Thursday, July 10, 2008
Nuclear Expertise
CRITIQUING NUCLEAR EXPERTS AND NUCLEAR EXPERTISE (PART 1 OF 3)
Scott Ritter’s challenge regarding the credentials of some outspoken "nuclear experts" is worthy of further comment, both in terms of the specific individuals and in terms of others who need to be "outed." Too often proponents or critics with impressive resumes, especially from academia, gloss over their lack of fundamental training and experience in the fields of technical discussion. Although relevant credentials and biases are very pertinent, it is extremely difficult to challenge credentials after formal publication or media publicity.
ALBRIGHT. Having been acquainted with David Albright since the early 1980s on the Washington NGO scene, I regrettably must second Scott Ritter’s outing of Dave’s overworked credentials.
My official role at Argonne National Laboratory in arms-control and verification technology led me to relevant contracts with the Defense Nuclear Agency well before the beginning of formalized on-site inspection, including OSIA, as well as interactions with all the DOE weapons labs, with DOD, and at overseas laboratories. My volunteer activities allowed contribution of technical expertise to various NGO groups with which I collaborated, such as the FAS, NRDC, ACA, CDI, and others. My professional activities at Argonne (and other laboratories) involved nearly 40 years of lab, field, and analytical activities in instrumentation, nuclear physics, nuclear engineering, reactor safety, radioisotopes, experiments, verification technology, and arms control. I have technical papers, review articles, and patents to back this up.
Besides being a technical consultant to the joint FAS/NRDC (Federation of American Scientists/Natural Resources Defense Council) verification project, I worked with European arms-control projects involving Soviet and Eastern European counterparts before the Cold War came to an end (www.NuclearShadowboxing.Info). Despite a half-century close involvement, I don’t recall Dave’s (or anyone else’s) position as a "Senior Staff Scientist" for the FAS (although they could use some professional help nowadays on nuclear issues).
Aside from Albright’s book compilation on fissile materials, there are some other useful contributions he has made to arms control and non-proliferation, such as his interpretation of country-specific proliferation activities. Dave’s a friendly guy, but I always found him shallow on experience, and — now realizing that he was once on the research staff of Princeton University's Center for Energy and Environmental Studies — I have a better understanding of his predisposition and educational preparation. With no substantive foundation he has expressed himself as philosophically opposed to nuclear power. This is not uncommon, particularly with academics associated with Princeton who evince no hands-on or other practical field experience regarding nuclear-weapons, nuclear-reactor technology, or verification methodology.
KHIDIR HAMZA. In connection with the "hands-on" criterion, I confess reluctance to accept some of the negative assessments about Dr. Khidir Hamza. He has evidenced both academic and insider experience that really cannot be challenged in terms of insufficient qualifications. As far has the technical content of his book, I find it quite plausible. Regarding his derring-do exploits and memoirs, they make a good read. I notice that David Kay, a highly qualified IAEA inspector that I was once acquainted with, praised the book. I sense considerable self-effacing dissonance among Iraqi defectors regarding Hamza and each other.
—A. DeVolpi, retired physicist
CRITIQUING NUCLEAR EXPERTS AND NUCLEAR EXPERTISE (PART 2 OF 3)
THE PROFESSORS. For progress in non-proliferation, we need be saved from the assumed or accorded authoritarianism of well-intentioned professors, especially from the East Coast, who have titles mistaken as credentials. Frank von Hippel of Princeton comes to mind. Notwithstanding good intentions, pleasant personality, teaching experience, and published papers — these do not constitute hands-on field or laboratory experience. Nor does time spent in Washington corridors, offices, conference rooms count.
I hold Frank partially responsible for the decade-long hiatus in reaching agreement with Korea on nuclear demilitarization, for decades of lack of progress in conversion of the Siberian plutonium reactors, for stalling growth of nuclear power in the United States, for misrepresenting the weaponizability of reactor-grade plutonium, and for sustaining radiophobia.
On the latter point, over two decades after the Chernobyl accident, Frank is yet to acknowledge in print that he was utterly wrong in projecting or implying a huge number of fatalities due to the accident. He and others cling to unvalidated beliefs regarding the effects of low levels of radiation. That particular professional impropriety about predicting Chernobyl radiation effects was written in collaboration with Tom Cochran. Frank’s other nuclear-policy distortions often came with like-minded, but equally unrepentant collaborators.
Another fundamental lapse, more common in academic circles compared to those who have gained field experience, is insufficient awareness of systematic error in data and computed results. Much of the debacle regarding unfounded projections of excess cancers (for adults and juveniles) from the Chernobyl and Three-Mile Island accidents would have averted if proper scientific methodology were applied to the estimates.
