Alan Gillis in The Science of Conundrums reports: The shock of Japan's mega earthquake and tsunami has paralyzed not only Japan but the rest of the world. It has been so fantastic and overwhelming, our response has been the Japanese response, a mesmerising flood of emotions staring from the blank faces of the survivors. A wonder far beyond the moment, as though time itself had stopped and entombed them and us.

Unstoppable forces suddenly come, suddenly go while unleashing a cascade of events as bewildering as all the destruction. Inevitable consequences wash over those of us still left standing like a tangible fate that won't stop until there's nothing left. What can we do anyway, especially behind a TV or laptop? Yet there are some who can act and have the power to save Japan from a second wave of disaster. But as part of the usual status quo that rarely acts in time, are politicians and scientists going to ignore the obvious or help us this time?

The big event still to come is not obscure, not buried in disaster upon disaster. It explodes literally at Fukushima near Tokyo, from a 6 reactor complex, that while we watch, explodes and explodes three times in a row sending out great clouds of dust and smoke and nuclear particle radiation. A 30 km radius evacuation of 180,000 people but radiation now detectable beyond Japan in the adjoining Russian Islands. Many Japanese stay put without other clear and better options. Go where, do what?

What do we do? We watch. We talk. Foreigners scramble to fly home. Many remember Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. Low levels of radiation still, but for how long? The best guess of an ultimate disaster brewing is that one of the three most damaged nuclear reactors, Number 2 is breached and Number 2 is likely at risk for an actual full meltdown of its core.

American Physicist Michio Kaku Warns Japan




"Sandbag the reactors" or do what the Soviets did to stop Chernobyl. (Alternate video link)

The worst case now is not like Chernobyl, not a sudden and catastrophic steam explosion of the containment building and its reactor, releasing a enormous cloud of deadly radiation that drifted across Europe into the British Isles. Something more like Three Mile Island so far except there's no safe way to cool down Number 2. Injecting seawater to cool the overheating reactors caused the hydrogen explosions at Fukushima. Physicists knew it could happen and warnings were given, but there was also no choice they said. Something had to be done to prevent the meltdowns.

At Fukushima the worst case could be an even greater disaster.

With failures evident and failures spreading, it seems we are waiting for a worst case scenario before we act. Then it could be too big and too late. Not one nuclear meltdown but six. Telling the Japanese who haven't left the Fukushima disaster zone to stay inside their homes and wash and dry their laundry indoors won't work for long. Watching some experts say it's too early to tell and it can't happen here is no help either.

Perhaps the other 10,000 nuclear physicists watching the resumption of experiments at CERN's Large Hadron Collider today, were too busy to notice what's been happening in Japan.

Seriously, why the wall of silence around CERN? The foremost nuclear lab in the world always chatting up its nuclear safety at the LHC every chance it gets, and the great discoveries always over the horizon? CERN has nothing to say to Japan? No CERN plan to save Japan? Not CERN's job? Fiddle while Rome burns?

There are pictures and video and commentators telling us what they see, but no real discussion of the events at Fukushima. Details are sketchy they say. Why? Is it the Charlie Sheen effect? No time for the real world? So we should wait? It's an International Emergency that can wait? One more day, one more explosion can change everything. If the Japanese aren't prepared to act now and entomb Fukushima Number 2, they may never be able to contain the meltdown that would also threaten the other 5 already damaged reactors nearby.

Besides 3 explosions another had a fire around its heavy water swimming pool spent fuel storage pond. A lot of extremely hot rods close to the reactors, way more fuel waiting for a fire. The 2 of the 6 reactors not in the news, not hit with explosions or fire, also suffered some coolant loss. All this damage in one space that could fit on a big shopping mall parking lot.

According to Dr Kaku there is only one solution and that is to bury the reactors now including the most dangerous Number 2 in sand and concrete like Chernobyl. If not Number 2 at least we could see a more dangerous Nuclear Fire and Meltdown. At Chernobyl it seems the reactor was destroyed and its fuel rods were smashed and scattered into something of a deadly hot heap of nuclear material and rubble.

At Fukushima Number 2 it would be hotter still. You have concentrated fuel rods still aligned and close to each other, though separated by graphite rods inserted during automatic shutdown to slow down the fission reaction. The extremely hot and probably partially melted rods are all in a tight fitting mass within the jacket of a 6" thick stainless steel vessel that has partially
ruptured. When the steel melts away opening a nuclear fire pit how would you get close enough then to use the Chernobyl sarcophagus option? How close can you get to an open nuclear fire? Then if you're still alive try dumping sand on a fire that melts stainless steel.

Chernobyl RIP 1986

Many first responders died horribly after extreme radiation exposure at Chernobyl and many others in the disaster zone later of slower cancers. That could be avoided now in Japan. Wait and see from physicists and government could mean six nuclear fires on Tokyo's doorstep. The scientific community which is often in its own catatonic state of theoretical R&D and pension plans needs to wake up to this emergency. After all didn't the physics and engineering branch give us Chernobyl in the first place?

Remember the 1950's PR that started the nuclear industry? "Harnessing the Atom" as they called it. And this soon after Hiroshima and Nagasaki? What next? "It can't happen in America" commercials and "tell your Congressman about today's safe nuclear option"?

Are you watching too Mr President? How about last year's Obama on video? No nukes but go nuclear? Loan guarantees to the nuclear industry for new nuclear plants. What about all the unsecured nuclear waste and the old nuclear plants in the US like the General Electric design used at Fukushima? What guarantees do we have? What guarantees in Japan? And who will pay? Us too?

This Story Starts To Break

Reuters Video: IAEA: Japan nuclear plant damage "worrying"

Reuters: Chernobyl clean-up expert slams Japan, IAEA

Reuters: Timeline: Japan's unfolding nuclear crisis

--Alan Gillis

It's not Nancy Kadaffy. It's Mo Kadaffy. Gimme that. What's 7 gram rocks?

NewsHammer Exclusive This you haven't heard yet from the Invincible Charlie Sheen: It's so hot even a dinosaur couldn't take it with 10 love goddesses kickin' his ass.

Sources close to FedEx Tripoli not authorized to speak to the media claim to have made weekly deliveries of Season 7 boxed sets of Two and a Half Men to the same video store in downtown Tripoli before there was a Season 7.

In Cairo, in Tunis, in bleds like Mers el Kebir it's the same old wanking story. Same guy in a keffiyeh always picks up the package. Charlie won't talk about it, but says:

It's the CIA and so what? You can't blame Two and a Half Men for crazy Arab parties in big ass presidential palaces for fsakes that just happen to bring down the entire Arab thing on CNN. They might giggle if they get it, but any lamebrain can hardly get corrupted by me, if that's what you think happens at my orgies. I work with professionals. I don't need amateurs who don't get it. Why bother a pro with foreplay when you don't need it? A guy's a guy and that's horseshit when you're ready to blow up the fort. For another thing the show is totally boring except for the love god played by me. Did you ever see a nipple on the show that wasn't mine? Mine are beauts fortunately. You won't even see a trickle on the bed. We're clean. Those are American values. We don't corrupt anybody. We just make money. If they're losing it over there and I'm not buying the crack story, it's because they got too much oil and not everybody's being lubed, that's the problem. Right Mo?

