When I studied chemistry at university, only a handful of select students were introduced to the nuclear science lab in the basement. It had a lot of spicy isotopes, neutron sources, etc. Even as a chemistry student with free run of the place for years I had no idea it was in the building until the department head pulled a few of us aside.
The reason for the informal secrecy, as it was explained to me, is that every so often someone would find out there was plutonium etc in the basement and have a public freak out, including on occasion other (non-STEM) professors at the same university. These people would try to organize crusades to get it shut down because evil. Intentionally obscuring its existence greatly mitigated this drama. They appreciated us continuing the tradition of keeping it out of sight and out of mind from the general public.
The publicity around this Kodak case was an example of why no one talks about nuclear labs. The public cannot be trusted to engage in a discussion about anything “nuclear” in good faith. There are quite a few areas of science like this.
This is just like how universities hide their animal research facilities. It wasn't until the final year of my biology degree that I found out we had a basement floor under our life sciences building where this research is carried out.
I visited a few times as part of a research project I was involved in, and that experience was one of the factors that put me off pursuing a career in biomedical research.
If we can’t have a good faith discussion then maybe it is a good idea to hide nuclear and animal labs.
But with less oversight, that also invites abuse.
You can probably imagine abuse on your own in an anima lab, but I would also point out after Obama banned gain of function research in 2014 U.S. scientists moved their lab to China where it continued without the same oversight, and bad things happened.
Joe Public doesn't provide oversight. He's mostly good at generating outrage. Experts provide oversight, and animal research in the US is highly regulated by experts!
Erin Brockovich and Lois Gibbs generated outrage, which was well deserved and a societal good. They were working against unregulated/underregulated firms, which did not have effective oversight.
Oversight for PG&E should have come from the US EPA. I suppose the EPA should have handled Love Canal too, but the agency didn't exist when Hooker dumped their pollutants.
Your cultural references suggest you're American, so you don't have a direct way of interacting with a sovereign nation's internal affairs. You can, however, elect competent politicians who support a competent foreign service.
If you want to verify the work of experts, you need knowledge. You need to read, practice, and talk. Once you develop relevant expertise, you're an expert and no longer Joe Public. There are public universities near you where you can learn any of these topics. If you're in a remarkably remote location, you can take online courses. It takes time, but that's true of almost anything worth doing.
If you aren't willing to do that, you're just proving Asimov right: "There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."
This kind of dismissive attitude and condescending tone is a big part of why people don't trust people who say "trust us, you don't need to know what we're doing to those animals in the secret basement at the university."
For the record I am not American and I have sat in on a few institutional review board meetings that pertained to animal welfare relating to a project that I was involved with.
Animal research is regulated, but not by a public jury. "We don't advertise what we do with animals in the basement" is because extremists have attempted to murder animal researchers in recent memory[1]. In the US we have a review process similar to an IRB for animal research: IACUC.
I'm dismissive of and admittedly rather condescending to people who equate their ignorance to experts' knowledge. But that's the whole point: expertise isn't a hereditary title. It comes from study, and I support anyone's effort to gain it!
For what it's worth: if you've sat on an IRB you're not Joe Public. You may not be a scientist, but you're an expert in another field. You also know that, so I don't get what you're arguing.
Do you feel the same way about the livestock industry? Like is that an industry that is sufficiently regulated that the public should not be allowed to have any input on the regulation?
Are there any other industries that don't involve animals that you feel the same way about? Why or why not?
In the dictionary definition that politics is "the total complex of relations between people living in society", academic rigor is defined by academic politics. It is a political problem, which means the definition and fundamental regulation will be made by politicians.
Consider supporting politicians who respect expertise. If you aren't presented with that ballot choice, at least vote against the anti-intellectuals.
As a dyed in the wool leftist I more and more struggle with Obama legacy from common core to regulation to his utter selling out the American people to the cia.
When he was well intentioned he seemed to be a total failure and when he was blatantly self interested he was monstrous.
I don’t think the right is another option but woof… this is tough
He was a corporate democrat. His cabinet was effectively selected by Citigroup. He burned home owners immediately and continued senseless wars. The difference between him and Bush was minimal.
His "legacy" is completely a media creation.
We lost control of this country the day JFK was killed.
It was obvious when he was president that he's a terrible person. Not sure how you're struggling with it now. He's just a guy like anyone else. Not special. We shouldn't deify presidents. I didn't vote for him in 2008 because I thought he was too inexperienced. I didn't vote for him in 2012 because he continued the war of terror.
