This is harder than research. Harder than making my presentation. Writing the script. Everything. The hard thing is interviewing someone for my project. My topic again for reminder is bombs, specifically speaking conventional bombs compared with nuclear bombs. I thought about it, who should I interview? So I thought, maybe someone in the military might help. Or a nuclear physicist! But only a list of people that aren’t alive came up. I mean, who studies nuclear physics now?

That led me to the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) located in Sante Fe, New Mexico. I live in New York. So I emailed their director Charles F. McMilian. After 4 days their was no reply so I called them. I talked with the secretary and the secretary said “He usually does not do that.” This was the start of my problem. The recommended date to finish the interview was in 2 days.

So plan B. Since this was urgent my dad helped me find good people because I am unskilled in navigating the web. I found 3 not directly relevant but still helpful people.  Those people are:

1.  Mr. David Albright. Works at Institute for Science and International Security ( ISIS ) Works on studying the risks of nuclear bombs and other hazardous large weapons. He studied in the nuclear section.
2. George M. Moore. In group called James Martin Center for Nonproliferation. Which basically means they are working to stop the production of nuclear bombs. This person I have my expectations on. If you happened to google the name of the people before you probably would have found out they are directors and founders. This person is a expert exactly in the field I am studying. Is probably less busy but still probably busy. I didn’t get a reply from anyone about yet but this person did. The bad part is he wrote that he can’t help and wished me good luck. 🙁

   

Now I was running quite late, actually in fact very late because the interview process was a long one. Replies don’t always come in 2 seconds and I can’t meet anyone because there are about 0 nuclear physicist near New York. Only choice means by email because the chances that at the second I call the person they aren’t busy is pretty low.

I sent emails to both these people. I may even try to BCC the Los Alamos Lab for the interview request.

March 24, C.E. 2017, 3:51 P.M. – Email sent to Dr. Ferenc Dalonki – Veress. Then my mom said “I got an email from this person named Dr. …Ferenc?” I got a reply in almost less than 5 minutes! I was saved. But the problem is his topic is not directly relevant to my main IQ. Hus work is based on the NPT, the nonproliferation treaty. That means he doesn’t study bombs and build them but does quite the opposite, limiting the production of nuclear weapons. So only about 5 questions were directly about his area of expertise. I included some questions not about NPT anyway. He said he was a bit busy which was fine. On May 31st I got the email. Although there were a couple tricky questions Dr. Ferenc successfully answered them. It was end semester and he was busy which was probably why he sent the email at 2:00 am. ( No time zone difference ).

The email was very elaborate. One of the biggest things he taught me was that in fact launching a building bombs isn’t that hard making limiting the use of bombs harder. Down below is the interview link. Answers to questions by Yanghee Lee-2cclhb3. He wrote a lot. He even shared a big slideshow with lots of information. I learned that in fact it is not the heat but the blast wave that does the most damage. Dr. Ferenc explained next that HEU can be acquired easily making terrorism a lot more dangerous.  Obviously I didn’t get to meet him in person. But I still learned a lot through email and also found email helpful because I don’t have to transcript my interview.

He also remarked that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not as destructive is in yield but were destructive due to the amount of deaths. So one of my questions as you probably knew if you clicked on the link is which event would you prevent if you could prevent 1 disaster. As Dr. Ferenc wrote about this he included a more political aspect I did not really think about. He wrote about how there is growing evidence that Japan would have surrendered without the bombings which killed over 200, 000 people, most being civilians.

Since nuclear bombs and even bombs of any sort has no answer it was interesting to hear about other opinions. He said he thinks nuclear bombs are quite not helpful and even wrote that air force pilots did not like releasing nukes. Dr. Ferenc said nuclear weapons are bulky, heavy, inaccurate, and importantly unnecessarily powerful. For example even when the United States could have just bombed Nagasaki’s base they destroyed the whole city while also killing many people that did not need to be killed.

Anyway I think I hit a jackpot with my interview and my interview went along great!