NOTES
INTRODUCTION
1.See Wernher Von Braun, “Why I Believe in Immortality,” in William Nichols, ed., The Third Book of Words to Live By (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1962), 119-20, reprinted at ThomasPynchon.com, www.thomaspynchon.com/gravitys-rainbow/extra/von-braun.html.
CHAPTER ONE: THE LOST BOOK OF THORIUM POWER
1.Robert Bryce, Power Hungry: The Myths of “Green” Energy & the Real Fuels of the Future (New York: Public Affairs, 2010), 7.
2.Ibid., 261.
3.Ibid., 264.
4.Isaac Sorensen, “History of Isaac Sorensen,” MendonUtah.net, http://www.mendonutah.net/history/personal_histories/sorensen_isaac.htm.
5.Joe Bonometti, email message to author, 2009.
6.Ivo Vaša, email message to author.
CHAPTER TWO: THE THUNDER ELEMENT
1.An isotope is simply a specific form of an element, determined by its atomic weight. Thorium-232 and thorium-239 have the same atomic number, 90, but different numbers of neutrons.
2.Susan Quinn, Marie Curie: A Life (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995), 144.
3.Ibid., 144.
4.Marie Curie, Comptes Rendus.
5.Quinn, Marie Curie, 165.
6.Ibid., 165.
7.David Wilson, Rutherford: Simple Genius (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1983), 136.
8.Ibid., 137.
9.Ibid., 141.
10.Richard Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1986), 43.
11.Ibid., 153.
12.Ibid., 43.
13.Peter Daniel Smith, Doomsday Men: The Real Dr. Strangelove and the Dream of the Superweapon (New York: Macmillan, 2007), 215.
14.Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb, 284.
15.Niels Bohr, “Resonance in Uranium and Thorium Disintegrations and the Phenomenon of Nuclear Fission,” Physical Review 55 (1939): 418-19.
16.Helen Hawkins, G. Allen Greg, and Gertrud Weiss Szilard, eds., Toward a Livable World: Leo Szilard and the Crusade for Nuclear Arms Control (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1987), xxix.
17.The cyclotron was named for its inventor, the Berkeley physicist Ernest Lawrence, who won the Nobel Prize in 1939.
18.The story of the Also missions is told in Samuel Goudsmit, Alsos (New York: Springer, 1996). Groves’ account of the affair is found in Leslie Groves, Now It Can Be Told: The Story of the Manhattan Project (Cambridge: Da Capo Press, 1983), 221.
CHAPTER THREE: THE ONLY SAFE REACTOR
1.Most accidents are cataloged on the website for the World Information Service on Energy’s Amsterdam-based Uranium Project.
2.Several plants begun in the mid-1970s did not come online until much later; construction on Watts Bar 1, in Tennessee, for example, began in 1972 but the plant did not begin commercial operation until 1996.
3.Philip Macoun, email message to author, 2011.
4.Gerald Grandey, speech to “The Future of Nuclear Energy,” symposium, Denver, Colorado.
5.John Byrne and Daniel Rich, The Politics of Energy Research and Development (Piscataway, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1986), 22.
6.“Passive safety” essentially means the plant has an automatic system that responds in case of an accident to avert disaster, such as auxiliary pumps that send water into the core if there is a loss of coolant. “Inherent safety” means that no disaster is possible due to the design of the reactor or the fuel it uses.
7.Many LFTR proponents, including Kirk Sorensen, believe that the best back-end for generating power from a LFTR is what’s known as a Brayton cycle, which drives a gas turbine rather than a steam turbine. Either will work, but gas turbines, particularly in combination with secondary exchangers to recycle waste heat, are typically more efficient, converting up to half of the reactor’s heat into electricity (some thorium advocates believe that with technological refinement that number can reach 70 percent). A typical steam system in a coal-fired plant is 45 to 49 percent efficient, and the most efficient uranium-fueled lightwater nuclear plants are only 33 to 38 percent efficient.
CHAPTER FOUR: RICKOVER AND WEINBERG
1.Norman Polmar and Thomas B. Allen, Rickover, Admiral of the Nuclear Fleet (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1982), 28.
2.Ibid., 75.
3.“The Man in Tempo 3,” Time, January 11, 1954, www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,819338-2,00.html.
4.Ibid., 102.
5.“Director Alvin Weinberg: Mr. ORNL,” Oak Ridge National Laboratory Review 25, nos. 3 and 4 (2002), www.ornl.gov/ornlhome/news_items/news_061020.shtml.
