A Philosopher's Blog

Philosophical Essays on Many Subjects

nuclear

Nuclear Power

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Nuclear power plant.
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The terrible natural disaster in Japan has been compounded by the dangers presented by radiation from the damaged nuclear power plant. As should come as no surprise, this has caused a world wide renewal of concern regarding nuclear power.

On one hand, the fear people have about nuclear power can be irrational and based on beliefs that are not entirely accurate. In part, these fears are grounded in atomic weapons. It is, after all, natural for people to associate the horrors of nuclear weapons with nuclear power plants, even though power plants do not work like nuclear bombs. In part, these fears are also grounded in fiction-radiation, mutation, and so on are put forth in science fiction and horror in ways that have branded them into the public mind. The fact that folks in the media tend to hype things and that the nuclear industry has done little to educate the public do not help matters.

While I do know a bit about nuclear power and radiation, I do have the same “gut fear” of radiation that most folks no doubt possess. As such, I am very sympathetic to people who are very scared of nuclear power and those who oppose it. However, I temper my fear with knowledge and hence I do consider nuclear power well worth considering. True, my ideal power source is nuclear fusion-but that is still the stuff of science fiction.

On the other hand, nuclear power plants can pose very real and very serious health and environmental risks. Accidents are always possible (though thankfully rare) and, of course, there is the concern that a natural disaster will (as happened in Japan) cripple or destroy a plant.

Because of these legitimate concerns, it is wise to be rather careful about nuclear power and the real risks that it presents. However, this assessment should be based on a rational consideration of the dangers and the benefits and should not be grounded in irrational or unfounded fears about nuclear power and radiation.

That said, it is obvious that we are in a phase in which politicians will be reacting to the events in Japan and people will be motivated by their fears. For example, people on the West coast of the US have been running to buy potassium iodide, despite the fact that there is (and almost certainly will not be) any radiation threat in the United States from Japan. As another example, some countries are shutting down reactors. While I am all for rational preparations and for due safety, we need to avoid being swept along by the events and fears of the moment.

Of course, it is almost certainly a waste of keystrokes to type that. After all, we tend to react rather than be proactive and are inevitably caught up in whatever is hitting the headlines this week. Then we generally forget until the next disaster, then we wonder why we did not do much (or anything) differently. But, I am sure we will learn our lesson this time.

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Ah, Republicans.

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Clipped version of Gingrich and Lott.jpg, a fi...
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Obama recently changed the United States’ nuclear policy and also signed a weapons treaty with Russia.

The gist of the policy change is that the US will not use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear powers (with some exceptions). Interestingly, Newt Gingrich and Sean Hannity claimed that under the new policy, the United States cannot respond with nuclear weapons to a massive biological weapon attack. However, this claim shows that these two men are either ignorant of the real policy or simply lying. This is because the policy makes an explicit statement that the United States retains the option of using nuclear weapons in such cases.

If Newt and Hannity are ignorant, then they were acting irresponsibly. After all, they have an obligation to determine the facts before making such claims. This is true of anyone, but as influential public figures (and being on a news program) they have an even greater obligation to get their facts right before making such claims. Naturally, people can miss facts even when acting in good conscience. However, finding out the facts about this policy is a rather easy matter and hence it is reasonable to expect these men to have taken the minuscule effort it would have taken to learn the truth.

If Newt and Hannity knew the truth, but simply lied in order to take shots at Obama and perhaps scare Americans, then they acted in an immoral manner. This, of course, assumes that lying is wrong.  However, if one takes the view that lying for political gain is acceptable, then this would be just fine. However, this would mean that the Democrats would be entitled to operate by the same principle as would the “liberal” media.

On a related note, I also happened to catch a clip of Sarah Palin criticizing this policy. She used an analogy to kids fighting on a school yard and there being one kid who says he will not hit back if attacked. Once again, Obama is not saying that we will not hit back. To make a more appropriate analogy, it is like kids fighting on the schoolyard and the biggest, toughest kid says that he will not use his baseball bat on kids who don’t have them. But, if someone hurls a rock at him, he will use the bat. Or if some kids have boards they want to make into bats, he can use the bat on them.

While I am all in favor of hitting people back, this means that I would be a rather bad Christian. After all, Jesus says:

You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth. ‘But I tell you, Do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.

Palin and many Republicans like to claim that they are Christians, so it was interesting to hear her blatantly rejecting what Jesus said.

