Nuclear Weapons and Nuclear Power - Book Report/Review Example

"Nuclear Weapons and Nuclear Power" "The last war: a world set free" is a novel published in 1914 by H .G. Wells. The book is considered to foretellnuclear weapons. There are growing numbers of people in the United States today who are standing up and speaking out against the dangers of nuclear weapons. At the same time a large number of these people are in favor of the use of nuclear power as a means of generating electricity. They believe, perhaps correctly, that the risk from the former is greater and more imminent, and further, that there is no connection between nuclear power and nuclear weapons. The facts, however, seem to point to a different conclusion. In this 1913 book (published in 1914), the author takes speculation he had read about the chance of releasing energy from atoms, and writes about a future of atomic power and atomic weapons. The atomic weapons of this book make relatively small, but on-going (for centuries!) explosions. Plus, it seems that at the time they knew little about the effects of radiation on living organisms. Scientists of the time were well conscious that the slow natural radioactive decay of elements like radium continues for thousands of years, and that while the rate of energy release is negligible; the total amount released is enormous. Wells used this as the basis for his story. In his fiction, The problem which was already being mooted by such scientific men as Ramsay, Rutherford, and Soddy, in the very start of the twentieth century, the trouble of inducing radio-activity in the heavier elements and so tapping the internal energy of atoms, was solved by a magnificent combination of induction, intuition, and luck by Holsten so soon as the year 1933. The physicist Leo Szilard read the book during 1932, conceived the idea of nuclear chain reaction during 1933, and filed for patents for it during 1934. Wells did have some knowledge of atomic physics, and William Ramsay, Ernest Rutherford, and Frederick Soddy's discovery of the disintegration of uranium. In Wells's story, the "atomic bombs" have no more power than ordinary high explosive-but they "continue to explode" for days. Never before in the history of warfare had there been a continuing explosive; indeed, up to the middle of the twentieth century the only explosives known were combustibles whose explosiveness was due entirely to their instantaneousness; and these atomic bombs which science burst upon the world that night were strange even to the men who used them. Wells offers the subsequent details of how the bombs are believed to work: "Those used by the Allies were lumps of pure Carolinum painted on the outside with unoxidised cydonator inducive enclosed hermetically in a case of membranium. A little celluloid stud between the handles by which the bomb was lifted was arranged so as to be easily torn off and admit air to the inducive, which at once became active and set up radio-activity in the outer layer of the Carolinum sphere. This liberated fresh inducive, and so in a few minutes the whole bomb was a blazing continual explosion."(Wells) "Certainly it seems now that nothing could have been more obvious to the people of the earlier twentieth century than the rapidity with which war was becoming impossible. And as certainly they did not see it. They did not see it until the atomic bombs burst in their fumbling hands... All through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the amount of energy that men were able to command was continually increasing. Applied to warfare that meant that the power to inflict a blow, the power to destroy, was continually increasing. There was no increase whatever in the ability to escape... Destruction was becoming so facile that any little body of malcontents could use it".(Wells) Before the last war began it was a matter of common knowledge that a man could carry about in a handbag an amount of latent energy sufficient to wreck half a city. Wells viewed war as the unavoidable outcome of the Modern State; the introduction of atomic energy in a world divided resulted in the collapse of society. The only possibilities remaining were "either the relapse of mankind to agricultural barbarism from which it had emerged so painfully or the acceptance of achieved science as the basis of a new social order." Wells's theme of world government is presented as a solution to the threat of nuclear weapons. It is possible that several years of nuclear terrorism could frighten world leaders so much that they are willing to consider a one-world government, seeking "peace and safety", as truly depicted in Revelations, for an instance. Advantages of Nuclear power: Efficient: Nuclear plants can create significant quantities of electricity, up to about 2GW (at the large end of the range. They are commonly similar in output to coal plants. Reliable: There is no need to worry about interruptions to the power supply: only if there is uranium, there will be power. This is a bare difference to most renewable energies which depend on the activity of the weather. Actually, nuclear plants are