| HalvOnHorseracing |
05-01-2020 09:03 PM |
Enrico Fermi and Nuclear Energy
I posted a short piece on Fermi's contribution to nuclear reactors on the religion thread.
I am familiar with Enrico Fermi's work and have visited his reactor No.1 in Washington state on the Columbia river. Actually I had somewhat of a VIP tour because I was working on some nuclear energy issues for my clients, so I was shown a lot of stuff other people don't get to see. The small reactor that produced some of the plutonium that was used in one of the atomic bombs dropped in Japan. That reactor is being used as a museum now.
They have a storage area where the reactors from retired ships and submarines. They have also been working on a containment system where used high level nuclear material could be stored inside special glass that kept the radiation from escaping (called vitrification). Easy storage, easy transport.
I also toured a nuclear plant on the Chesapeake Bay. Fascinating to see how it all works. I left with the feeling nuclear energy was not only a good way to generate electricity but a safe way.
Fermi, unlike most physicists, was exceptional in both theoretical and experimental physics. His calculations were considered second to none and were used in the development of the nuclear reactors in Chicago and Richland. The story of how he escaped Italy with his wife and children is fascinating.
The Russians, of course, kept tabs on Fermi. Chicago Pile 1 was the world's first nuclear reactor, built in 1942 by Nobel Prize winner Enrico Fermi. The reactor was built underneath the University of Chicago's Stagg Field football stadium in an abandoned squash court. When the Russians needed to send a report to Moscow on Fermi's activity, they found themselves stymied by how to translate squash court into Russian. So they wrote that Fermi was building a reactor in a pumpkin patch.
He was very much the equal of Einstein.
Einstein was a pacifist and wrote a famous letter to Roosevelt suggesting that great thought should go into the decision to use such a lethal weapon. Of course, Roosevelt died before the the bomb was dropped and the decision was left to Harry Truman.
I would strongly recommend looking at the biographies of Fermi. Very interesting life.
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