Seven Elements That Have Changed the World

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Seven Elements That Have Changed the World Page 31

by John Browne


  14. Only 64kg of uranium was inside the Little Boy atomic bomb. Less than a kilogram of this underwent nuclear fission and a mere 0.7g was directly converted into energy. To destroy a city you do not need much matter.

  15. Isotopes are chemically the same, containing the same number of protons in the nucleus, but differing numbers of neutrons.

  16. Only 0.7 per cent of naturally found uranium is of this type.

  17. Richard Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb (New York: Touchstone, 1988), p. 292.

  18. Many question why he brought so destructive a weapon to the attention of an authority that could make it a reality. This question is answered by Otto Frisch, who, having the same idea as Szilárd, presented his idea to the British government: ‘I have often been asked why I didn’t abandon the project there and then, saying nothing to anybody. Why start on a project which, if it was successful, would end with the production of a weapon of unparalleled violence, a weapon of mass destruction such as the world has never seen? The answer was very simple. We were at war, and the idea was reasonably obvious; very probably some German scientists had had the same idea and were working on it.’ Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb, p. 325.

  19. Charles W. Johnson and Charles O. Jackson, City Behind a Fence (Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 1981), p. 43.

  20. The other major method of enrichment at Oak Ridge was by electromagnetic separation. First electrons are removed from atoms of uranium so that they become positively charged. When directed into a magnetic field, these charged ions of uranium will follow a curved path, but the heavier uranium-238 ions will be deflected less than the uranium-235 ions and so the two isotopes can be separated.

  21. Zoellner, Uranium Charles W. Johnson and Charles O. Jackson, City Behind a Fence (Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 1981), p. 66.

  22. Michael H. Studer et al., ‘Lignin content in natural Populus variants affects sugar release’, PNAS, Vol. 108, No. 15, pp. 6300–305 (12 April 2011).

  23. Harry Truman announcing the bombing of Hiroshima, 6 August 1945. Harry S. Truman Library, ‘Army press notes’, Box 4, Papers of Eben A. Ayers.

  24. Ibid.

  25. Space Adventures, March 1960, Charlton Comics.

  26. Scott Zeman and Michael Amundson, Atomic Culture, How we Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (Boulder CO: University Press of Colorado, 2004), p. 15.

  27. This was the stern warning given by General Groves, director of the Manhattan Project, in the introduction to ‘Dagwood Splits the Atom’, a pamphlet produced in consultation with the US Atomic Energy Commission in 1949. Dagwood Splits the Atom (New York: Kings Features Syndicate, 1949).

  28. Dallas Morning News, 12 August 1945, section 4, p. 8.

  29. Eagle, 1 August 1952.

  30. Calder Hall was the first commercial-scale nuclear power plant in the world, producing tens of megawatts of electricity for civilian use. Both the US and Soviet Union had previously generated small quantities of electricity from atomic energy.

  31. ‘Queen Switches on Nuclear Power’, BBC, 17 October 1956. www.bbc.co.uk

  32. Ibid.

  33. R. F. Pocock, Nuclear Power: Its development in the United Kingdom (London: Institution of Nuclear Engineers, 1977), p. 25.

  34. Peter Hennessy, Cabinets and the bomb (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 48.

  35. The reactor design at Calder Hall was named PIPPA, or Pressurised Pile Producing Power and Plutonium. Plutonium is produced in reactors as a result of neutron absorption by uranium atoms. Weapons grade plutonium has a high concentration of the Pu-239 isotope. To get this, uranium fuel must only be left in the reactor for a short period of time and, as a result, less of the energy in the fuel is harnessed for electricity generation.

  36. Michihiko Hachiya, Hiroshima Diary, The Journal of a Japanese Physician August 6–September 30,1945 (London: Victor Gollancz, 1955), p. 35.

  37. Robert Socolow, ‘Reflections on Fukushima: A time to mourn, to learn, and to teach’, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 21 March 2011. Socolow writes: ‘Unless a large dread-to-risk ratio is assigned to choices such as whether to eat or not to eat, the experts’ models of risk will not match the choices.’

  38. Any deaths resulting from Fukushima are very unlikely to be statistically detectable. More dangerous than radiation could be carcinogenic chemicals scattered about by the earthquake and tsunami.

