Family was poor and lived in the middle of nowhere and the chances of them coming together as leaders of the world was you know . And they realized that and said Something Special happen to me, you and Something Special brought us together. And i think one thing i should have added that maybe people were right and the house was haunted. What happened there was so extraordinary and in a way so mysterious and so extra worldly that, you know, maybe they are right, maybe it is a ghost house or haunted house. Host well it is an ex extraordinary story and thank you for your time. This was a lot of fun. Welcome. On the next washington journal, former u. S. Ambassador to iraq, James Jeffrey is here to talk about the latest options in iraq and options regarding isis. And a look at the proposed 12 percent increase in the high gas tax to increase highway funds. Later, draw breakspear from the state bank super visors conference on the emergence of currency. Washington journal is live every morning at 7 45 on cspan and you can join the conversation on facebook and twitter. Remind your children in this year when we are the first generation to experience the tax on the United States. We are the first generation of americans to feel what it is like to have our government buildings attack. Remind your children are freedom isnt free and the countrys grea greatness is found in one another. That is what the starspangled banner is about. A threeday fourth of july weekend starts on thursday. Visit joe howl talking about the radiation experiments and sunday at 8 p. M. , a preview of Jeffrey Angles manuscript on george h. Bush and the peaceful end of the cold war. Craig nelson writes about the history of atomic science and the development of nuclear weapons. He talked about his bock at the New York Public Library. This is just over an hour. I remember going to the library when i was 11 and checking out a big beautiful illustrated book printed in 1956 ent titled our friend the atom by a german science author. It featured a preference about a man who rubbed a lamp and brought forward a genie and that was an atomic weapon. He had he had to be handled carefully. The man didnt want this responsibility but the genie told him now he was freed, his discovery couldnt put him back into the bottle. He had to decide how best to use him. Tonights presentation of the the age of radiance relates the tail of the man and the genie in more detailed form. The book tells of the science whose interest in the atom killed them and how hitlers scientist were driven from the country and the peaceful sources taken by nuclear research. The fireman who battled the disaster at chair noble loom as long as einstein. The power of the atom is neither an unalloyed good or evil in and of itself but very much the p product of how carefully we use items we discover. He has produced several books. The first hear heroes was about the dolittle raid in japan and lets get lost features the authors travel to unusual parts of the world and the odd experiences that accompanied them. Other things have appeared in vanity fair, the wall street journal and the saloon. Please welcome the author of the age of radiance, craig nelson. Thank you so kindly. It is such a thrill to be invited to the New York Public Library because i have been a patron since i moved here. As a historian it is a major part of my work and my Branch Library is mulberry street and a dr. Sues book was one of the first i read to think i saw it on mulberry street. There is nothing in this book as good as seeing david bowie who lives on my street. So you can see how history folds in and some of things we will be talking about. Five years ago when i started working on this book if you asked me what radiation was i would say it is scary, it is dangerous, it is cancercausing, it is evil. And probably this is what many of you think, too. And now i still think many of those but they are tempered with other ideas. First i learned about radiation is caused by atoms that are chubby and fat and they were adorable and so fat they break the bond of nature that create the Material World and spit out little pieces of themselves. So that is what radiation is. It is sputing out particles or gamma rays. So you can think of them as being the hollywood starlets of the periodicaleriodicalleriodic are balemic. And they create a charm about them. For example, when marie curie would go into her lab, she would leave out her radium so it would be glowing like fire flies on the wall. But after she put the radium away it was noticed the walls were still glowing. One person said when you picked up the silver plutoniom it was warm like a puppy. But the solution for holding that puppy too long was called high amputation. So it is a scary puppy we are talking about. But the entire subatomic world has this disturbing quality. We talk about radiation overtime as a half life and thing about this object that is sending off rays that is dangerous to us. But really the entire subatomic world is like that. Here is an example. Lets say you are flying in a plane. You look at the window and see a bunch of specks. And because you are a world class doctor you create a mathematical portrait of the speed they disappear and you have created a problem to define them and you know there is not a lot of melody but there is a a lot of rhythm. You take the new set of calculations based on the waves. This is how in the subatomic world we can use two different int instruments to noting the particles are waves powering the forces underneath. And this is how something in the subatomic world can be a particle and a wave. So all of that is creepy and disturbing. But before we get too much of the science, i want to backup. One of the things that is sad