intended to manufacture a base load, meaning that they are on persistently, rather than turning on and off to meet demand as with gas, for example. Clean: I am using this term strictly to refer to the greenhouse gas emissions of a nuclear plant. There is some greenhouse gas emissions related with the life cycle of uranium, as gases are emitted as it is mined and transported etc. On the other hand this is remarkably less than the emissions related with the burning of fossil fuels. Essentially, nuclear power would be "carbon-zero" if the uranium were mined and transported in a more efficient way. There are issues with radioactive waste, however. Supply: No, it isn't going to last forever, but at least what there is, is more easily accessible than oil. 24% of uranium resources are in Australia and 9% in Canada. These are hardly politically unstable regions! It is worth noting that there has been no real exploration for fissile materials (as with oil and gas), so there is likely to be more than is known. Not merely that but other fuel cycles are available for power generation, like Thorium. Disadvantages of Nuclear Power Waste: High level radioactive waste is very hazardous. It lasts for tens of thousands of years before decaying to safe levels. If there is to be a "nuclear renaissance", a sophisticated method of storing the waste for this period of time must be designed. This point itself has sparked a astonishing number of debates. For an instance, how do you write "danger" on a concrete box, when in 5,000 years the word "danger" may no longer exist Proliferation: A few forms of nuclear reactor, known as "breeder" reactors create plutonium, which can be used to make nuclear weapons. There are other reactors which do not have this trouble, but it is a different issue which must be addressed before the possibility of a nuclear future can be taken seriously. That said, there are also tens of thousands of nuclear warhead in existence, and actually making a nuclear weapon from waste would be awfully hard. Terrorism: While the probability of a current reactor exploding like Chernobyl are near zero, it is quite probable for intervention to have quite dreadful results. Nuclear plants would be very enticing targets to anyone wanting to disrupt the power supply and devastate an entire region in one fell swoop. Cost: Nuclear plants are very expensive to run. I am not an economist, but I believe nuclear plants are, like most other things, cheaper in bulk. Most of the cost comes from the initial building of the plant; the running costs are comparatively low. Advantages of Nuclear Weapons The advantage is the danger to the enemy of possible retaliation. If you were the (former) Russia or Pakistan or China, would you attack a nation if that nation could come back and wipe you off of the face of the earth Japan had to be hit TWICE before they came to their senses and sued for peace! One of the obvious advantages also is, it has the sheer ability to devastate large areas of land and forces in a split second. If a country is fighting a winner take all war like the one in WWII Pacific Front, then it proves useful. Furthermore, it provides an excellent moral destroyer to enemy troops. They might be able to kill thousands a day but a nuke can kill hundreds of thousands in a split second. On the bright side though, the demand for nuclear weapons has led to the progress of the nuclear industry in both power and medicine. Nuclear power plants are a direct byproduct of the nuclear arms race. Nuclear weapons also helped advance nuclear medicine in that it helped fund the research of new nuclear materials commonly used today. Disadvantages of Nuclear Weapons The disadvantages far outweigh the advantages. Namely in that they can lead to the complete destruction of mankind. A term known as M.A.D. or Mutually Assured Destruction is often used. This means that no country will dare use them because they know the retaliation will cause both to be shattered. They also are expensive and require extensive upkeep. Disadvantages are huge however, with a long list of problems associated with them. For the obvious, they are dangerous. They typically flatten everything within a 10 mile radius these days, with ranges in the megaton range; they are devastating weapons causing severe burns, radiation poisoning, future birth deformities, and so on. They tend to irradiate the area of impact so that the ground cannot be used for many years afterwards, and if it is used, every time the soil gets disturbed during construction, radioactive dust will fill the air. Other disadvantages include disarmament: they cost around $200 million EACH to produce, and cost about a quarter of that to maintain and then dismantle. Each warhead must be looked after, as after all, we know it's hard for terrorists to make them, but how hard would it be to steal one And as I mentioned before, with countries like Iran looking to join the nuclear 'club', we don't know whether or not we can keep track of the new weapons being produced. During a nuclear war, if your country has nuclear arms, they will be the first to be attacked: France, UK, US, Russia, China, Israel, Pakistan, India, etc will all be wiped out within minutes of a nuclear war. These are the main disadvantages; however there are many more minor problems. Conclusion: By the time British author H.G. Wells got around to writing "The Last War," in 1914, the general public already recognized he was a Master of Science fiction. "The Time Machine," "The Invisible Man," "The War of the Worlds," and "The Island of Dr. Moreau" had all come out some twenty years before he penned this slim book about global atomic war and the subsequent restructuring of human civilization. A large amount of readers today only remember Wells as an astonishingly prescient science fiction author. Wells was an affirmed socialist. I'd go so far as to call him a communist, especially after reading "The Last War". This look at nuclear catastrophe is less an accomplishment of science fiction and more a pamphlet used by Wells to espouse his socialist/communist belief system. I can't stand communism. Unfortunately, the good parts of "The Last War" fade away under a sudden large amount of socialist agitprop. Wells can't refuse to go along with slamming the capitalist system early on in the book, blaming it for creating conditions that lead to all-out nuclear conflict. Then there's the single world government stuff in the middle of the book. The really, REALLY scary stuff shows up in the final chapter. Set in a future far removed from the horrors of atomic war, Wells shows us the advances civilization has made without the threat of conflict hanging over its head. What's wrong with that Nothing, except most of it resembles Soviet dogma of the 1920s through the 1950s. He talks about changing the very structures of the human mind and body as well as radical feminism that denies biological differences, among other things. Wells obviously believed in the malleability of the human mind and body, and that governments should work to bring about this new reality. That's exactly what Lenin, Stalin, and the rest of the killers over in the Soviet Union tried to do. They failed miserably. Give "The Last War" a chance, but beware of the Stalinist propaganda contained within. I am in agreement that no imaginable global verification system or international security force for identifying and arresting violators of an internationally negotiated and codified legal framework for globally prohibition nuclear weapons and nuclear power can be definite to discourage violation of the ban. But this is a possession of any law governing human beings. The question is not about achieving perfect global security in opposition to nuclear violence. The question is: Which would be preferred by most human beings-a world in which possession and endangered use of nuclear weapons is permissible for some but outlawed for others, or one in which they are completely forbidden, with no exceptions I believe the time has come to set up a global popular taboo not in favor of nuclear weapons and devices or processes that might be used to make them. The taboo should be directed particularly at any action - by governments, non-government enterprises, or individuals - that is in violation of international laws specifically associated to nuclear technology. I also recommend that as the taboo is formulated and articulated enthusiastically worldwide, both informal and formal negotiations of an international nuclear abolition treaty start without more ado in the relevant United Nations organizations. Why not adopt a formal goal of completing the negotiations and the codification of the related laws and regulations before the start of the next millennium I would also join others now pressing for actions that would complete the process of actual global nuclear abolition no later than 2010. As is the case for many examples of bringing violators of popularly supported laws to justice, there should be frequent official and popular encouragement, including various kinds of major rewards, of "whistleblowers" who become conscious of violations and report them to a well-known international authority. Such whistleblowers should also be well protected against reprisals by the violators, as well as even authorities of their own country's government. Such actions may be even more significant in filling verification gaps than technical verification procedures implemented by an international authority. In conclusion, I now have new and strong feelings of hope about the future of humankind. We are collectively facing new choices. We can continue to apply those cosmic forces -which we discovered how to manipulate 50 years ago-to feed the destructive competitive power struggles among humans. Or we can join together to reject those enormously powerful forces-that are much easier to use to obliterate than to build-and reach out together to embrace the energy from our sun, which has for a very long time sustained all life on Earth. WORK CITED Wells, Herbert George (1914). "Chapter the second, section four". The World Set Free. Macmillan & Co. Wells, Herbert George (1914). "Chapter the second, section five". The World Set Free. Macmillan & Co. Read More