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THE POET AS SCIENTIST

THE POET AS SCIENTIST, THE POET AS SCIENTIST

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The Geek's Raven
[An excerpt, with thanks to Marcus Bales]

Once upon a midnight dreary,
fingers cramped and vision bleary,
System manuals piled high and wasted paper on the floor,
Longing for the warmth of bedsheets,
Still I sat there, doing spreadsheets:
Having reached the bottom line,
I took a floppy from the drawer.
Typing with a steady hand, I then invoked the SAVE command
But got instead a reprimand: it read "Abort, Retry, Ignore".

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Friday, August 12, 2022

What happens when small, modular nuclear reactors make plutonium readily available to the private sector?

It seems very likely indeed that in the not too distant future, because of both improving technology and increased energy needs, we could see small, modular nuclear reactors springing up everywhere, perhaps even in your own neighborhood. An aspect of this development that does not appear to be being discussed very publicly, anyway, is that any nuclear reactor will tend to produce plutonium isotopes suitable for the manufacture of atomic bombs. And, also, that even a small A-bomb can be used as the trigger for an H-bomb of virtually limitless blast yield, when combined with deuterium extracted from ordinary seawater. Now, of course, security and monitoring procedures will be put in place. However, as anyone who has dealt with them well knows, federal safety inspectors are bought and paid for by private sector employers on a rather regular basis. How likely is it that the materials for building nuclear weapons could fall into the "wrong hands" -- whatever those are -- under these circumstances? On a more positive note, the deregulation of nuclear weapons technology might open up a golden age -- the "magic of the marketplace" -- in the development of practical, civilian energy applications of nuclear explosives. Thoughts?

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