A LOGICAL CASE OF CAUTIOUS USE OF NUCLEAR POWER
HANS BETHE: PROPHET OF ENERGY BY JEREMY BERNSTEIN. BASIC BOOKS. 212
PP. $12.95.
Author: By Jerry Ackerman Globe Staff
Date: Sunday, October 26, 1980
Page: ?????
Section: BOOKS
It is difficult at times to tell where Hans Bethe's extensive quotes leave
off and where Jeremy Bernstein takes up. A physicist himself, as well as a
longtime reporter on science for the New Yorker, Bernstein is patient and
refreshingly clear as he helps Bethe tell what he has learned from life and
what he wants us to learn now.
Together, starting with Bethe's childhood memories, they build a
compellingly logical case for a cautious continuation of nuclear power to help
meet an energy crisis that won't go away. In an area where writing is so often
either too dry or too effusive, Bethe and Bernstein speak with precision as
they develop an exquisite progression of thought.
After a career in theoretical physics capped by a Nobel Prize - for his
deductions about how stars get their energy, a process we now call "fusion" -
Bethe (pronounced Beta) has turned his attention closer to home, thinking
about the energy question and, from time to time, going on the lecture
circuit.
Bethe has decided there are really two energy crises before us. One is the
overall dilemma of how the Earth's growing population is to get by on what
undeniably is a finite amount of energy in the ground. The other, much more
immediate and visible, is what to do about maintaining a supply of "portable"
fuel - namely, the gasoline that powers our cars.
He sees hope in the development of synthetic fuels from oil-bearing shales
and coal - not immediately, he cautions, but in time to replace oil as we now
know it when the supply is so depleted that we can't afford to pump it out.
In the meantime, Bethe says, we must extend the useful life of what oil
there is left in the ground by switching to something else for the rest of our
needs.
Coal is a quick solution for power plants and industrial boilers, he
agrees, and it can and must be burned as cleanly as possible.
Nuclear power is the next obvious step, he says, because despite its
faults and risks, it is a technology in hand. Bethe would rather see the
nuclear industry be using the Canadian type of power reactor because he
believes it is safer and its fuel process lends itself less to weapons
proliferation.
Ultimately, he agrees with those who want a non-nuclear future, that the
world must depend more on solar energy in all its forms. These include
sunlight, wind power, to some degree hydroelectric power, and a systematic
harvesting of wood and other "biomass."
But all these will come slowly, Bethe says. "Sometimes one hears the
suggestion that we should have a Manhattan Project for energy," says the man
who headed the theoretical division of that bombmaking venture during World
War II. ". . . I think this misses the point. While it true that research and
engineering can often by done at an accelerated pace, actually making use of
the results to supply a large number of consumers presents a problem of a
totally different magnitude. . . . (I*t is fair to say, I think, that any
technology that is gong to produce substantial energy by the year 2000 has
already been invented."
ACKERM;10/07,09:36 MFEENE;10/28,10 B07979483
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