وقال إنه "إذا أراد الأميركيون أو الغرب غزو ليبيا يجب عليهم أن يعلموا أنها ستكون جهنم وحمام دم أكثر من العراق"

Cut and pasted from Twenty Minutes with Gaddafi, maybe or maybe not an actual Charlie Sheen rant. The site was hacked and now there's only Twenty Minutes with the President. This one's a copy with Arabic subtitles, so maybe it's genuine, because every other Charlie Sheen in Arabic has been taken down or punched out on Youtube, except this German one which is about as close as you can get to Arabic in the free world where Charlie appears to be a German clone.

Though you have to admit that Twenty Minutes with Gaddafi could be a conspiracy as in 9/11 revisited in Twenty Minutes with the President, or in Germany anyway Charlie Sheen has been replaced by a clone. If he's a clone then you can understand the lip syncing problem and if there isn't a German connection, there should be one as his German is pretty good. It gets complicated because there seems to be another clone and this one rants just like Charlie.



The Undetected American Charlie Clone

Note the poor lip syncing again (Alternate Video Link) but all the other Charlie stuff feels right. Whatever the truth, the rant is genuine and anyone can see Charlie's influence in the Muammar Gaddafi video rant below, maybe thanks to some 7 gram rocks from Charlie's beach house, though the set doesn't even have a beach or any sand and nobody from the show has ever appeared on the beach, not even the babes who you think could play beach volleyball once in a while, but maybe that's too booby Baywatch for Charlie when there's no humping on the beach anyway, not even on TV. Charlie can get that tame stuff on video without the hot sun and sand in his Mai Tai. Holding back for Season 14? We'll never know why Charlie didn't score on the beach, now the show's been cancelled.

Though wait. Jon Cryer will no doubt tell us about all we don't want to know about Charlie once he gets on Late Night as the default Charlie Sheen. He's already doing Reception on daytime Ellen. Though Charlie might be back like I scared you all with this BS like Joachim Phoenix, remember, that long running long hair gag about Joachim the Rapper you didn't get for ages? See me and Chaim set this up. We're pals though he's still a no-talent brainless idiot. He goes to my AA meetings for me. Isn't that love? Believe me now?



Gaddafi Rant

If that's not Gaddafi, who is it? (Alternate Video Link) The lip sync is also flawed, but 2 international celebrity clones in one day is a bit much. It's easy though for big budget bad ass governments to overdo a good thing, but maybe they're right. More than Two and a Half Men have crashed worldwide and if you do the math the final score is America Wins. Whether or not Charlie or his clone is winning or gets the credit, is debatable, but what Gaddafi says above is exactly what Charlie would say if he were Gaddafi. Nobody could miss that.

In the best of all possible conspiracy theories, Two and a Half Men laid the groundwork for Western corruption of top heavy Arab States (check the Arab ratings and 7 days a week of reruns in Dubai) and planted the seed for deep seated erotic capitalism first in the mind and then the body of nation upon nation, as expressed by the love god Charlie himself. Though any hormonally imbalanced adolescent if you asked could tell you, that Charlie didn't discover El Dorado by himself. Even the rest of us know there must be something more to life than Starbucks with your laptop or unfiltered muddy Turkish at rickety cafe tables throughout the Arab world. Sex and capitalism must triumph or why else a world in the first place? Then there are personal relationships and Charlie has had plenty, very hot, very close, plus he's Hollywood Shooting Star Matter and so has kryptonite influence. Even guys get the buddy magic. When Charlie's with Muammar, he's 100% the best 100% the personal BFF. He nails it and nobody gets upset except CBS.

Ask Muammar. Did Muammar even think of shooting him? No! Here in another candid buddy to buddy moment is what Charlie apparently also said in Twenty Minutes with Gaddafi:

If we misplaced democracy somewhere, who the fcares. Do they know what it is even over here? Some boys tangoing in stuffed paper shirts like mine's better than yours and wait for my soundbite on the news, so fwhat? Is that what the Arabs want, what we got? They can have it. I'll take what they got, the houris in Paradise except I want it now bro, why not now, what are we waiting for? The end of the world? It can't happen too soon, but we're still waiting. But I'm not waiting and I won't be pissing in your cup to prove it, not anymore. I did 4 in a row. A perfect score. What's that Mo?

هل هذا ما والأمريكيون؟

I don't know what Americans think. But I know what they'll do to you. Like I was telling Hosni, get respectable. Open a lap dancing bar say in Hamburg, double D girls is about right and go Brrrr Boing Wow BLBLBLBL all night. If you don't then sooner or later the paparazzi will get you like they got my love pussy Kacey Jordan. But they won't get me. I'll lie if I have to.



If You Haven't ODd Duh The Best Charlie Rant Recap

(Alternate Video Link)

--Alan Gillis

NewsHammer Exclusive: It wasn't (Jimmy) Stewart Goes to Washington, but the 2010 retread with Jon and his alter-ego, the Caped Crusader For Fear, pal Stephen Colbert. Thanks for trying you guys, but the Capitol boys and girls back of the stage have been in a time warp since way before Capra, about when Mark Twain discovered Planet Washington in 1868:

I believe the Prince of Darkness could start a branch hell in the District of Columbia (if he has not already done it), and carry it on unimpeached by the Congress of the United States, even though the Constitution were bristling with articles forbidding hells in this country.

Anyway the Rally To Restore Sanity And/Or Fear 10.30.10 was a big success. "10 Million People," said Jon to a packed Washington Mall, to make sure it wasn't under-reported by Media told not to go by Media unless in an official reporting capacity, which was stranger than fiction but true. Like don't go to Disney World unless you should be suspected of hitting on Snow White or maybe the Seven Dwarfs. Or being one of those millions of Daily Show/Colbert Report sympathisers where you can be outed by Fox and slammed all week for the stinkin' left wing liberal media mafia everyone knows you are.

Was it fun and/or serious? Better than small late box TV and live from sunny (a lucky break) Washington for 3 great hours without commercials. Meaningful? Sure as a bit of Theater of the Absurd, an Anti-Rally for the ghosts of Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin who had haunted these same precincts this summer under the Washington Monument on their mission for Restoring Honor. (Alterate video link)




Preshow With Beck And More Beck

Happily Stewart and Colbert did not turn the Mall into an AA Meeting and didn't swear off or condemn anything, at least not with high sobriety. More subtly than you might think, these guys did manage something of a funeral for the 9/11 Age of Paranoia. Thing is on a low budget you can't dig a hole in Washington deep enough to bury Terror. With more cash, not a chance when there are bomb-proof bunkers everywhere. We saw Colbert climbing out of one under the stage, hiding snce Thursday, afraid yes afraid no one would come.

Parachuting in Father Guido Sarducci of the Church of Saturday Night Live was a nice try to blur all religious distinctions as not up to scratch anyway with God, so we can presumably get back to partying like when St. Belushi was alive. Not the big enough moment though. Maybe a million little gold-plated shovels engraved with Bury Fear Alive tossed into the crowd by Sarducci himself might have been more chilling and effective. Other big moments for the Rally were also edited out for the same reason, think small for lack of cash, the No Bailouts For Main Street from Planet Washington conspicuously looming behind the bare bones stage, a thin LCD Jumbotron threatening to blow away.

Still Stewart and Colbert got it right, mano a mano in a nicely scripted pillow fight between age old protagonist and antagonist, Sanity Vs Fear. More trashing of historic rallies and inaugurations in general. From the Benediction to The Poem and from Poet Laureate Colbert it did sound authentically bombastic enough to be the real deal, a kind of Shopping List Anthem. Sorry I can't be sure as you don't tend to listen to mere words in bouts of high oratory. Careful Steve, you could send a country, a continent to war.


