Last edited Mon May 26, 2025, 12:47 PM - Edit history (1)
Every once in a while I hear from someone here, "my dad was a nuclear this or that."
My dad dropped out of school in the eighth grade to shine shoes so his family had food to eat during the depression. He never went back to school. I don't, actually, know how to shine shoes very well.
I'm sure every morning at the breakfast table you discussed the limitations of software to generate numerical solutions to the Bateman equation, MCNP vs Origen, the computation time implications of one group vs multigroup calculations, or the implications of the number of delayed neutrons in the fast fission of 241Am with 1 MeV neutrons in reactivity control. Maybe every evening the conversation at the dinner table involved the risks of accumulation of the fission product 79Se over the next 50 centuries. Perhaps this makes you some kind of expert. I don't see a shred of evidence of that, but perhaps I'm wrong.
It doesn't mean very much to me, though.
This excellent "my dad told me" education seems not to have involved an ethical education, for instance considering whether a potential death from exposure to radiation anywhere at any time on this planet is far more important that the deaths of 19,000 people per day from air pollution and, of course, the ongoing collapse of the planetary atmosphere.
I find that ethical consideration relevant to the issue of energy and the environment, and I will not excuse a failure to acknowledge it.
To me, that ethical question is the most important.
The commercial nuclear industry is now 70 years old. In that 70 years, the loss of human life from commercial nuclear operations for the entire period does not match the death toll from a single day of deaths related to the normal use of fossil fuels. I think I made that point, only to hear about your Dad and MIT.
I couldn't care less.
I have more important things to do than to "debate" someone because their father went to MIT for nuclear engineering. I have worked with high level scientists my entire adult life. Some are better than others. There are some who make one wonder how the hell they got their degrees, and in fact, how they ever learned to tie their shoes. Others, of course, are awesomely brilliant. However, this has no bearing on their parenting skills.
That is not the issue however.
There is, again, nothing to debate considering the moral issue.
As for whether my "attitude" convinces anyone of anything, over the years, I have received nice notes from people who told me I changed their minds, and also people who say they won't consider what I say because I'm rude to them.
Over the years, I've used this analogy whenever the complaint comes up: A person is sitting on the railroad tracks when a train is approaching. Someone screams at them, "Hey asshole! Get off the tracks there's a fucking train coming." The person sitting on the railroad tracks says, "Ask me nicely and I'll consider it."
On this planet, we're sitting on the railroad tracks and a train is coming. It's called - or I call it - "extreme global heating."
I'm angry, and I have no use for this kind of thing.
OK? Do I make myself clear?
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