Some articles by Richard Garwin, who is on the team selected by Chu to work on the oil leak

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-05-14/obama-sends-bomb-mars-experts-to-fix-bp-oil-spill-update1-.html

Obama Sends Bomb, Mars Experts to Fix BP Oil Spill (Update1)
May 14, 2010, 1:40 PM EDT
By Jessica Resnick-Ault and Katarzyna Klimasinska

May 14 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu signaled his lack of confidence in the industry experts trying to control BP Plc’s leaking oil well by hand-picking a team of scientists with reputations for creative problem solving.

<snip>

Chu chose another JASON think tank member, Richard L. Garwin, for his oil spill taskforce. Garwin, 82, a physicist and IBM Fellow Emeritus, is a military-technology and arms-control consultant to the U.S. government. He helped design the first hydrogen bomb in 1951, according to the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

“To do interesting science, the whole point is not just to follow the beaten track, but find something new,” Freeman Dyson, another JASON member, said about Garwin.

Flaming Wells

Garwin, 82, held a 1991 symposium of academic scientists, explosives experts, firefighters and oilmen to grapple with how to stem oil flows from hundreds of wells Iraq set on fire in Kuwait during the Persian Gulf War, according to a summary of the event. Garwin declined to comment on the meeting in Houston, but confirmed his experience with Kuwait’s oil wells in an interview.

<snip>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Garwin

Richard Lawrence Garwin (born April 19, 1928 in Cleveland, Ohio<1>), is an American physicist. He received his bachelor's degree from the Case Institute of Technology in 1947 and obtained his PhD from the University of Chicago in 1949, where he worked in the lab of Enrico Fermi.

Garwin is IBM Fellow Emeritus at the Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York. For many years he was an adjunct professor of physics at Columbia University and, from 1952, a scientist at the IBM Watson Laboratory at Columbia University,<2> retiring from IBM in 1993.<3> He has also been an Andrew D. White Professor-at-Large at Cornell University.

Garwin received the National Medal of Science, the nation's highest honor for the fields of science and engineering, award year 2002.<3><4>

Among other things, Garwin was the author of the actual design used in the first hydrogen bomb (code-named Mike) in 1952.<5> He was assigned the job by Edward Teller, with the instructions that he was to make it as conservative a design as possible in order to prove the concept was feasible (as such, the Mike device was not intended to be a usable weapon design, with tons of cryogenic equipment required for its use).<6>

While at IBM, he was the "catalyst" for the discovery and publication of the Cooley–Tukey FFT algorithm, and did research on inkjet printing.

Dr. Garwin is a member of the Board of Sponsors of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.<7> He also served on the Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States in 1998. He is also a member of the JASON Defense Advisory Group.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x206505

Reprocessing isn't the answer
By Richard L. Garwin | 6 August 2009

Article Highlights
* With the nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain seemingly dead, reprocessing again is being proffered as a way to deal with U.S. nuclear waste.
* But the reality is that reprocessing neither solves the waste problem nor reduces safety risks.
* Research should continue into next-generation reactors that can burn spent fuel, but until then, dry casks and repositories must be pursued.

<snip>

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=228x63502

Reactor-Grade Plutonium Can be Used to Make Powerful and
Reliable Nuclear Weapons: Separated plutonium in the fuel
cycle must be protected as if it were nuclear weapons.

by

Richard L. Garwin(1)

<snip>

As an author of the 1994 CISAC report, I helped formulate
the statement that I quote above. What should the reader
believe? Individuals are often skeptical of official
statements, and it is often said "Those who know, don't
speak; and those who speak, don't know." But that is not
the case with the members of CISAC, all of whom endorsed
this statement; they both know and speak. It is
particularly to be noted that among the Committee are the
following physicists who are knowledgeable about nuclear
weapons and who reviewed a secret study done for CISAC by
the Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Lawrence
Livermore National Laboratory-- the United States' two
nuclear weapon design laboratories. Besides myself, these
include John P. Holdren, Michael M. May, and W.K.H.
Panofsky. May is a former director of the Lawrence
Livermore National Laboratory.

<snip>

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x1002392

Garwin discourages the use of space weapons

Edited on Thu Nov-18-04 09:44 AM by seemslikeadream
Published Thursday, November 18, 2004

BY MAX GLADSTONE
Contributing Reporter

While references to Star Wars might cause some to recall cinema, the phrase reminds Richard Garwin of the Reagan administration and complex space-based missile defense programs.

