This week’s column is dedicated to the memory of my sister-in-law, Carolyn Marie Brich, who passed away May 28, 2009, following a protracted and courageous battle against an incurable cancer.
Who’s To Blame?
Of all the nations that have existed on earth none have equaled the United States. The freedom and safety provided by the U.S. drew dozens of the world’s top physicists from Europe. Escaping Nazi Germany, fascist Italy, Hungary and Romania this list included Enrico Fermi, Leo Szilard, Albert Einstein and many others. Without the Jewish theoretical physicists synergistically working along with Yankee ingenuity and utilizing America’s vast resources, the nuclear age might never have been born. Some would argue that would have been a good thing and strive today to return the U.S. to its pre-nuclear subsistence level existence. If, however, we the people allow that to happen and turn our collective backs on the one power source that has virtually unlimited potential, then the future will be predictable, stale and dangerous.
Without nuclear power’s clean, abundant, inexpensive, reliable and safe electricity the engines of commerce will grind to a halt as fossil fuels run dry, renewables falter and synthetics fail to keep pace. America’s future will fade away like a Northern Great Plains sunset. However, unlike the daily Great Plains keystone events, there will be no sunrise the following morning, only darkness – absolute, complete, total.
Besides generating electricity, nuclear energy can be harnessed for a variety of other applications including the creation of tailor made radioisotopes to treat cancer. Combining a high LET short lived alpha isotope with a metabolically-specific carrier molecule a smart bullet results. Like a heat-seeking missile the smart bullet concentrates in the tumor irradiating the malignant cells from the inside out with high energy alpha particles, preserving the healthy cells outside the tumor. To create these isotopes requires a neutron source of specific energies. It’s just a matter of physics: Match the neutron flux with the target cross section and fashion a radioisotope capable of destroying any tumor cell. How perfect.
Unfortunately, the U.S. Department of Energy killed America’s last remaining potential source of life-giving neutrons when it eliminated the Fast Flux Test Facility a few years ago. The FFTF, a liquid metal fast neutron research reactor commissioned by the Atomic Energy Commission in 1965 began operating in 1982 and was officially terminated in 2002 after befalling the fate of all Congressional programs whose mission ceases. No mission; no funding.
The world’s most advanced nuclear test reactor, the FFTF, operated for only a fraction of its design life as proliferation fears caused then President Jimmy Carter to uphold former President Gerald Ford’s decision to halt spent fuel reprocessing thus dooming the burgeoning breeder reactor program. Without a breeder reactor program FFTF wasn’t needed, despite its ability to create medical isotopes in its variable neutron flux. As America’s drive toward a future powered by nuclear energy waned, federal nuclear R&D dollars dried up as well. The nation that invented the nuclear power reactor had gotten cold feet just when things were getting interesting. Now, as they say, the rest is history.
So, who’s to blame for the nuclear hysteria that swept America during the late ‘70s and early ‘80s? Do we blame Jane Fonda for her movie China Syndrome? Do we blame the media’s hype of the Three Mile Island accident? Do we blame M.U.S.E activists like Jackson Browne and Bonnie Rait? Do we blame the small but very vocal minority of anti-nuclear activists who masquerade as environmentalists? Do we blame Congress for not funding the necessary programs to allow America to continue leading the world in nuclear R&D? Or, do we blame ourselves for not seeing and reacting to the formation of the perfect storm that descended on nuclear power, nearly driving it into extinction?
With the current nuclear resurgence gaining strength we have another chance, perhaps our last, to make things right and bring the potential of the atom to fruition. This would create a nuclear nirvana, allowing all people to peacefully coexist free from fear of untreatable cancers as well as unstable regimes while living lives of meaning and purpose as clean, abundant, inexpensive, safe, and reliable electricity powers their world far into the future.
Carolyn Marie Brich
July 11, 1950 – May 28, 2009
May She Rest In Peace
About Randy Brich
Randy graduated from South Dakota State University in 1978 with a M.S. in Biology. After developing the State of South Dakota’s environmental radiological monitoring program, he became a Health Physicist with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, eventually transferring to the Department of Energy where he specialized in environmental monitoring, worker protection, waste cleanup and systems biology. Later in his career he published a multi-sport adventure guide book and became a regular contributor to The Entertainer Newspaper’s Great Outdoor section.
Since then he has retired from the federal government and, after taking time out to build an energy efficient house near the Missouri River, has formed Diamond B Communications LLC. Diamond B Communications LLC uses a multimedia approach to explain complex energy resource issues to technical and non-technical audiences. He also guides for Dakota Bike Tours, the Relaxed Adventure Company, offering tours of the Badlands National Park, the Black Hills and Devils Tower National Monument.
If you have questions, comments, or know of a book that you think Randy should review Email Randy Brich>> randy@nuclearstreet.com