The World of Uranium with Tom Zoellner

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Welcome to AMSEcast, coming to you from Oak Ridge, Tennessee,

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a global leader in science, technology, and innovation.

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My name is Alan Lowe, director of the American Museum

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of Science and Energy, and the K-25 History Center.

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Each episode of AMSEcast presents world-renowned authors,

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scientists, historians, policymakers, and everyone in between,

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sharing their insights on a variety of fascinating topics.

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Welcome to AMSEcast.

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It’s my pleasure to be joined in this episode by Tom Zoellner.

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Tom is an award-winning writer of nine books, and a frequent contributor

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to publications like The Atlantic, Time, and Scientific American.

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He previously served as a staff writer for The Arizona

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Republic and the San Francisco Chronicle, among other papers.

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In addition to his writing, Tom currently teaches at Chapman University,

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and serves as editor at large of the Los Angeles Review of Books.

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Today we’re going to talk about his terrific book,

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Uranium: War, Energy and the Rock that Shaped the World.

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Tom, thanks so much for joining us on AMSEcast.

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It’s a pleasure to be here.

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Thank you.

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I really enjoyed Uranium.

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I learned a lot.

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I feel like I’ve been in this job now, five years as

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director of the American Museum of Science and Energy, and I

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thought I knew a lot about uranium, but you taught me a lot.

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So, thank you for this really fascinating book.

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Very nice of you to say, thank you.

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Let’s start with some basics.

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I think most people know that uranium is radioactive.

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What does that mean?

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Why is uranium radioactive?

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Yeah, that’s the basic question about uranium.

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And if you don’t mind, I’m just going to read out loud from the

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book, just a paragraph that tries to explain this to non-scientists

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because I’m a non-scientist, and this is knowledge about the

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physical workings of the universe that I think is just fascinating.

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So—

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Yes—

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If you’ll indulge me.

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Please.

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Yeah.

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This is from the introduction here.

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“A uranium atom is simply built too large. It’s the heaviest element

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that occurs in nature, with 92 protons jammed into its nucleus.

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This approaches a boundary of physical tolerance.

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The heart of uranium, its nucleus, is an aching knot held together

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with electrical coils that are as fragile as sewing thread,

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more fragile than in any other atom that occurs in nature.

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Just the pinprick of an invading neutron can

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rip the whole package apart with hideous force.

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The subatomic innards of U-235”—that’s an isotope that we can

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talk about later—“Spray outward like the shards of a grenade.

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These fragments burst the skin of neighboring uranium nuclei,

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and the effect blossoms exponentially, shattering a trillion,

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trillion atoms within the space of one orgiastic second.

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A single atom of uranium is strong enough to twitch a grain of sand,

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a sphere of it the size of a grapefruit, can eliminate a city.”

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Yeah, just amazing what power there is within that single

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atom of uranium, and a fact that we started to realize

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in the early-20th century, to both a good and bad effect.

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So, tell me this, when we go out to look for uranium—well,

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let’s first talk about when it was discovered.

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When did we realize that an element named uranium,

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or that was going to be named uranium, existed?

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And how common is it here on earth?

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Well, it’s been with us since the formation of the Earth, obviously,

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but it wasn’t realized as a discrete element unto itself until 1769.

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This is when silver miners in Bohemia, currently the border in between Germany

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and the Czech Republic in a particular valley called Joachimsthal, they were

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encountering this layer of thick black rock that they called pitch blend.

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And the kind of slang term that they used was the bad luck rock.

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It meant that whatever silver they were looking for was playing out, and so

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they just sort of treated this black stuff as trash, you know, tossed it aside.

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And there was a chemist named Martin Klaproth who took a closer

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look at this and realized, no this actually is an element.

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And he had every opportunity, as scientific tradition

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had it in the day, to name this after himself.

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He could have called it klaprothium, which is the name that

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would have devolved to us today, except he modestly decided to

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name it after a Greek God Uranus, and hence the name uranium.

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Do we know how prevalent uranium is elsewhere in the universe?

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Is it?

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Is it found elsewhere in the solar system?

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Or do we see it in—

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Oh, yeah.

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Created when two neutron stars merge, so we know that it’s in

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the supernovas, and we know it’s common throughout the universe.

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So, when prospectors are here on earth looking for

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that uranium, how do they know where to search?

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Well, we’re probably familiar with the old Bugs Bunny cartoons, and the

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folklore of the 1950s which is when the uranium rush really happened

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in the United States, and elsewhere, where they would use the handheld

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Geiger counters, simply going out there and listening for clicks.

