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An episode in the WHA Radio series.
Mind Webs: What Really Caused the Energy Crisis? with Guest Paul Nahin
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An episode in the WHA Radio series.
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Go to Shopify.com slash dax to upgrade your selling today. Shopify.com slash dax. Welcome to a half hour of mind work. Short stories from the worlds of speculative fiction. This is Michael Hansen. The mind work story of this half hour comes from Analog of July 1978. This is Paul Nayens. Walking into his 8 o'clock freshman physics class, senior Ford professor Dr. John Pixley had the feeling the students looked familiar. But of course they weren't. It was the first class meeting of the fall semester and all the students were new to the campus. Looking around at the hushed, awed class, Pixley knew that wouldn't last past the third meeting. He decided it must be the firm bodies, tan skin and youthful excitement that was the same every year. If the students were new, Pixley certainly wasn't. 60 years old, but still trim and figure he thought. He was a full gruff, more by reason than 35 years of dedicated teaching and by publication of scholarly papers. No, Pixley had long since resigned himself to be the sort of teacher who gains influence and some sort of immortality through his students. But Pixley knew his worth. He didn't take second place in the department packing order to any of the hot shot publication artists, no sir. Good morning class, this is physics one, just in case any of you really should be in bio one that meets in room 241B. Pixley did this routine introduction each year as his class was invariably assigned 241A and a few students always got confused. Sure enough, two embarrassed boys and a girl got up and followed by some giggling, laughed. Pixley watched with a mixture of appreciation and regret at the departure of the blonde in a form-fitting skirt. After all these years as a physicist, the motion dynamics of a firm bottom still mystified him. He wondered if NSF would fund an experimental study of the phenomenon. Maybe, as he called it, the resonance modes of two balanced, juxtaposed hemispheres in a uniform gravity field. These pleasant thoughts were interrupted by the appearance of four new red-faced students obviously freshly emerged from bio one. The class got a new excuse to laugh at the expense of the confused, and Pixley noted with disappointment there was no replacement for the blonde. All right, let's get started. We're going to cover a lot of ground this semester, and I'll expect hard work out of all of you. This class will be demanding, but you'll find, even if you were here just to satisfy the university science requirement, that it can be fun, and you'll learn a lot about how the world we live in works. Even if you go into a non-technical career, a basic knowledge of physics will help differentiate you from the uneducated, the uncultured, and if I may say so, the uninteresting. Pixley was only momentarily hesitant with his last words, as while he wasn't sure they were true, he was convinced they should be. You may not have thought much about it before, but you really actually know quite a bit about this subject. Just to survive to the ripe old age of 17 or 18, you had to learn how a lot of things in nature work. Like if you jump off a porch, you'll fall rather than float, so you know something about gravity. You've learned to get out of the way of a bicycle, so you know something about kinetic energy, and energy coupling between bodies undergoing collision, and so on. Pixley stopped his pacing back and forth as he talked and looked at the class. They looked back expectantly. No one showed the slightest intention of asking a question. In fact, you even know a lot about theoretical things, too, that go beyond mere experimental observations of everyday life. For example, is there a limit to how fast things can move? Most of the students looked perplexed, but several put up their hands, pointing at a red-haired young man in the back of the room. The boy responded, Well, I guess you must mean the speed of light. I mean, nothing can go faster than light, right? Pixley nodded, happy to have been given a good line to follow. Yes, yes, that's pretty much true. It's not exactly right, because sometimes things can go faster than light if they're both moving in something other than empty space, like water. But you're essentially correct. Nothing can go faster than light does in a vacuum. Now, let's try something else. Reaching into his briefcase on the floor next to the lectern, Pixley extracted a broad-eared color photo and held it up to the class. Now, here is an old aerial picture I picked up years ago when I did some consulting for the Navy. It's a shot of the old carrier Enterprise with her crew on deck in their dress white. Can anyone tell me what it means? 