Nuclear Rockets: John F. Kennedy, Harry Finger, and Glen Seaborg -- photo

[hunter]

My parents just gave me some of my grandfather's papers. He was an engineer on the Apollo Project, and he'd kept this brochure about the nuclear rocket program at Jackass Flats. Perhaps he built some gadget for it.



I thought it was pretty cool. They did some pretty wild things out there in the desert, even delibrately blowing up a nuclear rocket...

http://www.cddc.vt.edu/host/atomic/testpix/index.html

Boom! And I'm sure all that incandescent metal flying out of the thing is radioactive.

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Rocket_Propulsion:Nuclear_Rocket_Propulsion

http://www.fas.org/nuke/space/c04rover.htm

Can you imagine trying to write a modern day environmental impact report for something like that?

[phantom power]

1. Yeah, somehow I don't think that EIA would be approved.

But it sure would be interesting to write it.

[NNadir]

2. There is a wonderful photograph of Alvin Weinberg, Jack and Jackie and Al Gore Senior in the control

room of a power reactor at Oak Ridge.

I can't find the photograph of all four on the internet right now, but here is Weinberg, Jack and Jackie:



Weinberg invented the Molten Salt Reactor as an outgrowth of a plan to build nuclear powered aircraft in the 1950's.

Although I am a strong supporter of nuclear energy, I'm not convinced that nuclear powered aircraft is a good idea. If we insist on having aircraft in the future, nuclear energy can only be used to the extent that it is used to make synthetic fuels through the hydrogenation of carbon oxides.

To my surprise, however, the idea of nuclear powered aircraft is being discussed again. The current issue of the scientific journal Nature (Nature May 2008 page 264) in the news section of an article entitled "Flights of Green Fancy" where the following is written:

"Nuclear power would remove the need for (aircraft) turbines. The idea was first touted in the 1940s and experiments were done by bothe the US and Russian governments during the cold war. Nuclear planes were dismissed by some as too risky in case of crashes."

In theory, of course, one could make a nuclear powered plane, but I think the risk of release of fission products during a crash - which may involve components not connected to the reactors - would involve considerable risk. That said, nuclear reactors have flown and one has, in fact, crashed. The Soviet satellite, Cosmos 954, which was powered by a small reactor, crashed in Canada on Jan 24, 1978.

It is expected that everyone in Canada will die.

[On the Road]

3. That Would Have Been Such a Cool Rocket

if it weren't for the tiny problem of massive radioactivity. I read about it in John McPhee's "The Curve of Binding Energy." Jackass Flats was an appropriate site.

[losthills]

4. What a bunch of fools....

[NNadir]

6. Yeah, Glenn Seaborg, having discovered 9 elements in the periodic table, winner of the Nobel

Prize, advisor to every President from Franklin Roosevelt to Bill Clinton, Democrat extraordinaire, negotiator of the limited test ban treaty, is a mental midget when compared to our fundies.

I personally find each of our fundie anti-nukes with their profoundly lazy exclamations to be real geniuses.

Glenn Seaborg?

He would never be capable of producing such a thought provoking, incisive, brilliant, reflective commentary that compares with "What a bunch of fools!"

I mean, the fact that he is responsible for the identification of the actinide section of the periodic table, that he was able to explain the f element chemistry of elements before they were actually observed in nature - that he was able to frame the oxidation states of the sub-Curium elements in terms of relativistic corrections to the energy states of tightly bound inner orbitals, that pales before the intellectually profound witticism "what a bunch of fools!"

Every fucking word out of the mouths of fundie anti-nukes reeks of fundie contempt for science!

Clearly, the author of 500 scientific papers, 50 books, 1972 President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, President of the American Chemical Society from 1972-1976, personal friend of John F. Kennedy, Harry S. Truman and, even Nikita Khruschev is a fool!

In celebration of fundie contempt for science, I now produce a link to Dr. Seaborg's Nobel lecture:

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/1951/seaborg-lecture.pdf

It is remarkable that Dr. Seaborg would bother to write a book like, say, this one:



when, he is so clearly and unambiguously identified as a fool by one of our own fundie "rocket scientists!"

