that the natural route was more likely, and that it would take years to figure it out, as it has for other diseases.

    Whe I started seeing claims that “the media got it wrong” and “everything has changed” I was confused, because they were describing something I didn’t see. It turns out that Nate Silver and the bros suddenly became aware of something that they thought changed their minds. The scientists I’ve followed hadn’t changed anything.

    But then came my article on the probably nonexistent directed-energy microwave weapon, and reporters started asking me about the lab leak too. So I felt I needed to read up on it. But not everything.

    Reading the garbage takes confuses. It puts stuff in your head that isn’t true. So I recommend not reading anything that isn’t from a scientist or from a science writer you trust. That’s what I’m doing.

  8. 8.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    June 15, 2021 at 7:00 pm

    @Elizabelle:

    And just in time. Jon Stewart has waded in, apparently he finds the lab leak theory plausible. Le sigh.

    Be kind, as the salt overtakes the pepper, Hipster Broder feels his Bro-hood slipping away…

    ETA: DougJ once said that the most pushback he ever got on this blog was when he– gently, he thought– mocked Stewart, and that was, if memory serves, before the rally about nothing.

  9. 9.

    Cheryl Rofer

    June 15, 2021 at 7:03 pm

    @OzarkHillbilly: The Guardian article was on microwave weapons.

    I think that these two topics, and UFOs, are a disinformation campaign to flood the zone with shit and drown out, for example, Biden’s successes with vaccination, but I can’t prove it.

  10. 10.

    VOR

    June 15, 2021 at 7:04 pm

    @Elizabelle: Look, in my non-expert opinion lab leak is possible and ought to be one of the many potential things investigated. Probably a long list of possibilities, none of which should be dismissed until investigated. But many of the people pushing the lab leak theory are known, serial liars and propagandists. Some of these people, if they told me the sun came up in the east I’d want a second opinion.

  11. 11.

    Cheryl Rofer

    June 15, 2021 at 7:04 pm

    @MisterForkbeard: #1 is not a big deal, but when Cohen first got the information, that wasn’t clear. France notifying the US and high-level meetings in the US made it seem like it could be a big deal.

    ETA: I give Cohen high marks for not making it into a big deal. I’ll be happy to talk to him again.

  12. 12.

    Major Major Major Major

    June 15, 2021 at 7:05 pm

    Congrats on the CNN quotes! Haven’t read the second article yet but it’s on my list assuming I have access.

  13. 13.

    mrmoshpotato

    June 15, 2021 at 7:07 pm

    @Elizabelle: And just in time. Jon Stewart has waded in, apparently he finds the lab leak theory plausible. Le sigh.

    Yup.  Exactly why I said Jon Stewart should be smacked.

    I stopped watched the segment when he mentioned the lab leak being plausible.

  14. 14.

    Benw

    June 15, 2021 at 7:08 pm

    OT: we made dough for calzones and homemade vanilla ice cream today and barely broke a sweat. Praise be for kitchen gadgets!!

  15. 15.

    MisterForkbeard

    June 15, 2021 at 7:11 pm

    @mrmoshpotato: I mean, it’s plausible. It’s just not that likely.

    Sort of like it’s plausible that Republicans would vote to impeach Trump. It turned out to be a 3% chance or so, empirically.

  16. 16.

    Mathguy

    June 15, 2021 at 7:11 pm

    @Cheryl Rofer: Absolutely. I started to follow some of the links and just saw a lot of “Bayesian analysis” that supposedly proved with a probability of .98 that it was a lab leak. Aaronson is a brilliant quantum CS theorist and there are a lot of really bright people that write in the comments, but with the exception of the virologist that was politely telling them they were full of shit, it was very much the tech bro mode of “just asking questions” nonsense that you describe. I vowed not to do that again.

  17. 17.

    Mary G

    June 15, 2021 at 7:16 pm

    @Elizabelle:  Some white men are not taking being usurped from positions of superiority over everybody else, and it’s often surprising which ones they are.