>As a dyed in the wool leftist I more and more struggle with Obama legacy from common core to regulation to his utter selling out the American people to the cia.
You're struggling now but presumably weren't struggling then even though it was obvious at the time that he was a bad person just like the rest of them.
Respectfully, I challenge you to show that it's any more "in the conspiracy theory category" than zoonotic crossover in a wet market.
I don't mean to say that it's proven, because to my knowledge it is not. There is a great deal more evidence pointing to it being likely than necessary for it to be considered a mainstream theory.
> One of the contentions in support of this theory was that the furin cleavage site on the virus has never been found in nature. Therefore, to some, that meant it must have been created in a laboratory... Recently, Wu and coworkers identified a bat virus (Bat CoV CD35) that harbored a furin cleavage site identical to that found on SARS-CoV-2 (Zhu W, Huang Y, Gong J, et al. A novel bat coronavirus with a polybasic furin-like cleavage site.
> There is now abundant evidence that SARS-CoV-2 was an animal-to-human spillover event that occurred in the western section of the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market that housed several live animals that were susceptible to the virus. Indeed, the early cases of COVID-19 centered on that section of the market.
> The hunt for the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic has new leads. Researchers have identified half a dozen animal species that could have passed SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, to people, by reanalysing genomes collected from an animal market in Wuhan, China1. The study establishes the presence of animals and the virus at the market, although it does not confirm whether the animals themselves were infected with the virus.
That's not how the burden of proof works. If you are putting forth the lab leak origin, it is you who must provide reasonable evidence in support of it.
I did not put it forth. The other user asserted that it was “conspiracy”. That’s the assertion that I’m challenging, not the veracity of the theory itself.
I am not sure what you are trying to say. It is a conspiracy theory at this point because it is believes, in spite of the existing evidence, the covid absolutely came leaked from a lab rather than starting being of zoonotic orign. It also asserts a coverup by both the Chinese and American government, as well as cover ups and complicity from the entire Chinese and American virology community.
This, despite the possibility seriously investigated by (at least the Americans) and finding very little evidence to support it, and far less than the zoonotic origin.
That's why it's a conspiracy theory, because it alleges a conspiracy.
The specific origins of the virus have not, to my knowledge, been confirmed.
I am not asserting that it was a lab leak; I’m merely asserting that it is not unreasonable to consider it possible.
Nowhere did I suggest that I believed it more likely to be the source than zoonotic spillover, nor did I assert anything about a coverup by any party.
Frankly, this whole discussion is a great example of why I commented. It should absolutely not be discouraged to consider less-likely explanations when the most likely has not been conclusively proven.
I'm not putting them in your mouth, I am stating what the most popular strains of the lab leak approach are.
> The specific origins of the virus have not, to my knowledge, been confirmed.
They have not, and realistically never will be. What would even constitute confirmation? If it leaked out of a lab, the lab and or CCP could own up to it. But zoonotic origin? You'd basically need a time machine to confirm it. The discussion by scientists is about the balance of evidence.
> nor did I assert anything about a coverup by any party.
I am not saying, or implying, you did. I'm sorry if you got that impression. The assertion of a coverup however is intrinsic to any version of the theory that it leaked from a lab. If someone believes that it originated in a lab then the only explanation for why it hasn't been proven yet is that the lab, the scientists, and/or the CCP is actively covering it up. Which is a textbook definition of a conspiracy.
> It should absolutely not be discouraged to consider less-likely explanations when the most likely has not been conclusively proven.
Who is discouraging considering the explanation? Take a look even at the wikipedia page [0]. Both scientists and varying government agencies have looked into the theory, and they have found no credible evidence to back it up, while finding plenty of evidence in support of zoonotic origin.
This discussion is not happening in early 2020, or even early 2021, when there is very little evidence to go on, it is happening in 2025 when there is plenty of evidence in support of zoonotic origin, and a of lack of evidence in favour of the lab leak theory.
Discussion on the topic isn't being suppressed, it's that those supporting the lab leak theory are supporting it despite the evidence to the contrary. They are using it to attack scientists and science broadly because they believe scientists are in on it (a conspiracy theory) [1][2].
First - thanks for waiting a few days to reply. I do that quite a bit on controversial topics like this to limit potential flame wars.
I know I'm picking and choosing a bit in replying; I read your entire comment and gave it thought. If I don't quote it, it's likely simply because I agree or have nothing to add.
