Richard Rhodes on nuclear technology ichard Rhodes is the author of 18 books, including The Making of the Atomic Bomb (published in 1986), R which won a Pulitzer Prize in Nonfiction, a Nation- al Book Award, and a National Book Critics Circle Award. He also has written Dark Star: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb (1995); and Nuclear Renewal: Common Sense About Energy (1993), which provides a look at the viability of nu- clear power in the United States. His writing reaches far beyond nuclear issues. Other works include novels such as The Last Safari and The Ungodly, and nonfiction books including How To Write: Advice and Re- flections and his most recent, Why They Kill: The Discover- ies of a Maverick Criminologist. Rhodes, a Kansas native and a 1959 graduate of Yale Uni- versity, has received numerous fellowships for research and writing, including grants from the Ford Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. He has been a visiting schol- ar at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a host and correspondent for documentaries on nuclear issues on public television’s Frontline and Amer- ican Experience series. He lives in rural Connecticut. Richard Rhodes: “While people are phobic about radiation, they are not when it is to their benefit.” Rhodes talked with Nuclear News about the experiences as a journalist that opened his eyes to the value of nuclear tech- etc.—journalists and the American public need to take a hard nology, and about how other journalists don’t seem to be do- look at a technology that provides so much to benefit hu- ing their homework in that regard. With what nuclear has to manity, he said. The interview was conducted by Rick offer—power generation, food irradiation, medical uses, Michal, NN senior associate editor. Besides your acclaimed books on the atomic history of the development of the bomb, So you didn’t start writing about nuclear with and hydrogen bombs, you’ve written on Amer- which led directly to my writing The Making a clean slate? ican farming, mad cow disease, your child- of the Atomic Bomb in the first half of the Not at all, and I don’t think journalists do. hood, and, in a novel, the Donner party. How 1980s. We’re all the product of our education and did you get interested in writing about nuclear What is interesting is that in the ’70s when background and experiences with other peo- issues? I was first writing about nuclear power, I had ple. It’s as clear now as then that journalists Back in the 1970s, I was doing a lot of the usual kind of ill-informed hostility toward are prepared by their backgrounds to be hos- magazine work while writing fiction on my it that most journalists still have today. But as tile. One of the dirty little secrets of the whole own. This was the time of the energy crisis I came to know the subject and assemble some antinuclear movement is that in many ways it and there was a lot of work writing about nu- facts, I changed my mind completely. I really is not about environmental issues, because if clear issues, particularly on nuclear power. got into nuclear technology as a journalist. I it were, the movement would be pronuclear. That’s when I noticed, for example, that think that is obvious from what I’ve written Rather, it is about something that arose from there had never been a complete narrative lately. the era when there was profound skepticism July 2000 NUCLEAR NEWS 33 and hostility to large corporations, which is of course, they look into subjects and talk to defending this form of energy generation as still a feature today of the antinuclear move- each other. But that’s not a very reliable way having benefits to humanity, I must be on the ment. That movement is as much concerned to find out the real facts about anything. payroll of the nuclear power industry. Subse- about the centralization of energy generation quently, after that program was aired, the ra- as it is about anything else. Since energy is As a follow-up to that question, is the chasm dio station got calls and letters from people successfully and efficiently generated by large increasing between science and liberal arts saying, “Rhodes gives lectures to nuclear central plants, the antinuclear movement re- that the late C. P. Snow wrote about in the power organizations and makes money off of ally reflects the hostility to large organizations ’50s in his book Two Cultures? Would the me- his position.” The station called me and asked and particular corporations. dia’s miscoverage of nuclear technology be about the charges. I responded yes, but that I I came in with all of that. But getting to an example of that chasm? make part of my living giving public speech- know the atomic scientists who worked on the Yes, it would be an example. I’m not sure es. It’s also true that I speak to universities bomb and developed the first nuclear power that the chasm is any worse now than it ever about violence, and I speak to Los Alamos systems in the country and in the world, I has been. For example, while researching on about the bomb. I certainly am not in the came to understand that there was a very dif- the development of the bomb, I found that pocket of the nuclear power industry and I was ferent story, that if I looked at other forms of back in the early 1930s at Oxford University insulted that the station had asked. So, yes, be- energy generation, nuclear power looked bet- in England they had not yet wired the physics ing pronuclear does have an effect and people ter and better. laboratory for electricity. That pervasive do notice it. standoff between the humanities and science A reviewer once called you “a peerless ex- is still very much evident in the universities Why would the scientist you were debating de- plainer of difficult concepts.” How much do and in the backgrounds of intellectuals. liberately make false statements? you think this affects the public’s acceptance There’s a sort of snobbery about technology Academics often take positions that they of nuclear energy—that it’s perceived as too in particular—somewhat less so with sci- can’t back up. It is often mantled with their difficult to be understood easily? ence—that pervades the literary intellectuals credibility. For example, I’ve been working Most people in the general public don’t of America as opposed to other Western on the subject of whether exposure to violent know, for example, that steam generators are countries. media makes people violent. I’ve discovered a part of any power generating system. So I’m On the other hand, we’re embedded in tech- that some of the most frequently cited re- not sure that it’s the relative difficulty of ex- nology today and it’s so much more evident search documents are fraudulent. The data plaining fission over chemical burning that is now than it used to be. I look at my desk in were deliberately shaped to fit the conclusions the issue. Rather, I think nuclear power has front of me; desks used to have a phone at that the researcher wanted to arrive at. It’s no been the center of a great deal of attention be- best. Now there are computers, fax machines, surprise, then, that the Nobel Laureate I was cause, for example, of the waste it produces. printers, cell phones, etc. debating made statements that were outra- All generating systems produce waste, of Of course, to some people it’s very de- geous. He claimed to be able to back them up, course, but the difference of nuclear power is pressing, which I find amusing, because half but he cited research that turned out to be that its waste is sequestered in one place rather the population of the United States is alive to- 20–30 years old. I presumed he was hostile to than spewed across the land. The waste issue day due to technological changes in the 20th nuclear power and wanted to put it down in is something that the general public has been century, most of them in public health. Half debate. made aware of by the attention it’s been giv- the population of America would not be en rather than by any inherent difficulty. alive—a quarter would never have been born Recently, a weekly news magazine had a spe- I don’t think that “difficult concepts” is the because another quarter would have died be- cial issue devoted to what life would be like in issue. What has deeply affected nuclear pow- fore they were old enough to reproduce. the future. A colorful illustration depicted the er’s reputation is the historic development of That’s a direct outcome of modern science world being powered 50 to 100 years from nuclear weapons and, in particular, atmos- and technology. People just don’t know that. now by fuel cells, wind machines, solar pan- pheric testing. American people became sen- The paradox is that good technology is trans- els, and gas through pipelines. But there was sitized to the notion of strontium-90 getting parent. People walk through it and use it and no mention of nuclear power. I was amazed into the milk supply. I remember those head- don’t realize it.