Hot Topic: SILEX laser technology could cut by half the cost to produce fuel for nuclear power plants, such as this one in Stedman, Mo. (NEWSCOM)
Will lasers brighten nuclear’s future?
New process could replace centrifuges but renew threat of nuclear proliferation.
By Mark Clayton | Staff Writer for The Christian Science Monitor/ August 27, 2008 edition
Reporter Mark Clayton discusses the development of lasers for uranium enrichment.
Reporter Mark Clayton
Inside a bland industrial building in Wilmington, N.C., an experiment is in the works that could vastly reduce the cost, time, and space needed to make fuel for nuclear power plants and, some nonproliferation experts say, for nuclear bombs as well.
In that building, secret uranium-enrichment technology licensed by GE-Hitachi Nuclear Energy is nearing a pilot test. If successful, the new technology will enable the company to supply low-cost nuclear fuel to power reactors worldwide, officials say.
Only broad outlines of the “Separation of Isotopes by Laser EXcitation,” or SILEX technology, are public. Most details are classified under the Atomic Energy Act.
But it would not take much – just a signal from Wilmington of SILEX’s success in the months ahead – to unleash a global push by companies and nations to develop similar laser-based technology, nonproliferation experts, scientists, and US government studies warn.
“The threat is there,” says Edwin Lyman, a nuclear nonproliferation expert with the Union of Concerned Scientists, a research and advocacy group in Cambridge, Mass. “If [GE-Hitachi] succeeds in overcoming remaining technological hurdles, the resulting laser-enrichment would be extremely vulnerable to proliferation. It’s also a technology that several countries would likely pursue.”
Henry Sokolski, director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center in Washington, is worried about SILEX too. “If it works, it has enormous industrial implications with the US perhaps bringing back all the enrichment services it has lost to Europe and Russia,” he says.
“But how long can you keep this process secret and out of the hands of proliferators? That’s the real question.”
The US Department of Energy, which oversees nuclear power, is not worried.
“Any program to build additional enrichment facilities in the United States will be evaluated for its safety, environmental, and nonproliferation characteristics before it is licensed to operate,” the DOE said in a statement responding to Monitor queries.
Still, SILEX’s success is hardly guaranteed. Laser isotope separation, or “laser enrichment,” is not new. It has a reputation as a fiendishly difficult technology that has defied researchers for decades. Most of the 18 countries that once pursued it have given up.
Jeffrey Eerkens, a laser expert in northern California, is one of the few researchers familiar with many aspects of the SILEX technology. One of the key hurdles has always involved the infrared laser, he says.
“For 20 years, everyone has been trying to find a good 16-micron laser to do uranium enrichment,” he says. “We know how to do the harvesting [of enriched uranium], now it’s the laser.”
Beyond a few trade reports, little attention has been paid to SILEX development, and there seems scant awareness of it in Congress. The US Department of Energy appears bullish on SILEX’s potential to lower the amount of uranium fuel US nuclear power reactors purchase from overseas firms. “Any increase in domestic enrichment capacity will increase US energy self-reliance,” the DOE said in its statement.
While the State Department was unable to provide an official to speak about SILEX, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is familiar with the technology, having approved the first-step SILEX “test loop” this spring.
SIDEBAR: How SILEX works
If all goes according to plan, sometime in the next few months a powerful infrared laser will fire into a chamber containing uranium hexafloride gas, according to a description of the laser-isotope-separation (LIS) process in a 2001 analysis by a researcher at Los Alamos National Laboratory. The beam will excite U-235, the uranium isotope used to make nuclear fission reactions, and enable them to be separated out.As the gas is cycled through the beam, the process steadily boosts the concentration of U-235. In the end, what precipitates out is a substance with 3 percent or higher U-235 concentration, enough to qualify as fuel for commercial nuclear power plants.
But with minor modifications, such a system could produce the highly enriched uranium used in nuclear weapons. Because of its relatively low power use and compact space requirements, the technology is a threat, says nonproliferation experts.
The NRC’s primary role is to make sure the process “meets all the health and safety requirements,” says Timothy Johnson, a senior project manager at the NRC’s enrichment and conversion branch. He doesn’t know if SILEX technology has yet been reviewed to assess its “proliferation resistance.”
GE-Hitachi, through its public relations firm, declined to make a spokesman available for this article. But officials have in the past been optimistic about the technology licensed in 2006 from Silex Systems, Ltd., the Australian company that originally developed it.
“GE’s agreement with Silex comes at an ideal time, just as the global nuclear industry is preparing to build new reactors around the world,” Andy White, then president and CEO of GE Energy’s nuclear business, said in a 2006 statement after the rights to the technology were acquired. “We expect the SILEX technology to help us fulfill the industry’s growing fuel demands.”
But all enrichment systems can be altered to produce bomb-grade uranium, something that has worried every US president since the 1960s.
Currently, the dominant method to enrich uranium involves centrifuge technology. Iran’s development of centrifuge enrichment has drawn condemnations from the International Atomic Energy Agency, the US, and European nations.
But in the US, anticipating a renaissance in nuclear power, two new centrifuge-based enrichment facilities are under development in Ohio and New Mexico.
If SILEX is successful, GE-Hitachi could produce low-enriched uranium fuel for power plants at half the cost of centrifuge-based technology, Dr. Eerkens says.
While a boon to the struggling US nuclear fuel enrichment industry, a SILEX success would press other nations to seek laser enrichment, often called LIS, to stay competitive, nonproliferation experts say.
“Once you’ve solved the problem, everyone knows it can be done,” says Charles D. Ferguson, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, who has studied SILEX. “France and Russia will pay particular attention because they are competing with the US in fuel services.”
But industry experts dismiss the idea that other countries will ramp up research if the “test loop” sees success.
“Just because it’s been done doesn’t mean another country can do it if they have a few extra dollars,” says Julian Steyn, president of Energy Resources International, Washington-based nuclear-fuel consultants. “I don’t think it’s a major proliferation-prone technology in the right hands.”
Six nations beside the US were reportedly still pursuing laser enrichment: Brazil, China, Germany, India, Iran, and Israel, according to a 2005 study by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.
“Once LIS is known to work on the pilot-plant scale, research and development can be expected to intensify in several technically advanced countries,” a 1977 report on nuclear proliferation by the US Office of Technology Assessment found. “Some of these countries would probably develop LIS 5 to 10 years after a US demonstration.”
SILEX’s development has been long and tortuous. From the 1970s to the 1990s, the US spent about $2 billion trying but failing to develop an LIS system, Mr. Ferguson says. In 1999, however, President Clinton signed an agreement with the Australian government to bring SILEX technology developed there to the US. In 2001, the US Department of Energy declared certain SILEX information to be “restricted data.”
Then, in October 2006, GE Energy’s nuclear business announced it had reached a deal with Silex Systems to develop the technology.
“Government authorizations” were obtained when GE-Hitachi licensed the technology in 2006, the company said. This week it reiterated that SILEX, which it has dubbed Global Laser Enrichment, has federal clearance and oversight.
“Global Laser Enrichment (GLE) has obtained the required security clearance from the NRC, which dictates a security program to safeguard information,” the company said in an e-mailed statement.
As SILEX moves into its testing phase, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is confident its procedures will keep vital data safe. Marvin Miller is less certain of that. A retired MIT researcher, he prepared classified government studies in the 1980s about the proliferation threat posed by the same type of laser-enrichment process now coming to fruition as SILEX.
“Laser isotope separation has not been a proliferation threat because it hasn’t worked before,” he says. “Now, if you can get SILEX to work, it would indeed be a proliferation concern.”
Eerkens, who has pursued similar laser-enrichment technology, is concerned about SILEX or other laser technology as a proliferation threat.
It would, he says, obviously be “easier to hide 20 or 30 lasers than 10,000 centrifuges.” One thing he is certain about: In coming months, every scrap of information about SILEX will get plenty of scrutiny from outside US borders. If GE-Hitachi moves ahead with a commercial-scale SILEX plant as the company says it wants to do next year, it will be a sure sign the test was a success.
“The Russians, the French, the enrichment companies – they’re all watching to see if SILEX is working,” Eerkens says.
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Comments
2. Walter | 08.28.08
A very interesting peace of reality.the financial side of things cannot be any different.i fully agree with the views expressed though i am not a scientist.
3. Sean | 08.28.08
To Jeff,
what about all the nuclear waste generated by the 500 additional nuclear power plants. The Yucca Mountain site which was supposed to start taking waste in 1998 is still not open. There are currently major security issues with storing waste at all the places where we currently operate nuclear power plants. I would think adding more sites with questionable security is not only environmentally problematic, but problematic for national security issues. Even if a centrally located site does come on line to dispose of nuclear waste, how will we get it all there safely. Do we truck nuclear waste through the US on our national highways or via train that can derail spilling nuclear waste?
I don’t believe there is any one solution to our energy concerns of the future, but if there is one it isn’t nuclear power plants using fission.
4. DLH | 08.28.08
Sean,
Used nuclear fuel, of which 95% is still able to be reused, is the stuff you are calling “waste” that would have to be transported. Nuclear fuel is in the form of ceramic pellets, encased in metal tubes. There is no more chance of it “spilling” than that of your dinner plates “spilling” out of your cabinets and endangering your neighbors.
The shipping canisters for used nuclear fuel have been extesively tested: dropped from helicopters, rammed by freight trains, engulfed in jet-fuel fires. None of these tests have breached the integrity of the shipping casks. I would much rather have used nuclear fuel transported through my town than chlorice gas or other hazardous substances.
Fission nuclear power plants in the US have quietly and safely been producing 20% of our nation’s electricity. I agree that there is not one single energy solution, but the use of nuclear power should be increased in the US, not decreased.
