“went critical in April of 1957, and it started feeding electrical power into
the grid on July 12, 1957. It provided power to 1,100 homes in the Moorpark
Area. On July 13, 1959, it had the distinction of being the first reactor
producing commercial power to suffer a core meltdown in the United States. […]
With one third of the fuel melted, the reactor was a loss, but there were no
injuries. A large volume of radioactive gas was quietly vented into the
atmosphere over a period of several weeks.” (Mahaffey, 2010, p. 188)


“The Americans were only months behind the Brits in their introduction of a
true commercial nuclear plant. On a site atop the Simi Hills, overlooking Simi
Valley to the north and the edge of Los Angeles, California […]. Santa Susana
built a reactor using metallic sodium as the coolant.” (Mahaffey, 2010, p.
188)


“Although it was still cheaper to produce power by burning coal, the
government was in constant fear of an economy-crashing coal miners’ strike.”
(Mahaffey, 2010, p. 188)


“Great Britain, with great ceremony involving Queen Elizabeth II turning the
switch, would claim title as having the first nuclear power station to deliver
electricity at commercial levels. […] The Calder Hall nuclear power plant was
first connected to the electrical grid on August 27, 1956 […]. The Calder Hall
plant looked like a civilian power plant, and it did put electricity on the
grid, but it was intended to make plutonium for the nuclear weapons program
and replace the obsolete Windscale reactors. It also had a commercial
purpose.” (Mahaffey, 2010, p. 187)


“on December 20, 1951, EBR-1 became the world’s first electricity-generating
nuclear power plant. It produced sufficient power to light exactly four
200-watt bulbs. The first civilian power station in the world was built in
Obninsk, Russia, about 110 kilometers southwest of Moscow. Construction began
on January 1, 1951, and the first startup was June 1, 1954. […] The reactor
was a dangerous mix of technologies, with both a graphite moderator and water
coolant. Reactors designed using only water had a moderator and coolant that
couldn’t burn, and reactors designed using only graphite had a moderator and
coolant that couldn’t explode. The Soviet design had a coolant that could
explode (water turned to steam) and a moderator (graphite) that could catch
fire. […] The reactor design would be scaled up into a design known as the
RBMK. […] Chernobyl […].” (Mahaffey, 2010, p. 187)


“the first nuclear reactor outside the United States was thus built at Chalk
River. It was given the name ZEEP, meaning Zero Energy Experimental Pile, and
it first went critical at 3:45 in the afternoon on September 5, 1945. The race
for nuclear power was on, and there were four runners. Although not actively
engaged in nuclear weapon production, the Canadians did supply some needed
plutonium to the United Kingdom for the Hurricane test in Australia. The
competitors, the United States, Canada, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union,
would each be able to claim a prize for first in the quest for power. The
United States, seeing no future in uranium-based power, proceeded to
investigate the complex, technically difficult design and construction of a
fast plutonium breeder reactor, named EBR-1, in 1949.” (Mahaffey, 2010, p.
186)


“As early as 1942 the Canadians had seen the future and had established a
nuclear research laboratory in Montreal, under the National Research Council.”
(Mahaffey, 2010, p. 186)


“the Soviets. In the heart of the Manhattan Project, in the nuclear physics
labs in Los Alamos, they had three spies: Klaus Fuchs, a physicist loaned by
the British, code-named CHARL’Z; Ted Hall, a physicist from the University of
Chicago, code-named MLAD; and David Greenglass, a machinist, codenamed KALIBR.
With information gathered by these operatives, the Soviet scientists were able
to build a faithful copy of Enrico Fermi’s Chicago Pile reactor in 1946. Under
the leadership of Russian physicist Igor Kurchatov, the village of Sarov
became the Soviet version of Los Alamos.” (Mahaffey, 2010, p. 184)


“Roosevelt died on April 12, 1945, and soon after the modified agreement
seemed to have been misplaced. No foul play was suspected, but it was as if
the document had never existed. The new president, Harry S Truman, saw no need
to share anything with anybody concerning the atomic bomb. The British had
made recently also a back-door agreement to share things with the French, and
this did not please Mr. Truman. […] In August of 1946 the United States
Congress passed the Atomic Energy Act, known as the McMahon Act. It forbade
the passing of secret atomic energy information to any foreign country,
including Britain or Canada, on pain of death.” (Mahaffey, 2010, p. 184)


“British scientists were allowed to work at Los Alamos and add needed
expertise and heavy lifting to the extreme effort being put into the bomb
design, but they were not allowed anywhere near production facilities, such as
the plutonium-converter reactors at the Hanford Works. The Americans seemed to
be getting as much work as they could out of the Brits, while making sure that
they would take home a minimum number of secrets. The British Prime Minister,
Winston Churchill, managed to convince President Franklin Roosevelt that a
clear-cut agreement was needed, under which the two close allies would share
all expertise and data concerning the atomic bombs. […] The Canadians, having
provided several nuclear physicists to the effort, were included in the
information-sharing policy.” (Mahaffey, 2010, p. 183)


“most advanced German submarines […]. Type XXVI. This boat, with its
streamlined, uncluttered hull, built for underwater speed and stealth, would
be a model for post-war submarine designs, including Rickover’s secret dream,
the nuclear sub. […] The nuclear submarine project would not be an easy sell
for the Navy. There was no war going on, and the Navy was already trying to
figure out what to do with hundreds of existing ships, not building new ones.
Rickover had a plan for a nuclear-powered boat, and it would take him another
10 years to make it come true, stomping down the Navy, the Atomic Energy
Commission, and the always pesky contemporary Conventional Wisdom. The designs
of the nuclear power plants in use today lead in a straight line back to Hyman
Rickover and his opinions of the Daniels Pile Project formed in 1946. For
better or worse, the heritage of contemporary nuclear power begins with the
development of Rickover’s nuclear-powered, 28-foot-diameter submarine. Most
other designs, and there were many, led to dead ends.” (Mahaffey, 2010, p.
172)


“he correctly saw the design of a power reactor as 95% engineering and 5%
nuclear physics. Building a power plant was mostly an exercise in plumbing
[…]. he believed in designing a reactor plant backwards, starting not with the
reactor, but with the propeller shaft. Find the number of watts required to
turn the propeller at the necessary speed, and work backward from there.”
(Mahaffey, 2010, p. 171)


“the Daniels Pile project was getting nowhere, hopelessly spiraling out of
control and beginning to look impossible for the allotted time and budget.
Likewise, the Knolls shipboard reactor design was beginning to resemble bad
science fiction. The engineering problems in these projects were observed and
noted by a Navy captain named Hyman George Rickover.” (Mahaffey, 2010, p. 169)


“Daniels boldly proposed that the United States Army, working with Monsanto
engineers, build the first prototype civilian nuclear reactor power plant at
Oak Ridge in 1946. The Army was caught off guard and could not think of why
this should not be done, so money was allocated and work began immediately, to
be completed within 18 months. […] Simultaneously, in Schenectady, New York,
the General Electric Company built an impressive research facility, the Knolls
Atomic Power Lab. Their first project in 1946 was to design a nuclear-powered
naval destroyer, or at least to study the problem of squeezing a nuclear
reactor into something the size of a ship, funded by the Bureau of Ships. […]
There were no uranium mines in the United States, and stockpiles were
limited.” (Mahaffey, 2010, p. 168)


“At Los Alamos during the war Teller was something of a pain, pushing for his
super-bomb and petulantly refusing to do implosion calculations. Exasperated,
Oppenheimer had to bring in a borrowed Brit named Klaus Fuchs to do the
calculations, and he turned out to be a spy. Fuchs told everything he knew,
which was considerable, to the Soviet Union, on ideological grounds. There
were other Soviet spies that had infiltrated Los Alamos as well, and this
wealth of information would save the Worker’s Paradise several years of
tedious rediscovery and invention in their quest for what the United States
had.” (Mahaffey, 2010, p. 167)


“The United States Government had spent $2 billion of the taxpayers’ money
developing something that no one was allowed to know existed. In the 1940’s,
it was a staggering sum. Days after the bombs were dropped and the war ended,
the United States made an unprecedented concession to the people who had paid
for the Manhattan Project, making the project’s final report, Atomic Energy
for Military Purposes, available in hardback. Aside from tedious details and a
few key secrets, all was revealed […].” (Mahaffey, 2010, p. 166)


“Hiroshima was the home of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. Hitting it with an
atomic bomb would be like wiping out Detroit. It also had the Hiroshima
Shipyards, the Second Army Headquarters, and the Hiroshima Ordnance Supply
Depot. It was a perfect target. Secondary target, in case Hiroshima was
obscured by clouds, was Kokura.” (Mahaffey, 2010, p. 163)


“Tinian was a former sugar plantation 5 miles southwest of Saipan and within
easy distance of Japan in a four-engine B-29 heavy bomber. In July 1945 it was
the busiest airbase in the world, with six 8,500 foot runways and 40,000
personnel. B-29’s left and returned at all hours of the day and night, raining
fire on Japan with an efficiency that only the United States could manage.
After months of incendiary bombing, more than half a million people had been
killed and there was nothing left of Tokyo to be bombed.” (Mahaffey, 2010, p.
162)


“Nuclear power had been born backwards. Instead of looking down a long tunnel
at the lamp of knowledge in the distance, there was a blinding flash, right at
the entrance, after only a few years of intense theoretical speculation. As
they say in nuclear engineering circles, if the first use of gasoline had been
to make napalm, we’d all be driving electric cars now.” (Mahaffey, 2010, p.
161)


“The job of determining the critical mass of uranium for the Little Boy was
assumed in late 1944 by Otto Frisch, nephew of Lise Meitner and a neutron
physics specialist, on loan to the Manhattan Project from Britain.” (Mahaffey,
2010, p. 154)


“Szilárd had started the war as a gung ho proponent of atomic bombing, but in
April 1945, when the wehrmacht collapsed and Germany surrendered without
condition, his attitude changed 180 degrees. Hanging around Los Alamos,
Szilárd started circulating a petition not to drop the bomb on Japan. He felt
no ancestral animosity toward Japan, and he felt that the United States should
stage a demonstration for the Empire instead, perhaps blowing up an unoccupied
island in the Pacific, or even inviting a delegation from Japan to see the
upcoming plutonium bomb test. […] Szilárd was also in the camp who believed
that the Soviet Union, allied with the United States in the war against
Germany, should be given all the results of the atomic bomb research. Groves
found him irritating, counter-productive, and he was poisoning young minds at
work in his laboratories, taking them off the task to talk them into
boycotting the project.” (Mahaffey, 2010, p. 150)