> I'm not putting them in your mouth, I am stating what the most popular strains of the lab leak approach are.
My apologies then, I misunderstood.
> What would even constitute confirmation?
I can't think of anything that would likely come to light after years that would qualify.
> If it leaked out of a lab, the lab and or CCP could own up to it.
I disagree. I believe they would, but cannot rule out that they would not.
Note that I am not asserting that they have hidden anything; I am saying that it's not unreasonable to leave open the possibility.
> But zoonotic origin? You'd basically need a time machine to confirm it. The discussion by scientists is about the balance of evidence.
I'm not in a discussion of scientists about the origin - I'm in a discussion on a forum of like-minded people :).
The fact that there is no proven origin at this point strongly suggests zoonotic origin. So strongly that I would put it at approximately the level of confident that I would have for a scientific theory - that I would consider it true and that evidence contradicting it would have to pass quite a high bar.
> They are using it to attack scientists and science broadly because they believe scientists are in on it (a conspiracy theory)
I agree, and don't like that either. My motivation is to say that we should leave room for investigation, and that we shouldn't try to limit the conversation of interested parties who want to continue considering it as a possibility.
I think the key difference here is that I see a distinction between saying "this isn't conclusive" and saying "the prevailing opinion is wrong". I'm saying the former, not the latter.
I’m sorry but no, I consider myself quite rational and I simply didn’t stay up to date on the subject, to me it was still a possible theory with others. When a theory was seriously considered not too long ago you can’t suddenly label it conspiracy.
And the two combined present an enormous ethical challenge but also enormous potential - radioactive spiders imbuing superpowers upon humans they might bite, magical ooze creating anthropomorphic turtles, and so on
A standard part of preclinical research for medicines and topical ingrediants is to determine the LD50. That is the dose per unit of weight of an animal, typically lab rats, that will kill just about 50% +- some small range. That is time consuming to zero into a 50% kill rate over a statistically significant sample.
I suggest we should strive for a more educated public to raise the percentage of people who can have informed discussions. We've seen what happens when education is watered down, so let's try raising the bar, and pushing more science in high schools.
Climate activists backed and propagandized by the fossil fuel industry and the KGB.
And now that there are a number of barriers to creating new nuclear, the propaganda has flipped with fossil fuel companies supporting nuclear because they know it'll be decades before anything real can happen.
I have nothing against nuclear and if it can be built I'm for it. But at the moment, solar + battery is quick to deploy and about as cheap as you can get.
> But at the moment, solar + battery is quick to deploy and about as cheap as you can get.
The actual equation is solar + battery + gas fired power plant.
That’s the dirty secret behind intermittent power sources and why fossil fuel companies are all investing in solar and wind. Batteries are simply not enough to face the long term intermittence. It’s purely an intra-day solution at the moment and nobody knows how to actually run a large grid on purely intermittent sources.
Even China is actually aggressively pursuing nuclear at the same time it builds an insane amount of solar and gas fired power plants.
Long distant transmission lines would help with that. Also, I want to point out we need to decarbonize, so I don’t think gas considers all externalities that it causes, like air pollution.
The problem is that people don't really want to pay for it.
When you compare the rates at which people recognize the need to decarbonize, to the rates at which people are willing to pay 20-50% more for green energy, an obvious and expected trend arises.... people overwhelming don't want to put their money where there mouth is. Or they want someone elses money to go where there mouth is.
It needs to be understood that almost all those "green energy is cheaper than fossil fuels" studies use the best case scenario to calculate those values.
To put that another way, gas meets it's ideal pretty much everywhere, whereas green energy meets it's ideal in small, often far from society, spots. Transmission can bridge the gap to a degree, but it's then a cost multiplier.
A carbon tax is a good way to balance this, but man, people vote hard to not have to spend more of their own money. (I don't want to pay for it/I only want it if billionaires pay for it)
If you make the carbon tax revenue neutral, and dividend out the whole take per capita, those below median carbon emissions should end up ahead, and it does end up resting on the wealthy, since carbon emissions generally scale with spending.
I don't know about activists, vut the US green party was influenced by russia for years. There is evidence of influence with Jill Stein for instance. But if you pick a political organization anywhere in the world that doesn't show signs of Russian influence, that would almost be more suspicious.
To pretend that the US "green party" has anything to do whatsoever with the environment is beyond naive, it's completely disconnected from reality.