And apparently our fundies have no difficulty declaring themselves "rocket scientists" in spite of lots of evidence that they are sinmply ignorant misinformed paranoid mystics of inordinate and extreme laziness.

[losthills]

7. And, what do you know? Here's another one....

[NNadir]

8. I know that a feature of every example of fundie thinking is contempt for science and scientists.

In fact, there is no difference at all between the expressed contempt for Glenn Seaborg and say, Pat Robertson's contempt for Darwin.

Both are forms of extreme ignorance.

The fact that you have just called the discoverer of a major part of the periodic law a "fool" is a "QED" moment for my continued insistance that the entire anti-nuke crowd is, in fact, merely ignorant.

There is NOT ONE fundie anti-nuke on this website who has escaped the level of ignorance that, paradoxically, would allow for the identification of ignorance.

In fact, one of the main features of deliberate and fatal ignorance is its obliviousness to even a modicum of self-awareness. That's why it's called "ignorance."

Ignorance kills.

[losthills]

16. Ignorance kills allright.

And so do braying jackasses.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downwinders

From 1951 – mid-1962, the Nevada Test Site(NTS) was a primary site used for both surface and above-ground nuclear testing, with eighty-six tests were conducted at or above ground level, and 14 other tests that were underground, all of which involved releases of significant amounts of radioactive material into the atmosphere.

In the 1950s, people who lived in the vicinity of the NTS were encouraged to sit outside and watch the mushroom clouds that were created by nuclear bomb explosions. Many were given radiation badges to wear on their clothes, which were later collected by the Atomic Energy Commission to gather data about radiation levels.

In a report by the National Cancer Institute, released in 1997, it was determined that the nearly ninety atmospheric tests at the Nevada Test Site (NTS) left high levels of radioactive iodine-131 (5.5 exabecquerels) across a large area of the continental United States, especially in the years 1952, 1953, 1955, and 1957. The National Cancer Institute report estimates that doses received in these years are estimated to be large enough to produce 10,000 to 75,000 additional cases of thyroid cancer in the U.S.<9> Another report, published by the Scientific Research Society, estimates that about 22,000 additional radiation-related cancers and 2,000 additional deaths from radiation-related leukemia are expected to occur in the United States because of external and internal radiation from both NTS and global fallout. <10>

The threat of downwind exposure to radioactivity remaining at the Nevada Test Site from nuclear weapons tests was still an issue as late as 2007. The Pentagon planned to test a 700-ton ammonium nitrate-and-fuel oil "bunker buster" weapon. The planned "Divine Strake" test would have raised a large mushroom cloud of contaminated dust that could have blown toward population centers such as Las Vegas, Boise, Salt Lake City, and St. George, Utah. This project was cancelled in February of 2007, in large part due to political pressure inspired by the threat of downwind exposure to radioactivity.

Laugh it up.....

[NNadir]

17. It is notable that every single lazy fundie post here consists entirely of Wikipedia.

I note, with contempt, that neither you nor any other fundie gives a rat's ass about the health effects of dangerous fossil fuel weapons.

Googling does not substitute for education fundie.

You couldn't care less how many people died, for instance, from the Kuwait fire, but you have a special <em>stupid</em> obsession with every single radioactive event.

For the record, dumb fundie postures aside, nuclear weapons have no more to do with nuclear power than your dumb fundie car has to do with napalm.

Got it?

No?

Why am I not surprised?

[losthills]

19. Can you refute this statement then?

"The National Cancer Institute report estimates that doses received in these years are estimated to be large enough to produce 10,000 to 75,000 additional cases of thyroid cancer in the U.S.<9> Another report, published by the Scientific Research Society, estimates that about 22,000 additional radiation-related cancers and 2,000 additional deaths from radiation-related leukemia are expected to occur in the United States because of external and internal radiation from both NTS and global fallout."

No?

