The Irony of a “Nuclear Free World”
September 5th, 2009
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Maybe I’m the only one who sees it this way, but I always have a bit of a chuckle at the ignorance of those who are looking for a “nuclear free world” or a “nuclear free future.” It seems funny to me that anyone would be so riled up against a portion of the atom or a basic component of the universe. After all, the word “nuclear” simply means “of the nucleus.” This is generally the portion of the atom that really matters – the part where the action is. Atoms can gain and lose their electrons fairly easily and frequently do, but the nucleus is what gives an atom its identity.
Yet there are groups that are committed to a “nuclear free world” or a “nuclear free future.” One of them even offers an award for those who are working toward a “nuclear free future.” Apparently New Zealand is a “nuclear free zone.” I’ve been to New Zea land, although only for a few days, and although I only saw a small portion of the country, I am pretty sure that it consisted of more than just a giant void with a few free electrons bouncing around.
So what would a nuclear free world look like? Well, it wouldn’t look like anything, really. It certainly wouldn’t look anything like the universe we know, but that wouldn’t matter too much, because nobody would be there to see it. However, here’s a representative illustration of what it might look like, if shown not to scale and with some abstraction:
Yes, you could have electrons, because they’re not nuclear. You could have muons and taurons. The later two don’t last very long, unless they’re moving really really fast, in which case time slows down. Of course, neutrinos would be permissible too. Given that most of the particles would have a negative charge, they’d tend to be repelled from each other, leading to the density of the universe rapidly decreasing, even faster than it is now. Sure, you could have positrons and such things, and that might make things interesting, but they’d get themselves annihilated pretty fast and if you had an equal number of positrons and electrons, then before long you’d turn them all into photons and have little left to show for it. Should two of those photons collide at the correct angles and energies, you may get back some of your leptons back, but only until they annihilate again.
What you could not have is any hadrons. You certainly couldn’t have any protons, because a proton can be a nucleus all by it’s self. A naked proton is really no different from a hydrogen nucleus and as soon as it finds an electron to pair with, you’ve got yourself a full fledged atom, with nucleus and all. That would certainly not be permissible in a nuclear free world! Neutrons are a no-no as well, because they’ll just decay into protons and even produce their own electron in the process. Indeed, any of those larger particles could potentially form a nucleus and the dream of a nuclear-free world would be destroyed.
Of course, even if you only stick to the little guys, there’s always the distinct danger that some of them will collide with enough energy to produce something that could turn nuclear on you. But assuming you don’t have too many of them, then your world should remain nuclear free for at least a while.
Okay, so I know what someone is going to say: “They just left out the word energy. They mean in this context ‘no nuclear energy’ but nucleus are okay, as long as they’re stable and don’t provide any energy.”
Fair enough, but there’s one big problem here: ALL energy is nuclear. It has to be. There’s no other place it can come from. The universe doesn’t generally store energy in the form of chemical bonds. Those are too puny to account for the vast energy of the cosmos. Energy and matter are interchangeable on a fundamental level. You can make energy, physics does not preclude that, but you can’t make it from nothing, you can make it, however, from matter. And this is where the usable energy in the universe comes from.
Nuclear energy is not just a fundamental form of energy, it is the most fundamental form of energy.
Most of the energy produced by the big bang went off into the universe as radiation. It’s still there as a faint afterglow, but it’s not nearly enough to keep us much warmer than absolute zero. But no worries, because there’s plenty of matter and that matter is being turned into energy, by means of nuclear reactions. That’s really the only way it can be done. Fission, fusion and decay all convert a portion of the mass of an atom, which is manifest as the binding energy, into usable energy.
Converting a classical particle into energy requires a matter-antimatter reaction or something similar (such as Hawking Radiation). In my book, this counts as a nuclear reaction as well, because it involves sub-atomic particles and is thus a part of nuclear physics. The larger of which are parts of the nucleus, or can be, and the smaller ones generally come from the nucleus through some reaction. For example, the only known source of large quantities of positrons in this region of the universe is beta+ decay. When it comes to most sub-atomic reactions, the nucleus is where the action is.
So what exactly are they shooting for? A radiation free world? A radioactivity free world?