5. Joe | 08.28.08
Sean,
As Jeff mentioned, the unusable (what you call waste) material in the fuel will be reprocessed. This is what is popularly called recycling and was the way nuclear power plants were originally designed to operate. I might add commercial nuclear power was ahead of other major industries in this regard. That is, until the politicians got involved and stopped the development of reprocessing technologies here.
I’m interested to know… what are the “major security issues” with storing used fuel?
Furthermore, we’ve been safely moving nuclear materials over the highways and rail lines of the US for a long time. If you’re concerned about transportation safety issues, you need to be looking elsewhere.
6. Ed Fenstermacher | 08.28.08
What we do with the spent fuel is reprocess it: separating the uranium, plutonium and other transuranics from the fission products. The fission products can be treated as waste (but much more compact), or more intelligently, packages securely and used for low level heat or energy production. The uranium, plutonium and transuranics are mixed with depleted uranium (what’s left after enrichment), and made into more fuel. That’s how you change hundreds of years of electricity to thousands.
Incidentally, there is a lot of misunderstanding about plutonium. There are four isotopes of consequence in spent fuel, Pu-239, Pu-240, Pu-241, and Pu-242. Pu-239 and Pu-241 can be used in weapons, Pu-240 and Pu-242 cannot. Pu-239 and Pu-241 with more than a few percent of Pu-240 and Pu-242 cannot easily be used for weapons (it requires much larger masses, and does not detonate well). These four isotopes are much more difficult to separate than U-235 and U-238, both because they are only one neutron apart in mass, and because there are four of them. Plutonium from modern nuclear fuel, which is used until the isotopic mix of plutonium has substantial amounts of Pu-240 and Pu-242, is not a good choice for weapons.
7. John D | 08.28.08
Jeff, the problems with Yucca Mountain are political, not technical. It would have been open years ago were it not for the political opposition. If we weren’t so politically stupid, we would be recycling nuclear fuel instead of burying valuable uranium, which (by the way) takes up 5% of the space and has a half life of 30 years rather than the extremely long half life of fissionable materials that should be recycled rather than buried. Have you compared the waste end of the nuclear industry in comparison to the coal industry?
Anyone who refers to “major issues” with security at commercial plants and uses terms as “questionable security” is certainly speaking from ignorance. Not only is the security at nuclear plants orders of magnitude higher than even airports, the task associated with causing any serious harm to the public is virtually insurmountable unless Superman is a terrorist. They might make a lot of concrete dust if they are lucky.
As to transportation, I’d rather have 20 ton spent nuclear fuel shipping casks running on the rails through my town any day rather than 20,000 gallon tankers of chlorine, acid, and who knows what chemicals. A recent accident near my home killed 9 people because of one switching mistake involving a train loaded with chlorine. The overkill of precautions associated with nuclear transportation makes it the safest cargo on the road.
You should really seek facts, Jeff, rather than listen to the bull&*%$ out there.
8. Joao Loureiro | 08.28.08
To everyone,
I believe that nuclear power is a necessary evil.
Eventhough, I also believe that this kind of technology should not go unleashed to the private sector, ready to be sold to the highest bidder.
Take care with this new technology that can make nuclear bombs as easy to make as cakes.
10. R. Scott Kemp | 08.28.08
To Jeff Eerkens,
Regarding the proliferation concern: The problem is not, as you say, one of verifying flows into and out of a declared LIS plant. The problems are 1) states constructing clandestine facilities that may be undeclared and thus not verified, and 2) the possibility of using a declared facility to acquire weapons overtly, in direct violation of treaty obligations, but more rapidly than allows the international community to respond. Thus we must ask if LIS technology, compared to other enrichment technologies, is particularly suitable for covert use and/or rapid breakout and whether it can be more easily acquired by states. This depends on the stage equilibrium time, the power consumption per square foot, any criticality conditions that might arise from making HEU, and the technological complexity of the minimum necessary components. At first glance, the first two factors make SILEX appear to be more dangerous than centrifuge technology, but it is difficult to assess the last two parameters without more information about how the process works.
11. Garry Thomas | 08.28.08
To Sean,
Spent nuclear fuel is both stored and transported in massive steel casks with multi-layered containments. These casks typically weigh more than 100 tons and are, for practical purposes, indestructible. For example, see: 1) an actual test where a diesel locomotive traveling at 80 mph broadsided a spent nuclear fuel cask loaded on a common tractor trailer causing essentially no damage to the cask. 2) a spent nuclear fuel cask was loaded on a rail car with a large propane tank located perpendicular to the center of the cask. Both were located over a large pit of burning fuel oil, resulting in a ferocious fire followed, after 17 minutes, by a massive propane tank explosion (fireball about 100 meters in diameter. The propane tank acted as a projectile to knock the cask 25 meters (I believe I understood), partially burying it in the ground. The cask had minor exterior damage and was still leak tight. Go the Google and type in “Spent nuclear fuel cask tests” to see these and other tests.
Bottom line: if a train carrying a spent nuclear fuel cask derailed then it might be necessary, if the cask fell off the rail car carrying it, to bring in a large crane to reposition the cask onto another rail car so that the cask could complete its safe journey!
12. Jim M | 08.28.08
In regards to waste, consider this tidbit:
“A family in four in France, where they reprocess nuclear fuel, would produce only enough waste to fit in a coffee cup over a whole lifetime. A lifetime of getting all your electricity from coal-fired plants would make a single person’s share of solid waste (in the United States) 68 tons, which would require six 12-ton railroad cars to haul away. Your share of CO2 would be 77 tons.”
source: http://www.wired.com/science/planetearth/news/2007/12/nuclear_qa
Another good bit of info can be found here:
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste&page=2
Before falling prey to typical misconceptions about nuclear power, consider that which we allow to go on around us without batting an eye. Nuclear power is not a singular or forever solution to our energy needs, as even uranium and thorium are resources which could be eventually exhausted. On the other hand, at this time nuclear power is one of the, cheapest, most reliable, safest and cleanest options available, requiring little beyond construction of infrastructure to implement.
13. Joe | 08.28.08
Joao,
If you’re so concerned about “cake mix” bombs… you should be lobbying to outlaw ammonium nitrate (ie fertilizers), fuel oil, and rental vans… a relatively easy combination (compared to nuclear weapons) and proven devastagingly lethal (ie Oklahoma City).
14. Jason Snyder | 08.28.08
To Sean,
Thank you for illustrating some of the environmental and security concerns associated with nuclear power. It is important to keep those concerns in mind, but I disagree with your statement that fission nuclear power plants are not the solution to our energy concerns for the future. Let me try to alleviate some of those concerns.
Nuclear waste in currently stored on site at nuclear reactor facilities around the country and you are absolutely right we need good security at everyone of those sites. Working to our advantage is the fact that the storage vessels are large metal/ceramic cylinders that are impossible to move without heavy machinery. (Visit the Nuclear Energy Institutes’s page about on site nuclear waste storage for pictures.) Also working to our advantage is that 98% of the waste’s radioactivity is gone within 6 months. It is still dangerous at this point and will be for about 1000 years, but I would argue safe enough for transport in the proper containers.
Jeff already presented the fact that there is 3000 years of nuclear fuel available on the planet. If we begin recycling nuclear fuel that number can be increased to a minimum of 50000 years of available fuel and as an added bonus the amount of waste to be disposed of will also be reduced. (If you doubt that number I can explain the physics if you’d like.) Eventually we will be forced to turn to more nuclear power. Why not invest early and reap the benefits of clean, cheap, and with vigilance safe nuclear power.
15. charles manning (manning120) | 08.28.08
Good discussion by all the contributors. Jeff Eerkens’ comments are certainly intriguing. Several observations I’ve never heard of before. He makes the case for nuclear power generation seem overwhelming. But I wonder how sound are the facts, especially statistical, he provides? And safety/security issues depend upon limiting nations, not just terrorists. It might be easier to resort to wind or solar than to “have all countries in the world sign the NPT and [to] support the IAEA.” Then again, rogue nations may exist even if we forego additional nuclear power.
16. robzilla | 08.28.08
Clean and Green Nuclear power. To cheap to meter!! The solution to everyones problem!!
The problems with Yucca are not just political although you can’t blame Nevada or any other state who say NIMBY Not In My Back Yard!! The fact is the DOA can’t prove the site is safe. There is no Geological site that will be safe for over 1/2 a billion years. Guess how long it takes Plutonium to be safe in our environment or at least not be a big difference from background radiation, that is right 500,000,000 years.
Our nation has been around for about 200 years yet we are confident that we can completely isolate this waste for longer than man has been on this planet?
Not only that but consider the “terrorist” threat of transporting tons of highly radioactive waste to one facility that the whole world will know about. No security risk there.
Price Anderson Act. This is the only way Nuclear power can operate. No insurance company will insure against the risk of a disaster because the losses are too great so we the taxpayers will flip the bill. Seems to me if an insurance company considers your business too much of a risk to insure what does that tell the rest of us? Insurance companies are not in the business to lose money and they make money on calculating risk.
There are so many reasons why Nuclear is a bad idea I can’t list all of them here.
It is time to be a leader again and stop making profits because it is easy but make profits because it is the right thing to do. What would happen if the U.S . solved the problem with current battery technology hindering the development of solar energy? Maybe we could make some serious money selling this technology all over the world while at the same time cleaning up our planet. It is not a dream. MIT students are close to solving the battery problem.
People we really need to educate ourselves. Nuclear, coal, oil are old and dead technology(pun intended) and it will lead us to death if we continue the way we are now.
17. dd | 08.28.08
Is there any chance of contamination of water or food supplies? Common worries I hear in Europe when they protest nuclear plants being built with the help of the US.
18. DLH | 08.28.08
Joao,
North Korea has demonstrated that it is not so easy to build a nuclear weapon. The intelligence community has always stated that it would take a nation-state sized infrastructure to build a nuclear weapon, not just a home grown terrorist group working in a garage. Even with North Korea’s easily detectable enrichement activities and military industrial complex, they could not properly assemble the precision components to produce a “nucelar yield.” As Joe mentioned, fertilizer based bombs can cause far more devastation than a North Korea “dud” nuke. Nuclear material does not equal nuclear capability.
