Reflections from the AAAS Convention
Feb. 22nd, 2010 12:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tspencer227To say that this past weekend was incredible for me would be a vast understatement. I'll write about Friday and Saturday later, but for now I want to focus on what happened Sunday.
A few months back, a friend of mine from school wrangled me in to volunteering as a session aide for the American Association for the Advancement of Science Annual Meeting here in San Diego. At the time, I thought it'd look good on my resume and transfer application, but i didn't really give it much more thought until the orientation meeting this past Thursday. It was then, seeing how far some of the other session aides had traveled, that I began to realize just how big of a deal it was really going to be- especially when I found out which sessions I would be working. The first one was Sunday morning, a symposium on Energy Return on Energy Invested, and the second on the future of Nuclear Power. I was especially excited about the latter symposium, but being interested on renewable energy, I was looking forward to the EROI session as well.
As I've reflected on the points discussed in both sessions, I've come away with a few profound (at least for me anyway) thoughts. The biggest thing I came away with was that both groups, the renewable energy proponents, and the nuclear power proponents are both of the mindset that, "my way is the only way to go," especially considering the impending collapse of oil that is fast approaching us. While I can understand this way of thinking, it's not necessarily true. The future of energy production lies along several different simultaneous paths. While it would be nice to think that the world's energy demands will be met by the sources provided naturally by the Earth, be it solar, tidal, or biomass, that's simply not a realistic scenario. The limits of the current technology, and the rate of growth simply won't pan out any time soon. While renewable energy will be an important source of the world's future energy needs, particularly for the liquid fuels we need to provide transportation and heating for a modern civilization, there's no way that it's going to be able to meet the need for electricity generating.
Nuclear, on the other hand, while great for generating electricity, will never be feasible for the above mentioned transportation needs, and to a certain extent, heating needs either. The future is going to depend on a diverse range of energy sources, not just one or even a handful of individual sources. And while the technology for advanced fission plants and even some fusion designs is quickly advancing, political and economic factors are still going to be barriers to overcome in the near term.
As I was listening to Dr. Thomas Isaacs, a nuclear physicist and specialist on policy talk about the political problems facing the future of nuclear power, I was immediately reminded of a book I'd recently read, "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" by Richard Rhodes. The book follows the story of the development of nuclear physics, from Rutherford and Bohr developing the atomic model, through the discovery of fission, and the frantic race that was the Manhattan Project and the subsequent creation of the Fat Man and Little Boy bombs that were dropped on Japan to end World War II. I'm not going to talk about the political ramifications of that right now. In the book, however, there was clearly a theme about the importance of the leadership and guidance provided by a few key individuals who led the world into the Nuclear Age.
When the first nuclear fission of a Uranium atom was observed in 1938, there were still a multitude of insurmountable obstacles that stood in the way of it being more than an interesting laboratory experiment for at least several more decades, according to contemporary sources. Still, it was less than seven years later that not one, but two effective types of weapons were created, and shortly thereafter that nuclear power was able to be utilized for power generation. This was because of a herculean effort on the part of hundreds of scientists, engineers, and politicians all with a common goal. When uncertainties arose about how to separate fissile U-235 from naturally occurring U-238, instead of just trying one method, several different approaches were tried simultaneously to see which one would be most effective. The same thing with the specific design for a nuclear weapon- would a Uranium bomb work better, or should the more technically challenging but potentially more powerful Plutonium weapon be attempted as well? Again, both were studied and developed simultaneously.
My question is, is this happening now? From what I observed over my brief exposure to the professional scientific community at the AAAS meeting, I got a sense that the answer was no. And my bigger question is this: why? All of the talented, brilliant, dedicated scientists I listened to were convinced that their ideas and theories were going to save the world. This is true, but only from a combination of multiple ideas and technologies being developed simultaneously, not only from focusing on nuclear power or renewable energy sources. How can this be achieved, and is anybody working to get everybody at the same table?