These, of course, are also impossible. There’s radiation constantly bombarding the earth from cosmic sources and radiation constantly being produced by the decay of naturally occurring materials like uranium and thorium. Groups can protest uranium mining all they want, but the fact is it is there, both in the ground and on it. There’s uranium in the crust of the earth and nearly all soil contains uranium and thorium traces. “Leave it in the ground” is not really a valid claim either, because it’s not just on the ground, but also in food (in trace amounts), in cement, in kitty litter, in granite and plenty of other things, sometimes in very significant amounts.
There are other radioactive substances in the world that produce even more direct exposure for humans. Potassium-40 is found in all naturally occurring samples of potassium. Carbon-14 is found in all organic matter. Both of these materials are generated by nuclear reactions, most of which occur in our upper atmosphere. There are also radioactive substances like radium, radon and lead-210 which are constantly being generated by the decay of other radioactive substances.
You can’t avoid it. It’s there. It’s in your body. You may be exposed to more radiation or less radiation than average from these sources. It depends on where you live, how your home is constructed, how often you travel and many other factors. There’s no evidence that this is anything to be concerned over.
So what then is this about? Is it that mankind should not be permitted to dabble in nuclear science, nuclear engineering or in any way produce a nuclear reaction?
This seems to be the crux of the argument. It’s fine that there is nuclear energy in the universe – or at least, there’s nothing we can do to stop there from being nuclear energy in the universe. However, we, as humans, should not be permitted from ever altering the atom, from ever modifying its nucleus or directly using properties of the nucleus. Presumably it’s okay to use radioactive materials, such as bananas, as long as we are ignorant of their nuclear properties and don’t in any way take advantage of the nuclear aspects of such items.
Sure, there are nuclear reactions all around us. Not only does the sun run on nuclear energy, but cosmic rays are constantly turning nitrogen into carbon-14. Atoms spontaneously fission from time to time and when they do, they produce neutrons, some of which collide with another atom and cause a secondary fission or transmutate that atom to something else. Even nuclear fission reactors have been discovered in nature.
Nuclear reactions are not necessarily that big a deal. They’re hardly limited to big laboratories or nuclear plants. You can easily create a nuclear reaction, and it could happen without you even knowing. To create a simple one, you’ll need an alpha emitter. Uranium will work, and that could be anything from a uranium baring rock to a granite counter top. Now just bring that alpha emitter close to something aluminum, or even better, beryllium, or something containing beryllium, and you can produce a nuclear reaction. It’s a small one – even tiny. But some of those alpha particles, upon colliding with beryllium atoms will fuse and produce a new element and neutrons. You won’t produce many, in fact, since only about 30 alphas per million will initiate a reaction, if you’re using low level sources, the radiation won’t even be detectable. But if nuclear reactions are so cursed and no place for humans, then putting a beryllium-copper golf club face-down on a piece of uranium-baring rock, could anger the anti-nuclear gods, when your action leads to the destruction of an atom.
There are other nuclear reactions that you could produce, even by accident. If you happen to have a stray neutron flying around, perhaps due to a cosmic ray or because of where you put your golf club, then you better be careful not to put anything in its path that might absorb it, or you can end up with another nuclear reaction, even one that creates ionizing radiation! If you’re apposed to nuclear reactions, here’s a word of advice: stay the hell away from anything containing boron. That stuff absorbs neutrons like nobody’s buisiness, and when it does, it spits out an alpha particle, which is a form of ionizing radiation. All you’d have to do is put that stuff in the path of a neutron, and wham! you’ve got blood on your hands from the ultimate sin!
If that’s not confusing enough, you can produce dangerously radioactive material without even doing anything nuclear. For example, radium-226 and its daughters are very radioactive, have a high biological uptake and are quite hazardous to human health. Radium-226 is a naturally occurring isotope, found in uranium ore and producing a sample of high purity Ra-226 is a matter of separating out the material from large quantities of uranium ore. The process is entirely chemical, and when it was first developed by Marie Curie in the late 1800’s, the fundamental structure of the atom had not yet been established. (Curie herself was a chemist)
Does this sound silly? Of course it is! Banning humanity from perusing nuclear energy or nuclear anything based on the belief that it is somehow inherently evil or wrong would be a stupid and insisting that humanity never create a chemical reaction or avoid electricity at all costs.
This entry was posted on Saturday, September 5th, 2009 at 10:25 pm and is filed under Bad Science, Enviornment, Good Science, Misc, Nuclear, Obfuscation, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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September 5th, 2009 at 10:40 pm
What about smoke detectors? No smoke detectors?
