[SUSPENDED] Up and Atom!

[Verdant Haven]

I want to present a somewhat general issue about the implications and uses of nuclear research. It is such a varied and debated subject, with applications to numerous other fields. This issue draws minor inspirations from the notorious "Demon Core", as well as the Litvinenko murder.

[TITLE] Up and Atom!

[DESCRIPTION] An enterprising group of @@DEMONYM@@ nuclear physicists, with financial backing from a surprising array of governmental and industrial sources, has established a research laboratory just outside @@CAPITAL@@. Using a subcritical mass of plutonium surrounded by tungsten carbide bricks, their occasionally-deadly demonstrations of fission physics have stirred the imaginations of their sponsors... and the fears of the populace.

[VALIDITY] Does not have Nuclear Power. Has at least moderate scientific advancement

[Validity] Private Industry
[CHOICE 1A] "Success teaches us nothing; only failure teaches" states @@RANDOMMALEFIRSTNAME@@ Rickover, aspiring director of a start-up power utility. "We marvel at the great truths our previous failures have taught us! With the lessons we've learned from the heroic sacrifices of these scientists, we have safely harnessed the power of the atom at last. Honor these men and women by committing government funding to our efforts, and behold the technological wonder of safe, clean nuclear power that will be too cheap to meter!"

[FALLOUT 1] no technology is considered safe until it has killed a few people


[Validity] No Private Industry
[CHOICE 1B] "Success teaches us nothing; only failure teaches" states @@RANDOMMALEFIRSTNAME@@ Rickover, director of the state power utility's technology branch. "We marvel at the great truths our previous failures have taught us! With the lessons we've learned from the heroic sacrifices of these scientists, we have safely harnessed the power of the atom at last. Honor our brave comrades by redirecting government funding to nuclear power, and we shall provide the people with safe, clean nuclear power that will be too cheap to meter!"

[FALLOUT 1] no technology is considered safe until it has killed a few people


VALIDITY: No WMDs.
[CHOICE 2] "I must disagree with the director" interjects your Defense Department's Undersecretary for Large Explosions, J. Robert @@RANDOMLASTNAME@@. "We do not need nuclear power in our homes; we need it in our enemies' homes, and their streets, and their fields! The deaths of those scientists have shown us what the atom can do – let us prepare ourselves to unleash it upon any foe who dares to cross us. Turn this power over to the military, @@LEADER@@, and you shall become Death, the destroyer of worlds!"

[FALLOUT 2] megatons get mega-funds


[CHOICE 3] "You know, I've studied the cases of the scientists who were exposed" offers your Surgeon General, doctor @@RANDOMNAME@@, as @@HE@@ flips through a stack of patient charts. "While it's true that the radiation did seem to cause a number of tumors and other complications, there's an interesting example here where a pre-existing tumor actually shrunk after exposure. I think with enough funding, we could harness the deadly atom for medical purposes, and actually save some lives!"

[FALLOUT 3] clinics offer patients "buy-one get-one" deals on unpredictable mutations


[CHOICE 4] "Excuse me, have you forgotten how terribly those scientists died? Their long painful suffering, unable even to move or speak?" demands @@RANDOMFEMALEFIRSTNAME@@ Caldicott angrily. "How about not killing people, and protecting the environment to boot? It doesn't matter if it's here at home, or abroad with our so-called enemies; nobody deserves to have this poison in their lives! These scientists are clearly out of control – you need to prohibit this research, chop all of their budgets, and keep a close eye on what dangers they're cooking up next!"

[FALLOUT 4] elementary school science fairs are overrun with secret agents


[Validity] At least moderate Authoritarianism
[CHOICE 5] As you finally succeed in shooing the petitioners from your office, you are startled by a shadowy figure. A voice that you're fairly certain belongs to your intelligence chief rasps out "So, this stuff kills people, does it? Silently? Painfully? Untraceably perhaps? Seize that core and slip it my way. @@NAME@@ has some enemies that need to be eliminated, and a horrible drawn-out public death sounds like just the right ticket. Nobody will be able to prove it was you, of course, but trust me… they'll get the message."

[FALLOUT 5] @@DEMONYMADJECTIVE@@ assassins are easily followed using a Geiger Counter

1st Draft:

There are currently, to the best of my knowledge, no issues at all that reverse the policy "No Nuclear Power" and only one issue that adds the "Nuclear Power" policy. I want to fill that gap somewhat, and present a more general issue about the implications and uses of nuclear research, drawing minor inspirations from the notorious "Demon Core", as well as the Litvinenko murder.