Neither their policies nor their electorate support the idea that people like Jill Stein are in any way looked at as authorities in any "green" subject.
I don't think that someone that had national relevance for roughly half an election cycle, and who got less than half of one percent of the vote (at the peak of her popularity) has had any influence shaping nuclear opinions.
She's not even on record stating her position, that's how utterly unimportant this issue to Putin / Russia.
I'm not even sure how you think Russia would benefit from less nuclear power plants an entire continent away
> I don't think that someone that had national relevance for roughly half an election cycle, and who got less than half of one percent of the vote (at the peak of her popularity) has had any influence shaping nuclear opinions.
It's not about any one person. You still see this now, where people suggest regulatory reform for the process of building new nuclear plants in the US to lower construction costs, people appear to tell you that nuclear costs too much and should be abandoned, i.e. they use circular logic to present the existence of the problem you're trying to solve as a reason not to try to address it.
The current line of reasoning is something like "solar plus storage is cheaper than nuclear so nuclear must never be attempted", which ignores both any possibility of improving the cost efficiency of nuclear and that the cost comparison they're using is for intra-day storage whereas nuclear also reduces the need for multi-day storage which is significantly more expensive.
> I'm not even sure how you think Russia would benefit from less nuclear power plants an entire continent away
Russia is a petroleum exporting country and petroleum is a global commodity. If the US (or anyone else) uses nuclear instead of fossil fuels then global demand for fossil fuels declines, US natural gas or coal producers instead sell to foreign customers who might have bought gas from Russia, etc.
Notice that the US oil industry has the same incentive. Exxon is very much aligned with Putin on this one and they have lobbyists too.
one of the current approaches is to turn communities against solar and wind projects on the grounds that it's racist or disturbs plant life etc. This has advocates of environmental justice, which is an important concern on its own, weaponized against building renewable energy.
NIMBY homeowners mostly. For instance, these days the Sierra Club mostly exists to preserve property values by blocking all new green energy construction.
China is eating everyone’s lunch on new(ish) sources of energy because it seems to have basically run out of old(er) ones. The insane amount of coal burning aside, there are e.g. basically as many hydroelectric plants in China as its enormous rivers can support, accompanied by the huge amounts of ecological and societal destruction that those always cause, and that’s still not enough. The buildup of both solar and nuclear energy infrastructure is not motivated by compassion for the environment or (pace George Carlin) the humans that have to live in it, it’s motivated by the cold, hard necessity of powering the industrial base. And if the project can partly fund itself by selling some of the production capacity to others, all the better.
None of this detracts from the quality of the engineering, but it’s important to keep the motivation in view (whether to filter out the propaganda or to try and reproduce something like this at home).
I don’t really care what the motivation is. If it means we get green energy over more coal-fired plants/fossil fuel sources than whatever. Call it Super Awesome MEGA PATRIOT Fuel for all I care. Right now we have an administration touting the virtues of “beautiful clean coal” on its official government website - https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/04/rein...
Solar + battery + wind actually do pretty well. There's a bit of a de-correlation between solar and wind that makes the mix more resilient than either alone. We can't do 100% in most places yet, but it's pretty straightforward to move to a much higher percentage of them in our grid mix than we have now, California possibly excepting. (But even in California you see battery starting to extend how much we can do with solar as prices continue to drop.)
And the plummeting price of solar modules makes it more cost effective to over provision for the case of clouds, and/or to mount solar panels to optimize for morning and evening production as well.
California has energy costs more than double most other states so it’s probably not the best argument for “it’s so easy to go mostly renewable.” A lot of things are feasible if you’re willing to [force everyone in the state to] spend 2x. Whatever California is trying to do in the past 20 years has been extraordinarily regressive.
It hasn’t, it is actually showing the way forward for a more dynamic energy mix. Regressive is continuing with the same 150y fossil fuel receipt for energy despite continuous advances in various clean technologies. California has multiple natural issues with regular fires and dry air that makes energy management very expensive.
Our energy costs are due to the distribution network and the massive amount of deferred maintenance on it that has come due in the last decade, accelerated by the Camp fire court case. There was a two year period a few years ago where power went out at least once a week while SDGE replaced every power pole in the rural east county by flying them in on helicopters. That's largely what we're paying for.
