Once again I rush in where angels fear to tread. Here are my predictions for 2022:
- The GOP will take the House next year. All the signs are there along with the fact that presidents almost always suffer losses in Congress in their first midterm elections.
- The GOP will take the Senate. Red wave coming.
- Biden will not be President on 12/31/22. A repeat from last year.
- Harris will be forced out as Veep.
- Hot fusion will become a reality.
- Pope Francis will resign or die in office.
- A major political assassination will occur in the US.
- Major unrest in China. The Communist Dynasty has growing internal problems that are largely ignored in the Western media.
- We are due for a major Marian apparition.
- McClarey will be wrong on some or all of his predictions.
A most reasonable list Donald. I would add the following:
—Someone besides Trump will emerge as the Republican leader. Maybe Ron DeSantis.
—We are due for the Great Chastisement. Could happen.
—There will be a schism in the Catholic Church between Traditional Catholics and Novus Ordo.
I’ve had a horrible thought. We already know that the people actually running this administration will stop at nothing. Faced with losing control of both House and Senate, might it not be tempting for them to combine both #3 and #7; especially if they could pin the blame on those pesky right-wing insurrectionists they’re so eager to see everywhere? Biden’s a horrible man and a worse president, but I pray no one lifts a finger against his person because the Left would surely use that as an excuse to commit outrages against those they dislike.
Sounds like a pitch for a bad Clancy novel knock-off, but then I’d have said the same about how the last presidential election unfolded…
Yes to 8! They’ve been covering it up just like they have been covering up the Covid infection numbers. Hoping that 9 is a result of 8. Xi might visit US in 2022…and that could result in 7….oh never mind!
The only thing that might give me me some encouragement to look foward to 2022, is that 2021 will finally be gone.
“Biden’s a horrible man and a worse president, but I pray no one lifts a finger against his person because the Left would surely use that as an excuse to commit outrages against those they dislike.”
Unlikely unless the Puppetmasters want to go to war with an armed population. If they do, they will have chosen poorly.
#9.
Interesting prediction.
I’m taking that one further out on the limb. A supernatural cosmic event for 2022. My guess is that the continuation on moral decay and advancement of the diabolical in our culture will advance the warning.
A time for reconciliation on a very large scale.
Mr. McClarey, I don’t disagree that they’d have chosen poorly.
But then this is the same administration that gave us Kamala, the Afghanistan debacle, covid theatre and the stupidest economic policies you could think of.
Choosing poorly is their superpower.
Good point Clinton.
1 & 2. I can easily imagine that (a) judicially-sanctioned vote fraud will prevent this and (b) the popular revulsion with the Democrats will be sufficiently severe that they don’t have the wherewithal to stuff enough ballots in the boxes.
Depends on a number of unspecified ifs.
Unless they have material that one of their minions in the US Attorneys office can use against her, not happening.
No clue
An ordinary man Francis age has about a 10% chance of dying in the course of a 12 month period. He’s had surgery which suggests colon cancer, which would enhance that probability by a certain amount. He’s ~18 years older than the median colon cancer patient. Don’t know if the annual attrition rate is higher or lower among older patients (it’s about 8.5% per year for the generic colon cancer patient). Do know that colon cancer eventually kills about 1/3 of those diagnosed with it.
7, 8, 9 are events not readily subject to forecasting (Marian apparitions especially).
True of anyone.
I can’t see both 3 and 4 happening.
The most interesting thing for this year is the one I can’t possibly predict, which is how our society will be handling the covid situation. The virus does change, as does the state of medicine in fighting it, but the hardest factor to predict is people’s reactions. It was interesting seeing family over Christmas and hearing their different stories of irrational regulations and pressures. I feel like I should still stand by my original thinking about covid, that the crisis would be over by mid-2020, because it basically was. Where we are now, with a weaker variant, vaccines, and effective therapeutics, the crisis part should be over with.
Also, I’m with Art about #9. There’s something contradictory about trying to set your watch by miracles.
In re COVID, from October 16 to December 11, the 7-day moving average of daily new cases increased by about 200,000. From 1 November to 27 December, the 7-day moving average of daily deaths declined.
Report from Sweden on 7-day moving average of daily new cases and 7-day moving average of daily deaths:
October 11 to December 6: case count increases by 1,500.
