Wilson Greatbatch Quotes
We have never succeeded in slowing down our nuclear fusion reactors.
Greatbatch, Wilson. The Making of the Pacemaker: Celebrating a Lifesaving Invention. Prometheus Books, 2000.
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
Rutherford had been the first to split the atom in 1919.
There was massive opposition to nuclear power in most countries of the world except France where the operators and technicians are so well trained and there are such high safety standards that the public had confidence in the nuclear management that did not exist in most other countries.
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.
Nuclear fusion is different from nuclear fission that currently powers atomic power plants. Fusion is the process the sun uses to generate all its power. Scientists understand exactly how fusion works—it’s much simpler than fission, but actually creating a way of doing it on earth has been a very difficult challenge. The National Ignition Facility has been trying to produce a fusion reaction for a number of years with no success.
Wilson Greatbatch was an American engineer and pioneering inventor. He held more than 325 patents and was a member of the National Inventors Hall of Fame and a recipient of the Lemelson–MIT Prize and the National Medal of Technology and Innovation (1990).