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Transform your listening experience with Sol Good Media. Visit solgoodmedia.com and start your free trial now. We can't wait for you to join our audio community. Happy listening. The red-haired boy spoke up again, drawing some resentful stares from the class. That boy's going to learn what happens to students who speak up, thought Pixley. That old school boy rule of never show off your knowledge was in operation, and Pixley made a mental note to learn his name. The boy looked promising. The crew is all lined up, spelling out E equals MC squared, so I guess that's an old nuclear-powered ship. Because isn't that Einstein's mass-energy law? Right again. Next to Maxwell's equations for the electromagnetic field, Einstein's result is probably the most beautiful creation of the human mind. And you already know of it just as part of growing up in our modern atomic-powered society. A young lady next to the red-haired boy spoke up at this. But shouldn't you add, professor, some comments about the terrible social problems atomic energy has caused? The spread of reactors with their radioactive waste. It threatens everybody, and all just because it makes money for a special few at the risk of ordinary people. Pixley felt a cold wave of apprehension as he recognized the tone of a young idealist speaking with all the fervor that being naive can muster. He replied carefully. Well, of course, there are great difficulties of the kind you mention, but so far there haven't been any major problems except for the partial core meltdown at Tulsa a few years ago. And with the Livermore fusion process, have all of you heard of that? Good. Soon to be coupled into the national power grid, we will then only have the tritium disposal problem. A minor problem, really. The young lady looked unconvinced, as did many of her classmates. Pixley knew from salary experience that he couldn't lose the class permanently right here and now if he did not regain control. To be challenged in the first ten minutes of the first meeting and not to persuasively counter would be fatal. He gained a few seconds to gather his thoughts by lighting his plant. Now look, I know what the prevailing ideas about the spread of nuclear power in the United States are. That a bunch of capitalistic, money-grubbing, publicly damned utilities and rich corporate investors found an attractive way to make enormous profits in response to the world energy crisis that first started to be publicly understood in the early 70s. Well, that's wrong. There was some of that, of course. But alone, it wouldn't have been sufficient to result in the massive energy conservation, new energy source development, and nuclear reactor construction programs of the last three decades or so. Something else has been at work. And that something was national security. I know most of you are aware of how that excuse was abused in the infamous Nixon-Watergate scandal and the slavery inquiry more recently. But in this case, it's true. The class still looked skeptical, but now there was interest, too, on their faces and Pixley knew he had them back in his hands. Now to keep them there. Pixley picked up his lecture notes and dramatically tossed them back into his briefcase. Well, to hell with today's lecture. I'm going to tell you a story. A story you may not believe. A story that the powers that be and the White House, the Pentagon, and State Department will deny, but it's nevertheless true. It isn't classified because, well, the classified would be to admit it. And there's always someone who would leak it anyway, like me. Today won't be a loss in any case. You'll learn some physics from this. How many of you have heard of our government agency called DARPA? No response. Just as I thought. And that's not strange. It keeps a low profile. Now DARPA, which stands for Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, is part of the Directorate of Defense Research and Engineering, which in turn is part of the Department of Defense. DARPA was chartered decades ago with a basic mission of providing initial financial support for blue sky, even almost crazy ideas for basic research that just might lead to new weapons technology. The idea has been to avoid what military people call technological surprise on the United States. That's where one of the potential enemies of this country comes up suddenly with a revolutionary new weapon that lets them get the upper hand in the military stalemate we presently have. And don't think this is just paranoia. Such catastrophic weapons developments have happened in the past. Any of you think of some examples? The red-haired boy in the back responded again, but now there was more interest by the class in what he had to say. How about the atomic bomb, Professor? When the United States dropped it on Japan, that must have caught them by surprise. Yes. Yes, indeed, it certainly did. To the Japanese it was pure magic, although that may not be exactly the right word. They had no idea what had happened to them. Interestingly enough, captured German documents and interrogation of captured scientists indicated that the Third Reich knew what had happened. But even the Germans didn't know how it had happened. That's pretty recent stuff. Actually, technological surprises have occurred all through history to the sorrow of the surprised. For example, you might look into what happened to the flower of 14th century French knighthood at Crecy when they ran into the armor-penetrating arrows of the English longbow for the first time. Or, even better, look into the 10th century battle for Constantinople, where Russia's Prince Igor had his fleet of 10,000 ships burned to their waterlines when the Byzantines zapped them with their Greek fire. And, of course, the classic case of technological surprise has to be David and Goliath. Now, past, Darth Vader itself came into being because of a major surprise on the United States, the launching of Sputnik by the Russians back in 1957. But this is drifting away from what I really started out to tell you. In the early 1970s, DARPA was suddenly faced with a colossal technological surprise from the