Page 3082 - 1970S

Then Aladdin brought out the
la mp a nd ru bbed it, and
stra i g ht away appeared a
Genie asking. " How may 1 serve
you. o h Maste r. ' '
Thirty-one yea rs ago this month.
thc world was cha nged foreve r.
With a blinding flas h anda dea fen–
ing roar. th e most devasta ting de–
vice known lo ma n was d e tonated
over the J a pa nese city of Hiroshima.
The result was consummate destruc–
tion a nd the killing o r ma iming o f
over 100.000 human beings. Th e
date was August 6. 1945. just three
weeks after the tirst test o f a n a tomic
bomb in the New Mexico dese rt.
"Scientists have now known sin. "
mu sed J. Roben Oppenheime r. di–
recto r of th e ramed Ma nhattan
Projcct that produced the a tomic
bomb. But th e sin was not in th e
discovery of th e atom ic geni e; the
sin was in its use. Indeed. no scien–
tifi c discovery in a ll of human his–
tory has s uch an awesome potential
fo r eithe r good or ev il.
Jn the heauy days fo llowing the
Postdam confe rence (Ju ly 17 to Au–
gust 2. 1945) a nd the Hiro hima
blast. the United State emerged as
the sole possessor of nuclear tech–
no logy. Only the U.S. had the bomb
and o nly the U.S. had the sophis–
ticated facilities needed to g ui ckl y
develop the a tom for a multitude of
peaceful purposes.
The Gentle Genie?
The atomic genie was immedia tely
to uted as good fo r a my ri ad of ap–
pli cat io ns in medicine. agricu ll ure,
and industry . And true to its prom–
ise, th e nuclear gen ie has offered
mankind gifts ranging from radio–
trace r s tudi es of crops a nd nutrient s
to a tomic-powe red hea rt pace–
makers. The pas t 30 years have in–
J eed seen millions of the earth 's in–
hab ita nts benefit from lhe secrels o f
the a tom.
The PLAIN TRUTH August 1976
Knowledge of
Good and Evil
LIVING
WITH
THE
ATOMIC
GENIE
by Plain Tr uth Research Staff
The promise of cheap. abundan t
power from the a tom also loomed
o n the borizon in 1945. And today.
with the worldwide ene rgy crisis.
lhere is a n increased ímpetus for t he
developme nl o f nuclear ene rgy
sources . Yet the promise of ehea p
and cl ean power has been assa il ed
as a risk- filled route lo reactor rou–
le tte. (Please see the aecompanying
a nicle.)
Nuclear Fusion - Tomorrow's
Energy?
There may. howeve r, be a nother en–
e rgy opt ion - nuclear(usion.
Powe r derived from th e splitting
of a toms in nuclea r jission has two
major disadvantages: ( 1) the fi ssio n
process produces la rge amounts of
intensely radi oactive wasles; (2) t he
amount of fi ssionable ma terial
ava ilable on earth could conceiv–
a bly be used up in jus t a few
decades.
By contras t. the combining of
atoms in nuclea r Jusion releases four
times as much ene rgy as fi ssion (on
a pound for pound basis) and has
ne ith e r of the above disadvantages.
Only mildly radioactive materials
are produced in nuclea r fusion . and
the raw maleria ls necessa ry (p rima r–
il y heavy hyd rogen) are copiously
abundan! in the world's oceans.
Unfortuna te ly, nuclear fusion has
one major drawback: No one has
yet achieved a controUed fusion re–
act ion on a significant sca le. The en–
ergy put in has always exceeded th e
energy taken out.
The problem is that in order to
get fusion to take p lace, hydrogen
atoms mus t be heated to more than
100.000 ,000 deg rees centigrade.
Such temperatures are found only
in th e s tars. gigantic fusion furnaces
which a re he ld together by their
own grav ity. On eart h, such tem–
peratures a re created o nly during an
atomi c bomb exp los io n. or by
mea ns of a powerful laser pulse.
So far. some success has been
aeh ieved. and laser fusion expert
Charles G ilbe rt believes a break–
through may be mad e in the next
few yea rs. But progress has been
slow.
Yel th e hope remains that ma n
will eventually succeed in crea ting a
contro lled "min i-star" on earth and
thus tap what is often considered
the fundamen tal ene rgy source of
the phys ica l un iverse. If so , ma n–
kind wi ll have a vi rtual ly unlimited
so urce o f clean power- power that,
even a t lOO times th e current con–
sump tion, would last for 10 billion
yea rs.
Peaceful Nuclear Explosions
T he te rm " peaceful nuc lea r ex–
plosion" is a mockery anda sham (if
not a contra dictio n in lerms) to
many people. especially in the after–
math of Ind ia's " peaceful " entry
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