“Oppenheimer brought in a Russian explosives expert, George Kristiakowsky, to
review the lack of progress. […] Johnny von Neumann, another genius from
Hungary, was brought in from Princeton as a consultant, to work through the
difficult mathematical models of the shaped charges for the controlled
implosion.” (Mahaffey, 2010, p. 146)


“If a ball of plutonium the size of an orange, sub-critical and perfectly safe
under normal conditions, could be compressed to a ball the size of a large
marble, then it would explode as the conditions for fission improved, without
the troublesome delay of bringing two separate pieces together. Neddermeyer’s
concept was radical and unprecedented: use explosives to compress the metal.”
(Mahaffey, 2010, p. 145)


“Simply running a nuclear reactor at high power produces Pu-239, as the inert
U-238 in the fuel captures stray neutrons and transforms to neptunium-239,
which decays upward into plutonium.” (Mahaffey, 2010, p. 139)


“It took 15,000 people to erect and operate the gaseous diffusion plant at
K-25. All employed by the Army, they lived in an immense trailer-park
assembled near by, given the fond euphemism “Happy Valley.” By the summer of
1944, the population of the Headquarters of the Manhattan Project had grown to
50,000 people […]. The K-25 plant, for all the expense of $512 million
dollars, for all the ingenious concept and the incredible accomplishment of
having built it in secrecy, did not reach operating capacity during the war.
[…] At the end of World War II the United States had the only uranium
enrichment plant in the world, turning out U-235 in any desired concentration
in quantities limited only by the amount of material loaded into the front-
end.” (Mahaffey, 2010, p. 138)


“Isotope separation became the priority function of the laboratories at Oak
Ridge […].” (Mahaffey, 2010, p. 135)


“Its explosive character would depend on three properties of nuclear fission
that were not necessary for simple power production: Hyper-criticality, prompt
fission, and fast fission. […] A reactor with a slight amount of extra fuel,
say one percent, is super critical. Include enough excess fuel to make it
three or four hundred percent over critical, and the reaction is hyper-
critical. Power increases explosively.” (Mahaffey, 2010, p. 134)


“Groves had picked out his secret lab site in Tennessee, and Oppenheimer
immediately picked out his in New Mexico. “Site Y” was the Los Alamos Ranch
School, a boy’s preparatory academy located on an isolated mesa, surrounded by
federally owned land, and having easily secured entrances. Oppenheimer had
spent summers there as a boy […].” (Mahaffey, 2010, p. 133)


“Oppenheimer was a theoretical physicist, educated at Harvard, Cambridge, and
Göttingen, professing physics at Berkeley and working on the fast neutron
study for the S-1 Committee. A slight snag was his security clearance.
Oppenheimer had socialist tendencies, and he subscribed to People’s World
magazine. His wife, his mistress, his landlady, his brother, brother’s wife,
and at least five of his students were card-carrying members of the Communist
Party […].” (Mahaffey, 2010, p. 133)


“The project was designated “Laboratory for the Development of Substitute
Materials,” in the tradition of giving secret operations confusing names.
Groves hated it. He changed it to the name of a nonexistent office of the
Corps of Engineers, “Manhattan Engineering District.” While that was the
official title, to everyone but Groves it would simply be “The Manhattan
Project.” The budget was essentially unlimited, and he could have whatever or
whomever he needed to complete the job. The singular task was to build and
test something that still existed only in science fiction but not for much
longer: the atomic bomb. Seven days after his appointment, his advance men
bought a 52,000-acre tract of land in rural Tennessee, hidden between two
mountain ranges, called Oak Ridge. Sparsely populated, forgotten by
civilization, but recently endowed with a severe excess of electrical power by
the Tennessee Valley Authority, it was perfect. The natives were swept out;
temporary, pre-fabricated housing was installed; and a city was built where no
Germans or Japanese would think to look for one. It would never be subjected
to bombing, surveillance, or sabotage. Some called it Site X, some called it
the Clinton Works, but the Manhattan Project called it Headquarters.”
(Mahaffey, 2010, p. 132)


“Georgii Flerov, one of a scant few Soviet nuclear scientists, pointed this
out to Joseph Stalin, General Secretary of the Communist Party. Actions were
soon set in motion in two directions. An atomic bomb project was started, to
no great effect, with Igor Kurchatov the scientific head of the effort. All
nuclear physics work was relocated to the village of Sarov. Also an
infiltration of the American bomb project was initiated. The success of this
spy action would be legendary, and it would save the Soviet Union a lot of
redundant work after the war when they developed their version of the atomic
bomb.” (Mahaffey, 2010, p. 131)


“Nobody outside knew what was going on, with the exception of the Soviets. […]
It was not information that was written, said, or transmitted by radio. It was
the sudden absence of information. The American physics journals had abruptly
stopped publishing papers concerning nuclear topics […].” (Mahaffey, 2010, p.
130)


“Given the immense sweep of the atomic bomb project, involving thousands of
workers, billions of dollars, and talkative physics professors, the security
apparatus was superb. Nobody on the other side of the war had a clue as to
what was going on. […] Harry S Truman, Vice President of the United States and
a heartbeat away from Commander in Chief, was kept completely uninformed until
the death of FDR and his inauguration.” (Mahaffey, 2010, p. 130)


“Element 94 was named for what was then considered to be the last planet in
the solar system, Pluto.” (Mahaffey, 2010, p. 122)


“A captured neutron can beta-decay into a proton, kicking up the atomic
number. If non-fissionable uranium could be made to absorb neutrons, then
elements beyond uranium could be synthesized, perhaps even element 94. […] It
was known that neutrons could be produced by hitting beryllium with heavy
particles, such as alpha particles from polonium-210, but there wasn’t enough
polonium-210 […].” (Mahaffey, 2010, p. 120)


“There is specific nuclear configuration of 92 protons and 143 neutrons in a
certain isotope of uranium, U-235, which happens to make the nucleus fissile.
Float an extra neutron into U-235, and it will blow violently half in two.
Quantum mechanics predicts that there is another, hypothetical element,
apparently never intended in the creation of the universe, beyond the last
element, and it is also fissile under neutron bombardment. If it existed it
would be element number 94, and the specific fissile isotope of this element
would have 145 neutrons, giving it an isotope number 239. If such an element
could be synthesized, in that specific isotope variety, then it would
eliminate all the bother of separating U-235 from U-238 to obtain a pure,
fissile metal.” (Mahaffey, 2010, p. 119)


“A copy of the most critical report was sent under secret cover to Lyman
Briggs, head of the Uranium Committee, hoping that he would see the need for a
joint United States and Great Britain nuclear bomb project. Seeing it as a
document deserving the highest security treatment, Briggs locked it in his
office safe and promptly forgot about it. On July 15, 1941, MAUD, having
nothing further to accomplish due to lack of resources, both material and
financial, disbanded. Vannevar Bush, science administrator at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was sufficiently well known to gain an
audience with President Roosevelt on June 12, 1940, and in ten minutes the two
formed a new governmental scientific organization, the National Defense
Research Committee, or NDRC. Bush was named chairman, of course, and by July
1, 1941, he had absorbed the Uranium Committee, assuming all responsibility
for nuclear research. The sustained fission initiative became project S-1.”
(Mahaffey, 2010, p. 118)


“in February 1940 the British government received a report concerning possible
German work on nuclear explosives, as pointed out by their own refugee German
and Austrian physicists. The memorandum suggested that British industry and
academic research should strive to build such a weapon before the Germans beat
us to it. The paper made it to the desk of Henry Tizard, Chairman of the
Committee on the Scientific Survey of Air Defenses, the most highly regarded
research organization in Great Britain. At his direction, a technical
committee was formed to evaluate the feasibility of nuclear power and weapons.
The committee was code-named MAUD. By December 1940 the British scientists had
investigated the possibility of building a uranium-based bomb, and they found
it likely that such a weapon could be developed” (Mahaffey, 2010, p. 117)


“Slow the neutron down to the speed of a common molecule at room temperature,
and the probability of fission increases 1,000 fold.” (Mahaffey, 2010, p. 109)


“American science also had a certain foolish optimism that allowed it to take
on seemingly impossible tasks, and in the final analysis this is what the
German atomic-bomb effort lacked. Call it realism, but the Germans knew deep
down that it would take at least four years to develop such a weapon if they
threw everything they had into it. They did not have four years to win the
war. All plans and strategies were based on a quick, one-year win. Germany
simply lacked enough fuel and other strategic resources to wage a long war.”
(Mahaffey, 2010, p. 106)


“The United States was blessed with the immigration of Albert Einstein in
1932, a month before Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany, and Johnny von
Neumann, possibly Einstein’s intellectual equal from Hungary, came over in
1930. E. P. Wigner, also of the “Hungarian Conspiracy” and every bit as
brilliant as von Neumann, landed stateside at the same time, and both men went
to work at Princeton. Hans Bethe, a theoretical physicist reared as a German
Christian but with a Jewish mother, came over in 1935 and so did Edward
Teller, a brilliant theoretician of the Hungarian-Jew persuasion. Enrico
Fermi, Roman Catholic co-inventor of the nuclear reactor, fled Fascist Italy
in 1938 because his wife was Jewish. Also out in 1938 was the famous eccentric
Hungarian Jew, Leó Szilárd. Niels Bohr, the Danish father of quantum
mechanics, was the last of the greats to come, barely making it out in 1943.
There were dozens of others.” (Mahaffey, 2010, p. 105)


“The United States had been slow in the world of physics research in the
beginning, but proved gung-ho in the pursuit of practical, industrial
research. The “Edison method,” in which every possible solution is thrown
forcibly against a technical problem was preferred over thoughtful analysis,
but the resulting progress over the past century was notable. While European
scientists indulged in fundamental scientific research, American inventors had
given us the telegraph, the telephone, electric lighting, and polyphase
current. In the years before the First World War, there was more nuclear
physics research in Canada than in the United States, as nuclear physics was
not yet deemed technically or industrially relevant.” (Mahaffey, 2010, p. 104)


“The project would then be broken up into 12 sections, each competing for the
same heavy water and uranium, and working on a low-priority budget.”
(Mahaffey, 2010, p. 103)


“There was exactly one heavy-water plant in the world. It was the Norsk Hydro
60-megawatt power station […].” (Mahaffey, 2010, p. 102)


“In theory it was perfect, but in reality German industrial graphite was
contaminated by traces of boron, and nothing soaks up stray neutrons with more
zeal than boron. There was a second, slightly less likely candidate: heavy
water, or deuterium oxide. […] Deuterium, on the other hand, comes pre-loaded
with a neutron, and is highly unlikely to need another. Heavy water was chosen
as the moderator for the German nuclear reactor experiment. However, it was
hard to produce in large quantities […].” (Mahaffey, 2010, p. 102)