You'll see that right now (before solar has really kicked in), The price for the next megawatt hour of generation is $49 -- i.e., under 5c per kWh. That's comparable to the average price in PJM (east coast) at the same time:
The big problem for California is that cheap generation via solar doesn't move the needle as much on consumer bills because of the transmission and distribution costs. In San Francisco, for example the distribution fee is over $0.20/kWh. That's twice what mine is in Pittsburgh. In contrast, the generation pricing is only about $0.04/kWh more than mine:
In terms of consumer bills, California is actually among the states with typical spending on such things. Your actual energy bill in California is not that high. There are 14 American states where residential energy bills are higher than California's.
People are always pointing out the marginal volumetric costs of electricity, which is indeed very high. But that is just reflection of the fact that we use so little energy because of our history of efficiency laws and the mild climate, so the fixed charges and taxes that combine into the volumetric price are much higher than in other states. And our extremely large fleet of behind the meter solar panels also contributes to the higher volumetric price of grid electricity. All together, this doesn't tell us much about whether renewables are a good policy or not.
Agreed. The point I'm trying to make is that the breakdown of California's costs shows that it's not actually the generation cost, i.e., whether or not the generation is solar or fossil is not really the thing that's making the difference.
(When you factor in behind the meter, solar is, in fact, probably reducing the average cost to consumers.)
If the homes heated by gas or oil all switched to grid electricity, that would in all likelihood reduce the marginal volumetric price of electricity by amortizing the fixed costs over a larger volume.
Texas and Florida both have a lot of solar as well, with TX likely passing CA on battery storage over the next few years. Those states also have much cheaper energy than CA.
California's energy problems aren't due to the source of their energy.
Not sure how they're allowed to generate a profit or distribute dividends given the cost of the wildfires started by their complete and total failure to maintain equipment to minimum safety standards.
Molten salt solar power doesn't care. It remains hot.
Advancements in solar also are improving with clouds.
Also, you know, batteries. When someone makes it cost effective to install a device to sell your car battery power on the grid we'll also have a better time managing the grid during spikes... Would be nice if that also did home battery backup in blackouts... 70 kWh would get me through most of the ones I've experienced.
If the entire developed world had followed the same energy usage and nuclearization path as france, we’d be able to accommodate the entire developing world increasing carbon footprint up to the French level within the same overall carbon footprint we have today.
The activists of the 60s-90s were witnesses to the nuclear bombing of Japan, domestic nuclear accidents, as well as a nuclear arms race that threatened to wipe out all of humanity. It is unfortunate that we threw the baby out with the bathwater when it came to nuclear power generation, but the people who had issues with nuclear in that era did have good reasons to be afraid.
That's not supported by physics. Even at the worst - if the other reactor had somehow also melted down, that still wouldn't have caused a major climate change event. It would have been absolutely terrible, regionally, but not globally. Nuclear reactors aren't atomic bombs.
I don’t understand. Plenty of climate change related developments are regional. See: the increasingly devastating hurricanes forming in the Gulf of Mexico. Not every single thing that we attribute to climate change has to span the entire globe.
Yep. Also, the pro-nuclear techno-utopians of that era promised that nuclear electricity would be too cheap too meter, nuclear-powered cars would be common, and quite a few other things.
If the public doesn't understand complex new thing X, and advocates for X have obviously told them all sorts of lies - yeah. Don't be surprised if the public becomes extremely skeptical about X.
When you read about how incidents and accidents at research and commercial nuclear facilities have been denied, covered up, downplayed and fumbled sometimes for years and years you realize the problem is not nuclear technology but the people who manage it. Nuclear technology may have progressed but our ability to handle it ethically surely hasn't.
Nuclear accidents were common back then. Activists not only had good intentions they had actual accidents occuring with cover-ups. I think you're only seeing the worst parts here. They didn't follow the science as well as they should but they did get dumping sorted and held the industry liable.
1. Mining and processing are destructive
Uranium mining leaves behind contaminated soil, groundwater problems, tailings, and long-term ecological damage. “Yellow Cake” shows this clearly. These impacts last far longer than any economic benefit.
2. Operation is low-CO₂, but not low-risk
Severe accidents are rare, but the consequences are catastrophic when they do occur. Chernobyl and Fukushima are obvious examples. The U.S. history is full of near misses, leaks, hardware failures, and human-factor problems. Calling such a technology “safe” glosses over systemic vulnerability.
3. Waste cannot be neutralised
High-level waste remains hazardous for tens of thousands of years. No human institution has ever maintained stable responsibility for anything even close to that timeframe. Most countries still rely on interim storage because final repositories are politically and technically unresolved.
4. Long-term burdens are externalised
The benefits (electricity, profits, political narratives) are short-term and local. The harms (contamination, risk, millennia of monitoring) are long-term and imposed on future generations who cannot consent.
5. “Clean” becomes a marketing word
In lifecycle terms—mining, fuel fabrication, plant construction, decommissioning, and waste storage—nuclear energy cannot be “clean” in any holistic sense. It is at best low-carbon but high-burden.
This doesn’t mean nobody can argue for nuclear energy, but it does mean that calling it clean is a simplification that hides very real costs and risks
Certain lobbyists like hiding the end-to-end aspects of nuclear and focus mostly on “energy density”, “clean operations” etc, because they take advantage of the fact most people think short term (because, well, it is simpler). It is like the fossil fuel lobbyists that say gas is cheaper but never mention the externalities caused by e.g., the air pollution causing health issues to those living nearby LNG plants, who end up paying for the costs, just not at the moment of operationalization. Of course none of these proponents live near these infrastructures. This is the very same old 60-90’s stories with the tobacco industry saying smoking have health benefits.
Same is surprisingly common when weeding books in university libraries. Care is often taken disposing of material, as it can trigger a lot of drama if discovered by the student body.
> The public cannot be trusted to engage in a discussion about anything “nuclear” in good faith.
I agree the fears and subsequent responses are generally not warranted but to call it “bad faith” (by saying not in good faith) is not fair either. Some people are afraid and don’t understand it. We’ve all seen seen the disasters and communities impacted with higher rates of cancer even decades later as a direct result of the Manhattan Project. This stuff can be dangerous so it’s not meritless even if the reactions are wrong and generally uninformed.
People not engaging in good faith are doing it very deliberately.
Same thing with animal testing. You don't get to know where the monkey labs are but the alternative is we test on poor people? learn to keep secrets, people.
You also don't want the very stupidest of your politicians to catch wind of it [0]. None of these puppy people would refuse stroke treatment on the same ethical grounds, naturally.
Conspiracists and media brainwashed people will react this way no matter what. Doesn’t matter whether it’s secretive or not. It’s not about you or the subject matter but their need to feel important or in possession of some truth THEY don’t want you to know.
I suspect its less about the need to feel special than you imagine.
My take is that these folks can't accept that nobody is actually driving. It terrifies them to realize that we are all aboard a rudderless ship, so they imagine these secret cabals to be able to sleep at night.
Take COVID. There is insufficient proof that it was the result of lab work, but many many people prefer that warm fuzzy thought over acknowledging that mutating is just what viruses do, and always have done. Knowing that we're all one unlucky mutation away from grisly death is just too much for some folks. "It can't happen again, we shutdown that lab!"
To those people it has to be a nice, neat conspiracy. That way someone is in control, and if we just put those few villains in their place everyone will be safe from viruses, economic instabilty, immigrants, and the boogey man forever.
Steam power is no joke if you actually look at the numbers. At this scale, it lets you move energy around and convert it to electricity in fewer steps, with fewer losses, than any other strategy.
We are still trying to solve the problem that we can't keep the plasma hot long enough to create fusion energy, so working on exotic conversion schemes is one step too far.
Consider also how complex these reactors already are, it makes sense to use the simplest method that we know works well.
Makes sense, but from a layman perspective it seems like introducing additional complexity and lots of inefficient, high-loss transmission steps.
We start with detached electrons moving at high speeds (plasma). We want detached electrons moving at moderate speeds (electrical current). And yet, the intermediate steps involve everything from heat, steam, large-scale mechanical forces and magnetic induction, just to get back to the electrons?
It feels more like the "pull in a 500MB framework instead of writing the function yourself" kind of simplicity.
There are lots of ideas, like using a reverse cyclotron (a particle decelerator) to drive a turbine, or harnessing the photo-electric effect (essentially solar panels, but for x-rays).
The reason for the informal secrecy, as it was explained to me, is that every so often someone would find out there was plutonium etc in the basement and have a public freak out, including on occasion other (non-STEM) professors at the same university. These people would try to organize crusades to get it shut down because evil. Intentionally obscuring its existence greatly mitigated this drama. They appreciated us continuing the tradition of keeping it out of sight and out of mind from the general public.
The publicity around this Kodak case was an example of why no one talks about nuclear labs. The public cannot be trusted to engage in a discussion about anything “nuclear” in good faith. There are quite a few areas of science like this.