  39. The week before I arrived in Japan, high radiation levels had been measured on a street in the Setagaya ward of Tokyo. The source turned out to be old bottles of radium stored in a cellar below the street, only discovered because of the now widespread radiation monitoring.

  40. Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev on Soviet Central TV later that year said that the Chernobyl accident was ‘a cruel reminder that mankind is still trying to come to grips with the fantastic, powerful force which it has brought into being’.

  41. Widespread anxiety and depression were prevalent in the population surrounding Chernobyl. This resulted from a fear of radiation, but also from their relocation to uncontaminated areas. Increased anxiety and stress may have had further adverse health effects through changes in lifestyle, such as diet, smoking and drinking habits.

  42. Outside the immediate disaster area, lower level radiation in the surrounding nations of Belarus and Ukraine led to thousands more cases of thyroid cancer, but this is usually treatable. A possible increase in the incidence of leukaemia has been observed in those workers involved in the clean-up of Chernobyl. There has been no observable increase, above background levels, of other types of cancer. Source and Effects of Ionising Radiation, United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation, UNSCEAR 2008 Report to the General Assembly, Vol. II, ‘Health effects due to radiation from the Chernobyl Accident’, United Nations, New York, 2011.

  43. These fears continue today. On 20 July 2012, a batch of radioactive blueberries, containing nine times the recommended radiation limit, were found at a market in Moscow, believed to have come from the contaminated Chernobyl fallout region.

  44. Forty-six per cent favoured maintaining Japan’s reliance on nuclear power at its current levels, while 44 per cent thought the use of nuclear power should be reduced. Only 8 per cent wanted Japan to increase its use of nuclear power (about the same percentage as in previous polls over the last twenty years). Japanese Resilient, but See Economic Challenges Ahead, Pew Research Center, June 2011.

  45. ‘Kan heaps pressure on atomic plant operator’, Financial Times, 15 March 2011.

  46. The Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission ruled that: ‘The TEPCO Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant accident was the result of collusion between the government, the regulators and TEPCO, and the lack of governance by said parties.’ The National Diet of Japan, 2012, p. 16.

  47. Japanese Wary of Nuclear Energy: Disaster ‘Weakened’ Nation, Pew Research Center, June 2012.

  48. For each energy source, the average number of fatalities per Gigawatt-year of energy produced (counting accidents of five or more fatalities from 1969 to 2000) are:

  Coal (without China): 0.60

  Coal (with China, from 1994 to 1999): 6.1

  Oil: 0.90

  Natural Gas: 0.11

  LPG:14.9

  Hydro: 10.3

  Nuclear: 0.048

  Source: Nuclear Energy Agency, Comparing Nuclear Accident Risks with Those from Other Energy Sources (OECD, 2010).

  49. Ian Buruma, Wages of guilt (London: Atlantic Books, 2009), p. 99.

  50. The Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons (UN, 1968), Article VI. www.un.org

  51. Excluding Iran, these nations are: the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, China, India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel. Between them they hold an estimated 22,400 nuclear weapons, over 95 per cent of which belong to Russia or the United States.

  52. Back in 1965, before becoming President (and later Prime Minister), Bhutto said: If India builds th
e bomb, we will eat grass or leaves, even go hungry, but we will get one of our own. We have no other choice.’ Gordon Corera, Shopping for Bombs (London: Hurst & Company, 2006), p. 9.

  53. Ibid., p. 10.

  54. Khan once told an interviewer: If I escort my wife to the plane when she’s flying somewhere, the crew will take notice of who she is and she will receive VIP treatment from the moment she steps on the plane. As for me, I can’t even stop by the roadside at a small hut to drink chai without someone paying for me. People go out of their way to show their love and respect for me.’ Zoellner, Uranium, p. 118.

  55. ‘Mutual Deterrence’ Speech by Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, 1962.

