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Leading Wind Energy Manufacturers Call for Immediate Extension of Key Renewable Energy Incentive

Senior executives from four of the world’s top wind turbine manufacturers – GE Energy, Gamesa, Siemens and Vestas – joined today in urging Congress to act promptly to extend the renewable energy production tax credit (PTC). The PTC is now set to expire December 31, 2008, although a one-year extension was recently approved by the Senate.

I keep reading on environmentalist websites how great wind is because it’s supposedly cheaper than nuclear. They also talk about how terrible nuclear power is, with its government subsidies.

Well, if wind’s so great, stand on your own two feet and let this subsidy expire! Then we’ll really have a chance to see how wind will do on the open market.

Waldo Cohn was both a remarkable scientist and a remarkable person. I have previously posted about his leadership in the school desegregation controversy in Oak Ridge, which lead to the peaceful desegregation of Oak Ridge Schools in 1955. Waldo’s was a biochemist, but pioneering physical chemical research on plutonium during World War II made an important contribution of nuclear technology. The ion exchange method Cohn developed had wide applications including the processing of fission products, rare earth separation, and in nucleic acid research.
In 1963, the American Chemical Society honored Cohn for his “pioneering work in ion exchange chromatography which has made possible much of the progress that has been made in two completely different fields of chemistry since World War II.”

Dr. Cohn pioneered the use of radioisotopes as tracers in medicine and was influential in starting the production of radioisotopes for scientific research and medicine at Oak Ridge. He set up a system for radioisotope distribution.pioneered the use of radioisotopes in medicine.

He applied his plutonium research methods to the study of the components of the nucleic acids DNA and RNA, and his research made a major contribution to the understanding information transfer from nucleic acids to protein molecules.

Alvin Weinberg stated about his long time friend Waldo Cohn:

“The main task (in 1943) was to produce gram quantities of the nuclear explosive, plutonium. The techniques developed there were transferred to the huge plutonium-producing nuclear reactors at Hanford, Wash.

“To manufacture plutonium, one had to ‘cook’ uranium in an atmosphere of neutrons in the nuclear reactor at Clinton Lab. In this process uranium atoms were split to create radioactive ‘fission products.’ Cohn set about to identify the chemical species of fission products. He applied to this process a technique known as ‘ion exchange chromotography.’

“After the war Cohn realized that this technique could be applied to the characterization of the components of the nucleic acids, DNA and RNA. Cohn’s technique ultimately led to Crick and Watson’s structure of the genetic materials, DNA and RNA. For this achievement Cohn received the Chromotography Award of the American Chemical Society and he was named a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

“Cohn was also the first to organize and promote the use of radioactive radioisotopes produced in nuclear reactors. The widespread use of radioisotopes is perhaps the most important scientific byproduct of the Manhattan Project.”

Dr. Cohn’s obituary in the Oak Ridger noted his many civic, artistic and political contributions to the Oak Ridge community:

“Cohn was politically involved both nationally and locally. He was one of the organizers of a petition signed by a large number of scientists urging that a nuclear bomb first be detonated in a test blast before being used on human targets. Immediately after World War II he became active in urging international control of nuclear weapons.”

“Locally he was one of the leaders of a group of local Democrats who worked to make basic reforms in the organization and operation of the party in Anderson County.”

“He was a strong proponent of the development of nuclear power and often spoke out against what he thought were exaggerated fears about the dangers of radioactive materials to the public. , , ,”

“Less than two months after joining the staff at Clinton Laboratories, he placed a small notice in The Oak Ridge Journal, weekly newspaper published by the Manhattan Engineer District, inviting all Oak Ridgers interested in playing in an orchestra to a meeting. Nine other musicians responded, two other strings and seven woodwind players. In a 1983 interview he told Juanita Glenn of The Knoxville News-Sentinel, “I didn’t want to join an orchestra, I was just looking for someone to play duets.”

“Cohn had studied the cello since age 11, although at first he hated carrying the large instrument. Before his 16th birthday he had been invited to join the Berkeley Community Orchestra.”

“That initial group of interested early Oak Ridge musicians grew into a string orchestra of 19. At first they rehearsed in the Cohn living room but soon moved to the auditorium of the original Oak Ridge High School, which was located on the knoll off Kentucky Avenue overlooking Blankenship Field and which, before it was demolished, had become Jefferson Junior High School.”