I remember seeing a similar “nuclear-free zone” in Oak Park, IL (a suburb of Chicago which is an exemplar of the “post-industrial society”) when I was about eight years old, after I’d learned how a smoke detector works. I literally thought for a while that they had banned smoke detectors.
It was one of the things that brought the lunacy of the whole anti-nuclear case to my attention. Thanks, anti-nuclear activists!
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September 5th, 2009 at 11:28 pm
Stewart Peterson said:
Well, yeah.. there would be no smoke detectors, but I was thinking more fundamental than that. I guess you could have a world without smoke detectors. But you couldn’t have much of a world without protons.
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September 6th, 2009 at 1:26 am
We’d still have photoelectric smoke detectors. They are easy enough to find in good stores alongside their RADIOACTIVE rivals.
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September 6th, 2009 at 1:52 am
Yeoz said:
I wouldn’t call them rivals. The photoelectric type gets less false alarms from steam (although I never have that problem) and is supposedly better at detecting smokey fires (it will detect them before the ionization type by several seconds) but they are very bad at detecting smoldering and “clean” fires – the type where there is not much visible smoke. This would also be how most household fires start – in a manner that initially does not necessarily produce a lot of visible smoke. Some claim that the photoelectric are vastly superior. I don’t buy it.
Personally, I like the dual sensor ones. I figure that gives you the best of both worlds and assures you will be warned of either type of fire. That is what I have. This model: http://www.firstalertstore.com/store/catalog.asp?item=1221
If I had to choose, I think I’d still stick with the old standby ionization type. They’re still the preferred for most circumstances.
I have a carbon monoxide detector as well. Those are always good to have.
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September 6th, 2009 at 2:51 am
I think much of the population would consider “a nuclear free world” a reasonable statement and not give it a second thought.
I also think that much of the population would consider the statement “I don’t want any chemicals in my food” a reasonable statement and likely even agree with it.
If you actually know what this means beyond the superficial terms then you can see both make no sense. (what isn’t a chemical?) But it’s a term people repeat with only a vague idea of what it means and don’t really think that deeply into it. Nuclear is that means of making power that involves scary radiation. This kind of thing is getting past the general science literacy level.
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September 6th, 2009 at 3:24 am
drbuzz0 said:
Yeah, I know; it’s just a further example of how the anti-nuclear activists have constructed an image of “nuclear” and decided to oppose it–regardless of whether their image is either accurate, or, more fundamentally, any kind of a falsifiable model with predictive power. They seem to think that reality doesn’t matter; that they can ignore it or define their own reality at whim.
Remember the old principle of the social sciences: social situations are real in their consequences if they are defined as real by their participants. If everybody collectively decides that the Earth is flat, as many groups have throughout history, that decision has real consequences (to, for example, the people who are burned at the stake for saying the Earth isn’t flat).
Anti-nuclear activists mostly don’t think beyond that. They socially define “nuclear” among themselves and don’t care to check their work by attempting to falsify their model, because falsification disrupts the group dynamic and is unpleasant. They also mostly think that since there’s no way to determine that the whole observable universe isn’t a giant hallucination, there’s no point making observations (an idea which they call “postmodernism,” but which is powered by pre-modern thinking). Reality, to them, is replaced with a totally subjective system of wishful thinking. If a group of people get together and think that giant pink elephants are the providers of all material things, that’s “reality” because everybody is able to enforce that belief on the people who don’t see the pink elephants.
This is why it’s impossible to get through to these people about economics, for instance. When we say that communism will fall in on itself because there’s no price mechanism to regulate demand, they say that the whole question is irrelevant. The people inside a sample communist system could, in the sense that there’s nothing stopping them, ignore supply and demand. If they did that–essentially, if the Soviet leadership had succeeded in transforming the whole Eastern Bloc into one giant cult–the USSR would still exist today. The consequences of that irrationality would be undeniable.
Engineers, of course, mostly don’t buy this, along with anyone else who has to create a well-defined, tangible product. If you build a full replica of the Golden Gate Bridge out of toilet paper, it will fall in, no matter who you can convince that it hasn’t. Nuclear engineers, on the other hand, see every day that reality doesn’t determine what people think, and those people’s opinions can affect what they’re allowed to build and how. In a perverse way, if you play enough word games, the anti-nuclear activists have modified reality to suit by politically maneuvering such that everyone is forced to act as though their image of “nuclear” is a valid model.