  56. The ‘Dead Hand’ system was most famously depicted as the Doomsday Machine in the 1964 film Dr. Strangelove.

  TITANIUM

  1. Titanium’s high strength-to-weight ratio is a result of the structure in which its atoms are arranged. The atoms in the metal are arranged in alternating layers. Titanium atoms bond in a ‘hexagonal close-packed’ structure, in which the atoms in every second layer will lie directly above each other (ABABAB). Iron atoms bond in a ‘cubic close-packed’ structure, in which atoms in every third layer will lie directly above each other (ABCABCABC). The density of atoms in a hexagonal close-packed structure is much smaller than that in a cubic close-packed structure, so that titanium is far lighter than iron, but remains very strong. Titanium’s resistance to corrosion is, surprisingly, a result of the element’s high reactivity. Titanium is so reactive that it bonds with oxygen in the air forming a very thin layer of titanium dioxide on the metal surface. It is this layer which protects the metal from corrosion and which quickly re-forms if scratched away.

  2. Uranium was named after Uranus, the planet, which was discovered a few years earlier by William Herschel. Klaproth writes: ‘Wherefore no name can be found for a new fossil [element] which indicates its peculiar and characteristic properties (in which position I find myself at present), I think it is best to choose such a denomination as means nothing of itself and thus can give no rise to any erroneous ideas. In consequence of this, as I did in the case of Uranium, I shall borrow the name for this metallic substance from mythology, and in particular from the Titans, the first sons of the earth. I therefore call this metallic genus TITANIUM.’ Martin Heinrich Klaproth, Analytical Essays Towards Promoting the Chemical Knowledge of Mineral Substances, Vol. 1, p. 210 (1801).

  3. An air-breathing jet takes in air from the environment, rather than a liquid oxidiser, to mix with fuel in the combustion chamber.

  4. B. R. Rich and L. Janos, Skunk Works (Boston: Little Brown and Company, 1994), p. 193.

  5. The high temperature is a result of kinetic heating due to the compression of gases around the aircraft. Aluminium alloys can cope with temperature up to 130 degrees centigrade, reached between Mach 2 and Mach 3, but for anything higher titanium alloys must be used. At these temperatures no off-the-shelf electronics would work and the whole system had to be designed from scratch.

  6. According to Kirchhoff’s law of thermal radiation good absorbers are also good emitters. By painting the aircraft black, more heat was radiated away, reducing the wing temperature by around 35 degrees centigrade.

  7. Small weight savings can dramatically reduce the fuel needed to boost a space vehicle into outer space. Fuel tanks were often made from titanium alloys for their high strength-weight and long-term chemical compatibility. For Apollo 11, titanium and aluminium were used extensively in the Lunar Module.

  8. Norman Polmar, Cold War Submarines (Virginia: Potomac Books, 2004), p. 136.

  9. Ibid., p. 139. K-162 was an ‘interceptor’ submarine. Using a titanium alloy hull enabled K-162 submarines to have a fifth less mass and to move a tenth faster than if steel had been used. It could accelerate to a speed of 45 knots.

  10. The metallic parts of the world’s first implanted artificial heart in 2001 were made from titanium.

  11. Around two-thirds of all titanium metal is consumed by the aerospace industry. The use of titanium alloys in commercial Boeing aircraft continues to rise. Between 1960 and 1995 titanium’s percentage of the aircraft’s empty weight rose from virtually nothing to around 9 per cent and that used in the engine’s weight rose to over 30 per cent.

  12. Titanium is most commonly bound in its ore with oxygen but, unlike iron, this oxygen cannot be removed using carbon. Titanium is so reactive that it will also bond with the carbon atoms, forming useless titanium carbide. Kroll solved this problem using a two-step chemical process in which titanium is first chlorinated to produce titanium tetrachloride (titanium atoms with four chlorine atoms attached) and then mixed with molten magnesium, which produces titanium sponge metal and magnesium chloride. The sponge metal then has to be further processed to produce titanium ingots. The process is very expensive because each stage is energy- and capital-intensive. Moreover, the hardness of titanium metal makes it very costly to machine and much metal is wasted in the process. New methods of separation by electrolysis (similar to the way that aluminium is extracted from its ore) are currently under development, but none have yet been commercially successful.

  13. Lance Phillips and David Barbano, ‘The Influence of Fat Substitutes Based on Protein and Titanium Dioxide on the Sensory Properties of Low-fat Milks’, Journal of Dairy Science, Vol. 80, No. 11, November 1997, pp. 2726–31.