6.Alvin Weinberg, The First Nuclear Era: The Life & Times of a Technological Fixer (New York: American Institute of Physics, 1994), 61.
7.Ibid., 4.
8.Einstein wrote Roosevelt to apprise him of the early research on a uranium bomb and the desirability of securing supplies of uranium. Einstein also suggested some government coordination of the research and perhaps some assistance with funding.
9.“Obituary: Professor Eugene Wigner,” The Independent, January 13, 1995, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-professoreugene-wigner-1567808.html.
10.Richard Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1986), 398.
11.Weinberg, First Nuclear Era, 21.
12.Ibid., 25.
13.Winston Spencer Churchill, ed., Never Give In! The Best of Winston Churchill’s Speeches (New York: Hyperion, 2003), 46.
14.John Keegan, The Second World War (New York: Penguin, 2005), 275.
15.Hanson W. Baldwin, “The Atom Bomb and Future War,” Life, August 20, 1945.
16.Thomas Parrish, The Submarine: A History (New York: Viking Adult, 2004).
17.Polmar and Allen, Rickover, 111.
18.Weinberg, First Nuclear Era.
19.Leland Johnson, Oak Ridge National Laboratory: The First Fifty Years (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1994), 16.
20.Ibid., 26.
21.The Bell X-1 was built by Bell Aircraft, which also built dozens of B-29s, the bombers that dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
22.Weinberg, First Nuclear Era, 38.
23.James Carroll, House of War: The Pentagon & the Disastrous Rise of American Power (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2006), 113.
24.David Alan Rosenberg, “The Origins of Overkill: Nuclear Weapons and American Strategy, 1945-1960,” International Security 7 (Spring 1983), quoted in Richard Rhodes, Arsenals of Folly: The Making of the Nuclear Arms Race (New York: Vintage, 2007).
25.Clark Clifford, “American Relations with the Soviet Union” (also known as the Clifford-Elsey Report), September 24, 1946, Conway Files, Truman Papers, Harry S. Truman Library and Museum (available online).
26.Weinberg, First Nuclear Era, 67.
27.Ibid., 69.
28.Ibid., 65.
29.James Carroll, House of War, 29.
30.Alice L. Buck, A History of the Atomic Energy Commission (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Energy, 1983), 3.
CHAPTER FIVE: THE BIRTH OF NUCLEAR POWER
1.Norman Polmar and Thomas B. Allen, Rickover, Admiral of the Nuclear Fleet (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1982), 121.
2.Thomas Parrish, The Submarine: A History (New York: Viking Adult, 2004), 435.
3.Norman Polmar and Thomas B. Allen, Rickover: Father of the Nuclear Navy (Washington: Potomac Books, 2007), 25.
4.Robert Wallace, “Deluge of Honors for an Exasperating Admiral,” Life, September 8, 1958, 105.
5.James Mahaffey, Atomic Awakening: A New Look at the History and Future of Nuclear Power (New York: Pegasus Books, 2009), 185.
6.Wallace, “Deluge of Honors,” 109.
7.Ibid., 110.
8.Alvin Weinberg, The First Nuclear Era: The Life & Times of a Technological Fixer (New York: American Institute of Physics, 1994), 43.
9.Weinberg, First Nuclear Era, 51.
10.Ibid., 59.
11.Mahaffey, Atomic Awakening, 188.
12.Weinberg, First Nuclear Era, 59.
13.Ibid., 33.
14.Ibid., 33.
15.“Predicts Atom Will End Limit on Plane Range,” Chicago Tribune, October 11, 1945, 1.
16.Weinberg, First Nuclear Era, 95.
17.Mahaffey, Atomic Awakening.
18.Ibid., 284.
19.Weinberg, First Nuclear Era, 97.
20.Ibid., 100.
21.H. G. MacPherson, “The Molten Salt Reactor Adventure,” Nuclear Science & Engineering, no. 90 (1985): 374-80.
22.Todd Tucker, Atomic America: How a Deadly Explosion and a Feared Admiral Changed the Course of Nuclear History (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2009), 63.
23.MacPherson, “The Molten Salt Reactor Adventure.”
24.Ibid.
25.Alvin Weinberg, “Why Develop Molten Salt Breeders,” in ORNL-TM-1851, “Summary of the Objectives, the Design, and a Program of Development of Molten Salt Breeder Reactors” (Oak Ridge National Laboratory, June 12, 1967).
26.Polmar and Allen, Rickover, 145.
27.The bill was sponsored by the powerful Chet Holifield, whose role in determining the course of nuclear power in the United States would grow over the next several years, and Senator Albert Gore Sr., father of Vice President Al Gore, now a crusader against global climate change.