  18. 18.

    PeakVT

    June 15, 2021 at 7:21 pm

    It’s important to realize that the lab leak talk is basically a squirrel for the Repuke base. It’s a distraction from Trumpolini’s failure at controlling the pandemic. Even if it turned out SARS-CoV-2 was a leaked bioweapon funded by Fauci with money diverted from the troops (or whatever), that doesn’t excuse Trumpolini. Except that it would in the minds of the base.

  19. 19.

    dmsilev

    June 15, 2021 at 7:25 pm

    @Mathguy: “Physicist disease”, i.e. the firmly held belief that because you are good at physics, it means that you have expertise in all the other fields.

    I’m a bit surprised that Aronson suffers from it; he’s young enough to have started in the era of strong emphasis on interdisciplinary science, which at least tries to beat that attitude out of physicists.

  20. 20.

    mrmoshpotato

    June 15, 2021 at 7:25 pm

    @Benw: Three cheers for the inventors of the electric ice cream maker, and the stand mixer!

    And now that you’ve let us know.  We need details on flavor and fillings. :)

  21. 21.

    Elizabelle

    June 15, 2021 at 7:26 pm

    @VOR:  Yep.  And that makes a real difference to me, too.

    Stopped clocks can be are right twice a day.  Does not mean you need to give them more credence than that.

  22. 22.

    germy

    June 15, 2021 at 7:26 pm

    A mystery solved?

    SCOOP: We obtained the first public tax records of right-wing site The Federalist's nonprofit foundation.

    It took in $800k in 2019, and we've identified the donors behind most of that money. https://t.co/P8evF8cZJV

    — Alex Kotch (@alexkotch) June 15, 2021

  23. 23.

    dmsilev

    June 15, 2021 at 7:27 pm

    @Benw: I bought an ice cream maker a few months ago and love it. I have some strawberry sorbet that I’m almost done with, and next up is a recipe I saw for “tiramisu” flavored ice cream; uses mascarpone cheese and Kahlua. Probably later this week.

  24. 24.

    VeniceRiley

    June 15, 2021 at 7:28 pm

    The Stewart story is everywhere on my news aggregator and I hope he chokes on blowback.
    Meanwhile…
    Delta variant 170 cases in WA:
    https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/health/highly-transmissible-covid-19-strain-spreading-in-washington-state-say-uw-virologists/

  25. 25.

    mrmoshpotato

    June 15, 2021 at 7:29 pm

    @MisterForkbeard: I think you’re using “plausible” and ” possible” interchangeably.

  26. 26.

    piratedan

    June 15, 2021 at 7:29 pm

    @Mary G: I kind of get the sense that Stewart knows that he’s not as “hip” as he used to be and hasn’t been able to personally reconcile and accept why.

    For a long time, he was lauded as being one of the few outspoken critics of the GOP with a sense of humor, laughing at them with us… never knew how passionately he embraced the idea that it couldn’t JUST be the GOP who was at fault and while to a certain extent that’s true, most of the Dems faults unfortunately are along the lines of hoping that a family member will finally recover their good sense while watching them chase goats in the front yard with their pants around their ankles….

  27. 27.

    Elizabelle

    June 15, 2021 at 7:29 pm

    @Cheryl Rofer:

    I think that these two topics, and UFOs, are a disinformation campaign to flood the zone with shit and drown out, for example, Biden’s successes with vaccination, but I can’t prove it.

    Agreed.  The shit and whataboutism, we are drowning in it.

  28. 28.

    Lacuna Synecdoche

    June 15, 2021 at 7:30 pm

    @Cheryl Rofer:

    The lab-leak furor hit me out of left field.

    One of the things I find most annoying about the ‘lab leak theory’ is that it’s like watching the global warming denialist nonsense spread all over again in fast-forward.

    The zoonotic route isn’t just more likely, it’s overwhelmingly more likely. My guess is that the zoonotic route is something between 95% to 99.5% more likely than a lab leak.