“The early musician group named him their conductor and gave their first concert as the Oak Ridge Symphonette in June 1944. Then, within weeks, they became the 65-member Oak Ridge Symphony, which gave its first concerts on Nov. 3-4, 1944.”

“Besides the Symphony and his service on the early Advisory Town Council, Cohn was a regular reader for Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic, reading primarily scientific texts. In more recent years he also volunteered regularly at the Oak Ridge Convention and Visitors Bureau, where he would answer visitors’ questions about the wartime atomic bomb development and the later research at the ORNL Biology Division, from which he had retired in 1975.”

Waldo stepped down as conductor of the Oak Ridge Symphony in 1955 when he received the first of his two Guggenheim Fellowships, this was for a year’s study at Cambridge University in England. Dr. Cohn also received a Fulbright Research Scholarship to partially finance his year in Cambridge.

Cohn continued to play the cello in the Oak Ridge Symphony until ill health forced him to stop a couple of years before his death in 1999.

I had a brief visit with Cohn about 1997, because I wanted to capture his memories of his 1954 recall election from Oak Ridge City Council. He was by then in poor health, but his stories of the recall period were lively and illuminating. Cohn was very charismatic. He was handsome, and had an air of distinction about him.

In 1995 Cohn was the subject of an extensive and remarkable oral history interview by Thomas Fisher, Jr. and Michael Yuffee of the U. S. Department of Energy. – Charles Barton

Naturally occurring radioactive material — often referred to as NORM — exists everywhere on the earth. Soil itself contains small amounts of slightly radioactive uranium and thorium. As these elements decay naturally, they produce radioactive daughter products including the radioactive gas radon. Not only do radioactive materials exist in the soil, they are also transmitted through the soil into our bodies. People worry about radiation from nuclear sources, but the truth is that during our lifetime, 80% of the radiation we will be exposed to will come from natural sources. Most of the rest of it will come from deliberate human use of radiation, for example, x-rays.

Plants draw radioactive isotopes into their organic structure, and concentrate them into their tissue. Among vegetable foods know to be more radioactive are white potatoes, sweet potatoes, coconuts, spinach, bananas, Brazil nuts, and cocoa powder – a major ingredient in chocolate.

But the radiation danger associated with food does not end in your grocery bag. The natural gas you cook with also contains radioactive radon gas. And this brings me to the topic of the gas from Barnett Shale, that comes from under Fort Worth, Texas.

Shale contains small but significant concentrations of radioactive uranium and thorium. This would most certainly be the case with Barnett Shale. Natural gas is extracted from Barnett shale by hydraulic cracking. As water is injected into natural gas wells a tiny amount of radioactive materials including uranium, and radium get leached into the water. Some of the water inevitably enters the ground water, and the contamination spreads. Sometimes it reaches the surface through water recovery, wells or springs. This is one source of radiation hazard associated with natural gas extraction from Barnett Shale. According to the Denton Record-Chronicle, there are 140 radiation cleanup sites in Texas, most involving radioactive materials from natural sources. (see also stories here, here, and here.) Twenty-five of those radiation clean up sites are were in Denton, Tarrant, and Wise Counties, areas where gas is extracted from Barnett shale. Radioactive contaminated sites include gas wells and equipment storage yards. A thousand barrels or radioactive contaminants have been removed from cleanup sites in North Texas, and hundreds of thousands of barrels of radioactive materials associated with oil and gas radiation cleanup, have been removed from sites in Texas, during the last 20 years.

Gas drilling at D/FW Airport
There is another side to the story which Peggy Heinkel-Wolfe did not touch on in her Denton Record-Chronicle stories on Barnett Shale radiation. That is the presence of radon in natural gas. During the 1970′s my father, C.J. Barton , Sr., performed an extensive investigation of radon in natural gas. They noted “since radon has a 3.8-day half-life and several days may be required to move the gas from the wells to the point or use there can be a significant drop in radon concentration during transmission.” Thus consumers are partially protected from Radon in their cooking and heating gas by the gas transmission process.