“The fuel would be uranium, which was available in Berlin in the waste-dump of
the Auer Company, the makers of radioactive toothpaste.” (Mahaffey, 2010, p.
101)


“The time when a research team could build a crazy, dangerous experiment to
try a fanciful application of nuclear power was gone. I had gotten there just
in time to watch it disappear over the horizon, and any brightness that I had
perceived was an afterglow. The last great nuclear experiment, the NERVA
nuclear rocket engine that was going to send us to Mars, had been recently
cancelled and shut down.” (Mahaffey, 2010, p. 97)


“it literally made more fissionable fuel than it used. It had to be shut down
every now and then, not to add fuel, but to remove it. In a breeder economy,
the world would never lack reactor fuel. Unfortunately, the first civilian
breeder reactor, the Fermi 1 in Michigan, experienced a fuel meltdown back in
1966, and it had been permanently shut down in 1972, the year before I
started. It was the last breeder reactor that would be designed or built
during my career.” (Mahaffey, 2010, p. 96)


“in 1.5 billion years the toxic remnants of the Oklo reactor operations had
barely migrated a few centimeters. Nothing poisonous had made its way into the
ground-water, there was no evidence of biological harm, and the highly
radioactive fission products had remained in place until they decayed into
stable end-products.” (Mahaffey, 2010, p. 23)


“The water acted as a moderator, slowing neutrons down to fission-producing
energies, and the reactors fired up. The reactors operated in pulse mode, with
the water being heated to a few hundred degrees Celsius, boiling away, and
temporarily shutting down for cool-off. The operating interval was about 2
hours and 30 minutes. The power production continued for a few hundred
thousand years […]. They produced power at a rate of 100 kilowatts in the form
of heat, made 11,907 pounds of radioactive waste, and 3,307 pounds of
plutonium.” (Mahaffey, 2010, p. 23)


“The gradual transformation of uranium begins with a decay into the element
thorium and ends, after 17 stumbles into transient atoms, with the formation
of nonradioactive lead. It takes tens of millions of years. […] At three
locations in the Oklo mines in Gabon, Central Africa, there were 16 naturally
occurring nuclear reactors, formed in the veins of high-quality uranium ore.”
(Mahaffey, 2010, p. 22)


“Most uranium is imported from the highly productive pitchblende mines in
Central Africa. At COMURHEX Malvési in the Narbonne region of south-west
France, it is milled, refined, and converted to uranium-tetrafluoride. It is a
fine, yellow powder, and in the United States we call it “yellow-cake” […].
the powder is further fluorinated into uranium-hexafluoride, or “hex,” feeding
into the enormous gaseous diffusion plant on site owned by Eurodif, a European
multinational subsidiary of COGEMA. A third of all the hex in the world, some
14,000 metric tons, goes through this plant every year. It is the second
largest commercial uranium-diffusion operation in the World, after Russia’s
Minatom. The purpose of the diffusion process is to take naturally mined
uranium, which is 0.7202% uranium-235, or U-235, and make it into 20.0% U-235
for energy production.6 U-235 is the special variety of uranium that produces
power in a nuclear reactor, and the rest, almost entirely U-238 with a touch
of U-234, is just inert filler. The highly corrosive hexafluoride gas with
enhanced U-235 content is then de-fluorinated and converted to uranium oxide,
a chemically stable, hard, black solid, for use as fuel in nuclear plants.”
(Mahaffey, 2010, p. 21)


“Most cancer treatments now include radiation, at levels sufficient to induce
cancer. While normal nuclear power activities, including radioactive waste
transportation and storage, don’t release radiation at levels anywhere near
the cancer-treatment or even the level of a dental x-ray […]. nuclear power
operations have become the world’s safest occupation. You have more chance of
getting killed or injured on the job if you are a real estate agent or a stock
broker than if you are a nuclear plant worker, and yes, that includes death by
cancer.” (Mahaffey, 2010, p. 19)


“All you had to do to get killed was bring two pieces of pure uranium close
together, with your bare hands. The inert pieces of metal would “go critical,”
suddenly generating serious power atop a lab-bench, and blasting you with many
types of radiation in hyper-deadly quantities. It glowed, but it would not
even glow red, as one would expect from the pre-fantasy days of steam-
technology, but with an unworldly greenish-blue. The radiation alone would
drop you where you stood, fried to a golden tan, from the inside out […]. It
has been over 60 years since anyone died in a criticality accident. There are
other death-modes. Radiation burns or radiation sickness are not really a
great concern, because they are so rare and not even necessarily fatal.”
(Mahaffey, 2010, p. 18)


“The cost of the fuel to burn, including its mining, processing, storage, and
transportation, was practically zero. A great deal of power comes from a tiny
amount of nuclear fuel. The problem is the up-front capital cost of the plant
itself. A coal plant is cheap to build and expensive to run. A nuclear plant
is cheap to run and expensive to build. From a total expense standpoint, it is
a lot better to have the expense spread out over the life of the plant as fuel
costs than to pay interest on the initial build for the life of the plant.
Economics is what killed the expansion, and not the TMI-2 meltdown.”
(Mahaffey, 2010, p. 14)


“In a speech to the National Association of Science Writers on September 16,
1954, Lewis L. Strauss, Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, is quoted as
saying, “It is not too much to expect that our children will enjoy in their
homes electrical energy too cheap to meter...”” (Mahaffey, 2010, p. 13)


James Mahaffey, Atomic Awakening: A New Look at the History and Future of Nuclear Power , Reprint Edition (Pegasus, 2010).


“by making us more reliant on weather-dependent energy, the environmental
movement has made us more vulnerable to the weather patterns they warn climate
change creates. Moreover, renewables have reversed their decarbonization aims
by locking in natural gas and coal while making America more dependent on the
cheap coal China uses to make solar panels. […] The all-renewables dream was
never about reducing greenhouse gasses, but about entrenching energy poverty
to halt population growth, so as to spare the environment.” (Penney, 2022, p.
14)


“During the 2021 Uri storm, Texas’s $66 billion in renewable energy
investments failed to perform in a time of crisis, which, when coupled with
the poor market design of the grid, created blackouts.
Hundreds died. Texas isn’t the only one—overbuilding renewables now breeds
instability all over the American electric grid.” (Penney, 2022, p. 14)


“The Environmental Defense Fund and the NRDC have a combined budget of nearly
$384 million, for example. It’s also the case that the renewables schemes they
push for tend to benefit financial elites like Michael Bloomberg, Tom Steyer,
George Soros, and Jeff Bezos, who then plow millions into their organizations.
Renewables projects, stimulated by tax breaks, have invited major banks to the
trough.
Warren Buffett infamously said that he would do whatever it legally takes “to
reduce Berkshire’s tax rate. For example, on wind energy, we get a tax credit
if we build a lot of wind farms. That’s the only reason to build them.” A
recent study found that “tax- motivated investors in today’s renewable energy
deals are typically a highly restricted set of the US’s largest banks,
insurance companies, and financial institutions” who “have been joined more
recently by a handful of giant corporations like Google and Amazon.” Those who
reap the rewards of the tax breaks are also some of the biggest donors to
climate change causes that back renewables-only policies. […] If the greens
were to walk back their position on energy in general and nuclear in
particular, it would mean disaster for their legitimacy, their power, and
their bank accounts.” (Penney, 2022, p. 13)


“No longer would America pursue the “hard” energy path of large, centralized,
nuclear power plants. […] Coal industry veterans like Amory Lovins and E. F.
Schumacher, whose seminal works —“Energy Strategy: The Road Not Taken?” (1976)
and Small Is Beautiful: Economics As If People Mattered (1973),
respectively—led the ideological charge. Instead, it would embrace “soft”
renewable technology—small enough to decentralize and in harmonious accord
with nature. David Brower reprinted Lovins’s essay in his organization’s
magazine and nominated him for the Nobel Prize. Eventually, the nonprofit
sector, academics, and utility elites would come to accept many of these
ideas.
President Jimmy Carter’s infamous “malaise” speech and his National Energy Act
solidified the new cultural and policy direction: away from energy abundance,
toward energy conservation. Environmentalist (and racist ideologue) Edward
Abbey’s quip that “growth for growth’s sake is the ideology of the cancer
cell” became conventional wisdom. […] Ehrlich said, “In fact, giving society
cheap abundant energy at this point would be the equivalent of giving an idiot
child a machine gun.”” (Penney, 2022, p. 11)


“since the New Left, whose most radical members often hailed from wealthy
families, had little relationship with labor, it became easy to adopt an
antagonistic stance toward industry. They didn’t want control over the
factories, because they didn’t want the factories to exist in the first
place.” (Penney, 2022, p. 9)


“DDT killed mosquitoes and so alleviated malaria, an apparently disastrous
victory for Third World birth rates. To take one example, the year Rachel
Carson received her contract for Silent Spring, 1958, Aldous Huxley (brother
to Julian Huxley, leader of the British Eugenics Society) wrote Brave New
World Revisited, in which he argued that using DDT to stop malaria meant
worldwide disaster from overpopulation. […] the Environmental Protection
Agency launched a seven-month-long investigation which featured 125 expert
witnesses and 365 exhibits. At the end of the investigation, the presiding
judge ruled that “The uses of DDT under the registration involved here do not
have a deleterious effect on freshwater fish, estuarine organisms, wild birds,
or other wildlife. ... DDT is not a carcinogenic hazard to man ... DDT is not
a mutagenic or teratogenic hazard to man.” He was overruled by the EPA’s
administrator, William D. Ruckelshaus, who would go on to sponsor the Draper
Fund. Ruckelshaus neither attended the hearing, nor read the report, and
banned the use of DDT in 1972. The American ban of DDT rippled throughout the
world and cut off poorer nations from the pesticide. Tens of millions have
perished from malaria since.” (Penney, 2022, p. 9)


“According to Erlich and his wife, The Population Bomb was “written in
response to a request that Paul summarize arguments he had been making in the
media that the population issue should be taken up by the growing
environmental movement ... triggered in no small part by Rachel Carson’s
Silent Spring (1962)” and to influence the 1968 election.” (Penney, 2022, p.
8)


“Two books, William Vogt’s Road to Survival and Fairfield Osborn’s Our
Plundered Planet, emerged as national bestsellers in 1948. The latter sold
millions of copies […]. Their work, though largely disproven, inspired Paul
Ehrlich, whose bestselling environmental elaboration of Vogt and Osborne’s
ideas was titled The Population Bomb (1968) […]. was originally titled
Population, Resources, and Environment, but received its publication name from
a pamphlet put out by the Hugh Moore Fund, as well as from General William
Henry Draper Jr., a denazification opponent and founder of the eponymous
Draper Fund, a eugenicist organization.” (Penney, 2022, p. 7)