There is no reason that policymakers have to base their decisions on facts. When they don’t, and somebody else does, the other side out-competes them. If they’re lucky, it won’t be during a major war. For somebody trying to model societies, knowing that it’s possible to be delusional is sufficient, but for someone trying to make a decision, you have to know how not to be, and the test of a model is whether it applies to the situation it’s trying to describe. Postmodernism doesn’t, and runs right into science as a result.
That’s the divide that we’re up against, when, for example, you tried to suggest to environmentalists that they base their decisions on facts. “Pro-nuclear environmentalists” in the sense of hippies who think nuclear power is preferable to global warming generally are people who have redefined their image of “nuclear” to be a favorable one–not people who genuinely have come to a conclusion based on solid information evaluated empirically against a falsifiable hypothesis. Trying to get them on our side is dangerous; what happens when they redefine their image again, some years from now? Computers, fortunately, have caused a serious drop in this type of thinking among those who have grown up with them, but whether we can succeed depends on whether we can connect with millenials’ understanding of computers and turn it into a generation gap. Right now, I don’t think we have the capability to do that.
Like the new URL schema, BTW.
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September 6th, 2009 at 12:10 pm
While I know that the opposition has expanded the theme beyond this, ‘nuclear free world’ used to mean a world without nuclear weapons – but even that is a pipe-dream. Almost from the moment the first atomic bomb was detonated in New Mexico in July 1945, the menacing aura of the nuclear age has inspired visions of a world free of nuclear weapons. Never more so than now, with the prospect that the Taliban could someday control Pakistan’s nuclear weapons, North Korea might develop nuclear-tipped missiles, Iran may soon become a nuclear power and terrorists could get a bomb.
Yet even as the allure of disarmament grows, the obstacles seem as daunting as ever. Going to zero, as the nuclear cognoscenti put it, is a deceptively simple notion; just about everyone who knows nuclear weapons agrees it would be wickedly difficult to achieve.
Past efforts have foundered. A 1946 plan named after the American financier Bernard Baruch died partly because its scheme to have a powerful international agency control nuclear technology required the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council to give up their veto power on some nuclear matters. The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, 41 years old now, has proved ineffectual in moving the world toward nuclear disarmament.
That’s because it would require a sea change in a dizzying array of defense matters, ranging from core defense policies to highly technical weapons programs. To fully grasp the political and military implications, consider what would have been involved had the great powers of the 19th century decided to abolish gunpowder. However since scientific and engineering knowledge cannot be expunged from mankind’s memory, the potential to build weapons will always exist. Efforts to hide a few weapons will be difficult to detect and prevent.
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September 6th, 2009 at 1:20 pm
DV82XL said:
You can’t uninvent nuclear weapons. They exist because their time had come in terms of scientific knowledge. By the 1930’s we reached the point where it was understood well enough to realize that a nuclear explosive was entirely scientifically and technically possible. If the Manhattan project had not been conducted, it may have taken longer, but eventually, someone would have set off the first fission bomb.
The only way it could have been stopped would have been to outlaw all physics research in the 1910’s or so and enforce it by pain of death.
I would be more afraid of a nuclear-weapon free world than a world where there are nuclear weapons in the well guarded arsenal of a few countries. If the established nuclear powers of the world gave up their arsenal, then it would only take one clandestine program in an aggressive nation to hold the entire world hostage. Or suppose all the powers of the world agree to dismantle and destroy their nuclear arsenal, but as it turns out, China cheated and stored away a few warheads. Now what? They could do whatever they want. They could take over the world in a manner not seen since the Romans.
The fact that North Korea is where it is with their nuclear program has a lot to do with the world political situation and that nobody wanted to be the one to deal with this problem. We know where their nuclear facilities are. They’re too big to hide. The reactors, the enrichment plant they’re building etc. A round of Tomahawk missiles wouldn’t have any problem reducing those to rubble, and if they chose to rebuild them in a few years, there’s plenty more where that came from. The issue is that the US currently has an administration unwilling to even consider that and the previous administration was too busy fighting other (unwise) conflicts to commit to such an action. The South Korean’s don’t want to do that alone. The Japanese don’t either and they may be constitutionally bared from a preemptive strike. The Brits have no interest in it falling on them.