19. marta | 08.28.08
We use threats of nuclear weapons against other countries, and than wonder why they seem to need to make them too, and force them to stop. Perhaps we need to work more for peace, than always trying to create a war.
20. Don Robertson | 08.28.08
All scientists are living in the world entirely disregarding reality. They make a false claim of amorality in their work. But take a look around. We can go anywhere on the planet today and ask, what scientific genius thought that immoral abomination was a good idea?
Empirical science builds knowledge sets. These are vast storehouses of information, some relating to the nuclear technologies. Within every scientific knowledge set, there is the overwhelmingly obvious potential for weapons of mass destruction, accidents of mass destruction, and the virtual extinction for a variety of species including our own.
Generations of scientific mechanics will tinker recklessly upon reality with the tools provided by these scientific knowledge sets. There is virtually no moral control of science in place today. And there is virtually no moral control even being considered.
There is only a devious and inane political control of but a few technologies, and then the control is for political gain only. The war in Iraq is not about WMDs. It is about oil. It is about empire.
The reality for humanity encompassed by the dangers inherent to every scientific knowledge set is far more dangerous than humanity has any capacity to control. Because reality is infinitely complex, the implications of the unintended byproducts made of the use of scientific knowledge sets are far more complex than humanity could ever have the capacity to understand.
Contrary to any common Star Trek mentality, science is not the messenger of truth.
Science provides only levers of truth. The actual truth is outside of these scientific levers. The actual truth is wrapped up in the unintended byproducts of applied science.
The “truth” science provides is only meant to affect some change. This same ability however, does not include presaging the impact of the change intended by any applied science. There we all will recognize reality in all its complexity, but only after the fact.
Reality is infinitely complex.
So there is no chance, not even through the reckless trial and error of the scientific method, of ever ever ruling out all the dangers scientific knowledge sets present.
Here, fools, and I do mean fools, call for safer, cheaper, and MORE energy to be used by a scientific humanity that is already bloated beyond anything the planet can sustain long term.
We rush toward the ultimate truth of scientific oblivion.
No. The answer is, scientific humanity needs to use much less energy than it already uses with the observable net effect of so many dangerous byproducts of that clearly are destroying the world one day at a time.
Don Robertson
21. Jeff Eerkens | 08.28.08
To Sean and others who worry about used nuclear waste. Besides excellent retorts by previous commentators, I like to add my two-cents worth:
Cries by nuclear-power opponents of “what do we do with all the long-lived radioactive nuclear waste” are some of the oldest in the debates. The volume of waste amounts to one aspirin tablet per year per person using nuclear electricity, compared to tons of air pollutants and globe-warming gaseous CO2 emitted by coal or fossil-fuel combustion. Nuclear waste can be easily stored and safely transported, as the US nuclear navy has done for half a century. We don’t need any more “studies” of the “toxic waste problem” that anti-nuclears keep suggesting. Their political/legal tactics have resulted in costly delays in the opening of the Yucca Mountain repository in Nevada. Nuclear engineers solved “the waste problem” long ago; fission waste can be safely handled and is no more “toxic and dangerous” than transporting and storing many man-made chemicals that are routinely used in the chemicals and manufacturing industries. Used nuclear waste comprises chemicals that can not fission any further; they are slowly decaying elements whose nuclei emit beta and gamma particles that are easily shielded. Contrary to allegations that uranium and plutonium in spent fuel elements pose a problem because of million-year half-lives, they are separated from used fission products by reprocessing and burnt as fuel in future fast-breeder reactors. They will not be dumped. This reduces 50,000 tons from ten-year accumulation of spent fuel to 500 tons (with shorter decay lives) of fission products, taking centuries instead of decades to fill the Yucca repository. The notion that long radioactive lifetimes are undesirable is also erroneous. The longer the decay lifetime, the less the radiation emitted per gram of radio-isotope. Most elements that make up our bodies (hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, etc) have infinitely long decay lifetimes. All humans are “hot” because everyone has radioactive potassium-40 (K-40; 0.012% abundance) in his body, which continuously emits beta particles with a half-life of one million years! Man successfully evolved in this environment and there are even indications that low levels of radiation benefit health (called hormesis).
Some well-known environmental organizations such as Greenpeace and the Sierra Club were once amiable and sensible. However now they are held hostage by a few dictatorial administrators who oppose all things with the word “nuclear” in it and who will never admit they are wrong. Greenpeace founder Patrick Moore, naturalist James Lovelock, and many other environmentalists now admit they were wrong about nuclear energy, but present Greenpeace and Sierra-Club commanders refuse to agree. Energy is man’s third most important need after water and food. Those who hinder expansion of nuclear power will be viewed as irresponsible neo-luddites by future generations. Delays of a committed worldwide nuclear energy program will cause certain impoverishment and death of many people by 2050. Without greatly expanded nuclear power, desert cities like Las Vegas and Phoenix will become ghost-towns. Originally the US had planned to have 300 reactors by the year 2000, but instead there are only 104 today. After the Three-Mile-Island (TMI) reactor meltdown in 1979 in the US (with 0 casualties) and Russia’s Chernobyl accident in 1986 (with 57 fatalities), public hysteria fanned by fear-mongering antinuclear activists caused cancellations and moratoria on construction of new nuclear plants. While the USA was once the leader, most US businesses with reactor manufacturing know-how closed. Instead France, Russia, Japan, South-Korea, India, and China are now in charge. Anti-nuclear lobbyists and a mal-informed government have created the pending energy crisis. We are entering a war-like energy-deprivation period as serious as WW-II or Al-Qaida. Strong Manhattan-project-like leadership is now needed to reverse the short-sightedness and follies of prior administrations.
22. Don Robertson | 08.28.08
The previous poster, Jeff Eerkens, makes an ineffective argument based upon a condescending plea for ever more scientific respect, diligence, scientific policy endorsements, and ever more scientific thumbs in the leaky scientific dike to prevent ever greater numbers of human beings from dying due to their increasingly tenuous and scientifically supported existence and subsistence.
I don’t think Jeff Eerkens or any other proponent of expanded nuclear power have thought through their positions. They merely suffer from delusions of scientific grandeur. They still think their work is amoral. And they want more public support to push the scientific envelope that threatens to permanently close the door to any future humanity, or perhaps only tolerably debase it some how.
Jeff, these scientific mistakes are cumulatively weighing upon the future. This is apparent in our present if we examine our nearby past. You do realize this do you not, Jeff? And you must realize to continue this folly is immoral by any measure, regardless the centuries old claim of scientific amorality.
At some point, logically, science is going to run out of thumbs to stick into the scientific dike that holds back the flood of reality that will wash away much of scientific humanity.
And these same scientists will proclaim then, it was the fault of those who refused to fund and sponsor more scientific nonsense.
Science is but a modern witchcraft. It holds no truth.
If science held truth, it should open the door to what philosophers term, “free will”. I see no evidence of this.
We (I) would always act morally.
If I do not understand what is moral, then I have no free will. I can merely chose to take one path or another uninformed of the morality of either path. This is no choice made of my free will, because as I said, we (I) would always act morally, if we knew how.
The scientific route is mere empirical ignorance and barbarity.
Don Robertson
23. Christopher Skase | 08.28.08
Guys, i think it needs to be dropped from the debate about whether this is a proliferation problem or not.
1)The GLE joint venture between GE, Hitachi and Cameco has a vested interest in making sure this technology remains private.
2)The technology is classified in accordance with some security pact or another between Australia and the US. It is strictly on a need to know basis, and also on an ability to comprehend basis
3)Pretty much all of the G9 have spend billions of dollars over the past 20 years trying to come up with a laser enrichment method or any other method than the expensive archaic centriguge technology, to no avail.
It is preposterous to think that this could be replicated by a terrorist group and highly doubtful that even current nuclear nations will be able to replicate.
It would be like going back to the 1920’s, telling someone about how a TV works and then seeing if they could go and build one.
On nuclear waste, im not a scientist but i have followed the creator, silex systems for a long time. Because their technology is so cost efficient, it can economically extract enriched uranium out of supposedly ’spent’ nuclear material. As you scientists can imagine this dramatically improves the situation as all the ‘waste’ will be reproccesed thus reducing it to a fraction of the old waste.
Anyway if you want to make some money, buy silex, its listed in Aus but you can buy SILXY over there if you have any spare cash…If not you could go to the bank and draw down some equity from the home!
24. Christopher Skase | 08.28.08
Also Don Robertson, your posts especially 22 really blew me away.
I dont think i have ever heard rambling waffle quite like it, i thought maybe it was just a bit deep for me, so i read it again…i think you may have lost it.
25. Don Robertson | 08.28.08
Christopher Skase -
“Anyway if you want to make some money, buy silex, its listed in Aus but you can buy SILXY over there if you have any spare cash…If not you could go to the bank and draw down some equity from the home!”
You have absolutely no idea how the stock market works, do you, Christopher.
85% of all those who open a retail stock trading account, lose 98% of their equity within six months. The stock markets are controlled by industry players who know how to take money from retail stock traders. They harvest the money of retail traders just like wheat. They even wait for it to ripen.
The other 15% end up down 60% on average, and usually close their accounts before before they go broke and within a year of opening them.
I don’t suppose you’ve made your fortune in the stock market have you, Christopher? That’s rhetorical question.
This stock market information was passed on to me by an employee of a large, well advertised and prominent retail online trading company.
You come here advising others to close a worthy and contentious debate, and end up by providing a stock tip that is a guaranteed loser.