It was pretty clear from my father’s research that radioactive radon could get into consumer’s homes through natural gas, and that the chief barrier that protected consumers was distance. But what if the consumers lived next to the gas wells? It would be clear that given the radiation cleanup problems associated with NORM. Who is in charge of determining the radon content of natural gas in Texas? PEGGY HEINKEL-WOLFE stated, “Texas Railroad Commission rules allow the industry to self-monitor for NORM . . .” How much monitoring do Texas gas suppliers do for radon in natural gas? This cannot be determined by an internet search. Indeed I can find no reference to the topic on the internet.

We know these things:

There are undoubtedly uranium and thorium associated with Barnett Shale.

Radon is a natural daughter product of Uranium and Thorium decay.

Radon is present in natural gas.

The half life of radon-222 is 3.8 days.

Thus radon from Barnett shale sources could easily travel up a gas well from its Barnett Shale source, travel through local pipe lines, and get consumed in cooking in heating fires within a few hours. Radon exposure is the second leading cause of lung cancer in the United States. Iowa research has shown that “cumulative radon exposure is a significant risk factor for lung cancer in women“. “Radon gas is thought to be responsible for 5,000 to 20,000 lung cancer deaths per year in the United States“. Thus radioactive radon gas, transported to North Texas homes, from Barnett Shale gas wells, almost next door, constitutes a significant danger to the health of North Texans. Needless to say, this problem is being ignored gas companies, the governments of Texas and the United States. Interestingly, it is also being ignored by critics of nuclear power who complain about the radiation dangers of nuclear power, but are unconcerned about the radiation associated with natural gas. How much is radon from natural gas effecting the health of Texans? No one knows. – Charles Barton

Introduction: Alvin Weinberg originally delivered this paper at a 1998 symposium held in honor of the 100 year anniversary of Leó Szilárd’s birth. The symposium was head by Eötvös University, and focused on ‘strengthening the tradition of non-use of nuclear weapons.’” The Bell is the International Friendship Bell, or “peace bell” was a joint project of the cities of Oak Ridge, Tennessee and Hiroshima, Japan. The Bell was designed in Oak Ridge as a traditional Japanese bell. It was cast using traditional casting methods in Japan, and is approximately 4.8 feet in diameter and 6.7 feet tall. It weighs approximately 1,000 kan, about 3,750 kilograms or 8,250 pounds, and is cast of solid bronze (about 85 percent copper and 15 percent tin). The Bell is located in a Park in Oak Ridge. Alvin Weinberg was chairman of the committee which oversaw the planning and construction of the bell.

The Bell and The Bomb

By Alvin M. Weinberg

The Earth’s history has been punctuated by catastrophes. Perhaps the greatest was the impact of a 10-kilometer diameter meteorite on Yucatan, Mexico some 65 million years ago. The energy released, the equivalent of about 100 million megatons of TNT, resulted in the extinction of the dinosaurs as well as 75% of all other living creatures. Another catastrophe which, according to Judeo-Christian tradition, wiped out almost all living creatures was the “Flood.” That a catastrophic Flood actually happened is suggested by traditions on every continent that speak of a Flood. A meteorite impact in an ocean with the energy of 1000 megatons could well have created a tidal wave over a 100 feet high that would have devastated coastal areas.

Both of the above catastrophes had natural causes. By contrast, the Holocaust, a man-made event, resulted in the deaths of some 6 million people, probably many more than were supposedly killed in the Flood. The Flood, assuming it actually occurred, and the Holocaust constitute turning points in human history. The Flood story, though it can never be proven, has persisted for thousands of year by virtue of its incorporation in religious traditions. The Holocaust is but 50 years old, but it too will certainly persist in Jewish religious tradition essentially forever.

The nuclear bombing of Hiroshima also represents a major turning point in human history. To help prevent the extinction of humans by a nuclear holocaust, Hiroshima, no less than the Flood and the Holocaust, should be incorporated in that most permanent of human institutions, religious tradition. I call this the “sanctification of Hiroshima.”

When I joined the Manhattan Project at Chicago in December 1941, our group was terrified lest Nazi Germany develop the bomb before we did. By the time the first atomic bomb was tested four years later, Germany had been defeated and Japan was tottering. Many scientists at Chicago and Oak Ridge debated how, or whether, to use the bomb against Japan. I signed petitions urging that the bomb be demonstrated first, but this advice was not heeded. The Hiroshima bomb was dropped from the B-29 Enola Gay, at 8:15 a.m., August 6, 1945, and exploded with an energy release equivalent to about 15,000 tons of TNT.