28.William Lanouette, “Nuclear Power, 1945-1985,” Wilson Quarterly 9, no. 5 (Winter 1985), 112.
29.Weinberg, First Nuclear Era, 127.
CHAPTER SIX: THE END OF NUCLEAR POWER
1.Alvin Weinberg, letter to W. F. Libby, January 19, 1959, Alvin Weinberg Papers, Oak Ridge Children’s Museum, Oak Ridge, Tennessee.
2.“History of Oak Ridge National Laboratory,” Oak Ridge National Laboratory Review 25, nos. 3 & 4 (2002): chap. 4, www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/rev25-34/chapter4.shtml.
3.Johnson and Schaffer, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, 97.
4.Alvin Weinberg, The First Nuclear Era: The Life & Times of a Technological Fixer (New York: American Institute of Physics, 1994), 108.
5.Ibid., 108.
6.Alvin Weinberg, “Power Breeding as a National Objective,” Nucleonics 16, no. 8 (1958).
7.Eugene Wigner, letter to W. F. Libby, January 2, 1959. (N.B.: This letter was in the Weinberg papers, which are owned by ORNL.)
8.Wigner to Libby.
9.Ibid.
10.“History of Oak Ridge.”
11.James S. Lay, Jr., “Statement Of Policy On Peaceful Uses Of Atomic Energy,” March 12, 1955, (Washington, D.C.: Office of the Historian, U.S. Department of State) http://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1955-57v20/d14.
12.Lanouette, “Atomic Energy, 1945-1985,” 110.
13.Weinberg, First Nuclear Era, 126.
14.Paul Haubenrceich, J. R Engel, “Experience with the Molten Salt Reactor Experiment,” Nuclear Applications & Technology vol. 8, no. 2 (February 1970): 118-137.
15.Charles Barton Jr., “Milton Shaw Part 1,” The Nuclear Green Revolution, February 21, 2008, http://nucleargreen.blogspot.com/2008/02/milton-shaw-part-i.html.
16.Bill Cabage and Carolyn Crause, “A Chat With Alvin Weinberg,” ORNL Review vol. 28, no. 1 (Fall 1995).
17.Charles Barton Jr., “Milton Shaw: Part 1.” The Nuclear Green Revolution, www.thorium1.com/thorium101/history.html.
18.Weinberg, First Nuclear Era, 159.
19.Ibid., 162.
20.Ibid., 158.
21.Richard D. Lyons, “Scientists Studying Nuclear Powered Agro-Industrial Complexes to Give Food and Jobs to Millions,” New York Times, March 10, 1968, 74.
22.John F. Kennedy, “Address at the University of Wyoming,” September 25, 1963, The American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=9433#axzz1i9Kp48Ki.
23.Weinberg, First Nuclear Era, 149.
24.“An Evaluation of the Molten Salt Breeder Reactor,” Atomic Energy Commission, Division of Reactor Development & Technology, September 1972, 51.
25.“An Evaluation of the Molten Salt Breeder Reactor,” 6.
26.Richard M. Nixon, “Special Message to the Congress on Energy Resources,” June 4, 1971, University of California Santa Barbara, American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=3038#ixzz1ituPN8O9.
27.Bureau of Mines Minerals Yearbook, U.S. Bureau of Mines, 1970, University of Wisconsin Ecology and Natural Resources Collection, http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/EcoNatRes/,1085.
28.R E. Hollingsworth, letter to Alvin Weinberg, January 26, 1973.
29.H. G. MacPherson, “The Molten Salt Reactor Adventure,” Nuclear Science And Engineering vol. 90 (1985): 374-380.
30.David LeBlanc, “Too Good to Leave on the Shelf,” Mechanical Engineering, May 2010, 32.
31.Alvin Weinberg, “Social Institutions and Nuclear Energy,” Science, July 7, 1972, 33.
32.Cabage and Crause, “A Chat with Alvin Weinberg.”
33.Jay E. Hakes, “25th Anniversary of the 1973 Oil Embargo,” U.S. Energy Information Administration, September 3, 1998, ftp://ftp.eia.doe.gov/international/25opec/anniversary11_2_98.html.
34.Paul Fine and Holly Fine (producers), “Admiral Rickover,” 60 Minutes, CBS News, December 9, 1984.
35.“The Fugitive Accuser,” Time, April 8, 1985, www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,965528,00.html.
36.Weinberg, First Nuclear Era, 281.