“Eugenics took root in late nineteenth-century America with the formation of
groups like the Immigration Restriction League and the Eugenics Records
Office. Its boosters included historic figures like Theodore Roosevelt and
lesser-knowns like Madison Grant, whose bestselling book The Passing of the
Great Race was referred to by Hitler as his “Bible,” and Henry Fairfield
Osborn, then president of the Natural History Museum. Both Grant and Osborn
connected poor breeding with environmental degradation. […] The pair would go
on to fund the Sierra Club and the Save the Redwoods League. Osborn’s son,
Fairfield, would write one of the two books that bridged the gap between
prewar eugenics and the postwar environmental population control ideology.”
(Penney, 2022, p. 6)


“The last reactor built in the United States was Watts Barr 2, which began in
1973 and was completed in 2016 after years of paused construction. […] Between
2013 and 2021, America shut down twelve reactors.” (Penney, 2022, p. 6)


“The AEC introduced alara in 1971. […] a standard so broad as to become
impossible to fully achieve. […] effect. To put this in perspective, if we
used alara for any other industry, we would shutter the airlines immediately,
evacuate every Colorado mountain town, and bulldoze the DeVargas Skate Park in
Santa Fe, New Mexico, which sits on a granite deposit shot through with
uranium. […] In 2015, scientists and experts petitioned the NRC to reconsider
their use of alara. Six years later, the NRC denied the petition.” (Penney,
2022, p. 5)


“Nuclear enthusiasm meant less interest in coal, leaving America with limited
coal reserves just as nuclear stalled in its ramp-up. So when OPEC flexed its
muscles in 1973, the utilities hit a wall as they became more reliant on newly
expensive foreign oil to keep the lights on. To make matters worse, the growth
rate of annual demand for electricity dropped “from 7.3 percent from 1960
through 1973 to 2.2 percent from 1973 to 1982.” Inflation, high interest
rates, and a boom in regulatory activism did the rest.” (Penney, 2022, p. 5)


“At first, nuclear energy was too expensive and so less attractive to
utilities. But once General Electric and Westinghouse spurred the industry
onward by becoming loss leaders (they collectively lost around $1 billion
building plants) the race was on. A herd mentality soon developed as utilities
lined up to take advantage of government benefits to build new reactors. So
many orders came in that “[w]ith only two companies building plants, a rapid
increase in orders escalated costs for major components and strained the
limited supply of qualified labor.”” (Penney, 2022, p. 4)


“Lewis Strauss, a wealthy financier and Naval Reserve admiral, found himself
at the helm of the AEC during the Bravo Incident at Bikini Atoll. Described by
Rhodes as an “arrogant and vengeful Eisenhower appointee,” Strauss handled the
incident with astonishing dishonesty and insouciance. He told the press “that
the fallout ... was less than the fallout measured from some previous tests
and ‘far below the levels which could be harmful in any way to human beings.’”
Geneticists responded in force and eventually won their way onto the AEC. By
the end of the decade, they had overcorrected and adopted the linear no-
threshold standard (LNT) for measuring doses of radiation.
Herman Joseph Muller, a geneticist with a passion for eugenics and socialism,
developed LNT. […] He won the Nobel Prize for his research in 1946.” (Penney,
2022, p. 2)


“The nuclear establishment did not feel the need for candor when dealing with
the American public. In 1955, the world’s first fast-breeder reactor melted
down at Idaho Labs. During a stress test, it overloaded and became permanently
damaged, yet hurt no one. Outside the building, the meltdown was undetectable.
The AEC covered up the incident. Eventually, the information leaked and led to
a loss of public trust, the first of many wounds to come.
Despite this, in 1974, Dr. Herbert Kouts, who headed up the AEC’s reactor
safety division, told the Associated Press, “Preliminary results suggest there
will never be a major accident in a nuclear power plant. The odds of a major
catastrophe were one in one billion to one in ten billion years for a given
reactor.”” (Penney, 2022, p. 2)


“France’s nuclear buildout, beginning in the 1970s, achieved the greatest
decarbonization in human history; since the 1990s, France has generated around
75 percent of its electricity from nuclear power. In North America, the mantle
belongs to Ontario, whose nuclear plants replaced its coal fleet.” (Penney,
2022, p. 1)


Emmet Penney, “Who Killed Nuclear Energy and How to Revive It,” American Affairs Journal , May 20, 2022, https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2022/05/who-killed-nuclear-energy-and-how- to-revive-it/.


“A nuclear-powered naval vessel is not, and has never been, less expensive to
produce than a conventionally powered ship. […] In 1982, it was estimated that
a French nuclear submarine cost approximately 1.7 times what a conventional
diesel electric submarine cost, and also had higher maintenance and support
costs. More recently, a CRS report estimated that making a naval surface ship
nuclear- powered would add $600-800 million to the cost of the ship in 2007
dollars ($845-$1,127 million in 2022 dollars.)” (Potter, 2022, p. 8)


“Virginia also took greater advantage of modular construction than previous
programs. […] Emphasis was also placed on simplicity and standardization -
Virginia used 80% fewer unique components than Seawolf had used. As a result
of these efforts, the first Virginia class cost ~$2.8 billion to build (in
2004 dollars), compared to an average of $6 billion for each of the three
Seawolf classes […]. However, this was still 50% higher than originally
budgeted for. Effort was thus placed on improving the construction process of
subsequent subs. The builders managed to cut over 100,000 labor hours out of
the construction process by improving and simplifying design and increasing
automation. The cost was eventually brought down to less than $2 billion in
2004 dollars (though the Virginia was later upgraded with a “Virginia Payload
Module”, which raises its current cost to ~$3.6 billion, $2.6 billion in
2004-dollars.) And though there have been some hiccups, the construction time
for Virginia subs has steadily decreased […].” (Potter, 2022, p. 7)


Virginia made extensive use of 3D CAD to experiment with equipment layouts
and find potential interferences, in addition to building full-scale
mockups to help find potential issues (a method with a long history of
successful use in nuclear sub design - previous sub programs often built
full-scale wood models of the submarine prior to construction.)
When construction on the first Virginia class sub began, design was 50%
complete (compared to just 10% on the first Seawolf class), and Virginia
had 80% fewer design errors found during construction than Seawolf. Unlike
Seawolf, design requirements were frozen early on to minimize changes
required during construction.
Shipyards and vendors were brought in early on in the design process, to
ensure constructability was taken into account.
While Virginia also used multiple shipyards to build different components,
effort was made to improve the structure. Newport News modified its
construction practices to match those of Electric Boat, and sent a team of
35 engineers to learn and understand their methods.” (Potter, 2022, p. 6)


“Development of the Virginia class attack submarine began in the 1990s
following the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Seawolf program. The
Virginia class was deliberately designed to a) learn lessons from the Seawolf
program, and b) be inexpensive to produce (the goal was a submarine
inexpensive enough that the navy could afford to build 2 per year, which would
help to maintain the industrial base.) As part of this effort, Virginia
deliberately eschewed new, untested technology as much as possible, and
avoided trying to push the boundaries of submarine performance.
Technology and systems were deliberately chosen on a cost-benefit approach.
For newly developed systems that it did include, it used a “try before buy”
acquisition strategy, where new equipment was tested first on land or on other
ships prior to construction.
Similarly, the Virginia program placed a great deal of emphasis on upfront
design work, and attempting to spot and resolve problems before they occurred
during construction.


“the extreme focus on training as a key element of safe reactor operation […].
Another major difference is that with nuclear vessels, emphasis is often
placed on maintaining the industrial base that can construct them - it’s
recognized that nuclear submarines (along with the reactors that power them)
are incredibly complex artifacts, and only a few firms and people possess the
required skills, and those capabilities may deteriorate if not deliberately
maintained. […] the second and third Seawolf subs were built largely to
maintain continuity in the industrial base until the next submarine program
began. And the Virginia submarine program was structured with both Electric
Boat and Newport News building portions of each sub partly to ensure multiple
shipyards maintained the ability to build nuclear submarines.” (Potter, 2022,
p. 4)


“Naval reactors are smaller and produce less power than a commercial power
station, which makes managing the risk from loss-of-coolant accidents easier.
The largest naval reactor, the A1B, generates an estimated 380MW of
electricity and driveshaft power, and submarine reactors generate less than
100MW, compared to 1100MWe or more for commercial power stations. […] Naval
reactors also use highly-enriched uranium for fuel, a denser power source that
allows ship reactors to operate without refueling for extremely long periods
of time - current reactors are designed to last the entire life of the ship
without being refueled. […] When the Ohio class submarine’s service life was
extended from 30 to 42 years, it included a refueling overhaul which took 2+
years to complete (though this included many other items beyond just
refueling.) While civilian power plants will (ideally) operate near their
capacity for their entire life (and often can’t be easily ramped up or down),
naval reactors spend most of their time operating at a fraction of their
potential output, and are designed to quickly ramp up or down (and be turned
off and on) as conditions dictate. And these operating conditions are much
more extreme than a civilian reactor will be subject to - beyond the potential
conditions created by an accident, a naval reactor must operate deep
underwater, and may be subject to battle damage (potentially causing shocks,
equipment failures, exposure to high-pressure water, etc.)” (Potter, 2022, p.
3)


“like civilian reactors, naval reactors are built with an overwhelming focus
on safety. The navy follows the ALARA philosophy, and goes to great lengths to
minimize exposure to radiation. No military or civilian personnel in the Naval
Reactors program have ever received more than 10% of the annual occupational
exposure limit (the same limit that the NRC uses), and the average annual
exposure of reactor personnel is 0.112 rem per year, compared to the 0.620 rem
per year average of the US population as a whole. Naval reactors have operated
for over 5000 reactor years, and over 130 million miles of travel, without a
major accident. […] the navy had at least one submarine, the USS Guardfish,
experience a partial loss of reactor coolant that resulted in minor radiation
exposure, the records of which have remained classified.” (Potter, 2022, p. 2)


“A joint project to explore the possibility of nuclear reactor began at Oak
Ridge labs in 1946, and included a group of naval officers led by Hyman
Rickover (who would go on to lead the navy’s reactor program for over 30
years.) By 1947, partly spurred by rising concern about the Soviet Union,
plans were underway to build a nuclear-powered submarine. The prototype
submarine reactor began construction in 1950 (4 years before the construction
of the first civilian reactor at Shippingport, which used a reactor originally
designed to power aircraft carriers), and the world’s first nuclear-powered
submarine, the USS Nautilus, launched in 1954. The Nautilus confirmed the
potential of nuclear-powered submarines, and over the next 20 years the navy
would build 60 more, as well as several nuclear-powered surface ships. Because
of the advantages of nuclear propulsion, the navy continues to use nuclear
power for all its submarines today, though the only surface ships that
currently use nuclear power are aircraft carriers.” (Potter, 2022, p. 2)


“Unlike civilian power stations, US naval nuclear-powered ships are frequently
(though not always) delivered on-time and on-budget.” (Potter, 2022, p. 1)


Brian Potter, “Why Are Nuclear Power Construction Costs so High? Part III - the Nuclear Navy,” Substack newsletter, Construction Physics (blog), July 1, 2022, https://constructionphysics.substack.com/p/why-are-nuclear-power- construction-c3c.


