Is nuclear energy the key to saving the planet?
Only
Nuclear Energy Can Save the Planet
Nuclear Power Can Save the World
Within the past couple of
years, these and other headlines have appeared in publications ranging from the
Wall Street Journal to the New York Times and even to the widely read environmental
publication, High Country News.
According to many of the
articles newer designs and materials have made nuclear reactors much safer and
therefore safe to use a major power sources. Unfortunately, these claims have
not been proven.
I spent nine years as a
research physicist and middle management director studying nuclear reactor
safety at the National Reactor Testing Station (now Idaho National Laboratory).
It was called Special Power Excursion Reactor Tests (SPERT).
We had four reactors of
differing designs operated by remote control from a half mile distance. I have
the dubious honor of blowing up one of those reactors as a test in 1962. An
offshoot of our program was called LOFT, or Loss of Fluid Test, designed to
study what happens in a loss of coolant accident – similar to what happened in
the Three Mile Island and Fukushima accidents.
Both the SPERT and LOFT
programs were eventually stifled and killed by one man, a zealous advocate of
nuclear power plant development who was head of the division in the Atomic
Energy Commission overseeing and funding reactor safety research. Today there
is little, if any, meaningful research being conducted on reactor safety,
particularly on the highly touted “new designs.” Many advocates point to
computer modelling studies as proof of the safety. However, there are too many
complex parameters in computer models and the only real study to prove the
safety is to push the outside of the envelope on actual reactors.
If computer modelling is so accurate,
would we put astronauts on top of a powerful moon rocket relying solely on
computer modelling - and not actually physically testing that rocket extensively?
Not likely.
My next book, in progress,
will cover my years of nuclear reactor safety studies and the demise of true
scientific research in that field. It’s entitled: Tickling the Dragon’s
Tail. The title is from a quote by famed physicist Richard Feynman during
the Manhattan Project at the Los Alamos lab. A risky experiment had been
proposed which would create a supercritical burst of fissions by dropping a
piece of fissionable uranium 235 through a subcritical mass of the same
substance. When the experiment was presented at a meeting, Feynman chuckled, saying
“That’s like tickling the tail of a sleeping dragon.” It became known as the
Dragon Experiment. Later, two physicists were killed by modified versions of
that experiment. Several years later I went to work in that Idaho project that
was a descendant of the Dragon Experiment.