It’s a guaranteed loser because almost regardless of the quality of the company behind any stock investment, stocks peel off layers of equity to short players and “put” contract players year in and year out. The stock game is rigged and built upon mathematical analysis that guarantees retail stock owners lose. The analysts call the plays like quarterbacks. Their companies are as corrupt as they come.
When a stock goes up, it usually goes up after all the retail players have been thoroughly shaken out by steep losses contrived to drive the retail stock owners towards selling, like harried sheep into a corral.
Credulity is what you are asking everyone here to subscribe to. I doubt anyone here has much money in the stock market. So you waste your time.
There is a modest debate going on here. But the ideologues on both sides have been stymied by stark reality.
It is not merely nuclear power that has taken it on the chin here. It is the presumptive scientific credo that effectively has had the curtain pulled back.
Don Robertson
26. Joe | 08.29.08
Mr. Robertson,
Have you considered the fact that instead of smearing your message on some cave wall using the remnants of your last meal… you’re using one of SCIENCE’s achievements (ie the INTERNET) to enlighten us all? which, depending on where you live, is up to 80% nuclear powered.
27. Don Robertson | 08.29.08
Joe-
“Have you considered the fact that [..] you’re using one of SCIENCE’s achievements […] to enlighten us all?
Yes, Joe. I know the world is dependent upon the Internet now in a crucial and pitiful life-sustaining way.
I consider the Internet and my use of it like using present-day papyrus.
And when you contemplate the ancient Egyptians toiling along the Nile for their many thousands of years, do you have an irresistible urge to go off into the desert and build pyramids of stone?
Somehow, you fail to understand life is not made better by a personal preference or bias for or an adherence to any of these technologies.
Life is most commonly made more abundant but also more tenuous by technology.
That abundance logically always will prove temporary. The habitable system that sustains life is a finite, just like our ability to make changes to it with any life-sustaining efficacy. Increased complexity strains our ability to keep artificial technological systems intact and running.
The colloquial expression is “Mickey Mouse”. Technology is Mickey Mouse at best.
There is nothing better than life, Joe. All else pales. Your Mickey Mouse technologies offend my sense of credulity.
However, as the planet has become ever more populated and technological to the point of risking mass suicide, it has also become massively degraded, to the point of teetering upon habitability for some, if not all at present.
More of the same solutions designed by science simply are out of the question.
Star Trek is a fantasy, Joe. And endless improvement of technological solutions too is also a wild fantasy. We cannot even afford the mistakes that will accompany the endless efforts required just to maintain and adjust the existing reckless technologies already implemented.
The air we breathe, the water we drink and the land we live upon, Joe, that is the only reality for which we have any real choice.
Don Robertson
28. Jim M | 08.29.08
Don, while accusing others of being ideologues, I wonder if you can provide solutions rather than anti-science ideals. I may be mistaken, but I don’t think anyone here feels nuclear power to be a perfect solution to all the world’s problems. Nuclear power is advocated as an alternative to other, more irresponsible choices. Under your morals, would it be better to continue down the path of fossil fuels as we are now, or take a less destructive route?
Or, are you able to offer a feasible alternative? I imagine it would be something like population control, and the abandonment of technology. Do you have a plan for that which could actually be implemented?
29. Don Robertson | 08.29.08
Jim M’s question is direct and to the point. It deserves some attention, regardless the venue for such a discussion.
First, the idea that there is a problem at all, this is an idea that only comes into view regarding the scientific perspective. The idea that there are any answers is a peculiarly human trait, one that only reflects how we view ourselves, our existence, and our closest held beliefs.
Science is not solely to blame. Humanitarianism also is a spoke in the wheel upon which humanity is being slowly broken.
The humanitarian is a megalomaniac whose sole concern is addressing the universal suffering he imagines exists, regardless the ability of those in whom the humanitarian sees this suffering, to feel the suffering the humanitarian sees in them.
Our perspectives of the world must be changed. Our moral underpinnings must be recast with a better understanding; that the relative morality left to us as a legacy of the Enlightenment was just an illusion.
Mankind found God dead of so many wounds inflicted by an intellect expressing itself as an authority without all the pieces to the puzzle during the Enlightenment. Voltaire, Rousseau, Locke, Hume, Berkley … Oh! The list goes on, and each deluded free-thinkers’ ideas were determined less so by what they understood, than by what they found to be false out of laundry list of those things that were believed all around them as they entered the world’s stage.
There are an infinite number of lies that can be told. Truth is much more rare, singular; and the truth usually comes in deafening and blinding singularities. But more importantly, just because we can know what is false, does not mean we can know what is true.
There is no logical deductive process that permits us to determine what is true by knowing what is false. There are an infinite number of falsehoods, and only one truth in any matter. And reality is a stunningly singular phenomenon. Guessing at the truth, one can endlessly delay discovering it.
In “A Critique of Pure Reason” Immanuel Kant’s first important work, the author posed a simple question when he conjectured that there might be a moral imperative. Is there a moral statement that was categorically true? A statement unlike the edicts of the Ten Commandments, or any of the teachings of religious figures, which generally held true, but for which there always seemed an exception for the moral consequences?
Kant later explored this idea as the Categorical Imperative, addressing it from every perspective by which he could mold and shape it. Kant however, could not put his pen to the moral imperative of life. He could not, exactly because he was both a scientist and a humanitarian. His perspective was wrong for the task.
Kant died in 1804 leaving his most important, if long forgotten, conjecture unanswered. Humanity has since lapsed into an era where the most widely held belief about morality is that it is relative. If you will explore what people believe is moral, you will find a relative morality, of Rube Golbergian capacity and complexity.
Had Kant discovered The Moral Imperative of Life in his Eighteenth Century lifetime, we would be living with the benefits of it today. Morality is not relative.
That is the answer to your question. Find The Moral Imperative of Life, and all these problems dissolve over time. And, the world can be made a better place.
This is the answer to Kant’s conjecture:
The moral imperative of life is to live a life that detracts not at all from the lives available to those who will follow us into this world.
You see from it, morality, the most basic foundation of morality is founded in the future and our responsibility towards the future. The Moral Imperative says, Whatever you do, don’t screw up the future. It implies it is immoral simply to gamble on a solution when the wager of that gamble involves some possible detriment to the future.
Those wagers, those detriments are cumulative. This is our present as we can readily observe it. The detriment of lost wagers laid to benefit humanity are crowding humanity out of a place on the planet and harming humanity.
Who is it here that will say, it is morally okay to try and fix the world knowing that if we fail by our efforts, the world will be further doomed?
Some will say, We must try!
The road to Hell though is paved with good intentions.
If we must try, then we must try to undo what has been done in the past that has so thoroughly debased the prospects for the future.
The path forward is not a path backward. The path forward, is the path forward. But it is not on the same path onto which we have found your problem.
We are alive today. We are at the grand party that is life. Who is it here that would gamble, and perhaps close the door to ALL those who might come to the party after we are gone?
And more to the point, who among you would say YOU have the right? That YOU should have the academic freedom to perform these experiments and build these dangerous scientific knowledge sets?
Who among you would say you have the right to vote for such a gambling away of the future? Who?
I say to you, if we count all our votes as being in the affirmative, and then we count all the votes of everyone who might come into this world after we leave it, WE ARE OUT-VOTED!
And this is why I speak of fools here. Enjoy your party. But don’t trash the place on the way out just because you’re drunk with scientific power.
Don Robertson
30. Jim M | 08.29.08
Thank you for your answer. If I were to formulate any serious response it would only go heavily off topic and thus I will refrain.
31. George Stanford | 08.30.08
Hey, guys, the word is slowly coming out that there’s a great way to deal with nuclear waste. It’s called a “fast reactor.” I hope Bill Gates finds out about it soon — it can save him some money. I heard recently that he is funding research on “a new type of nuclear reactor that would use fuels other than enriched uranium — including spent fuel from existing reactors.”
But such a critter already exists. Called the IFR (Integral Fast Reactor), its development at Argonne National Laboratory was almost complete in 1994, when it was canceled by Congress for non-technical reasons. It has been carried further toward commercialization by General Electric, under the name “S-PRISM.”
The IFR is a combined reactor and recycling system with remarkable capabilities.
- It can be fueled entirely with material recovered from today’s used nuclear fuel.
- It consumes virtually all the long-lived radioactive isotopes that worry people who are concerned about the “nuclear waste problem,” reducing the needed isolation time to less than 500 years.
- It could provide all the energy needed for centuries, feeding only on the uranium that has already been mined.
- It uses uranium resources with 100 times the efficiency of today’s reactors.
- It does not require enrichment of uranium.
- It has less proliferation potential than the reprocessing method now used in several countries.
- And, of course, it emits no greenhouse gases.
For more info on the IFR, one good place to start is at
Someone please tell Bill that his dream can come alive with much less seed money than starting over from scratch.
32. George Stanford | 08.30.08
So the link I tried to include got filtered out. Sorry. You can find the IFR info I referred to by doing a Google on the phrase
“To control climate change, we must get rid of coal”
(keep the quotation marks). It’s a web page by one Steve Kirsch.
33. Jeff Eerkens | 08.30.08
This is my last comment. I very much enjoyed the debates, with a philosopher reprimanding amoral scientists, and with anti-nuclear and pro-nuclear commentators. It’s great! Two comments I like to respond to. I agree with R. Scott Kemp (# 10), but will not say more. To George Sanford (# 31), thanks for mentioning the IFR. It is a scandal and utmost stupidity that our government stopped the IFR work at Argonne in 1994. When will our politicians learn to listen and leave technical energy issues to seasoned engineers instead of lobbyists, and ignore the mis-information some special interest groups try to peddle? George, I had heard of the canceled IFR program and know of one writer who showed me a rough draft of a book he plans to publish about this political atrocity and the bitterness of the participants. I also heard of Bill Gates involvement with a study group trying to re-invent fast reactor technology. Of course there is the book by Alan Waltar and A.B. Reynolds published in 1982 about fast reactor engineering. Most of us who studied nuclear engineering know that fast and/or epithermal breeder reactors must be put into service in the next thirty years (or so) to sustain the “global nuclear-power millennium” as Alan Waltar likes to call it. As George Stanford points out, not only will fast-breeder technology let us enjoy peaceful nuclear energy for thousands of years by utilizing all available uranium-238 and thorium,but it can be operated proliferation-proof. This is done by retaining a few transuranic isotopes in fuel elements that spoil it for use in weaponry but still allows adequate power generation and breeding. It also leaves little waste since it contains only products of fissioned uranium and plutonium; there is no uranium or plutonium fuel left in it.