October 21 to December 16: death count increases by 1.
Report from Britain on 7-day moving averages:
From May 9 to December 13: case count increases by 50,000
From May 23 to December 27: death count increases by 100.
Being, I think, the only nuclear professional here, I must comment on number 5.
(1) We already have mastered hot fusion – in thermonuclear weapons.
(2) Fusion itself is notoriously easily to do. Working in your own garage, you can build a fusor which consists of a spherical vacuum chamber surrounding a negatively charged spherical grid. If you can get deuterium, then when the fusor is fueled with such and electrified, high-voltage current strips electrons off the deuterium atoms, converting them into positively charged atomic nuclei that fly toward the negatively charged inner cage. With the right combination of deuterium fuel, vacuum pressure, and voltage, some of the nuclei will collide violently enough for them to fuse together, releasing high-energy neutrons. Voila! Fusion! Don’t believe me? Then believe the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (whose standards on digital I&C the US NRC endorses for design reactor instrumentation & controls):
https://spectrum.ieee.org/try-this-at-home-fusion-in-the-basement
(3) I think what you mean, Donald, is controlled fusion in a reactor with a net energy output that can be provided economically. That’s STILL 20 years away minimum. Yes, there’s the Tokomak, the Stellarator, and other such designs. There’s ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor), a complicated colossus of a machine that compared with a 1600 MWe GEH ESBWR or Areva EPR fission plant, will yield only 600 Mwe max (assuming it’s successful).
https://www.iter.org/proj/inafewlines
(4) Now think about this. In fission, a neutron (neutrally charged) hits a heavy metal atom like U-233, U-235 or Pu-239, and causes it to divide, releasing 2 to 3 neutrons in the process which go on to cause more fission. If the core is blanketed with fertile material like Th-232 or U-238, then under the right conditions you can breed more fuel than you consume. This is easy to do because the neutrally charge neutrons are not repelled by the positively charged protons in the nucleus. But in fusion, positively charged nuclei of deuterium and tritium must be forced together despite their coulombic mutual repulsion to the point where the strong nuclear force takes over and they combine to form heavier nuclei like helium. It almost always takes MORE energy to do that than you get out of the loss in binding energy with the new nuclei (I don’t have time here to go over the binding energy per nucleon curve which is the basis of energy out of both fission of heavy metal nuclei and fusion of light element nuclei – you need 6 months of reactor physics in Naval nuclear power school and math that most people here hate). Suffice it to say: energy plus fission is easy, energy plus fusion is notoriously difficult.
(5) Now there are some promising designs out there. My favorite is this brute force method because it’s simple and doesn’t rely on complicated particle beams, laser beams or magnetic confinement fields:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdOfW6h77ZU
I truly love brute force. I think General Fusion is onto something here. But there’s a problem. I explain that in number 6 immediately below.
(6) The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission. All of 10 CFR 50 is designed for light water fission reactors. NOT advanced molten salt reactors. Nor liquid metal reactors. Nor gas cooled reactors. Nor heavy water reactors (in fact, you can’t get a Candu licensed in the US because owing to the fast fission factor and resonance escape probability in heavy water natural uranium reactors, Candus have a slight positive void coefficient of reactivity – again, you need 6 months of nuke school to understand that). And NONE of the US NRC regulations are design for fusion reactors, so even if General Fusion or some other companies were successful, no fusion reactor will be licensed for DECADES. It’ll take that long to write the regulations and get the licensing. Don’t believe me? Read on:
Here’s a simple Power Point presentation
https://science.osti.gov/-/media/fes/pdf/2020/NRC-Public-Forum/AS1_A.pdf
And you can go to the US NRC web links here:
https://www.nrc.gov/reactors/new-reactors/advanced/fusion-energy.html
(7) So even if energy plus economic fusion happened tomorrow, it’ll be 10 years at a minimum and more than likely 20 before the electric grid sees any energy from such a facility. And the US NRC is the GOLD STANDARD in nuclear regulation. The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, the UK’s Office of Nuclear Regulation, etc. will all follow suit. Oh, France will do whatever France does (they are an arrogant, snotty lot, but when it comes to nuclear, they are among the best); its Autorité de sûreté nucléaire darn won’t give fusion a free pass. The scrutiny it gave ITER was something you cannot conceive if you’ve never worked in nuclear. My company (a developer of an advanced light water reactor) had to submit a 20,000-page document to the US NRC for its safety evaluation and acceptance by the Atomic Safety Licensing Board, and that’s for a rather standard fission reactor – it’s been 18 years now and we are about five years away from breaking ground. You have no idea what nuclear regulations are like. And Russia and China? They may well succeed in fusion ahead of us and make Donald’s prediction a reality. But Putin and Xi don’t give a damn about safety, and I sure wouldn’t want to work at a Russian or Chinese facility, fission or fusion.
