nuclear Science:

Fukushima Notwithstanding....

The World needs energy.  It continues to need more and more energy with ever increasing demand: From today, to steadily improve the standards of living of humanity, over the next twenty years the world must have four times as much power as it uses now, and that's just the beginning.

Yet, incredibly there is there is talk, both popular and political, of powering civilization down. Oil is running out, and the constraints of fossil fuel energy = constraints on the economy. This creates an energy bottleneck that enables wealth and and power to be seized, and the share of everyone else greatly diminished.

This is surely a mistake in reason, and an injustice, for the grand edifice of civilization is made possible by its growth of energy transformation into work.

A return to Nature is impossible for the billions now living, unless that is the aim of gross and rapid depopulation is to make way for a new dark green world.  Yet it is not Nature that forces this upon us by depriving us of energy.

     There are other energy sources, however they have problems, and in policy formation and investment, for wind and solar are exploitable on a scale requiring designed over capacity. Biofuel from land based agriculture is unsustainable and yields hunger commensurate with its production. Although the potential is prodigious the combined energy available from wind, solar, and ocean farming of algae and kelp for biomass to fuel is ultimately sufficient  only to make the margin of need a generation hence, it could only provide that much and not much more.

   Then there are the expanding energy needs of our industry and emergent artificial population: we are served by the explosive growth from the evolution of robotic industry in convergence with the nanotechnology of 3D computational output. For billions of people to be served by the coming robotic revolution we are going to have to have many more times energy than we use now.

The coming robotic revolution is a grand economic bubble that promises to, and if managed wisely shall, provide fantastic prosperity, and a brighter future for all, if only we develop the energy to make it happen.

Get with the Program. Let’s start on the same page now here.

Harnessing the power of the atom is key to the survival of the human race, and its prevailing in our destiny.

Harnessing the power of the atom not for the machines of war, as is done now, but to harness the power of  the atom for universal prosperity.

At this time the power of the atom is harnessed, as a chariot of war rather than a farm horse, its fittings are principally isotopes of two elements: Uranium 235 and Plutonium.

These two rare elements have extreme explosive potential as everyone knows, to make bombs, and they are the intended product of the invested process for producing fuel for conventional nuclear power: weapons grade material is the purpose of the industry.

    In the process of mining, extracting and refining U235 an enormous quantity of  U238 is cast aside for storage, and though not explosive, some is cast into weights, shells and bullets because it is heavier and harder than lead.  This largely unused portion, the U238, has the potential to be used as atomic fuel many times greater than the trace of  U235 it contains.  The U238 process is inherently much safer than U235, and reduces the quantity of weapons grade fissile material, and thus is non-proliferative.

   The harness of the atom for war is one just harness and it is the least desirable as it is least fitting to control the forces of nature.

   There are other harnesses of the atom that are low hanging fruits for capital investment, and all of these have three great rewards, these are:  

1)      Uranium 238 – its use of a little U235 for ignition consumes it, and burns its own ash;

2)      Thorium – Edward Teller, the father of the atomic bomb, was in the last month of his life working on thorium reactors to deliver a blessing to Mankind; and

3)      Strontium batteries - cohering the magnetic fields of alpha and beta particles to useful electric current of strong consistent power output at room temperature.

4)      Muon catalyzed fusion – this somewhat exotic sounding technology is achievable

    Taken singly or together these nuclear harnesses would:

a)      eliminate radioactive waste

b)      reduce the production and availability of weapons grade material

c)      produce absolutely humungous amounts of energy, many times greater than oil at its peak.

The last, energy, is the reason we need to harness the atom. Nothing else can supply what we will need.  The safety issues are why these technologies must be developed and standardized for mass production. Moreover, thereafter, the Stars are ours.

Let me clear, the spark of U235 and Plutonium will continue to be part of the new nuclear industries, but being of vastly smaller quantity required for initiating U238 and Thorium pose significantly less danger. The risks are manageable.

That’s the whole behemoth shibboleth of multi-mega tonnage atomic blasts gone, safely removed to no longer be a threat hanging over our heads. 

However, the fear of the atom remains, and this is terrible for it feeds the crushing defeat of the human spirit to be subject to the control of the power elite mad with thirst for more power. There are like vampires, and they hate atomic power, and choose to exploit only the atom’s harness of war, and sustain that fear, your fear, of radiation, to keep from you and your neighbors from what they fear: the power of Prometheus – the world set free by abundant energy for all.

Let us look at that fear briefly:

The decay of nuclear elements is dangerous –  yes, that must be admitted, but the fear of it overwhelms the real hazard. No, you may not disagree, for if you do you are succumbing to fear, and engaging in the pretense of reason to be anti-nuclear, a position that supports those who would master you, and deepens the internalization of their oppression of your fellows.

However unwelcome the news, it is true, radiation is good for you.  Just as cold is miserable to endure, and fire a dangerous servant, it is even a more terrible master, so it is that enough is comfort and wellbeing, and that creates happiness.  Yes, even the spooky spark of atomic fire is benevolent to the health and vigor of living systems. To a degree.  For it is the minor trifling harm that invigorates rather than kills. Stress and recovery strengthens. It is as Nietzsche said “That which does not kill me makes me stronger”  Though there is fine line between not enough and too much, and even though that varies for individuals, the general rule is it is good for you.

