Now, Petr Beckmann proposes to repeat the Michelson-Morley experiment in this new system within the Earth. But the velocities are 100 times smaller, and because there is a compensation of going forward and going backward, the measurement has to be made 10,000 times (100 2 times) more accurate. My point is that there has been developed in the United States, a system called GPS, Global Positioning System, which uses a number of satellites which send out signals at prearranged times. If I, sitting in an airplane, want to know precisely where I am, I will get these signals with a delay and then by triangulation I can find out where I am. If the signal moves always with light velocity, that would give results that agree with the present design. If the signal moves with a velocity that is a little different from light velocity, relative to the Earth's surface (as suggested by Petr's theory) that would give interesting corrections. So, depending on the detailed discussion of special relativity, at least, we should be prepared to accept or reject "Einstein Plus Two." My fellow physicists on the whole have been very wrong in political matters. In the particular field in which they are working, I a am pretty sure they are right, and they know what they are talking about. But don't believe me. Just be careful in that respect.
Now, let me turn to something that is much more constructive. It is in the line of what I believe should be done. We could make a big contribution in the sense in which Access To Energy is written and in the sense in which you and I would like to see technology develop.
There is a problem with energy, a real problem. Carbon dioxide is the wrong scare. But in the middle of the next century, there are apt to be shortages in fossil fuels. Perhaps a lot more natural gas will be found on the continental slope. But we have available to us nuclear energy which is inexhaustible. Now don't tell me that nothing is inexhaustible, because I know it. By inexhaustible, I mean that if you use the energy from thorium, a very abundant material, particularly in China, in the United States, in Brazil, in India, it will last for a million years, and that is a period in which many other things can change. A million years is a good approximation to "forever," because it's longer than the time during which Homo Sapiens have existed.
But there are two big objections: one I think quite unreal, the other sort of real. Nuclear reactors are unsafe, and nuclear reactors can add to the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Well, the lack of safety I don't deny, but I say that nuclear reactors are at any rate safer than coal plants or hydroelectric plants. Where there have been accidents, like Three Mile Island or Chernobyl, they have been due to human error. Eliminate the human, eliminate the fool, and there indeed you have something that is foolproof. But as long as the fool is there, the proof can never be complete.
The second point, in a way, is more important. How can we prevent misuse of nuclear reactors and proliferation of weapons? We could separate the reactors and human beings. We could load the reactor, and run it without reloading for 30 years. Put the whole thing underground. When the reactor has served long enough so that its components no longer can be considered quite reliable, we will let it melt down into a lump, that will never again be approached by humans. The whole thing may be 300 feet underground. At such depth, we have performed in Nevada many nuclear explosions, and we have found out that even at these much higher activities, radioactivity is contained.
How do I do all of this? Let us put the reactor underground, have a coolant that communicates to surface, and that has to be safeguarded so that no radioactivity can come to the surface. How do I regulate it? The reactor should work more effectively at lower temperatures and less effectively at higher temperatures. Include nuclei which absorb neutrons and tend to interrupt the chain reaction, but absorb neutrons only of very definite energies. Those few neutrons which happen to have that energy win be completely absorbed but neutrons at other energies will not be absorbed. If you raise the temperature, the nuclei will move more rapidly. They will absorb neutrons of other energies as well. So they will be more effective in stopping the chain reaction. That is a well-known technique. There are reactors of that kind, the TRIGA reactor, some modifications of the High Temperature Gas Cooled (HTGC) reactor are examples. Higher temperatures can stop them.
One may then demand more energy by extracting more heat from the coolant. The reactor will run cooler and give more energy. You demand less energy, the reactor will run cooler and will produce less energy. You make it run hot enough, and it will produce no energy. Actually, it will continue to produce some energy because a lot of material has become radioactive, and that produces some heat. When the chain reaction stops, this amounts to a few percent of the full effectiveness of the reactor. Later, it will slowly become less. Once the reactor has been going, it remains a heat source for a long time. So, for the 30 years you have to have your coolant going at a lower rate or at a higher rate. But this is all you are doing: extracting the maximum or the minimum energy which will differ maybe by a factor of 20.
After the reactor has been run long enough so you no longer trust it, you no longer extract heat, close the exits, let the reactor melt down. Try to involve in the melt-down some material like tungsten—that is hard to melt. It melts at very high temperatures, then trickles down into the loose Earth surrounding the reactor. This will make a lump that might be extremely resistant to human efforts at getting close to it. One may be able to show that it will also resist an earthquake. The radioactivity cannot be ejected by anything, except possibly a volcanic eruption at that precise spot or a meteorite which hits just at that point. I'm not saying it's absolutely safe, but I think it's obviously safe as a method of waste-disposal.
Now, where do you get all the material that should go into these reactors? There's a big problem what to do with the fissionable materials from nuclear explosives that are now being dismantled. The answer is: put them into the reactors. I don't want them to serve just for a few years. I want each of them to work without refueling for 30 years. You add a readily available material, thorium which is quite abundant. Thorium will absorb neutrons and turn itself into a very effective supporter of a chain reaction uranium 233.
That material is associated with a strong gamma ray emitter. For this reason, people did not like it because it was hard to handle. Now we don't want to handle it, we want to leave it underground. Anything that makes things harder to handle for possible further use as an explosive, is welcome.
We have an energy problem, particularly if you consider all of the Third World that needs energy, whose people to an increasing extent, are congregating into big cities: Mexico City--24 million, Tehran--14 million. There are more than a dozen in the Third World with populations over five million.
Reactors producing electricity in those places do not even need a substantial distribution system. I think such reactors would be most useful because they do not need special handling knowledge, are not approachable, and are not capable of being misused as a source of nuclear weapons (except if you have the very high technology of remote mining).
Now I want to conclude by objecting to everything I have said about reactors. Petr Beckmann told us that the radioactive materials are very useful to find out what's wrong with us. Do we throw away all this material? I say right now we want to throw it away. In fact, I'm glad to pay this price if that is the only way that I can get reactors at all. But, assume we have done all that. In 500 or a thousand years, most of the radioactivity would decay, very little of it would remain. We need not wait for centuries. In 100 years, we may have found out a lot more about the use of the isotopes. In 100 years, we may find out a great deal how to mine these old reactors and how to use the radioactivity.
Let us think about development far in the future. How much more we shall know at that time about biology, about the uses of these substances. We don't throw these substances away, we leave them in places where for the time being we make them inaccessible. Their roles, their uses, their accessibility will change with time. We can assure everybody that people will not be able to get at these radioactivities unless they are much more clever than we are now. And then let us go out on a limb and try to imagine a world where more knowledge will also be connected with better behavior. If we believe that much, then we can fight the battle for more technology with confidence.
I believe that we should be honest, that truth is an elusive thing, that safety is never complete, but that people are educable in every sense of the word. If that is valid, then our fight to defend technology will succeed.
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Vol. 21, No. 2
Newsletter: Access to Energy Newsletter Archive Volume: Issues Issue/No.: Vol. 21, No. 2 Date: October 01, 1993 04:47 PM Title: Dr. Petr Beckmann
Copyright © 2004 - Access to Energy Newsletter Archive
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