December 15, 2003: Nuclear Scenarios - Dr. Michio Kaku
Podcast: The Art Bell ArchivePublished On: Mon Jul 07 2025
Description: Art Bell welcomes theoretical physicist Dr. Michio Kaku for a wide-ranging discussion that begins with the feasibility of antimatter weapons and quickly moves into a hidden history of nuclear accidents in the United States. Kaku reveals the stories of seven Americans killed in supercriticality incidents, including Harry Daglian and Louis Slotin, who were fatally irradiated by plutonium hemispheres at Los Alamos in 1945 and 1946.Kaku details the 1961 SL-1 reactor explosion in Idaho Falls, where a worker removed a control rod too far and was impaled on the ceiling by the blast. He recounts the near-catastrophe at the Fermi 1 breeder reactor outside Detroit in the 1960s, America's first commercial reactor meltdown, which was kept from the public even as evacuation plans were drawn up. The discussion extends to the ongoing instability at Chernobyl, where radiation levels still rise with every rainfall.Art and Kaku examine the Windscale fire in England, a massive Soviet plutonium dump explosion in the Ural Mountains, and the dangerous state of commercial breeder reactors in France and Japan. Kaku reflects on Edward Teller's belief that nuclear plants belong underground and shares how his own family's internment during World War II shaped his critical perspective on nuclear technology.
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