Clinton’s Anti-Nuclear Administration helped get us into the energy crunch we are currently in!

The truth is, the US was working on a technology 15 years ago, that the Clinton Administration killed! We could be generating significant energy now from a technology that the Clinton Administration canceled back in 1994!

Back in 1990, I went to work for the Idaho National Laboratory, then known as the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory. I am an optical physicist, not a nuclear physicist, so I can’t claim to be an expert, but I do know enough to understand the basics of nuclear energy. When I first went to work for the Idaho National Laboratory, I knew scientists and engineers who were involved with state-of-the-art reactor design, and they were working on a new class of reactor which was modular in design and inherently safe. Following is a brief summary of the work that was being done at the time and why we do not have this type of technology now.

Back in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, Argonne National Laboratory was conducting research and design of the Integral Fast Reactor (IFR) or sometimes called the Integral Fast Breeder Reactor (IFBR). This design was an extension of research they had been doing at their Argonne West facility at the Idaho National Laboratory in their Experimental Breeder Reactor II (EBR-II) power plant reactor. The design they were developing had the following features:

·    Modular design – a new power plant would purchase one or several IFR modules according to the size of the power plant being constructed.

·    IFR modules would have a lifetime of maybe 20 to 30 years.

·    IFR modules would be loaded with fuel once – only at the beginning.

·    IFR modules would breed and re-process their own fuel for the total length of their life.

·    In the breeding and re-processing of their fuel, they would burn up all the long-lived transuranic radioactive elements, leaving only short-lived radioactive waste. Some of this could be reprocessed for medical applications. The rest could be disposed of safely (buried) for a short period of time (a couple hundred years as opposed to thousands of years) until all the short-lived elements were gone.

·    The IFR modules were being designed to passively SCRAM or shut themselves down if they lost coolant or heated up to quickly. This would eliminate all chances of having a reactor meltdown. The reactor was inherently safe.

·    The IFR modules also were designed so that it was virtually impossible to use one to obtain bomb-grade material from it.

In the early 1990’s, the IFR modular reactors were only 5 or 10 years from being put into production. If research had continued on these, we could be generating much of our power using clean nuclear energy, We also could be selling these modules around the world to help with other countries’ energy needs. We could have been well on our way to energy independence.

Unfortunately, the short-sighted, anti-nuclear Clinton administration shut down this research and started decommissioning the EBR-II research reactor. This put us 10 to 15 years behind the research capable of bringing us energy independence. An article on Wikipedia states:

One design of fast neutron reactor, specifically designed to address the waste disposal and plutonium issues, was the Integral Fast Reactor (also known as an Integral Fast Breeder Reactor, although the original reactor was designed to not breed a net surplus of fissile material).^[2][3]

To solve the waste disposal problem, the IFR had an on-site electrowinning fuel reprocessing unit that recycled the uranium and all the transuranics (not just plutonium) via electroplating, leaving just short half-life fission products in the waste. Some of these fission products could later be separated for industrial or medical uses and the rest sent to a waste repository (where they would not have to be stored for anywhere near as long as wastes containing long half-life transuranics). It is thought that it would not be possible to divert fuel from this reactor to make bombs, as several of the transuranics spontaneously undergo fission so rapidly that any assembly would melt before it could be completed. The project was canceled in 1994, at the behest of then-Secretary of Energy Hazel O'Leary.

       quoted from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_breeder_reactor

            their references: 2 & 3 are

2 - http://www.nuc.berkeley.edu/designs/ifr/

3 - National Policy Analysis #378: Integral Fast Reactors: Source of Safe, Abundant, Non-Polluting Power - December 2001

 

"...faith and knowledge are related as the two scales of a balance; when one goes up, the other goes down."   - Schopenhauer

I saw this quote on a bumper sticker the other day while on my way to work.  A more complete version of the quote is:

"In the whole course of the events which I have indicated, you may always observe that faith and knowledge are related as the two scales of a balance; when one goes up, the other goes down."  from The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer

Arthur Schpenhauer (1780-1860) is a 19th century German philosopher.  From my research on the internet, his quote seems to be a favorite quote among atheists.

What Schopenhauer and his atheist followers are saying in this statement is that faith and knowledge are incompatible.  That the more knowledge you have, the less faith you exhibit and/or need.  Mathematically, they would argue that the amount of faith you have is inversely proportional to the amount of knowledge you have, or:

Now this statement may be true of most of the religions of the world – the more you know, the less you can trust that religion.  In fact, many Christians that I know, think they have to have “blind faith”.  They are afraid to look at the evidence behind their faith.  So in reality, they are affirming Schopenhauer's philosophy.

But Schopenhauer’s statement is false.  I certainly have not found Schopenhauer’s philosophy to be true in my life.  Instead I have found the opposite to be true – that knowledge about the truth increases the amount of faith I can exercise in that truth, therefore

Faith in the truth = const * Knowledge of that truth

Here are three simple examples of this statement:

Example 1 – Sitting on a bench or chair – While typing this essay, I am sitting on a bench at a table in my dining room.  I have faith in this bench – I am trusting this bench to support my weight.   But before I ever sat down on this bench, I knew a lot about this bench:

• This bench looks sturdy.  I looked at the bench and saw that it was made sturdily, out of hardwood lumber that should have no trouble holding me up when I sit on it.
• I have past experience sitting on benches similar to this one.  All of them have held me up.
• I have previous experience sitting on this bench and the duplicate bench on the other side of the table.  When my wife and I were buying it at the furniture store, I tested one of the benches.  I have also sat on both of these benches quite a few times since we purchased them, and every time, I found them to be trustworthy in supporting me.  In fact, I have experience sitting on these benches along with 3 or 4 other people, all at the same time, while eating Thanksgiving dinner.  I have experiential knowledge that it will hold me up.  The bench has been faithful to hold me up in the past, therefore I can trust it now to hold me up.
• I could have done scientific analysis and experiments on the design and structure of this bench to determine that it would definitely hold me up.  (I’m not quite this geeky, though sometimes my wife and kids think I am.)  If I had had any doubts about this bench, this step could have been done to increase my faith in this bench.

My point is, the more knowledge I have about this bench, the more I know that I can trust it to hold me up.  My faith in the bench is proportional to my knowledge about the bench!  Schopenhauer’s statement is false!

Example 2 – My faith in the speed of light – I believe that the speed of light in a vacuum is 3x10^8 (300,000,000) meters per second!  (Note – exact value is 299,792,458 meters per second.)  In fact, I believe this fact so much, that I am willing to stake my career on it.  In reality, I am also willing to stake my life on it, and I have done so many times.  (And, by the way, you probably have too!)  Every time I fly on a plane, I put my trust in the speed of light.  How?  I believe that the ring laser gyroscopes (RLGs) on board the plane will give the pilots the right information so that they can guide the plane.  I believe that the radar signals and GPS signals and radio transmissions will all travel at the speed of light, again so that the pilots can avoid other planes and also properly guide and control the plane.  Everything that I have just mentioned, to one extent or another, depends on the fact that light (and radio waves) all travel at 3x10^8 meters per second.

Now why do I believe that light travels at 3x10^8 meters per second? 

• My father told me.  (Actually he told me 186,000 miles per second.)  My father as an engineer was knowledgeable, and as my father, I knew he was faithful.  I knew I could trust him.
• I learned it in my high school science classes.  Again, I believed my teacher and my science text book, because both were trustworthy sources.
• College and graduate school classes taught the same thing.  I majored in physics in both college and graduate school.  I learned who all had measured the speed of light and how they measured it.  Every time it has been measured by someone, its speed has always been measured to be 3x10^8 meters per second to within the error bars of the experiment being done.  I also learned the theoretical, electro-magnetic basis for why light travels at this speed.
• I have experimental knowledge of the speed of light myself.  If I wanted to, I could do an experiment myself to measure the speed of light.  I don’t remember that I have ever done this, but I have done other lab experiments in college, grad school, and during my career, that depended on the speed of light being 3x10^8 meters per second, and my findings from those experiments have always been consistent with that value to within the error bars of my experiments.