CHAPTER SEVEN: THE ASIAN NUCLEAR POWER RACE
1.Peter Lavoy, “The Enduring Effects of Atoms for Peace,” Arms Control Today, December 2003, www.armscontrol.org/act/2003_12/Lavoy.
2.“Nuclear Power in India,” World Nuclear Association, June 2011, www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf53.html.
3.Sandeep Dikshit, “Revive R&D in Thorium, Says India,” Hindu, March 9, 2010, www.thehindu.com/news/national/article221360.ece.
4.Ibid.
5.Anil Kakodkar, “Reversing the Logic of the Nuclear Deal,” The Hindu, July 3, 2011.
6.M. D. Nalapat, “UPA Sabotages India’s Thorium Energy Quest,” The Organiser, June 26, 2011.
7.Suvrat Raju, and M. V. Ramana, “Strange Love,” Open Magazine, May 14, 2011, www.openthemagazine.com/article/nation/strange-love.
8.Brahma Chellaney, “Can Corrupt India Handle Nuclear Safety?” Rediff News, March 18, 2011, http://www.rediff.com/news/column/india-corruption-nuclear-safety/20110318.htm.
9.M. V. Ramana, “India and Fast Breeder Reactors,” Science & Global Security 17 (2009): 54-67, www.princeton.edu/sgs/publications/sgs/archive/17-1-Ramana-India-FBR.pdf.
10.Ashwin Kumar and M. V. Ramana, “The Safety Inadequacies of India’s Fast Breeder Reactor,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, July 21, 2009, www.thebulletin.org/web-edition/features/the-safety-inadequacies-of-indias-fast-breeder-reactor.
11.Xu Qimin, “The Future of Nuclear Power Plant Security ‘Are Not Picky Eaters,’” Wen Hui Bao, January 26, 2011, http://whb.news365.com.cn/yw/201101/t20110126_2944856.htm.
12.Ibid.
13.I wrote about the U.S. rare earth mining company Molycorp in the December 12, 2011 issue of Fortune.
14.Cindy Hurst, “China’s Rare Earth Elements Industry: What Can the West Learn?” Institute for the Analysis of Global Security, March 2010, Potomac, MD.
15.Hurst, “China’s Rare Earth Industry,” 13.
16.Lan Lan and Zhang Qi, “China May Appeal WTO Ruling on Resources,” China Daily, July 7, 2011, www.cs-re.org.cn/en/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=64.
17.Ibid.
18.Karl G. Schneider Jr., “The Rare Earth Crisis—The Supply/Demand Situation for 2010-2015,” Material Matters 6, no. 2 (2011): 32-37, www.sigmaaldrich.com/etc/medialib/docs/Aldrich/Bulletin/1/material_matters_v6n2.Par.0001.File.tmp/material_matters_v6n2.pdf.
19.Malcolm Moore, “Leading Physicist Calls China’s Nuclear Programme ‘Rash and Unsafe,’” Telegraph (UK), June 1, 2011, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/8549384/Leading-physicist-calls-Chinas-nuclear-programme-rash-and-unsafe.html.
20.Xiegong Fischer, “China Seeks German Nuclear Know-how,” Deutsche Welle, June 6, 2011, http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,6542389,00.html.
CHAPTER EIGHT: NUCLEAR’S NEXT GENERATION
1.Leslie Allen, “If Nuclear Power Has a More Promising Future . . . Seth Grae Wants to Be the One Leading the Charge,” Washington Post, August 2, 2009, www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/24/AR2009072401847.html.
2.Alvin Weinberg, The First Nuclear Era: The Life & Times of a Technological Fixer (New York: American Institute of Physics, 1994), 133.
3.In February 2012 the Nuclear Regulatory Commission announced that it would award a combined construction and operation license to the Southern Co. to two AP1000 reactors at Southern’s Vogtle, Georgia, plant. The license was the first issued in the United States since 1978.
4.“Criticality for Fast Reactor,” World Nuclear News, July 22, 2010, http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/newsarticle.aspx?id=28097.
5.“Nuclear’s Next Generation,” Economist, December 10, 2009.
6.Weinberg, First Nuclear Era, 22.
7.“Report to the Full Commission,” Reactor and Fuel Cycle Technology Subcommittee, Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future, June 2011, iv.
8.“Report to the Full Commission,” 90.
9.Ibid., 34.
10.Daniel Yergin, The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991), 24.
11.The dating of the earliest uses of fire is the source of much dispute among archeologists. See, for example, W. Roebroeks, and P. Villa, “On the Earliest Evidence for Habitual Use of Fire in Europe,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 108, no. 13 (March 29, 2011): 5209-14.
