Nuclear Options
2015; Project HOPE; Volume: 34; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1377/hlthaff.2015.0159
ISSN2694-233X
Autores Tópico(s)Science, Research, and Medicine
ResumoBook Review Health AffairsVol. 34, No. 4: Cost & Quality Of Cancer Care Nuclear OptionsMatthew L. Wald Affiliations Matthew L. Wald ( [email protected] ) is a journalist specializing in energy and technology. He has written extensively on nuclear power and nuclear weapons for the New York Times, Scientific American, and other publications. PUBLISHED:April 2015Free Accesshttps://doi.org/10.1377/hlthaff.2015.0159AboutSectionsView PDFPermissions ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmail ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack CitationsPermissionsDownload Exhibits TOPICSWilhelm Röntgen, the discoverer of a new kind of electromagnetic radiation, known as x-rays, has been dead for nearly a century and is beyond most living memory, but a few Americans do recall the early exuberances of the atomic age, such as the shoe-store fluoroscope, a powerful machine that let shoppers see their toe bones inside of shoes. More recall later events in the nuclear age: the awe of the atomic bomb, the panic after the partial nuclear meltdown at Three Mile Island in 1979, and the invasion of Iraq in 2003 in search of a nonexistent nuclear weapons program. Craig Nelson’s The Age of Radiance is a lively tour of the atomic age, from Röntgen’s “mysterious and alarming” discovery of x-rays in 1895, to details of Marie Curie’s sex life, and the stumbling discovery of fission, first recognized by physicist Lise Meitner, exiled from Germany because she had two Jewish grandparents. Otto Hahn, a colleague of Meitner’s, quickly grabbed credit for the discovery, Nelson records. This is a grittier history of science than most. Nelson writes that Irene Joliot-Curie, Marie’s daughter and intellectual heir, on learning that someone had beaten her to the key discovery that bombarding uranium with neutrons was fissioning them, raged at her husband, “We’ve been such dumb assholes.” Nelson, a prolific writer of histories and biographies, has a different take than some of the other prominent recountings of the atomic age, such as Richard Rhodes’s The Making of the Atomic Bomb . Nelson thinks the age is over. Nuclear weapons have been used only twice in combat, at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, despite the expenditure of trillions of dollars, and are unlikely to be used again, he posits. And after the accidents at Chernobyl (1986) and Fukushima (2011), nuclear electricity is in decline. “The atomic utility industry and its government affiliates have done such a poor job of both educating the general public and managing their crises that they will be driven out of business,” he writes. “How many parents want a burning radioactive pile anywhere near their young children? Unless some dramatic technological breakthroughs completely rework public opinion…eventually, nuclear power will become so insignificant that it will be essentially meaningless.” This is so, he argues, even though the negative health impact of nuclear power, even counting the aforementioned catastrophes, is minuscule compared to competing ways of making electricity, especially coal. And the benefits of nuclear medicine, he writes, are substantial. Electricity itself, American audiences tend to forget, is the precursor of public health, required for clean air and water, fresh food year round, and vaccines that require refrigeration. Much of the rest of the world has not forgotten this; in a few places it has yet to be learned. Nearly every method of producing electricity, including nuclear power, will have its day in those places.Nelson might not be correct about what makes technologies rise and fall. The age of ocean liners didn’t end because the Titanic sank, for example. It ended because of the commercialization of the jet. Civilian nuclear power can survive Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima if it keeps its nose clean. Before Fukushima, US industry experts had been saying that favorable attitudes toward nuclear ran stronger among the young, those for whom Three Mile Island was ancient history.What is closing nuclear plants now is a revolution in a competing technology: fracking and cheap natural gas. In 2025 or 2030 it might be wind or solar energy—or maybe fast reactors, thorium reactors, lead-cooled reactors, or something barely on the horizon today. While The Age of Radiance is a colorful accounting of the unlocking of atomic secrets, it does not look ahead in technological or strategic terms. Nuclear power has not reached its technical apogee, any more than has the jet. Possibly the nuclear bomb’s role is still evolving. Yes, its use was unlikely in the era of the Soviet-US standoff, but in a conflict on the Indian subcontinent or in the Middle East, other thinking might prevail. An engineer or physicist would find other faults with the book, as the finer points seem to have eluded the author. Abdul Qadeer Khan, who led Pakistan to its first bomb using designs he stole from a European enrichment company, is the “Johnny Appleseed of rogue-state plutonium,” Nelson declares, but Khan’s expertise was uranium, not plutonium. Fukushima’s reactors melted down because the tsunami swamped the emergency batteries, he writes. Yes, that happened, but the reactors were already doomed by the loss of the emergency diesels and switchgear.Yet his thrust is toward a basic truth of society’s approach to science and technology, with an insight borrowed from Marie Curie: “Now is the time to understand more, so that we fear less.” Loading Comments... Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus. DetailsExhibitsReferencesRelated Article Metrics History Published online 1 April 2015 Information Project HOPE—The People-to-People Health Foundation, Inc. PDF download
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