about history the way we learned it is the way to this and that when this great man was born and when he died and the guy who started history had a different idea all together. He had that history is about one thing and one thing only and that is have i got a story for you. Once upon a time there was a little girl who was the youngest of five children when was once prospering but then they fell on hard times. So a deal was made to work for two years while i go to university and then i will turn around and do the same. In that moment it was illegal for women over the age of 12 to get an education and they were getting around that by attending a floating university. It floated so they could not track down who was running it and throw them in a labor camp. It did a fantastic job because she got into medical school at the university of paris and off she went. And the first couple jobs she is unhappy and it is terrible. Then she starts working for a family that runs a sugar beet plantation and they love her and their six kids are adorable and then the oldest son comes home from school. And he and manya fall head over heels in love. They are dating for a year and he said finally i am going to tell my parents we are going to get married. He goes and does that and all of the kids know and Everybody Loves her but in fact the parents say no way. You are not marrying this moneyless no body. You are marrying up. And he said i am going to work this out and talk them into marry you and they see each other secretly for six months, the parents find out and fire her. She is back in warsaw and heartbroken living at her fathers home. And the letter comes, i finished school, i am engaged to be mur married and now it is your turn. Come to paris. But she is so in love she can not give up. And then the letter arrives forget it. My parents are never going to let me marry you. Decades late she became a famous mathematici mathematician because she didnt marry him and left for paris. I love this story because it shows you, first of all, dont always follow your heart, especially if you are 19, but it shows you what would happen if she had never left poland . She went on to discover the forces of radium and polonium and realized radiation came from within not the outside and they discovered you can use it to treat cancer because it has an affect on fast growing cells. And i happen you heard the comments on the couple and how good they were. But after piere died marie had an affair with paul. And this is the only women. Here is maria. Here is our white cap idea. Here is einstein. Okay there we go. These are the greatest mind of science in 1927 and they were nappy dressers. Marie has an affair with this man next to einstein. She and paul had a fantastic relationship and they rent a house and their letters back and forth are passionate and she comes back to live after piere was dead and probably affected by working with radio active materials. And they are madly in love and it is like she has a second life except there is a problem and paul is married and even though his wife doesnt mind he has a m mistris she fiends it is the most famous person at the time. And they Start Talking about how she is a home wrecker and a polish immigrant and saying she is jewish and she is almost the only person in the book who is not jewish. It becomes such a scandal that when she is ready to go off to sweden to get her second noble prize they say maybe you should come and get this next year. She called einstein and says what should i do . And he said g get the prize. That relationship falls apart and paul goes back to his wife as the women in the audience guessed. But paul says before it breaks i have this gogetter named fred and you should hire him. She does and after a year fred says maria i want to marry your daughter. And she makes him sign the first prenup in history. Marie was wrong. They a they have a fantastic method and discovered fundament fundamental radiation. And the reason i told you this story is at the end marie curie was the first women to win a noble prize and her daughter was the second. Isnt that fantastic . Fred was a hunk. After fred and iran discover artificial radiation everyone around the word start said e eradiating everything. And a chemist in germany and none of you have heard of these even though she is the center of the history and i would like to tell you her story. Lisa might ner was the First Women University professor in the history of germany and the second women to receive a degree at the university of viena. She was kicked out for having j j jewish ancestry. There she is at the age of 60 all washed up. Her boss hates her, should see not being paid, she feels washed up and alone and cant believe this happened to her. Her nephew comes for a visit on christmas and they have something called loot fisc and that is like when you go to a 7eleven and by beef jerky except it is fish and feels like jello. Then they go for a walk and all she can talk abo expartner auto hahn and his findings he is having. What auto is doing is pointing a strome of neutrons at uranium and getting bazaar results. They think maybe their instruments are wrong or their chemist. Lisa sits down, takes out a pencil and a piece of paper, and takes uranium atom and how much it weighs and the stuff they are getting out and applies einstein in the middle and it fits. She has discovered vision. When auto goes back he asked his neighbor what they call it when bact bacteria splits and the neighbored fishing. In the United States especially all of the Anglo American scientist are working on radar. They dont care about this. They think splitting atoms is whacky. But everyone fleeing hitler is thinking what it hitler gets the atomic bomb and we dont have it. So normally we are told the story that einstein and others wrote calculations on a board and poof. But it took three of the most terrifying experiments in the history of science to make these bombs. The first one happened in the middle of the city of chicago in the argon woods. The university of chicago president said we dont have football here any more so no one is using our football stadium so you can use that. And they found this squash court inside the football stadium in the middle of the city of chicago and this is where the First Nuclear reactor was created and this is called the third most dangerous experiment in history because what if something had gone wrong. But nothing went wrong. It was the most perfect experiment anyone had seen and he has the paton on this style of Nuclear Reactors today. One thing very funny happened with the soviet spies who were sending word of this back to mouse moscow and there was a translation issues so instead of moss court they thought the First Nuclear reactor was in a pumpkin patch. I know you heard there was going to be a reading and so i will read a little for you so you are not disappointed. In 1921 a young woman named catherine that she would soon die. Catherine decided to spend the rest of her day as a wife to a chicago millionaire as old as her daddy and live out west on the page family ranch named for the sun sets where the peek snow caps burned red. A pale jewish boy the following year had a cough and showed up to stay at the ranch and she taught him how to ride a horse in every weather. A few seasons later bob returned to mexico with frank and this time catherines page took them 9500 feet to a cabin with a fire place made from clay, surrounded by 154 acres of meadows. The two boys convinced their dad to rent the place and robert would continue as an adult until he could die it for 10,000. He and frank went there every chance they could living our great guide dreams and riding horse back thousands of miles and living on sausage, chocolate covered raisins, cheese and whiskey. If you have a man, ladies, who is the object of your interest and he is not paying enough taverns attention, history suggest chocolate covered raisins and whiskey should be tried. He wrote my two great loves with phys physics a new mexico. It is a pity they cannot be combined. He took a ride with catarrhine to a volcano crater and a stream which cotton wood flourished. You know i grew up in a jungle town and i love the southwest and think it is beautiful so i get this part of the story. Now, two kind of bombs were made. The first from uranium and it was so simple they never tested it before dropping it. The first time it was tested was when it was detonated. This was a shot of uranium was thrown into a bowl of uranium. So the one who helped discover fishing went off into the cannons and created the second more dangerous experience in history where he created a guillotine advice and did a set of washers where you could change the size of the plug and another set of washers where you could change the size of the bowl and he would drop the washers with his guillotine and they would pass through the bowl for a couple seconds and create a very split second super criticality and one american said we were trying to come as close to an atomic explosion without blowing ourselves up. Carefully notice what this bomb looks like and this is the plotonium. And they had the concept that plutonium would be pure but it wasnt. They had to compress it from the size of an orange to a marble and that would make it work. The only way to do that would be to employ it on both side. These are are firing at the same time to compress them and my favorite scientist came up with this. He createded the fundamentals of the mordern computer. He was such a good mathematician his wife said johnny can count everything but calories. He like today play german music loud. He did the calculations that made the plutonium bomb work and he was a natty dresser that when he wore a three piece suit going bury riding in the country. And he liked to drive his car and read a book at the same time and crashed so often into this corner here it is named for him to this day. Right after the bombs were dropped, america became excited about this and the government explained tht that the reasons we had was because we knew atomic secrets. And what they were doing was an engineering and the real genius was going done at oak ridge, tennessee because they were creating the fuel that goes inside the bombs. And they had to do it with different methods. One was a thermal defusion, one was a drip, and they had a prot proton. And they had a thermo or plutonium device. But the great thing from oak ridge was they discovered a special sealant and that entered american homes. One thing i am sad about the fact that the atomic age is ending is that the bombs were beautiful. Lets look at 13 of them together. I would like to see one. Im sorry. Now we have the most dangerous experiment in the history of science in america. Having lunch together here with Edward Teller and he said i dont know why we are making fishing bombs because it is growing to create heat. You could merge hydrogen and become a fusion bomb and adam spent 20 years trying create themo nuclear or fusion weapons. He would sit at his desk and come up with bomb ideas. The backyard bomb was my favorite. It was emormious and kill tons of people and you could just set it off in your back yard. And here is Edward Tellers first test in 1952. This is when the bikini was first introduced because like the fusion bomb it is small and devastating chat devastating. This is called the bravo bomb which is 15 mega tons and created a fire ball four miles in diameter. The people said it was like watching a diseased brain appear overhead. It started snowing and that was radio active fallout from the island it was sitting on. One of the incredible side effects of this is the infected a japanese fishing boat and one of the fischfisherman died and f the tuna affected was sold in the japanese market. And godzilla came out after that and many of us thought it was funny, but many japanese watched it and saw the movie being about the monster american inflicted on them and also what their children were turning into that their descentants were going to be like this. And many japanese would get so upset and run out of theater. And here is a slide out of order. Many people ask isnt there a possibility there will be dirty bombs that terrorist will have nucle Nuclear Bombs and the worst terrorist attack was done with box cutters and flying lessons so i dont think the next step is Nuclear Science. But this is something that could make you nervous and that is that we have a huge number of atomic plants all over the United States. Some are where weapons are stores, produced, or where power plants are and the lines are the Transportation Network and since we dont have a way of disposing Nuclear Materials, 12 atomic plants have materials sitting outside in swimming pools. So if there is something to be frightened about with terrorism this would be it. One of the great ing things you can do is the next time you see dr. Strange love you can watch it as history because a lot of it turns out to be true. Almost any time someone in the movie is ranting and raving that we can put the best and brightest and mind shafts and all of this was serious theory. Hermon con tried to tell cooper he deserved royalties. And every time in the movie you see the president of the United States and the head of the soviet union using a hotline that wasnt invented. A major part of the cuban crisis is they had to translate cables back and forth. So they came up with the thing where if missiles attack the soviet union and no word came from moscow missiles would automatically fly back and attack the United States so the doomsday machine here in dr. Strangelove would actually come to pass 30 years later. And if dr. Strangelove, the significant move in economic history, but most significant history in economic history is chinas and. Americans first learned about Nuclear Science from seeing movies and pictures of the victims of hiroshima and nagasaki. And the learned about it, power plants with three mile island belted at the same time as the china syndrome was in theaters. Walter cronkite announcing what could be the world is happening in pennsylvania while jane fund is giving a Powerpoint Presentation about how Nuclear Power plants work and saying, into something that happens, it could destroy an area the size of pennsylvania. And because of this, this coincidence of three mile island and china syndrome launched the biggest series of protests in the United States which culminated with 1 Million People in central park. At his will he stop Nuclear Powered it. We got 20 of our electricity from nuclear then, and thats still all we get now. A long time ago, for many, many years we were told that dropping the atomic bombs ended world war ii, kept us from having sending one and half million troops to invade the island and cause a terrible tragedy and carnage that way, and that was the only thing they got the japanese to surrender. And now we dont think that thats true anymore. We think that what they got the japanese to surrender was that the soviets said that they were going to come in on our side instead of help the japanese negotiate a settlement, and that the japanese had already lost 60 cities, and losing 61 and 62 didnt matter that much and the idea to drop the bomb was actually too terrified stalin. So you can see that we can so do they think that hiroshima and nagasaki were not the ends of world war ii. They were the beginnings of the cold war and when i believe that the end of the cold war was actually caused by chernobyl. When chernobyl exploded and sent a cloud the size of 400 hiroshimas across all of europe, it broke the soviet citizens belief in its government as being competent and trustworthy. And both gorbachev and both believe this is what ended the soviet union, chernobyl. So you can say the cold war started ended with nuclear holocaust. Extraordinaire think about chernobyl is the fact that first of all, the reason why integrated such a horrible clout is that they change the roof of it so that they could make both electricity and warheads with the same powerplant. It all began as a test of a safety idea. They were going to see if they could run down the plant low enough that they could restart it without any problem. And when that failed it all blew to health. Now, the u. N. Has spent almost three decades studying chernobyl, and they figured out that 75 people died. 57 were either First Responders and the others with a teenage children of families who didnt evacuate the zone and to drink milk from contaminated cows and got cancer in the thyroid. Speaking a little closer to home, fukushima is an amazing story since the plant actually survived the incredible earthquake, and it wouldve survived the sin on the exit that they kept their backup batteries in the basement. That was the only flaw in this. And what happened was they had to battle three different problems at the same time. They had hydrogen gas exploding in the atmosphere. They had reactors exploding, and then they also had these cooling tanks with the old, used fuel. That was also exploding. So it came from three different directions. At 1. 1 of those writing things in the book is learning how the head of the utility called the Prime Minister said, theres nothing we can do, we are evacuating the plant, we are giving up. But the onsite manager insisted on going forward, and he came up with a system of the fukushima 50 where 400 men were cycled in and out of the plant, many of whom were the equivalent of day laborers that you hire in the parking lot of cosco or who went in and they would even reset their tanks because if they got to high readings they would be pulled out of the workforce. So they would hide how much theyre getting, and they would want to actually say this are being a global holocaust. I love this. If anyone doesnt needed something to get their children, Atomic Energy lab that comes with my favorite device which is a Cloud Chamber which is a supersaturated fog, you can actually see subatomic particles moving around in that fog. Now, i say that wer we are seeg the end of the atomic age, and i like this picture as a symbol of that. This first came out as a comic book that Elementary Schools would like to give their children to learn about the history of atomic age. Its about this little boy named andy, and hes playing with his dog, and the dog runs off into the nevada test site, and they find it out after a week covered in radioactive dust. So during this time and he learned about the wonders of Nuclear Power and nuclear medicine. I hear he is reunited with the dog while in the background that had a still continuing its nuclear tests. So this image was originally this educational magazine that children were supposed to read, then he became the sort of horrific picture of nuclear winter, sort of andy and his dog with the last survivors of nuclear war. And now you can buy it as a humorous mousepad. Now its a joke. So i think that history is fantastic, but there is a terrible story in all this in the fact that all this time that weve been worried about being contaminated by being attacked by a atomic bombs from the soviet union, in fact, the biggest danger to americans come from the test done in nevada which have no contaminated the entire continental United States and 11,000 americans die every year from that pollution am left over pollution from nevada. So, but there is a little bit of good news in all of this. One of the pieces of the good news is that we spent a number of decades studying the survivors of hiroshima and nagasaki, and i would imagine that they would have 50 higher cancer rates than normal, 70 are cancer rates. Instead, all this time they only have 1 higher cancer rates. So all of this is sort of mixed really, but the reason why i say were in the final stages of the atomic age is that even though if i had to, id rather live next to a Nuclear Power plant and a coal power plant if i had to. Every time we have one of these disasters happen, the government and the company does such a terrible job managing it that theyve lost all their political capital. And now to build a Nuclear Power plant, to maintain it and to fix it if something goes wrong, you need subsidies, government subsidies, and whos going to vote for that . So unless there is the possibility of a breakdown, and over is when because we cant keep using petrochemicals, california now has evolution imported from china, from chinese problems. And i really wish there was a technological breakthrough but itll take to would be one so i think nuclear is on the way out. As far as power goes. And then as far as atomic bombs ago, the United States and the soviet union spent over 5 trillion on nuclear arms. And the last time anyone use nuclear arms was hiroshima and nagasaki in 1945. And every time somebody gets nuclear arms, everyone gets nervous about it, but they never get used. So even mao and stalin never use their Nuclear Bombs. And, in fact, is a fantastic conundrum in that offered nobel whose oil fortune founded the nobel prize said his great dream in life was great a weapon that was so powerful it would make wars obsolete. And many people believe that keller, with his backyard bomb ideas, came up with that idea. That, in fact, the whole reason the cold war state gold was because everybody had nuclear arms. When reagan met with thatcher and said, my great dream is to abolish all nuclear weapons, she said, are you crazy . What do you think is keeping us in world war iii . That if one has these nuclear weapons. So one of the great conundrums is should add keller and the other creators of the atomic weapons get the nobel prize for keeping us at peace with the atomic weapons . Many people think thats true, but i dont want to leave you on this terribly sad story. Remember when we first got together to talk about marie curies boyfriend and all that fun stuff . Were told you about how los alamos was the name of that tree that they named the canyon after . Well, in fact, where i grew up in texas we also had an alamo which was a church also named for that tree. And lastly from the radio someone asked me, what was your first childhood memory . And i remembered that when i was a very little boy we just have these very strange dreams about the alamo where i was hoping the alamo people escape the doom but it was sort of this spiritual thing going on. It was a very weird dream come and they couldnt figure out what was going on. And then when i was a teenager i went back to visit the alamo, and i went around the corner and there was the memorial for everyone who i died. And on that was his fantastic angel carrying the honor of the dead up to heaven. So now in my job as a historian when i tell you a great story about marie curie that brings her alive here today, winning approval for someone whos forgotten, i may be no angel, but other than that little boys dream has come true. And for your time and attention, i thank you kindly. [applause] does anyone have any questions . Yes, sir. Oh, okay. I havent done this before. Yeah, what you said about world war iii, many people believe that mutual assured destruction, yeah. Mutual assured destruction saved us from world war iii, such as the u. S. Against the soviet union for pakistan against india, but other people feel that actually we are mighty lucky, cuban missile crisis, 1983, 1995. So where do you come down on this area . Dq that we were lucky or that it really did save us from world war iii . I think both are true. One of the most frightening moments in the book is when brzezinski, carters security adviser, is woken up in the middle of the night and told that we are being, the soviet union has attacked and they are sending and the missiles. And he waits half an hour to get a confirmation call before he calls the president. And they call them with a confirmation call and say its true, and its much worse than we originally thought. We thought it was one of 20 missiles, and its 12,000 missiles. So hes sitting there and decided and could wake up his wife because he knows they will be dead in a couple of minutes. As hes getting ready, as you reaches over to the phone to call carter at 40 and over the phone rings again, oh, somebody made a mistake. We put in the training tapes last night and this happens over and over and over again by the soviets are convinced that something, that we are attacking them and its ease, and were convinced were under attack, and its weather balloons. You know, the bombers have an accident and they drop their payload in the middle of the desert. So yes, we are extremely lucky. And the most terrifying one, another terrifying one is that during the Reagan Administration we ran this nato wargame called abel archer, and the soviets, the kgb had developed an entire theory that were going to use wargames as a cover for attacking. And we, england had the queen prepare a speech on how england was going to respond now that the comic missiles are falling on england. And all of these were signs said the kgb were going to attack the. Thats why the Korean Airline plane was brought down because it wandered into airspace as they achieved their total paranoid and having these wargames. He has the mic. Okay. You touched on this when you spoke of where you prefer to live, but the fact is people perceive risks irrationally and behave irrationally regarding what is risky, relatively risky. Hundreds of thousands of people each year, even with lower, with higher pollution standards in various countries, died from emphysema and other respiratory problems induced by articulate from fossil fuels, and i could go on and on. Yes. If a bus going over a cliff, it makes news. If 100 automobiles are involved in a fit of collision, people buy one at a time, that does not make news. But the reality is the conventional Nuclear Plants are a much better deal for civilization. Yes, i agree with you. In fact, at the chernobyl after i point out how the u. S. Has 75 people died, i have the biggest u. N. Critic says, no, this is wrong, at least 16,000 people died. And then i point out how in the u. S. 16,000 die every year from pollution caused by using coal to produce electricity. But i still feel that when you have a situation like three mile island where, in fact, they couldve used that to prove that the design of the reactors went in the United States are safe because Nothing Happened to anybody from three mile island, they didnt even, they couldnt even do that. So i think every time we have one of these disasters, its so mishandled that the public feels no sense of safety in having this go down, so theres no political willpower, even though i agree with you about the truth of the fatalities. [inaudible] yes. [inaudible] yes, yes. As i recall, and im 72 years old and it was a few decades ago, unless im mistaken on who the president was, reagan made a joke and they didnt realize that it was still being transmitted about bombing moscow. Right. And it horrified the women with children in moscow when they played it. That kind of went around the world for about a week, until doctors treating women in canada were appealing. If this is going to blow us up around the world six times and it is not going to be any living thing on the face of the earth, when are we going to stop producing these weapons . That ended the cold war. Because the rationale of that is nothing and no one is going to stay alive. Right, absolutely. One of my favorite moments in the book is when i have Jerome Wiesner who is can these scientific adviser, and you said you know, a noted to wipe out a continent completely we need about 300, weapons. And at that moment, which was 1962, we had 2300, weapons, and we only have seven continents and we all need to wipe out five of them. So we knew it, [inaudible] yes, yes come exactly. Who has the mic . Oh, okay. I can repeat questions, too. Why do we go to and i will repeat your question. [inaudible] i couldnt hear so say it again. Im sorry. You had mentioned the statistics, i thought you said like 1000 people had cancer from the radiation no, 1 . 