Alvin M. Weinberg
Encyclopedia
Alvin Martin Weinberg (April 20, 1915 – October 18, 2006) was an American nuclear physicist who was the administrator at Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Oak Ridge National Laboratory is a multiprogram science and technology national laboratory managed for the United States Department of Energy by UT-Battelle. ORNL is the DOE's largest science and energy laboratory. ORNL is located in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, near Knoxville...

 (ORNL) during and after the Manhattan Project
Manhattan Project
The Manhattan Project was a research and development program, led by the United States with participation from the United Kingdom and Canada, that produced the first atomic bomb during World War II. From 1942 to 1946, the project was under the direction of Major General Leslie Groves of the US Army...

 period. He came to Oak Ridge, Tennessee
Oak Ridge, Tennessee
Oak Ridge is a city in Anderson and Roane counties in the eastern part of the U.S. state of Tennessee, about west of Knoxville. Oak Ridge's population was 27,387 at the 2000 census...

 in 1945 and remained there until his death in 2006.

Early years in Chicago


Alvin Weinberg was born April 20, 1915 in Chicago, Illinois. He received his PhD from the University of Chicago
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...

 in mathematical biophysics in 1939. He then worked at the Metallurgical Laboratory
Metallurgical Laboratory
The Metallurgical Laboratory or "Met Lab" at the University of Chicago was part of the World War II–era Manhattan Project, created by the United States to develop an atomic bomb...

 at the University of Chicago until the war
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

 intervened. He then went to work at a newly formed laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

Work at Oak Ridge

Dr. Weinberg served as director of Oak Ridge National Laboratory's Physics Division from 1945 until 1948, when he became Research Director for the laboratory. He was named director of the laboratory in 1955. Weinberg often sat in the front row at ORNL division information meetings and ask the first, often a very penetrating, question after each scientific talk. For young scientists giving their first presentation, the experience could be frightening but was also exciting and stimulating. When asked how he found the time to attend every meeting, Weinberg replied jokingly, "We didn't have a DOE
United States Department of Energy
The United States Department of Energy is a Cabinet-level department of the United States government concerned with the United States' policies regarding energy and safety in handling nuclear material...

 in those days."

Reactor development

Weinberg had the Materials Testing Reactor converted into a mock-up of a real reactor
Nuclear reactor
A nuclear reactor is a device to initiate and control a sustained nuclear chain reaction. Most commonly they are used for generating electricity and for the propulsion of ships. Usually heat from nuclear fission is passed to a working fluid , which runs through turbines that power either ship's...

 called the Low Intensity Test Reactor (LITR), or the "Poor Man's Pile." Experiments at the LITR led to the design of both Pressurized-Water
Pressurized water reactor
Pressurized water reactors constitute a large majority of all western nuclear power plants and are one of three types of light water reactor , the other types being boiling water reactors and supercritical water reactors...

 (PWR) and Boiling-Water nuclear Reactors
Boiling water reactor
The boiling water reactor is a type of light water nuclear reactor used for the generation of electrical power. It is the second most common type of electricity-generating nuclear reactor after the pressurized water reactor , also a type of light water nuclear reactor...

 (BWR), which have since become the dominant reactor types in commercial nuclear power plants. Attracted to the simplicity and self controlling features of nuclear reactors with fluid fuels, such as Drs. Harold Urey
Harold Urey
Harold Clayton Urey was an American physical chemist whose pioneering work on isotopes earned him the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1934...

 and Eugene Wigner's proposed Aqueous Homogeneous Reactor
Aqueous homogeneous reactor
Aqueous homogeneous reactors are a type of nuclear reactor in which soluble nuclear salts have been dissolved in water. The fuel is mixed with the coolant and the moderator, thus the name "homogeneous" The water can be either heavy water or light water, both which need to be very pure...

