I have met this man and can vouch for his naval background and period of service in nuclear submarines but this is the first time he has mentioned this. He is now in his eighties, very lucid and up with the play. He retired early with definitely negative views on US.geopolitics, converted to Islam, married a very warm and charming Muslim woman and they now live in Malaysia.
For fifteen years I was a working, AEC and USN certified and licensed Water Cooler Reactor Engineer, Operator and Watch Supervisor. I know with an engineers certainty that you cannot make a water cooler reactor go supercritical to the point at which it will explode. We tried to do that a number of times early on back in the late fifties in Idaho, and we simply could not do it. All we got were meltdowns, which were not very spectacular at all on the scale of Fukushima and, without the Press spectacularization and sensationalization of Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and wherever, not at all spectacular or frightening. Messy, and a bit of work to clean up, true, but nothing dangerous or out of the ordinary. I knew most of the men involved, and we have all lived rather long and healthy lives ever since, except for th statistical norms who were involved in other mishaps such as sinking submarines, speeding autos, and perhaps an irate husband or two. We could never even simulate or stimulate anything like a "China Syndrome" which proved Jane full of shit. The biggest difference with what we did experimentally in Idaho and what happened in subsequent Power Plant "disasters" was the presence of the press and public exposure. We were a closed US Naval Installation, and we kept it that way. None of the men were sworn to secrecy or ordered to "keep quiet," they simply did not seem to think that anything we were doing was very exciting or worth discussing. The Press has a tendency to magnify and spectacular! If there was a nuclear explosion or an uncontrolled nuclear event at Fukushima, then it was not the reactor! Note; a high intensity chemical explosion within a nuclear reactor core might make quite a mess, which is why the hydrogen was always such a problem. And, it was also why nuclear reactor containments were built with very heavy and thick steel and concrete walls. It has been my experience that just getting a nuclear reactor up to criticality, and keeping it hot and running was some sort of superhuman miracle... making it go bang would be and is physically, (in the nuclear physics sense) impossible. The negative temperature coefficient of the water reflector and shield are physically ordered to prevent this by immutable laws of physics and thermodynamics. This is not only my personal testimony... it is the official testimony of every Nuclear Physicist and Engineer who has ever worked or written about Nuclear weapons and Nuclear power systems. There is a great difference between the two, and to make either one happen, or do what it is designed to do, is immensely more difficulty a task to make happen than to prevent. I have lived and worked with professionals in both of these fields. Earlaiman _____ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: /pipermail/attachments/20120113/597eee4a/attachment.html _______________________________________________ Biofuel mailing list Biofuel@sustainablelists.org http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainablelorgbiofuel Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (70,000 messages): http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/
