Dave Brower: Tireless Environmental Champion

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Now it only takes about 15 kilos (33 pounds) of plutonium to make a Nagasaki-type bomb. I don't know how to do it and I don't want to know how . . . but other people do. People in organizations like the Black September Movement. People who are extremely clever and who are willing to sacrifice anything to get their way. Once we open the door to the plutonium economy, we expose ourselves to absolutely terrible, horrifying risks from these people.

We don't need all those dangers. The additional energy isn't worth it. The breeder program should be forgotten . . . stopped!

PLOWBOY: I take it, then, that you are now against nuclear power in any form.

BROWER: At this point, I don't want to see any atomic plants operating anywhere with fission energy until [1] we find a very large group of absolutely infallible people to build reactors, [2] we have a still larger group of infallible people to operate them and [3] we've turned every one of the Black Septembers in the world white and persuaded God to stop acting. When all that happens, atomic energy will be safe. Until then, forget it.

PLOWBOY: And what about fusion?

BROWER: It's very hard for me to know what to say about fusion right now, inasmuch as it is not yet scientifically feasible. I just can't understand how so many people are able to predict so much about something that still isn't scientifically possible.

I will say this,—though: If it is true that fusion will put unlimited amounts of energy into our hands, then I'm worried. Our record on this score is extremely poor. It seems that every time mankind is given a lot of energy, we go out and wreck something with it. Make a plot chart of our uses of power and you'll find that we use about one percent to help the environment and the other 99% to do quite irreversible damage. It scares me to think of what we could—and undoubtedly would—do with unlimited amounts of force at our finger tips.

I remember a discussion I once had with a man I respect very much. He was the head of the AEC's fusion reactor program at the time and he was telling me about all the great things we would be able to do with fusion's vast amounts of low-cost energy. "We won't have to worry anymore about solid waste," he said. "We'll be able to disintegrate it into its atoms."

Well, my friend was quite pleased by that thought and I was frightened . . . because I don't know who's going to go around sorting all those atoms into their proper cubbyholes. When you've knocked things down to their atoms, you know, you've taken molecules apart . . . and I have a sort of strong sentimental attachment to molecules. I use them myself.

PLOWBOY: Well you've certainly built a strong enough case against atomic energy . . . and you haven't even mentioned thermal pollution or DNA once.

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