34. Don Robertson | 08.30.08
Yes. I too would like to thank those of you who participated in an uncommonly civil discussion. While I was simply ignored by some, I am more used to being shouting down, or at least I am used to having someone attempt to shout me down. I apologize for what might have seemed to some like my straying off the enthusiastically popular party line of the topic, and for as is my wont talking down to a group too obviously in need of a lecture, if not a sound thrashing, (by a common philosophic license).
Someone had to do it, was my honest impression as a perused the docile but misguided and clearly rosy-glassed techno-speak that was being tossed about here.
I recently finished a copyrighted paper, hot off the fingertips, some twenty pages worth, “A Critique of Pure Science”. It is temporarily posted online. It is online so I can easily reference and present it to prospective for-profit publishers. But it is accessible, even if it is not meant to be public. It’s a philosophic sleigh ride.
Anyone who might be interested, (and the paper is what it seems by its title), this paper very tentatively can be viewed on Google Docs.
docs.google.com/View?docid=ddkf3pk6_0c5vbphc5
And similarly, anyone interested in pursuing a light conversation away from the CS board, my address is donrZ207me.XXX replacing the “Z” with an @ and similarly replacing the “XXX” with the common “com” extension.
And again- My Best to you all.
Don Robertson
35. Jeff Eerkens | 08.30.08
I cannot help myself to add one more post-script to the debate that is so dear to me. Regarding nuclear proliferation (#1 and #10), I want to say to Scott Kemp (#10) where does one draw the line between a true proliferation threat and diagnostics/research? A mass spectrometer can also separate uranium-235 from uranium-238 (but only in nanogram quantities). Should every mass-spectrometer in the world therefore be “declared” under the NPT? The atomic energy act uses the words “significant quantities of enriched uranium” to make a process subject to security classification, but our government refuses to define what is meant by “significant”. While Scotts’s comments (#10) are valid, if worried about diversion to weapons, I believe our intelligence community should flag super-kilogram movements of uranium hexafluoride (and elapse of time) before trying to determine details of separation techniques. Though footprints of a laser enrichment plant might be smaller than for a centrifuge plant, there are many ways to determine what is going on in a suspect facility (e.g. purchase of large numbers of special IR optics, etc) besides power consumption.
Regarding the general history of nuclear energy development, people may find it interesting that among the nuclear pioneers were two extremely bright ladies in a man-dominated world, Marie Curie and Lise Meitner. They realized that nuclear energy might be the solution to save humanity from economic collapse when oil was depleted by the mid-2000s. They never would believe that man would be so stupid as to reject it because it might harm humanity.
36. Don Robertson | 08.30.08
I keep reading this stuff. WOW!
I’ve never been an alarmist about this nuclear subject more than I am now reading this last post by Jeff. Nuclear power is no Second Coming, Jeff.
Look, Jeff. You’re still not looking at what you’re for doing with a wide angle lens. I think you missed something in your education somewhere along the line.
Nuclear power in the simply more clever, laser-enriched scheme of things, massively deployed and, run with the no-problems incarnation you envisage for everyone here, will only provide humanity more energy that will be all too readily consumed on top of all the other current energy production and consumption.
This continued priming of the humanity-pump will lead to more of exactly the same problems that are at the root of the demise of scientific humanity, over-population and a massive poisoning of the planet from a myriad of sources due to over population and the increasingly technological exploitation of everyone and everything.
At some point, Jeff, the systems will all break down globally for any number of an ever increasing number of insurmountable reasons. The greater super-dependence of societies upon this sort of artificial technological creation, the greater the calamity will be when entropy cracks an axle or springs a massive leak.
Even if it doesnn’t happen like that, what would humanity look like after just 500 more years of this sort of technological drive? You’ve seen the sci-fi movies, Jeff. I’ll let you guess at the details.
But I’ll tell you this, it’s not going to be the Jetsons, or Star Trek, or even Star Wars. It’s going to be more a futuristic vision of Easter Island, and massive heaps of human bodies floating in every ocean bay worldwide the likes of which will make Katrina pale.
You’re advocating building hell on earth, not some high tech paradise where everyone will sit around playing Doom all day long with ring tones for ALL their appliances.
Your vision is as old as the Enlightenment, and it has simply never worked out as all the technological dreamers thought it would.
Your vision is WAY obsolete.
And you’re just not intellectually brave enough to cut your losses on your fantasy that is no different from a thousand other technological fantasies that have crashed and burned leaving a huge toxic waste mess for posterity to deal with.
What you’re advocating is immoral. It’s a stupid vision, and it’s immoral. I have no other words for what you’re trying to do.
You’re on the wrong side of history AND experience, Jeff.
Best though.
Don Robertson
37. Christopher Skase | 09.01.08
To Don Robertson,
You are quite clearly a joke, why you are publishing papers on anything is beyond my belief…
I dont want this to be a personal slanging match but it really annoys me when someone hijacks a discussion/debate about the future of nuclear power by contending that what we all think is progress is in fact regression and going into philosophical questions of truths and untruths…Leave this for your “papers”
You claim “85% of all those who open a retail stock trading account, lose 98% of their equity within six months.” It is quite possibly the most absurd claim i have ever heard made. And yes, i do have a very good understanding of how the stock market works, you seem to have got your education on this topic from conspiracy theorists and shock jocks…As for the rest of your pseudo-philosophical drivel, its not even worth going there, im not going to waste my time with an essay picking you apart piece by piece.
Your heart seems to be in the right place with your concern about the long term future of the earth and the happiness of its inhabitants, though as you say “The road to Hell though is paved with good intentions” reading through your ramblings i feel i have made the trip aswell.
38. Don Robertson | 09.01.08
Christopher Skase-
There is absolutely no merit and even less weight to your post, just like all of your posts here. Hijack? This most recent post amounts to nothing more than an embarrassing public tantrum meant to cause every reader stop, and turn away in embarrassment from your raw and real childishness.
You even go so far as the imply your head hurts from immensity of the ideas being discussed. Of course it does, Christopher, you were straining to understand when you through your fit.
This most recent post amounts to a whine about not wanting to believe what was related to me by a certified stock professional employed in the industry. And then with a pouting resignation to every other assertion as stated, you essentially toss up of your small arms and hands high into the air in verbose theatrics.
Are these antics supposed to be convincing as it comes to the discussion from someone who wants to drop stock tips on a comment board meant for the discussion of the efficacy of another in a long line of unproven and untested technological breakthroughs in the dying and quite blackened art of nuclear power generation?
You hold back that there MIGHT be some over riding moral issues, but then you infer you don’t really care about them, and you certainly give no indication you really understand what these might be, or that they might have any sway in your thinking.
You infer you can read with comprehension, Christopher, and I suspect with some effort you possibly can to some limited extent. But you show no sign of it by your stance in this last post of yours, or any other thus far.
You apparently want all to believe you are superman here, but you come off like some sugar-coated, sticky fingered child with tears in his eyes and look of anger meant to draw our compassion! You have it, Christopher.
Regardless of the moral issues raised by the enthusiastic assertions Jeff and others in the article and in these posts concerning vastly expanding public confidence, public funding and public policy support of nuclear power industry, you apparently again want the discussion to turn on your smudging of the moral issues to benefit your inane and otherwise unsubstantiated belief about what you think should be done, including investing in some stock scheme involving nuclear power.
Pshaw, Christopher! Pshaw! Proof your posts for credulity, is my suggestion. Does what you write, even read true to you when you reread what you have written?
I ask you then, specifically so you cannot avoid it,
1) What is point of expanding nuclear power generation when so much of the power generation in this country and the rest of the world is spent creating the suicidal disaster of modernity as it too obviously being played out?
2) Does not human nature as it has been repeated and re-affirmed by history thoroughly negate every assertion made by the proponents here?
3) Are you really proposing some sort of nuclear powered Utopia where laying down on the floor and kicking your feet is acceptably public behavior and the way to render public policy?
I will add, that if you are some insane fundamentalist Christian seeking to rush humanity toward some utterly profligate precipice of a nuclear Apocalypse, say so. Go ahead, blurt it out. It will make you feel better, and likely help stir you back to some semblance of sanity.
Otherwise give us some cogent measure of real progress that substantiates the blind faith you have in scientific humananity and its ability to better handle this and all these many scientific powers that have historically been so grossly abused to the detriment of everyone now living on the planet.
Philosophy may seem obtuse and abstruse to a child with more sugar in his system than is reasonable, Christopher, but let me assure you, philosophy is the pinnacle of all knowledge. Philosophy is no mere curiosity like science or mathematics. Philosophy expends all its efforts attempting to answer the tough questions that we know cannot be answered.
But, the answer to this question concerning expanding nuclear power and the knowledge inherent to all the scientific and nuclear power knowledge sets, is by the merits of the discussion thus far here, clearly a resounding, no.
Scientific humanity has demonstrated no capacity to continue on down this path of inquiry with any predictable efficacy, especially when there are all too obviously gambles being laid (and argued for here) that could turn the world into a cinder, if history is to serve as any example.
I will recall for all of you still just barely hanging on, everyone else still painfully reading here, the President of the United States, George W. Bush, declared World War III not too long ago, did he not?