First Washington Then Maybe Maryland After I Get A Coffee

Lots of fill-in mini events like Sheryl Crow and the bands and guest stars to add some punch and sparkle. Sam Waterston who should be President. R2D2 and a 7 year old girl who gets a medal from Jon for Sanity while Stephen awards his Medal of Fear to Anderson Cooper's Black Tshirt. When Anderson the Grim Reaper and CNN invade your neck of the woods, you know you've got trouble. Soundbites for quick crowd participation. Mythbusters to open on Can Two Guys Generate Crowd Waves that actually worked over and over again rolling through the Mall. Nice job from Adam and Jaime who didn't have to blow anything up this time in the name of National Security. Tony Bennett to close with a lighter clear-eyed patriotic Say Can You See...

Jon Stewart has the last word after slaying Steve's Giant Dummy of Fear, with his Un-named Holland Tunnel Speech like we're all a lot of goofy weird cars with nothing else in common, peacefully driving together down Life's Highway trying to squeeze down to one lane. And it works in the USA! Ipso facto (like ants for instance) we must be doing something right and why doesn't it work for the rest of the world?

Which plays back to the Rally's Biggest Moment. Yusuf Cat Stevens in person after disappearing into Islam for ages gets to sing Peace Train again. Maybe a serious thoughtful moment for bridge building, but no, Colbert on his own Terror Express won't have any piece of that train. Enter Ozzy Osbourne on a collision course burned out from Hell still, but respectable enough for an afternoon Crazy Train. The Battle of the Trains is a comic gamble that shocks the crowd and sort of works by not being funny. When it can't of course resolve into a feel-good theme park ride like Jon's Cars Into The Tunnel, there's only one way to save the day, the O'Jays and Love Train.

In this bedtime storybook from Jon and Stephen we'll take the Love Train. A bit sticky and sweet like Caramilk but tomorrow it's Halloween and Trick or Treat.

--Alan Gillis

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

*****UPDATE Gaddafi Hijacks Jon Stewart Video Link

March 11, 2011 Tripoli

Forces of Darkness reported (inadvertently) through MSNBC which uses so much video code you never know what's next. See the original Jon Stewart/Glenn Beck Match Of The Century in the sidebar video on your right.

It only confirms what Stephen Colbert, The Caped Crusader For Fear, was trying to tell us: Stay home and watch TV. It's safer.

If you need a recap of the Autumn of Our Discontent, well everybody in Washington went home. A lot of people are now taking NetFlix seriously and are watching for Tsunamis from Japan.

--Alan Gillis

NewsHammer Exclusive The big showdown yesterday June 15 between Big Oil's Top 5 and Chairman Ed Markey's House Subcommittee had about as much impact as a quart of oil spilled on the floor. Exciting at first, embarrassing and then slippery to talk about, but nobody bothered to clean it up. In the end there wasn't much anyone could do on the spot except blame BP and look forward to nuclear energy, what? Just 2-word bombshells going off now and then carelessly dropped into every Green energy future, oddly by the same people who were going mission critical on dirty dangerous BP oil destroying our way of life.

Riveting at first with BP America's Chairman looking stone-cold sober and ready to be lead to the gallows for about the first hour of opening remarks. Markey as Chairman sliced and diced first, kicking some BP walruses clean out of the Gulf as well as walruses found in 3 other Spill Response Plans just like BP's, all 4 with the same 500 page format and 90% identical even Shell's, all 5 with about the same cover art, but at least Shell with some background in fossils and maybe fossil fuels knew that there haven't been walruses in the Gulf for 3 million years, as Markey lectured the other Chairmen of Big Oil.



The other tipping points scored could have been boiled down to 5 minutes from the 5 hour hearing and have been of course even down to less than 2 minutes by AP video (alternate link) and by other media where just about everybody looks good. Not in the video above, some other essential answers wrung out later from 4 of the 5 Chairmen with Yes or No like admissions that they wouldn't have been ready either for a BP Size Spill. BUT they all said they wouldn't have had a BP Spill anyway if they had been drilling and filling BP's Well according to their own Better Industry Practices. Even so they didn't want to say that much, and Markey had to hit them again with Yes or No to get some answers. Even on the 14-page letter from Subcommittee members Waxman and Stupak to BP CEO Tony Hayward that rips out the bleeding heart of BP incompetence before the Deepwater Horizon "nightmare well" explosion and fire, the Big 5 were going to demure. Yes or No? Well, only if the facts were true, so Yes like 5 bad boys down the line.

For the first major confrontation between Capitol Hill and the Big 5, covering the BP backend disaster, the current BP hopeless mess and America's safe and maybe Green energy future and maybe without BP, only BP's Lamar McKay looked like he passed the audition for the Movie. Better at emotional depth as the scared shitless corporate martyr, saying nothing while waiting for a miserable end that might go on forever. One after another 30 committee members sharpened their opening remarks on his stony face and frozen dead body. An amazing study, but cut from the news videos.

It could have worn him down, but surprisingly he got used to it and thawed with only a few other House Members up to Markey's sharp facts and pointed go for the jugular style. Once the give and take of Q for A started an hour later you had to love the game change flip from Exxon Mobil. With that effortless industry leadership you might expect, the whole deal was cookie-cuttered into a Forbes Magazine spread. Exxon Mobil out in front, McKay had some cover and soon he was able to step out of his catatonic disaster suit into just another one of the guys from Big 5 eyeballing shareholders from another planet, the gentlemen and gentleladies from a House Subcommittee on Planet Washington.

It wasn't long before McKay got his clichés in a row. Still waiting for the investigations [elsewhere of course] and the final reports [years away]; and it hasn't been decided yet, escrow funds [BBBejesus]; BP will pay for the spill cleanup [good] and will mitigate its effects [not so good] and ducking and sliding by the storm of leading questions.

But McKay had one ace up his sleeve. Though it fell on the floor instead of on the table. Unified Command was responsible for Spill cleanup, so Unified Command was the shield for BP's slow and ineffective post-spill actions. Everybody's working together, BP hasn't held anything back. McKay didn't hammer it home, but he could have. There was still a backup ace, that could have piqued MMS and drawn blood from the Government that so far has approved everything BP wanted. It must have been a tough call with the long knives out. But it seems McKay remembered it was a hearing after all, a public relations exercise, and not a fight to the death in a dangerous fire and brimstone court of law. Why push his luck when the other Big 4 were circling the wagons around him? If they'd been out to burn British Petroleum in the interests of Industry Safety or business as usual, as rumor had it, well then nothing could have saved BP. They weren't, so relax. Oil was still in bed with Gas.

To be fair it is a good take on what happened and the shared responsibility for the Spill and cleanup that McKay left instead for the armies of lawyers to come and courts to settle maybe 20 years later. McKay's unspoken inference that everybody's to blame for all the failures and setbacks through Unified Command, notably the US Government including President Obama who took charge of operations through the USCG and his National Incident Commander Admiral Thad Allen way back as of May 1, and the dozen other agencies involved, was lost in the shuffle and spark of brittle questions and watered down answers.

Lowballing Estimates, Who's On First?

McKay did underline NOAA's 5,000 barrels per day estimate, as though BP did not lowball the estimates. Markey shot back but McKay noted that BP's, if in-house and confidential, original estimate was 1,000 per day up to 14,000, everybody in Government knew that.