After the Hiroshima bombing, my original doubts practically vanished. After all, the bomb had helped greatly in ending the war. And I have come to realize that a demonstration in which no one was killed simply would not have had the extraordinary social and political impact that the use of the bomb on humans achieved. Hiroshima will stand for all time as a terrifying symbol that man now has the capacity to destroy himself!

With 70,000 nuclear bombs in the world’s inventory at the height of the Cold War, the conceivable nuclear devastation could exceed that of a vast natural catastrophe. Since nuclear bombs are an unprecedented threat to humanity, the most important event of the 50 years since Hiroshima and Nagasaki has been a non-event-the non-use of nuclear weapons. Most policy-makers and military people have recoiled from ordering a nuclear strike. As Professor Tom Schelling, of the University of Maryland, says, a “tradition of non-use” of nuclear weapons is being established. If we concede that the hydrogen bomb represents an unprecedented threat to humanity, then it is imperative that the “tradition of non-use” be preserved forever.

My preoccupation with the longevity of the tradition of non-use began in 1993 with the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the founding of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, where the U-235 in the Hiroshima bomb was produced. As a symbol of this anniversary, a four-ton bronze bonshoo Bell was cast in Kyoto by the famous Japanese bell-maker Iwazawa and presented to the city. On the Bell are inscribed four dates that defined Oak Ridge: Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941; Hiroshima, August 6, 1945; Nagasaki, August 9, 1945; and VJ Day, September 2, 1945. In addition, the words PEACE and INTERNATIONAL FRIENDSHIP as well as bas-reliefs of scenes from Japan and Appalachia are embossed on the Bell.

Bronze bells can last for centuries. The Oak Ridge International Friendship Bell will probably still be rung well past the year 2945, the 1000th anniversary of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. Even if all nuclear bombs were to be destroyed the knowledge of how to make them will still be available in 2945. The nuclear genie, once having been released, can never be stuffed back into the bottle. Hydrogen bombs cannot be “uninvented.” As the Bell’s longevity will serve to remind future generations of the bomb’s immortality, it also will remind them that the “tradition of non-use” must last forever.

Although the bomb has not been used since 1945, there have been several near-misses: Korea, Vietnam, Cuba and possibly Iraq and Israel at the time of the Gulf War. Of these, the 1962 Cuban missile crisis may have been the closest shave. What was not known-until it was divulged in 1989 at meetings between U.S. and Soviet crisis management teams-was that the Soviets had placed tactical nuclear weapons in Cuba. A U.S. invasion might have been countered by tactical nukes and the tradition of non-use would have been brok
en thirty-odd years ago.

Despite such close shaves, the tradition of non-use has been maintained. Policymakers have recoiled from the ultimate step: the doctrine of nuclear deterrence has worked for 50 years. Will it work forever?

One approach to reducing the likelihood of use of nuclear weapons are sanctions backed by extraordinary power and strength. We can consign nuclear weapons to Freeman Dyson’s “Dustbin of History” if the use of nuclear bombs becomes a crime against humanity which would be punished by overwhelming force.

The Gulf War illustrates the possibility. Saddam Hussein was punished for threatening to take control of Middle East oil, but he was also punished for trying to develop nuclear arms. The world knew that Iraq was attempting to make nuclear weapons. The Gulf War aborted the project. Though no world tribunal justified the allied attack on the grounds that a nuclear-armed Iraq posed an unacceptable danger, in retrospect this was perhaps the most important justification for the war. For sanctions to work, we must maintain a world-wide regime that has the moral authority as well as the military power to dissuade any rogue state’s use of nuclear weapons.

Nuclear deterrence-i.e., mutually assured destruction-is the only proven mechanism for preventing the use of nuclear weapons. Although a first U.S. strike could have obliterated the Soviet Union, a retaliatory strike, ragged though it might have been, would have destroyed at least Washington, D.C., and New York City. This awful knowledge has always been in the mind of every president since Eisenhower; and as the Cuban missile crisis demonstrated, it was also in the mind of Nikita Khrushchev. The sheer enormity of such weapons seems to insure that they can never be used.