[TITLE] Up and Atom!

[DESCRIPTION] While the prohibition on nuclear power may have dimmed the lights, it has not dimmed the enthusiasm of a group of young @@DEMONYM@@ physicists. Operating from their laboratory just outside @@CAPITAL@@, using a subcritical mass of plutonium surrounded by tungsten carbide bricks, their sometimes-deadly demonstrations of fission physics have stirred the interest of the populace... and your advisors.

[VALIDITY] Has prohibited nuclear power, has at least moderate scientific advancement


[CHOICE 1] "Success teaches us nothing; only failure teaches" states @@RANDOMMALEFIRSTNAME@@ Rickover, director of the lab. "We marvel at the great truths our previous failures have taught us! With the lessons we've learned, we have safely harnessed the power of the atom at last. Honor the sacrifice these men and women made, lift the ban, and behold the technological wonder of safe, clean nuclear power that will be too cheap to meter!"

[FALLOUT 1] no technology is considered safe until it has killed a few people
(Policy change: remove "No Nuclear Power")
(Policy change: add "Nuclear Power")

VALIDITY: No WMDs.
[CHOICE 2] "I must disagree with the director" interjects your Defense Department's Undersecretary for Large Explosions, J. Robert @@RANDOMLASTNAME@@. "We do not need nuclear power in our homes, we need it in our enemies' homes! We've seen what the atom can do – let us prepare ourselves to unleash it upon any foe who dares to cross us. Turn this power over to the military, @@LEADER@@, and you shall become Death, the destroyer of worlds!"

[FALLOUT 2] megatons get mega-funds
(Policy change: remove "No WMDs")
(Policy change: add "Weapons of Mass Desctruction")

[CHOICE 3] "Excuse me, have you forgotten why we prohibited nuclear power in the first place?" queries @@RANDOMFEMALEFIRSTNAME@@ Caldicott angrily. We did it because we don't want people to die, and we don't want to mess up the environment! It doesn't matter if it's here at home, or abroad with our so-called enemies; nobody deserves that! These scientists are clearly out of control – you need to prohibit this research, chop all of their budgets, and keep a close eye on what dangers they're cooking up next!

[FALLOUT 3] elementary school science fairs are overrun with secret agents
(Policy change: add "No WMDs" if not already present)

[CHOICE 4] As you finally succeed in shooing the petitioners from your office, you are startled by a shadowy figure. A voice that you're fairly certain belongs to your intelligence chief @@RANDOMNAME@@ rasps out "So, this stuff kills people, does it? Silently? Painfully? Untraceably even? Seize that core and slip it my way. @@NAME@@ has some enemies that need to be eliminated, and a horrible drawn-out public death sounds like just the right ticket. Nobody will be able to prove it was you, of course, but trust me… they'll get the message.

[FALLOUT 4] @@DEMONYMADJECTIVE@@ spies are easily followed using a Geiger Counter

[Trotterdam]

There are currently, to the best of my knowledge, no issues at all that reverse the policy "No Nuclear Power," and only one issue that adds the "Nuclear Power" policy.

I'm guessing you're basing this off of my site?

This is, in part, because of the recent database reset needed to clear data corruption from the zombie bug, meaning that some rarely-happening things haven't been re-observed yet.

Querying an old backup database from August, I find that #69 3, #301 1, and #649 3 are all capable of giving the Nuclear Power policy (#649 doing so seems odd - maybe it's because a nation that previously outsourced its nuclear power to other countries was forced to bring it back home? I'm not seeing this on other Autarky-setting options, though), and #69 3 can does so in nations that previously had the No Nuclear Power policy, implicitly removing it.

It should be kept in mind that the No Nuclear Power policy is kind of hard to get, as two of the three ways of doing so requires you to have already had nuclear power before, then changed your mind and gotten rid of it (with the third way being an obvious crazy option). Players doing that and then changing their mind AGAIN to bring nuclear power back requires being very indecisive, so it just doesn't happen much, even though it's possible. Hence why my post-reset database hasn't seen it.

your Defense Department's Undersecretary for Large Explosions

Best. Title. Ever. Or at least this week.

[Verdant Haven]

I think I chose a really bad time to check the listings! Second time this week I got something like that wrong :-P Must have done it like the day after the wipe. Thanks for the info about how those choices interacted! I'll remove the "no nuclear power" validity, and reword this as a more general nuclear issue (which is what 3/4 of it already is).

I was pretty pleased with that title as well :-D. Glad to hear it tickled your fancy, too!

[Ransium]

I think I chose a really bad time to check the listings! Second time this week I got something like that wrong :-P Must have done it like the day after the wipe. Thanks for the info about how those choices interacted! I'll remove the "no nuclear power" validity, and reword this as a more general nuclear issue (which is what 3/4 of it already is).

I was pretty pleased with that title as well :-D. Glad to hear it tickled your fancy, too!

So keep in mind the no nuclear policy isn’t really a policy, but the nuclear power policy being turned off. However, some options set the nuclear policy to off regardless of whether it was ever actually turned on. Long story short a more general nuclear power premise would be better.

[Verdant Haven]

That's perfect, actually, as that was the direction I ended up taking it! New draft posted, here's the changelog:

- Removed all validities and references based on "No Nuclear Power" policy, and changed it to just not being "Nuclear Powered"
- Removed policy suggestions in the fallout sections - best I just leave that to the folks in charge
- Retooled Choice 1 as the director of a power utility, rather than the lab director
- Split Choice 1 in to capitalist and socialist versions
- Minor textual modifcations to the original Choice 2 and Choice 3 (now Choice 2 and Choice 4) to better fit the new narrative
- Added a new Choice 3 to introduce Nuclear Medicine to the equation
- Added an authoritarianism validity to the option about assassinating enemies

[USS Monitor]

This feels very Cold War era. It'd be a good issue if NS was a Cold War era simulator, but issues are supposed to be a modern setting. While there are still some countries that have never developed nuclear stuff, it's getting rarer and rarer. If nothing else, the scientific advancement check should exclude the most advanced nations.

[Trotterdam]

So keep in mind the no nuclear policy isn’t really a policy, but the nuclear power policy being turned off.

It's possible for a nation to have neither, though, which I guess means that you aren't actually using nuclear power but also haven't officially ruled against it? Or that you're allowing private enterprises (if extant) to build nuclear reactors but aren't encouraging them to?

Honestly I think we can probably do with the No Nuclear Power policy, since it doesn't really do anything that the simple lack of the Nuclear Power policy can't, even though the two are not exactly equivalent right now.

This feels very Cold War era. It'd be a good issue if NS was a Cold War era simulator, but issues are supposed to be a modern setting. While there are still some countries that have never developed nuclear stuff, it's getting rarer and rarer. If nothing else, the scientific advancement check should exclude the most advanced nations.

This is contradicted by the fact that, despite scientific advancement, some nations still don't use nuclear power.

Only 31 nations in real life use nuclear power, with countries as large and prosperous as Australia having none at all, while only 5 nations use nuclear power for a majority of their energy. And of course, in NationStates, there are nations that don't have the Nuclear Power policy. The alleged unsafety and waste disposal problems of nuclear power are the chief reasons for this.

[CHOICE 3] "You know, I've studied the cases of the scientists who were exposed" offers your Surgeon General, doctor @@RANDOMNAME@@, as @@HE@@ flips through a stack of patient charts. "While it's true that the radiation did seem to cause a number of tumors and other complications, there's an interesting example here where a pre-existing tumor actually shrunk after exposure. I think with enough funding, we could harness the deadly atom for medical purposes, and actually save some lives!"

[FALLOUT 3] clinics offer patients "buy-one get-one" deals on unpredictable mutations

While radioactive isotopse and radiation beams have some medical uses, they require surgical precision rather than just "throw radiation at it", and involve very different physics than nuclear reactors. It seems rather disconnected from the rest of the issue.

Honestly, that's also true of the last option, with the assassination.

(Little-known fact: the physics of nuclear fission reactors actually has very little to do with radioactivity. It just happens that the input and waste materials for efficient nuclear fission are predominantly radioactive, but that is not really the reason why it works. Mainly, it's just that useful nuclear fission requires high-atomic-mass elements, and all high-atomic-mass elements are inevitably also radioactive, though not highly so - uranium is actually safe to hold in your hands, provided you wash them thoroughly afterwards. The waste materials of a nuclear reactor that has been running for a while are a lot nastier, but they're just that: side effects, not the main point of running the thing.)

[USS Monitor]

This feels very Cold War era. It'd be a good issue if NS was a Cold War era simulator, but issues are supposed to be a modern setting. While there are still some countries that have never developed nuclear stuff, it's getting rarer and rarer. If nothing else, the scientific advancement check should exclude the most advanced nations.

This is contradicted by the fact that, despite scientific advancement, some nations still don't use nuclear power.

Only 31 nations in real life use nuclear power, with countries as large and prosperous as Australia having none at all, while only 5 nations use nuclear power for a majority of their energy. And of course, in NationStates, there are nations that don't have the Nuclear Power policy. The alleged unsafety and waste disposal problems of nuclear power are the chief reasons for this.

It's written as if the scientists don't know what they're doing because nuclear technology is new to them, not as if it is a familiar technology that has been kept off the commercial market by choice.

Most of our playerbase is from countries that have nuclear power. Any country that has nuclear weapons or a nuclear reactor for research purposes IRL is probably above the tech level that this issue is written for, even if they don't have nuclear power -- with the possible exception of places like North Korea that have major political problems which prevent them getting international help with their research and development.

[Trotterdam]

It's written as if the scientists don't know what they're doing because nuclear technology is new to them, not as if it is a familiar technology that has been kept off the commercial market by choice.

That's not how I'm reading this at all.

[CHOICE 1A] "Success teaches us nothing; only failure teaches" states @@RANDOMMALEFIRSTNAME@@ Rickover, aspiring director of a start-up power utility. "We marvel at the great truths our previous failures have taught us! With the lessons we've learned from the heroic sacrifices of these scientists, we have safely harnessed the power of the atom at last. Honor these men and women by committing government funding to our efforts, and behold the technological wonder of safe, clean nuclear power that will be too cheap to meter!"

This scientist sounds like he's pretty confident in his design, even if he's treating it as a relatively new development. People who oppose nuclear power usually cite safety concerns, to this day, but this guy (why is he fixed to male, anyway?) claims to have completed (not be just starting on) research that alleviates those safety concerns (not makes nuclear power viable in the first place).

Since minor nuclear accidents like Fukushima continue to (very rarely) happen in recent times, we can continue to learn from those failures and make our nuclear reactors even safer, as this scientist claims to have done.

Most of our playerbase is from countries that have nuclear power.

And most of our player nations don't, though it's hard to tell if that's due to deliberate choice or due to there only being a small number of issues that give it.

Only 18% of nations have the Nuclear Power policy, and 1.25% have the No Nuclear Power policy. (Logically, no nation has both.)

[Sacara]

I definitely agree with USS Monitor here. This feels like something that would occur during the 1930s and 1940s when this first started -- not something present day.

[Candlewhisper Archive]

It's written as if the scientists don't know what they're doing because nuclear technology is new to them, not as if it is a familiar technology that has been kept off the commercial market by choice.

Glad you said that, as that was my feel as well.

It seems to be an issue that assumes that nuclear power is something unexpected and new, rather than a known technology.

[Altmer Dominion]

It's written as if the scientists don't know what they're doing because nuclear technology is new to them, not as if it is a familiar technology that has been kept off the commercial market by choice.

Glad you said that, as that was my feel as well.

It seems to be an issue that assumes that nuclear power is something unexpected and new, rather than a known technology.

Agreed; Not sure I was totally on board with the 1950's/Cold War angle due to the existing acknowledgement of McCarthyism, but this line of thought is most similar to mine. I wonder if this might be salvageable if the validity and wording hearkened to a very primitive nation on the cusp of something greater.

[Nagatar Karumuttu Chettiar]

I love the premise of the issue, and wish I could give better feedback, but how about changing "secret agents" to "government spies" or something.

Again, this is WAY better than most anything I produce.

[Verdant Haven]

I definitely do have some different "head-canon" about the general state of the world than many folks, as I've discovered over the course of attempting to write issues. I very much presumed that because of things like the starting space programs, McCarthyism, the Capitalist vs Socialist divide, etc... that the general world state included a great deal of Cold War feel. All of that stuff smacks of the 50s-80s, which is very much a period when it would make sense to have nations discovering for themselves the powers and dangers of nuclear experimentation. Obviously there are also very modern issues dealing with stuff like genetics and the high-speed internet, but with everything existing together, this didn't feel out of place to me. I mean hell - there's an issue being written with people talking like cavemen debating about if it's ok to use fire to cook meat.

I can see re-flagging it as a "low tech" nation issue rather than a "high tech" nation issue for the reasons listed. Perhaps this is what "high primitiveness" looks like in NS? I can also take a look at the writing to reword it with some references to catching up to higher-tech neighbors and such, to acknowledge that some of the world is far beyond this point.

[Australian rePublic]

We already know the effects of radiation

[Verdant Haven]

Alright, I'm going to suspend this one and take it back to the whiteboard for an overhaul reflecting more accurately the accepted world-state of NS. Thank you for the feedback!