Naturally, it can be argued that the bible is rather inconsistent and that a Christian does not have to follow that “turn the other cheek” thing. After all, the bible is full of passages justifying and allowing killing. Of course, this same sort of “pick and chose” should be extended to others as well, on the pain of inconsistency. So, for example, folks who want to ignore what the bible allegedly says about same sex marriage should feel as free to ignore that as Palin and other Republicans feel free to ignore other parts of the bible.

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Palin, Obama and Iran

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Sarah Palin, eleventh governor of Alaska and 2...
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Sarah Palin recently spoke about Iran, Obama and terrorism on Fox News. While we are currently involved in two wars, Palin seems to think that a third war (against Iran) would be something we should do. She said:

“Say he decided to declare war on Iran or decide to really come out and do whatever he could to support Israel–which I would like him to do. That changes the dynamics of what we can assume will happen between now and three years. Because I think if the election were today, Obama would not be elected.”

While support for Israel does make sense (Israel is a consistent American ally in the region), attacking Iran does not seem to be a very good idea.

Three reasons this would be a bad idea are Iraq, Afghanistan and the economy. In other words,  we are already bogged down in two wars and our economy is in bad shape. Starting up a third war might well be beyond our means. Two factors that tend to break empires are overextending the military and overtaxing the economy. As such, we should give considerable more thought about the matter before sending tanks into Iran.

Of course, it could be argued that the consequences of not attacking Iran will be far worse than then consequences of attacking. People have argued that Iran is close to getting nuclear weapons and hence we must attack them.

Of course, we have never operated on the principle that we will invade countries to prevent them from getting nuclear weapons and it is not clear why Iran should be the exception. Also, if we a adopt the principle if attacking countries who might get nuclear weapons, then it would make sense to also go after those that already have these weapons. However, this does not seem to be a very good idea since it would probably start a nuclear war.

It might be argued that the time to strike is before a country has nuclear weapons. After all, if someone is reaching for a gun, the time to hit him is before he gets to it. It also makes sense to fight people who do not have guns rather than those who do. Likewise with nuclear weapons in place of guns.

This analogy does work well when you know the person reaching for a gun intends to shoot you. If a person is reaching for a gun because so many other people have guns and having one is a status symbol as well as means of deterrence, then attacking seems far less reasonable. After all, attacking will certainly start a war and allowing the person to get his gun unmolested might not lead to a fight. So far this approach has worked-after all, we are currently living with a world on which many folks are toting nuclear weapons. If we can live with them, the argument goes, we can live with a nuclear armed Iran.

However, some folks claim that the leaders of Iran are religious fanatics and that they will start a nuclear war as soon as they can get the weapons.

If this were true, then this would be a matter of great concern. Going back to the gun analogy, if you saw a madman lunging for a gun while screaming about slaughtering all the heretics/infidels/non-believers in the name of Jesus/Allah/Santa Claus, then shooting him before he can grab that gun would probably be a good idea.

This leads to a critical factual issue: are the people who call the shots in Iran crazy religious fanatics who intend to start a nuclear war as soon as they get weapons?

The answer seems to be “no.” While the leaders in Iran talk the religious talk and act in theocratic ways, they seem to be very similar to all leaders: concerned about power, corrupt, and very much interested in the things of this world. As such, it seems unlikely that Iran would switch from being a fairly pragmatic political player to being an apocalyptic madhouse simply because it gets the bomb.

I could, of course, be wrong about this. Maybe they are dreaming of burning the world in nuclear fire for the glory of God. Maybe Obama

Also, there are other reasons to be concerned about a nuclear armed Iran, such as their willingness to provide weapons to terrorists. But this possibility must be weighed against the cost of attacking Iran and maintaining a sustained campaign to prevent them from acquiring such weapons. Ironically, launching such an attack could make the United States even less safe by providing even more motivation for terrorism and creating even more fear in the Middle East that America has no qualms about attacking Muslim countries.

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Too Blur or Not to Blur?

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Washington Public Power Supply System Nuclear ...
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When planning an attack, the more information you have, the better. When trying to defend against an attack, the more information you can deny to the enemy, the better. These facts underlie the concern about high quality online images of American nuclear power plants.

