I am writing this series for several reasons. First and foremost, I owe you, the taxpayer. Why? You paid.
I attended the College of William and Mary in Virginia – a state-funded university. I then spent four and a half years on active duty in training and then as a nuclear propulsion officer on USS Dace, a U.S. Navy Submarine. The Navy, with our tax dollars, converted me from an academic physicist to a practical nuclear engineer, and then gave me years of experience, both submerged and in a shipyard. After active duty, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission paid for my nuclear engineering PhD at Northwestern University, in exchange for my research there.
Degree in hand, I took a job at Argonne National Laboratory, a government-owned lab 10 miles east of Naperville. In my 44 years there, my work was entirely government-funded. I also spent 26 years (part-time) in the Navy Reserves, available for call-up, but being paid to keep my training current. It all adds up to a large investment in me. Other than the summer of 1977, I have never worked for any private company in the energy business.
Second, now that I’m retired both from Argonne and from the Navy, I’ve got a little time to devote to sharing some of what I learned since Vice Admiral Rickover interviewed me in 1970. As I’ve explained, some of this urge is motivated by gratitude, but alas, also by a great deal of misinformation about civil nuclear technology. (There is a fine book cataloging the history of this problem: “The Rise of Nuclear Fear,” by Spencer Weart.) This fear has harmed human health, the environment, our prosperity and our security.
I aim to describe, in laymen’s terms, the basics and explore the issues surrounding nuclear energy today. Sometimes, I will use numbers and graphs, but mercifully for most, no equations.
Nuclear energy can be released either by splitting atoms (fission), or by merging them (fusion). Simply put, it is exceedingly difficult to make fusion reactions happen on a usable scale, while fission is far easier. Accordingly, I won’t discuss fusion in this series – also because it is outside of my expertise.
Stay tuned for actual information.
