Alvin Weinberg, former Director of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, inventor of the Molten Salt Reactor, (MSR) and one of the driving forces behind the adoption of the highly successful Pressurized Water Reactor (PWR) that provides, along with hydroelectric, the vast majority of greenhouse gas free energy on the planet has died at the age of 91.
Dr. Weinberg was the author of one of the first important texts on nuclear technology,
The Physical Theory of Neutron Chain Reactors first published in 1958.
I have been fascinated with Dr. Weinberg's greatest invention, the Molten Salt Reactor, which Dr. Weinberg showed to have been a thermal breeder reactor in the early 1970's. The molten salt reactor experiment is perhaps one of the most successful designs
not to have been developed commercially, although the elegant and highly flexible design is being revived as part of the international Gen IV nuclear program.
For reasons that can only be regarded as dubious, probably with a nod to weapons material, the design was supplanted by the far less flexible and somewhat more problematic Liquid Metal Fast Breeder Reactor.
The MSR reactor was designed to accomplish many important tasks that are still under appreciated, including weapons proliferation resistance, fast continuous reprocessing of nuclear fuel, fuel breeding and quick and facile decontamination of nuclear materials. In his wonderful and informative book
The First Nuclear Era, Dr. Weinberg describes standing next to reprocessed nuclear fuel that had been decontaminated by a factor of several million in a matter of days. The fuel was uranium-233 and bringing the reactor to criticality was accomplished in the presence of Glenn Seaborg, the Nobel Laureate who discovered many elements in the periodic table including plutonium. It was a great loss to the human race when this design was not pursued, but I expect that future generations will avail themselves of this technology - it really represents a separate class of homogeneous high temperature reactors - should humanity survive global climate change.
Speaking of climate change, I didn't know this until reading an obituary, but Dr. Weinberg was one of the first modern scientists to bring the subject of the potential for carbon dioxide to change climate into broad discussion.
Managing Carbon:
ORNL's Research Roles
In 1968 Jerry Olson, an ORNL ecologist, began studying how trees take carbon from the atmosphere, incorporate it into their leaves and wood, and return it as carbon dioxide after they die. Ever since, studies of the global carbon cycle have been under way at ORNL.
In 1975, a former ORNL director and nuclear power enthusiast, Alvin Weinberg, met with a number of government officials. He reiterated the scientific concern expressed by Roger Revelle of Harvard University in 1965. Weinberg told them that the carbon dioxide buildup in the atmosphere as a result of increased fossil fuel combustion for power production could lead to climate change. He reminded them that nuclear power plants do not produce carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that traps excess heat from the sun, warming the earth's surface. As a result, the effect of human activities on atmospheric carbon dioxide levels began to receive government attention; a carbon dioxide effects office was established in the Energy Research and Development Administration, the predecessor of the Department of Energy...
http://www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/v33_2_00/managing.htmI didn't know about his role in climate change awareness until reading an obituary of the great scientist. Dr. Weinberg was an adviser to Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy, and always played an important role in the discussion of public energy policy.
He published on this subject back in 1974 "Global Effects of Man's Production of Energy." Science 186: 205, 1974.
Dr. Weinberg lost his position at ORNL in part because of his emphasis on "defense in depth" safety systems for PWR reactors, and was one of the first to emphasize the safety aspects that have helped nuclear energy to establish itself as one of the cleanest and safest energy production technologies ever developed in human history. Throughout his career and after his retirement, Dr. Weinberg was a passionate, thoughtful, and prescient worker for nuclear energy and other safe forms of energy. He worked hard to define the important parameters that have characterized the focus of the Gen III and Gen IV nuclear programs. He was an active participant in the establishment of the Solar Research Institute in Golden Colorado.
I highly recommend "First Nuclear Era," a fascinating account of history of nuclear and even political science. In particular Dr. Weinberg's account of his participation in leftist politics in the 1930's is interesting and illuminating and he goes a long way to describing the feel of Los Alamos and the Manhattan Project.
http://libserv.aip.org:81/ipac20/ipac.jsp?uri=full=3100001~!13790~!0&profile=newcustom-aipnbl#focusI hope that future generations will offer some of the appreciation denied to Dr. Weinberg in life. Though I note there is no reason to believe that Dr. Weinberg ever felt any bitterness about what may have happened in his career, I do believe that his ideas have not received the currency and full respect they deserved. I know that I will always be in awe of his contribution. A giant has passed. His was a life well lived.
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