(8) But my wife reminds me all the time how wrong I can be, so if I eat crow this time next year, then good for the country! But the anti-nukes will oppose fusion with all the fervor that they have fission.
One final piece of humor from this old submarine sailot: a little nukie never hurt anybody! Ha! Ha! (and that applies equally to fission and fusion.
LQC: Where is my flying car?
The following is more an iteration of perceived economic risk than a prediction.
The same people who pushed [COVID 1984 lockouts and gargantuan fiscal/monetary stimuli] inflation to such heights have no idea how to stop it. Either they give more inflation, or they go too far the other way and we are hit with deflation/recession. I visit various econ profs’ blogs. They are clueless.
History. Ultimately, Paul Volker resolved 1970’s inflation at the price of recession and economic misery, e.g., unemployment over 10% for nine months in 1983.
History. Ultimately, Paul Volker resolved 1970’s inflation at the price of recession and economic misery, e.g., unemployment over 10% for nine months in 1983.
The NAIRU was over 7% by the late 1970s due to labor market dysfunction. I doubt the unemployment rate would approach 11% today in a recession of the depth which hit the United States in 1981-82. You’ll also recall that when Volcker instituted controls on the growth rates of monetary aggregates in October 1979, Jimmy Carter insisted he abandon the policy. Restabilizing prices in 1981-82 took more time than it might have otherwise because the Fed had been dithering for 12 years.
“Hot fusion will become a reality.” but it already is…that’s where solar energy comes from: proton to alpha particle fusion.
Bob is rite. Here is the reaction in our sun that produces a helium nucleus from fusion of four light hydrogen nuclei through gravitational compression elevating temperatures sufficiently high.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fusion#/media/File%3AFusion_in_the_Sun.svg
The thermonuclear reaction in the weapons of my old submarine were started by fission of Pu-239 and used a deuterium-tritium reaction to produce a helium nucleus.
Existing Tokomak and Stellarator designs use some sort of magnetic confinement and plasma injection system to produce the same reaction. General Fusion’s steam piston liquid lead system will also use deuterium tritium (I think).
There are several fusion reactions that use helium-3 and with lithium-6 these require less ignition energy and give off no neutrons (that cause activation of reactor components via irradiation and are hazardous), but such reactions produce less energy per event, and as a fuel helium-3 is almost non-existent on Earth though it’s abundant on the moon due to the effects of a solar wind not blocked by an atmosphere.
I can’t reproduce the equations here on my cell phone, but you can Google fusion and read the Wikipedia entry for yourself.
Still 20 years away.
Go heavy metal fission. There’s enough Th-232 in Earth’s crust to supply us for tens of thousands of years. And fast neutron burner reactors nullify the problem of spent nuclear fuel. And advanced reactor designs of today cannot undergo a TMI or Chernobyl or Fukushima event.
LQC, thanks for those posts re: fusion and fission above. I appreciate the concise overview— and the years of experience behind it.
Besides fusion’s obvious benefit of inexpensive, virtually limitless energy;
another less obvious benefit will be a decline in demand for oil. The economies of some very troublesome Middle-Eastern nations will decline and they will sink back into the insignificance they held before the 1920s.
You are welcome, Clinton. However, I think there are some misconceptions and misunderstandings.
