Edward Teller

Edward Teller (original Hungarian name Teller Ede) (January 15, 1908 – September 9 2003) was a Hungarian-born American nuclear physicist of Jewish descent. He was known colloquially as "the father of the hydrogen bomb."

Star Wars, Plowshares, and Three Mile Island

Teller was Director of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (1958-1960) and then an Associate Director. He also served concurrently as a Professor of Physics at the University of California, Berkeley. He was a tireless advocate of a strong nuclear program and argued for continued testing and development (in fact, he stepped down from the directorship of Livermore so that he could better lobby against the proposed test ban). In 1975 he retired and was named Director Emeritus of the Livermore Laboratory and appointed Senior Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution.

Related Topics:
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory - University of California, Berkeley - Test ban - Hoover Institution

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In the 1980s, Teller began a strong campaign for what was later called the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), derided by critics as "Star Wars", the concept of using lasers or satellites to destroy incoming Russian ICBMs. Teller lobbied with government agencies—and got the sanction of President Ronald Reagan—for his plan to develop a system using elaborate satellites which used atomic weapons to fire X-ray lasers at incoming missiles. However scandal erupted when it later became apparent that the scheme was technically infeasible and that Teller (and his associate Lowell Wood) had deliberately oversold the program and perhaps had encouraged the dismissal of a laboratory director (Roy Woodruff) who had attempted to correct the error. The futility of the system was pointed out by many scientists. Hans Bethe, along with IBM physicist Richard Garwin, coauthored an article in Scientific American which analysed the system and concluded that any putative enemy could disable such a system by the use of suitable decoys. The project was eventually scaled back many times over. Teller was later encouraged, however, by the Bush administration's revitalization of the missile defense program in the early 21st century (known to its critics as "Son of Star Wars").

Related Topics:
1980s - Strategic Defense Initiative - Russia - ICBM - Ronald Reagan - Lowell Wood - Roy Woodruff - Bush

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Despite (or perhaps because of) his hawkish reputation, Teller made a public point of noting that he regretted the use of the first atomic bombs on civilian cities during World War II, and before the bombing of Hiroshima he had indeed lobbied Oppenheimer to use the weapons first in a "demonstration" which could be witnessed by the Japanese high-command and citizenry before using them to incur thousands of deaths. The "father of the hydrogen bomb" would use this quasi-anti-nuclear stance (he would say that he believed nuclear weapons to be unfortunate, but that the arms race was unavoidable due to intractable nature of Communism), to promote technologies such as SDI, arguing that they were needed to make sure that nuclear weapons could never be used again (Better a shield than a sword was the title of one of his books on the subject).

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Teller also proposed various non-military uses of nuclear explosives, including a project to carve out a harbor in Alaska by detonating a hydrogen bomb on the sea floor as a part of Operation Plowshare. While working for the Atomic Energy Commission in the late 1950s and 1960s, he proposed "Project Chariot", in which hydrogen bombs would be used to dig a harbor more than a mile long and half a mile wide to provide a deep-water harbor for coal fields near Point Hope. Various factors, including opposition from the Inupiat people living near Point Hope and the fact that the harbor would be ice-bound nine months of the year, doomed the project.

Related Topics:
Operation Plowshare - Atomic Energy Commission - 1950 - 1960 - Project Chariot - Point Hope - Inupiat

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Teller suffered a heart attack in 1979, which he blamed on Jane Fonda: after the Three Mile Island accident, the actress had outspokenly lobbied against nuclear power while promoting her latest movie, The China Syndrome (a movie depicting a nuclear accident which had coincidentally been released only a little over a week before the actual incident). In response, Teller acted quickly to lobby in favor of nuclear energy, testifying to its safety and reliability, and after such a flurry of activity suffered the attack. Teller authored a two-page spread in the Wall Street Journal which appeared on July 31, 1979, under the headline "I was the only victim of Three-Mile Island", which opened with:

Related Topics:
Jane Fonda - Three Mile Island - Nuclear power - The China Syndrome - Wall Street Journal

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:"On May 7, a few weeks after the accident at Three-Mile Island, I was in Washington. I was there to refute some of that propaganda that Ralph Nader, Jane Fonda and their kind are spewing to the news media in their attempt to frighten people away from nuclear power. I am 71 years old, and I was working 20 hours a day. The strain was too much. The next day, I suffered a heart attack. You might say that I was the only one whose health was affected by that reactor near Harrisburg. No, that would be wrong. It was not the reactor. It was Jane Fonda. Reactors are not dangerous."

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An editorial criticizing the ad ran the next day in The New York Times, noting that it was sponsored by Dresser Industries -- the company which had manufactured one of the defective valves which contributed to the accident at Three Mile Island.

Related Topics:
The New York Times - Dresser Industries

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