The main worry is that terrorists will use these images to plan out attacks against nuclear power plants. Apparently, the people who attacked Mumbai used online mapping software to help plan their attack and this lends credence to the worry. Obviously, such images would be very useful in planning out an attack. Also important is the fact that the images can be acquired without attracting attention. In contrast, making a physical reconnaissance of a target would be risky for terrorists and could well tip off law enforcement that something is up. The proposed solution is to have a policy for blurring such images to make it more difficult for terrorists to get such information. Dick Cheney‘s house, it has been claimed, is blurred out on Google Earth.

Of course, one obvious problem with this plan is that the images are readily available now. Any terrorists thinking about attacks in the future can just save the images and have them on hand should they decide to plan an attack. However, the blurring of new images could still be effective. Doing so would deny people detailed images of these critical locations, provided that they did not have some other means of acquiring them. Of course, terrorists could simply attack the multitude of sites for which they already have clear photos. As such, the time to blur would have been before the images were posted. To blur now is like covering a child’s eyes to prevent him from seeing streakers only after several of them have already run by.

While blurring such images might help, terrorists have obviously launched effective attacks without them. Terrorists can also acquire information in many other ways, though these might be somewhat more difficult. As such, the value of blurring is probably fairly minimal.

No doubt someone will argue that we should blur the images even if it would have little effect. After all, they might say, blurring the images takes such little effort and could make us a tiny bit safer. Surely that is worth it?

On one hand, that seems reasonable. After all, if blurring the images makes it a tiny bit more difficult for hypothetical terrorists to launch hypothetical attacks in the future, then it seems like something that should be done.

On the other hand, there are some concerns about doing this. One is that blurring out the sites would really do nothing to make us safer. After all, a terrorist is not going to say “curses, we were going to attack the Great Satan‘s nuclear plant, but these blurred images make it impossible! Damn you to hell, Photoshop!” As such, there is no reason to take even the small effort needed to blur things. A second reason is that for the blurring to have any chance of being effective, all publicly available images would have to be blurred. Ensuring this would require new laws and their enforcement. This would, as always, not be free or easy and we should ask if the cost of doing this would be worth the alleged gain in safety. Conservative folks would probably also raise concerns about the government stepping in with more regulation. A third reason is that such moves towards secrecy can encourage the spread of more secrecy. If we start by blurring out nuclear plants, then the logical step is to blur out non-nuclear power plants, and so on to everything that the terrorists might consider attacking. Also, since terrorists have made use of online mapping programs, we need to be worried that they might use Mapquest or Google Earth to find their way to key targets. They can, of course, also use paper maps-so we need to be worried about those as well.

While this seems absurd, that is my point. The same logic used to argue for blurring the photos of the buildings can be used to argue against allowing maps that show their locations to be online. The mere fact that something might have some use to a terrorist hardly seems to justify such action.

Someone might be thinking that because of my view, I would argue that everything about such sites should be publicly available. That, for example, detailed interior maps and the security plans of nuclear plants should be put online.

I do not think that at all-because that would be stupid. That is the sort of information that would be very useful to the wrong sort of people. Also, there is a distinction between what the photos show and this other information. The photos just show the exterior of the plants. They show what a person could see who walked /drove by them or was in a commercial flight that went nearby. In other words, the photos show what is publicly available. They do not show what is hidden from the public eye. This is an important distinction. As such, I do not think that blurring is necessary or even reasonable at this point.

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Obama & Iran

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While the President of Iran congratulated Obama on his win, the speaker of Iran’s parliament has criticized Obama for his position on Iran’s nuclear program. Like Bush and McCain, Obama takes the view that Iran’s development of nuclear weapons is unacceptable.

While some on the right would like to paint Obama as soft, weak, and ready to cozy up with America’s enemies, this does not seem to be the case. Obama has shown a willingness to use diplomacy and conversation and some see this as a sign of weakness. Presumably some think that strength is shown by resorting to force without seriously attempting a peaceful solution. While there is a certain satisification in the gunslinger approach to the world’s problems, this seems to be a morally questionable approach. The use of force leads to death and destruction. Further, it is generally not the most effective solution. To solve a problem effectively without violence is the better approach-as Sun Tzu argued centuries ago. If talking with foreign leaders achieves our national ends without the shedding of blood and treasure, so much the better. Of course, there are times when talking fails and force must be employed. One who refuses to ever use force is as foolish as one who sees it as his only option. I don’t think Obama is a fool-but he has yet to be truly tested.

In regards to Iran, Obama will probably attempt to improve our diplomatic relations and work on achieving our national ends in this manner. However, Obama has made it clear that he will not accept a nuclear armed Iran. Whether he will be willing to fire missiles into Tehran is a question that remains unanswered. I suspect Iran will try to test Obama’s will. I think they will not find it lacking, nor the will of the American people.

However, I do hope that we can work out a peaceful agreement and ratchet down the tensions. While Iran has strong theocratic elements and has been involved in terrorism, the Iranian leaders and people seem genuinely interested in better relations with the United States. I think we can find common ground with the Iranians and work from there. Of course, we cannot be naive about things.

Nuclear Detection Flaws

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In 2002 the Bush administration began a $300 million radiation defense system. The system is intended to screen border traffic between the United States and Canada for radioactive substances. While defending the United States against radioactive-based attacks (such as nuclear weapons or dispersal of radioactive material) is a laudable goal, these efforts have failed. In fact, they have done worse than fail.

Newsweek recently published an article on this defense system that presented two very important facts. First, the system has had 1.5 million false positives in the course of screening 270 million vehicles. While the sensors have been set off by tile, cat litter, granite and even bananas, the majority of these false positives are from patients who have undergone medical procedures involving nuclear isotopes. The patients are, in effect, radioactive and hence are picked up by the sensors. While the sensitivity of the sensors is certainly encouraging, the fact that they cannot distinguish between patients and possible weapons is less encouraging. Of course, it could be the case that there simply is no effective way to distinguish between real threats and false positives using such sensors.

The second fact of concern is that of the 1.5 million positives, all of them have been false. Thus, no terrorists have been caught using this system. On one hand, this can be seen as a positive thing. Perhaps the deterrence factor of the system has kept terrorists from even making the attempt. On the other hand, maybe this is a bad thing. Perhaps terrorists (or others) have smuggled radioactive material across the border without being caught. In “Detecting Nuclear Smuggling” (Scientific American, April 2008 pages 98-104) Thomas Cochran and Matthew McKinzie discuss the unreliability of nuclear detectors. To illustrate their point, they helped ABC news smuggle depleted uranium through such detectors. While the authors go into some technical details in making there case, it is easy enough to make a general and intuitive case for why nuclear smuggling would be so easy.

While I am not a physicist, I know that radiation detectors work by detecting emitted radiation. To use an analogy, they can be compared to an eye seeing light or a nose detecting a scent. In the case of the eyes, if all emitted light is blocked, it cannot be detected. In the case of scent, if the particles coming off the substance can be contained, then it cannot be detected by smell (one might recall the commercials for zip lock bags demonstrating this). In the case of radiation, if the emissions are blocked, then the substance cannot be detected in that manner. Blocking radiation is a relatively simple thing and anyone who had read Superman comics knows how to do it: lead. Naturally, the actual concealing of radioactive material can be a bit more complex, but it is a simple matter of shielding and does not require any advanced technology or special equipment. In short, anyone who can gain access to radioactive material will certainly be able to have access to shielding material as well as a basic grasp of how to use it.

Radiation detectors would be useful against terrorists who lack the most basic grasp of how radiation detection works or in cases where the shielding is not adequate. However, it seems likely that these cases would be extremely rare.

It might be thought that such shielded containers would be easy to spot. However, as ABC news proved, it seems easy enough to get them through ports. Shielded containers could be disguised as any number of harmless items (metal machine parts, for example) that would pass visual inspection during border crossings. Of course, if we have to rely on visual inspection, it makes little sense to have spent $300 million on a system that is almost useless.

The nuclear detection flaws are just yet another example of what Bush’s war on terror has done in terms of defending America: we have spent millions of dollars building a system that inconveniences people needlessly and cannot really protect us. While it might catch very stupid  or ignorant terrorists, it hardly seems worth the cost.

Of course, the stated intent is a good one: protecting the United States from nuclear danger. Radiation weapons do present a potential for serious damage and we should have defenses against them. However, we need to spend our resources on defenses that work rather than ones that do not.

It might be argued that the defense would work, provided that people like Cochran McKinsie and myself did not betray America by drawing attention to the fact that the system cannot work. In reply, I think that the terrorists would figure that out on their own. Also, a citizen has a moral duty to point out wasted resources and inffective defenses. Basing a $300 million defense on the hopes that no one will notice or say that it cannot work is hardly good strategy.

We do need a defense against radiation weapons. Unfortunately, the current system is not the defense we need. Thanks again, George, for burning through so much cash with so little to show for it.

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