Causation’s Nuclear Future: Applying Proportional Liability to the Price-Anderson Act

For more than a quarter century, public discourse has pushed the nuclear-power industry in the direction of heavier regulation and greater scrutiny, effectively halting construction of new reactors. By focusing on contemporary fear of significant accidents, such discourse begs the question of what the nation\u27s court system would actually do should a major nuclear incident cause radiation-induced cancers. Congress\u27s attempt to answer that question is the Price-Anderson Act, a broad statute addressing claims by the victims of a major nuclear accident. Lower courts interpreting the Act have repeatedly encountered a major stumbling block: it declares that judges must apply the antediluvian preponderance-of-the-evidence logic of state tort law, even though radiation science insists that the causes of radiation-induced cancers are more complex. After a major nuclear accident, the Act\u27s paradoxically outdated rules for adjudicating causation would make post-incident compensation unworkable. This Note urges that nuclear-power-plant liability should not turn on eighteenth-century tort law. Drawing on modern scientific conclusions regarding the invariably statistical nature of cancer, this Note suggests a unitary federal standard for the Price-Anderson Act—that a defendant be deemed to have caused a plaintiff\u27s injury in direct proportion to the increased risk of harm the defendant has imposed. This proportional liability rule would not only fairly evaluate the costs borne by injured plaintiffs and protect a reawakening nuclear industry from the prospect of bank-breaking litigation, but would prove workable with only minor changes to the Price-Anderson Act\u27s standards of injury and fault

A quantum violation of the second law?

An apparent violation of the second law of thermodynamics occurs when an atom coupled to a zero-temperature bath, being necessarily in an excited state, is used to extract work from the bath. Here the fallacy is that it takes work to couple the atom to the bath and this work must exceed that obtained from the atom. For the example of an oscillator coupled to a bath described by the single relaxation time model, the mean oscillator energy and the minimum work required to couple the oscillator to the bath are both calculated explicitly and in closed form. It is shown that the minimum work always exceeds the mean oscillator energy, so there is no violation of the second law

Generalization of the Schott energy in electrodynamic radiation theory

We discuss the origin of the Schott energy in the Abraham-Lorentz version of electrodynamic radiation theory and how it can be used to explain some apparent paradoxes. We also derive the generalization of this quantity for the Ford-O'Connell equation, which has the merit of being derived exactly from a microscopic Hamiltonian for an electron with structure and has been shown to be free of the problems associated with the Abraham-Lorentz theory. We emphasize that the instantaneous power supplied by the applied force not only gives rise to radiation (acceleration fields), but it can change the kinetic energy of the electron and change the Schott energy of the velocity fields. The important role played by boundary conditions is noted

Consistency of a Causal Theory of Radiative Reaction with the Optical Theorem

The Abraham-Lorentz-Dirac equation for a point electron, while suffering from runaway solutions and an acausal response to external forces, is compatible with the optical theorem. We show that a theory of radiative reaction that allows for a finite charge distribution is not only causal and free of runaway solutions, but is also consistent with the optical theorem and the standard formula for the Rayleigh scattering cross section.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figure

Signatures of the Youngest Starbursts: Optically-thick Thermal Bremsstrahlung Radio Sources in Henize 2-10

