Rad Future

1: The Dawn of the Atomic Age

The hallways of the stone building are dead silent as fluffy snow falls outside. Most researchers have gone home, but Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann are still holed up in their lab, messing with equipment. Fritz looks out the window with his icy blue eyes and zones out for a sec, questioning his choices. A newlywed, he pictures his wife all alone at home, playing a sad tune on the violin. What would he be doing if he weren't a scientist? Hopefully something more fun than spending his nights in a dimly lit room with an old guy and a bunch of beakers.

They have spent all day bombarding uranium-a radioactive element-with neutrons. Lots of physicists, including the famous Enrico Fermi, have done this before. But Otto and Fritz are chemists, and their analysis is showing them something new.

Fritz gets up from his hard metal stool and walks across the room, trying to remember what it feels like to have blood flowing to his legs. He's had enough science for the day; he's ready to go home. But just as he is about to hang up his white lab coat and make a break for it, Otto convinces him to run the experiment one more time.

Their lab setup looks like a scene straight out of a B movie about mad scientists, complete with bubbling beakers and humming gadgets. They set up their uranium sample for what feels like the millionth time, hit it with neutrons, and do another chemical analysis of it. Maybe this time they'll be able to figure out what the hell is happening.

According to the current scientific understanding, they should be detecting something heavier than uranium. But Otto and Fritz are detecting barium, an element that is a lot lighter than uranium. Almost half its weight, to be precise . . .

They rally and repeat the experiment a bunch of times, probably hoping the universe will start making sense again. But it doesn't. Each time, they get barium. It's almost like the uranium atom is splitting into completely different elements. Wild. By now, it's very late and they're either geniuses or completely unhinged. Fritz and Otto decide to call it a night and write a letter in the morning to their colleague Lise Meitner, a badass physicist, who's in Sweden.

When Lise gets the letter, she's as confused by the results of the experiment as they are. She teams up with her nephew, fellow physicist Otto Frisch, to try and figure this out. They decide to go for a walk in the snow, probably because the best ideas happen when you are freezing. After a few minutes of walking and shivering, they come up with a crazy idea: What if the nucleus of the uranium atom is splitting in half and releasing a lot of energy in the process? After crunching some numbers on scraps of paper, they realize they're onto something huge-like world-changing huge.

Less than a month after their wild night at the lab, Otto and Fritz publish a paper on their observations, but they won't say an atom had split. "As nuclear chemists we cannot bring ourselves to take this step, so contradictory to all the experience of nuclear physics." That seems fair, to be honest. Who wants to go down in history as the guys who cried split atoms over some spilled barium?

But Lise Meitner couldn't care less if others think she is delulu. She has the math to prove it. Lise and her nephew Otto replicate the experiment for themselves and publish the first two official papers on what they dub "nuclear fission." Legendary.

Just imagine how psyched Meitner, Frisch, Hahn, and Strassmann get when they realize their discovery will unlock the powerful energy trapped inside the atom and usher in a whole new era. From now on, the world will never be the same. Except for one detail. The real-life version of this story took place in 1938 . . . in Germany.

What Could Have Been

Word of the discovery of nuclear fission gets out quickly. At the University of Chicago in the United States, scientists jump up from their desks and awkwardly dance in their offices, celebrating the news. Some even start crying. They know this technology is a complete game changer-a source of power so dense that it will put an end to humanity's scarcity era. Never again will we struggle to find enough energy to meet the growing demands of society, a problem that has led to competition, wars, and economic drama. Just a couple of years later, that same group of scientists from the University of Chicago finishes building the world's first nuclear reactor: Chicago Pile-1.

The success of Chicago Pile-1 proves it is possible to get steady energy out of reactors, and countries rush to build their own. Nuclear electricity becomes ridiculously cheap and quickly pops up all over, from Brazil to the United States to India. In a world with unlimited access to clean and cheap energy, things that sounded like science fiction become everyday reality.

