Found it! Feasibility of Coal-driven power stations

["Frohne, Vickie" <VFrohne@BEN.EDU>]

The article is by O.R. Frisch, "On the Feasibility of Coal-Driven Power
Stations," originally published in "The Journal of Jocular Physics" 3, 27-30
(1955) and written on the occasion of Neils Bohr's 70th birthday.  You can
find it on p. 107 of R. L. Weber, "A Random Walk in Science" (The Institute
of Physics, 1973, ISBN 0-8448-0362-6.  This book and its sequel, "More
Random Walks in Science" are highly recommended and well worth getting.
They're compliations of science humor from the pre-Internet era and contain
the original veraions many of the famous "classics" such as the
determination that Heaven is hotter than Hell, the Mathematical theory of
big-game hunting (how to catch a lion in the desert), Slidesmanship, R.W.
Wood's account of N-Rays, and how to choose the correct graph paper in order
to plot any data as a straight line.

Vickie Frohne

-----Original Message-----
From: Dr. Paul O. Johnson
To: PHYS-L@lists.nau.edu
Sent: 8/7/02 10:18 AM
Subject: Re: nuclear power, titles of topics:

I remember 50 years ago or so, at the dawn of the nuclear age, someone
published a paper in some journal about the hazards of coal-fired
reactors.
It was written from the perspective of living in a society in which
safe,
clean, efficient fission reactors supplied all of mankind's energy
needs.

It pointed out half-dozen or so major problems with the "recently
discovered" coal-fired reactor:
It was based on combustion which depleted the available oxygen,
If the combustion was incomplete (a fairly frequent occurrence) it gave
off
highly toxic and insidious (odorless) CO,
The fuel usually contained contaminants such as sulfur that made the
gaseous
waste products even more hazardous, Combustion occurred at a fairly low
temperature which made the reactor inefficient,
The solid waste products were voluminous and required cleaning out the
reactor on a daily basis,
And on and on.

I saved the paper for a number of years but now I can't find it in my
files.
Does anyone else remember that paper?

poj

----- Original Message -----
From: "Ludwik Kowalski" <kowalskiL@MAIL.MONTCLAIR.EDU>
To: <PHYS-L@lists.nau.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, August 06, 2002 2:56 PM
Subject: nuclear power, titles of topics:


> I also think that, for the next 50 to 100 years, nuclear fission
> option is worth supporting (as opposed to coal option described
> by Mike Edmiston). Nothing is ideal, what we choose should
> be based on relative merits. I hope that solar option, nuclear
> fusion option, or something totally unexpected, will be shown
> to be practical, and better, in the future.
>
> Would it be worth our time to develop o list of advantages
> and disadvantages of nuclear fission option. I suggest we
> use A and D to quickly identify advantages and disadvantages.
> Also Q to identify a question worth addressing. Keep labeling
> items in the same way (see below) and I will be appending
> your inputs to the grownig list. The sorted list (according to
> A, D and Q) will be periodically posted to reflect new
> contributions.
>
> The items should be as short as possible for the purpose of
> this list; we can have parallel threads to discuss the issues.
> Let me begin.
> ------------------------------------------------------------------
> A1) No production of CO2.
> D1) Accumulation of long-lived radioactive waste.
> D2) Production of Pu which can be used to build weapons.
> A2) Large supplies of fuel are available.
> D3) Possibility of highly devastating accidents, like
>        Chernobyl.
> Q1) Should nuclear energy topics be part of general physics?
> D4) Costly fuel enrichment process.
> Q2) What is wrong with breeding Pu-239 (from common U)
>        or U-233 (from common Th)?
> Q3) Should the development of nuclear waste "burning"
>        technology be supported at present time?
> Q4) How many Yucca mountains would be needed if 100%
>        of electricity was nuclear, all over the world?
> -------------------------------------------------------------------
> Keep adding. Next item should be A3, D5 or Q5.
> -------------------------------------------------------------------
> Ludwik Kowalski
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