It's been a while since I've written an article. I have been really busy, but I thank my readers for their interest.
Let’s start with the CANDU rector, since this substack is about nuclear power.
CANDU stands for CANadian Deuterium Uranium which was made into a word. (You know those inventive Canadians!) The CANDU reactor uses naturally occurring uranium (not enriched) but uses heavy water for the moderator. This allows the use of natural uranium in the power reactor. It's a relatively safe reactor as far as commercial reactors go (I’d personally own one), and they've had some success and have some 4th generation design iterations. So, all in all it's OK, but one thing that's characteristic of the CANDU is that it can be refueled while it's online because it has a calandria.
That means the fuel can be placed in channels inside the reactor and removed without shutting off the reactor or taking it apart. This is very similar to the Hanford reactors that were designed during World War 2 to produce plutonium for the atomic bomb, but they used graphite (carbon) for moderation instead of heavy water.
Lo and behold the Indian government bought a CANDU reactor back when and used the CANDU reactor precisely for making plutonium for bombs. The CANDU, though successful commercially is not proliferation resistant. It's a drawback of the design.
Hand it to the Canadians, though, for developing and marketing a reactor and they did it with panache and they called it CANDU.
I guess that's a success story but the proliferation aspect of the reactor is poor, actually it's not proliferation resistant since the Indians used it to build their bomb. (And then the Pakistanis had to counter with their own bomb, and then a Pakastani sold the tech to North Korea…)
Canola stands for Canadian oil low acid. Bear with me for a minute, canola oil is used in everything; every food item imaginable around the world these days, but it wasn't like that until about 1972. Canola oil comes from a plant called rapeseed and the Canadians grew it during World War 2 for marine engine oil.
Yes, it was used to lubricate marine engines. When the war ended the Canadian farmers were out of business growing rapeseed for oil, but due to incredible scientific inventiveness, a couple of agronomists and universities found a strain of rapeseed that only had 2% toxic erucic acid.
Other varieties of rapeseed had 50% toxic erucic acid so being scientists they did what scientists do and that was increase the efficiency of the process and lower the erucic acid content, so now millions of tons of canola oil are grown and extracted in Canada.
The entire food supply of the planet has been contaminated with canola oil. Maybe we should all rest easy and not let us not let it bother us that canola oil, by law can only have up to 2% toxic erucic acid, instead of 50%. God bless them for such a discovery!
I'm not exaggerating when I say you can go to the grocery store and pick up almost any item and it will be chalk full of either canola, soybean, cottonseed, corn oil or some other industrial, highly processed slime.
You can try this home experiment. Eliminate from your diet, for one month, all canola, soybean, and seed oils. In order to do this experiment you're going to have to dedicate yourself because it is literally in everything! But avoid these seed oils and in a month see how you feel. See what you weigh. I bet you a free subscription to this substack that you will feel better and you will weigh less.
I guess you can call it a Canadian success story. (I'm really starting to doubt the the benevolence of scientists.) Let's develop a reactor that we can sell to foreigners and they can make plutonium with it for bombs. And let's have our farmers grow low erucic acid rapeseed so we can make it into canola oil and sell it to the entire universe and call it vegetable oil. (Question, as a kid did your mom ever make you eat a vegetable called rapeseed?)
Of course, in the United States we have our own patent medicine of global food contamination. It’s called high fructose corn syrup and all the other industrial processed gunk that comes from corn.
I guess I'm just disappointed in the inventiveness of people from the corn belt, like Iowa. Instead of calling high fructose corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup they could have called it Iowacane sugar. You know kinda like iocane powder from the movie The Princess Bride?
I'm in favor of nuclear power, but I also expect some safeguards against proliferation. I think thermal spectrum thorium molten salt reactors are robustly anti-proliferation because the fissile fuel is uranium 233. I'm only aware of one instance where somebody tried to make a bomb out of 233 and it was the United States and there's some discussion that it really didn't have much U233 in it.
Take me up on my experiment for the next month, avoid canola, soybean, and all seed oils and avoid foods that have high fructose corn syrup. Weigh yourself at the beginning and at the end and see if you don't feel objectively better at the end of four weeks.
I know that means you're going to have to give up your Coke or your Pepsi, but drink water. Also, the diet soft drinks are not good either. Just drink water or find some Mexican Coca-Cola that uses actual sugar. I believe that's less damaging than high fructose corn syrup, sucralose, aspartame and all the other artificial sweeteners.
Call me a nut job, but do the experiment.