Ultimately it would not surprise me if China decided to cut off the little bastard’s nuclear balls with a nice clean round of ballistic missiles on all the nuclear facilities in NK. I’ve read some things about China having developed some contingency plans to do that if things get much worse with the North Korean situation. Can you think of any countries that would really be that upset if that happened?
Similar situation with Iran. Although it seems some early intelligence was not accurate and they’re further behind in their program than we thought. When and if they do get to the point of having a deplorable weapon, someone is going to stop them. If nobody else does, it will be Israel.
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September 6th, 2009 at 2:23 pm
I think the issue with NK is the incredible vulnerability of the world’s electronics industries (which are located mainly in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan and are EXTREMELY specialized — aren’t there several important types of electronic component that are only manufactured in one location on the entire planet?).
Only those in Taiwan are really safe from North Korean attack — ironically enough because China would intervene (on the grounds that an attack on Taiwan is an attack on Chinese territory).
And good point mentioning Israel — I’m sure they’d keep their nukes even if everyone else disarmed…
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September 6th, 2009 at 2:27 pm
People think MAD is insanity, but for the entire cold war the world was divided and each side armed to the teeth. Nothing happened. I’m fine with nuclear weapons being securely kept in silos, if only as a bargaining chip or a deterrent. The fact is that it works and assures that things can only go so far before both sides are forced to calm down.
North Korea is exactly why you can’t have all countries give up nuclear weapons. If you did, someone could develop them and would not be countered.
I am not too worried about them in the long run. Even if they don’t get their nuclear facilities blown up and even if they do produce a weaponized warhead, there is no way that I can see North Korea producing a missile that couldn’t be shot down reasonably easily. The only missiles that have in their arsenal are no better than the vintage 1970’s SCUDs. They have no countermeasures. Especially with the upgrades now, a few Patroits will give a near 100% probability of interception.
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September 6th, 2009 at 11:33 pm
A lot of these groups are not anti-nuclear-weapon, because they are very very strongly opposed to nuclear power (fission) and some are also opposed to even research on fusion because they think it detracts from ‘renewable energy.’ I have also seen them protest irradiation and other things like that.
So it’s not about nuclear weapons. Look at some of their sites. It is all things nuclear! Really, I am serious!
And the author is making a good point here. It is just ignorance. You can’t escape nuclear. Our universe is nuclear! It is just blind fear and its like a religious belief that it is somehow bad or wrong to use it.
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September 7th, 2009 at 1:03 am
The trouble is that nuclear weapons don’t require ballistic missiles. Load one on a freighter and set it off in NY Harbor. You get much better denialability that way. Heck, load one on a DC3 and set it off over London. You could have zero causalities and the EMP would wreck the world economy.
Also you have to consider Pakistan. What happens if the Taliban takes over and Al Queda gets some of the nukes? If we knew where those guys are, they’d already be dead. That is why I oppose withdrawal from Afghanistan. I don’t care that we have little prospect of establishing a self-sustaining government in Afghanistan. Every day we don’t have a terrorist attack on US soil, we won that day. You want the keep those guys focused on Survival 101 and not on attacking us at home.
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September 7th, 2009 at 2:09 am
Talking about Radium; Do you know about a place in Iran called Ramsar? This place has reputedly the highest natural background radiation on the planet.
In this Iranian Spa town people take baths in water with a high concentration of Radium, and have been doing so for ages. And this without any advers health effects. Serves as a good example for putting the dangers of radioactivity in perspective…
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September 7th, 2009 at 2:21 am
Dr Robotnik said:
Well I don’t know of any that are pro-weapon, but anti-power reactor, generally the former begot the later. At its roots the whole antinuclear movement grew out of the Ban-the-Bomb movements of the late 60’s.
Joel Upchurch said:
The possibility of ether of these two thing happening are next to zero. A careful review of the evidence suggests that there are technical obstacles to such attacks that are insuperable. Yes it’s conceptually simple, and that’s where the simplicity ends.
Imagine if a town of about 5,000 people, none with more than a 4th grade education and no weapons more advanced than AK-47s and a few rocket-propelled grenades were threatening to take over the US Government and its nuclear weapons and impose their morals and values over the entire US population, would anyone take their threat seriously? They might do a bit of damage on their way to Washington, but would they be able to take a single nuclear weapon, let alone the entire arsenal?
Transpose this scenario to Pakistan, and that is exactly what’s happening. The Taliban, who are based in tribal areas in northern Pakistan, have a tight control over their small region. Because the Taliban are based in hard to reach mountains, the Pakistani army can’t fight them easily (the US and Canadian forces in Afghanistan face a similar problem). Over the last few years, people from this group have occasionally descended from the mountains to commit suicide bombings (or shootings) in nearby cities to show they mean business. However, since they lack modern weapons and logistical support and have no air power, the Taliban are in no way able to come down from these mountains to take on the Pakistani army head-on in pretty much flat terrain. Which means they have no hope of taking over the country or its nuclear arsenal.
To put it as delicately as possible, the specter of a nuclear-armed Taliban helps sell the military actions that are being taken in Afghanistan, and helps justify the aid for the Pakistani military that is coming out of the West, but it has little bases in reality.
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September 7th, 2009 at 10:26 am
DV82XL said:
John Gofman, the scientist who discovered that U-233 fissions and who later turned darling of the early anti-nuclear-energy movement, did not oppose the building of nuclear missiles.
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September 7th, 2009 at 11:37 am
DV82XL, Everything you said is sensible and I would totally agree with it, if I hadn’t heard the same arguments 30 years ago about the Shah. If anything the Shah looked more secure than Zardari. I think the situation is secure enough as long as we are in a position to throw an occasional Hellfire into the Taliban org chart. It is hard to do long term planning with that kind of management turnover.
I’m already reading editorials calling for us to withdraw from Afghanistan. If that happens, then I don’t what we happen, but I don’t think we will like it.
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September 7th, 2009 at 1:37 pm
Joel Upchurch said:
While I agree that Pakistan isn’t as stable a nuclear power as everyone would like, I still contend that the likelihood of nuclear weapons falling into the hands of the Taliban is low to non-existent simply because the states are so high. Even if there wasn’t a U.S. military presence there to help secure Pakistan’s arsenal, the other regional players are acutely aware of the ramifications and would act accordingly if the threat of it falling into the wrong hands looked likely.
We should also keep in mind that the fall of Shah Pahlavi was not at the hands of unwashed hill bandits, but those of an urban axis made up of clerics and students, well educated classes, that at the time had the tacit support of the people. The situation and the players were very different and while they are both certainly part of the Islamic Resurgence, one cannot compare events in Iran to the actions of the Taliban.
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September 7th, 2009 at 8:38 pm
Joel Upchurch said:
Bah. EMP is totally overblown. It wouldn’t even fry most computers. I should maybe write a post about that…
Joel Upchurch said:
We don’t know where they are, but we do know where they are not, and they are not in the military command or the presidential palace. I’m not saying we can necessarily trust those who are in the Pakistani government, but as things are they are reasonably stable and western friendly and we have an idea where their nukes are. The moment that a true Taliban leader seized power in Pakistan, every Pakistani nuclear weapon, storage location or facility would immediately be blown up – in the conventional sense, bu cruise missiles and laser guided bombs.
The US has had a lot of concern over the safety and security of the Pakistani weapons. Actually the US did something rather unusual and gave the Pakistani’s the arming mechanisms off of retired US nuclear weapons. These are not the current generation of arming mechanisms – they’re a generation or two old and phased out in the US in the 80’s or 90’s. They’re the security device that arms the bomb and although older than the current ones, they’re still very secure devices. It’s a bit like a combination lock, because there is a series of codes and steps needed to allow the arming sequence to begin. However, if not entered properly, the device will jam, it physically breaks internally and then the weapon needs to be sent back to be refitted. This was done because apparently the Pakistanis didn’t have much in the way of a secure arming mechanism to stop anyone from just picking up the bomb and setting it to “armed” or whatever.
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September 8th, 2009 at 12:54 am
drbuzz0,
I’d be very interesting in reading an article on EMP if you write one.
BTW, do you have any inside scoops on what another Carrington event, might actually do? The stories I’ve read are pretty scary.
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/06may_carringtonflare.htm
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September 9th, 2009 at 10:26 pm
See this. : )
http://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/sftriple/felec.html
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September 10th, 2009 at 7:54 pm
Jim Baerg said:
Yeah. That’s exactly the same thoughts I had.
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September 11th, 2009 at 2:18 pm
Congratulations on erecting a huge straw man and then bravely knocking it down.
Yes, perhaps opponents of nuclear energy / nuclear weapons don’t use the terminology right, but the debate is not about semantics. By pointing out that all energy involves nuclei you just make yourself look like a big nerd willfully bent on missing the point entirely.
I’m actually undecided on nuclear energy (and to be totally clear, I mean the kind produced by nuclear fission in large “nuclear” reactors. I’m leaning toward the possibility that the benefits may outweigh its evils. But your sham straw man argument about semantics only discredits you.
The debate over “nuclear free” is not about banning nuclei from the world. It’s about whether it’s responsible to create radioactive waste that will need to be store for hundreds of thousands of years and creates an opportunity for terrorists to get their hands on extremely dangerous material and possibly weapons, and also whether it can reduce global warming and dependence on foreign oil.
These issues need to be addressed in a much less childish way than your article does.
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September 11th, 2009 at 2:34 pm
Daniel said:
Get off your high horse son, if you bothered to read the rest of this website you will find many serious articles on nuclear energy. This was just having a bit of fun at the expense of some of the more idiotic of the objectors. You will find that many of us here are working in, or very well trained in the sciences, we know exactly what this bit of humor means.
As for generating radioactive waste that will need to be store for hundreds of thousands of years and creates an opportunity for terrorists to get their hands on extremely dangerous material and possibly weapons, it might be best if you looked beyond the propaganda of the antinuclear movement to get your facts. You seem like a person who at least has not closed their mind to the possibility that nuclear energy may be a net benefit, it behooves you now to get a clear picture of the whole issue. I won’t try and lead you by the hand, because I don’t want to be seen as just another supporter pushing his propaganda, but I will tell you that the truth is out there for anyone with a rational mind to come to the conclusion that nuclear is our future. Please do yourself the service of looking into it very closely.
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September 11th, 2009 at 3:11 pm
Daniel said:
I don’t see it that way. The misuse of the terminology is part of a fundamental disconnect and ignorance about what exactly “nuclear” is. To me, nuclear forces are just another part of nature and the universe. Nuclear energy is different from other energy in that it is more dense and more fundamental, but otherwise, it’s just like chemical energy or any other kind.
This is all part of disconnecting the concept of nuclear fission from the whole greater context of things.
Daniel said:
That’s you, but the anti-nuclear movement goes beyond that. Groups like Greenpeace openly oppose nuclear fusion as an energy source and efforts to make it one. Personally, I’m skeptical that fusion will ever be a viable energy source for general purpose power generation, but if a way of creating fusion in a manner that could enable this, I would never oppose it. Many groups would, on the grounds that it is “nuclear”
These groups oppose food irradiation – even if it uses a linear accelerator which does not involve nuclear reactions. Some such groups have protested the Australian OPAL reactor. It’s the only reactor in Australia and is used for materials research and medical isotopes. It’s a non-power reactor.
Environmental groups have used a radiological accident in South America to their advantage. The source was a medical source, by the way. It was far more concentrated and powerful than any energy-related materials.
Efforts by a group of “environmentalists” lead by Christie Brinkly and some other celebs lead to the closure of the two reactors at the Brookhaven National Labortory. One of the two reactors was one of the most advanced medical reactors in the world and was used in R&D of new medical therapies and isotopes.
Anti-nuclear groups have opposed RTG’s (radio thermal generators) that are used to power deep space probes using decay, not fission.
The groups are not simply anti-fission. It’s entirely accurate to say that many are entirely anti-nuclear, and that, given the greater context, is very silly and narrow-minded.
Daniel said:
So to be clear on this… radioactive waste that comes from fission is bad, but other radioactive waste that you don’t “make” is okay?
For example, oil drilling sludge that is very high in aqueous daughters of uranium and thorium… is okay? Coal ash that is radioactive is that okay?
Many many things are radioactive. Nuclear reactions are common. Why should we treat them as holy and off limits?
I’m not terribly worried about terrorists getting their hands on anything radioactive. There are many things I’d rank much higher on the list of things I’m worried a terrorist might get their hands on: An LNG tanker ship, a propane tanker truck, a large load of fertilizer, a commercial airliner.
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