    But the more the press talks up the lab leak theory, hypes it, reports on it, and speculates about it, the more the press gives the impression that the lab leak theory is 50/50, that it’s at least on par with the zoonotic explanation – in just the same way that people think there’s a 50/50 disagreement between environmental scientists on global warming, when the reality is more like a 97/3 consensus that global warming is happening and that it’s caused by people.

    Anyway, my opinion has been, and remains, that, yes, experts should look into it on the basis that we need to make sure protocols were followed and check if we need to update them.

    Other than that, the lab leak theory shouldn’t be anyone else’s primary focus until, and unless, the experts investigating it say otherwise. And the rest of us should assume that zoonotic transfer is the most probable cause unless proven otherwise.​​​

  29. 29.

    Anoniminous

    June 15, 2021 at 7:30 pm

    There is exactly zero evidence for SARS-CoV-2 escaping from a Wuhan Lab.

  30. 30.

    Robert Sneddon

    June 15, 2021 at 7:32 pm

    Rampant wild speculation here, about the Taishan 1 EPR fuel problem… (warning, very geeky stuff follows).

    The Areva EPR design is the biggest commercial power reactor design currently in operation, producing about 1.6GW of electricity to a grid when operating. The Chinese have two EPRs in operation at Taishan, with the first to start up being the one the “fission gas” problem has been reported at. Taishan 1 started operation back in mid-2018 and achieved commercial operation at the end of 2018 after a few months of testing at full power.

    The refuelling cycle for the EPR design is supposed to be about 18-20 months or thereabouts so (I assume) Taishan 1 has had one operating cycle followed by some downtime to defuel and go through a thorough inspection since it’s the first time it’s been operated and then it was refuelled and started up again. It’s been operating for another year or so on the second fuel load which will (probably) include some partially-burnt fuel assemblies from the first operational cycle. Long story short, some of the fuel assemblies will have been in an operating reactor core for 30 months or more, on their second time around.

    Fuel assemblies take a hammering from vibration, pressure and heat in operation not suprisingly. The assemblies consist of clusters of fuel “pins”, long thin metal tubes containing low-enriched uranium in a ceramic pellet form. These tubes are sealed and if they work correctly and don’t break or get damaged they should contain any gases created by fission. The reactor operators are apparently detecting gases in the coolant/moderator water of the primary circuit which could only come from within these pins so it is presumed one or more pins are leaking this gas.

    Because the EPR is a very new design this is the first time this design of fuel assembly has actually been used in operation for any length of time — the fuel pins are each 4.2 metres long, longer than most other PWR fuel assemblies since the EPR core is larger than other PWR cores in all dimensions. This extra length of the pins, even supported by the fuel assembly frame means they’re possibly more prone to excess vibration causing cracking or seal damage and hence allowing gas leaks. My guess is that the leaking pins are in one or more assemblies that are on their second fuelling cycle since they’ve been subject to mechanical stresses for longer than fresh assemblies.

    It’s easy to examine fresh fuel assemblies since they’re not particularly radioactive, it can be done with minimal protection for the inspectors. Used fuel assemblies are another matter since they are highly radioactive. A basic distanced visual check can be carried out but nothing really intensive so the partially-spent fuel assemblies might well have taken damage before they were reinserted into the core during refuelling.

    Once the reactor is shut down for refuelling again the operators will find out what happened. If I remember correctly the fuel assemblies for at least the early operation cycles of the Taishan EPRs were manufactured and supplied by Areva, the designers of the EPR. I presume there’s a technology transfer deal with the Chinese operators who will want to close the fuel supply chain and manufacture their own fuel assemblies under licence going forward but this early in the reactor’s lifespan that probably isn’t happening yet. If this is so then Areva is on the hook for a possibly faulty or undercooked fuel assembly design.

    It will be some time before what has gone wrong is made clear to the interested general public like myself. At the least it will take until the next shutdown to find out definitively what’s been going on inside the Taishan 1 reactor core. If it starts happening in Taishan 2 as well then Areva are really going to be sweating bullets.

