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Soaring, Cryptography, and Nuclear Weapons

Posted by kdawson on from the we-can-get-there-from-here dept.

Martin Hellman sends in a pointer to his essay that uses analogies from cryptography and the sport of soaring in an attempt to draw people in to thinking about the risks of nuclear weapons. Quoting: "... I did a preliminary risk analysis which indicates that relying on nuclear weapons for our security is thousands of times more dangerous than having a nuclear power plant built next to your home." Hellman is best known as co-inventor (with Diffie and Merkle) of public key cryptography, and has worked for over twenty-five years to reduce the threat posed by nuclear weapons. He is also a glider pilot with over 2,600 logged hours. Hellman adds, "Readers needing a break can go to some photos of the Sierra Nevada mountains taken from my glider."

19 of 303 comments (clear)

  1. Am I the only one... by AKAImBatman · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ...who's takeaway from the article is that we need to build more nuclear plants?

    Must have been a stack overflow somewhere. /BOFH reference

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    1. Re:Am I the only one... by bugeaterr · · Score: 4, Insightful

      ...who's takeaway from the article is that we need to build more nuclear plants?

      America does need to build more nuclear plants.
      The rest of the world is because it is safe and clean.

      Chernobyl, 3 Mile Island, need you name more?

      Yes, you do.

      Even reasonable environmentalists are considering nuclear.

    2. Re:Am I the only one... by repvik · · Score: 4, Insightful

      And the reasonable environmentalists might be right. Technology might possibly have developed over the last 20+ years.
      We're afraid of technology that had flaws in its infancy. Maybe humanity has learned, and possibly improved technology since then?

    3. Re:Am I the only one... by Free+the+Cowards · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It's even worse than technology that had flaws in its infancy. Chernobyl is the only serious civilian power-generation reactor accident. And Chernobyl had a tremendously bad design that never would have been approved in the West, even in the period when everything nuclear was considered to be good, and what killed it was a horribly conceived experiment run by idiots that never would have been allowed in the West, again not even during that optimistic period.

      It's great to take lessons from Chernobyl, but it's wrong to take away the lesson that nuclear power is dangerous.

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    4. Re:Am I the only one... by AKAImBatman · · Score: 4, Informative

      Does it really make sense to have to guard and watch over nuclear waste for thousands of years because we as a society couldn't be bothered to minimize our energy use?

      Not really. That's why we SHOULD be reprocessing that stuff and burning it in reactors. Yet the powers that be feel reprocessing increases the risk of nameless Bad Guys(TM) getting their hands on fissionable materials. Never mind that the Uranium slugs used in regular reactors are far more useful to Bad Guys(TM) than reprocessed Plutonium. (If you have limited resources, a gun-type bomb is infinitely easier to create than an implosion device.)

      The thing is, the nuclear waste issue has been incredibly overblown by environmentalists and government alike. We have solutions. It's just a matter of getting this regulatory ship realigned to meet the modern world.

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    5. Re:Am I the only one... by Free+the+Cowards · · Score: 5, Insightful

      My understanding is that the ridiculously thick containment structure around the TMI reactor (the lack of which is one of Chernobyl's unforgivable flaws) would have saved the day anyway. And things have improved since then, my point was merely that it wasn't bad even to begin with.

      Waste becomes much less of a problem if you reprocess the fuel. We don't do that in the US because our nuclear policy is completely idiotic. But there's no rational reason not to do it.

      The general public seems to think that coal power is pretty acceptable, even though its toxic waste, vastly more than is ever produced by any nuclear plant, goes straight into the air and the population's lungs. But somehow the prospect of burying a miniscule amount of nuclear waste is considered to be vastly worse than breathing in vaporized mercury around the clock. It boggles the mind.

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    6. Re:Am I the only one... by Firethorn · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Uh, it really is dangerous. That's why nuclear power plants are considered terrorist targets.

      That's funny, nuclear plants don't even make my list. On my list are things like planes, train stations, embassies and other government buildings, cafes, malls, and busses.

      While you are correct that Chernobyl was a bad design and an ill-conceived experiment started the disaster, do you recall what caused Three Mile Island or what the consequences might have been had the hydrogen bubble ignited?

      Do you recall that TMI happened BEFORE Chernobyl, and sparked a quite thorough redesign of reactors to make them safer, and GenIV reactors, if we ever get around to building them, would be safer yet?

      And the bigger problem is the cost and various issues with properly sequestering the waste. Using nuclear power is basically like borrowing to run the country - we get the immediate benefit and our children have to pay the price.