With fire we are harm, our food cooked, our clothes and bedding and bodies clean. In light we thrive – green are our crops for the red and blue of sunlight is plant fuel, and even the ultraviolet is good for our blood if we don’t over do it, for it is also possible to be deficient in sunlight. 

 To illustrate the truth of this in nuclear science:

In the early 20^th century patent medicine peddlers dared to market radium water as an invigorating serum. In fact, this it was, for man and horses alike, but a few men because of an unfortunate gene become poisoned and died. The vitalizing charge of radium’s radioactive decay came from the body’s repair of the damage it caused. The metabolism of healing had momentum and for most animals, beast and men, the effect was salubrious, to their good. But for that damn gene in an unlucky few.

In the later half of the 20^th century a nuclear industry had arisen, regrettably it is true,  to manufacture the harness of war for the atom, but in the factories and ships it turns out those laborers who were irradiated even a hundred fold greater than other ordinary men on ordinary industries, had fewer incidences of cancer.

In shipyard workers: 72, 356 men working within nuclear submarine shipyards were divided into three groups defined by None, Low and High radiation exposure: those who had none, that is from the workplace, had the highest cancer rates, exactly the opposite of popular opinion and misinformed scientific opinion before the start of the study. The group with low exposure, under 500 mrem, had lower cancer rates than the Nones, and the Highs, guys getting zapped with 500 mrem plus, they had the lowest cancer rates, lower by a quarter than all the “Nones” whose exposure was normal background.

Women too… 37,000 Canadian women were given cumulative doses of x-rays during fluoroscopic breast exams in doses up to nine million times that within the Fukushima exclusion zone: the result – the women with the highest doses had cancer rates just one third that of unexposed women.

That’s three proofs now: Radiation is good for you. Once you understand the inverted bell curve you know its true. Whether Sunshine and the natural EMF of ultraviolet ranging down on through fire’s red and glow of heat to biology’s infra-red lazing in microtubules and the subtle chatter of living tissue in terahertz, too little is as bad as too much. There is a happy medium, health, and that is true too even of the stinging sparks of radioactive particles.   

Why, if it is to be said that radiation is bad for you, you’d be wiser to shun entirely your cell phone and its towers, wi-fi, and most definitely smart meters, and you'd regard with suspicion the body scans at airports, and certainly avoid the chest x-ray dose per pack punch of polonium in cigarettes more any atomic power plant. By valid risk assessment the plain old high tension wires around a plant are clearly a hazard.

Then there is this dull factoid: some 3000 tons a year of uranium surge into the sky as smoke along with millions of tons of sulfur from the antiquated coal burning power plants around the world. Plants that burn more at a faster rate:  Coal simply isn’t going to last beyond another generation or two. Then what?

  Up and Atom!

  Okay – for those of you who are spluttering objections with vigorous intellect from the depths of well intentioned yet misinformed philanthropy, the point has been conceded: nuclear energy is dangerous. You want policy. If however you want policy that leads to a Dark Green future, that is forever against the promise of the atom, and chasing after the moonbeams of wind and solar and biomass, you would be no different than the foolish advisors to the king who forbid horses and oxen throughout his realm so that men are forced to plow by hand, and live hard meager lives.   If you want rational policy that can be found here:

  Fukushima illustrates the need for world government, at least in so far as government would provide services and not force. In the face of a crisis it's firefighters and emergency response we need, not armies of blue hats, tanks and rifles.  

   Now months after the catastrophe it is far from over, and the disaster at Fukushima continues to provoke anxiety, when it should have been quenched, its nuclear fires put out and embers contained, near its beginning.  Its legacy of radiological harm and enduring hazard shall be far less than imagined, and every bit of that tragic, yet the greater legacy of harm is that fear wrought by letting it go on for so long.

    That’s the policy needed: that every nuclear plant be designed liable to emergency shut down from external operations, and quickly. Special equipment is of course needed and it is a blow to rational thought that Japan doesn’t already have the robots they would need.  That said, given all the resources of a nation, it must be possible to seize hold of the very heart of a meltdown with mighty robot hands of water cooled tungsten, tunnel digging machines and bulldozers, and pull it apart,  mixing it and spreading it with sand and clay, that it become a sub-critical mass that can be quickly be buried and shielded.

In the owners minds, be it for profit or national prestige, there can be no thought in mind of saving a nuclear plant and recovering it for later use. That simply prolongs public anxiety. Firemen put out fires.

 As a matter of global policy, in forming a World Fire Department that responds to atomic disasters, all the plants out there now should be rated for risk, and costs of emergency shut down taken  into account, to decide which ten percent get shut down now as a precautionary measure.

  Thereafter all new plants, which will be much more numerous, must use the harnesses of peace, and not war, being of the inherently safer varieties of both nuclear fuel and designs: there can be no more fixation on maximizing the yield of U235 and Plutonium.

 I must add however, that U235 and Plutonium, having the longest half lives of nuclear fuels, are not the most dangerous. Its counter-intuitive because we are all aware of the iconography of mega tonnage explosive blasts made possible by those two rare isotopes. The matter is contrary to speculation: By its nature the isotopes of elements with the shortest half lives are the most dangerous, and yet these do naturally remove themselves from the environment.   

The issue is the necessity of re-tooling the nuclear industry so that the menace of atomic bombs is eliminated, and also making available all the power mankind needs for universal application that everybody shall have clean water, fresh air, food, and quality housing and efficient convenient transportation.

   Now,  Up and Atom!