, in support of the Nuclear Aircraft
Nuclear aircraft
A nuclear aircraft is an aircraft powered by nuclear energy. Research into them was pursued during the Cold War by the United States and the Soviet Union as they would presumably allow a country to keep nuclear bombers in the air for extremely long periods of time, a useful tactic for nuclear...

 project in the late 1940s, Weinberg asked ORNL's reactor engineers to design a reactor using fluid fuel instead of solid fuel. This Homogeneous Reactor Experiment (HRE) was affectionately dubbed "Alvin's 3P reactor" because it required a pot, a pipe, and a pump. The HRE went into operation in 1950 and at the criticality
Critical mass
A critical mass is the smallest amount of fissile material needed for a sustained nuclear chain reaction. The critical mass of a fissionable material depends upon its nuclear properties A critical mass is the smallest amount of fissile material needed for a sustained nuclear chain reaction. The...

 party Weinberg brought the appropriate spirits: "When piles go critical in Chicago, we celebrate with wine. When piles go critical in Tennessee, we celebrate with Jack Daniel's
Jack Daniel's
Jack Daniel's is a brand of sour mash Tennessee whiskey that is among the world's best-selling liquors. It is known for its square bottles and black label. As of November, 2007, one blogger was claiming that it was the best-selling whiskey in the world. It is produced in Lynchburg, Tennessee by...

." The HRE operated for 105 days before it was closed down. Weinberg even hosted Senator
United States Senate
The United States Senate is the upper house of the bicameral legislature of the United States, and together with the United States House of Representatives comprises the United States Congress. The composition and powers of the Senate are established in Article One of the U.S. Constitution. Each...

 Jack Kennedy and Senator Albert Gore, Sr.
Albert Gore, Sr.
Albert Arnold "Al" Gore, Sr. was an American politician, serving as a U.S. Representative and a U.S. Senator for the Democratic Party from Tennessee....

 on their visit to ORNL. Despite its leaks and corrosion, valuable information was still gained from operation of the HRE, and it proved a simple and safe reactor to control.

Molten salt reactors

The Aircraft Nuclear Propulsion
Aircraft Nuclear Propulsion
The Aircraft Nuclear Propulsion program and the preceding Nuclear Energy for the Propulsion of Aircraft project worked to develop a nuclear propulsion system for aircraft. The United States Army Air Force initiated Project NEPA on May 28, 1946...

 (ANP) project was ORNL's biggest program, which provided 25% of ORNL's budget. The ANP project's military goal was to produce a nuclear powered aircraft (bomber) to overcome the range limitations of jet-fueled aircraft of the time. ORNL successfully built and operated a prototype of an aircraft reactor powerplant by creating the world's first molten salt fueled and cooled reactor called the ARE (Aircraft Reactor Experiment) in 1954, which set a record high temperature of operation of ~815 °C (1,500 °F – red heat)). Because of the radiation hazard to the aircraft crews and the subsequent development of ballistic missiles, mid-air refueling, and longer range jet-fuel bombers, President Kennedy killed the military's Aircraft Nuclear Propulsion
Aircraft Nuclear Propulsion
The Aircraft Nuclear Propulsion program and the preceding Nuclear Energy for the Propulsion of Aircraft project worked to develop a nuclear propulsion system for aircraft. The United States Army Air Force initiated Project NEPA on May 28, 1946...

 (ANP) program in June 1961. This allowed ORNL to shift its focus to a civilian version of the meltdown-proof Molten Salt Reactor
Molten salt reactor
A molten salt reactor is a type of nuclear fission reactor in which the primary coolant, or even the fuel itself is a molten salt mixture...

 (MSR) from the military's "daft" idea of nuclear powered aircraft. That civilian pilot plant, the Molten Salt Reactor Experiment, set a record for continuous operation and was the first to use uranium-233
Uranium-233
Uranium-233 is a fissile isotope of uranium, bred from Thorium as part of the thorium fuel cycle. It has been used in a few nuclear reactors and has been proposed for much wider use as a nuclear fuel. It has a half-life of 160,000 years....

 as fuel, and also used plutonium-239
Plutonium-239
Plutonium-239 is an isotope of plutonium. Plutonium-239 is the primary fissile isotope used for the production of nuclear weapons, although uranium-235 has also been used and is currently the secondary isotope. Plutonium-239 is also one of the three main isotopes demonstrated usable as fuel in...