      First, the stuff is safer than coal - a lot of the pollution from coal actually ends up in the environment. Besides that, I(and many other nuclear proponents) figure we'll be going after that high level waste in less than a hundred years to use it as fuel again. Other options include breeder reactors and reprocessing using modern methods to reduce the amount of waste, and the lifespan of the waste, substantially.

      Any idea how much it will cost to pay just for the guards to monitor a waste site for 100,000 years or so? I don't think that is factored into the cost of electricity from a nuclear plant, is it?

      How long until the Mercury released by Coal plants exits out of the environment? How long until the CO2 is sequestered again?

      And yes - it is factored in. The federal government told the nuclear power plant operators: You WILL pay us $X per megawatt/hour produced. We WILL dispose of the waste. There's lawsuits going on about that one.

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    7. Re:Am I the only one... by AKAImBatman · · Score: 4, Informative

      Will you stop spreading FUD?

      Uh, it really is dangerous.

      So is burning coal, operating a steel plant, manufacturing dangerous chemicals, and driving a race car. Yet we do all those things on a regular basis!

      That's why nuclear power plants are considered terrorist targets.

      That's why there are 3 columns of stealth troopers protecting each plant from invasion by the Slitheen.

      Or in other words, [Citation Needed].

      do you recall what caused Three Mile Island or what the consequences might have been had the hydrogen bubble ignited?

      Um... it DID ignite. Several times. Ignition of hydrogen in the reactor core only complicated a difficult situation. However, the reactor operated more or less as intended in that situation and the risk to the surrounding area was minimal. Certainly not anywhere near Chernobyl levels. (Chernobyl ran into a lack of shielding against a boiler explosion. So all those materials were spread around surrounding areas rather than being contained by three feet of concrete.)

      And the bigger problem is the cost and various issues with properly sequestering the waste. Using nuclear power is basically like borrowing to run the country - we get the immediate benefit and our children have to pay the price.

      That's a terrible analogy. Nuclear power is just fine. Most of the hot stuff is gone within days to months. That's why reactors can be serviced and/or dismantled within a few months to a few years of being shut down. If anything, we're leaving our kids a nasty power crisis and dirty air because we refuse to build more nuclear plants!

      Any idea how much it will cost to pay just for the guards to monitor a waste site for 100,000 years or so?

      I am being completely serious here. Any materials that last that long are more than safe enough. Heck, anything with a nuclear lifetime that long is safer than the Potassium stored in your body*.

      Think about it. Radiation is a process whereby mass is converted into energetic particles. Thus the mass itself is the fuel for the radioactivity. The more radiation produced, the faster the mass is converted into that radiation. In result, the mass will burn itself out in a short period of time. Materials with 10,000 year lifespans convert their mass to radiation so slowly that you can count each particle as it is produced. Compared to cosmic radiation, that's a zero risk.

      Furthermore, there are different types of radiation. A great deal of radiation (e.g. alpha and beta) can't even penetrate the dead layer of cells on our skin!

      In effect, the situation with nuclear radiation has been overblown. Read up on radioactivity if you want to understand the true dangers of working with the material. Once you understand things better, you may start demanding that your local coal plant be replaced with a nuclear plant! (Did you know that coal plants disperse more radioactive material into the environment than any other power-producing technology?)

      * In a human body of 70 kg mass, about 4,400 nuclei of 40K decay per second.

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    8. Re:Am I the only one... by AKAImBatman · · Score: 4, Informative

      Reprocessing also increases the amount of waste there is to dispose of.

      Complete and utter nonsense caused by a misreading of early safety reports. Allow me to inject some real information:

      Rather, waste management [from reprocessing] is made very much easier. The decree that Yucca Mountain must isolate the waste for more than 10,000 years is due primarily to the presence of long-lived transuranic elements. Appropriate reprocessing will allow those troublemakers to be consumed in fast reactors, leaving only the real waste--the fission products--to be disposed of, and their radioactive toxicity fall below that of the original uranium ore after less than 500 years. Effective waste management becomes a slam dunk.

      Are you even aware that the uranium used in reactors isn't bomb grade?

      Are you aware that reprocessed Plutonium isn't bomb grade?*

      Both would require significant reprocessing to be made into weapons. If you must do it, it's much easier to reprocess Uranium. At least then you'll be ready to build your bomb. With Plutonium, you're not even half-way there.

      * http://www.aps.org/units/fps/newsletters/2006/april/article2.html

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    9. Re:Am I the only one... by Chris+Burke · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Waste becomes much less of a problem if you reprocess the fuel. We don't do that in the US because our nuclear policy is completely idiotic. But there's no rational reason not to do it.