Would encumbering use of nuclear weapons with somewhat vague moral sanctions reduce the effectiveness of the nuclear deterrent? Had such sanctions been in place at the time of the Gulf War, and had Iraq possessed nuclear weapons, would its leaders have used them and counted on its opponents to abstain from retaliations because of the sanction? I doubt it. More likely, no matter the strength or character of moral sanctions, nuclear deterrence would always operate at some level.

But against the possible erosion of the nuclear deterrent because of moral taboos, one must place the morally sanctioned regime that would be empowered to intervene militarily were nuclear war threatened. As I contemplate the distant future, I visualize such a morally sanctioned international regime gradually acquiring the strength to prevent nuclear war-in effect, supplementing deterrence in maintaining the tradition of non-use. But this lies in some very distant future whose political structure and whose attitude toward war we cannot now fathom.

Let us assume that investing nuclear weapons with moral sanctions and taboos is desirable. How can we, the generation that first used the nuclear weapon, and then abstained from its use for 50 years, devise moral sanctions of sufficient strength to prevent nuclear war?

We can hope that the Peace Bell, by virtue of its existence for 1000 years, will remind future generations of what happened on August 6 and 9, 1945, and how these cataclysmic events were followed by 50 years of non-use. But remembrance is hardly enough: the Bell, a physical object, has no moral authority.

The ultimate source of moral authority is religion. The three great monotheistic religions-Judaism, Christianity, and Islam-are basically historical in content. Events such as the Crucifixion, the Hegira and possibly even the Flood were given religious significance and became fixed in humanity’s memory. They will never be forgotten as long as there are Jews, Christians or Muslims. Thus, if the full significance of the bomb is to be appreciated over the millennia, ought not the tradition of non-use acquire religious significance? Should not Hiroshima and Nagasaki somehow be incorporated in the world’s religious traditions? Just as the Holocaust and protection of the state of Israel has become part of the liturgy in certain Jewish synagogues, should not Hiroshima and Nagasaki become incorporated in various liturgies? If the nuclear turning-points become part of religious tradition, they would remain forever in human memory even after the Bell has disappeared.

We are witnessing an immortalization of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki events that may well presage their ultimate “sanctification.” This process seems to be proceeding in three directions: First, through the erection of monuments that keep alive the memory of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; second, through the many ceremonies of a quasi-religious nature on the anniversaries of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; and third, through pleas for rejection of nuclear war by religious leaders.

At Hiroshima and at Nagasaki there are Peace Parks located at the ground zeros of the explosions. Central features of the parks are bonshoo bells which can be struck by the many visitors to the parks. Thousands of paper birds, similar to those in Japanese shrines, dot the parks which have become shrines to peace. The Oak Ridge International Friendship Bell and its pavilion should acquire the same transcendent significance as the Japanese Peace Parks.

At Wendover, Utah, there is a monument to the 509th Composite Air Group which included the two B-29′s, Enola Gay and Bok’s Car, that delivered the bombs to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Chiseled in the monument are the words of Harry Truman: “The atomic bomb is too dangerous to be loose in a lawless world …we pray that God may guide us to use it in His ways and for His purposes.”

Two Japanese bonshoo bells dedicated to world peace hang in Honolulu, donated by its sister city, Hiroshima, and by the city of Nagasaki.

In Chicago, at the site of the first man-made release of nuclear energy by Enrico Fermi on December 2, 1942, a large bronze Henry Moore sculpture commemorates the release of nuclear energy. It seems to portray a modernistic mushroom cloud.

As for ceremonies, on the 50th anniversary of Hiroshima tens of thousands of people attended memorial services there and dignitaries from Japan and elsewhere spoke about the need for world peace. Though not explicitly religious-there were no Shinto or Buddhist priests in attendance-a religious atmosphere prevailed.

The Pugwash Conference, held first in 1955 at Pugwash, Nova Scotia, has provided a valuable anti-nuclear war forum. It has conducted innumerable conferences devoted to furthering peace, particularly to avoiding nuclear war. Pugwash, and its leader Joseph Rotblat received the 1995 Nobel Peace Prize, enhancing its p
restige and effectiveness. Although Pugwash itself is non-religious, its stand on most issues seems to be supported by the various church-sponsored studies on peace and nuclear war.