Well then, what constraints are left upon the use of any scientific technology? None, is clear and undeniable answer that should leave an indelible mark on anyone’s clear-minded intellect. There are no moral restraints whatsoever on science.
The world is at war, and if we should trust our President, the world is at war in a clash of civilizations best likened to the Crusades that will last for at least the next hundred years (or until the oil runs out!).
Go read my paper again, Christopher. And this time read it with the idea in mind that the guy who wrote it might have something to say you haven’t heard before.
Don Robertson
39. Christopher Skase | 09.01.08
Don you have done it again. I dont know why i put myself through this, i dont even know what i am supposedly argueing about??? If you want to criticise me for dropping a stock tip, fine go ahead. Im sorry if i offended your delicate sensibilities, i thought this may have interested some of the folks out there. (Maybe the 15% who didnt loose 98% of their equity in the first 6 months. LOL)
If you want me to provide a counter arguement to your assertion that scientific progress is in fact regression leading to our ultimate doom, im not going to bother, i have no interest in discussing such an absurd proposition. Your of course welcome to abandon your TV, Car, Computer, Refrigerator etc…in fact just start trecking and dont stop till you find a little cave in Bolivia where you can get away from all the evil progress.
In the interests of being a good sport i will attempt to answer your 3 questions sequentially and seriously:
1)I disagree with the premise of the question as i dont believe modernity is suicidal. Of course we could and should cut our electricity consumption but unless one of the “misguided scientists” comes up with a way to make our labor saving devices work without conventional electricity we will always need it. Fossil fuels are bad for the planet and finite…Nuclear can fill the breach. Sorry thats the best i can go to answering your loaded question.
2)Once again this is a loaded question…So juvenile…I disagree that human history makes us incompatable with nuclear power. (If this is what you are getting at)
3)Your really stretching here…Its just power, its a very boring but essential part of our society…Maybe we could run all our equipment another way, what do you propose? Shutting down the grid? It would be one way of stopping your inane posts.
If you want to have a debate with me, im afraid it has to be about something real…ie take my No 23 post as a starting point.
40. Don Robertson | 09.02.08
Your incorrigible support for extending the status quo, an increasing human demand for an ever greater portion the limited life sustaining resources of the planet, even to deprive that resource necessary for any human population to exist with some recognizable quality of life in the future, is an impasse we will not climb over easily. Your youthful enthusiasm for making all the mistakes of the past regardless of the lessons learned in the greater society in which you live, is similarly difficult for me to fathom.
But I will let you have your belief.
If it is your intent to publicly mock and shirk your moral responsibility to the future by your stand on the issue, you have apparently succeeded with no shame being exposed on your part.
But I still contend even the goal of nuclear fusion stated as “unlimited clean power” is but an aberration because it is not just the source and technological byproduct behind the power grid that is degrading the planet. It is also what is being done with that energy. There is no current need for more electrical power, Christopher, any more than there is any current need for more oil to be fed into the oil exploration, drilling and distribution systems.
As for the immediate scientific push for more public funding and a greater acceptance of a demonstrably deadly technology, my opinion is it should be resolved that when this new crop of criminally enthusiastic scientists have finished the job of cleaning up all the planet’s existing nuclear waste problems, a problem similar scientists to themselves caused, and when they can resolve all the other nuclear issues that have already arisen, including nuclear weapon proliferation, which the scientific enlightenment is also wholly responsible for; in short, when these scientists can demonstrate that the genie has put back in the bottle, then let the current crop of scientific Utopian proselytes, these precocious experimenters fresh out of Nintendo boot camp come back and talk about proceeding with the resurrection of this otherwise wholly and necessarily obsolete technology.
This debate of course happened decades ago. And the amateur rocket club lost the debate so sorely, they have cried a river in the decades since. Even though wholly socially proscribed, they continued clandestine, rogue scientists working in secret out of sight of public scrutiny.
Just because humanity has continued on its course of continued consumption of everything that can be consumed, including every available energy source, gives no one any reason to believe the debate will turn another corner of some unseen enlightenment about the benefits of newer, cleaner, and more child-safe nuclear technology. This push is an attempt to resurrect a debate that was lost decades ago.
We all read how North Korea’s nuclear bomb wasn’t very big, right? Well? How big does a nuclear bomb have to be to set off alarm bells?
But then I could be wrong, as some here would argue for giving Borneo the bomb, if it allowed them to continue their immoral tinkering, trying to make the world and life somehow, even impossibly better while gambling the viability of both with increasingly alarmingly catastrophic results being predicted by many greater minds than toil at the extension of this scientific insanity.
I too throw up a warning flag about what is being proposed here, and I ask, what could be the hurry? Let these enthusiastic scientists exhaustively calm the fears of every last one of the earth’s inhabitants before they are allowed to proceed further with this ongoing gamble. Let everyone have their say, when we are discussing a technology that could significantly increase the likelihood of further degradation of the planet.
Besides, as I said, we’ve got a wholly declared world war going on. And, the U.S. government is currently engaged in another round of semi-secret nuclear weapons testing. Why should anyone want to make the necessary material for this madness more readily available now?
Does the world really need more and better nuclear weapons, Christopher? Does the world need scientists to continue to extrapolate ever greater insanity from the science of the preexisting and newly accumulated nuclear technology knowledge set?
Until you can grasp these paramount moral issues, you have nothing that needs to be considered further.
Good day, Christopher.
Don Robertson
41. Art O’Meara | 09.02.08
Mr. Robertson speaks with the fervor of a zealot. Reasoned discourse will avail us nothing but patronizing condemnation.
42. Art O’Meara | 09.02.08
Mr. Robertson speaks with the fervor of a zealout. Reasoned discourse will avail us nothing more than further patronizing condemnation.
43. Christopher Skase | 09.02.08
Agreed Art, Im reminded of an American saying i heard in a movie, “you cant argue with stupid”. I really have heard nothing like it. Its been enlightening for all the wrong reasons. Thank you Don. Just curious, if you dont mind me asking, what is your proffession?
44. Shane Coffman | 09.03.08
Don Robertson,
I think for the sake of argument, enlightenment, and even entertainment, your points are truly appreciated. I have always enjoyed and admired the art and language of Philosophy. But, may I ask, how practical is it to attempt to re-invent the “needs” of human civilization before everything comes crashing down? Is it even possible to make the kinds of sweeping changes to human behavior that you propose are needed before nuclear energy becomes much more needed, and common? Throughout human history, haven’t various religions of the world been attempting to propagate similar waves of enlightenment? It must not have been working because you seem to imply that we are more “human” (in the most irresponsible of senses) than ever in history. So how can you take such a position and expect that it will contribute to the solution given the time-frame we are working in?
At the very root I agree with many of your persuasive arguments. But it seems more prudent to me that we should be talking about solutions to this inevitable “problem” rather than turning this important discussion into a philosophical exercise from which no practical solution can be derived.
Regards,
Shane
45. Don Robertson | 09.03.08
Shane Coffman-
Your argument demonstrates a clear grasp of the social issues, even if just yet, we do not see eye to eye concerning the persuasive value of the moral issues.
Superficially I might point to 1789 in France as an analogy and ask, would it not have been better to have dealt with the social problems epitomized by Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI? than to have run the long course of the
Revolution that then led ultimately to Napoleon and the Duke of Wellington slugging it out after countless lives were lost on the Continent?
I use this analogy merely to point out, in retrospect these things cannot be changed. And the fatalists also would argue, neither can they be changed for the future. I would have you consider, this is the crux of your argument.
In the future, you assert, given our current course and momentum we are going to end up with a much more widespread nuclear science and a spreading of its poisonous technological knowledge sets ever wider on the planet.
I ask you to also consider that the more complete agricultural-science knowledge sets that could have prevented or ameliorated some of the experience of the American Dust Bowl was already well understood before that historic event.
In the short run, fatalism is a persuasive argument.
Until recently there was no definitive moral sense, a moral sense that would have for instance allowed those early Twentieth Century ag-scientists to assert to those who farmed contrary to the knowledge-lessons known to be true then, were committing an immoral act. Today we know such a practice is immoral, or at least it would be proscribed by some social sense.
Quite contrary to the assumptions of some here, I am not a zealous anti-nuclear writer/activist.
I am a moral philosopher. The philosophic discoveries that drive my themes and efforts are moral in a way much bigger than nuclear power.
I do not come to this discussion so easy to define. It takes some effort, of which I see only evidenced in your cogent post.
Here is an example for the slackards here:
I am similarly quite concerned about the environmentalist movement embodied and enraptured as it is by a nascent science that seems wholly intent upon building a scientific knowledge set concerning EXACTLY how to destroy the habitability of the planet from any number of different platforms. (Some here may have to reread that sentence several times to get my gist.)
It is the knowledge set that is the true danger, even if most would react only against the hubris…
I do not mean to imply here that the proponents’ efforts are known to them to be immoral. I am saying with higher authority however, as far as they have thought their ideas through, they feel no moral uneasiness. These proponents of expanding this technological pursuit come up immoral in my eyes entirely due to my new found philosophic perspective.
I now re-examine the world having busted the myth of any relative morality.
Morality is not relative. And from a non-relative morality, a new knowledge set that lauds over every empirical knowledge set has been given birth.
That new knowledge set is Categorical Knowledge.
And just as empirical knowledge lauded over superstition, Categorical Knowledge now lauds over empirical knowledge and every truth we adhere to and consider to be these purported scientific truths.
And it is rightly so. For if one considers the assumptions of science, even the accomplishments of science, we find merely another superstition, albeit a very powerful and more powerfully dangerous superstition.
So, Shane from your fatalist point of view, even if unintended, that nuclear science is going to grow, I write to counter such an argument by stating, these scientists who today puff and say this will all work out only to benefit mankind, that these same scientists also come from a long line of empirical miracle-cure salesmen, each guaranteeing a scientific Utopia that seems invariably to turn up nothing but another detriment and degradation of the human condition.
And I say so with all my logical evidence founded in Categorical Knowledge, human nature and the infinite complexity of reality science is, and will forever be, incapable of anticipating, presaging or controlling.
So. Now we have two views sitting upon our balance equally weighted by some hypothetical common perception. To tip the balance, let me prove there is no long term human value to the promise scientific progress might imply for some here.
I know of no other cogent measure of progress than a test I developed some years ago to determine human progress. You, or anyone else here might propose another test. I would welcome this as a continuation of the discussion before us.
Here is my test of progress. I call it “The Five Year Old Test”.
You were five years old. And I was once five years old. All of us here, we should assume, were at one time five years old. This is our basic assumption, a common experience and a knowledge of some five year olds.
Five years old is a wonderful age, filled with siblings, puppy dogs, kittens, trips to the beach in the summer, sleds and ice skates in the winter, and moms and dads, if we’re lucky enough.
Every year there is a new crop of human five year olds.
Now here is the test:
On average can any of us say that since we were five years old that each successive years’ crop of five year olds has had a higher standard of living and better quality of life than we had when we were five years old?
That gnawing feeling in the pit of your stomach right now? That is the measure of human progress I intend for you to feel by my test of human progress.
So, yes. As you assert, nuclear technologies are continuing to expand. But I would contend, so is the growth and acceptance of Categorical Knowledge that will prove either its demise or its subordination to Categorical Knowledge.
I do not write to directly stop nuclear power in any event. I write to spread Categorical Knowledge, which in turn will overwhelm all empirical knowledge sets and in the process any mislaid belief in nuclear power.
Merely enhancing the nuclear science knowledge set with its promise of a Nuclear Utopia is immoral. It is immoral because it is a lie because the odds are clearly against it, and, it is a gamble where the wager is laid against the future.
Thanks.
Don Robertson
46. Brendan S | 09.04.08
Don,
After reading all of your posts as well as the other posts presented here, I made a few observations regarding your thoughts. Now, none of this is meant as a personal attack, only at the fallacious and often paradoxical ideas you are presenting in the interest of removing ignorance, fallacy and poorly thought out philisophical ideas from an otherwise academic discussion.
1.) At no point throughout any of your rambling did you ever come close to answering any of the pertinent questions asked of you. You were asked several times what your ultimate solution to the energy crisis and penultimate “immoral science crisis” you repeatedly bring up. How would you solve it? Remove all technology? Remove any remnants of the evils science has brought upon our world? Despite your hatred for it, that which you despise has given you everything that you need to continue to make your circular arguments. Your education? An ultimate product of science. The books you have quoted? Produced by science. Since you want to take this to the absolute extreme, science is absolutely responsible for civilization. Without science, humans are no different than any other mammal (aside from other great apes, otters, and other creatures that have learned through trial and error that some things in their immoral lives are easier with the use of tools, most notably acquisition of foodstuffs.) Regarding those foodstuffs, do you propose that we intentially allow over half of the global population to die by starvation? Would that be moral? Moral or not, without the agricultural methods brought about by science, the human population would be unable to sustain itself. So, are you suggesting that being alive only through the help of science that was immoral from the start, that our very survival and continued existance is immoral? If so, your entire argument is void, due to the paradox it creates.
So, again, what is your ultimate and moral solution to solving the energy problem without using science?
2.) Your comment “Morality is not relative.” Is one of the most fallacious statements I have ever read, heard, or been exposed to. Morality by it’s very nature is subjective, and determined by one’s personal ans societal mores. On a macro level, this can be proven by comparing civilizational level cutural differences. There are only a few similarities to the moral beliefs of secular Christianity-originated Western culture and those of religious Wahhabi Arabs. To say that morality is absolute is to say that only one system of beliefs is correct, and moreover is implied that it is your system of beliefs that is correct.
3.) Regarding your “5 year old test”, is that not scientific in nature? You have a hypothesis (incorrect, mind you) that you attempt to prove by telling the audience, “On average can any of us say that since we were five years old that each successive years’ crop of five year olds has had a higher standard of living and better quality of life than we had when we were five years old?” To answer your question, yes I can say that each successive generation of 5 year olds has a better standard of living, overall, when looked at from a macro level. Admittedly, the amount of improvement to 5 year olds standards of living by science and technology is going to have diminishing returns, and in an industrialized nation, little change will be seen over one to three generations, but these improvements are still visible when looked at over a larger period of time.
4.) Regarding my own beliefs on nuclear fission power, I feel that it is currently the best option we have available to us based off of our choices. I do not feel that it is an ultimate solution, and think that new sources of energy should be continuously developed, consistently trying to find better, cleaner, more efficient methods of producing large quantities of energy that are necessary for the maintenance of human civilization. And to refute one of your other claims, yes, we do constantly need more energy. At this point in civilizational advancement, more nations are coming “on the grid” than ever before.
5.) What you said about the stock market makes absolutely no sense. For 98% of all owners of stock to lose all of their equity, every corporation in the world would have to fail. Not even in the great crash leading to the depression did 98% of the stock owners lose all of their equity. Not to mention, your “friend” wouldn’t have a job were such an event to happen.
6.) Regarding your paper, which I did punish myself with about half of, do you actually seriously intend for this paper to be looked at from an academic and philosphic standpoint, or is it some kind of inside joke?
I will start with your statement, “If we make critical the measure of human benefit such as affects the whole of the human species spread
out over time it is easy to see, humanity surely suffers more now than before the rise of scientific beliefs or these tangential supplicant notions about benefiting humanity.”
That statement actually dropped my jaw. So, humanity was better off when it lived in caves, was actively hunted by other creatures, was illiterate, uncultured, had NO morality, and was focused only on its very survival? Isn’t this a complete contradiction to most human behavior models?
Your argument that science inhibits free will is in direct opposition to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, as science provides more efficient, stable and reliable methods of providing the two lowest need categories.
Your statement, “The species as a whole, or any collective part of it, has no collective consciousness. I want to drive this theme home if nothing else here. This delusion will keep any soul from discovering the door to free will.” is in direct contradiction to your point that morality is not relative.
“A human being has a very large but limited intellectual capacity. Each individual is limited similarly by their time, or their lack of it, spent alive on this earth. None of us can think the same thing, not even in a single thought. And while we may think we have filled our heads with knowledge, if knowledge is truth, our heads are nearly empty of it.” Yep, and by your very argument, intellectual capacity is increased by science, due to the fact that it has greatly increased human lifespans and continues to do so.
“What possible perspective could lead any briefly lived individual to believe they might have some cogent view of our species or something of its purported intellectual progress?” I don’t know, why don’t you tell me your actual perspective instead of burying it in bad philosophy?
That was about as far as I could read without being completely turned away by your continuous self contradiction.
Now, again…
Please just answer these questions, simply, briefly and without contrivance before writing the rest your retort, which is likely to begin with a direct personal attack.
What is your solution to solving the world’s energy crisis?
What is your solution to handling the immorality of science?
How is philosophy different than pure science? Is it that philosophy accepts that what it presents is not truth, just belief?
Lastly, how do you suggest that your philosophy handle physical laws such as those penned by Newton? Do you suggest that gravity is subjective, and only exists in my own perception of reality? And if so, if I were to refuse to believe in gravity, could I fly?
47. Don Robertson | 09.04.08
Brendan S-
Thanks for your contentious comment. There must be others remaining here who feel your frustration or, perhaps just your eagerness to deny any truth to what I have said.
First, Brendan, while it is clear you gave me the benefit of your time constructing a very cogent and clear comment concerning what you meant to say, it is unfortunate that you have read through my perhaps less well constructed comments and only part of my twenty paged paper with an eye toward being critical instead of an eye toward comprehension.
It is a far more difficult task to read any written words for comprehension than it is to read them with the intent of assigning some unavoidably superfluous and incongruous faults.
You have assigned to what I have said too many times for me to address your error, something I neither said, nor implied by my written words.
Thus, I will only address a few of these, and for having done so I will then expect you to go back and try and read my words for their intended meaning, and not with an eye for finding more faults your imagination has largely concocted for your own enchantment and self-deception.
Should you then have questions, or observations, they would be better phrased to enhance the discussion, and far less a waste of my time explaining where you went wrong when you too quickly and too carelessly read my previous words.
If I sound rancorously condescending, do not fault my intent. Instead, consider my reaction were you in my position reading your words that repeatedly and at great length misrepresent what I said by incompletely quoting the context, or perhaps simply ignoring the context and intent of my words.
Here is an example of your error, beginning right at the start:
You state: “1.) At no point throughout any of your rambling did you ever come close to answering any of the pertinent questions asked of you. You were asked several times what your ultimate solution to the energy crisis and penultimate “immoral science crisis” you repeatedly bring up.”
Here are the answers you missed:
“If we must try, then we must try to undo what has been done in the past that has so thoroughly debased the prospects for the future.”
“This continued priming of the humanity-pump will lead to more of exactly the same problems that are at the root of the demise of scientific humanity, over-population and a massive poisoning of the planet from a myriad of sources due to over population and the increasingly technological exploitation of everyone and everything.”
“But I still contend even the goal of nuclear fusion stated as “unlimited clean power” is but an aberration because it is not just the source and technological byproduct behind the power grid that is degrading the planet. It is also what is being done with that energy. There is no current need for more electrical power, Christopher, any more than there is any current need for more oil to be fed into the oil exploration, drilling and distribution systems.”
And concerning your statement containing “immoral science crisis” you seem to want to paraphrase me by misquoting me between your quotation marks. But even here, your assertion I have not addressed this notion, is wrong.
“So, yes. As you assert, nuclear technologies are continuing to expand. But I would contend, so is the growth and acceptance of Categorical Knowledge that will prove either its demise or its subordination to Categorical Knowledge.”