      One of the brightest moments for McCain in the debates (for me obviously) was when he said he supported nuclear fuel reprocessing. Obama isn't against nuclear in principle; I hope he will be open to the idea of reprocessing instead of letting the red herring issue of nuclear proliferation that caused Carter (a nuclear physicist!) to ban breeder reactors.

      The general public seems to think that coal power is pretty acceptable, even though its toxic waste, vastly more than is ever produced by any nuclear plant, goes straight into the air and the population's lungs. But somehow the prospect of burying a miniscule amount of nuclear waste is considered to be vastly worse than breathing in vaporized mercury around the clock. It boggles the mind.

      That's because of tremendous ignorance about even the basics of radiation, such as the longer the half life, the lower the radioactivity. And that while high levels of radiation are of course very bad, something with a half life of ten thousand years isn't necessarily more poisonous than something that isn't radioactive at all. Oh and of course there's the general fear-mongering of all things radioactive since the dawn of the atomic age, perpetuated by Hollywood myths where even in the distant future any nuclear reactor is a single leaky coolant pipe away from nuclear detonation.

      Whereas inhaling the byproducts of coal power plants has been an American tradition for over a century. So nobody thinks about how bad it really is.

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    10. Re:Am I the only one... by AKAImBatman · · Score: 4, Informative

      One thing about the potassium in our bodies - unless you get the levels seriously out of whack, it won't kill you.

      And neither will external materials that have low-level radioactivity for 10,000 years.

      Polonium 210 is an alpha emitter (you know - the kind you toss about as not being able to penetrate the dead skin on our bodies). Unfortunately 89 nanograms, ingested, is the median lethal dose.

      Let's be clear for a moment: Litvinenko was poisoned. He didn't accidentally ingest 10 micrograms of Polonium 210 any more than you or I have accidentally ingested 5 mg of Pu-238. With a half-life of about 1/3yr, a temperature that easily exceeds 500C, and a heavy weight that prevents it from becoming airborne, Polonium poses little risk outside the laboratory or industrial environments where it is used. In addition, Polonium is a highly stable heavy metal that is unlikely to chemically bond to common materials and/or make it into the water or food supply like the more concerning Su-90 or I-131.

      The greatest concern with Polonium-210 is that tobacco fertilizers contain the material, probably from natural Uranium decay in the soil. The tobacco plant absorbs the chemical and thus it gets into cigarettes. The quantities are miniscule, even by Polonium-210 standards (partially owing to the short half-life), but enough to eventually lead to lung cancer.

      And while it is obvious to anyone versed on the subject that a coal plant belches out far more radioactive material than a properly operating coal plant, when a nuclear plant goes south, it can do it in a big way. TMI let some 40,000 curies of radioactive Krypton out. Chernobyl was far worse and directly killed a lot of people, contaminated a huge area of the Ukrane, and spewed contamination across Europe.

      Let's count up the deaths, shall we?

      Three Mile Island: 0 deaths
      Chernobyl: 47 deaths (there were also 4,000 cases of Thyroid cancer that were successfully treated)
      London Great Smog: 12,000 deaths

      That last one was caused by burning coal. 12,000 deaths from a disaster caused by burning coal. Versus a maximum impact from nuclear power of ~4,050 people. (Only a small handful of who directly lost their lives.) And that's DESPITE the USSR building a sub-standard facility, DESPITE the USSR requiring untrained personal to safety test the facility, DESPITE the lousy and late evacuation job, and DESPITE the massive release of radioactive materials.

      If that's not sinking in, read it again. Coal is MASSIVELY more dangerous than nuclear power plants. Period, end of story. If you have your brain even half-way engaged, you should be demanding that every one of our coal plants be ripped out.

      (The 125,000 death figure, BTW, is a myth.)

      I think it's pretty convenient and disingenuous that you and your other proponents of nuclear power continue to blame every accident on "bad designs".

      TMI was not a "bad" design for its time. By modern standards it is, but then it was acceptable. And guess what? NOBODY DIED. Chernobyl on the other hand lacked BASIC safety measures. Like concrete for example. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that putting a solid concrete bunker around a super-heated boiler is a good idea in case it should explode. (Boiler explosions are a VERY common industrial accident, regardless of nuclear materials.) For some stupid reason, the bunker wasn't there. Furthermore, the untrained techs who performed the tests actually DISABLED the shutdown systems by cutting wires so that the reactor could not auto-sc

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  2. He's a fool. by tjstork · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The thing is, if you all don't have nuclear weapons, and I covertly do, I win.

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    1. Re:He's a fool. by Chris+Burke · · Score: 5, Funny

      2. ???

      Never knew those were supposed to be ASCII mushroom clouds!