Then just keep braying with your "Jackass Flats" buds.....

[NNadir]

20. Do you know how to cite a scientific reference? No? No fucking idea?

Why am I not surprised?

It's very, very, very, very, very clear that fundies are completely unfamiliar with the contents of the scientific literature, although very clearly you are quite willing to produce unreferenced claims from the vast circle jerk of self referential anti-nuke literature.

Is there some special reason that you are completely indifferent to the number of cancer deaths related each year to the non military use of dangerous fossil fuels?

No?

Is there some fucking reason that I should have any respect for your contention that only nuclear technology need to be free of military applications to be acceptable?

Is there any fucking reason that I should give any credence to your illiterate contention that wjo;e millions die for dangerous fossil fuel related military applications, I should pay special credence to your immoral selective attention?

Why am I in no fucking way surprised?

Nuclear power does not need to be perfect to be better than everything else. It merely needs to be better than everything else.

Got it?

No?

Why am I in no fucking way surprised?

Now, I do understand that the anti-nuke cults depend wholly on scientific illiteracy, but for the record, even a bunch of lazy googlers can access abstracts of the scientific literature, even if they are clueless about how to interpret it.

Here for instance, is what a fucking scientific reference might look like:

http://www.epidem.com/pt/re/epidemiology/fulltext.00001648-200509000-00347.htm;jsessionid=LGXTwTnmJQF04JpL7rN6QGvJQ3yVR1wHw1Ngg1hQG02vvS2QC2LX!-1610132471!181195628!8091!-1

Of course you couldn't care less.

Now, fundie, why don't you tell us once again how you regard Glenn Seaborg to be a "fool."

[losthills]

21. TTroll....... ...

[hunter]

22. I find your lack of curiosity astonishing, losthills.

Dogma is a tool of the devil, to defeat him you've got to know how to dance, and you've got to know what he is about.

Dogma is the fatal flaw of anti-nuclear activism. The devil doesn't care about nuclear power, he'll just use coal. That's been happening since the U.S. stopped building nuclear power plants. If we'd continued to develop nuclear power the U.S. coal industry would be moribund by now. On balance I believe that would have been a very positive thing. You may disagree.

I'm fascinated by old nuclear sites like Hanford or Nevada in large part because they demonstrate nuclear worst case scenarios, and a lot of these horrors were quite deliberate and astonishingly reckless experiments, even more horrific in retrospect than they were at the time. My father-in-law was one of the human guinea pigs who got to witness a nuclear explosion up close and march around ground zero while it was still hot. Some of those guys didn't fare to well. One of my more colorful college professors was an engineer who designed radiation resistant electronics for the aerospace industry. When his company transfered him to a project designing electronics for armored vehicles he started having nightmares about guys who knew they were dead still fighting, so he quit the war machine to teach.

It's a scary road ahead, and most supporters of nuclear power will be your friends, not your enemy. Building an entire world economy upon a foundation of fossil fuels was the greatest engineering disaster of all time. Fossil fuels have already caused the suffering and premature deaths of billions of people, and billions more will die.

Nuclear power could become a similar engine of death, but it doesn't have to. The political mechanics by which we might prevent nuclear disaster are not yet clear to me, but I'm certain it will take a stable society to accomplish that. As easy natural gas and oil supplies fail, and as CO₂ induced climate disasters take their toll, we may need to build new nuclear power plants to maintain the stability of our society. How do we do that without repeating the mistakes we've made in the past? Are their any real alternatives to nuclear power? So far I'm unconvinced. I've been watching the pursuit of "clean coal," solar, and wind for thirty years and I'm more and more certain they won't reduce the brutal impacts of the first serious natural gas and electric power network failures.

:sigh:

[losthills]

23. I know that radiation is a foolish thing to screw around with.

Dogma or common sense-- whatever-- the benefits, real or imagined, don't even come close to balancing out the hazards. "Coal" is a red herring, and a person with an open mind can ascertain that for themselves in an hour of googling. Nuclear power is not an alternative to fossil fuels. It's just a stronger dose of more bad medicine; an escalation of the same bad trip. And if you "ha ha look at the giant spiders" guys got your way, we would all live to regret it. Those of us who have made a commitment to stand in your way are trying to help you.