Lovelock: Das stimmt. Die Wurzeln meines Optimismus liegen  beinahe im
Reich der Science Fiction: Seit mehr als dreieinhalb Milliarden Jahren hat
Gaia die Erde mit diesen gefährlichen Experimenten bewohnbar gehalten und
dabei kontinuierlich besser abgestimmt. All diese Zeit hat es gekostet, ein
Lebewesen zu schaffen, dass sowohl sozial als auch intelligent ist. Andere
Tiere, Wale vielleicht, sind eventuell intelligenter als wir, aber sie sind
nicht sozial und kommunizieren nicht so gut. Dies ist also eine wichtige
Eigenschaft, und das System würde es sehr bedauern, uns zu verlieren. Wir
haben eine enorme Zukunft vor uns, sofern wir uns so weiterentwickeln, dass
ein noch besseres Lebewesen entsteht, das besser mit dem Planeten leben kann.


TR: Trotz Ihrer düsteren Prophezeiungen erscheinen Sie mir ausgesprochen
optimistisch. Wie kommt's?


Lovelock: Ich bin froh dass Sie das sagen. Ich bin seit langer Zeit dieser
Meinung, aber ich erwähne es nicht oft, weil es so defätistisch klingt.


TR: Sollten wir dann nicht vielleicht den Kampf gegen CO2 hintanstellen und
eher versuchen, uns auf eine unvermeidliche Erderwärmung vorzubereiten?


Wir könnten mit diesem Verfahren dem System also ziemlich schnell große Mengen
Kohlenstoff entziehen. Bei der thermischen Zersetzung entsteht nur wenig CO2,
aber Pyrolysegase, die als Bioenergie verkauft den Farmern sogar einen kleinen
Profit sichern würden. Außerdem verbessert Holzkohle die Bodenqualität und
spart so Dünger und Wasser. Also eine Lösung, die wirklich etwas bewirken
könnte – trotzdem scheint sie an den allzu menschlichen Problemen der
Umsetzung zu scheitern.


Lovelock: Sie meinen massenhaftes Vergraben von Holzkohle. Ich halte diese
Idee, auf die mich Johannes Lehmann von der Cornell University brachte,
tatsächlich für unsere einzige Hoffnung, das Weltklima auf dem Stand vor 1900
wiederherzustellen. Dazu müssten Landwirte ihren pflanzlichen Abfall – der ja
reichlich Kohlenstoff speichert – durch Verschwelen bei wenig Sauerstoff in
nicht biologisch abbaubare Holzkohle verwandeln und unterpflügen. Die
Biosphäre sequestriert pro Jahr 550 Gigatonnen Kohlenstoff – wir emittieren in
der gleichen Zeit nur 30 Gigatonnen – doch 99 Prozent davon werden innerhalb
eines Jahres wieder freigesetzt, indem Bakterien, Würmer und Nematoden die
Pflanzen zersetzen.


TR: Einen ziemlich unorthodoxen Weg zur CO2-Reduktion haben Sie aber noch in
petto ...


Lovelock: Der schwach aktive Müll, nun das ist mal wieder jede Menge
grüner Blödsinn. Das sind zum Beispiel Overalls, die Arbeiter getragen haben,
und mit empfindlichen Instrumenten können Sie da eine leichte Strahlung
messen. Aber das ist nicht wirklich eine Gefahr für irgendjemand. Wenn Sie
dagegen, wie ich normalerweise, an der Küste Cornwalls lebten, könnten Sie
dort zum Beispiel in den Straßen von St. Ives eine natürliche Strahlung
messen, die tatsächlich Angst macht.


TR: Aber gibt es nicht große Mengen mittel und schwach radioaktiven
Abfalls?


Lovelock: Jedes Jahr produzieren wir CO2-Abfall der, würde man ihn in
Trockeneis verwandeln, einen Berg von 20 Kilometern Umfang und 1,6 Kilometer
Höhe ergäbe. Das ist tödlicher Abfall, und er hat das Potential, uns alle
umzubringen. Ein Kernkraftwerk von zwei bis drei Gigawatt dagegen produziert
pro Jahr gerade soviel Abfall, wie in ein Auto paßt. Ich sehe das nicht als
Problem.


TR: Wie sieht es mit den anderen Problemen der Atomenergie aus, zum Beispiel
den Müll, um den man sich sehr lange kümmern muss?


Lovelock: Ähnlich wie in Deutschland haben wir ein staatliches
Gesundheitssystem. Das hat bei allen Nachteilen den großen Vorteil, dass
erstklassiges Datenmaterial zur Verfügung steht. Ein durch den Ausstoß
radioaktiven Jods erhöhte Anzahl von Schildrüsenkrebs-Toten wäre leicht zu
erkennen. Es gibt sie aber nicht.


TR: Klingt logisch. Aber gab es medizinische Studien?


Lovelock: Na ja, vielleicht ist unsere lausige Politik eine Folge davon!


TR: Aber können Sie sicher sein, das es zum Beispiel keine
Erbgutschädigungen gab?


Wir hatten übrigens auch in Großbritannien eine Art Tschernobyl, über das
niemand sprach, weil es vertuscht wurde. Und zwar gab es 1956 ein Feuer in
einem Reaktor namens Windscale. Zufällig war ich damals in London mit
medizinischen Strahlenmessungen beschäftigt, und plötzlich schoss die
Hintergrundstrahlung hoch, ich mußte die Experimente abbrechen. Wir dachten,
wir hätten versehentlich Jod-131 in den Ausguß geschüttet und so das ganze
Labor kontaminiert. Erst 20 Jahre später fand ich heraus, dass das Feuer im
militärischen Windscale-Reaktor schuld war. Durch die Windrichtung wurde ganz
England der Strahlung ausgesetzt. Es gibt jedoch keinerlei Hinweise auf
erhöhte Krebsraten oder ähnliches.


Lovelock: Sie meinen die Millionen von Leuten, die durch die Katastrophe
von Three Mile Island getötet wurden? Wo sind ihre Gräber? Nein, im Ernst: Es
gibt keine Belege. Das schlimmste bekannte Unglück war sicher Tchernobyl. Das
war aber im alten Sowjet-System. Die ganze Anlage war so verrückt aufgebaut,
wie man sich  nur vorstellen kann – ein instabiler Reaktor, der einem
törichten Experiment unter sowjetischen Bedingungen unterzogen wurde. Da
musste ja etwas schiefgehen. Die Zahl der Toten lag aber unter 100, vor allem
Menschen, die in der Anlage selbst arbeiteten. Manche wurde von umstürzenden
Betonträgern getötet, und so weiter. Die Vorstellung aber, dass ganz Europa
erhöhte Todesraten gehabt habe, entspricht einfach nicht den Fakten.


TR: Vielleicht weil, wenn etwas schief ginge, der Schaden ungleich größer
wäre als bei anderen Technologien.


Lovelock: Nun, oft geht es um Emotionen. Nehmen Sie zum Beispiel die
Kernkraft. Ich finde es beinahe zum Lachen. Die meisten Leute fürchten sich
fast zu Tode vor der Kernkraft, dabei ist sie eine der harmlosesten
Energiequellen, die wir kennen, harmlos in jeder Beziehung. Wenn Sie sich
Großbritannien oder Deutschland anschauen: wie viele Menschen sind in der
Atomindustrie gestorben? Und sie hat inzwischen wirklich viel Energie erzeugt,
über Jahrzehnte. Ich glaube, in Großbritannien ist bisher nicht einmal jemand
verletzt worden, geschweige denn gestorben. Vergleichen Sie das mit anderen
Arten der Energieerzeugung,  sind dort die Statistiken trostlos. Warum sollte
man also Angst haben?


TR: OK ... und was könnte das praktisch bedeuten?


Lovelock: Sie haben das Herz am richtigen Fleck, sehen Sie zu, dass Sie
auch Ihren Kopf orientiert kriegen!


TR: Was würden Sie einem jungen Umweltschützer heute sagen?


Lovelock: Ja, das ist unvermeidlich. Ich glaube, seit Wissenschaft von
einer Berufung zur Karriere wurde, findet man die wunderbare Selbstdisziplin
der alten Zeit nicht mehr. Heute geht es vor allem ums Vorwärtskommen. Es muss
sich dringend etwas ändern, wir bräuchten zum  Beispiel striktere Modelle.
Dabei geht es nicht nur um unseren guten Namen als Wissenschaftler, sondern um
das Interesse aller.


TR: Und Sie meinen, dasselbe geschähe jetzt wieder?


Lovelock: Und das schließt Wissenschaftler ein. Ich glaube sogar, ein
Problem des IPCC ist, dass man dort anfangs von der Vorstellung ausging, die
jetzige Situation sei mit dem FCKW-Problem vergleichbar und werde sich ähnlich
lösen lassen. Natürlich ist dem nicht so. Wie einfach wäre es doch, wenn es
nur sechs Firmen gäbe, die Kohlendioxid herstellen . Übrigens wurde auch
damals schon richtig schlechte Wissenschaft betrieben. Der kürzlich in
Großbritannien bekanntgewordene Skandal über Temperaturmessungen ist gar
nichts im Vergleich  zu damals – getürkte Messungen, Leute die behaupteten sie
könnten FCKWs mit bis zu einem Prozent Genauigkeit messen, tatsächlich aber um
bis zu 400 Prozent falsch lagen – und fast alles wurde unter den Teppich
gekehrt. Oh, und ein Satellit wurde umprogrammiert, niedrige Ozonwerte zu
ignorieren, weil sie nicht mit den Voraussagen des Modells übereinstimmten.
Dadurch wurde das Ozonloch für zwei Jahre ignoriert.


