Few American writers on current affairs can match Irving Kristol in erudition, wisdom, insight, or even sheer beauty of language. But a month ago, he published an essay on "Nuclear Disturbances." Ouch! Prof. Kristol is, of course, too smart to be taken in by gimmicks like the UCS-Nader petition ("scientists . . . engaged in echoing an . . . ideology which they have learned not from their sciences, but from their students"). But he seems to have fallen victim to some nuclear myths nevertheless. Perhaps he believes that nuclear explosions could occur in nuclear plants and that a major disaster in such a plant would result in hundreds of bodies piled up in the streets. Both is non-science fiction. To induce an explosive nuclear reaction in 3% enriched uranium is not improbable, it is absolutely impossible for as long as the laws of physics stand. And a major disaster could indeed cost hundreds of lives, if a number of improbable events occurred after the disaster, but these deaths (by cancer) would be distributed over several decades and would only be statistically detectable.
Prof. Kristol does not explicitly contradict this, but he "thinks the unthinkable" and asks about the consequences of civil strife, perhaps even war, in a landscape thickly populated with nuclear reactors.
OK, so we thought about it and grew scared by what could happen near oil and gas storage facilities. We know of one place (which we are reluctant to reveal) where shooting up an oil storage tank could result in tens of thousands of dead. The place that would probably be safer than any other would be the containment building of a nuclear reactor. It is made of four feet thick, heavily reinforced concrete that will withstand a jet airliner crashing into it. It is, in fact, not unlike the German U-boat pens on the Fench coast that the Allies failed to crack with repeated savage bombing. The warring parties would have to use some very special artillery to shoot a hole into it. They would then be faced with a 450-ton massive steel vessel encasing the reactor itself.
But could a kamikaze commando storm the plant and blow up the reactor or its cooling system from the inside? Yes, though the death toll would not be as large as other methods available to them. But above all, the deaths would be delayed for many years, so what would be the point?
We still highly recommend Irving Kristol's brilliant essays on government, liberty, welfare, foreign policy, urban affairs, sociology, environment, the press, and a hundred other subjects. But nuclear power? Si tacuisses, philosophus mansisses, which is Latin for "Didja hefta blow it?"
|
|
Vol. 3, No. 2
Newsletter: Access to Energy Newsletter Archive Volume: Volume 3 Issue/No.: Vol. 3, No. 2 Date: October 01, 1975 10:31 AM Title: Oil and Paper
Copyright © 2004 - Access to Energy Newsletter Archive
|