, as well as the normal and naturally occurring uranium-235
Uranium-235
- References :* .* DOE Fundamentals handbook: Nuclear Physics and Reactor theory , .* A piece of U-235 the size of a grain of rice can produce energy equal to that contained in three tons of coal or fourteen barrels of oil. -External links:* * * one of the earliest articles on U-235 for the...

. The MSR was known as the "chemist's reactor" because it was proposed by mainly chemists (ORNL's Ray Briant and Ed Bettis (an engineer), and NEPA's Vince Calkins) and because it is a chemical solution of melted compounds (salts), containing the actinides (uranium
Uranium
Uranium is a silvery-white metallic chemical element in the actinide series of the periodic table, with atomic number 92. It is assigned the chemical symbol U. A uranium atom has 92 protons and 92 electrons, of which 6 are valence electrons...

, thorium
Thorium
Thorium is a natural radioactive chemical element with the symbol Th and atomic number 90. It was discovered in 1828 and named after Thor, the Norse god of thunder....

, and/or plutonium
Plutonium
Plutonium is a transuranic radioactive chemical element with the chemical symbol Pu and atomic number 94. It is an actinide metal of silvery-gray appearance that tarnishes when exposed to air, forming a dull coating when oxidized. The element normally exhibits six allotropes and four oxidation...

) in a carrier salt, most often composed of beryllium
Beryllium
Beryllium is the chemical element with the symbol Be and atomic number 4. It is a divalent element which occurs naturally only in combination with other elements in minerals. Notable gemstones which contain beryllium include beryl and chrysoberyl...

 (BeF2) and lithium
Lithium
Lithium is a soft, silver-white metal that belongs to the alkali metal group of chemical elements. It is represented by the symbol Li, and it has the atomic number 3. Under standard conditions it is the lightest metal and the least dense solid element. Like all alkali metals, lithium is highly...

 (LiF – NOTE the Lithium is isotopically enriched in Lithium-7 to prevent excessive neutron capture or tritium production) - FLiBe
FLiBe
FLiBe is a mixture of lithium fluoride and beryllium fluoride . As a molten salt it is proposed as a nuclear reactor coolant, and two different mixtures were used in the Molten-Salt Reactor Experiment....

. The MSR also affords the opportunity to change the chemistry of the molten salt while the reactor was operating to remove fission products (the 'nuclear ashes') and add new fuel or change the fuel, all of which is called "online processing".

Biological and environmental studies

Under Weinberg's tenure as director, ORNL's Biology
Biology
Biology is a natural science concerned with the study of life and living organisms, including their structure, function, growth, origin, evolution, distribution, and taxonomy. Biology is a vast subject containing many subdivisions, topics, and disciplines...

 Division grew to five times the size of the next largest division. This division was charged with understanding how ionizing radiation
Ionizing radiation
Ionizing radiation is radiation composed of particles that individually have sufficient energy to remove an electron from an atom or molecule. This ionization produces free radicals, which are atoms or molecules containing unpaired electrons...

 interacts with living things and to try and find ways to help them survive radiation damage, such as bone marrow transplant
Bone marrow transplant
Hematopoietic stem cell transplantation is the transplantation of multipotent hematopoietic stem cell or blood, usually derived from bone marrow, peripheral blood stem cells, or umbilical cord blood...

s. In the 1960s Weinberg also pursued new missions for ORNL, such as using nuclear energy to desalinate seawater. He recruited Philip Hammond from Los Alamos
Los Alamos National Laboratory
Los Alamos National Laboratory is a United States Department of Energy national laboratory, managed and operated by Los Alamos National Security , located in Los Alamos, New Mexico...

 to further this mission and in 1970 started the first big ecology project in the United States: the National Science Foundation
National Science Foundation
The National Science Foundation is a United States government agency that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National Institutes of Health...