Nobody told us though or Congress either until Markey went fishing.

Though everybody knows BP did say 1,000 barrels a day in public and then disputed NOAA's 5,000 estimate. Then BP tolerated NOAA's estimate while not bothering to analyze its own data, and not releasing video of the leaks until Markey jumped all over BP. Not wanting live feeds either of Top Kill until kicked by Capitol Hill. And still doing nothing on its own. Finally the Government got some hi-res video from BP for analysis of flow after Cut and Cap started, and still nothing more from BP until the Government recently figured out they needed some actual sensors in the Cap to monitor flow that BP was ordered to install finally. Now the Government's Flow Assessment Team is saying up to 60,000 barrels a day. But the same team had earlier also reported numbers that were oddly taken to be the full range of the leak at least in the media, that was in fact its low range of 12-25,000, with no upper range then possible according to Dr Ira Leifer in NewsHammer, "BP's Big Fix".

So who has been lowballing the numbers? Why everybody. But why? Easy for BP as huge and deadly eventual fines would be based per gallon of oil spilled. Why everyone else? Confusion, incompetence, stupidity or maybe just bureaucracy and its many insulting brain-numbing states? It has to be on form 1006.

Markey hit BP hard anyway on BP lowballing its numbers which had the disastrous effect of a minimal spill response. Everybody should have been prepared for a much bigger spill and they weren't because of BP. And BP wasn't either. Since it was their Spill and they were responsible they should have acted right away to contain a big spill underway with their 500 page plan. That was useless anyway, but anyway it was their Spill.

McKay on auto-pilot carelessly repeated BP's misleading smoking-gun soundbite hammered into the media, that the numbers had nothing to do with stopping the Spill as BP was always considering the kill of the Deepwater well as a worst case scenario. And anyway the Government had BP's data and BP's estimate. Which brings us to:


The Obama BP Inaction Plan

Is that why Obama has been playing Mr Nice President Guy? First saying it was BP's Spill and BP would clean it up. Then taking over after finding out he had to under law and BP was dragging its heels? Then still playing partners with BP on it until the media screamed and the people too that he wasn't taking the disaster seriously enough, wasn't even angry when everybody else was. So he got angry for awhile, for Larry King Live, and that wore off too by the time he figured he had to do something from the Oval Office. A talk with the American people. No, it wasn't exactly Obama in action, it was Obama politics.

These guys at BP who he even avoided talking to, if they weren't going to act decisively had to be given enough time to do it or enough rope to hang themselves. As much as possible he had to get some action from BP, not through confrontation and the courts, but playing along. Playing along because the ass he wanted to kick was technically out of reach, his own ass especially. The Buck Stops With Me came out so late because well he and the US government were co-responsible with BP since May 1st when he formally took over through Admiral Allen to run the Unified Command show. So BP messed up but Obama managed to get BP to pay for the cleanup, disregarding the $75 Million corrorate lifesaver cap law, that limited BP's liability in the Spill. Managed to get BP to start paying some claims from those suffering in financial hell.

The other and only straight option was go in guns blazing and sink BP's Corporate Ship. Charge them, lock'em up for the Deepwater Spill in light of their reckless record and hundreds of safety violations. Put BP in receivership where it belongs. Send in the Army and clean up the horrendous mess. That would have been the Change We Need, but as a political cat with 9 lives behind a podium, Obama didn't want to risk his Presidency on a gamble with American Oil or these 5 guys who might cut and run further Offshore to any of the many regulation-free Tax Havens abroad or to Dubai like Haliburton did, or try to anyway. So reform the whole rotten industry that's destroying the planet? Extreme, well not if you read up on it.

Even during the Oval Office Address that night, when everybody thought there would finally be some action from the White House, it was more the winter fireside chat, fire out, without the Christmas Tree.

June 16 Update: Obama Inaction Plan Wins Big: $20 Billion From BP

If Obama is smart as a politico, is he smart enough to lead the nation? Or did he outsmart America's gut instincts and instead doom the Gulf to save some BP Corporate Paper and billions of lousy bucks? Stop and contain the Spill or get the money? Two long months later too late for anything else, there's only one smart choice left, play along and get the money.

Shaking down the BP Empire, the BP Corporate heads marshalled at the White House today to play ball, Obama scored an escrow account as promised at a tidy $20 Billion yet for those hurt by the BP Spill. To be run independently from BP and from the Government, the new setup is another chance for Gulf residents denied their money or nickel and dimed by BP. Plus another $100 Million for lost wages for rig crews idled by Obama's expanded 6 month moratorium on deep sea drilling until it's safe. Though BP gets a beak. Not $20 Billion now, but the damage fund topped up from time to time from BP's deep pockets, hopefully deep enough.

The new claims procedure is better and doesn't limit anyone or any State's rights to sue BP and the $20 Billion doesn't cap the damages either for BP. It's a win-win for everybody except BP and its shareholders who won't see a dime in dividends for at least a year.

Hopefully it will be easier to get claims processed and paid than understanding the White House video (CNN alternate link).



The White House Tries To Explain How To Get Money

Obama's other promise last night to capture Up To 90% of the Spill with built-in loads of room for error, is still weeks away. At least some sort of murky future is coming into focus. It could take years to bring back the Gulf and the Gulf way of life, but Obama also said he's getting a long-term Gulf Coast Restoration Plan in motion that he's asked Ray Mabus, the Secretary of the Navy, to develop. And on top of that big plans for a new Greener energy economy.

Wow. Good enough for starters. Better than we hoped from yesterday's homily, as long as BP keeps paying the bills. But how long do we have? Dr Leifer who's in charge of the Government's flow assessment said that if the Deepwater well can't be capped, it could spew oil for another 20 or 30 years.

Getting it right when it's too late?

--Alan Gillis

NewsHammer Exclusive If anything is clear 51 days into the BP Spill, the battle for the Gulf is turning into a war on the Gulf States, with surprise, even more oil releasing from BP's latest fix.

BP's cloudy crystal ball forecast of 60% to 70% success for the Top Kill, turned out to be a perfect 0% along with its first big idea, cofferdam containment that took 2 weeks to build and a day to fail while the slick spread from manageable to catastrophic. Now the new Top Cap from Cut And Cap that was supposed to capture most of the oil from the leaking BOP a mile under the Gulf, may have increased the escape of oil.

If BP says the new Cap or LMRP is working and latest numbers show 15,000 barrels of crude are being recovered daily by the Cap and riser assembly to a surface ship, a huge gain over the earlier 2,000 barrels a day recovery, spill cams don't show the expected improvement. A UC Santa Barbara researcher, Dr Ira Leifer, part of the government's new response team to estimate flow, thinks the release is much worse than before. Dr Leifer told The New York Times yesterday:

“The well pipe clearly is fluxing way more than it did before. By way more, I don’t mean 20 percent, I mean multiple factors.”

BP had said it expected only a 20% increase in flux or flow when the old damaged riser was cut off from the BOP to install the Cap. But now it seems the mile-long tangle of bent riser pipe that fell down to the sea floor from the destroyed Deepwater Horizon rig but still attached to the Blow Out Preventer, was producing much more back pressure that substantially limited the flow of oil into the Gulf. Now the Cap has to take way more pressure and oil.

