Atomic Insights

Atomic energy technology, politics, and perceptions from a nuclear energy insider who served as a US nuclear submarine engineer officer

recycling

The Atomic Show #122 – Steven Chu – Confirmation Hearings for Secretary of Energy

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Steven Chu is a well respected scientist, national laboratory manager and biofuels focused researcher. He has been nominated by President-elect Barack Obama to be the Secretary of Energy, a position that puts him in charge of approximately 30,000 people and an annual budget of approximately $25 billion. As Dr. Chu stated in his testimony, the US Department of Energy employs more physical scientists than any other single organization in the country.

On this episode of The Atomic Show, I have cut in audio clips from the confirmation hearing that the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee held to hear testimony from Dr. Chu about his priorities, how he would manage his department and the challenges that it faces in addressing climate change, energy security, and environmental restoration for its sprawling collection of research and development facilities.

I have a great deal of respect for Dr. Chu and for his ordered way of thinking, but I do have some concerns that he is too focused on a scientific approach to problem solving rather than an engineering one.

Let me explain. Though many people mentally link science and engineering, there is a fundamental difference in philosophy between the practitioners of the two important fields. Scientists like to study and find answers to questions that no one has yet solved. Engineers like to design and make things using the knowledge they can find in textbooks, graphs and reference material along with the practical knowledge that they can gain from actually engaging in their craft.

They know that they do not have a perfect knowledge of the universe, but they also know that their knowledge is good enough to create many amazing things. If they find a hard roadblock during the creation process, they are reasonably confident that they will find a way around the obstacle. Both science and engineering are important disciplines, but there is a time and a place for each to have primary influence. When it comes to addressing the world’s energy, climate and water supply challenges, there is no doubt that it is mainly an engineering problem, not a science project.

Unfortunately, Dr. Chu’s approach to the problem seems more influenced by his scientific bent than informed by a strong understanding of what is possible TODAY. His comments during the hearing lead me to believe that he does not yet have a good grasp of the approach needed to empower the people who ALREADY know how to reduce pollution, make energy available and affordable, and who know how to use that energy to reduce supply challenges for other important commodities like water and food.

As you listen to the Senators’ questions, Dr. Chu’s response and my interspersed commentary, you will realize just why I have more concerns about the department’s priorities and initial actions than does the Nuclear Energy Institute. There are a number of things we could be doing now, that do not necessarily involve a great deal of expenditure by the American taxpayers to simply encourage and enable proceeding with due haste to building and operating a new generation of devices that use fission instead of chemical combustion to provide an almost unlimited amount of emission free, reliable, energy.

Fission is not just an option, it is an imperative that has the potential to dramatically improve the lives of everyone on the planet – except those who have been unable to read the handwriting on the wall and continue to depend on selling fossil fuels at elevated prices to enable them to remain powerful and secure.

I know this is a minority view that would not be popular in the Senate committee with all of its competing interests – that is why I am a writer, a podcaster and an analyst, not a politician.

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The Atomic Show #119 – Clinton Bastin, Used Fuel Recycling Expert With 42 Years of Experience

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Clinton Bastin is an atomic pioneer who worked on used fuel recycling for most of his 42 year career. He has some strong opinions to share about related technologies.

Clinton Bastin is an atomic pioneer who worked on used fuel recycling for most of his 42 year career. He recently published We Need to Reprocess Spent Nuclear Fuel, and We Can Do It Safely, At Reasonable Cost (924 kB PDF). After I read that detailed opinion piece, with its critique of the Integral Fast Reactor (IFR) and its comparisons between projects that have worked consistently with those that have not, I got in touch and began an email dialog.

After several exchanges, I had to get Clinton on the show to share some of his vast knowledge. It is a true privilege to be able to talk with a pioneer in an industry that has been as important to the world as atomic fission; especially in an specialized area that has gained considerable political attention.

As a teaser, I want to share an recent op-ed that Clinton wrote and submitted to the New York Times. It was not published there, but these days being overlooked by the major media does not mean that the voice or the opinion is silenced.

As a long-time reader of The New York Times, chemical engineer and nuclear scientist for the Department of Energy and its predecessors for 42 years, and President of a DOE Headquarters Employees’ Union from 1983 through 1996, I am dismayed that The Times never explains to its readers that the DOE:

– has spent about one trillion dollars and failed to address the energy challenges that were the reason for its creation;

– lost the ability to produce nuclear materials needed for medicine, space exploration, defense, industry, and research;

– suppressed information that should have been used to correct false allegations of dangers of radioactive waste stored at DOE sites in order to obtain many billions of dollars for so-called “cleanup” of the wastes which has been simply to remove it from where it is safely stored to other locations which resulted in much more danger and radiation exposure to humans than if nothing had been done;

– helped maintain a 34-year moratorium on new nuclear power plants, our safest, least polluting and potentially most abundant energy source;

– failed to provide full and accurate information to Americans about energy and nuclear technology;

– ignores the laws of thermodynamics, which is the science concerned with the relationship and conversion of heat to mechanical (usable) energy or work, in its development of usable energy with low-temperature energy sources such as geothermal, solar, tidal and wind;

– continues to fund expensive experiments for development of controlled nuclear fusion on Earth, for which there is no scientific basis;

– exaggerates threats of nuclear weapons proliferation from fully safeguarded nuclear power programs in other nations;

– interacts with its national laboratories in a manner virtually identical to that of the former Soviet Union Ministry of Atomic Energy with its Institutes; and

– has (with the help of The Times) dismissed all of the competent, experienced corporations that managed safe and successful nuclear programs for the Manhattan Project and Atomic Energy Commission.

During the Administration of President Bill Clinton, my major effort as union president was to work as partner with Energy Secretary: Hazel O’Leary, Deputy Secretary Bill White and other DOE leaders for major downsizing of the DOE in a manner that would minimize adverse impact on employees.

The downsizing, planned and projected to extend well into this century, was reversed by the Administration of President George W. Bush.

Clinton Bastin

Avondale Estates, GA

During our interview, Clinton stated that during the 20 years that he worked at the Department of Energy (formed in 1978 from the rubble of the Energy Research and Development Agency), the organization did not accomplish anything of real value.

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