Update from Alan Hickman

On Ants and Nuclear Power Stations

When discussing the meaning of ‘natural’ in last Saturday’s class, I put forward the proposition that a nuclear power station is just as natural as an anthill.

Ants take natural sand and natural spit and use them to modify the environment for the benefit of their species. Humans take natural sand and natural pebbles and natural limestone, to make concrete buildings; they take natural iron and natural carbon to make steel structures, and they take natural uranium to make fuel, all to further the cause of the human species.

Anthill technology is just as cutting-edge to the ant species as nuclear power-station technology is to the human species. The difference, such as it might be, is one of degree, not one of kind.

Both the anthill and the power station are made of natural stuff dug out of the ground and processed. If the power-station is deemed to be not natural, then it can only be because the humans who made it are not natural. And that poses the question: ‘When did humans cease to be natural creatures?’

A couple of points which I did not bring up in class are here taken from Wikipedia:

“A natural nuclear fission reactor is a uranium deposit where analysis of isotope ratios has shown that self-sustaining nuclear chain reactions have occurred. The existence of this phenomenon was discovered in 1972 at Oklo in Gabon, Africa, by French physicist Francis Perrin. The conditions under which a natural nuclear reactor could exist had been predicted in 1956 by Paul Kazuo Kuroda. The conditions found were very similar to what was predicted.

Oklo is the only known location for this in the world and consists of 16 sites at which self-sustaining nuclear fission reactions took place approximately 1.7 billion years ago, and ran for a few hundred thousand years, averaging 100 kW of power output during that time.”

Additionally, “Plasma physicist John Brandenburg has detected anomalies in gamma ray emissions from Mars in data from the NASA Mars Odyssey orbiter. This points to an abundance of radioactive uranium, thorium and potassium, especially in one particular spot on Mars that indicates that there was once a thick layer of radioactive substances, and the likelihood of a natural reactor.”

There is probably not a whole lot that humans do that nature hasn’t already done without out help. Like harnessing fire and water we’ve merely figured out ways to get the energy stored in atoms to do work for us.

So what do anthills and power stations and the possibility of fission reactors on Mars have to do with gardening? The immediate object of the proposition was to show the importance of saying what you actually mean. Do not say unnatural if what you really mean is man-made. How an individual explores and resolves the deeper implications of the proposition, will influence how all sorts of decisions are made, both in and out of the garden.

High Temperature:
Actual: 1°C mostly sunny Wind WSW8km/h P.O.P.0%
Average: 2°C
Record: 19°C in 1946

Low Temperature:
Actual: -8°C mostly clear Wind WNW9km/h P.O.P.2%
Average: -6°C
Record: -20°C in 1988