12.“Plutonium,” World Nuclear Association, April 2009, www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf15.html.
13.Kirk Sorensen, “Does ‘Conventional’ Reprocessing Make Sense?” Energy From Thorium, April 29, 2006, http://energyfromthorium.com/2006/04/29/does-conventional-reprocessing-make-sense/.
14.The four points are adapted from Arjun Makhijani and Michele Boyd, “Thorium Fuel: No Panacea for Nuclear Power,” January 2009, paper prepared for the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research and Physicians for Social Responsibility.
CHAPTER NINE: THE BUSINESS CRUSADE
1.Anne Paine, “Different nuke plant fuel proposed,” The Tennessean, May 8, 2011.
2.The actual number of military reactors includes nuclear-powered naval vessels, which at any given time are in drydock for maintenance, being decommissioned, or otherwise inactive. This number includes eight research reactors operated by the U.S. Army.
3.Katie Fehrenbacher, “From Microsoft to Nuclear, 10 Questions for Nathan Myhrvold,” Earth2Tech, June 17, 2010, http://gigaom.com/cleantech/from-microsoft-to-nuclear-10-questions-for-nathan-myhrvold/.
4.E. Teller, M. Ishikawa, L. Wood, R Hyde, and J. Nuckolls, “Completely Automated Nuclear Reactors for a Long-term Operation II: Toward a Concept-Level Point-Design of a High-Temperature, Gas-Cooled Central Power Station System,” paper presented at the plenary session of the 1996 International Conference on Emerging Nuclear Energy Systems, Obninsk, Russian Federation, June 24-28, 1996.
5.“Baroness Worthington’s House of Lords maiden speech,” March 31, 2011, online video, Vimeo, http://vimeo.com/21912309.
6.Leo Hickman, “Sandbagged: Dealing a blow to carbon trading,” Guardian (UK), September 12, 2008, http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/sep/12/carbonemissions.carbonoffsetprojects.
7.Ibid.
8.Richard Martin, “The New Green Nuke,” Wired, December 2009, http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/12/ff_new_nukes/.
9.Jim Kennedy, email to the author, July 29, 2011.
CHAPTER TEN: WHAT WE MUST DO
1.Rutilius Namatianus, De Reditu Suo, translated by J. Wight Duff and Arnold M. Duff, Minor Latin Poets, Loeb Classical Library, vol. II, 753-829.
2.Joseph Tainter, The Collapse of Complex Societies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).
3.The general thrust of the first sections of this chapter, and some of the historical information, come from a talk given by Ugo Bardi at the “Peak Summit” in Alcatraz, Italy, on June 27, 2009, entitled “Peak Civilization.” The talk was transcribed by Bardi and posted online on July 22, 2009, by Energy Bulletin: http://www.energybulletin.net/node/50025.
4.Thomas Homer-Dixon, The Upside of Down: Catastrophe, Creativity, and the Renewal of Civilization (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 2006).
5.Ibid.
6.The Pneumatics of Hero of Alexandria, trans. Bennet Woodcroft (London: Taylor Walton & Maberly, 1851), http://www.history.rochester.edu/steam/hero/.
7.Barbara Tuchman, The March of Folly (New York: Ballantine, 1984), 7.
8.Robin Cowan, “Nuclear Power Reactors: A Study in Technological Lock-in,” Journal of Economic History 50, no. 3 (September 1990).
9.William Langewiesche, The Outlaw Sea (New York: North Point Press, 2004), 101.
10.William Lanouette, “Nuclear Power in America,” Wilson Quarterly vol. 9, no. 5 (Winter 1985): 110.
11.Ibid., 106.
12.Peter Bernstein, Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1996), 15.
13.Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (New York: Random House, 2010), xxii.
14.Jon Gertner, “Does America Need Manufacturing?” New York Times Magazine, August 24, 2011.
15.Vaclav Smil, “The Manufacturing of Decline,” Breakthrough Journal, July 2011.
16.Kari Lydersen, “War Costing $720 Million Each Day, Group Says,” Washington Post, September 21, 2007.
17.“ICF International Integrated Energy Outlook Predicts Up to 40 GW of Coal Plant Retirements in the Next Two Decades,” company press release, October 10, 2011, http://www.icfi.com/news/2011/third-quarter-2011-integrated-energy-outlook.
18.Bradford DeLong and Stephen Cohen, The End of Influence: What Happens When Other Countries Have the Money (New York: Basic Books, 2010).