As part of the Yale Engineering Dean's Distinguished Lecture Series, Garwin, a former member of the Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States and a recipient of the National Medal of Science, spoke Wednesday afternoon in Davies Auditorium. Garwin said he did not believe space weapons should be part of the United States' security strategy and the nation should lead the world in an effort to ban such weapons.

<snip>

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/24/science/who-built-the-h-bomb-debate-revives.html?pagewanted=all

Who Built The H-Bomb? Debate Revives
By WILLIAM J. BROAD
Published: April 24, 2001

After suffering a heart attack, Edward Teller took a breath, sat down with a friend and a tape recorder and offered his views on the secret history of the hydrogen bomb.

''So that first design,'' Dr. Teller said, ''was made by Dick Garwin.'' He repeated the credit, ensuring there would be no misunderstanding.

Dr. Teller, now 93, was not ceding the laurels for devising the bomb -- a glory he claims for himself. But he was rewriting how the rough idea became the world's most feared weapon. His tribute, made more than two decades ago but just now coming to light, adds a surprising twist to a dispute that has roiled historians and scientists for decades: who should get credit for designing the H-bomb?

The oral testament was meant to disparage Dr. Stanislaw M. Ulam, Dr. Teller's rival, now dead, and boost Dr. Richard L. Garwin, a young scientist at the time of the invention who later clashed with Dr. Teller and now says he would wipe the bomb from the earth if he could.

<snip>

Reactor-Grade Plutonium Can be Used to Make Powerful and Reliable Nuclear Weapons: Separated plutonium in the fuel cycle must be protected as if it were nuclear weapons.

by

Richard L. Garwin(1)

<snip>

As an author of the 1994 CISAC report, I helped formulate the statement that I quote above. What should the reader believe? Individuals are often skeptical of official statements, and it is often said "Those who know, don't speak; and those who speak, don't know." But that is not the case with the members of CISAC, all of whom endorsed this statement; they both know and speak. It is particularly to be noted that among the Committee are the following physicists who are knowledgeable about nuclear weapons and who reviewed a secret study done for CISAC by the Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory-- the United States' two nuclear weapon design laboratories. Besides myself, these include John P. Holdren, Michael M. May, and W.K.H. Panofsky. May is a former director of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

The renewable option: Is it real?
SUNLIGHT: 100,000 TW reaches Earth’s surface (100,000 TWy/year = 3.15 million EJ/yr), 30% on land. Thus 1% of the land area receives 300 TWy/yr, so converting this to usable forms at 10% efficiency would yield 30 TWy/yr, about twice civilization’s rate of energy use in 2004.

WIND: Solar energy flowing into the wind is ~2,000 TW. Wind power estimated to be harvestable from windy sites covering 2% of Earth’s land surface is about twice world electricity generation in 2004.

BIOMASS: Solar energy is stored by photosynthesis on land at a rate of about 60 TW. Energy crops at twice the average terrestrial photosynthetic yield would give 12 TW from 10% of land area (equal to what’s now used for agriculture). Converted to liquid biofuels at 50% efficiency, this would be 6 TWy/yr, more than world oil use in 2004.

Renewable energy potential is immense. Questions are what it will cost & how much society wants to pay for environmental & security advantages.

The nuclear option: size of the challenges
• If world electricity demand grows 2%/year until 2050 and nuclear share of electricity supply is to rise from 1/6 to 1/3...

–nuclear capacity would have to grow from 350 GWe in 2000 to 1700 GWe in 2050;

– this means 1,700 reactors of 1,000 MWe each.

• If these were light-water reactors on the once-through fuel cycle...
---–enrichment of their fuel will require ~250 million Separative Work Units (SWU);
---–diversion of 0.1% of this enrichment to production of HEU from natural uranium would make ~20 gun-type or ~80 implosion-type bombs.

• If half the reactors were recycling their plutonium...
---–the associated flow of separated, directly weapon - usable plutonium would be 170,000 kg per year;
---–diversion of 0.1% of this quantity would make ~30 implosion-type bombs.

• Spent-fuel production in the once-through case would be...
---–34,000 tonnes/yr, a Yucca Mountain every two years.

Conclusion: Expanding nuclear enough to take a modest bite out of the climate problem is conceivable, but doing so will depend on greatly increased seriousness in addressing the waste-management & proliferation challenges.