Soviets. Yes, that's right, one that threatened to leave us wide open to them. The Russians were on the verge of developing a weapons system that would completely negate our ICBMs and the SLBMs, a perfect anti-ballistic missile system that was the Directed Energy Beam, consisting either of space-based high-energy lasers or subatomic particle accelerators. The Russians had made fantastic strides in such devices, just because such weapons violated the then-existing ABM and outer space treaties, that didn't make any difference. Once they had such weapons actually deployed, there wouldn't be a damn thing we could do about it. But, Professor, couldn't you just shoot their weapons down? Pixley fixed a prodigally smile on the student who had just spoken. With what? Their new weapon was designed to shoot our missiles, and that's all we had to shoot at their satellite-based energy beam projectors. Once in orbit, they would have really had us right by the neck. The class was hanging on the edges of their seats now. Pixley relaxed a bit and began to enjoy himself as he continued on with his tale. You can't believe the uproar that rolled through the corridors of the Pentagon, the careers of a lot of generals and admirals and senior civilian intelligence officers came to an abrupt end once Congress got hold of that story. As it turned out, some isolated Air Force intelligence people had been warning the CIA about the Soviet advancements, but they were dismissed as being alarmists. It was the old not-invented-here syndrome. Why, if the United States couldn't build such weapons, why, then, could mostly ro-ro, peasant-like Mother Russia do it? Well, by God, they did it! But a spectacled, bright-looking young man in the front row, quiet up to now, raised his hand. Pixley gave a quick nod to him. Professor, you know, this all reminds me of that old cowboy and Indian joke where the ancient Indian fighters tell him how, years before, he'd been surrounded by attacking Indians and how he was down to his last bullock and when asked how it turned out, he replied, I got killed! The class roared, and Pixley glowed. A better entrance line he couldn't have written himself. Well, quite true, young man, quite true. Here we all sit, alive and healthy. America's still here, and Russia's still there. And how do I explain that? Could it be that once Russia defeated us without a shot, they just said, okay, we won, but don't worry, everything stays the same. We just wanted to show you guys we could do it. A few snorts of laughter rippled through the class, and Pixley himself had to suppress a smile. Pixley kept quiet for half a minute, just smoking his pipe and letting him think about it. Thirty-five years in the lecture room had taught him that to be a good teacher wasn't just knowing your subject. You had to know how to put on a show, too. Well, class, just because the CIA blew it doesn't mean we were totally defenseless. The boys at DARPA hadn't been sitting on their hands all those years. It seems they had been fronting the research of a little-known professor in a small New England university who had come to them with a wild idea in the late 60s. Remember Einstein's energy equals mc squared? Well, the way we used that in the atomic bomb was to convert a small portion of uranium mass into a heck of a lot of energy. And, of course, that's what we do today in fission and fusion reactors, except in fusion reactors it's hydrogen mass. What this professor wanted to do was run the Einstein equation backwards. Do you see what that means? Pixley could see they didn't, and here he didn't wait for any dramatic silence down above. What the professor wanted to do was to take electrical energy and literally compress it back into mass. The kicker in this was that his theoretical analyses predicted the end mass did not have to have any relation to the mass that might have been converted to produce the energy he started with. In fact, energy produced just from chemical reactions like burning wood was okay, too, although not very efficient. A wood burner doesn't put out much energy compared to a nuclear plant, and he claimed he could create any of the known elements and other super-heavy ones predicted by extending the periodic table that weren't even known to science. Pixley puffed on his pipe to get it going again, blew a smoke ring, and then continued. One of these super-heavy elements had the theoretically calculated property of making an ultra-hard heat-resistant alloy when mixed correctly with titanium. The result was called, appropriately enough, impervium. Impervium, used to make the outer skin in our missiles, made them invulnerable to the Russian ABM energy beam projectors. So, you see, we had what in the old days we used to call a Mexican standoff. The Russians could build an ABM system we didn't know how to build, but we could build missiles to penetrate their ABM defense, missiles they didn't know how to build. So, counter-surprise. And so, for the next 10 years, both sides worked like hell to catch up with the other's technology. And in the end, both ended up with duplicate capabilities. As of right now, both sides have refrained from deploying ABM energy beams because both sides have impervium-skinned missiles. But, of course, this happy ending, happy so far at least, occurred only because of DARPA's excellent judgment in deciding to support a good professor's nutty idea. I might add, however, that he was handsomely rewarded, so don't worry about him, even though he didn't get the Nobel Prize. At least, not yet. He did get a heck of a