Nuclear Fission Quotes

• O. Hahn and F. Strassmann have discovered a new type of nuclear reaction, the splitting into two smaller nuclei of the nuclei of uranium and thorium under neutron bombardment. Thus they demonstrated the production of nuclei of barium, lanthanum, strontium, yttrium, and, more recently, of xenon and caesium. It can be shown by simple considerations that this type of nuclear reaction may be described in an essentially classical way like the fission of a liquid drop, and that the fission products must fly apart with kinetic energies of the order of hundred million electron-volts each.

  Lise Meitner

  Xenon, Science, Simple

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• The technologists claim that if everything works [in a nuclear fission reactor] according to their blueprints, fission energy will be a safe and very attractive solution to the energy needs of the world. ... The real issue is whether their blueprints will work in the real world and not only in a "technological paradise."... Opponents of fission energy point out a number of differences between the real world and the "technological paradise." ... No acts of God can be permitted.

  Hannes Alfven

  Real, Science, Differences

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• Today, nothing is unusual about a scientific discovery's being followed soon after by a technical application: The discovery of electrons led to electronics; fission led to nuclear energy. But before the 1880's, science played almost no role in the advances of technology. For example, James Watt developed the first efficient steam engine long before science established the equivalence between mechanical heat and energy.

  Edward Teller

  Science, Technology, Discovery

  Edward Teller, Judith Schoolery (2009). “Memoirs: A Twentieth Century Journey in Science and Politics”, p.42, Basic Books

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• Rocket scientists agree that we have about reached the limit of our ability to travel in space using chemical rockets. To achieve anything near the speed of light we will need a new energy source and a new propellant. Nuclear fission is not an option.

  Wilson Greatbatch

  Travel, Light, Space

  Wilson Greatbatch (2000). “The Making of the Pacemaker: Celebrating a Lifesaving Invention”

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• Nearly all of our existing power sources are generators which use a heat cycle. This includes our coal, oil, and gas fired utilities, our automobiles, trucks, and trains, and even our nuclear fission utility power plants.

  Wilson Greatbatch

  Oil, Nuclear, Coal

  Wilson Greatbatch (2000). “The Making of the Pacemaker: Celebrating a Lifesaving Invention”

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• Of all the failed technologies that litter the onward march of science - steam carriages, zeppelins, armoured trains - none has been so catastrophic to prosperity as the last century's attempt to generate electricity from nuclear fission.

  James Buchan

  Technology, Nuclear, Zeppelins

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• Don't get me wrong: I love nuclear energy! It's just that I prefer fusion to fission. And it just so happens that there's an enormous fusion reactor safely banked a few million miles from us. It delivers more than we could ever use in just about 8 minutes. And it's wireless!

  William McDonough

  Fun, Environmental, Fusion

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• It was my responsibility that this world got itself an atom bomb, because there were only a handful of nuclear physicists in the thirties - only a handful. And we were all beating the desk and saying "How wonderful it will be if we discover atomic fission."

  L. Ron Hubbard

  Responsibility, Atoms, Nuclear

  "Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health". Book by L. Ron Hubbard, 1950.

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• There is more He-3 energy on the Moon than we have ever had in the form of fossil fuels on Earth. All we have to do is to go there and get it.

  Wilson Greatbatch

  Moon, Energy, Burning Fossil Fuels

  Wilson Greatbatch (2000). “The Making of the Pacemaker: Celebrating a Lifesaving Invention”

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• When all thermonuclear sources of energy are exhausted a sufficiently heavy star will collapse. Unless fission due to rotation, the radiation of mass, or the blowing off of mass by radiation, reduce the star's mass to the order of that of the sun, this contraction will continue indefinitely.

  J. Robert Oppenheimer

  Stars, Order, Energy

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• Other paths would include making nuclear fission cheap enough and safe enough that people broadly embrace it, so that could be scaled up.

  Bill Gates

  People, Nuclear, Safe

  "THE BILL GATES INTERVIEW: An energy miracle is coming, and it's going to change the world". Interview with Drake Baer, www.businessinsider.com. February 22, 2016.

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• It is impossible, except for theologians, to conceive of a world-wide scandal or a universe-wide scandal; the proof of this is the way people have settled down to living with nuclear fission, radiation poisoning, hydrogen bombs, satellites, and space rockets.

  Mary McCarthy

  Space, Hydrogen Bomb, People

  Mary McCarthy (1964). “The humanist in the bathtub”

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• I must furnish those, who would protect or save life, with an energy source, which produces energy so cheaply that nuclear fission will not only be uneconomical, but ridiculous. This is the task I have set myself in what little life I have left.

  Viktor Schauberger

  Energy, Tasks, Nuclear

  Viktor Schauberger, Callum Coats (2000). “The Energy Evolution – Harnessing Free Energy from Nature: Volume 4 of Renowned Environmentalist Viktor Schauberger’s Eco-Technology Series”, p.230, Gill & Macmillan Ltd

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• We can and should complain about certain horrors of the modern world, but when it comes to the treatment of mental illness, the advances made in the last hundred years have been far more significant than the space program, nuclear fission, or even The Wire, for so many fortunate people.

  Rob Delaney

  Years, Space, People

  Rob Delaney (2013). “Rob Delaney: Mother. Wife. Sister. Human. Warrior. Falcon. Yardstick. Turban. Cabbage.”, p.35, Hachette UK

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• Most of us do not understand nuclear fission, but we accept it. I don't understand television, but I accept it. I don't understand radio, but every week my voice goes out around the world, and I accept it. Why is it so easy to accept all these man-made miracles and so difficult to accept the miracles of the Bible?

  Billy Graham

  Faith, Men, Voice

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• Evolution is the fundamental idea in all of life science, in all of biology. The key to our being here now is time, 4.54 billion (Earth) years of time. Nuclear fission wasn't discovered until long after Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace published their original books and papers, for example. Our ability to measure atomic masses wasn't developed until long after their deaths. These features of nature enabled us to reckon the age of the Earth and compare it with speciation rates here.

  Bill Nye

  Book, Years, Ideas

  Interview with Brad Kramer, biologos.org. February 04, 2015.

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