The Anonymous Widower

It’s All James Bond’s Fault

According to this article on the BBC’s web site, the general distrust of nuclear power is all down to James Bond. Here’s the first two paragraphs.

The evil villains in James Bond movies are being blamed for casting a long-lasting shadow over the image of nuclear power, says the president of the Royal Society of Chemistry.

Prof David Phillips says that Dr No, with his personal nuclear reactor, helped to create a “remorselessly grim” reputation for atomic energy.

I won’t argue with the President of the Royal Society of CHemistry, but I will add a little story of my own.

In the 1960s, I worked on NMR spectroscopy or to give it its full name nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy. The technique is summed up as.

Nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, most commonly known as NMR spectroscopy, is a research technique that exploits the magnetic properties of certain atomic nuclei to determine physical and chemical properties of atoms or the molecules in which they are contained. It relies on the phenomenon of nuclear magnetic resonance and can provide detailed information about the structure, dynamics, reaction state, and chemical environment of molecules.

One of the guys I worked with at the time, Eddie Clayton, predicted that the technique would be used instead of X-rays in the future. We didn’t think he was right, but now of course nuclear magnetic resonance imaging is commonplace, with most hospitals having a scanner.

However because of peoples’ fears of anything nuclear, the nuclear has been dropped and it is referred to as MRi.

January 12, 2012 - Posted by AnonW | Health, News | Science