J. Robert Oppenheimer Quotes

Reflecting on the two scientists different views immediately after nuclear fission had first been demonstrated and explained--{640924}. The different “conservative” views reflect the norms and mores contrasts of the scientists and the political world. To the scientist saying something is possible before it has actually been demonstrated is unethical, and estimates of likelihood of success is not taken into account until there is evidence—that it has happened. Szilard’s conservatism was not concerned with undue optimism about something that has not yet occurred, but pragmatically it might happen and if so the political and practical implications for a world at war were so profound that preparations should be made even if a chain reaction could not be produced in the next years. In this disagreement, Szilard’s view prevailed and the two scientists led the efforts that produced the first chain reaction months later.

What makes this quote important historically is to realize the assurances that he had to give the press and the public. This shows the level of anxiety about nuclear science that existed at the time and some of the absurd claims that critics and skeptics made. While it was true that there were same dangers in the nuclear testing, some of which the authorities were ignorant of, they were not of the expansive catastrophic magnitude that the critics claimed. Almost all new science and technology develops a Luddite community of opponents who want the technology stopped or at least slowed much. These opponents almost always exaggerate dangers in order to alarm public opinion via fear. At the same time, almost all the new scientific arenas eventually display and disclose problems and potential dangers of which the scientists and policy makers originally unaware. But they are almost always different from those the original critics claim. For example instead of environmental concern for radiation caused mutations in the animal life or the problem of what to do with radioactive byproducts of making atomic weapons, the warnings were that the water would flow out of the oceans and that gravity would be nullified.

The letter was actually delivered to President Roosevelt on October 11. It was the stimulus for the Manhattan Project to develop the atomic bomb. It had been drafted in large part by physicist Leo Szilard whose idea it was that Einstein sign the letter. As the world’s most prestigious scientist Einstein, Szilard felt, would make more of an impression on FDR than he, Fermi or other scientists even though Einstein was a theoretician and never did work on the development of the bomb. The military men did not understand Szilard and thought him a danger to the nation. So the two men who initiated the idea of the development of an atom bomb did not do any, of the work on it.

Meitner and her nephew Frisch had been the first people to realize that the atom had been split. Meitner had described the process to her nephew and he made some drawings of the process she described. A few of these looked like a bacteria dividing. Frisch happened to meet with William A. Arnold, an American Biologist doing research in Stockholm. He asked Arnold what the biologists called it when a bacteria divided, and he replied, “fission”. Frisch told his aunt and she decided that they should use that term in the scientific article they were preparing on the splitting of the atom.

Both knew that this proved an atomic bomb was possible. It was Szilard’s message about the possibilities about the atomic bomb that Albert Einstein transmitted to FDR, leading to the American development of the bomb.

This was a political use of sarcasm and irony. Oak Ridge was the site of the largest facility for producing fissionable material in the world as the result of the Manhattan Project. And yet the problem of what to do with the radioactive waste has never been resolved. So Oak Ridge was producing more and more radioactive uranium in the area without a resolution in sight. The “joke” was that the people in the area were immune, so production could continue without a solution to radioactive waste.

Morrison was then a graduate student of Oppenheimer. The quotation is important, not because it shows how quickly the “father of the atomic bomb” realized that a nuclear bomb could be made and how, but how relatively easy and rapid it was for a competent theoretical physicist could conceptually design a nuclear weapon if they first had knowledge of the Hahn / Strassmann Experiment and the Meitner / Frisch explanation of what had happened ({640924}). Note Leo Szilard’s letter at about the same time--{640925}.

Corporations in the nuclear business argue that Nuclear power is less expensive than otehr forns of ower that are in common use. However, when a nation adds the huge cost of maintianing a scientific infrastructure to inspect and regulate the nuclear power plants, and the costof establishing the contingency capability of popularion evacuation and containment when there is a nuclear accident, and then the cost of safely stopring and containing the spent but deadly radioactive fuel, the incredibly high cost of insurance, then it is clear that nuclear power is the most expensive form of power. However, some countries do it better than others with France being the only country at the beginning of the 21st century that operated nuclear power safely and efficiently. The United States, Russia and Japan had huge costs

This was the first Russian atomic explosion.

See Albert Einstein.

Breslin was criticized in a Federal report for his alarmist news coverage of the Three Mile Island nuclear mishap:

Germany had some world class physicists. Our scientists, military intelligence people, and political leadership assumed that the Germans were also seeking to develop the Atomic Bomb. Ironically, it turned out that they were not, and what Truman reported in this quotation was untrue (although that was not fully known at the time.) Einstein and several of the scientists who were early pioneers in modern physics were Jewish, and Hitler referred to the study of nuclear fission and fusion as “Jewish Science.” As a result, the German government did not commit the resources to the development of an atomic bomb. Instead, they were betting on the development of the Jet Airplane which they succeeded in deploying against the Allies at the end of the war. But they did not have enough or enough pilots left alive to fly them, and Germany was overrun by the Allied Troops. Prior to Truman’s erroneous report about the German development of an atomic bomb, there had only been one piece of evidence that the Germans were not developing one. An OSS secret agent, Moe Berg, had talked with Werner Heisenberg, at a Swiss scientific conference during the war. He was going to assassinate the greatest of the German physicists if Berg thought he was working on a nuclear device. Berg concluded from his discussions that Heisenberg did not know enough about nuclear fission to have been working on that. Berg did not kill Heisenberg, and reported that he did not think the Germans were developing a bomb as if they were Heisenberg would have been deeply involved. However, the American intelligence people and the American scientists, did not trust Berg’s analysis and conclusion. Berg was not a trained scientist. He was a professional baseball player—the NY Yankee backup catcher to Bill Dickey. He was a college graduate, a brilliant guy and a very fast learner who had studied physics books and papers before his assignment. Berg turned out to have been right, but that was not confirmed until a few years after the war. Truman had relied on an incorrect intelligence estimate when he made this quotation. It was not the first such error of intelligence analysis in American history and it would not be the last.

When the atomic bomb was first tested at Los Alamos, some of the scientists were concerned that Aston’s warning might come to pass. The result was that they conducted a series of calculations to preclude the possibility. Oppenheimer, Fermi, Bohr, Teller, Alverez, Feynman and dozens of others calculated that given the parameters that they were testing, there was no danger. None the less, in their memoirs most admit that in the back of their head, there was lingering this possibility that was first raised by this quotation from another great scientist.

Rocky Flats was operated for the government by Dow Chemical Company, which unfortunately violated the terms of their contract and improperly buried nuclear waste which ended up producing so much radiation that the plant had to be closed down and the government had to buy up property around the nuclear plant as a buffer zones so that private people would not receive high radiation doses by being too close to the plant.