TR: Ich weiß allerdings, dass Sie weit weniger optimistisch sind
hinsichtlich der politischen und wissenschaftlichen Möglichkeiten,
Treibhausgase unter Kontrolle zu bekommen. Andererseits hat Ihre Entdeckung
atmosphärischer Fluorchlorkohlenwasserstoffe uns damals letztendlich vor dem
Ozonloch gerettet. Viele Menschen sehen da Parallelen zum Kohlendioxid oder
verwechseln gleich das Eine mit dem Anderen.


Lovelock: Nein. Ich bin Optimist, wie Sie ja schon festgestellt haben.


TR: Und glauben Sie, dass wird wieder passieren?


Lovelock: Das hoffe ich. Wir haben ein – allerdings schreckliches –
Beispiel: Während der Folge von Eis- und Warmzeiten der letzten Million Jahre,
so glauben Genetiker, sind am Ende einer der großen Erwärmungen, wie sie alle
hunderttausend Jahre oder so stattfinden, nur noch rund 2000 Menschen übrig
gewesen. Aus der Sequenzierung des Human-Genoms scheint sich zu ergeben, dass
es damals zu einer Art Flaschenhals-Situation kam.


TR: Also wird unser Planet immer für Menschen bewohnbar bleiben, wenn auch
vielleicht in kleinerer Zahl?


Lovelock: Ich glaube, es ist reine Hybris anzunehmen, dass wir derartig
mächtig sind. Die Erde hat Arten erduldet, die viel schädlicher waren als wir.
Denken Sie nur daran, wie die ersten Photosynthese-Organismen auftauchten und
begannen Sauerstoff auszustoßen – ein ekliges, giftiges Gas. Das muss eine
unglaubliche Anzahl Arten vernichtet haben. Natürlich hat sich die Natur den
Veränderungen angepaßt und sie in Vorteile verwandelt. Aber damals muss es
schrecklich zugegangen sein.


TR: Aber wir sind in der Lage die Erde zu zerstören?


Lovelock: Nicht, wenn sie sich verändert. Es gibt immer die Möglichkeit
der Erkenntnis.


TR: Und damit meinen Sie die menschliche Spezies?


Lovelock: Nein, im Gegenteil. Da die Evolution auf dem Gaia-Planeten eine
Abfolge gefährlicher Experimente ist, hätte ich immer erwartet, dass die
natürliche Selektion sie korrigiert. Sie können es auch so ausdrücken:
Jegliche Spezies, die die Erde so schädigt, dass ihre Nachkommenschaft bedroht
wird, ist dem Untergang geweiht, und wird verschwinden.


TR: Oft wird Ihre Theorie als dynamisches Gleichgewicht interpretiert, und
daraus abgeleitet, dass der Planet sich – wie ein Organismus –  selbst heilen
werde. Nun aber warnen Sie, dass die Erde durch die globale Erwärmung auf eine
Katastrophe zusteuert. Haben  Sie sich damit selbst widerlegt?


Lovelock: Gaia ist eine Evolutionstheorie, die Darwin ergänzt. Sie erkennt
an, dass Organismen ihre Umgebung sowohl verändern als auch sich daran
anpassen. Das ändert komplett die Regeln natürlicher Selektion, denn sobald
Sie das in einfache Modelle einbeziehen oder auch nur darüber nachdenken,
führt es zur Evolution eines bewohnbaren Planeten.


TR: Könnte ich Sie bitten, Ihre berühmte Gaia-Theorie zusammenzufassen?


Lovelock: Dem stimme ich gänzlich zu. Ich glaube dass die Ansichten über
Biodiversität -  sie erinnern beinahe an die über Mutterschaft; sie ist
heilig, wir müssen sie in Schutz nehmen – Unsinn sind. Die Evolution verändert
die Erde. Und zwar so, dass sie bewohnbar bleibt, glaube ich.


TR: Manche Wissenschaftler sagen ähnliches über Biodiversität: Das
Aussterben von Arten sei vielleicht gar nicht so schlimm ist, sondern einfach
der Lauf der Natur.


Lovelock: Ich hätte das Land einfach liegen lassen sollen und Gaia die
Bäume pflanzen lassen. Das System weiß viel besser, was für Bäume dort
hingehören. Und da sich die Dinge nun für uns ändern: Die Bäume, die ich vor
30 Jahren gepflanzt habe, werden vielleicht für das kommende Klima nicht
geeignet sein.


TR: Warum nicht?


James Lovelock: Gute Frage. Ich wünschte Sie hätten nicht "morgen" gesagt,
denn mit so wenig Zeit hätte man wohl anderes im Sinn. Ansonsten Ja, denn ich
bin in erster Linie Optimist. Ich habe übrigens vor 30 Jahren 20.000 Bäume
gepflanzt, in guter grüner Absicht – inzwischen ist mir allerdings klar,  dass
dies ein kompletter Fehler war, ich hätte es nie tun sollen.


Technology Review: Professor Lovelock, wenn Sie wüssten, dass morgen die
Welt unterginge, würden Sie heute ein Apfelbäumchen pflanzen?


James Lovelock, „Können wir die Erde zerstören?“, January 29, 2010, https://www.heise.de/tr/artikel/Koennen-wir-die-Erde-zerstoeren-917173.html.


trade restrictions and various European government policies tainted by
“befuddled romanticism”—from campaigns against genetically modified foods and
low-wage produce to “save the peasant” farm reforms—have resulted in sub-
Saharan Africa now having less commercial agriculture than it did fifty
years ago.


91 percent of fresh fruits and vegetables exported from Kenya to the United
Kingdom are air freighted, adding, for example, an additional 2 to 18 pence to
the cost of each pack of organic Kenyan green beans. Intercontinental air
freight adds 8 kg of CO2 to the atmosphere per kg transported, about 200 times
more emissions and 12 times more energy than sea transport. 38 However, a much
larger volume of CO2 emissions is released by UK passenger flights each year.
Indeed, passenger flights amount to 90 percent of all emissions from airlines,
with cargo flights amounting to about 5 percent. Furthermore, less than 0.1
percent of total UK emissions of CO2 are contributed by fresh fruit and
vegetable air-freighted imports. Interestingly, 60 to 80 percent of Kenyan
fresh agricultural products are transported in the cargo hold of passenger
flights. When passenger- related emissions are factored in, CO2 emission
levels for air-freighted exports are much lower. In a recent study, Adrian
Williams contrasted production of cut flowers in Kenya and the Netherlands
destined for the UK market. For every 12,000 cut roses produced, Kenyan
producers released 6,000 kg of CO2, as opposed to 35,000 kg of CO2 for their
Dutch competitors. Overall, Kenyan rose production is said to be much more
efficient and environmentally friendly than Dutch production, reflecting,
among other things, that 99 percent of Dutch emissions were caused by heating-
and lighting-intensive production systems, whereas Kenyan flower production
relies mostly on natural sunshine. In contrast, 91 percent of Kenyan emissions
were attributed to the 4000 mile air-freight transport from Kenya to the
United Kingdom.


25 percent of all produce grown ends up as waste.


a UK consumer driving six miles to buy Kenyan green beans emits more carbon
per bean than flying them from Kenya to the United Kingdom.


Pierre Desrochers and Hiroko Shimizu, Yes, We Have No Bananas: A Critique of the “Food Miles” Perspective (Fairfax, VA: Mercatus Center, George Mason University, 2008).


Nuclear Energy


Bitcoin


Topics


I dont understand that: When evolutionary reduction becomes trivial in the study of life it is for a reason different from incompleteness; rather, it is because the breadth of the generalization distances it too significantly from a particular problem that may be at hand.

“biologists proceed as if the lives of all organisms can be understood better
by seeing them first as predictable patterns of somatic and reproductive
effort […] Proximate-cause reductionism (or reduction by dissection) sometimes
advances our understanding of the whole phenomena. This happens when the
mechanism discovered or elucidated is unique or new, has a special kind of
practical application, or itself represents a simplification through
generalization. Discovering that diseases are caused by microorganisms, that
cancer results from mutated genes, or that the genetic materials of all life
are likely to be deoxyribonucleic acid are obvious examples. When evolutionary
reduction becomes trivial in the study of life it is for a reason different
from incompleteness; rather, it is because the breadth of the generalization
distances it too significantly from a particular problem that may be at hand.
For example, if a group of political scientists or physicists meeting to avert
an imminent nuclear disaster were presented with a discussion of the general
principles of conflict strategies and confrontations throughout the history of
life (nonhuman as well as human), they might think that someone had changed
the subject. Even if they realized that this was background material they
should have had available to them to make the best decisions, there might be
no time to review or absorb it. […] “the greatest weakness of reduction by
generalization is not that it is likely to be trivial but that errors are
probable through unjustified leap from hypothesis to conclusion, by either
those who generate hypotheses or those who hear about them.” (Alexander, 1987,
p. 37)


What's the value of evolutionary approach? - I'd say to realise why the reality is what it is...how come anyone would set limits?

“The value of an evolutionary approach to human sociality is thus not to
determine the limits of our actions so that we can abide by them. Rather, it
is to examine our life strategies so that we can change them when we wish, as
a result of understanding them.” (Alexander, 1987, p. 29)

“As a consequence of the general ignorance of biology, many discussants of
human behavior fail to realize that nearly all traits of organisms are
variable or plastic. Those traits that in usual environments are not so
plastic, and that still reflect genetic variation within the human species
(like eye color, nose shape, ear lobe attachment, and hair patterns on the
back of the hand), are actually rare and probably will require special
explanations. Many such traits in humans are involved in individual and kin
recognition” (Alexander, 1987, p. 28)


“I think there have been far fewer such truly self-sacrificing individuals
than might be supposed, and most cases that might be brought forward are
likely instead to be illustrations of the complexity and indirectness of
reciprocity, especially the social value of appearing more altruistic than one
is. […] That I regard true altruism, in the sense of genetic self-sacrifice,
as rare means that I also regard order and justice, as they now exist, as
outcomes of self-interested behavior (in the sense of genetic interests).”
(Alexander, 1987, p. 203)

“To understand our social and moral systems we have to unravel their fabric
until we begin to see precisely how it has been created from the interlacing
of the threads of individual reproductive striving. […] conflicts of interests
arise out of a history of genetic individuality. […] altruism appears
generally to diminish with decreasing degrees of relatedness in sexual species
whenever it is studied—in humans as well as nonhuman species” (Alexander,
1987, p. 82)

