Remember, remember, the fifth of November, unmute your dang microphone, guy! Well, once I got over that little bobble, this show from Munich, capitol of the Free State of Bavaria in Southern Europe, mostly wound up being a response to a question from the audience (in SDF’s com chat) : “what is the safest type of civil nuclear power reactor?” It’s an inherently difficult question to answer, because only one type, the RBMK–1000, has ever killed anybody. But I give it a fair shot.
2022–11–08 Further readings from Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy, vol 1, are interspersed with my editorial commentary. Somehow I manage to get through Estimate of Energy Requirements by P Ailleret of Electricité de France. And I do math live on the air!
2022–11–11 I tarried too long at the grocery, so this show actually started about 15 minutes late. Everything up to that point in the archive is a repeat. As you have perhaps come to expect from me, I began by commemorating the date with Dulce et Decorum Est by Wilfred Owen. Then I started reading American foreign policy and the peaceful uses of atomic energy by Klaus Knorr, out of the volume Atoms for Power : United States Policy in Atomic Energy Development, the report of the Twelfth American Assembly, 17―20 October 1957. I have quite a bit to say in response to Knorr’s analysis.
Next week I will be coming to you from Munich, and that fact causes me to reflect on the dangers which arise when politicians ignore expert advice about what effects policies will have, and consistently lie to the public. Social pressure (such as arises when people are losing their livelihoods or seeing their heat and light bills exceed their rent) tends to drive people toward radical political movements, and that tendency is only reinforced when the political main stream has been insisting there is no problem. Also I talk for a while about the badge press which I have acquired with the gratefully–acknowledged assistance of Generation Atomic, and in general my efforts to disseminate pro–nuclear propaganda. And I explain some important facts about the latest saber–rattling from Russia.
2022–11–04 Testing the audio setup in Munich. I read a letter I have been draughting to the head of Ontario Power Generation, relating to the planned life extension of the Pickering nuclear station near Toronto, and then The Outlook for Nuclear Power in Puerto Rico by Alvin Mayne and Philip Mullenbach, from Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy (the proceedings of the 1955 Geneva Conference), volume 1. Puerto Rico is definitely a place that could use atomic power, relying as it does on fuel oil for its electricity, but the only power reactor that has ever been built there was the experimental (and largely unsuccessful) BONUS superheating BWR.
“Have a Lucky Day!”
Sorry due to a station technical screwup, the first half hour of the show will only live in memories of the live listeners.
Starts 30 minutes into the show.
You may never have heard someone called a “dirtsucker” in anger before, but the news of the death of Jim McDivitt leads me to do just that. (Unfortunately, the archiver didn’t capture the whole show, so it’s less coherent than the actual broadcast was.) Also I spend a little more time talking about immigration, emigration, social policies, and the concept of “vampire states” ; and I make an impassioned plea for curiosity and play, specifically in the natural sciences.
2022–10–25 As a counterpoint to the description from the Leonard book, last week, I read about a rocket launch at White Sands from the perspective of that eminent rocketeer, G Harry Stine : chapter 7, “Missile Away!”, from his 1957 book Rocket Power and Space Flight. Then, to round out the time, I read chapter 11, Space Travel and Our Lives.
2022–10–28 From Analog magazine, 1992 April, a resounding plea for the science fiction illustrator from Frank Kelly Freas (whom we have heard from before, also from Stine and Freas here), entitled The Story Between the Words, and an Alternate View column from G Harry Stine about “Intermittents”. Then, from the 1990 November number, the first part of Forging Planet–Stuff, an article about nucleosynthesis and its implications for planetary formation (and thus the kinds of stories one can credibly write), by Stephen L Gillett, PhD. He mentions another article, from 1983, which we may also want to read here.