-Research Applied to National Needs Environmental Program.

Leadership

In 1958 Weinberg coauthored the first Nuclear Reactor textbook, The Physical Theory of Neutron Chain Reactors, with Nobel Laureate Eugene Wigner. He was elected president of the American Nuclear Society
American Nuclear Society
The American Nuclear Society is an international, not-for-profit 501 scientific and educational organization with a membership of approximately 11,000 scientists, engineers, educators, students, and other associate members. Approximately 900 members live outside the United States in 40 countries....

 in 1959 and began service on President's Science Advisory Committee the following year, advising Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy. Starting in 1945 with Patent #2,736,696, Weinberg, and usually with his friend Eugene Wigner, filed numerous patents on the Light water reactor
Light water reactor
The light water reactor is a type of thermal reactor that uses normal water as its coolant and neutron moderator. Thermal reactors are the most common type of nuclear reactor, and light water reactors are the most common type of thermal reactor...

 (LWR) technology that has become our primary nuclear reactors, the main LWR types are Pressurized Water Reactors
Pressurized water reactor
Pressurized water reactors constitute a large majority of all western nuclear power plants and are one of three types of light water reactor , the other types being boiling water reactors and supercritical water reactors...

 (PWRs) and Boiling Water Reactors (BWRs), that serve in Naval propulsion and commercial nuclear power. In 1965 he was appointed vice president of the Union Carbide Corporation's Nuclear Division.

Weinberg's Firing impacts MSR and Thorium based Nuclear Fuel Research

Weinberg was fired by the Nixon Administration from ORNL in 1973 after 18 years as the lab's director because he continued to advocate increased nuclear safety and Molten Salt Reactors, instead of the Administration's chosen Liquid Metal Fast Breeder Reactor (LMFBR) that the AEC's Director of Reactor Division, Milton Shaw, was appointed to develop. Weinberg's firing effectively halted development of the MSR, as it was virtually unknown by other nuclear labs and specialists. There was a brief revival of MSR research at ORNL as part of the Carter Administration's nonproliferation interests, culminating in ORNL-TM-7207: 1980–07, "Conceptual Design Characteristics of a Denatured Molten-Salt Reactor with Once-Through Fueling", by Engel, et al. It is still considered by many, to be the "reference design" for widespread, commercial Molten Salt Reactors (MSRs).

ORNL had also done the majority of research on thorium as a nuclear fuel in other reactors such as PWRs, so Weinberg's firing reduced thorium's nuclear fuel research. The next, and the only demonstration of thorium breeding uranium-233, was during the Carter Administration, when Admiral Rickover, along with his nuclear core designer Dr. Alvin Radkowsky
Alvin Radkowsky
Alvin Radkowsky was a nuclear physicist and chief scientist at U.S. Navy nuclear propulsion division. His work in the 1950s led to major advances in nuclear-ship technology and civilian use of nuclear power.-Biography:...

's successfully replaced the enriched uranium core with a Seed and Blanket based core using thorium and U-233 in the USA's first commercial power plant at Shippingport, Pennsylvania to create the Light Water Breeder Reactor (LWBR). Despite this successful demonstration of net breeding of U-233 fissile from thorium in 1982 in a Pressurized Water Reactor (PWR), no further research or development would be done until the 1990s. In 1992, Dr. Alvin Radkowsky formed the commercial firm, Thorium Power, Inc. to further develop the LWBR's Seed and Blanket Unit (SBU) based re-coring of existing PWRs with fuels consisting of mainly thorium instead of uranium-238. During the 1990s, the Clinton Administration backed Thorium Power's LWBR technology adaptation to destroy excess Russian military plutonium in proliferation resistant, recorded PWRs (VVER) in Russia with the U.S. DOE's Initiatives for Proliferation Prevention program funding, and oversight from Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL). The Russian-USA cooperative venture for peaceful uses of nuclear power, and therefore the Thorium Power, Inc. (now Lightbridge Corporation) program to destroy excess Russian military plutonium in the SBU cored VVER was stopped by the Bush Administration in 2008 after the Russian invasion of Georgia. (US-Russian 123 Agreement was withdrawn from Congress' consideration in 2008)