[hunter]

25. I've no respect for dogma or "common sense."

I'll argue with the Pope of the Catholic Church, Amory Lovins, or whatever king or queen of bishop of anti-nuclear activism happens to be railing against the Promethean evils of invisible radiations and evil spirits.

Many anti-nuclear groups are simply mystery cults, the bomb and nuclear power being a drop-in replacement for whatever deities the ancients feared.

A mystery cult is comfortable place to hang out in comparison to the stark realities of science and history. The amoral United States deliberately attacked Japan with nuclear weapons, and deliberately exposed it's own sailors and soldiers to nuclear fallout because our government wanted to know if nuclear weapons might be a useful tool for furthering our imperial ambitions, our "manifest destiny" to control world trade. Apparently they were not, otherwise we would have used them.

From the perspective of an ecologist all the nuclear weapons ever exploded, and all the nuclear reactors ever built have done nowhere near the damage to the earth's environment as our utilization of fossil fuels. Places like Hanford and the Nevada Test site still have much of their natural ecosystems intact in comparison to any Iowa cornfield. The accident at Chernobyl demonstrates conclusively that natural environments are more tolerant of radioactive pollutants than they are of human habitation, be it the extreme sort of poverty that exists in places like Haiti, or the gated golf course communities of wealthy Americans. If you care about the natural environment it sorta sucks to be human.

On this satellite image of the Hanford nuclear reservation, the natural environment has been destroyed in the green places:

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=hanford+nuclear+reserve&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=46.27475,81.738281&ie=UTF8&ll=46.660718,-119.458208&spn=0.315269,0.63858&t=h&z=11

Coal is not a "red herring" as you claim. For every nuclear plant that wasn't built a coal or natural plant was built, and the environmental consequences of that substitution are grim. That's a fact. Solar power, wind energy, or other green energy technologies were unable to step up to the plate, and they are still unable to step up to the plate. Because of that a lot of people have died, and even more will die, by the billions. Our exploitation of fossil fuels and the resulting human population explosion is one of the greater environmental catastrophes of earth's history. We've blown ourselves right out of the neogene period, and probably out of the Cenozoic era too.

Who'd have thought a damned clever monkey could do all that?

[losthills]

26. "Self-delusion" is the worst kind of delusion.

Thanks for making that clear.

[hunter]

27. It's good to journey beyond your comfort zone...

If you don't Nature will drag you out with her teeth, if not today then maybe tomorrow.

[Nihil]

29. Good post.

You presented good information and refrained from lowering yourself
to the ad-hom level of many anti- (and some pro-) nuclear posters.

I would just correct one point:
> For every nuclear plant that wasn't built a coal or natural (gas) plant
> was built

If we are talking about the normal sized plants of the last few decades,
every missing nuclear plant cost *several* coal/gas plants as, apart from
the super-sized monsters like Drax, it takes much more than one coal
plant to substitute for one nuclear plant.

> Places like Hanford and the Nevada Test site still have much of their
> natural ecosystems intact in comparison to any Iowa cornfield. The
> accident at Chernobyl demonstrates conclusively that natural environments
> are more tolerant of radioactive pollutants than they are of human
> habitation

There is something depressingly sad about this realisation isn't there?
:-(

[losthills]

30. Chernobyl Cancer Deaths Under Reported

http://www.greenpeace.org/international/news/chernobyl-deaths-180406

Chernobyl, Ukraine — A new Greenpeace report has revealed that the full consequences of the Chernobyl disaster could top a quarter of a million cancer cases and nearly 100,000 fatal cancers.

Our report involved 52 respected scientists and includes information never before published in English. It challenges the UN International Atomic Energy Agency Chernobyl Forum report, which predicted 4,000 additional deaths attributable to the accident as a gross simplification of the real breadth of human suffering.

The new data, based on Belarus national cancer statistics, predicts approximately 270,000 cancers and 93,000 fatal cancer cases caused by Chernobyl. The report also concludes that on the basis of demographic data, during the last 15 years, 60,000 people have additionally died in Russia because of the Chernobyl accident, and estimates of the total death toll for the Ukraine and Belarus could reach another 140,000.

[hunter]

18. How many people have been killed by cars since 1951?

How many ecosystems have been damged or destroyed by the automobile culture?

How many people die driving to and from Las Vegas?

Nuclear weapons are irrational. So are automobiles.

Sometimes it's laugh or go mad.

In the old days you couldn't poke around the Nevada Test Site from the comfort of your home. It took a lot of footwork and brain sweat to learn anything about the place.

http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&client=opera&q=Nevada+Test+Site&ie=UTF8&t=h&ll=37.055588,-116.046181&spn=0.091649,0.159645&z=13&iwloc=addr

Poke around the dark heart of the U.S.. There's some dirty, dirty secrets hidden there, and very few of them are radioactive.

[hunter]

9. You can walk anywhere in the United States...

...in season, with enough water. Don't forget your hat and cloak.

It's a pity how these nuclear fools turned the promising young metropolis of Las Vegas into a radioactive wasteland populated by giant ants and mutant brain eating Elvis clones.



But frankly the ants would rather eat wild horses or lost cattle, and the Elvis clones are easily distracted by Twinkies or gyrating hips. If you can't dance bring lots of Twinkies.

Here's the google satellite image of the Nevada Test Site for you to explore:

http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&client=opera&q=Nevada+Test+Site&ie=UTF8&ll=37.055588,-116.046181&spn=0.091649,0.159645&t=h&z=13

What the hell is that big 1 kilometer radius circle with the jet coming out of it? Personally, I wouldn't walk there until I figured out what was going on.

After you've picked up some random bits of Trinitite and explored a few craters you can wander northeast to Area 51.

Area 51 is a super secret sex club run by the Air Force. They cater to every sort of fetish -- most of them illegal in all fifty states. The world's only plutonium powered vibrators are kept there, ingeniously designed to keep a constant temperature of 37 °C with a broad selection of rhythms, from a very gentle thrumming favored by various coddled and kept congress critters to a violent thumping that will leave even the toughest meanest military man bruised but satisfied.

If you go there the password is easy... bring a large suitcase stuffed full of one hundred dollar bills, put it down and open it, and step away from the door until they scan it electronically. Or you can simply use the password. The guy on the other side of the door will tap out "shave and a haircut..." but the response is NEVER "two bits." Do that and you will be vaporized instantly by a laser canon. Instead turn around slowly, face away from the door, drop your pants, and give the door two solid thumps with the sole of your left boot.

The dark wing of the Air Force wants you to have a good time.

[NNadir]

10. I hate those giant radioactive ants. One of them ate my cat.

I also hate it when Rodan and Godzilla get all radioactive and start smashing power lines.

It makes for an awful mess.

[hunter]

12. I've got a picture of Godzilla too.

I don't have a picture of a brain eating zombie Elvis that I can link to... yet... but these guys are almost as bad:

[NNadir]

13. The second picture clearly demonstrates the danger of radioactivity.

[depakid]

15. Night of the Lepus!

[eppur_se_muova]

5. A bit 'cleaner' than Project Orion, anyway. ;^)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_%28nuclear_propulsion%29

[phantom power]

11. One of my favorite scenes from any book...

is from Footfall (Niven and Pournelle), when the humans build and Orion-class attack ship. And launch it from earth surface.

:headbang:

[hunter]

14. "God was knocking, and he wanted in bad..."

:nuke:

[Ready4Change]

24. Don't forget SLAM

http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/systems/slam.htm

Truly devestating weapon concept. Just overflying enemy territory would have been viscious.

Seems more level heads prevailed on that one.

[hunter]

28. .

:scared: