Scientist advocates clean nuclear power

Dr. Hadyn Williams reads from a letter warning of the dangers of nuclear proliferation and urging scientists to curb the growth of nuclear weapons. But his letter is dated Feb. 26, 1948, and it is signed "A. Einstein."

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Jackie Ricciardi/Staff

A copy of a letter Albert Einstein wrote in 1948 is framed in the Augusta home of Dr. Haydyn Williams, an associate professor of radiology. The renowned physicist wrote the letter to fellow scientists, warning of the dangers of nuclear proliferation.

Dr. Williams, the chief of nuclear medicine at Medical College of Georgia, got some recognition of his own recently when he was named Distinguished Scientist of the Year by Citizens for Nuclear Technology Awareness. He sees some potential for growth in peaceful uses of nuclear power, potentially in the Augusta area, in addition to the dangers Albert Einstein warned about.

The prized letter from the Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists, which Dr. Einstein led, was retrieved by a cousin from an estate sale in northern Maryland for $15.

"Of course, I was extremely interested in it," said Dr. Williams, who has had the Einstein signature authenticated.

What is most striking about the letter, however, is its prophetic message. Three of the eight members of the committee had worked on the Manhattan Project that produced the first atomic bombs.

"They were worried about what they'd done," Dr. Williams said. The letter was part of a fundraising effort to raise public awareness about the dangers of nuclear proliferation and the potential for nuclear war.

"I'm convinced that if the present bitterness continues to dominate international relations, we face catastrophe," Dr. Einstein wrote. "We cannot count on the prestige or strength of any single nation to bring about international stability. The power that one country possesses today, tomorrow will belong to others. So long as international relations are determined by rival nations' sovereignties, the threat of atomic war will remain."

If those scientists could see what is happening today, "I think they'd be a little worried with the nuclear capabilities of some unstable countries," Dr. Williams said. Those kind of fears also feed into the misconceptions people have about nuclear power, "that it is dangerous and dirty," Dr. Williams said. "And really, it is quite clean, especially the newer reactors don't produce hardly any radiation that would escape from them. The water they use for cooling is mostly recycled. They're efficient. They can be made now to use, instead of highly enriched uranium, low enriched uranium that could not be made into plutonium" for weapons.

France, for instance, gets 80 percent of its electricity from nuclear power plants. And radioactive isotopes derived from commercial reactors are widely used in medical imaging such as what Dr. Williams performs with the PET scanner.

There is only once source for these radiopharmaceuticals -- a reactor in Canada, Dr. Williams said. That hit home recently when Canadian regulators shut the plant down temporarily for safety concerns, an act that the Canadian parliament had to overturn.

"It's a critical part of any hospital imaging department now," Dr. Williams said. "We had to send out an e-mail telling the medical staff that we may not have these tests available after the end of the week, there was a great uproar."

That also prompted another discussion: why can't the United States make its own?

"There are a lot of reactors that could be converted to do this," Dr. Williams said. "And I'm thinking there are a lot of reactors at Savannah River Site that could be converted to do this. And it would be a very lucrative production. These are widely used everywhere in the U.S."

Reach Tom Corwin at (706) 823-3213 or tom.corwin@augustachronicle.com.