Washington and ORAU

Weinberg was named director of the U.S. Office of Energy Research and Development in Washington, D.C. in 1974. The following year he founded and became the first director of Institute for Energy Analysis at Oak Ridge Associated Universities
Oak Ridge Associated Universities
Oak Ridge Associated Universities is a consortium of American and British universities headquartered in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, with an office in Washington, D.C., and staff at several other locations across the country.- History :...

 (ORAU). This institute focused on evaluating alternatives for meeting future energy requirements. From 1976 to 1984, the Institute for Energy Analysis was a center for study of diverse issues related to carbon dioxide
Carbon dioxide
Carbon dioxide is a naturally occurring chemical compound composed of two oxygen atoms covalently bonded to a single carbon atom...

 and global climate
Global warming
Global warming refers to the rising average temperature of Earth's atmosphere and oceans and its projected continuation. In the last 100 years, Earth's average surface temperature increased by about with about two thirds of the increase occurring over just the last three decades...

. Weinberg worked at ORAU until retiring to become an ORAU distinguished fellow in 1985.

Retirement

Weinberg remained active in retirement. In 1992 he was named chairman of the International Friendship Bell Committee, which arranged for the installation of a Japanese bell in Oak Ridge. He also called for strengthening of the International Atomic Energy Agency
International Atomic Energy Agency
The International Atomic Energy Agency is an international organization that seeks to promote the peaceful use of nuclear energy, and to inhibit its use for any military purpose, including nuclear weapons. The IAEA was established as an autonomous organization on 29 July 1957...

 and systems to defend against nuclear weapon
Nuclear weapon
A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission or a combination of fission and fusion. Both reactions release vast quantities of energy from relatively small amounts of matter. The first fission bomb test released the same amount...

s.

Books

  • The Physical Theory of Neutron Chain Reactors
  • Reflections on Big Science
  • The Second Nuclear Era: A New Start for Nuclear Power
  • Continuing the Nuclear Dialogue
  • Strategic Defenses and Arms Control
  • Stability and Strategic Defenses
  • Nuclear Reactions: Science and Trans-Science, 1992, Springer. ISBN 0-88318-861-9.
  • The First Nuclear Era: The Life and Times of a Technological Fixer, 1994, Springer. 324 pages. ISBN 1-56396-358-2. Weinberg's autobiography, covering the period from the early 1940s to the early 1990s.
  • Fluid Fuel Reactors, 979 pages, James A. Lane, H.G. MacPherson, Frank Maslan (1958), Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, Inc., Reading, Massachusetts, U.S.A.

See also

  • Oak Ridge National Laboratory
    Oak Ridge National Laboratory
    Oak Ridge National Laboratory is a multiprogram science and technology national laboratory managed for the United States Department of Energy by UT-Battelle. ORNL is the DOE's largest science and energy laboratory. ORNL is located in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, near Knoxville...

  • Big Science
    Big Science
    Big Science is a term used by scientists and historians of science to describe a series of changes in science which occurred in industrial nations during and after World War II, as scientific progress increasingly came to rely on large-scale projects usually funded by national governments or groups...

  • Molten salt reactor
    Molten salt reactor
    A molten salt reactor is a type of nuclear fission reactor in which the primary coolant, or even the fuel itself is a molten salt mixture...

  • Liquid fluoride thorium reactor
    Liquid fluoride thorium reactor
    The liquid fluoride thorium reactor is a thermal breeder reactor which uses the thorium fuel cycle in a fluoride-based molten salt fuel to achieve high operating temperatures at atmospheric pressure....

  • Weinberg Foundation

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK