Letter: Berlin reactor
Taryn Toro’s report on the research reactor of the Hahn-Meitner Institute
in Berlin presents well the situation at the time (This Week, 4 August).
I would, however, like to make two comments.
One must stress even more that denying the licence for the reactor is
based exclusively on the question of the disposal of the spent fuel. The
experts in the administration do not object to the operation of the reactor.
They recognise the significant differences between this research reactor
and commercial nuclear power plants; the safety is considered to be adequate.
German law requires standards when disposing of spent fuel: the claim is
that not only the Berlin reactor does not meet legal requirements.
The formulations of the last paragraph suggest a cynicism which certainly
was not my intention. My scepticism towards nuclear power is independent
of any recent political development. It has always been questionable to
build and to operate a nuclear plant in the vicinity of people. Chernobyl
has shown that a town a 1000 kilometres away is still in the vicinity of
a nuclear installation. In the course of German unification I believe more
people have become aware of these questions, reducing further the public
acceptance of nuclear power.
A Gaupp Berlin Germany
Letter: Musical chairs
Having first agreed wholeheartedly with Michael Duff’s opinion that
‘Britain’s brain drain is not a myth’ (Talking Point, 29 September) I then
read Marcus Chown’s ‘Sacred words’ (his review of The Feynman Lectures in
Physics: 25th Anniversary Commemorative Issue), in the same issue. Also
feeling in tune with Chown, I began to wonder what would have happened if
Feynman had been born in Britain 25 years ago. Would we be celebrating his
achievements, not as a physicist, but as a bongo player?
Chris Lesurf St Andrews Fife, Scotland
Letter: Solar designs
Your article ‘Plug into the Sun’ is somewhat misleading in several ways
(22 September). While large funding is now being placed into photovoltaic
development, historically most effort has been into developing conversion
to heat. During the oil crises of the 1970s the majority of development
was made in the active field, for heating water. The high cost of these
systems has precluded their widespread use in northern countries, but they
are in extensive use in countries such as Spain, Greece and Israel.
The conversion of solar energy into electricity by using photovoltaics
has a long history, but it is only in the last decade that this technology
has achieved widespread interest, strongly reflecting the large investments
being made in the sister industries of electronics and computing. The cost
of producing panels is prohibitive, but the important factor is the relative
costs of conventional and solar electricity. While conventional electricity
is subsidised by governments and no cost is placed on pollution, then solar
energy will remain relatively expensive.
Photovoltaic technology is now in widespread use in areas not served
by conventional fuels and still has a vast potential in developing countries.
This is where the short-term exploitation of photovoltaics lies, not in
industrialised countries.
Passive solar energy is a term that reflects design philosophies rather
than any piece of technology. High levels of insulation, glazing and heat
recovery in building reduces their heat loss and heating demand to the point
where solar energy can supply a large portion of the net heating load. It
is this technology that I believe the author is trying to promote.
Robert Forrest University of Strathclyde Glasgow, Scotland
Letter: Early warning
Your editorial took the American IPCC delegation to task for their weak
endorsement of the validity of global warming (Comment, 8 September). While
we may agree emotionally with John Houghton’s certainty that the earth will
become warmer, we must realise that predictions of our greenhouse future
are based on unproven models; models that cannot be proven until a climate
change can be unambiguously identified as an anthropogenic phenomenon. Therefore,
even the most environmentally active among us must entertain a hint of doubt.
What this suggests is that we should double our efforts to measure the
condition of the environment for the earliest possible detection of a climate
change (we Americans are doing well in this regard) and quadruple our efforts
to use the flow of data being collected (with a few exceptions, both the
US and Britain are doing poorly in analysing what is already on hand).
Also, and most obviously, I suggest we get on with those activities
that make sense even were a change in climate to prove a chimera.
David Slade Silver Spring Maryland, US
Letter: Backward beetle
Following on from Daniel Bickel’s interesting article on the sex life
of flies, I wonder if anyone can add anything to or explain my observations
of two beetles which wandered into my classroom a few weeks ago (‘Sex with
a twist in the tail’, 25 August).
Otherwise looking rather ordinary, they were attached back to back so
that the larger (about one inch long) was dragging the smaller one behind
it. I presume that they were mating though the posture was very odd; although
one advantage might be that between them they could see all around, the
smaller (male?) one did not seem to have much say in where to go.
Edward Richards Sabasaba Kenya
Letter: Forest range
It was a touch disappointing that Tam Dalyell’s good commentary on Australia’s
threatened rainforests in Queensland implicitly accepted that ‘rainforest’
means ‘tropical rainforest’ (Thistle Dairy, 18 August). In fact, Australia’s
biggest rainforests are the temperate rainforest in North West Tasmania,
the Savage River Wilderness.
It would be good to say that the Savage River forests are appreciated
as they should be but a recent moratorium against logging has expired and
plans by the state government now put the forests firmly into a ‘wood production
zone’.
Henry Brookman Battery Point, Tasmania
Letter: Piltdown plot
Frank Spencer’s Piltdown publications can be safely left for your reviewer
to deal with, but meanwhile readers should not be deceived by the extraordinary
piece of publicity you have chosen to print in advance (‘On the trail of
the Piltdown fraudsters’, 6 October).
I write from a position of authority on the Piltdown fraud. In a series
of articles in Antiquity the late Glyn Daniel and I exposed the true Piltdown
culprits, Samuel Woodhead and J T Hewitt, not merely on the basis of a careful
examination of Woodhead’s role in the affair, but also on the surprising
evidence that Hewitt had admitted his involvement in the hoax to a friend.
There simply is no case to be made against Arthur Keith, and it is a
pity that the Natural History Museum has chosen to mar the useful publication
of the Piltdown Papers by allowing Spencer the shelter of their prestige
for an attack on a distinguished scientist.
The first Keith knew of the ‘finds’ was late in the autumn of 1912.
His diary (now in the College of Surgeons archives) reveals that when he
and his wife tried on their own to visit the Barkham site in January 1913
they lost their way.
Spencer’s theory is as far fetched as those others we have had in recent
years naming Teilhard de Chardin, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and Elliot Smith.
Peter Costello Dublin Ireland
Letter: Piltdown plot
The notion that my late great uncle the anthropologist Sir Arthur Keith
forged or even took any part in the Piltdown forgery is silly beyond belief.
It does not stand up to serious examination. Of all those who stood to loose
from such a fraud on the scientific establishment of the time, Keith had
most to lose. It was no pleasure for him to be told at the age of 87 that
modern dating methods had shown that he had been fooled over some 40 years.
If he had been the forger, why would he have been still puzzling over the
skull as long after the 1912 ‘discovery’ as 1939?
For my money and, for that matter, Lord Zuckerman’s in his review for
the New York Review, which he has let me see in draft, Spencer has left
almost completely without discussion the most obvious suspect.
Martin Hinton Lindsay Keith Hurstpierpoint West Sussex
Letter: Nappy bin
I was surprised to see that disposable nappies were included in the
list of non-compostable materials (‘Waste that no one wants’, 8 September).
Disposable nappies are compostable in most industrial plants. This has been
demonstrated in recent experiments in both the US and Germany. These studies
show that the acrylate copolymer or supersorber is easily incorporated into
the compost. The plastic components of the nappy (about 10 per cent) can
be screened out. The quality of compost as measured by physical properties
and heavy metal ion content is not affected negatively even by composting
nappy levels 3-10 times higher than averagely found in municipal waste.
We support the development of composting as a way of handling the putrescible
fraction of municipal waste. Including disposable nappies in this is both
practical and desirable.
P Dutton, Chairman Disposable Nappy Association London
Letter: Engineering success
I am disappointed at the grudging approach adopted in your leading article
and by Bill O’Neill, commenting on the announcement of the establishment
of four Engineering Design Centres (1 September). The suggestion that the
success of the scheme is in doubt almost before it has got underway is not
only counterproductive, but also untrue. The concern expressed by Michael
French and Ken Wallace about the ability to recruit and retain staff is
a general one which reflects the difficulties being experienced by all HEIs
because of their salary structures, and a lack of suitable qualified applicants
to fill these posts. This is not a problem created by the level of funding
awarded by SERC to the centres.
There is equally no basis for the statement that ‘early conflicts between
the SERC and the Design Council did little to help their joint initiative
to get off the ground quickly’. SERC has been working since 1985 with the
Design Council to advance and promote engineering design and this cooperative
activity continues to work well.
SERC has committed over 6 million Pounds (pds) to the Interdisciplinary
Research Centre in Engineering Design established by a consortium led by
the University of Glasgow. This IRC will be complemented by the four recently
approved centres, and later this year the SERC’s design management committee
will consider proposals for further centres at the rate of one a year over
a five or six year period.
Your comments on the lack of authority of the design management committee
are equally ill-judged. SERC’s engineering board has taken the view that,
as design is an activity which should permeate all engineering disciplines,
it would be both wrong and counterproductive to fund all design-based grant
applications through a specialist design committee, as the other committees,
having sent all their design applications elsewhere, would then continue
to devote their funds to engineering science in their own disciplines. The
design management committee’s grant budget is therefore meant only to complement
the much larger release of funds produced by committees diverting some of
their budgets to the support of design.
It is SERC’s (and the design management committee’s) fervent hope that
the not inconsiderable support which is being put into engineering design
research will be used to full advantage to develop and extend expertise
in this field.
E W J Mitchell, Chairman Science and Engineering Research Council Swindon,
Wiltshire
Letter: Koala numbers
I would like to add to the very good summary of the koala story (‘Can
koalas bear the twentieth century?’, 22 September). What the white settlers
called ‘natural’ was in fact a human artifact. The Aborigines generated
changes in our wildlife as skilled hunters and also with their continual
use of fire.
The population explosion of koalas was probably due to the removal of
the Aborigines as efficient hunters and the dingo as a ground predator.
There was also the factor of the changing fire regime where the slow-burning
fires lit by the Aborigines kept the forest country more open and with their
going, ground cover became more abundant. Koalas were unharmed by such a
ground-running fire.
Much of the clearing of the forests had already taken place by the late
1920s yet this did not stop koalas numbers from increasing, and if any new
diseases had been imported with the white settlers this had no discernible
effect.
Why then have koala numbers not exploded once more with the complete
ban on their hunting? My opinion is that the new fire regime of intense
bushfires meant that all koala were killed in burned areas, unlike the less
intense burning of the aboriginal period. However, it does appear that koala
numbers are slowly increasing and present research will test this theory.
Vincent Serventy, President Wild Life Preservation Society of Australia,
Sydney, Australia