  14. In June 1946, the world’s largest ilmenite deposit was found in the Lake Allard area of Quebec. Quebec Iron and Titanium Corporation formed in August 1948 between Kennecott Copper and the New Jersey Zinc Company. Titanium most commonly occurs in nature as either ilmenite (titanium iron oxide) or rutile (titanium oxide).

  15. Newton had a working theory by January 1666, but didn’t publish his ‘New theory about light and colours’ in Philosophical Transactions until 1672.

  16. According to Benjamin Haydon, the nineteenth-century historical painter and writer, during an ‘immortal dinner’ on 28 December 1817 hosted by Haydon and attended by William Wordsworth, Charles Lamb, John Keats, and Keats’s friend Thomas Monkhouse, Keats joked that Newton ‘has destroyed all the poetry of the rainbow, by reducing it to the prismatic colours’. He then proposed a toast to ‘Newton’s health, and confusion to mathematics’. Based on this story, Richard Dawkins entitled his book on the relationship between science and the arts Unweaving the Rainbow (London: Penguin Books, 1998). Benjamin Robert Haydon, The Autobiography and Memoirs of Benjamin Robert Haydon: Vol. 1 (London: Peter Davies, 1926, edited by Tom Taylor), p. 269.

  17. Bernard Cohen, Cambridge Companion to Newton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 230.

  18. The Sun emits electromagnetic radiation of different wavelengths (for visible light, a type of electromagnetic radiation, these correspond to different colours) in different intensities. As well as visible light, the Sun emits electromagnetic radiation of longer and shorter wavelengths that are not detectable by the eye. Our eyes have developed so that the range of wavelengths they can detect are those that the Sun emits with maximum intensity.

  19. The Sun appears golden because the Earth’s atmosphere acts like a filter, scattering longer, bluer wavelengths of light (making the sky appear blue) and leaving behind the shorter yellow and red wavelengths.

  20. Pilkington Glass produced the first commercial self-cleaning windows in 2001.

  21. Deyong Wu and Mingce Long, ‘Realizing Visible-Light-Induced Self-Cleaning Property of Cotton through Coating N-TiO2 Film and Loading AgI Particles’, ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces, 2011, 3 (12), pp. 4770–74.

  22. These solar cells, called Grätzel cells after their inventor Michael Grätzel, are a type of ‘dye-sensitized solar cell’ (DSC). However, most solar cells are of another type, made from silicon, which will be discussed in the next chapter. Michael Grätzel and Brian O’Regan, ‘A low-cost, high-efficiency solar cell based on dye-sensitized colloidal TiO2 films’, Nature, Vol. 353, pp. 737–40 (24 October 1991).

  23. Titanium’s use i
n cutlery sets was revealed to me by a former British intelligence officer based in Moscow, who recounted his surprise at being asked to go out and purchase one for analysis.

  SILICON

  1. Vannoccio Biringuccio, Pirotechnia (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1966), p. 126. Biringuccio was a contemporary of Georgius Agricola. In De re metallica Agricola writes: ‘Recently Vannoccio Biringuccio of Sienna, a wise man experienced in many matters, wrote … on the subjects of the melting and smelting and alloying of metals … by reading his directions, I have refreshed my memory of these things which I saw in Italy.’ He did rather more than refresh his memory, extensively copying (but also extending) sections of Biringuccio’s work. Yet De re metallica and Pirotechnia are distinct texts. Agricola writes in great detail on mining practices, which are only briefly considered in Pirotechnia. Biringuccio instead focuses on the extraction of metals from ore and the fabrication of metallic objects. For example, he writes at length on the fabrication of guns and bells (he was employed later in life to cast arms and construct fortresses for, among others, the Venetian Republic). Agricola can be considered the ‘father of the mining industry’, while Biringuccio is the ‘father of the foundry industry’. Agricola, De re metallica, p. xxvii.

  2. Biringuccio, Pirotechnia, p. 126. The story of the discovery of glass, retold by both Agricola and Biringuccio, originated with Pliny the Elder (Natural History, c. AD 79).

  3. The first glass objects were beads, which imitate gemstones, from Egypt in the third millennium BC; Near Eastern glass was developed around 1600 BC.

  4. Biringuccio, Pirotechnia, pp. 126–7.

  5. Viscosity is the friction between the molecules of a liquid.

  6. Glass easily breaks because it does not have a rigid crystal structure.

 

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