The problem is the Cap to ship recovery is already working at about maximum 15,000 barrels a day capacity and still more oil seems to be escaping. Within a week BP will employ yet another system to capture 5,000 more barrels a day. A ship connected to a sea floor manifold, lowered earlier to inject 30,000 barrels of mud and some Junk Shot for the failed Top Kill, will be used to recover more oil. BP could be containing a total of 20,000 barrels a day by next week. Admiral Thad Allen, the National Incident Commander, says new estimates bump total capacity even higher, to 28,000 by next week.

It might not be enough if Dr Leifer is right. The earlier government maximum spill estimate before Cut and Cap was 25,000 barrels per day. As discussed in NewsHammer, BP Top Kill And The Oily Bottom Line, the actual spill could have been 50,000 barrels a day. BP originally said the Deepwater spill was only about 1,000 barrels a day.

There's still no accurate assessment, but Dr Leifer's government team is working on it. Their latest high end figure is about 43,000 barrels a day. In any case the government has decided that a quicker turnaround and more capacity should be on site just in case. Due to arrive in a few days, an oil barge on the way from the North Sea is being brought in to transfer oil to the mainland. The big news for extra capacity is the deployment of a new oil/gas burner to be installed on a rig by mid-June. The EverGreen Burner is designed to vaporize the oil/gas for a smokeless burn and could process another 13,000 barrels a day. If everything goes right, by mid-June BP could capture about 41,000 barrels a day from the leaking Deepwater well. In part, that seems to depend on another better sealing replacement Cap now in the works to maximize oil and gas capture. Knowing BP I'd say that's tempting fate. BP should know by now that BP Science has been shown to have limits.

Even so, there are other major holes in the damaged BOP itself and they will continue to leak though at a reduced rate, even if all the flow from the 21 inch cut-off riser is captured by the new improved Cap.


The real solution is the Bottom Kill, when BP drills way down into the well itself and plugs it permanently with mud and cement, hopefully in August. That won't be easy. Not even with a backup relief well also being drilled now.

The Top Kill failed because the pressure from the well was so great the heavy drill mud wouldn't stay down. When pumping stopped, the 30,000 barrels of mud shot up and out of the well into the Gulf. Pumping in still more mud was considered, then abandoned by BP. It could have ruptured the well pipe and casing, which was not a standard BP design according to BP's drilling engineer, Mark Hafle, during USCG/MMS Joint Hearings on the BP spill May 28.

Try more mud deeper down?

It's going to be a long hot sticky summer.

In an update June 9, Dr Ira Leifer interviewed by Democracy Now! (alternate video link and transcript) ballparks his estimate on total oil flow to over 100,000 barrels a day. He goes on to say that earlier government estimates of 12,000 to 25,000 barrels a day were only low-end in any case, and there was no upper-end as data was too poor for evaluation. Yet somehow or other those figures were misconstrued and reported by the media as the full range of the spill.

Like the other unsubstantiated 5,000 barrels a day that was reported for weeks, all we've been hearing since then are more wrong numbers.


With just about everything going wrong with the BP Spill, now including the numbers, you begin to wonder if there's a conspiracy theory to cover it? Why didn't BP or Admiral Thad Allen or President Obama or Robert Gibbs at the White House brief the Press that this was clearly the low end, 12-25,000 barrels a day? Is fudging the numbers the only way to minimize the spill? Or is this the best we can do? Win the PR war? Everything is being done, is it? Not exactly.

This is what Dr Leifer says about the level of science going on, again worse than you would expect, and what the real potential of the BP Spill could be:

"During the event of a spill, typically, as we’re seeing now, the scientists are kept away. We have to stop the spill right away; we don’t have time to let the scientists come in and take a look. We scientists will come in after the fact, much later. There’s government support for a few years, and then it completely dries up. And little bits of research still continue, and new developments are made; however, these tend not to be implemented. . . .

"This reservoir is massive, and it could easily flow that kind of oil for the next twenty or thirty years, if it was left to go unattended. So the amount of oil that could end up in the environment if measures are not successful is at what I would call unimaginable. . . ."

See the US Government's Ongoing Response Timeline since the Deepwater Horizon Explosion and Fire, April 20, 2010.

More news and updates from Deepwater Horizon Unified Command.

--Alan Gillis

NewsHammer Exclusive 34 days and counting at the Deepwater Horizion Blowout. Just a stone's throw from the last major disaster to hit Louisiana, the FEMA/Bush relief effort before and after Hurricane Katrina rolled into New Orleans in 2005.

Apart from Obama's rhetoric which always sounds great, the biggest offshore oil spill since Mexico's IXTOC I, has blown away a big chunk of Obama's credibility, at least a million tons of media inspired paper since Yes We Can.

Obama Strikes Oil

Not only did the Obama Administration approve without any review, the BP permits for offshore drilling at the Deepwater site, a month before the BP accident Obama called for an end to the 20 year moratorium on offshore drilling in most US coastal waters. Or Blast foreign oil. Fire all torpedoes. Not the environmentally friendly Obama we expected, but the way out of left field way beyond more oil, the new let's go nuclear Obama. What? What happened? No nukes but go nuclear?

Time for a rethink. Here's half the answer, through the Wall Street backdoor to the dirty BP Meltdown in the Gulf of Mexico. Do we need the other half, a big bucks nuclear meltdown to stop being stupid about energy?

Back to square one: New offshore drilling on hold pending a 30 day review says Obama. Exciting turnaround, but a bit late for Deepwater spewing death in the Gulf. Then let's not get too serious in Washington when there's a slew of new permits to approve anyway, another 30 odd for more offshore drilling. Now granted according to The New York Times despite the new emergency moratorium. Not a real moratorium on drilling, just one for Public Relations purposes it seems. Frightening coming from the government, when as Obama said back at his Inauguration "Words mean something." Even old Deepwater-type do your own thing permits to be outlawed still handed out lately like candy thanks to the same loophole in permit regulations that covers exemptions like building outhouses from government scrutiny, that covered BP and Deepwater Horizon.

Shows you can't make policy when you don't know the industry in question. Whether it's Oil & Gas or nuclear. Same problem in Congress when lawyers and moneymen (the usual credentials for office) want to improve things or muddle into war. Worst of all, is the lame billions of dollars more of public money to be thrown at a nuclear renaissance because nuclear is the Green Option to energy independence and carbon capping. Wrong again, Mr President. Sorry. Stick to law on this one, like "certain unalienable Rights...Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."


BP or MMS in Deepwater

Though the old Obama surfaced for awhile and kicked some ass at Mineral Management Service which collects Oil & Gas royalties for DOI (the #2 US revenue source after the IRS) while awarding permits for exploration like it did for Deepwater. Obviously a federal department based on conflict of interest, money or safety, should be split. Obama ready to swing the ax, got a bonus when the Head of deep sea oil exploration, Chris Oynes, rolled out of his MMS office on May 18, a month after Deepwater Horizon blew up. Now a followup report on MMS shows just how cozy the relationship to Big Oil was, with freebies and other incentives for some staffers, some resigning, some fired, others up for criminal prosecution.

Hope some of the guys at BP's Head Office noticed that for a disaster of this size, fallguys are mandatory. So far there haven't been any pleas of Mea Culpa at BP. No they're all doing their best. Always have, goes without saying. It's all over the BP corporate website if nowhere else. No one at BP seems to be remotely responsible for what happened in the best of all possible PR worlds. An "incident" or PR jargon for accident we're investigating. We're on it. We'll clean up every drop of oil. There's that at least. BP is doing everything it can (34 days later).

What is BP Doing?

"22,000 personnel deployed"
Says the BP website. Yeah? Where? Whose personnel? BP's? Has everybody in BP London or BP Houston been schlepped over to the wetlands of Louisiana in Wellington boots? Doubt it. Maybe if you count the Coast Guard, NOAA, maybe 800 or so crew on 10 BP ships and platforms at Deepwater now, maybe a thousand BP engineers world-wide on cell phones, but there's still a big shortfall. Well, add thousands of BP made redundant Louisiana fishermen donating their time to lay boom and contain the spill. I guess you've still got to add the Louisiana State Legislature and Congress too, plus a few thousand concerned citizens wringing their hands in the neighborhood. Oh yeah, and just how many rapid response 12 man teams from BP in the Gulf? One fat guy?

"1,100 vessels on site"
Says the BP website. That explains it, not BP vessels, not 22,000 BP personnel, but BP takes the credit. Terrific PR!

If BP has bleached its record clean on its website, past and present, and in soundbites for the media, Obama has been in Make No Mistake mode, knocking BP for lack of transparency and action. It's BP's oil spill and BP will pay. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar who might be the cowboy in charge of this BP mess, has his boot on BP's neck he said. But so far government heavy breathing hasn't been effective either on the oil spill or on BP. But Obama is gearing up for more effective invective with a new bipartisan commission to investigate BP. Good luck. Last time the EPA investigated BP in 2006 for negligence on the Alaska North Slope BP pipeline spill, BP buried the investigation with 62 million pages of documents. Blink, it's no typo. And that was for a small BP spill of 250,000 gallons.


EPA and BP: Clash of the Titans

According to CNN the other day, the EPA is on BP's case again, this time ordering BP to stop using a toxic dispersant that's been airplane sprayed over the gigantic oil slick, and injected by ship into the undersea plume, about 715,000 gallons so far. BP has disputed the order saying that Corexit is better than what the EPA has approved, yet BP had already purchased an EPA recommended substitute, Sea Brat 4. Hundreds of thousands of gallons of this less toxic dispersant are idling on the mainland in the hot sun, waiting for who knows what as the oil slick moves into the wetlands of Louisiana where it has already fouled 65 miles of shoreline there.

The injection by BP of Corexit into the undersea plume of oil, also ordered stopped by EPA, is potentially the more serious problem long term. BP has always minimized the amount of the spill, relying on surface oil slick and sheen to estimate the flow, ignoring the outflow from the ruptured riser and the Blow Out Preventer. That BOP malfunctioned and failed to stop the Deepwater Horizon drilling platform from exploding when a giant bubble of gas ruptured it and caught fire. The BOP a mile down on the seafloor still capping the wellhead still doesn't work. Otherwise it would have been possible to simply shut off the well.

Besides BP and the BOP, MMS is also in the loop for blame. It granted BP's drilling permit without any impact or safety study on a very deep well in very deep water, a mile down to the seafloor and drilling another 4 miles down to the oil. That's five miles of rock and water pressure on the BP oil under the seafloor.


BP's Top Kill Next

Stopping the leak with mud, cement and junk shot, what BP wants to do as early as May 26, chances are will only plug the BOP. Is that enough to stop an extremely high pressure leak? Probably not. It might reduce the flow. Though BP will try to go down deeper below the BOP and plug the well itself. If the well can't be filled with mud and cement, then a partial BOP cap could blow out of the water. Tremendous oil pressures, 5 miles of rock and water on the oil bed, could pop a few tons of plugged up BOP clean out of its way. Then we could have a much bigger eruption of oil, totally out of control. Deepwater could spew for months and destroy the the entire US Gulf of Mexico coastline.

The IXTOC I spill of 1979 in the Gulf of Mexico ruptured for 9 months before it was finally plugged. And it was a much easier to control 2 mile well in 160 feet of water west of the Yucatan. It wound up fouling Texas beaches 600 miles away.


Underestimating The Deepwater Spill

Initially BP claimed the spill was 1,000 barrels a day. Outflow based on surface water conditions analyzed by NOAA was revised to 5,000 barrels a day. BP disputed NOAA's figures. But BP said it was also impossible to measure the undersea flow, and the actual flow was irrelevant. Now BP is siphoning off about 2,000 barrels a day from the leaking well to a surface ship--and yet that's only sucked up a modest amount of what is still leaking out furiously. How wrong can you get BP? Try 50,000 barrels a day.

Other estimates in the NYT based on analysis of video of the leaks have gone as high as 100,000 barrels a day of oil/gas mix leaking, though as the flow seems to be about half gas/ half oil according to BP, the oil volume has been adjusted down to about 50,000 barrels of pure oil escaping into the Gulf per day or maybe twice the oil spill of IXTOC I.

So why does the still enormous spill look smaller on the surface water than it should be if we do have 50,000 barrels a day leaking? Enter Corexit. As a dispersant it acts on oil to break it down into small droplets by binding to the oil molecules. But Corexit is itself toxic according to the EPA. The resulting droplets although more easily biodegradable than liquid oil, are even more toxic to marine life breathing it in like fish do. Using Corexit doesn't reduce the amount of oil pollution. It's still there. Diluted oil should be less likely to foul shorelines and birds though it still does as we've seen from Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal's presentations, fouling 65 miles of shoreline so far while BP and the Feds dither about what to do next. In an emergency you've got to have action as Katrina should have demonstrated. Instead according to Jindal there's a terrible shortfall in equipment needed while some resources available are tied up in approval procedures so committees can sit around calling for studies before they approve anything Jindal wants to do.

Dead Zones Underwater

If there's some surface benefit to dispersants, injected directly into the undersea plume of oil there are other effects. It's happily preventing more oil from reaching surface waters, but at the same time this oil is now trapped under the surface of the Gulf of Mexico where it may persist for a much longer time. Oil under water doesn't biodegrade easily, in the absence of sunlight, mechanical wave action and bacteria. Huge plumes of treated oil from Deepwater have been discovered underwater 20 miles away creating giant dead zones. They too could move into ocean currents while some of the oil may be settling on the seafloor contaminating shellfish.

This trapping of oil probably occurs even without dispersant applied, as the BOP leak is a mile underwater, the deepest oil spill yet. As oil/gas mixture rises in extremely cold water, the temperature is so cold and the pressure of water so high, that there is already a tendency for oil to congeal and in the case of gases like methane involved, for the methane and seawater to freeze forming methane ice or hydrates as they're calling them on the news. Hydrates formed in the containment cofferdam over the BOP in BP's first attempt to seal the leak and the cofferdam was abandoned.

The EPA did order BP to stop such injections of Corexit. But BP continues to use it underwater and on the surface spill. If the oil spill looks better that way, appearing to be a much smaller spill, all the spilled oil is still there underwater or on the surface except for some natural evaporation of volatiles like gasoline in the oil. By underestimating the flow and stubbornly refusing to measure the actual outflow from the leaks, by using a lot of dispersant, BP may be counting on not only better public relations fallout from a smaller looking spill, but less liability if it comes down to eventual court actions including possible criminal charges filed by the US government or by other claimants for damages. It's cover your ass time at BP and in Washington.


The BOP and BP's Safety Record

Fixing blame might never happen. Who did what? Besides BP, Transocean the owner of the Deepwater Horizon rig that was destroyed in the accident, Halliburton which did the cement work on the well and the maker of the failed BOP, Cameron International, are blaming each other. Yet it's clear from the recent House subcommittee investigation of the accident that there were many defects in the BOP, from poor modifications to it to improper maintenance. Its failure has to be the main cause of the explosion and fire that killed 11 workers, and for the continuing disastrous oil spill as well.

There's a lot of anger and grief too as the oil washes into wetlands and birds, potentially a greater tragedy in the wings if the oil isn't stopped soon. So far BP has been getting all the heat, partly because of warnings before the Deepwater Horizon fireball and their US corporate record on maintenance and safety, the worst by far in the entire industry.


BP makes more money than 90 Oprahs in a bad year. $19 Billion profit in 2005, $25.59 Billion in 2008 and $13.96 Billion in 2009. It has pursued an aggressive expansion of its business and has never been much impressed with government meddling in its affairs. Being big is good and drowning in money helps. Its PR machine and army of lawyers are up to any environmental challenge as BP has demonstrated twice over the last 5 years.

Besides the 2006 Alaskan North Slope BP pipeline spill due to maintenance issues, BP's Texas City refinery explosion and fire of 2005 killed 15 people and injured another 180. BP negotiated a settlement with the Bush Justice Department of $20 Million for the first accident, and $50 Million for the second. Chump change, considering the seriousness of the violations that the lead EPA investigator Scott West wanted to pursue for the BP Alaska spill. At that time the EPA was considering damages of $672 Million from BP plus possible felony charges against some BP executives just for the Alaska spill.

If that was then and this is now, here's what the BBC reported recently on Deepwater:

In BP's 2009 exploration plan for the well, the firm suggested an oil spill was unlikely or virtually impossible, AP news agency reports.

Breaking News

CNN reports that 51 minutes before the Deepwater Horizon explosion April 20, there were several warnings of trouble on the rig. Witnesses said there were 3 ruptures of fluid and pressure on the drill pipe "unexpectedly increased".

Read The New York Time's account of the Deepwater Horizon's last troubled hours, based on reports from the Congressional Committee investigating.

In the Los Angeles Times, Kent Wells a senior BP Vice President said that the Top Kill could start Wednesday May 26 or later this week.

See the CNN animation of the Top Kill for what to expect if it works.

Live BP video of the Top Kill attempt, in some doubt until Capitol Hill pressure was applied, will be available on the BP website and CNN Live.

--Alan Gillis

Waiting For Tom Hanks

NewsHammer Exclusive No question the Large Hadron Collider scored a brilliant success with its first collisions at 7 TeV. Considering the extreme complexity of the detectors/ reactors this was a breathless performance. Soon after the 1 PM Geneva start, all four massive experiments were delivering data during the 3 hour window.

The first particle tracks and jets that were recorded surprised and delighted the physicists at CERN. At 7 TeV something new was going on that hadn't been seen before at any other collider, the signals of a New Physics. Though if you managed to sit through CERN's live webcast all day March 30, (video highlights: LHC First Physics) at least an interminable 27 km long, you still wouldn't have found out what that New Physics was or what CERN physicists were thinking. The only relevant comment I heard was that some muons were produced, and as they are decay products from heavier particles, some massive particles should have been produced, what CERN hopes for including the massive Higgs.


Great To Be Alive

With everyone so dazed and happy for the collider, by the time the CERN Press Conference started even the mostly 20-something journalists forgot to ask any new or relevant questions. It was one of those great cathartic moments where you're thrilled to have survived the biggest physics experiment ever when it's a hundred meters under your feet.

Confusing anyway to get focused on results with a loud echo for the first half-hour and more loud simultaneous French translation overlapping. Good thing CERN A/V wasn't running any important experiments. On camera four spokespersons and "two people waiting in Japan" weren't deterred. Another spokesperson for CERN PR coordinating the spokespersons and reporters while walking around the wireless mic kept tripping over the "two people" on the live video feed. "Two people waiting in Japan" who maybe had a comment? What were "two people" doing in Japan? What "two people"? The not just any "two people" turned out to be Sergio Bertolucci, CERN's Director of Research and Director General Rolf-Dieter Heuer, but anyway they were happy enough splitting a bottle of 1991 red collider wine, the year CERN started thinking about the LHC.

The only memorable quote of the day came from Dr Bertolucci:

"The most exciting thing is we are just mapping the unknown. And so the most striking things will be the unexpected things we might find there."

Fabiola? Wrong Control Room

Though we've heard variations on this theme from just about everyone. For the "unexpected things" well they're unexpected but at least we should be told just how much time we have before they arrive. CERN knows more or less but CERN won't say in so many words. Not even what the March 30 departure point was or where's the blasted finish line. Is today a sprint or the stage one of the marathon? What stages exactly? 7 TeV doesn't really cover it but it sounds great, another collider record. Get the camera Fabiola!

Listening very closely that day some of us were sort of warned. Piecing it together from the friendly banter the LHC was still taking its first "baby" steps. Mama and Papa CERN were very proud. If there was a buzz word through that exhausting day, it was "baby" and double that for "new babies" from our excited Italian hostess, who was doing nearly all the talking for everybody in her webcast from control room to control room while two guys were chatting in a loud French voiceover, like at the back of a church. They had some interesting things to say if you could hear them. Thanks CERN A/V, a division of CERN PR, leaving us hankering for Tom Hanks in the final analysis.

Instead of a nice clean start, say 2 minutes of CERN's objectives for the day or a Press Release on that: how many bunches of protons, how many protons per bunch for this first 7 TeV experiment -- a lot of happy and excited people at CERN were telling us over and over again how happy they were for and hours and hours. Sure we're glad they're all happy. But being so very happy about all the ''new babies" the collider was having, our hostess and her physicists forgot what millions of people out there wanted to know. Was she going to bring them coffee?

Even 40 Live Status LHC Pages were no help with how many bunches were loaded into the collider that day: The CERN variation on Russian Roulette.

Bits of what we needed to know did come out in gurgles. ATLAS was having fewer "babies", only about 30 per second, while CMS was having 100 "babies" per second, and LHCb went from 50 to 60 "new babies", but we never did find out if ALICE got knocked-up down the rabbit hole until we saw the "baby" scan and hers were certainly hairier than any other "new babies", so Wow.


ALICE Hairy Baby Scan

The "babies" were collision events of course, 2 protons making one collision "baby", but the mother of all colliders obviously wasn't making "babies" the way she should. Where were all the other "babies"? Once upon a time CERN was forecasting 1 million collisions per second per experiment. Later on at the mighty ATLAS we got the new ultimate forecast: 40 million "babies" per second in each detector or times 4 making 160 million per second overall.


Squeezing More Babies

Evidently for now something was wrong. Not enough squeezing going on, or a low proton count. Both as it turned out, but you had to beam down via the Internet and watch the naked collider in action. The first clue was March 29, NewsHammer "CERN Fires The Collider" when only 2 bunches per beam made it into the collider round. Then bright and early March 30 there were 2 aborted ramps to get stable beams and with millions of people getting bored CERN tried square one. With the "baby" machine feeling testy, the absolute minimum 1 bunch per beam was knocked in instead of 2 or the nominal 2808 bunches per beam we were told to expect for years and years.


