Email from John Deutch of MIT w/cc to John Podesta about nuclear initiatives.
Attachment in email cites work by Sam Briton now working at DOE.
Deutch had his clearance suspended in 1999 for working on classified material on his home computer - https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/daily/aug99/deutch21.htm
Excerpt from bio:
"John Deutch has served in significant government and academic posts throughout his career. In May 1995, he was sworn in as Director of Central Intelligence following a unanimous vote in the Senate, and served as DCI until December 1996."
https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/682
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From:jmd@mit.edu
To: Brian_C_Deese@who.eop.gov
CC: john.podesta@gmail.com, Monizej@hq.doe.gov
Date: 2015-06-06 20:56
Subject: Be Careful
To Brian Deese,
I am informed that John Holdren is hosting a meeting on advanced nuclear
technology in the WH on June 15. This meeting to hear from an industry group,
“The Third Way” who are advocating an advanced nuclear technology and are
seeking the DOE to fund an “advanced nuclear test center.”
Here is what I told a friend (from the real world) about caution with this approach.
Best regard, John .
____
I believe this approach is deeply wrong. The greatest lesson from
large scale new technology demonstration projects is to spend a lot
of up front time analyzing the schedule, cost, and milestones of an
integrated project development. In the case nuclear power history shows
and common sense confirms that each technology option involves a
project time line on the order of a decade, a cost on the order of $10 billion,
and a very demanding up front regulatory process involving several years
and a couple of billion dollars.
Clearly the private sector is not going to undertake such projects - especially given
the low cost of natural gas. Equally clearly the federal government cannot afford
to pay for even a small fraction of the interesting new reactor concepts that are
around.
A nuclear innovation test center (at what cost) might cut the project development
time and cost of each of the many competing fission/fusion alternatives. But,
no estimate is offered of how much such a center might cost and how many
projects would need to be pursued to justify it.
In sum, too little analysis of the prospects and costs of the advanced nuclear fusion
alternatives and too little analysis of the leverage that might be realized from a
advanced nuclear test center.
The federal resources available for energy RD&D are limited. Do you want to
spend billions here or somewhere else. The U.S. certainly cannot afford to
pursue “all the above.”
John Deutch
****
John Deutch
Department of Chemistry
Room 6-215
MIT
Cambridge MA 02139
e-mail jmd@mit.edu<mailto:jmd@mit.edu>
Tel: 617 253 1479
Fax: 617 258 5700
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Bio
http://web.mit.edu/chemistry/deutch/biography.html