Capital Letters
Filed Under: Departments
On Nuclear Power
Concerning Rodney Adams’ "The First Atomic Age" and "Nuclear Power: Our Best Option" by Mike Oliver and John Hospers (January 1995): Both articles totally ignored the U.S. Army Engineer Reactor Group, formed in 1954 and in operation until 1974. This organization built, operated, and maintained small nuclear Power plants, both high and low enriched, pressurized-water, all over the world very successfully. They were in existence and operational at the North and South Poles and in Alaska, Wyoming, Virginia, and the Panama Canal Zone. This elite group of servicemen proved that small nuclear power plants could operate successfully under the most arduous conditions. A good deal of the technology that companies such as GE and Westinghouse gained in nuclear power plants came from that program.
The inability of our free enterprise system to develop further, what was already proven, will remain one of the great mysteries of our time.
—David E. Gonier
(Retired, U.S. Army) Fredericksburg, Virginia
Rodney Adams replies:
I have a great deal of respect for the technical accomplishments of the Army in their reactor program. Not only did the Army Engineer Reactor Group successfully operate small pressurized-water reactors in the locations Mr. Gonier mentions, but they also built and operated the first closed-cycle nuclear heated gas turbine. ML-1, a 300 KW(e) machine designed to be transported to remote communications sites, is a technical ancestor of the machine that Adams Atomic Engines, Inc., is marketing.
I must disagree, however, with his final comment. There is little mystery why the Army’s technology was never commercialized. No one involved with the program, either from the military or from the contractor organizations, ever left their organization with the fire to develop new markets for the exciting technology they had learned. Even in the nuclear industry, few people have heard much about the Army’s program or its accomplishments.
The main point in my article is that technical revolutions are led by promoters as much as they are by inventors, engineers, and technicians. The success of a market economy depends on people who are free to be rewarded for the risks of challenging the status quo. Market success also depends on those people being allowed to fail. Bureaucratic organizations rarely provide the freedom necessary for true innovation.
Assent on Tacit Consent
I was pleased to see the work of a fellow Montanan in your January 1995 issue. Bowen Greenwood’s "Tacit Consent: A Quiet Tyranny" was very well reasoned and presented.
The idea of tacit consent is, of course, dctrimental to a free government. For years the Left has been telling us, "If you live here, and enjoy the benefits of the state, then you agree to pay the taxes we levy to maintain that state." They’ve used the idea of tacit consent to justify taxes to which we would never actually consent.
My congratulations to The Freeman for your continuing good work, and your success at finding insightful new writers, especially local ones!
—Senator Sharon
Estrada Montana State Senate
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