Within twenty years of the discovery of nuclear fission, London becomes completely different from the smog-filled mess it once was. The city is so clean you could eat off the streets. Well, not literally, but you know what I mean. As countries use less and less fossil fuel, deaths caused by air pollution dwindle everywhere. Lifespan goes up and things like asthma enter the category of "weird conditions people used to have in the past," like tuberculosis.

In the United States, New York City becomes the poster child of this new era, featuring huge skyscrapers, some powered by mini reactors, sparkling against the night sky. Balconies overflow with plants, creating a sort of vertical jungle. The Hudson River, once a toxic waste dump, is now so clear you could practically see the fish high-fiving each other. Central Park, blessed with fresh air, lush greenery, and the sound of birds, becomes the go-to spot for people needing a break from the city's chaos.

Transportation has a makeover too with electric vehicles kicking gas-guzzlers to the curb. High-speed trains zoom along magnetic tracks, connecting cities and countries, making travel incredibly easy. The annoying sounds of cars, motorcycles, and leaf blowers is replaced by the sounds of nature and people talking to one another. Nuclear-powered ships crisscross the oceans, delivering goods everywhere without spewing out pollution.

Because nuclear power plants take up such a tiny amount of land, green areas spring up around cities and forests flourish, while the planet begins to heal from the gross effects of the Industrial Revolution. Nuclear electricity becomes the backbone for incredible new clean energy tech. It allows us to come up with scaled-down wind turbines that seamlessly blend into buildings. Solar cells cover roofs and surfaces, collecting energy from the sun. Cities become truly clean and green as coal, oil, and methane gas become ancient history.

Economies boom as they have a surplus of energy and don't have to import fossil fuels, allowing nations to put a lot more money into education, healthcare, and research instead. Global cooperation goes up as countries swap nuclear electricity tech and know-how, creating an atmosphere of unity and progress. Energy independence also cuts down the clout of oil-rich nations and leads to a more balanced world stage. Energy conflicts fizzle out, replaced by teamwork on nuclear safety and waste management.

Within forty years of the discovery of nuclear fission, every single human on Earth has access to electricity. Okay, not everyone. There is a small group of people who chose to live "the old school way" by using only firewood and not embracing electricity. But hey, to each their own.

Going all in on nuclear eventually enables us to unleash the full potential of artificial intelligence to help solve the world's hardest problems. We find the cure to most cancers, eliminate all genetic diseases, and keep making people healthier. Nuclear also gives us the electricity needed to recycle even the most difficult things like electronics, plastics, and batteries. With rockets powered by nuclear thermal propulsion, we can explore the universe faster and settle on other planets. Tiny nuclear reactors power human colonies on the moon and Mars, making humans an interplanetary species.

Nuclear fission completely transforms the course of human history. With a cheap, plentiful, and safe source of energy accessible to all, humans enter an unprecedented chapter of prosperity, abundance, and peace.

What Actually Happened

You might be scratching your head right now, wondering if I've taken some hardcore drugs or if we live in different universes. Our planet could have looked closer to what I just described in italics, had the discovery of nuclear fission happened in a different year or a different place. But, tragically for us, Hahn and Strassmann's night at the lab happened during one of the worst times ever. You don't need to be a history buff to know that 1938 in Germany was a "bad place, bad time" situation-a time when a dictator was working to build up his forces and weapons in preparation for his megalomaniacal ambitions.

As the two chemists studied in their lab, Nazis marched on the streets outside.

Lise Meitner was one of their closest colleagues. The only reason she wasn't in the lab with them that night was because she had fled to Sweden to escape persecution, and possibly death, for being Jewish. World War II would start one year later.

While physicists around the world were buzzing with excitement over the discovery of nuclear fission, some of them also saw the writing on the wall. Controlled splitting of atoms could provide useful energy to power people's lives. But uncontrolled splitting of atoms could create a weapon of mass destruction unlike anything the world had ever seen.

In August 1939, less than a year after the discovery, celebrity physicist Albert Einstein cowrote a letter with physicist Leo Szilard to American president Franklin D. Roosevelt sounding the alarm about the potential dangers of this new breakthrough. He warned that Germany was most likely already trying to develop a bomb using the underlying science. Imagine the level of destruction and suffering Hitler could have inflicted upon the world, had he gotten his murderous hands on nuclear weapons.