I take the speed of light on faith.  I trust its value to be 3x10^8 meters per second, and it has never failed me yet.  I have a significant amount of theoretical and experiential knowledge on the subject.  The point is, my faith is based on knowledge; it is not a blind faith.  Again Schopenhauer’s statement is proven to be wrong!

Example 3 – My wife loves me – I believe my wife loves me!  Now this may be a little closer to “blind” faith.  I cannot go into the lab and prove it, as I could with the bench or the speed of light, but I still have a significant amount of experiential knowledge that this is indeed a fact that I can put my trust in.  She tells me she loves me.  She kisses me goodbye when I go off to work or on a trip.  She puts up with my quirks, and has done so for the 32 years that we have been married.  She enjoys my company, and misses me when I am away.  We still enjoy sleeping together.  We know each other very well after the 33+ years we have known each other.  She has been faithful in her love, so I can put my trust in the fact that she loves me.  Schopenhauer is wrong again!

All of these examples illustrate that the more I know about the truth of something, the more I can put my faith or trust in the truth of that thing.  To be fair to Schopenhauer, there are times that the more I know, the less I believe.  For example, I do not believe that the speed of light is 2 miles per hour.  Nor do I believe that the speed of light is infinite.  These statements are not consistent with the knowledge thatI have about the speed of light.  They have been proven to be wrong.  So I have strong faith that they are not true.  My point is however, if I am firmly convinced about something being true, then I will believe it.  My goal then should be to investigate the truth of the things that I believe, so that I can have true faith instead of a blind faith.  And the more I know about the truth of the subject in question, the more faith I can exercise in that truth.

So why should my faith in God be any different, if my faith is in the One True God?  In fact, the Biblical definition of faith assumes knowledge of facts!

The Bible tells us that:

“Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Hebrews 11:1 NASB^®

and

“So faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ.” Romans 10:17 NASB^®

Therefore the Bible emphasizes that our faith in God is proportional how well we know Him.  It comes from a knowledge of the word of Christ.  It is assurance and conviction.

Even the main definition of the English word for faith shows that it is based on knowledge, not that it conflicts with knowledge.  According to the American Heritage Dictionary (1981 version), faith is defined as:

“Confidence or trust in a person, idea, or thing.”

How does one have confidence in a person, idea, or thing, if he or she has no knowledge of that person, idea, or thing?

Similarly, the Greek word for faith used in the New Testament of the Bible is the word pistis (Strong’s Concordance word #4102).  Spiros Zodhiates, Th.D., in his The Complete Word Study Dictionary – New Testament, states that the word pistis is “....from peitho (3982), to win over, persuade.”  He then states that pistis subjectively means “....firm persuasion, conviction, belief in the truth, veracity, reality or faithfulness....”  How can one be persuaded, or hold a conviction, or a belief in the truth, without having knowledge about the truth?  In fact, Dr. Zodhiates comments on the Hebrews 11:1 passage I quoted above as follows:

“In Heb 11:1, ‘faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen’ means that persuasion is not the outcome of imagination but is based on fact, such as the reality of the resurrection of Christ (I Cor. 15), and as such it becomes the basis of realistic hope.”  (my emphasis)

So Schopenhauer, and my atheist friends driving cars with Schopenhauer quotes on their bumpers are both wrong.  In fact, the atheist with the bumper sticker is exercising blind faith in Schopenhauer’s quote – he or she has never really looked at what true faith is!  Faith is proportional to knowledge.  I do not have to be afraid of knowledge, because knowledge about the truth of God will increase my faith in Him, not decrease my faith in Him!  One of my goals for this website is to present evidence for increasing your knowledge of God, and thereby giving you reason to trust Him.