After analyzing the DNA of 13,000 Australians, scientists recently found
several genes that differed between liberals and conservatives. Most of them
related to neurotransmitter functioning, particularly glutamate and serotonin,
both of which are involved in the brain’s response to threat and fear. This
finding fits well with many studies showing that conservatives react more
strongly than liberals to signs of danger, including the threat of germs and
contamination, and even low-level threats such as sudden blasts of white
noise. Other studies have implicated genes related to receptors for the
neurotransmitter dopamine, which has long been tied to sensation-seeking and
openness to experience, which are among the best-established correlates of
liberalism. As the Renaissance writer Michel de Montaigne said: “The only
things I find rewarding … are variety and the enjoyment of diversity.” 309

Bees construct hives out of wax and wood fibers, which they then fight, kill,
and die to defend. Humans construct moral communities out of shared norms,
institutions, and gods that, even in the twenty-first century, they fight,
kill, and die to defend. 230

„nach der Kapitulation Athens die künstlerische, literarische und
philosophische Kultur sich schnell in den Zustand der Fassade verwandelte.
Gerade in entleerter Form eroberte der attische Geist das gesamte Griechenland
und dann den mittelmeerischen Raum, in den Außenstellen von Britannien und
Spanien bis Indien reichend. Die Großartigkeit und Vollkommenheit dieser
Schöpfungen er wies sich als formal ablösbar, sie konnten über die Welt hin
nachgeahmt und kolportiert werden, zu eben der Zeit, als dem Volke, aus dessen
Kraft sie einst entstanden, alle Knochen gebrochen waren. Die Impulse der
Kultur gingen nunmehr in die Richtung der eigenen Reproduktion, sie wurde
rhetorisch, dekorativ und nach oben abgeschoben, und sie gewann sich in eben
dieser Form die Liebe und die grenzenlose Bewunderung vieler Generationen,
ohne deren eigene Lebensfragen überhaupt noch anzusprechen, es sei denn in
Kleinformen, Alltagsszenen und Lustspielen. Unter den Philosophen blieben die
Kyniker und Stoiker echt politisch. Daß Kultur gerade als Fassade
transportabel wird, kennen wir, ein solcher Zustand ist seit langem erreicht;
die künstlerischen Äußerungstypen und Produkte der Resteverwertung werden seit
Jahrzehnten über die halbe Welt hin- und hergezogen, wobei der zunehmenden
Degeneration der steigende Aufwand an Reklame, aber auch an öffentlichen
Mitteln, entspricht. Das, was Wyndham Lewis die "große propagandistische
Nebenhandlung, genannt KULTUR" nannte, etablierte sich: schon einmal zur Zeit
des Hellenismus. Dies ist ein phänomenales Schauspiel, das in seiner Eigenart
nur Ernst Howald (Die Kultur der Antike, 1936, 1948) erkannte: „Der Siegeszug
der athenischen Kultur durch Griechenland nahm von dem Zeitpunkt an, wo sie in
Athen ihren Existenzboden verloren hatte, geradezu stürmische Formen an"
(1948, 82).“ 24f

„In unseren sonderbaren Zeiten bedarf sogar die Ordnung noch der
Verteidigung. Sie ist der Zustand, der das Auseinandertreten der Positionen
zur Unversöhnlichkeit erspart, der den Gewissenskonflikt der Politik bis zur
Erträglichkeit temperiert, der eine gute Sorte von Freiheit zutage bringt,
nämlich das Recht, alles zu tun, was die Gesetze erlauben [...]. Damit soll
nicht geleugnet werden, daß es Fortschritt gibt: Überall da, wo die Technik,
die exakten Wissenschaften zum Zuge kamen, ist er evident, das Elend von
früher ist gemindert und der soziale Anstand immerhin so weit durchgesetzt,
daß jeder seine Rolle mit Würde spielen kann — erst die Studenten haben das
wieder zerstört und dieses Recht ihren Lehrern genommen.“ 172

“The peril of human extinction arises out of the tendency of humans across
history to seek and accept knowledge more readily in physical than in social
realms. The point is that we have learned how to manipulate the physical
universe so as to extinguish ourselves, and we have simultaneously been
reluctant about learning how to manipulate the social universe so as to
prevent self-extinction.” (Alexander, 1987, p. 247)

“With respect to the success of the offspring itself, most other people in
society (leaving aside the close relatives of the parents, particularly the
parents’ parents) are affected less by the offspring’s success or failure than
are its close relatives. Yet the rest of society acts as though what happens
to someone else’s offspring is of great concern. […] the rise of indirect
reciprocity in large technological civilizations is what causes the citizenry
of such societies—as opposed to those in small, nontechnological societies—to
view abortion and infanticide more frequently as a concern of more than the
parents alone.” (Alexander, 1987, p. 220)

„Im Zeitalter des Im-Stich-lassens gibt es kaum eine Schuld, die nicht schon
durch Treue versöhnt würde. Im übrigen vermöchte ein asketisches Klima gerade
auf den Höhen des Staates den hinfälligen Regierungen ein Ansehen zu
vermitteln, das die Image-Fabriken vergeblich herzustellen suchen würden, an
dieser Stelle übrigens auch gar nicht wollen. Mit dem Zitat von Goethe: „Es
gibt im Menschen ein Dienenwollendes" muß man bereits befürchten, sich
lächerlich zu machen, wenn man in einer Welt lebt, in der die „Kritik" die
Treuepflicht zu über subjektiven Werten grundsätzlich anräsonniert. Wenn man
sagt, der Dienst an den Institutionen sei die „Entfremdung", so ist das ganz
richtig, aber diese Entfremdung ist die Freiheit, nämlich die Distanz zu sich
selbst und zu dem, was sich so zufällig im Kopf und Herzen abgelagert hat,
wenn diese lange genug den Meinungsmachern ausgeliefert waren. Man mag
verpflichtet sein, Meinungen Anderer zu achten, aber selbst welche zu haben
ist ein Laster, denn sie sind es, mit denen angebbare Kreise die Auflösung
der Institutionen legitimieren, um die Gesellschaft in eine Masse von
Particüliers zu verwandeln.“ 72

“In Kohlberg’s Level A the child depends on immediate rewards and punishments:
nothing is given up for later or long-term rewards. In Level B immediate
rewards are foregone in the interests of longer-term rewards, and the
decisions or actions are based on an expectation of reciprocity (reward) from
the individuals in the child’s immediate group or actual presence. In Level C
the individual has so effectively absorbed knowledge of the systems of rewards
and punishments within society at large that (I suggest) it profits from using
its own judgment, or following its conscience, and sometimes reaps rewards not
solely from persons and groups involved at the time or in its immediate
group.” (Alexander, 1987, p. 146)

“Moral and legal systems are commonly distinguished by those, like moral
philosophers, who study them formally. I believe, however, that the
distinction between them is usually poorly drawn, and based on a failure to
realize that moral as well as legal behavior occurs as a result of probable
and possible punishments and reward.” (Alexander, 1987, p. 191)

- a. The realm in which the word ethics is most employed
- b. Best characterized (or most likely to be) conscious

Individually distinctive; personally unique

„Gerade weil die entscheidenden ethischen Probleme unlösbar sind, weil sie
aus dem Widerstreit der letzten Instanzen im Herzen entstehen, den heute
niemand auszutragen gewillt scheint, werden sie in den Gesinnungsraum
vorverlegt, dort absolut gesetzt und damit zugleich entleert. Parallel mit der
Hypertrophie des humanitär-eudaimonistischen Ethos verfallen die Sitten und
nimmt die innersoziale Gereiztheit zu. Man muß dazu bedenken, daß Kritik und
Angriff die einzigen Mittel zur Wirksamkeit darstellen, die der Intellektuelle
überhaupt besitzt, denn eine lobende, unterstreichende oder bestätigende
Geste zu etwas, das im Raume der praktischen Welt ohne ihn entstanden ist und
sich hält, wäre ja offenbar überflüssig. Einen „Auftrag zur Kritik" hat
niemand den Massenmedien erteilt, sondern dies ist die einzige ihnen
erreichbare und mit Wirkungspotential ausgestattete Aktionsform [...]“ 151

beginning in the 1980s, scientists increasingly recognized that emotions were
filled with cognition. Emotions occur in steps, the first of which is to
appraise something that just happened based on whether it advanced or hindered
your goals. These appraisals are a kind of information processing; they are
cognitions. When an appraisal program detects particular input patterns, it
launches a set of changes in your brain that prepare you to respond
appropriately. For example, if you hear someone running up behind you on a
dark street, your fear system detects a threat and triggers your sympathetic
nervous system, firing up the fight-or-flight response, cranking up your heart
rate, and widening your pupils to help you take in more information. Emotions
are not dumb. Damasio’s patients made terrible decisions because they were
deprived of emotional input into their decision making. Emotions are a kind of
information processing. Contrasting emotion with cognition is therefore as
pointless as contrasting rain with weather, or cars with vehicles. […] two
different kinds of cognition: intuition and reasoning. Moral emotions are one
type of moral intuition, but most moral intuitions are more subtle; they don’t
rise to the level of emotions. 59

„Die definitive Unterscheidung von „geistlich" und „weltlich" wurde, wie
Böckenförde ausführt (Die Entstehung des Staates als Vorgang der
Säkularisation, in: Säkularisation und Utopie, 1967, 75 ff.), anläßlich des
Investiturstreites geboren. Damals hat sich die Ecclesia als eigene, sich
juristisch verfassende, sakramental-hierarchische Institution aus der
umfassenden Einheit des orbis christianus losgelöst, der Kaiser wurde in die
Weltlichkeit entlassen (79), und gerade dies war das Mittel, um nunmehr die
Vorherrschaft des Papstes zu behaupten: Die Voraussetzung für das
Geltendmachen dieser Vorherrschaft war die Anerkennung der Weltlichkeit, die
prinzipielle Säkularisation der Politik.“ 102

“If we fail to scrutinise the meaning of the terms "end" and "purpose," we are
apt to assume uncritically that all deliberate action, i.e., action proper,
must have a purpose; we then become puzzled both when we look for the purpose
of an action done from a sense of obligation, and also when we try to apply to
such an action the distinction of means and end, the truth all the time being
that since there is no end, there is no means either.” 27

“There are obvious possible reasons why failures to censure homosexuality and
suicide might adversely affect one’s reproductive success; and it is easy to
argue that some actions—even possibly both of these actions—are “unnatural” in
the sense that they might derive from developmental experiences that are
historically or evolutionarily novel.” (Alexander, 1987, p. 164)

„Zugleich errichtet man in Gedanken eine Natur höherer Ordnung, die zugleich
moralimprägniert sein soll; so werden die weiß Gott doch auch natürlichen
Unterschiede zwischen den Menschen und ihren verschiedenen Kulturprägungen
subalternisiert: Wer in diesem Sinne argumentiert, ist intellektuell und
moralisch rückständig und kommt unter Logosträgem nicht in Betracht. Die
schlichte Bezeichnung dessen, was ist, rückt in die Nähe des „Vorurteils",
denn die wahre Vernunft hält sich in Allgemeinheiten auf.“ 29