Eventually the rumors motivated Roosevelt to kick-start a massive effort to beat Nazi Germany to the nuclear bomb punch. The Manhattan Project launched in 1942 under the leadership of J. Robert Oppenheimer. Lise Meitner was invited to join the effort but refused, saying, "I will have nothing to do with a bomb!"

The effort culminated in the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, which effectively ended World War II. It's estimated that between 129,000 and 226,000 people, mostly civilians, were killed. That would be the first and last time, so far, that nuclear weapons have been used in battle.

Just two years after the chaos of World War II, the planet's biggest superpowers decided to keep the drama going by getting straight into the Cold War. Because apparently, peace and harmony were just overrated. During this time, the United States and Russia engaged in an arms race, stockpiling a bunch of nuclear weapons and creating a whole new anxiety genre: nuclear annihilation, the fear that a weapons exchange would wipe humans off Earth. The national security concept was MAD-Mutual Assured Destruction-meaning that any country that used nuclear weapons against its enemy would be wiped out as well.

For obvious reasons, this fear scarred a whole generation, especially those who had to do "duck and cover" drills. Picture American kids in the 1950s and 1960s in school doing their thing. Suddenly, an alarm goes off and the teacher yells, "Duck and Cover!" They drop everything and lunge under desks, hands over their heads. The geopolitical tensions were so high at the time, everyone feared and prepared for a nuclear weapons attack at any minute.

It didn't seem like an overreaction back then. The photos of the aftermath of the bombings in Japan had become seared into public consciousness and the wars in Korea (1950-53) and Vietnam (1954-75) kept everyone on edge.

To say that the timing of the discovery of nuclear fission was shitty would be an understatement. It could have changed everything for the better. But the world was introduced to nuclear technology through horrific images of mushroom clouds and terrified children crying, running away from crumbling buildings. Besides the awful devastation, the dropping of the bombs resulted in unexpected collateral damage, which ended up causing even more harm for humans.

The Impact

The public could not disentangle images of mushroom clouds and frightening duck and cover drills from the peaceful use of nuclear to generate electricity. And how could they? Governments made everything worse, as they cast a veil of secrecy over all nuclear research. From the 1940s until 1954, only the military could build and operate reactors. As a result, anything with the word "nuclear" in it became something to fear, and we ended up villainizing one of the best sources of energy we have.

The full story of how we got to be so anti-nuclear electricity is a lot more complicated-and wildly fascinating. It's filled with mystery, unexpected events, and celebrities. I'll dive into all the juicy details in chapter 7, but for now all you need to know is this: In large part because of the bad rep it got during the Cold War, nuclear electricity hasn't had the opportunity to reach its full positive potential.

Instead, in the second half of the twentieth century, the world doubled down on fossil fuels as our primary energy source, developing an addiction that we still haven't been able to kick and that's costing us immensely. In a single year the pollution from burning these fuels causes at least four million deaths, which is way more than nuclear electricity has ever caused in its entire history.

Our addiction to coal, oil, and methane gas has polluted communities, claimed millions of lives, and set the stage for one of the biggest threats our civilization faces: climate change. At the same time, energy inequality and poverty remain serious issues.

Is it surprising that so many people, especially young people, feel anxiety and dread about the future? They're living in a world that seems to be inching closer and closer to total environmental and societal collapse.

Infinite Possibility

Energy poverty is a topic that gets me fired up. That's because I was born in 1990 in Brazil, in a small town about ninety miles north of the border with Uruguay. Though my family was middle-class, my apartment had few modern amenities because electricity was very expensive and sometimes unreliable. To give you an idea, in the 1990s the United States created eight times more electricity per person than Brazil. We had all the basics-lights, a gas stove, a refrigerator, and a standing fan. But other tech that people in North America take for granted, like air-conditioning, dishwashers, and laundry machines, was something only the wealthy could afford.