  31. 31.

    Cheryl Rofer

    June 15, 2021 at 7:40 pm

    @Lacuna Synecdoche: I’ve written to Josh and gotten some feedback, so I know he opened my email, but yes, he’s published some real trash.

    Part of what’s wrong with what he’s doing is that it’s the same thing as the other bros and trying to be the smart detective who figures it all out. He would do better to note who’s saying what. What Justin does in the Foreign Policy article is to recount the detective work of people who actually understand the subject, along with who’s saying what

    ETA: I’ve sent the link to the article to Josh and tagged him on Twitter.

  32. 32.

    Cheryl Rofer

    June 15, 2021 at 7:45 pm

    @Robert Sneddon: Thanks! One small correction – the fission gases (now known to be xenon and krypton, no surprise) have been detected outside the reactor building at levels above Chinese regulatory levels. I have not seen any of those numbers. That, to me, suggests that a filter has been saturated and is allowing breakthrough. No big problem, but shutdown and refueling may come early.

  33. 33.

    Martin

    June 15, 2021 at 7:51 pm

    @germy: Wait, you can buy every Supreme Court judge appointment for $800K?

  34. 34.

    Martin

    June 15, 2021 at 7:57 pm

    @Robert Sneddon: It seems to me that having a problem so early in a Gen 3 reactor isn’t great. I’m objectively pro-nuclear power, but I’m having trouble envisioning a management structure that has the right set of incentives to create a virtuous safety cycle. Plus, the time to build them is so long that they aren’t really part of the climate change mitigation solution. We just can’t wait that long. The technical aspects of newer generation reactors wasn’t really something I thought was a problem, but having a technical problem pretty much right out of the gate doesn’t help sell nuclear to governments.

  35. 35.

    Tom Levenson

    June 15, 2021 at 7:58 pm

    @Mathguy: @Cheryl Rofer: I just committed the folly of commenting on the Aaronson blog post.

    Dear FSM. What self aggrandizing faux flagellation.

  36. 36.

    Lacuna Synecdoche

    June 15, 2021 at 7:58 pm

    @Cheryl Rofer:

    @Lacuna Synecdoche: I’ve written to Josh and gotten some feedback, so I know he opened my email, but yes, he’s published some real trash.

    Oops, I had deleted the paragraph on Josh, because I didn’t want to single him out. But here’s the paragraph that was there in case anyone wants to know what Cheryl and I are discussing here:

    Josh, who should know better, has been one of the worst on the left about the “lab leak theory”. It’s not that he even thinks the lab link theory is likely (as far as I can tell), but he just can’t stop harping on it with almost a dozen blog posts about it since the beginning of the month.​​

    That paragraph was in reference to my complaint that reporters & pundits are creating an impression through repetition that the “lab leak theory” is more likely than it actually is.​

  37. 37.

    Baud

    June 15, 2021 at 8:02 pm

    Congrats, Cheryl.

  38. 38.

    Robert Sneddon

    June 15, 2021 at 8:06 pm

    @Cheryl Rofer: Filtering to catch noble gases like krypton and xenon is a tricky prospect, ditto for radon in coal mining. Xe-135 has a half-life of only 9 hours or which makes it intensely radioactive and hence easily detectable but it doesn’t persist in the environment and as a noble gas it’s not bioaccumulative like some of the rest of the isotopic zoo. The two gases quoted are noticeable but I’m a little concerned that some other fission products are also getting into the reactor coolant/moderator but not being detected or reported. I-131 is the perennial nuclear disaster cheerleader with a longer half-life than Xe-135 but Cs-134 and -137 could easily “cook” out of the ceramic fuel pellets and escape into the reactor’s moderator water given the typical core temps. Cesium is in the same chemical family as sodium…

     

    Leaking and even fractured fuel pins were common enough in decades gone by, something to deal with during refuelling but not a showstopper for reactor operators. I understand efforts were made to improve the design, manufacturing and QA testing of fuel pins around the turn of the century and it’s become a rare to non-existent problem in modern fuel construction. Having this fuel assembly failure happen so early and so visibly in the EPR’s operational life cycle is what concerns me (and the Areva fuel assembly designers, I expect).

  39. 39.

    dnfree

    June 15, 2021 at 8:07 pm

    Thanks and congratulations!  I subscribe to Foreign Policy.  I’ve subscribed for so long that I get a much lower rate apparently than whatever it costs now.  I appreciate that they cover more ground than most US news sources and that they present a variety of viewpoints. It’s where I encountered Max Boot long before he became anti-Trump. (He wasn’t ever pro-Trump but he’s very conservative.)

  40. 40.

    Martin

    June 15, 2021 at 8:09 pm

    Martin is ruminating on the appearance of Robert Sneddon explaining to Cheryl Rofer how radioactive Xe-135 is. Assuming that was meant for the rest of us. 

  41. 41.

    Robert Sneddon

    June 15, 2021 at 8:19 pm

    @Martin: Xe-135 is one of those Problem Children in reactor physics — its presence was a contributing factor to the Chernobyl-4 explosion so it’s something reactor operators keep a watchful eye on and have checklist procedures to cope with it. Xe-135 absorbs neutrons better than just about anything else in the fission-isotope zoo so changes in power levels bog down for a time when the operators step on the gas pedal to ramp up power levels then zoom! as the Xe-135 levels drop due to radioactive decay and suddenly they’re going faster than intended. Result — unrequested fission surplus. Oops.

     

    Steady state operation of a reactor is not really a problem, getting to that steady state can be tricky thanks to Xe-135.

  42. 42.

    Mathguy

    June 15, 2021 at 8:23 pm

    @Tom Levenson: I read the blog for the quantum computing/quantum information material. When he veers off course into other topics, I almost always stop reading. It’s been especially bad lately.

  43. 43.

    Kristine

    June 15, 2021 at 8:36 pm

    @dnfree: I’m a subscriber, too. Though a much more recent vintage.

    The things I felt compelled to read starting in, oh, late 2016, still surprise me at times.

  44. 44.

    Kristine

    June 15, 2021 at 8:37 pm

    Congrats on the mentions, Cheryl!

  45. 45.

    susanna

    June 15, 2021 at 8:45 pm

    Way to go, Cheryl!  Congratulations!

  46. 46.

    Ken

    June 15, 2021 at 9:04 pm

    @Martin: Wait, you can buy every Supreme Court judge appointment for $800K?

    Yearly.  You make it sound like they’re as cheap as the state Senators who can be bought for a steak dinner and a $10,000 campaign contribution.

  47. 47.

    Benw

    June 15, 2021 at 9:11 pm

    @mrmoshpotato: yo, I had a meeting right after I posted, but I’ll hit you with the recipe next time I see you

  48. 48.

    randy khan

    June 15, 2021 at 9:11 pm

    @Anoniminous:

    There is exactly zero evidence for SARS-CoV-2 escaping from a Wuhan Lab.

    <sarcasm>And?  So?</sarcasm>

    The lab escape proponents think that the exclusion of a handful of the nearly infinite number of potential natural transmission paths is sufficient to demonstrate that it must have come from a lab.  It’s because they lack both imagination and an appreciation for all the possible ways it could have happened.  It’s like the people who think that the pyramids must have been built by space aliens because they can’t figure out how the Egyptians would have done it.

  49. 49.

    Benw

    June 15, 2021 at 9:12 pm

    @dmsilev: holy fucking shit tiramisu ice cream sounds amazing!

  50. 50.

    Arclite

    June 15, 2021 at 9:16 pm

    That Fauci guy, what does he know anyway.

    Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and President Biden’s chief medical adviser, is supporting an open investigation of the coronavirus origins, saying earlier this month he is “not convinced” it developed naturally.

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