To paraphrase myself here, I meant to state unequivocally, science is wholly subject to moral constraints and will end up entirely subordinate to Categorical Knowledge.
Now, let me again answer your all-important questions I previously answered in other posts.
>>>”What is your solution to solving the world’s energy crisis?”
There is no energy crisis. There is only a crisis of the ridiculous consumption of energy.
>>>”What is your solution to handling the immorality of science?”
To subordinate science to the constraints of morality and an expanding Categorical Knowledge based upon a non-relative morality. (Non-relative morality is thoroughly explained in my paper.)
>>>”How is philosophy different than pure science? Is it that philosophy accepts that what it presents is not truth, just belief?”
No, Brendan. Philosophy knows a few truths.
Both scientific and mathematical assertions however, are entirely dependent upon convention. Neither science or mathematics is anywhere near the standard of philosophic truths.
(This final assertion at this point in this discussion would require too long an educational process to convince you here, just as it would no doubt open up another can of misquoted worms and too eager faults for you. And you seem to lack the temperament to learn anything from me anyway. But rest assured, Brendan, I am not deceiving you. If you would like to find out why mathematics and science are mere convention, you may write to me via my email address already provided. But I doubt you are truly interested in much more that attempting to come back and make your impatient, mundane and uninspiring points on this comment board. This is my impression of your post here. I do not mean to demean you, even if my words appear intended to smart. You are mistaken if you believe our light conversation here is in any way a unique experience for me. As with any difficult subject matter, that are too often too many Brendans who assume they see flaws in logical assertions they do not understand and refuse to take the time to thoroughly analyze and consider.)
Patience, Brendan, is a virtue. Being a good listener takes patience, patience and maturity.
Don Robertson
48. Christopher Skase | 09.07.08
Don, all you are good at is seeming to have a point. Nothing you say makes any sense. As i mentioned, you have hijacked this thread, please continue with this on any other threads, its all very boring.
49. Don Robertson | 09.08.08
Christopher Sakes-
Your pronouncement that what I have written here is boring is delicious. But I’ll spare you the embarrassment of reading here any slight I might otherwise engender concerning your boredom. You’ve generally been a good sport, Chris.
Others have come here like you, and complained I have failed to answer what they seemed to think were their pointed and crucially demanding questions, as if they were supermen demanding to defeat the demon with whom they did not agree, as if this forum were a ready place to play Lancelot’s forty questions, regardless that their questions were already well addressed.
I have but one question for each of you, and especially for Jeff, who refused to consider my comments that were in such conflict with his.
Here is my question:
I have stated in my referenced paper, “The moral imperative of life is to live a life that detracts not at all from the lives available to those who will follow us into this world.”
As the literal foundation of our moral underpinning, I believe this statement to be a categorical statement with immense implications for all science.
Is there anyone here who might see a way to get around this moral statement, and still remain moral?
I shall leave this discussion now for those who would wish to continue it. I leave the discussion because I trust human intellect enough to allow anyone to defend my final statement here, regardless any possible response contrary to the assertion of that final statement.
The moral sense is no mere abstract or conventional notation suspended by time in a variable culture.
It is my philosophic conjecture that: We may disagree about what is moral and/or what is not moral. But there is only one right answer to any moral question.
The moral sense is an infinitely indelible notion integral to our common reality.
My Very Best to you all.
Don Robertson
50. Stan Erickson | 09.08.08
I wish there was a fork in the stream so those who want to rehash ancient pro/con nuclear arguments could have one, and those who want to discuss the breaking news about SILEX could have another. Filtering is a difficult problem.
There are two key points I was able to locate. 1) If there is no covert hex plant, having a covert LIS plant is likely to be discovered by IAEA guys who carefully measure all hex traveling around in a country. Seems reasonable.
2) With the nuclear renaissance going full bore, there is going to be a lot more expertise around to do a HEU stream on the sly, given some skill at clandestine construction. Seems obvious. So, if you want to proliferate some nuclear devices, you can find the people to build you a complete stream. More cops and robbers, or spies and rogue scientists games. One thing I do take issue with is the “$1 billion” quote for a HEU plant. More like a few times $10M. Devices use a lot less SWUs than a nuclear power complex.
51. Don Robertson | 09.08.08
Stan Erickson-
You state, “I wish there was a fork in the stream so those who want to rehash ancient pro/con nuclear arguments could have one, and those who want to discuss the breaking news about SILEX could have another. Filtering is a difficult problem.”
Breaking news? Filtering? This article is much more exposing immoral activities than it is reporting, as you have read it, on some promising new nuclear technologies. You’re an oddball if you think the author’s article approved by the editor was meant to hype the stock of this company, Silex, that has effectively had the curtain pulled back to expose its immoral activities.
You need perhaps to have the title of the article drawn to your wee attention, Stan. “Will lasers brighten nuclear’s future?” subtitled, “New process could replace centrifuges but renew threat of nuclear proliferation.”
If that implies you are in the right place, and the “ancient” arbiters of the moral question concerning all nuclear technologies are somehow out of place, so be it for you behind your blinders.
I suppose you expect the road to nuclear Utopia requires ignoring the ancient question of the morality, and a thorough pumping up of the morale of an elitist crowd of scientific whirling dervishes, devotees who would prefer to continue to thrash their backs and that of humanity as well, until we all are swollen, bloodied and sore from radiation burns like Marie Curie and literally hundreds of thousands since who have met with the toxicity of nuclear materials?
I honestly do not know what it is these devotees do not understand about their continued immoral pursuit. It is immoral, guys, simply to GAMBLE where the WAGER is a possible detriment to the future.
What don’t you understand about that, Stan?
Do you not see the immoral gamble you are advocating?
Do you not see the gamble inherent to the enriched nuclear materials that are being proliferated ever wider on the planet?
You are no doubt aware that large quantities of these materials have gone missing from U.S. government facilities, are you not?
You are no doubt also aware the United States has repeatedly shown it is incapable of keeping any nuclear secrets, are you not?
So here you come advocating an unfettered discussion of a doomed technology and a company dedicated to it, and a technology that will greatly reduce the cost of these immoral activities as well as the footprint of the equipment required to conduct same.
You did see the second picture accompanying this article did you not?
It’s a picture of the Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad touring an Iranian Uranium enrichment facility.
What kind of superman are you that you believe you can do what no other nuclear advocate has been able to do?
The university that educated and certified you with such a moral deficit should be closed for its transmission of such information to someone so poorly educated.
Your post explains so much about the intrinsic value of your academic freedom, Stan. You do not have the ethical where-with-all expected of a high school sophomore.
What kind of superman are you, Stan?
Your answer is not just to ignore the moral question. Your answer is to advocate ignoring the moral question.
You are an interesting fellow, Stan.
Don Robertson
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1. Jeff Eerkens | 08.28.08
Regarding proliferation problems with uranium enrichment, I like to point out that monitoring clandestine enrichments for weaponry require focusing on the quantities of uranium hexafluoride that enter and leave an enrichment plant, rather than diagnosis of the footprint of a particular separation technique that is used. Regardless whether centrifuges,lasers, or any other separation method is used, to make say 10 kg of 99% enriched U-235 requires 1,400 kg of natural uranium feed, or 1.4 tons. It should not be too difficult to monitor and trace such large feed quantities of uranium shipped from a fluorination plant to an enrichment facility suspected of diversion. To ascertain whether the final product is 10 kg of 99% enriched for a weapon or 200 kg of 5% enriched uranium for a power reactor would of course require sampling which IAEA teams are allowed to do in NPT-signed countries. I doubt that terrorists would spent a billion dollars on a clandestine separation plant (centrifuge or laser) and could move 1.4 tons of uranium hexafluoride into it without detection. Only sovereign nations can afford to do this. The best solution for nonproliferation in my opinion is to have all countries in the world sign the NPT and to support the IAEA. Additional discussions on this topic can be found in my book “The Nuclear Imperative - A Critical Look at the Approaching Energy Crisis”, published by Springer-Dordrecht, ISBN 1-4020-4930-7.
Green nuclear power is the only practical solution to (1) ameliorate global warming, (2) avoid dependence on foreign oil/gas, and (3) overcome oil/gas depletion. Only two prime energy sources, coal and uranium, can affordably deliver terawatts of “mother” electricity for: (A) heavy industry, i.e. manufacture of autos, ships, airplanes, etc; (B) power for vast fleets of future electric plug-in autos; and (C) production of portable synfuels (hydrogen and ammonia) and biofuels to replace oil. However coal worsens global warming and must be preserved as raw material to make organics when oil is gone. This leaves uranium as the only green “mother” energy source, an “inconvenient truth”. Green solar and wind energy are useful for small-quantity power generation in select locations. But at multi-giga-watt levels, immense areas of land and/or sea would be needed, necessitating enormous maintenance operations, spoiling scenic land- or sea-scapes, and destroying local ecosystems. Only uranium and thorium can affordably sustain global energy needs for over 3000 years, using proven fuel reprocessing and advanced reactor technology. For the USA, 500 additional nuclear reactors are required, built on 9000 acres @ $1.5 trillion, compared to 1,500,000 windmills with storage systems on 6,000,000 windy acres @ $4.5 trillion (in 2005 dollars). Ten times these numbers are needed world-wide. Contrary to false propaganda by anti-nuclear groups, the cost of giga-watts of electricity is three times less expensive with nuclear than for wind or solar. Solar and wind power generation requires expensive energy storage systems (batteries, etc) when there is no sunshine or wind. Also many miles of access roads for maintenance and repair are needed to keep blades or solar panels clean from bird droppings, dead birds, sand erosion, and storm damage, and to periodically replace electrodes on storage batteries. Should the USA limit itself to solar and wind energy, it is guaranteed to become impoverished and dependent on synfuels imported from other countries (future OPECs), who invested in nuclear power before oil field depletions by 2040/2050.