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  3. Off the cuff statistics make me sick. by shellster_dude · · Score: 5, Interesting

    "...I did a preliminary risk analysis which indicates that relying on nuclear weapons for our security is thousands of times more dangerous than having a nuclear power plant built next to your home."

    Yeah...I would love to see how he produced that "risk analysis" statement. I guess, since nuclear reactors are virtually not dangerous at all with todays technology, it can be said that something that is only a little dangerous (relying on nuclear weapons for security, which has worked for almost 60 years) can be a thousand times as dangerous, because 1000 * 0 = 0.

  4. which brings us to iranian proliferation by circletimessquare · · Score: 5, Insightful

    pro-israel or anti-israel

    pro-usa or anti-usa

    you should be against iranian proliferation

    there's this weird alien line of thought out there that goes like this: "if the usa has nukes, why shouldn't iran?"

    what that thought represents is tribal nationalistic thinking trumping common sense

    common sense holds that NO ONE should have nukes. so proliferation is bad, for whomever. the most logical approach to iranian proliferation then is this: "i am against iran having nukes, AND i am against the usa having nukes"

    but this whole "i support iran having nukes, to balance out the usa" is a level of stupidity beneath respect

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    1. Re:which brings us to iranian proliferation by commodoresloat · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The reason is that these countries are, ostensibly, sane, although I am beginning to wonder about Russia. Iran is ruled by a bunch of fanatics that believe in fairy tales and are attempting to bring about the return of the 12th Imam. The countries on your list have not used nukes, excepting the US pre-understaing-much-about-the-long-term-impact. We haven't since.

      Yes you're right the US is the only country that has ever used nukes, and though we haven't done so since, it's pretty clear the reason had nothing to do with restraint on the part of the United States -- it is well documented, for example, that Eisenhower and Nixon both considered using nuclear weapons in China and North Vietnam. So as far as using nukes, perceived "sanity" does not seem to be the major deterrent. In fact, the major deterrent seems to be nukes in the hands of our enemies. As far as whether Iran is "sane," I would suggest you look at what they've done, not just the idiotic religious rhetoric of the country's titular leaders. Iran simply has not behaved aggressively in international affairs. They have not invaded their neighbors despite their sabre-rattling towards Israel (though Iraq invaded Iran in 1980). The Iranian military is no joke, to be sure, and nukes will make it more powerful, but that is really a major concern only for anyone unwise enough to attempt to invade Iran. Pakistan's and India's governments are also filled with millenarian fundamentalists (and, hell, we've had quite a few of those in power here in the United States as well!) but the fact is that when the chips are down, these states have acted like states, and have not used their nuclear weapons "irrationally." I see no reason to believe Iran would.

      All that said, I am still against a nuclear Iran; I just don't think we can realistically do much more than we are already doing about it. Get the UN to castigate them, sure; encourage government reform, definitely; but if you think invading Iran is going to help anything you are living in an absurd fantasy land with John McCain.

  5. what the hell do you win? by commodoresloat · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The whole point of nuclear weapons is to overtly have them; if your possession of them is truly "covert," you don't win a damn thing. Even Israel's nuclear program was an open secret for years because it allowed them to gain the effects of deterrence without openly proclaiming that they had a nuclear arsenal. But nobody seriously believed they didn't have one.

    1. Re:what the hell do you win? by couchslug · · Score: 4, Insightful

      "The whole point of nuclear weapons is to overtly have them; if your possession of them is truly "covert," you don't win a damn thing. "

      Touch one off on an enemy center of gravity without them knowing it was you, and you can win a bunch if the object is to disable the enemy.

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  6. Slightly disagree by mbessey · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Waste becomes much less of a problem if you reprocess the fuel. We don't do that in the US because our nuclear policy is completely idiotic. But there's no rational reason not to do it.

    I think that's overstating it a bit. The rational reasons for not reprocessing fuel revolve around the following issues:
      1. Transporting used fuel to the reprocessing center and back.
      2. Production and separation of enormous quantities of Plutonium, which needs to be carefully guarded due to proliferation and terrorism risks.
      3. Some hazards in the reprocessing itself. There have been several serious accidents in reprocessing plants, for example:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorp_nuclear_fuel_reprocessing_plant#2005_leak
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokaimura_nuclear_accident
    (and other incidents)
      4. Reprocessing only really starts to make good economic sense if you bring fast breeder reactors online, and those have safety issues of their own.

    Something like the IFR (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integral_Fast_Reactor) might substantially reduce these risks, but until an advanced breeder reactor is actually built and operated for a significant period, it's hard to say how safe they really are, and whether they'll make economic sense.