Physics of the Future: How Science Will Shape Human Destiny and Our Daily Lives by the Year 2100

with water, it can cause a steam explosion that can blow the reactor apart, spewing tons of high-level radioactive debris into the air. In a worst-case class-9 nuclear accident, you would have to immediately evacuate perhaps millions of people out to 10 to 50 miles from the reactor. The Indian Point reactor is just 24 miles north of New York City. One government study estimated that an accident at Indian Point could conceivably cost hundreds of billions of dollars in property damages. At Three Mile Island, the reactor came within minutes of a major catastrophe that would have crippled the Northeast. Disaster was narrowly averted when workers successfully reintroduced cooling water into the core barely thirty minutes before the core would have reached the melting point of uranium dioxide.
    At Chernobyl, outside Kiev, the situation was much worse. The safety mechanism (the control rods) were manually disabled by the workers. A small power surge occurred, which sent the reactor out of control. When cold water suddenly hit molten metal, it created a steam explosion that blew off the entire top of the reactor, releasing a large fraction of the core into the air. Many of the workers sent in to control the accident eventually died horribly of radiation burns. With the reactor fire burning out of control,eventually the Red Air Force had to be called in. Helicopters with special shielding were sent in to spray borated water onto the flaming reactor. Finally, the core had to be encased in solid concrete. Even today, the core is still unstable and continues to generate heat and radiation.
    In addition to the problems of meltdowns and explosions, there is also the problem of waste disposal. Where do we put it? Embarrassingly, fifty years into the atomic age, there is still no answer. In the past, there has been a string of costly errors with regard to the permanent disposal of the waste. Originally, some waste was simply dumped into the oceans by the United States and Russia, or buried in shallow pits. In the Ural Mountains one plutonium waste dump even exploded catastrophically in 1957, requiring a massive evacuation and causing radiological damage to a 400-square-mile area between Sverdlovsk and Chelyabinsk.
    Originally, in the 1970s the United States tried to bury the high-level waste in Lyons, Kansas, in salt mines. But later, it was discovered that the salt mines were unusable, as they already were riddled with numerous holes drilled by oil and gas explorers. The United States was forced to close the Lyons site, an embarrassing setback.
    Over the next twenty-five years, the United States spent $9 billion studying and building the giant Yucca Mountain waste-disposal center in Nevada, only to have it canceled by President Barack Obama in 2009. Geologists have testified that the Yucca Mountain site may be incapable of containing nuclear waste for 10,000 years. The Yucca Mountain site will never open, leaving commercial operators of nuclear power plants without a permanent waste-storage facility.
    At present, the future of nuclear energy is unclear. Wall Street remains skittish about investing several billion dollars in each new nuclear power plant. But the industry claims that the latest generation of plants is safer than before. The Department of Energy, meanwhile, is keeping its options open concerning nuclear energy.
    NUCLEAR PROLIFERATION
    Yet with great power also comes great danger. In Norse mythology, for example, the Vikings worshipped Odin, who ruled Asgard with wisdom and justice. Odin presided over a legion of gods, including the heroic Thor, whose honor and valor were the most cherished qualities of any warrior.However, there was also Loki, the god of mischief, who was consumed by jealousy and hate. He was always scheming and excelled in deception and deceit. Eventually, Loki conspired with the giants to bring on the final battle between darkness and light, the epic battle Ragnarok, the twilight of the gods.
    The problem today is that jealousies and hatreds between nations could unleash a nuclear Ragnarok. History has shown that when a nation masters commercial technology, it can, if it has the desire and political will, make the transition to nuclear weapons. The danger is that nuclear weapons technology will proliferate into some of the most unstable regions of the world.
    During World War II, only the greatest nations on earth had the resources, know-how, and capability to create an atomic bomb. However, in the