THE PACER

As a matter of fact, a similar project for generating civilian electric power was being worked on in the Los Alamos Scientific Labs, and coincidentally or not, it bore the name "Pacer." It called for the detonation of a nuclear bomb every 12 hours deep underground. The heat would have turned water pumped down from the surface into steam, which would have collected in the underground cavity, from where it would be piped to a (fairly) conventional power plant on the surface. There was nothing wrong with this idea, but the project was abandoned in the early 70's for PR reasons¾retreat before public hysteria. People were horrified by the detonation of two nuclear bombs per day; it never occurred to them that this was the exact same amount of energy they would have used up by motors, light bulbs, clothes driers, and juke boxes in the service area of the plant.

But Pacer is not the end of the problem. It may produce enough energy, but that energy must be accumulated (stored) and released into the beam-forming mechanism in less than a microsecond¾and vot i problema, which is Russian for "that's the problem."

[More: "Particle-beam weapons" by J. Parmentola and K. Tsipis, Scientif. Amer., Apr. 79, is the type of article giving all kinds of technical reasons "why it can't be done," though it does not contain the usual supplement "and let's not irritate the Soviets, anyway." However, both authors belong to the self-deterrence group at MIT which includes Bernard T. Feld, editor of the notorious Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, a virulently anti-defense, anti-industry, anti-nuclear propaganda monthly catering mainly to the most affluent sections of the radical-liberal fashion followers. Tsipis shares platforms with Helen Caldicott in lectures on "The Threat of Nuclear War." For more solid information, see "Particle-beam weapons: a controversy," IEEE Spectrum, June 79; "Killer Particle Beams," IEEE Spectrum, Sept. 81; "Particle beams, laser weapons," Aviation Week & Space Technology, 28 Jul. and 4 Aug. 81.¾ "Washington's push for anti-missiles," Fortune, 19 Oct. 81, gives some political background, but little technical information. Among the reports on US military inferiority, we recommend Surrendering America: A Decade of Unilateral Disarmament by J. Finnerty, $2 from Amer. Inst. Econ. Resrch., Gt.