VLA radio continuum imaging reveals compact (<8 pc) ~1 mJy radio sources in the central 5" starburst region of the blue compact galaxy Henize 2-10. We interpret these radio knots as extremely young, ultra-dense HII regions. We model their luminosities and spectral energy distributions, finding that they are consistent with unusually dense HII regions having electron densities, 1500 cm^-3 < n_e < 5000 cm^-3, and sizes of 3-8 pc. Since these H II regions are not visible in optical images, we propose that the radio data preferentially reveal the youngest, densest, and most highly obscured starforming events. Energy considerations imply that each of the five \HII regions contains ~750 O7V equivalent stars, greater than the number found in 30 Doradus in the LMC. The high densities imply an over-pressure compared to the typical interstellar medium so that such objects must be short-lived (<0.5 Myr expansion timescales). We conclude that the radio continuum maps reveal the very young (<0.5 Myr) precursors of ``super starclusters'' or ``proto globular clusters'' which are prominent at optical and UV wavelengths in He 2-10. If the ultra-dense HII regions are typical of those which we predict will be found in other starbursting systems, then super starclusters spend 15% of their lifetime in heavily-obscured environments, similar to Galactic ultra-compact HII regions. This body of work leads us to propose that massive extragalactic star clusters (i.e. proto globular clusters) with ages <10^6 yr may be most easily identified by finding compact radio sources with optically-thick thermal bremsstrahlung spectral signatures.Comment: AASTeX, 8 figures 2 included with psfig in text; other 6 in jpeg format; Postscript versions of figures may be found at http://zem.ucolick.org/chip/Research/young_clusters.html -- Accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journa

A multi-layer extension of the stochastic heat equation

Motivated by recent developments on solvable directed polymer models, we define a 'multi-layer' extension of the stochastic heat equation involving non-intersecting Brownian motions.Comment: v4: substantially extended and revised versio

Statistically determined dispersion relations of magnetic field fluctuations in the terrestrial foreshock

We obtain dispersion relations of magnetic field fluctuations for two crossings of the terrestrial foreshock by Cluster spacecraft. These crossings cover plasma conditions that differ significantly in their plasma β and in the density of the reflected ion beam, but not in the properties of the encountered ion population, both showing shell-like distribution function. Dispersion relations are reconstructed using two-point instantaneous wave number estimations from pairs of Cluster spacecraft. The accessible range of wave vectors, limited by the available spacecraft separations, extends to ≈2 × 104 km. Results show multiple branches of dispersion relations, associated with different powers of magnetic field fluctuations. We find that sunward propagating fast magnetosonic waves and beam resonant modes are dominant for the high plasma β interval with a dense beam, while the dispersions of the interval with low beam density include Alfvén and fast magnetosonic modes propagating sunward and anti-sunward

Measurements of the magnetic field induced by a turbulent flow of liquid metal

Initial results from the Madison Dynamo Experiment provide details of the inductive response of a turbulent flow of liquid sodium to an applied magnetic field. The magnetic field structure is reconstructed from both internal and external measurements. A mean toroidal magnetic field is induced by the flow when an axial field is applied, thereby demonstrating the omega effect. Poloidal magnetic flux is expelled from the fluid by the poloidal flow. Small-scale magnetic field structures are generated by turbulence in the flow. The resulting magnetic power spectrum exhibits a power-law scaling consistent with the equipartition of the magnetic field with a turbulent velocity field. The magnetic power spectrum has an apparent knee at the resistive dissipation scale. Large-scale eddies in the flow cause significant changes to the instantaneous flow profile resulting in intermittent bursts of non-axisymmetric magnetic fields, demonstrating that the transition to a dynamo is not smooth for a turbulent flow.Comment: 9 pages, 11 figures, invited talk by C. B. Forest at 2005 APS DPP meeting, resubmitted to Physics of Plasma

Thermocurrents and their Role in high Q Cavity Performance

Over the past years it became evident that the quality factor of a superconducting cavity is not only determined by its surface preparation procedure, but is also influenced by the way the cavity is cooled down. Moreover, different data sets exists, some of them indicate that a slow cool-down through the critical temperature is favourable while other data states the exact opposite. Even so there where speculations and some models about the role of thermo-currents and flux-pinning, the difference in behaviour remained a mystery. In this paper we will for the first time present a consistent theoretical model which we confirmed by data that describes the role of thermo-currents, driven by temperature gradients and material transitions. We will clearly show how they impact the quality factor of a cavity, discuss our findings, relate it to findings at other labs and develop mitigation strategies which especially addresses the issue of achieving high quality factors of so-called nitrogen doped cavities in horizontal test