In the past decade there have been many studies on nuclear war sponsored by various churches. (These studies have been summarized in Ethics, Nuclear Deterrence, and War, edited by Jack Barkenbaus, Director of the Energy, Environment and Resources Center at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and published by Paragon House.) The most elaborate statement was that of the Roman Catholic Bishops of the United States, The Challenge of Peace: God’s Promise and Our Response. Ten other Bishops’ statements from all over the world appeared about the same time. Papers on the same topic were issued by many Protestant denominations, such as the United Methodist Council of Bishops’ In Defense of Creation and the Presbyterian General Assembly’s Christian Obedience in a Nuclear Age.

While these studies do not constitute a sanctification of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, many congregations will draw on them in their prayers and sermons. Were Hiroshima and Nagasaki to become part of the standard Protestant or Catholic liturgy, we need not worry about their being “forgotten” after the Bell has eroded. One could even imagine an Eleventh Commandment, “Thou Shalt Not Use Nuclear Weapons” being added to the Decalogue. This would provide the religious basis and, therefore, the moral sanction for the world-wide imposition of powerful and condign temporal sanctions against violating the tradition of non-use.

To see how a mix of deterrent and moral sanctions might work, let us return again to the case of Iraq. In 1981 when Israel destroyed Iraq’s OSIRAK reactor, I could not understand this action since OSIRAK merely converted enriched uranium into a lesser amount of plutonium. If Iraq intended to make a nuclear bomb, why not simply use the French enriched uranium supplied for the OSIRAK reactor? I did not realize what Israel presumably knew: that Iraq planned to manufacture its own enriched uranium and use OSIRAK to produce several plutonium bombs each year. Though Israel was justified in its attack, at the time it was strongly criticized.

Now, suppose the use of nuclear weapons were forbidden both by generally accepted religious and moral sanctions and by economic and military sanctions. Iraq might not have dared secretly to develop nuclear capability. Since it did-and was known to be doing so-the Israeli attack, as well as the 1991 Gulf War, would have received full worldwide support from the outset. As it was, only President Bush’s determination in the face of domestic opposition enabled the allies to launch the war and, after winning, stopped Iraq’s development of a nuclear force.

Are there precedents for planning on a millennial scale. Three instances come to mind: Hitler’s 1000-Year Reich; environmental attempts to prevent global warming; and plans for defense against meteorite impacts on earth.

Albert Speer, Hitler’s minister of production, tells in his autobiography that Hitler ordered that buildings and monuments constructed by the Third Reich must last for 1000 years, the minimum time he expected Nazi tyranny to last. To fulfill this requirement, experiments were conducted to measure the corrosion rate of the concrete to be used in construction.

Carbon dioxide injected into the atmosphere remains there for a century or more. Thus, the problems we are creating now that seem to lead to global warming will be with us long after we are dead.

The possibility of an earth-meteorite collision-an event that a few years ago would have been regarded as too far-fetched to consider-is now receiving serious attention. Recently, the Air Force and NASA have received $22 million to study the problem. The first step is to catalogue the threatening objects. Then, presumably, a plan for deflecting or destroying them will be developed-perhaps utilizing a nuclear device in space.

Plutonium 239 waste has a half-life of about 24,000 years and therefore can be dangerous for many millennia if the waste containers and the surrounding geologic burial grounds leak. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission requires that integrity of wastes be maintained for 10,000 years. Leaving aside whether such a requirement makes any sense, it is an almost unique example of an action taken today with a time horizon of 10,000 years. Thus, my concern with preserving the tradition of non-use into the far distant future does have precedent.

As for political attempts to control nuclear bombs, a comprehensive test ban has been accepted by all nuclear powers except India. This treaty presumably will be followed by ratification of START II (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty), which in turn would be followed by future bilateral and multilateral reductions in nuclear weapons. The recent suggestions by the former head of the Strategic Air Corps, retired Air Force General George Lee Butler and by 60 general officers from many countries to reduce drastically the number of nuclear weapons and to stand down first-strike weapons merit strong support.