1 , im sorry. Why was it so minimal . Because apparently it takes a lot more come it takes a massive amount of exposure for you to actually have cancer effects from radiation, much more than any of us would imagine. You are basically saying if one of us over to a bus or 10 of us know, we would have more of a chance of getting cancer than the 1 well actually theres radioactive polonium in tobacco. So in daytoday life, thats your most dangerous method of getting getting rid activity is by smoking. Because when i told you before about the little fat atoms spinning things out, those subatomic particles are too fat to penetrate your skin. Thats what in the movie silkwood that are all those scenes of naked meryl streep writhing in pain, agony as men scrubbed her dead but they are washing the radiation away. And if you are at a fukushima type event and you inhale anything, you didnt swallow anything, you can take a shower and you would be okay. Diving, if youre not sitting there on top of the reactor. But, you know, by anyway. I remember reading [inaudible] all of the women who work in the plant, i remember my parents having those clocks. You could see them in the dark. That they licked the brushes because it works better. Every single one of those people died 10 years later, 12 years later. They were doing that every day licking the brush. Spent yes. They were sharpening the brushes with their mouth and they were using the radiation as make up. And that those women died, those were the first people to sue their employer for unsafe working conditions, and that case became the foundation of osha, the occupational safety. My question is [inaudible] i study eisenhower and truman politics, and ive been, i study the four leaders. [inaudible] and its believed that reason Second World War was to make sure third world war would never happen. The reason for the kings speech is because britain was so hesitant about joining the allies are joining the other side. Because they knew when the war ended with the atomic, britain would wind up paying the bulk of the destruction in germany. And thats why they went almost bankrupt. They lost onethird of their colonies, and they give of colonialism all in total after world war ii. My question is, does america consult with hitler through a speech like kings of speech . Does driven give a speech . I dont believe that united nations, league of nations, turkey gave up league of nations and invaded. Japan gave up on league of nations. Iran gave up a league of nations, and it caused first world war. So what is americans price for dropping the atomic bombs on hiroshima and nagasaki . I mean, britain lost onethird of her colonies, and she could britain gave up colonialism in all. What is americans price and what is you in spent giving the cost of creating the atomic bomb . Question one, does american president have speech like a kings speech . Or the second question is, what is americans price to pay for dropping the bomb . You mean monetary price or emotional price . Yeah. Yeah, the Atomic Bomb Program cost 2 billion, but the program to make the plane to drop the bomb cost 19 million. So thats one of the funny ironies about all this. That it costs a lot more to make the plane that could carry the bomb at a cost to make the actual bomb. And im not sure about the speech. Truman is not one of my favorite president s for this, partly for this decisionmaking behind the dropping of the bomb. I dont know why he had to drop two of them. But anyway, but eisenhower is a fantastic, fascinating president , and on one of the reasons what is he started something called atoms for peace can which was to export the peaceful use of Atomic Energy and not have it just for military, and thats with a sort of drive to create Nuclear Power plants began. And as part of our trying to make up to the japanese for their infected tuna, we give them a atomic power plants. That was part of the apology to the japanese. [inaudible] atomic bomb was already dropped in june, and that stopped hitlers invasion, and i think actually hitler stopped his invasion right away. The end of world war i, world war ii, european theater, but when the bomb was dropped on june 12 in japan, the japanese didnt even know that they had been hit. How is that possible . Oh, no. In europe it was an dropping your. Youre thinking of something else. It was only dropped in japan. [inaudible] all, then that tells you, then that tells you to be careful what you read on the internet. Yes. [inaudible] anyone else . Hold on, hold on. Somebody else has the mic first. Thank you. When it comes to power plants using Nuclear Power, what is your, what are your thoughts on the prospect of fusion power . Because they have a big project in europe going on, but it sounds impossibly complex. Like its not ever going to come in the near future, not in the near future anyway. It also sounds wildly dangerous to me, too, since they are grating little tiny stars on the face of the earth to make this power. But the theory behind it is fantastic. And if it ever works it will be the greatest thing that ever happens to us because we will have Terrible Energy problems. And if any of you are tinkering in basements or garages, please think on energy because we need help in this process. Right now whats going on is that china is working on something called, oh, god, double bed reactors with the uranium is court inside the graphite and the concept is that if something happens to it, it can cause any trouble. It cant cause any fallout because it will immediately extinction so. Since john is terribly polluted from using coal and petroleum, if they come up with a breakthrough that would be a tremendous help for us all. Then bill gates is supporting something called the traveling water reactor, and which is a little, tiny Nuclear Reactors like you have at your house. But i dont understand the people designing this happened really released on the t cells i dont know about that. Then fusion reactor youre talking about is something called tragedy which is a 35 Nation Coalition building in the south of france. And anyone wants to look into it can look up iter. Lawrence livermore here in the United States has been trying to create confusion since 1955, i think, at something called the National Ignition facility. And for the First Time Since then, so in 60 years about, they have created something that creates more electricity than it cost them to make it. So they did make this breakthrough. So my fingers are crossed the something happens because we need something to happen. Yes . I have a question. I have always been wondering why u. S. Soviet union, former soviet union and china, these three countries, they are afraid of each other. China is afraid of russia and the u. S. , u. S. Is afraid of russia and china, and russia is afraid of u. S. And china. What is origin of this paranoid among the three countries . Well, thats a very good question. And, in fact, no matter, in thiu read the book, its like no matter what the u. S. Or the soviet union or china do, it makes everyone else more hysterical, you know . The cuban missile crisis makes America Military hysterical that they were able to stick missiles in right under our noses. So that means we need even more nuclear weapons. And it made the soviets hysterical that the americans were able to force them to remove those missiles, some they needed more nuclear weapons. Its like every single thing triggers more. Theres a great churchill quote that after a certain amount of Nuclear Material and all youre doing is making the rubble bounce. And i say that, you, apparently no matter what happened, both sides, all they wanted was more bouncing. They didnt care it was rubble. They just needed more bouncing. Theres a fantastic quote where one of the consultants at the pentagon, and hes going over the war plans and hes going, but, you know, everything is based on attacking the soviet union and china together. What if china has nothing to do with it . And the guy running it says, well, i sure hope that doesnt happen because that will really miss of our plants. [laughter] okay. So we know that sundeck because they like the glow of the uranium. I want to know about us. We are all over the place with our computers. Youve got went up there. Are we getting the same kind of effect slowly, getting cancer from all of these cell phones and gadgets people have surrounding is . No. One little part about all this that i left out is the fact that radiation is all over the place. Its destiny on us from cosmic ways but its rising up from uranium in the bedrock but its in their smoke alarms and in our microwave oven. Your dog and cat are radioactive. Your friends and family are radioactive, and right now we are also radioactive that we are irradiating each other and that, in fact, maybe the combination of our pheromones and our sparkling personalities and this radiation is what causes human chemistry. But i wasnt able to get to that point. So thats part one. Its everywhere. So in order to have a cancerous effect, it needs to be a lot more than what were getting already in daytoday life. Exactly. If you are under an unusual medical situation and you are getting lots of different diagnostics and you dont have one doctor or physician who is overseeing all of these things you would need to add them up in your head. Yes, you are right. Yes sir. Point. Yes maam . Are there any prospects of the fukushima problems being resolved rather than being a serialized tv movie week after week month after month . They are doing this wild thing. Theyre putting in these giant types of coolen to freeze the ground so they are trying to freeze the area around it and then they will have the nomads land like they have at chernobyl but they think this technology is going to keep it from leaking out into the oceans. But the amazing thing is that they have an open air laboratory going on in chernobyl and what they are finding is dramatically less than we would expect. For example they have barn swallows that have a higher rate of a certain percentage of the barn swallows have smaller brains than normal and a higher percentage are albino than normal but its not affecting the population as a whole. They will find most bombs that are wildly radioactive meaning the wolf ate these wildly radioactive mess or mice or anyway but the Wolf Population doesnt seem to be affected. But really the disturbing thing that is really affected is the bacteria that turns the garbage into mulch. The forest is not decaying like its supposed to. Yes. Yes. Yes. People who didnt care about where the dumping was done. We have lots of cancer going on around there with full pockets of it. Thats what she is talking about. Theres a famous madman episode where the family goes on a picnic and they just throw all their trash in the pike and picked up and leave with all the trash sitting there. I think that explains a lot of what we are still living with today with that toxic chemical and hanford washington where they created plutonium is one of the most polluted places and the soviet union and the United States put a lot of its military Nuclear Waste and metal oil drones and dumped it into the ocean. Now the islands off San Francisco the fairlawns are like radioactive coral because they have Nuclear Waste dump there. Just wanted to Say Something else not the people here. The league of nations put such a heavy burden on germany that when hitler won the election people were working 14 hours a day in factories. I heard that from german immigrants from all over. That is how he got elected. He was breaking the backs of the people. And when hiroshima was bombed, the emperor was contacted by us and he did not give up. Arthur came in. He didnt want to repeat the mistake of the league of natio nations. He created a beautiful rebuilding of japan and look what has happened as a result. They are one of the biggest economies in the world. The current theory is that there isnt a world war i and world war ii that its one big war with the break and thats the current military thinking about world war i and world war ii. The greek philosopher says [inaudible] hi. Is the nuclear age over and should it be . I