Shane and Rod provide a different take on a current debate regarding the use of enriched uranium. There is a notion among a certain kind of politically educated person that the only valid use of enriched uranium is to produce weapons that can be used to assure mutual destruction. Rod and Shane explain that enriched uranium is merely uranium where a major portion of the U-238 had been removed leaving U-235, which is the isotope that fissions most easily.
This process not only enables the production of bombs by a team of people with sufficient engineering and mechanical skills, but it also enables the construction of very small and safe research reactors and small power reactors. These small reactors without a lot of neutron absorbing U-238 can be used for experiments, education, and power production in remote areas. In other words, they are something that is quite useful for a countries that have massive commercial nuclear power plants and for countries that do not need massive commercial power plants but want to learn more about nuclear technology or have distributed power needs that can best be served by small power plants.
Shane and Rod then shift gears completely to a discussion of energy efficiency and talk a little about Amory Lovins, who has been one of the gurus of the energy efficiency community for the past 30 years. Listen carefully, you might learn a little known tidbit about Mr. Lovins early academic career.
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Dear Sirs:
Is there a text version available for your podCast #006?
If you could send our web address along to your Atomic people, they might be interested in our mission. Thanks / Gary
Gary:
Thanks for listening. I hope that your request means that you like the show.
We do not have a full transcript, though one could be created if necessary. I would also point you to Atomic Insights – http://www.atomicinsights.com and the Atomic Insights Blog http://www.atomicinsights.blogspot.com as sources of similar commentary in a text form. (I am the main writer on both of those publications.)
Rod Adams
I really enjoy your show, and it’s very informative and interesting. I too am concerned about Russia’s curvy path to Democracy and hope some of the posturing in the last few years is just that–posturing and that there is some cooperation in the background. We and the Russians have a lot in common and could do great things together if we can be assured they aren’t turning back to “the Dark Side”. I hope that some of the posturing is merely to deflect domestic criticism that they are some kind of American puppet, as was tossed around on a few occasions in the past with both Yeltsin and Putin.
You and I have also discussed the Uranium enrichment issue at length in your main blog, so I won’t flog a dead horse here. I am just a little bewildered that someone who *still* doesn’t trust Russia just accepts that Iran should do what it wants. Also, you are right that enrichment itself does not automatically mean they are making weapons, and that there are legitimate uses for enriched fuel, but it is also a pre-requisite for making weapons, and is only marginally useful for reactors because of all the energy and waste produced (which could be burned with a fast reactor) in all that enriching. Add to this the statements that they themselves have made virtually announcing what they are doing and their openly stated intent of destroying the West and Israel, their open support for terrorism, the whole suicide bomber culture and their testing of medium range ballistic missiles which can reach Europe and you get a much scarier picture of what they plan on doing with that enrichment. If this were Brazil or Norway or Thailand I wouldn’t have as big a problem with the enrichment process going on, but none of them have declared the intent to wipe us off the map either.
PowerPointSamurai:
You used the right word – I accept Iran’s decision to enrich uranium because I cannot think of an acceptable way to stop them. We cannot afford to isolate them, I find preemptive attack to be morally wrong, and Iran has the physical and intellectual resources necessary to do the job without any additional assistance.
I think that we have a very good chance of continuing to exist without them attacking us.