Will the world ever reach “zero” weapons, as General Butler has suggested? In my view, probably not; the risk of cheating is too great, at least as we now see the world. The number of nuclear weapons that remain even after major disarmament would still be sufficient to retaliate against what we call the “cheating threshold” of weapons-that is, the number of weapons that could plausibly be sequestered clandestinely. This number would be much below the 3500-weapon level of START II.

As Admiral Stansfield Turner, former director of the CIA, has argued, even one retaliatory H-bomb is too heavy a price for a nuclear aggressor to pay. A worldwide defensive system that can assure the survival of even a few H-bombs may be a central element of a world in which nuclear weapons play no role except to dissuade cheaters of the futility of nuclear aggression. Whatever technical measures evolve, the strengthening of moral sanctions against nuclear war seems to me to be essential. And these moral and religious sanctions would, one hopes, be backed by temporal sanctions of a strength sufficient to guarantee punishment against adventurous entities that threaten nuclear war.

Can the Bell toll not only for an end to nuclear war but for peace itself? Is Immanuel Kant’s Comity of Peaceful Liberal Democracies, first visualized in 1795, still a mirage? The end of the Cold War is both reassuring and disappointing in this regard. How can we speak of peace while ethnic wars remain unresolved? Yet the ascendance of liberal democracy, the perfection of smart weapons and smart surveillance and, eventually, a powerful, morally sanctioned regime that in the future would abort Bosnias and Chechnyas offer hope. Our generation has agre
ed, thus far, that nuclear war is too dangerous to fight, too abhorrent to contemplate. Let us hope these realities about nuclear war-incorporated in the tradition of non-use-will lead to the peaceful world symbolized by the Oak Ridge International Friendship Bell.

Homi Jehangir Bhabha, an Indian physicist, who had, during a pre-World War II stay in Europe, made important discoveries about cosmic rays. Upon his returned to India at the start of the war, he began to campaign for Indian research institutions deveoted to physics and nuclear energy. He quickly established himself as a scientist politician who had the ear of Pandit Nerhu, the first Indian Prime Minister. Shortly after Indian independence in 1948, Bhabha was assigned the task of establishing the Indian Atomic Energy Commission, and developing a nuclear research program.

During the first UN Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy (1955), Bhabha, who was the Conference President, presented a paper on Indian Atomic development. He argued that India lacked energy resources, and in order for the Indian people to have a Western standard of living, Indian electricity must be generated by nuclear means. He noted, “the necessity of obtaining enriched or pure nuclear fuel (plutonium- or uranium-233) for use in future atomic power stations of a more advanced design required the setting up during the next decade of a few atomic power stations designed to produce these materials as well as electric power.”

Bhabha once remarked that “No energy is costlier than no energy”. He was what Texans use to call a wheeler-dealer. He used his position at the The First Conference to obtain British, Canadian and American assistance for the Indian nuclear program. Soon Indian Scientists were showing up at Chalk River, Harwell, and Oak Ridge for on the job training.

In addition to training, during the 1950’s, with American support and Canadian help, India began to construct its first reactor, the heavy water Cirus. What the Americans and Canadians did not notice was that the Cirus was capable of producing weapons grade plutonium.

We grow crops to eat, not to drive. What is an inconvenience for developed countries is turning deadly for the Third World:

EU defends biofuel goals amid food crises

Food Costs Rising Fastest in 17 Years

We can make hydrogen from water using energy from thorium, you know. Or ammonia, or dimethyl ether, or whatever you want.

Global warming rage lets global hunger grow

We drive, they starve. The mass diversion of the North American grain harvest into ethanol plants for fuel is reaching its political and moral limits.

“The reality is that people are dying already,” said Jacques Diouf, of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). “Naturally people won’t be sitting dying of starvation, they will react,” he said.

The UN says it takes 232kg of corn to fill a 50-litre car tank with ethanol. That is enough to feed a child for a year. Last week, the UN predicted “massacres” unless the biofuel policy is halted.

Las Vegas Review-Journal: Domenici pans Yucca-only approach

WASHINGTON — Political support for a Yucca Mountain repository eroded further on Wednesday when a leading Senate advocate of nuclear power said it has become “foolhardy” to plan to store used nuclear fuel at the Nevada site.

Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., said the strategy to place spent nuclear fuel underground has become badly outdated in light of advances in waste reprocessing that could wring more energy from the assemblies.