„Schumpeter sah ganz richtig, die kapitalistische Bourgeoisie sei geneigt,
auf der Anwendung der sittlichen Gebote des Privatlebens in den
internationalen Beziehungen zu bestehen (209), so wie der Kellogg-Pakt (1928)
den Krieg wie eine Wegelagerei zum Verbrechen erklärte. Auch dieses
bürgerliche Ethos hat sich als sozialisierbar erwiesen, es ist von den
Intellektuellen seit langem über die Welt hin verbreitet worden. Die
Menschheit entsteht durch Propaganda, sagte G. Benn (Der Ptolemäer,
Lotosland). Und zwar entstand sie im 18. Jahrhundert. Bei Holbach, der im
Jahre 1789 starb, bevor er seine Saat reifen sah, hieß es: „Die Menschlichkeit
ist ein Knoten, um den Bürger von Paris mit dem von Peking zu verbinden"; so
sollte eine scheinbar unpolitische Binnenmoral der „Menschheit" von einer
überdehnten Hausmoral geliefert werden, im Wunschbild waren die Bürger von
Paris und Peking Flurnachbarn. Da wird doch der verdeckt politische Inhalt
erkennbar, denn mit dieser Priorität würde man den Staatstugenden die Wurzeln
abgraben, dem Behauptungswillen, der Treue zur eigenen Gründung, der
wachsamen Sorgfalt und dem Willen, Grenze und Identität zu behaupten — mit
einem Wort: dem Patriotismus. Auch wird klar, wer das Wort führt: der
Intellektuelle der Großstadt, der Konformist der Negation, dessen ganze
Geltungschance von einer Kritik abhängt, die schmerzend trifft. Ungeachtet des
hohen Wertes des familiären Ethos und der Stabilität der Institution Familie
muß doch gesagt werden, daß sie niemals der Ort eines bedeutenden Fortschritts
gewesen ist. Jede große, neue Weltbewegung hat sich gegen den Familiengeist
durchsetzen müssen, so der ägyptische Regiestaat, die griechische Polis, das
ursprüngliche Christentum, so wie Jakobus und Johannes ihren Vater im Schiff
ließen, und auch der Kommunismus mit seiner wissenschaftlichen Diktatur. Die
Familie brachte eine edle, ausweitungsfähige Binnenmoral hervor, sie ist
unentbehrlich für eine lebenslange seelische Gesundheit; aber alles, was
Größe hat: Staat, Religion, Künste, Wissenschaften wurde außerhalb ihres
Bereiches hochgezogen, und selbst die Wirtschaft nahm erst große Dimensionen
an, als sie sich aus ihrem Verbände gelöst hatte.“ 89f

“human arms races and intergroup resource competition are even more bizarre
and less controlled than runaway sexual selection. These two cultural races
are obviously dangerous because together they may lead to irrevocable
disasters, up to and including extinction of the human species or all of life
on Earth. Part of their danger comes from a kind of synergism or feedback
between them. […] Neither the arms race nor the resource-competition race has
any of the usual brakes that eventually slow down and prevent further
evolutionary races, whether cultural or noncultural. […] Because we have so
reduced the impact of all other hostile forces on our lives, the weapons and
resource races both continue virtually unchecked […] Even if arms races are as
old as life itself, however, there may be no precedent for the kind of largely
unchecked arms race in which the great powers of the world are currently
involved.” (Alexander, 1987, p. 240)

“Why is the Ethics so disappointing? Not, I think, because it really answers
two radically different questions as if they were one: 1. "What is the happy
life?" 2. "What is the virtuous life?" It is, rather, because Aristotle does
not do what we as Moral Philosophers want him to do, viz., to convince us that
we really ought to do what in our non-reflective consciousness we have
hitherto believed we ought to do, or, if not, to tell us what, if any, are the
other things which we really ought to do, and to prove to us that he is right.
Now, if what I have just been contending is true, a systematic account of the
virtuous character cannot possibly satisfy this demand. At best it can only
make clear to us the details of one of our obligations, viz., the obligation
to make ourselves better men; but the achievement of this does not help us to
discover what we ought to do in life as a whole and why; to think that it did
would be to think that our only business in life was self-improvement. Hence
it is not surprising that Aristotle's account of the good man strikes us as
almost wholly of academic value, with little relation to our real demand,
which is formulated in Plato's words:on gar peri ton epitucontoV o logoV alla
peri ton ontina tropon crh xhn.” 29

„Zenon vertrat sogar schon die beachtliche Ansicht, daß alle
Verwandtschaftsverbindungen und Stammespflichten vor der „Tugend"
zurückzutreten hätten: „Dementsprechend stellte er in seinem Staate nur die
wirklich Tugendhaften als solche hin, die man als Mitbürger, Freunde,
Verwandte und Freie (!) bezeichnen dürfe" (Diog. Laert. VII, 33) — die
daseinswichtigen Qualifikationen sollte man demnach von der Einstufung durch
Intellektuelle zu erwarten haben, nämlich den Mitgliedern der stoischen Loge.
Dies kann als eine zukunftshaltige Erfindung angesprochen werden, man verlieh
so etwas wie ein gesinnungsethisches Bürgerrecht in einem noch utopischen
Überstaat. Sehr viel später kam die Aufklärung auf solche Gedanken mit großer
Wirksamkeit zurück. Wenn Zenon, ein Phönizier, die Instinkte der längst
entpolitisierten asiatischen kultivierten Schichten im Westen in Politik
umsetzen wollte, dann konnte die Eroberung der Eroberer nur mit Hilfe der
griechischen Kultur vor sich gehen, denn diese war die Eintrittskarte an jeden
Hof und in jedes gebildete Bewußtsein. Der Background dieser neuen Richtungen
ist übrigens auch nicht uninteressant. Unter den Kynikern war Antisthenes von
nicht vollgültiger Ehe, Diogenes unter dubiosen Umständen verbannt, Monimos
ein fortgejagter Sklave; nur Krates scheint Vollbürger gewesen zu sein, er
entäußerte sich freiwillig seines Vermögens. Mit der Stoa verlegten sich die
Einflüsse ganz nach dem Osten; bis in die römische Zeit waren fast alle
Stoiker Asiaten aus Zypern, Kilikien, Syrien, Mesopotamien; nur Panaitios war
Grieche aus Rhodos.“ 27f

the Ilongot, a tribe in the Philippines whose young men gained honor by
cutting off people’s heads. Some of these beheadings were revenge killings,
which offered Western readers a motive they could understand. But many of
these murders were committed against strangers who were not involved in any
kind of feud with the killer. The author explained these most puzzling
killings as ways that small groups of men channeled resentments and frictions
within the group into a group-strengthening “hunting party,” capped off by a
long night of communal celebratory singing. This was my first hint that
morality often involves tension within the group linked to competition between
different groups. 22

„Zenon, geboren um 340, war kein Grieche, sondern ein Phönizier aus Zypern,
Sohn eines Mnaseas, nach Pohlenz ein hellenisierter Name aus Manasse oder
Menahem. Er galt als einer der reichsten Männer seiner Zeit mit einem Kapital
von 1000 Talenten, das er nach Diog. Laert. VII, 13 in Reedergeschäften
auslieh, war Philanthrop und Wahlathener.“ 20

We care about violence toward many more classes of victims today than our
grandparents did in their time. Political parties and interest groups strive
to make their concerns become current triggers of your moral modules. To get
your vote, your money, or your time, they must activate at least one of your
moral foundations. 153

„Verpflichtungen gegen nicht Anwesende oder gar abstrakte Antipoden sind uns
schwer ans Herz zu bringen, und umgekehrt schafft das Fernsehen, das uns die
Leiden der unglücklichen Bevölkerung von Sonstwoland unmittelbar ins Haus
setzt, eine noch schwer übersehbare, sicher folgenreiche Veränderung unserer
Verpflichtungsgefühle, vielleicht in Hinsicht der Abstumpfung nun auch gegen
leibhaft gegenwärtiges Leiden. Eine Fern-Ethik gehört also noch in den Bereich
der Versuche und Irrtümer. K. Lorenz hat die ethische Verunsicherung als Folge
der Durchbrechung der Nahsicht-Bedingung an der Vervollkommnung der
technischen Tötungsmittel gezeigt: Derselbe Mann, der die schwersten
Hemmungen hätte, einem Wehrlosen vor ihm den Schädel einzuschlagen, macht
sich kaum Gedanken, wieviele Menschen die Bombe tötet, die er mit einem
Fingerdruck abschickt.“ 53

“if, as is usually the case, we mean by the "Theory of Knowledge" the
knowledge which supplies the answer to the question "Is what we have hitherto
thought knowledge really knowledge?" there is and can be no such thing, and
the supposition that there can is simply due to a confusion.” 30

„mit der motorischen Entlastung und physischen Bequemlichkeit des modernen
Kulturmenschen scheint seine Verhetzbarkeit und Erregungsneigung zuzunehmen“
41

Studies of charitable giving in the United States show that people in the
least religious fifth of the population give just 1.5 percent of their money
to charity. People in the most religious fifth (based on church attendance,
not belief) give a whopping 7 percent of their income to charity, and the
majority of that giving is to religious organizations. It’s the same story for
volunteer work: religious people do far more than secular folk, and the bulk
of that work is done for, or at least through, their religious organizations.
There is also some evidence that religious people behave better in lab
experiments—especially when they get to work with each other. 294

“The preconscious-postconscious approach to rights seems to me to be
consistent with the aspects of these problems that involve the stake of
society as a whole in a viable system of indirect reciprocity. In a society
cemented largely by reciprocity it appears to be important that a generally
lofty selfview be held by the citizenry with regard to the propensity for
beneficence within the society. It does not appear to be beneficent to kill a
helpless, developing embryo or a moribund person. If the interests of such
embryos and moribund people conflict with those of healthy, conscious, aware
people, however, then the question of how to resolve the conflict will not
disappear.” (Alexander, 1987, p. 223)

“morality is a matter of whose interests one should, by conscious and willful
behavior, serve, and how much; evolutionary knowledge contains no messages on
this issue. The most it can do is provide information about the reasons for
current conditions and predict some consequences of alternative courses of
action.” (Alexander, 1987, p. 232)

- a. No ethical or moral problems are involved
- b. Best characterized as (or most likely to be) nonconscious

Shared within subgroups; different between subgroups; overlapping but
different among individuals