lot more money than the prize carries. Some might think it was a fortune, along with the Presidential Science Medal. It was all very private and hush-hush, of course. Professor, that's a very interesting story. But just what does it have to do with the energy crisis? I mean, that's what you started to tell us about, right? And why don't you people talk about it today? It's all over, right? And why did the professor in your story have to keep quiet about his invention after the Russians had the impervium technology, too? And what would be the point in being secretive now, today? Well, those, young lady, are the crucial questions. And the answers are really very simple. To answer the first one, just calculate how much energy it takes to make a kilogram of the impervium additive. In fact, I'll save you the trouble. Plug the value for the speed of light into Einstein's equation, and it's not hard to calculate that it takes 25 billion kilowatt-hours of electrical energy to make a one-kilogram mass of anything. Now, that, my young friends, is just one hell of a lot of energy. One of the new rebel fusion plants will run full out at a power level of 10,000 megawatts. You can work through the math yourself, but in one year, the total energy from such an installation will be just enough, at 100 percent efficiency, just enough to produce three and one-half kilos of impervium additive. And, of course, at the power levels available in the 60s and 70s, a lot of those old-fashioned reactors were needed to produce the necessary amounts of impervium in order to shield our missiles. Those reactors were built after much controversy, as you well know, and a portion of the power from each was diverted from the national power grid. The cover story for all this was, quite simply, the so-called energy crisis. I should also explain the failure of Congress in the face of what was reported to be imminent doom to do anything about it. The student who had started Pitsley on his story had been squirming in her seat for several minutes. Finally, she could stand it no longer. Look, Professor, I don't mean to be disrespectful, but I just can't believe all this. How could everybody be fooled by that? How could it be hidden from the government regulatory agencies who looked at the records of the utility? Couldn't someone have revealed it all to the public eventually? My dear young lady, it was the government that made the decision to manufacture impervium. Of course, the regulatory agencies knew what was going on. They were in charge of running the whole operation. As to the secrecy involved, the CIA manages to keep its $10 billion budget secret, even from Congress. Bureaucracies can be very good at that sort of thing. During World War II, the Manhattan Project, involving billions of dollars and thousands of people, maintained absolute secrecy. One of the slogans of the early days of the energy crisis was that it was the moral equivalent of war. Only people then didn't really understand what was meant by that. It was for real. Okay, Professor, maybe you're not putting us on, but why is it still hushed up? You saw the Russians, and we both have impervium missiles today. So what's the point in not telling people what happened? Pixley banged his pipe into the waste paper basket near the door and began to remap the stem with a pipe cleaner. The reason is simple. It's still happening. Oh, not so much as in the early days of the crisis. And as the fusion plants come online, the truth will probably be revealed in the next few years. You see, like all the other super-heavy elements, the impervium additive is unstable, with a radiation half-life of only a few years. We have to keep on making this stuff, even with a fixed number of missiles, to replace the skins as they lose their resistance to directed energy beams. The Russians have the same problem, of course, and that's why no one over there is talking either. Because scared of Pixley, is he, we packed his pipe with tobacco. Professor, how do you happen to know all this? And how can the government be absolutely sure that professor who discovered impervium will remain silent? Pixley looked pleased with himself as he replied. Well, let me answer your first question by responding to your second one with a counter-question. What makes you think he has? The government isn't worried about the professor talking now because who would believe such a crazy story? Do you? Of course you don't, but it is true. I certainly wish I could convince you, and maybe I can. From the inside pocket of his expensively tailored coat, Professor Pixley took out his wallet and extracted a wad of $20 bills. Spreading them out for the class to see, he then wrapped them tightly into a tube along their long axes. With the tube on fire with his lighter, Pixley lit his freshly packed pipe with the flaming greenbacks. Well, you'll believe me now? You've heard Paul Nayan's story, what really caused the energy crisis, until it appeared in the July 1978 edition of Analog Magazine. This is Michael Hanson, technical operation for this broadcast by Bob Chan. MindWebs is produced at WHA Radio in Madison, a service of University of Wisconsin Extension. Experience the best in relaxation and entertainment with soulgoodmedia.com. Our extensive library features hundreds of audio books, thousands of short stories, and popular sounds for sleep, meditation, and relaxation, all ad-free. Start your free 30-day trial today and discover your new go-to for entertainment and relaxation. 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