Even after nuclear fuel has been recycled, the resulting waste products might not need to be placed in the Nevada volcanic ridge, he said.

At that point, the waste would be less toxic and could be stored safely in salt formations in New Mexico or elsewhere.

“The current strategy of limiting our options to a permanent repository for the disposal of spent fuel is deeply flawed,” Domenici said. He said he was writing a bill that would alter the “Yucca only” approach.

Thorium and the liquid-fluoride reactor can help you meet your goals, Senator Domenici.

Alvin Weinberg invented and patented the Light Water Reactor. My father made an important contribution to its development. Both Dr. Weinberg and my father, like other scientist they worked with, never regarded the LWR as the best way to make nuclear power.

Light Water Reactors are not very efficient producers of energy. Although potentially 100% of uranium could be either burned as nuclear fuel, or converted to nuclear fuel, only a tiny fraction, less than 1% of the energy locked in uranium is released inside light water reactors. U-235 is the primary fuel of light water reactors, and only 0.7% of natural Uranium is U-235. Because the normal hydrogen in light water tends to consume non-trivial amounts of neutrons in reactors, the U-235 content of nuclear fuel has to be increased to 3% or even 5% of the reactor uranium. The enrichment process requires large amounts of energy.

First, because of the nature of the uranium enrichment process, nearly 30% of the U-235 present in natural uranium does not get included in the enrichment product. So 30% of the potential energy of the U-235 present in natural uranium never makes it to a reactor. Some breeding of U-238 takes place in inside a reactor. The result close to 3% of the U-238 is converted into reactor-grade plutonium. Now reactor-grade plutonium is not very good nuclear fuel in a thermal-spectrum reactor. It does not burn well in LWRs, and when the reactivity of the fuel can no longer support a chain reaction inside a light water reactor, nearly 20% of it is left. Another 12% 27% of the original U-235 is left.

Thus light-water reactors only extract about 0.6% of the energy present in natural uranium. The rest of the energy goes into two piles. One marked “Depleted Uranium”, and the other marked “spent reactor fuel”. “Spent reactor fuel”, ironically contains about as much U-235 as natural uranium. The system of electrical generation in Light Water Reactors is to place the reactor inside a high-pressure vessel, heat water with it, turn the hot water into steam (in a BWR) or use the hot water to make steam (in a PWR), and run a turbine with it. The turbine then turns a generator, which produces electricity. This whole, rather complicated system only turns about 1/3rd of the heat produced in a LWR into electricity. Thus 70% of the energy captured by the reactor is lost as waste heat. So of the energy present in natural uranium, 0.2% gets converted into electricity, 99.8% of the energy gets lost.

The light-water reactor system is extraordinarily wasteful in terms of energy. It is also wasteful in terms of uranium. In order to make LWR fuel, 200 pounds of natural uranium gets depleted. 19 pounds of that uranium can go back into a reactor, so over 90% of mined uranium never goes into a reactor. Of those 19 pounds of depleted uranium – almost all U-238 – that goes into a reactor, 18 ½ pounds comes out unchanged. Such is the power generated by splitting the atom, that by using only a very small amount of its potential energy, very useful work gets done.

It is a measure of the inefficiency of light-water reactors, that its “spent fuel” can be removed, remanufactured without changing the fuel ration, and placed in other types of reactors – say the heavy water CANDU reactor, and used like ordinary CANDU nuclear fuel in electrical power generation. But even the CANDU reactor is still not very efficient. For every 200 pounds of uranium used in a CANDU reactor, about 1.4 pounds actually generates energy or about 0.7% of the energy in natural uranium. From the viewpoint of EROEI (energy returned on energy invested), the CANDU reactor is a better deal than light-water reactors. First because uranium does not have to be enriched before it goes into CANDU reactors. And secondly, because the CANDU is a little better at extracting energy from uranium than light-water reactors.

It is clear then that the light-water reactor, a technology that was advanced in the late 1940′s and early 1950′s primarily for military use, is very inefficient at the task of extracting energy from uranium, and converting it into electricity. Only 0.2%, that is one five hundredth (1/500) of the energy that could potentially be liberated from uranium by the nuclear process, is converted into electricity by the light-water reactor. The liquid-fluoride thorium reactor (LFTR) can do much better than this.