And even more importantly, is the scientific community waiting for another Robert Oppenheimer or Ernest Lawrence to step up and take charge, to get everybody working together? Who knows, but it's an interesting question to think about.
A few months back, a friend of mine from school wrangled me in to volunteering as a session aide for the American Association for the Advancement of Science Annual Meeting here in San Diego. At the time, I thought it'd look good on my resume and transfer application, but i didn't really give it much more thought until the orientation meeting this past Thursday. It was then, seeing how far some of the other session aides had traveled, that I began to realize just how big of a deal it was really going to be- especially when I found out which sessions I would be working. The first one was Sunday morning, a symposium on Energy Return on Energy Invested, and the second on the future of Nuclear Power. I was especially excited about the latter symposium, but being interested on renewable energy, I was looking forward to the EROI session as well.
As I've reflected on the points discussed in both sessions, I've come away with a few profound (at least for me anyway) thoughts. The biggest thing I came away with was that both groups, the renewable energy proponents, and the nuclear power proponents are both of the mindset that, "my way is the only way to go," especially considering the impending collapse of oil that is fast approaching us. While I can understand this way of thinking, it's not necessarily true. The future of energy production lies along several different simultaneous paths. While it would be nice to think that the world's energy demands will be met by the sources provided naturally by the Earth, be it solar, tidal, or biomass, that's simply not a realistic scenario. The limits of the current technology, and the rate of growth simply won't pan out any time soon. While renewable energy will be an important source of the world's future energy needs, particularly for the liquid fuels we need to provide transportation and heating for a modern civilization, there's no way that it's going to be able to meet the need for electricity generating.
Nuclear, on the other hand, while great for generating electricity, will never be feasible for the above mentioned transportation needs, and to a certain extent, heating needs either. The future is going to depend on a diverse range of energy sources, not just one or even a handful of individual sources. And while the technology for advanced fission plants and even some fusion designs is quickly advancing, political and economic factors are still going to be barriers to overcome in the near term.
As I was listening to Dr. Thomas Isaacs, a nuclear physicist and specialist on policy talk about the political problems facing the future of nuclear power, I was immediately reminded of a book I'd recently read, "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" by Richard Rhodes. The book follows the story of the development of nuclear physics, from Rutherford and Bohr developing the atomic model, through the discovery of fission, and the frantic race that was the Manhattan Project and the subsequent creation of the Fat Man and Little Boy bombs that were dropped on Japan to end World War II. I'm not going to talk about the political ramifications of that right now. In the book, however, there was clearly a theme about the importance of the leadership and guidance provided by a few key individuals who led the world into the Nuclear Age.
When the first nuclear fission of a Uranium atom was observed in 1938, there were still a multitude of insurmountable obstacles that stood in the way of it being more than an interesting laboratory experiment for at least several more decades, according to contemporary sources. Still, it was less than seven years later that not one, but two effective types of weapons were created, and shortly thereafter that nuclear power was able to be utilized for power generation. This was because of a herculean effort on the part of hundreds of scientists, engineers, and politicians all with a common goal. When uncertainties arose about how to separate fissile U-235 from naturally occurring U-238, instead of just trying one method, several different approaches were tried simultaneously to see which one would be most effective. The same thing with the specific design for a nuclear weapon- would a Uranium bomb work better, or should the more technically challenging but potentially more powerful Plutonium weapon be attempted as well? Again, both were studied and developed simultaneously.
My question is, is this happening now? From what I observed over my brief exposure to the professional scientific community at the AAAS meeting, I got a sense that the answer was no. And my bigger question is this: why? All of the talented, brilliant, dedicated scientists I listened to were convinced that their ideas and theories were going to save the world. This is true, but only from a combination of multiple ideas and technologies being developed simultaneously, not only from focusing on nuclear power or renewable energy sources. How can this be achieved, and is anybody working to get everybody at the same table?
And even more importantly, is the scientific community waiting for another Robert Oppenheimer or Ernest Lawrence to step up and take charge, to get everybody working together? Who knows, but it's an interesting question to think about.
