The Curve of Binding Energy

_The Curve of Binding Energy_ is a book on Theodore Taylor by John McPhee.

According to McPhee, Taylor is a physicist who designed a fair number of
nuclear bombs for the U.S.

It was printed in 1974. At that time Taylor believed nuclear power
plants would become much more widespread. Taylor was concerned that with
more enriching facilities, storage plants, and trucks hauling this
stuff, come more opportunities to steal enriched uranium or plutonium-239.

It seems to me this book has become more relevant now that nuclear power
plants are being touted as an energy source with no green-house gas
emissions.

Taylor describes the uranium in power plants as being mostly U238. The
neutrons flying about frequently get lodged in U238 nuclei making the
isotope U239. U239 then decays to Neptunium-239 and then to Plutonium-239.

So will countries with nuclear power plants have a source of Pu239?

I am not sure how much of threat stolen uranium intended for power
plants would be. Isn't further enrichment necessary to make weapons
grade uranium?

It was Taylor's contention that most of the difficult work to make an
atomic weapon had already been done and made public knowledge. He
asserts that given a source of fissile material, there were many
engineers who could build a nuclear weapon. He seems to differ with the
conventional wisdom that a massive infra-structure would be needed to
build an atomic bomb.

The book isn't all doom and gloom.

An account of project Orion starts on page 170. I liked this passage on
Freeman Dyson: "To Dyson himself, Orion suggested not only a scientific
instrument but an imperative for the future of the world. He saw the
human race running out of frontiers, and he considered frontiers
essential to the human psyche, for without them pressures would build
that would implode upon the race and destroy it. The planets were
unpromising, because of their apparent inability to support life. Dyson
speculated instead about comets. Comets had abundant water and, among
other things, nitrogen and carbon. They seemed to be the logical places
to colonize. Extrapolating from the frequency with which comets come
into the solar system, it could be concluded that comets by the
thousands of millions must be out there in space awaiting colonists. To
provide warmth and air, trees would be grown on comets. The leaves would
be genetically reprogrammed to adapt to conditions of space. Nothing
would inhibit growth on a comet, so the trees would reach heights as
great as a hundred miles. Returning in a sense to an earlier modus
vivendi, people would live among the roots of these great trees,
whirling though space with the basic requirements for life ready to hand."

This section also includes a description of the Dyson Sphere.

I wonder what Dyson thinks of the discovery of the Kuiper Belt or of
Michael Brown's discovery of comets with circular orbits in the Main Belt.

I enjoyed this thought provoking and entertaining book.

Hop