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But the more high tech, the more corporate way to look for it is with airborne

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geophysical surveys, which can look forward at a depth of over a kilometer.

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And what they’re doing is high resolution electromagnetic surveys, and

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looking for those structural zones that speak to the presence of uranium.

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So, how’s it then taken out of the earth?

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Is it like coal mining?

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Or how is it mined out?

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Used to be, yeah, your old fashioned Appalachian coal mining methods, you know?

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The block-and-pillar methods used in the American Southwest.

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That proved tremendously hazardous, very hard to ventilate these

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mines, deadly, eventually, to those who would work in them if

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you didn’t blow what are called the radon daughters out of there.

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The common way to do it today is simply by strip mining.

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What about you mentioned the uranium rush in

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the US, and it happened elsewhere as well.

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But where in the US did that happen?

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And then, if you went today, where is the majority

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of uranium mining happening here in the States?

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Radium, which is closely related with uranium, as we all know,

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Marie Curie was the first to isolate radium, which became a

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kind of a faddish product used in somewhat deleterious ways

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for health purposes, also for luminescent dials, and so forth.

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This is before properties of uranium were really understood, in the 1930s.

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So, there was a radium rush on the western slope of the

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Rocky Mountains in Colorado; a lot of radium mines there.

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And when it became clear that uranium was an important

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product unto itself, they started to mine what are called the

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tailings piles, the waste rock of some of those radium mines.

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And it turns out that the geology of the Colorado Plateau, a gorgeous

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physical expanse that generally maps over the Four Corners region

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of the United States, but that was particularly rich in uranium.

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And so, in the 1950s when—the dawn of the nuclear arms race,

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the United States government paid huge bonuses for guys,

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prospectors, to go out there and locate new uranium deposits.

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So, you really saw it in Utah, Arizona, parts of Colorado.

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Most uranium mining today in the US is really minuscule.

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We produce domestically less than a percent of the

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fuel requirements of our nuclear power reactors.

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We’re obviously not making nuclear weapons anymore, so

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this production comes from what’s called in-situ leaching.

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This is injecting—crudely put—water into the ground and

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then sucking it back up with mineralized content, uranium.

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There’s some of this going on in Wyoming, Some in Nebraska, there was some in

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Texas, and they’re mining Some tailings out of the mill at White Mesa, Utah.

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And a new operation just went online in Arizona, the Pinyon Plain

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Mine is an underground mine, actually, the old fashioned variety.

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This is not too far from the Grand Canyon, and that

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itself has caused some controversy, unhappiness.

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I assume, with what’s called the nuclear renaissance going on

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now, which we live, frankly, in the middle of here in Oak Ridge,

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with some almost 200 companies looking at the future of nuclear

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energy, I assume that uranium mining would be on the uptick.

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Is that not the case?

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We really haven’t seen the kind of price excitement with what’s called

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yellowcake that would really justify expanded mining operations.

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Certainly, there’s been renewed interest in nuclear

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power, given the question of European energy independence.

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A lot of people want to cut themselves off from Russia, given the

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Ukraine war, and there’s a lot of hand-wringing going on right

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now in Germany over the decision to phase out their nuclear power

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infrastructure, and some are asking, Hey, is this really a good idea to

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lash ourselves to this potentially hostile petroleum giant to our east.

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As you call it, the nuclear renaissance that we really saw in the first

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decade of the 21st Century, which came to a crashing halt with the Fukushima

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disaster, the excitement has not quite gotten to those levels of, for

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example, around 2008, 2009, when the price of yellowcake was really going up.

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What about let’s go back in history from the

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nuclear renaissance, back to the Manhattan Project.

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Where did the uranium used here in Oak Ridge, which is

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where we process uranium, where did that uranium come from?

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Yeah and now that is a really fascinating story.

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Some of it, as previously stated, did come from the waste product of those

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radium mines out in Colorado, but the majority of it, more than two thirds,

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came from a freakishly rich deposit in the middle of Africa, a place called

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Shinkolobwe, which sat then in what was called the Belgian Congo, and

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is now, of course, the Democratic Republic of Congo since independence.

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And the Belgians, the Belgian company called Union Minière, after the

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Nazi invasion of Belgium, and concurrent with this rising scientific

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understanding that uranium could be a powerful weapon of war, the

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Belgian company took steps to not just seal off Shinkolobwe from

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potential German spies, but also make sure that existing supplies

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of yellowcake, uranium oxide, were safely removed from Europe.

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And so, the head of the company, Edward Sengier, shipped it secretly to Bayonne,

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New Jersey, where it sat pretty much underneath what’s called the Bayonne

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Bridge, next to a waterway called Kill Van Kull, sat there in a vegetable oil

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warehouse for a couple years before the company got approached by Lieutenant

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Kenneth Nichols of the Manhattan Project, offering to buy this substance.

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And the visit was not entirely unexpected.

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The Belgian executive knew that—he kept up with the science, and

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knew that he was sitting on a potentially explosive product there.

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I read at some point as well that the Northwest Territories

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in Canada provided some uranium for the Manhattan Project.

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Is that correct, too?

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That’s correct.

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But yeah, the story of the Belgian Congo is just a really

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fascinating part of your book, and an important part of our history.

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Let’s talk about for a moment you put a lot of focus

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on efforts of non-proliferation around the world.

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How are uranium supplies, and power plants, and

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other sources around the world controlled right now?

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And what’s the role of the IAEA in those efforts?

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The key to understanding this is that national

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sovereignty is really the guiding principle here.

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And the International Atomic Energy Agency is there to provide

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guidelines, provide support for member nations, offer scientific

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expertise, but there is no one world body that controls uranium.

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It was recognized immediately, in the days after Hiroshima, that

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the United States was not going to have a monopoly on this, that it

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couldn’t last forever, and certainly within four years, thanks to

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a crash program of its own, and you know, some very good espionage,

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Russia was able to—the Soviet Union was able to become a nuclear power.

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Today we have nine of them: Russia, the United States, China, France,

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Pakistan, Britain, India, Israel, and now, of course, North Korea.

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This genie couldn’t be kept in the bottle for long.

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And so, the International Atomic Energy Agency is there

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to try and detect who’s got a nuclear program going on.

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Iran is, of course, on the threshold of becoming the world’s 10th nuclear

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power, but no one can go in there and prevent them from doing it, you know?

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We can wag fingers from a distance, and we can attempt to use

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diplomacy to stop nations from becoming nuclear capable, but it’s not

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like there’s some sort of international criminal court about this.

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And many, though not all, have signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

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How useful has that treaty been?

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Pretty useful, actually.

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I mean, it’s got holes in it.

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It let Israel, and North Korea, and Pakistan, and India slip

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through the fence, but it has largely kept nations, by their

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own agreement, not to engage in nuclear weapons development.

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Two nations have been persuaded to give it up after they

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got pretty far down the line, South Africa and Libya.

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So, it has been effective.

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Not perfect, but no one should say that the NPT was a failure.

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It most certainly was not.

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I know there are a lot of work done here in Oak Ridge by Y-12 National

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Security Complex and Oak Ridge National Lab on non-proliferation.

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Very important efforts.

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And you talk about a nation I spent some time

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in, Tbilisi, and the Republic of Georgia.

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You say it became an atomic crossroads in

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the frightening world of uranium smuggling.

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Can you tell us a bit about that very frightening scenario playing out there?

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Sure.

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Well, after the breakup of the Soviet Union, for a period of time in the

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1990s and to some extent still today, Russia became a big garage sale.

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Anyone who had access to the goods of the former Soviet Union

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could sell them on the black market, and this happened with

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a number of technologies, the nuclear product among them.

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There was an enormously successful program, Swords into Plowshares.

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The idea being that, you know, the United States would

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actually buy the enriched uranium of the Soviet Union.

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And a really unheralded figure named Thomas Neff, a professor at MIT,

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if I remember correctly, has just passed on, but it was his idea to

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essentially pay the former Soviet Union for that really hazardous product,

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and that we would put it into our electrical infrastructure, we would

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essentially use it for nuclear fuel, an amazing way to reduce those stocks.

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That isn’t to say that there weren’t opportunists and thieves that got a hold

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of some of this, and realized, well, we could make quite a bit of money by

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simply selling it to actors who will then take it to Dubai, which also became

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sort of a nuclear bazaar of its own right, and sell it to either non-state

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figures or state apparatuses like North Korea for their own nuclear program.

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Certainly a scientist who helped Pakistan find its way to the

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bomb, a guy named A. Q. Khan was an expert at running a black

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market nuclear network, and without him, I don’t think the North

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Koreans would have been able to have become a nuclear nation.

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Stepping back into the nuclear renaissance right now, we talked about mining.

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The other area where the United States has fallen behind

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and is now catching up, is with uranium enrichment.

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We just had a major announcement here in Oak Ridge, where the firm Orano is

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moving into, I think, a billion dollar-plus investment to enrich uranium.

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So, where is uranium enriched today, and how is that

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whole calculus factoring into American national security?

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Yeah, we’re talking here about enrichment, which involves taking

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uranium oxide, which you get out of the back end of a mill.

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It’s essentially a stable, relatively safe product to handle, U-308, and

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what you do is you take it from U238 to U235, which is the really more

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unstable product that’s used in nuclear power plants and nuclear weapons.

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And these are super sensitive facilities, obviously.

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Everything has to be counted five times, more

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than that, intense security around the facility.

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There’s a worldwide industry that does this, and there’s only about six

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countries, if I’m not mistaken, that have these operating out in the

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open: France; Germany; there’s one in the Netherlands, where I believe

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A. Q. Khan was able to steal some of that technology for [North Korea]

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; there’s one in Britain; Russia, of course; and then the United States.

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And there’s really only three major worldwide concerns that run these places.

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You mentioned Orano.

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There’s

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Rosatom, which is the Russian nuclear program, and a company called Urenco.

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Currently, two of these facilities—leaving Oak Ridge out of the question

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temporarily—there’s one in Eunice, New Mexico, that I’ve visited.

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It’s in a section of New Mexico called Little Texas.

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It’s down there in the oil patch.

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The whole area is dedicated to energy production, and it’s operated by

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a small company called—well, relatively small called—Louisiana Energy.

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And then there’s one that does lower enriched uranium for nuclear

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power plants in Piketon, Ohio, that’s run by a company called Centrus.

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And it looks like you guys there in Tennessee are getting one near you.

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Yeah.

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I think it is symbolic, or emblematic, or whatever the word

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is, Tom of what we’re facing now in terms of restarting this

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renaissance of nuclear energy here in America, in part to address

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the climate change concerns that we’re all very much worried about.

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Tell me what’s next for you?

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You’re a prolific writer.

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What are you working on right now?

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What can we expect next, from Tom?

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Oh, thank you.

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I’m working now on a book about Western water, some of the gigantic dams

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in the southwest, which were built during a period of technological and

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scientific exuberance, as it happens, right, around the time that intense

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weaponization capacities of uranium were being discovered, that is to

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say, the 1930s and ’40s, dams went up all over the South, the Southwest.

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Some of them probably should not have been built.

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And how can we think about taking some of them down?

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There’s one thing, of course, that any watcher of government or

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business will know is that once a program gets started, people’s

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careers start to depend on it, there’s big budgets to defend.

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Whatever you think of Ronald Reagan’s legacy, he did have a pretty

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memorable line here about, “The closest thing to eternal life is a

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government program.” And we certainly saw that with uranium, where,

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for me, beyond question, that enormous production line that we had on

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nuclear weapons really spun out of the bounds of military necessity,

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and that there was a tremendous overproduction of these weapons.

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We had enough to level the Soviet Union 20 times over.

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It just became sort of a self-sustaining, I mean, we call

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it a monster, that no one wanted to close down the shop.

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You got to find a new line of work.

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You got to find a new stream for that federal appropriation.

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This isn’t to say there’s anything unique about uranium

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here, but it does illustrate this principle, I think, pretty

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vividly, that sometimes things just keep on going and going

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and going beyond the need for their commercial or military use.

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I’m really fascinated with your next topic, for sure.

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I lived in Southern California for a little while.

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I worked at the Reagan Library.

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I was thinking of your Reagan quote, as you said that, by the way, so

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[laugh] I’m glad you brought that up, but in terms of, you know, a very

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dry, arid area, you know, sustaining, in LA, over ten million people.

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So, I’d be very curious to see if we’re doing away

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with dams, how those communities are still sustained.

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Not not every dam, you know, obviously was

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useless, and, you know, did a lot of good.

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But, you know, I think we can argue—and here’s a uranium link again—that there

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was a federal overproduction that we now need to contend with that legacy.

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Excited to read that when it comes out.

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Tom, when do you think that will see the press?

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We’re looking at that in probably 2027.

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These things, unfortunately, take a while.

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I try and write as fast as I can.

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[laugh] . I understand.

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Well, you’ve been very successful in that, sir, and I encourage all of our

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listeners to read Uranium: War, Energy and the Rock that Shaped the World.

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And Tom, when you finish that book, come back on AMSEcast.

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We’d love to have you.

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I’d be delighted.

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Thank you so much.

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Thank you.

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Thank you for joining us on this episode of AMSEcast.

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