Were it not for the prevalence of contemporary East-Coast academics, U.S. oil- and coal-burning electrical power stations might long have been on the wane, along with the carbon-dioxide and chronic pollution they emit. Certainly shortages and prices of oil would not have reached their present levels had more nuclear-power stations been built as a carbon-disengaged source of baseload electricity.
Steve Fetter, now at University of Maryland, is another bright fellow with Harvard physics graduate degrees, but has weighed in on topics with which he evinces little or no practical field experience. I know about these people because I once had to bring them up to speed on fundamentals regarding practical nuclear and instrument technology.
Include Tom Cochran in the good-hearted, under-experienced list. Academic qualifications aside, professorships or PhDs do not necessarily correspond to the experiential foundations of a John Pike or Steve Aftergood. Hal Feiverson of Princeton, though, is an example of a professor who has exhibited a learning process well beyond the university norm.
Moreover, were it not for the professors of the 30s and 40s who gained hands-on laboratory and field experience, we would not have succeeded in the timely development of nuclear weapons and nuclear reactors. With the demise of Hans Bethe and Pief Panofsky, a good example remaining is Dick Garwin (aside from some uncharacteristic overreaching he has done with regard to Chernobyl cancer projections).
Finally, there is the matter of "political" scientists, such as Graham Allison of Harvard, who have leaned over from the political to the technical side to address issues regarding "nuclear terrorism," and others who have presented overhyped views about "dirty bombs." The political scientists do better when they have sound technical advice or stick to their field.
—A. DeVolpi, retired physicist
CRITIQUING NUCLEAR EXPERTS AND NUCLEAR EXPERTISE (PART 3 OF 3)
FIELD EXPERIENCE. What’s so special about hands-on experience? It’s simply not gained without many years working in the field or in laboratories, well beyond graduate-level academic and specialized training in occupations. Those who attain hands-on field experience — usually under distracting and sometimes dangerous conditions — find out that good data collection, patience, luck, calculated risk, indulgence, leadership, subservience, practical skills, inadvertent radiation exposures, bruises, disappointment, details, experiment design, equipment, science fundamentals, analytic skills, jury-rigging, self-effacement, open-mindedness, tolerance, technical publication, and knowledge reinforcement are some aspects of direct participation not found much in books or in the classroom for either teacher or student.
Academic institutions do a great job giving researchers a good start; just look at the graduate degrees and prominent educational institutions (United States, Great Britain, etc.) where the Iraqi nuclear-weapon developers acquired their basic scientific and technological knowledge. The remaining requisite experience is gained in the field the hard way. (It should be noted, however, that even after two decades of effort, Saddam Hussein — lavishing authority and money — failed to have even a single functional nuclear weapon produced.)
Once in a while it does become necessary to challenge the credentials and experience of those who take outspoken positions on topics they seem to misunderstand or misrepresent, often because of they lack meaningful field experience, as Scott Ritter has noted. If a more insightful author-evaluation process were routinely available, policymakers would have less cover for the type of premature or egregious data selection experienced particularly with regard to events in the Mid-East.
CREDENTIALS AND CONFLICTS OF INTEREST. In general, one inherent qualification of the academic community is comparatively less conflict of financial and institutional interest. Even so, more weight to meaningful qualifications and explicit disclaimers should be required of academics when they address issues without having the type of field experience that Scott Ridder and David Kay have had. I find that to be particularly the case when it comes a technical understanding of nuclear reactors and the risks of radiation and proliferation. Academic or NGO papers having essentially no professional foundation are a disservice to our common interest in an improved energy economy that would be accompanied by reducing risk and chronic hazard.
This isn’t meant to imply that questions they raise shouldn’t be answered — just that those who answer should have an applicable track record.
In any event, a good disassociated test of validity is to examine technical statements and papers for rigorous recognition, analysis, and presentation of potential systematic errors in measurements; it is the keystone to credibility. Too many consequential predictions have been made on the basis of selected or functionally dependent data. Those who don’t recognize the limitations of their estimates do not warrant much credibility.
In short, academic/NGO papers and presentations should start out with a disclaimer if not based on actual laboratory or field experience, and if the authors cannot or do not fathom or report systematic measurement errors. Why don’t they just admit, "I’ve really had no field experience on this topic, and I don’t know how to characterize the validity of my results, but caveat emptor, here they are!"
Academic and NGO communities should police their own qualifications for speaking out on critical issues so that experienced professionals, such as Scott Ridder and myself, don’t have to come forward with the risk of appearing to respond with ad-hominem attacks.
—A. DeVolpi, retired physicist
Labels: Nuclear Expertise