10 Billion Protons Instead of 561,600 Billion Protons

Then how many protons? The maximum per bunch is 100 billion according to CERN. Nobody said how many protons before, during or since March 30, but one of the two French guys in the background voiceover did mention "5 milliards de protons" or 5 billion, or 1/20 the nominal number of protons per bunch. So at most there were 10 billion protons that could have collided, or in overall terms the very rock bottom minimum or the lowest possible luminosity next to zero. The maximum intensity would have been 2 x 2808 x 100 billion for a very large number of protons circulating eventually or 561,600 billion. Versus 10 billion protons March 30, meaning the LHC achieved 1/56,160 of its potential in protons. Far less than that when it comes to LHC luminosity or the ultimate shootout at CERN's OK Corral.

During the webcast we did catch 2 other related facts. At 10 billion protons in the collider, maximum collisions in any one detector would be 11,000 per second where at CMS with the most "babies" there were 100 per second. ATLAS was aiming for 40 million collisions per second in any detector, but not today.


CMS On Top

CMS with the best score achieved 100/40,000,000 or 1/400,000 of what it can do at 7 TeV. Or at the per second OK Corral Rehearsal 200 bullets smashed into each other vs 80 million that will smash one of these days.

If all goes well late next year we might see maximum luminosity at 7 TeV or 400,000 times more collisions per second. In 2013 the ultimate proton fireball at 14 TeV will be over (no typo) 100 billion times the core temperature of our sun or ~ 10^16 °C.

Step 4: "Don't panic." Good advice from an LHC operating manual.

Hot enough for ya? will be something to brag about if there's anyone left at CERN.


ATLAS Trying For Better Days

So the big event March 30 was a very small physics experiment, though with some risk to the LHC machine. Because of the way CERN handled it and the media reported it, there's a general sigh of relief. We're still here, the LHC is safe. Nothing more to worry about after the Barnum and Bailey Collider Test.

Nothing wrong with going for the smallest possible test at 7 TeV. The smart and prudent way to go, except when you don't disclose the facts clearly and let people imagine they're getting the full Big Bang for their buck. Echoes of "There's one born every minute."


LHCb: What You Say?

Belatedly offering soundbites to the media on increasing collisions to 300 per second and a stab at luminosity, again after the brouhaha of March 30, is more you-knew-all-along sleight of hand through the back door for millions of empty chairs who won't complain. Making lame excuses before the collisions like the LHC would be colliding beams together over the Atlantic, in case of PR failure, was rather embarrassing, though a genuine attempt at some false modesty.

Canceling the Tom Hanks Show at the collider was the biggest CERN event. It finally dawned on CERN that the most important physics experiment since Trinity should be treated seriously. The live interactive video/data player for the webcast was first rate and another positive step. But being hustled into CERN's Big Top for a handful of firecrackers like this is it, The Greatest Show on Earth, is another sad comment on how easy it is to fool people.

You can make allowances for any live event, that the excitement overtakes the action and the facts. But CERN has had years to get the facts across and a week since March 30 for revisiting unfortunate false impressions. The postmortem CERN Press Release "Yes we did it" makes no corrections.

Of course there are no bragging rights if CERN simply stated in advance and during the March 30 demonstration that the 7 TeV test collisions were slated for about 1/400,000 of design efficiency. Then of course nothing of LHC safety would be proved either, except that the LHC is apparently safe to operate at an extremely tiny fraction of its potential. Now that the public is satisfied with safety CERN can go to the LHC maximum. Not right away, as the machine is unreliable. Failures since start-up including this week are common. Luminosity consequently has to be coaxed up in stages or there will be no more "babies"and no more collider.

Go slow is commendable to save the collider from another accident. But why not tell us? It was no secret inside CERN, just outside.

The biggest safety issue has always been the LHC's New Physics. Now apparent safety (of small numbers) of 7 TeV collisions will be taken as a proof of safety for what is to come.

Actual physics results even from March 30 may never be fully known. Dangerous sorts of Collider Objects might have been produced and might have gone undetected during the 3 hour run of March 30 of about 1/2 million proton collisions recorded. What will happen in 2011 in a proton fireball of 40 million collisions per second? When the truth is known, you can fly.


CERN's Smoking Gun

CERN had already predetermined that First Physics at 7 TeV would be 1 proton bunch per beam, 1 x 1 for the first three days of collisions, then a week of tests on multi-bunches, then a jump to 4 x 4 or 4 bunches per beam colliding for another 2 days. Then a bigger jump to 12 x 12 collisions for 2 more days. Then who knows? Though CERN hasn't been able to achieve these results due to ongoing machine failures.

Down the road: "BEAM PARAMETERS AND MACHINE PERFORMANCE TO BE REACHED IN 2010"*.

What we can expect now is less machine risk as proton bunches are gradually maximized in stages. It will take until the end of this year to reach about 800 bunches per beam out of 2808, another lucky fact blown out of CERN's windy webcast. Luminosity will still continue climbing next year to the maximum.

The obscure but essential CERN document (above) "Pilot physics run at 3.5 TeV"* should have been released to the public before March 30 or summed up in a CERN Press Release. Just a reminder to CERN that Press Releases are for the Press and provide the Press with tools, not more hot air to analyze. This short document would have made CERN's intentions clear on going slow (adding the rationale: the minimizing of machine failures and damage) and that would have pre-empted all the phony suspense of March 30. We could have got some more sleep instead.

The Future At 7 TeV

So we're not much further ahead in knowing what to expect from the LHC. The preliminary data and continuing collisions will give physicists some ideas, but data analysis isn't that easy. It could take months to see some New Physics papers on what happened.

Even so physicists will be reluctant to draw conclusions from a few collision events, which is why they want to see 40 million per second.

The funny thing is, because of the enormous amount of data these collisions produce, CERN's entire computing power can only record 2,000 events per second. So CERN will filter all data, discarding nearly all of it, hoping their filters will capture only the significant events, whatever they are.

For now and since CERN decided to blast us with Collider PR 10 years ago, we're in another prolonged state of suspense. When is the axe going to fall? Certainly it looks like there is a better chance for safety in terms of shutting down before hazardous events arrive, if data analysis can determine the next threshold where New Physics might spin out of control. Though there are no guarantees that we'll have any bumpy warnings. Just ask ALICE when she's 10 feet tall.


LHC News: Doomsday Postponed

As to the future, the only real news out of the Press Conference was delivered by Steve Meyers, Director of Accelerators and Technology who talked about some long term goals and difficulties, announcing the next planned shutdown in Autumn 2011. After a year of upgrades to safety systems for another $235 Million (not mentioned) the LHC should be ready to start 14 TeV collisions in 2012, though giant bending magnets will still be difficult to retrain, some 1/3 of about 1,800 (not mentioned) needing 25 to 30 ramps and quenches. The much fabled LHC might have to settle for 13 TeV.

*Note to CERN Techies: Put dates on all your documents. If Plan "A" is PR Mystification, your Plan "B" Common Timeline Confusion will mystify everyone else at CERN who needs to sift through a mountain of links to a mountain chain of documents that might save your life.

This is Part 7 of a series on machine safety and potential risks of expected Collider Objects like mBH at the LHC when the collider jumps to very high energies starting March 30, 2010. "Doomsday Report: New Physics At The LHC" will appear in The Science of Conundrums.

NewsHammer Part 1: Large Hadron Collider Waiting For Doomsday

NewsHammer Part 2: Fantastic LHC Energies May Be Higher Than Expected

NewsHammer Part 3: Higgs Discovered At The Large Hadron Collider / More Delays

NewsHammer Part 4: Scrubbing CMS Data At The LHC

NewsHammer Part 5: LHC Lords Of The Ring

NewsHammer Part 6: CERN Fires The Collider


--Alan Gillis