(1) You said, “Besides fusion’s obvious benefit of inexpensive, virtually limitless energy…” We already have a virtually limitless source of energy for electricity. It’s called heavy metal fission. There is enough fertile Thorium-232 in Earth’s crust to breed fissionable Uranium-233 to supply electrical energy to all mankind at the US level of consumption for the next ten thousand years. Saying that controlled, energy plus, cost effective fusion will supply limitless power is true – but redundant to what we already have. If the goal was inexpensive, virtually limitless energy, then why is nuclear fission strangulated by regulatory constriction? Fusion is a red herring to divert attention away from what is workable so that the nonsense of climate change, useless worthless renewable energy, etc., can be used to limit access to low-cost energy and thereby control the populace.
(2) Too many people and ignorant about energy, having no idea where it comes from or what it’s used for or how much is produced and used. Typically, they think only of electricity when it comes to energy. Yet electrical production is only one part of our overall energy needs. There are transportation and residential heating needs. Liquid hydrocarbon fuels are ideal for transportation (land vehicle and air), and that’s about 24.3% of our energy consumption. Liquid hydrocarbon fuels are also ideal for residential heating, and that’s about 17% of our energy consumption. All this talk about hydrogen or electric cars is fine, but hydrogen must be produced from water, and that requires energy; and batteries in electric cars must be charged, also requiring energy. Both of those would double the demand for electricity – to get hydrogen from water and to charge the car batteries. Further, the electric grid supply to residential areas for car battery charging on a massive scale would have to double. And where is all the lithium going to come from for those batteries? Where lithium is abundant in the universe, it is rare on Earth, and we are running out already. Petroleum and natural gas are here to stay.
(3) I recommend the following to the reader:
https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/us-energy-facts/
(4) From the US EIA: “Petroleum products include transportation fuels, fuel oils for heating and electricity generation, asphalt and road oil, and feedstocks for making the chemicals, plastics, and synthetic materials that are in nearly everything we use.” Our need for petroleum will NEVER end. If we run out of it from drilling and fracking, then we will have to manufacture it from coal using Fischer–Tropsch synthesis, and that requires energy (nuclear heated steam would work fine).
(5) Anthropogenic climate change is a fiction. Renewable energy is useless and worthless. Fusion is still 20 years away, and just wait till the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission starts regulating it. We already have a solution: heavy metal fission. If I were king (which by God’s grace and mercy on all humanity I am not), then I would (1) go ba11$ to the wall nuclear fission for electricity and ship propulsion (cruise liners, cargo ships, etc. – the Navy does it with aircraft carriers and submarines), (2) use petroleum for chemicals, plastics, synthetics, and land transportation, (3) use coal for producing petroleum when drilling and fracking are insufficient, (4) stop with this renewable energy nonsense, and (5) throw Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in jail on general principle. As for spend nuclear fuel, I would build fast neutron burner reactors to consume all the long-lived actinides and rend the need for a million-year geological repository a moot point. As for events like TMI, Chernobyl and Fukushima, today’s advanced reactor designs with their passive safety systems obviate such concerns. And I can explain that for each different reactor type, but it would take too long to do that here.
(6) BTW, wanna know which source of energy is safest? Safer than even useless worthless wind and solar? Yup You guessed it. Even including TMI, Chernobyl & Fukushima, it’s nuclear fission:
https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2016/06/update-of-death-per-terawatt-hour-by.html
Just scroll down the web page there till you come to a table in light grey. Nuclear is at the bottom at 0.04 deaths per terawatt hour. How here is a secret: No electricity kills. Electricity from coal kills, but less than no electricity. Electricity from oil kills, but less than coal. Electricity from methane (natural gas) kills, but less than petroleum. Electricity from biomass kills, but less than methane. Electricity from solar kills, but less than biomass. Electricity from wind kills, but less than solar. Electricity from nuclear kills, but less than solar. You and I are gonna die. Memento Mori. Only Enoch and Elijah got off the planet alive (along with a handful of astronauts and cosmonauts), and the Virgin Mary fell asleep first. None of us rate that high. But we can hasten our deaths by NOT using right NOW what we have IMMEDIATELY available: heavy metal fission. As I said before: fusion is a red herring. Good luck chasing it.
I don’t see Francis abdicating. He’s too in love with his power. He, unlike his predecessor, does not believe his authority ends at the door of whatever room he’s in.
The only way he relinquishes power is to die. On that note, I get the sense the seriousness of his health ailments are exaggerated.