I am not a neutral participant when it comes to atomic energy. My comments on the subject are rather easy to find; I started sharing them on the Internet in 1990. In essence, my view is that nuclear fission is the most important discovery of the 20th century, with the potential for more positive impact on human prosperity than the automobile, air travel, television, personal computers, or the Internet. On my personal scale of important technologies, it ranks right next to fire.

Few people share that opinion, but I am used to people thinking of me as a bit crazy. Even nut cases can have a point or two that might be worth considering.

Before 1934, no one knew that energy could be extracted using a self-sustaining chain reaction to break heavy metals into smaller elements. Lise Mitner first used the term "fission" to describe the phenomenon in 1939. The first chain reaction took place in a simple pile at room temperature in Chicago on December 2, 1942. Less than two decades later, real machines existed that could power a large ship or a small city by consuming only a few ounces of material each day.

In 2003, more electricity was produced in the United States using nuclear fission than was produced by all US electrical power plants in 1960. (763 terawatt-hours vs 755 terawatt hours according to annual statistics from the Energy Information Agency) Even though there have been no new nuclear plants ordered since 1973, incremental improvements in existing reactors have enabled fission heated plants to nearly double their annual production during the last 25 years.

In addition, all US submarines and more than 80% of American aircraft carriers have engines that use uranium instead of oil. Much of Europe and parts of Asia have also built a number of power plants heated with atomic fission, resulting in a total current uranium energy production (not including naval applications) equal to 12 million barrels of oil per day.

In other words, uranium fission has successfully captured large and profitable markets from fossil fuel combustion, which has dominated energy markets for more than 150 years. In doing so, it temporarily shifted the supply-demand balance in favor of the buyers and played a large role in a long period of low energy prices that lasted from approximately 1986 through 2000. The only fossil fuel alternative with similar success at gaining market share from fossil fuel is hydroelectric power - and it has no technical ability to directly power vessels at sea or cities hundreds of miles away from a source of falling water.

Some people claim that if we simply provided as much money for solar and wind as we have for fission, that their difficulties would be overcome. They seem to ignore the obvious fact that humans have always known that the wind and the sun are sources of energy that can be captured. People began using fire long ago to overcome the limitations imposed by relying on these weather dependent energy sources. Little has changed with regard to the considerations that encouraged this development many thousands of years ago.

Market successes for nuclear fission have come in spite of numerous efforts to slow down the development of nuclear energy production. The anti-nuclear industry has provided full time employment to a virtual army of detractors for more than 40 years. Though the detractors often claim to be concerned about the environment, many of them have proven by their actions that they have little or no interest in cleaning up the air or water. They completely discount the fact that nuclear fission does not produce any air pollution at all.

Their real interest seems to be to slow down nuclear power in order to provide support for clean coal, natural gas, biomass, wind or solar power generation. Interestingly enough, many nuclear power detractors also fight hard to slow down hydroelectric dam construction and advocate the removal of existing dams using language with environmental connotations.

Nuclear fission has the very real potential to dominate the energy markets. It has proven that it can cheaply power cities and push ships. In the future it may even be able to propel commercial aircraft, trains and large trucks. The disruption that fission power expansion will cause is quite real and scares people whose capital and careers are invested in fossil fuel discovery, production, distribution, and consumption.

The shift in power and wealth away from the privileged people that currently lead a number of countries - including America - will be significant. Of course, those people understand the laws of supply and demand and work diligently to control them in their own favor. They know that an almost unlimited, inexpensive new energy source will lower the price that people are willing to pay for all other sources of energy. Their support for the anti-nuclear industry is generous and reliable.

When energy consumers realize that the real opposition to nuclear energy developments comes from existing energy producers, their attitude and support for development will change. Fortunately, there are far more consumers than producers, they just need some information to arouse their competitive fire.

In many discussions involving nuclear energy, one of the participants will attempt to halt debate with a comment like "What about Three Mile Island and Chernobyl?" The tone and the context of the question normally indicate that the questioner does not expect an answer, instead he expects his opposition to concede.

However, the question itself is a great comment in support of nuclear power. Imagine - almost all educated people can name the only real accidents experienced by a very large industry. One of them occurred in 1979 while Jimmy Carter was still President and the other one occurred in 1986 and is thought to have contributed to the fall of the Berlin Wall.

When someone asks me that question after indicating that they support natural gas power, I have begun responding with "What about Ghislenghien?" Of course, I get a blank look, but in July 2004, that little village in Belgium was the site of a natural gas pipeline explosion that killed at least 20 bystanders and severely injured more than 100, far more than the zero at TMI and on approximately the same scale as the 31 at Chernobyl. Then I say "What about 12/23?" and get another blank stare. On that date in 2003, a gas well in rural China blew out. The resulting deadly gas cloud killed more than 250 local people and caused more than 9,000 people to be hospitalized with lung damage. No one has any idea what the long-term health effects will be on the innocent population.

The point is that accidents in nuclear plants - while obviously possible - are so rare that people remember them for decades. In contrast, accidents in the fossil industry are so common that they do not get enough attention in the press to become memorable for even a very short period of time. I named two large, very recent accidents, but space does not allow me to list all of the deadly fossil fuel related accidents for even the past half dozen years. According to the US Bureau of Mines, more than 100,000 people have died in the American coal industry during the past 100 years. The situation is analogous to the old journalism adage - dog bites man is not much of a story, but man bites dog is unusual enough to become a headline.

Even the "waste" that gets so much attention is more of an opportunity than a problem. First of all, it is a very manageable problem. All of the waste is carefully stored and accounted for in highly regulated and licensed containers. The total mass of the spent nuclear fuel in the United States is roughly equal to the mass of the waste products released directly to the environment by a moderately sized coal fired power plant in a single day. If we set aside a land area the size of a football stadium and its parking lot, we could store the high level waste that would be generated by powering the entire country for a few centuries.

That statement ignores the fact that the "waste" represents an incredible source of energy. Current nuclear plants only use about 4% of the potential energy of their fuel. With a little creative engineering, using techniques that are already proven - that portion can be increased by an order of magnitude or more. If the energy content of the waste is put to use, the stadium-sized lot will probably never fill up.

In addition, fission byproducts can be put to use in many creative ways, including heat sources for long life batteries and as sources of radiation for sterilization devices. The byproducts have proven to be useful in treating many diseases; some cutting edge research is even indicating that they can be effectively used to help prevent certain kinds of illness including cancer and heart conditions.

When I have the chance to get through all of the above arguments, I often find that my opponent reluctantly agrees that nuclear power has some pretty favorable characteristics, but they then state that they still do not believe my rosy predictions because "You will have a hard time changing public opinion. Why don't you use your expertise to solve some of the problems that slow the development of popular alternative energies like wind or solar power?"

I grant them the fact that overcoming public opinion is a challenge. I disagree with the assertion, however, that nuclear power is unpopular. Many recent studies show otherwise. In addition, there is a lot more potential for successfully changing people's minds about nuclear power than in overcoming the basic physical or chemical laws that limit the ability of solar, wind or biomass to reliably supply enough energy to replace the fossil fuels that are rapidly being depleted. God's laws are a lot harder to change than man's laws.

I like living an American lifestyle with its accompanying energy consumption. When nuclear fission is freed from the human imposed constraints that limit its natural growth, there is enough energy available to allow everyone the opportunity to share in this lifestyle. We are at an equivalent stage in the development of atomic energy as the computer industry was in the early 1960s when mainframes dominated the market and Moore's law had not yet been formulated.

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