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38 The PCB Design Magazine • March 2015 2015 IPC aPeX eXPo show review After Wednesday's keynote, publisher Barry Matties invited Dr. Stanton Friedman, a nuclear physicist, lecturer and UFO researcher to the Real Time with… booth for a lengthy interview on Friedman's long career with companies such as GE, Westinghouse, and McDonnell Douglas, among others. Friedman has worked extensive- ly on highly advanced and classified programs focused on nuclear aircraft, fission and fusion rockets and compact nuclear power plants for space and terrestrial applications. Friedman has presented at more than 600 colleges and univer- sities and 100 organizations spanning the Unit- ed States and Canada, and more than a dozen countries abroad. The following is excerpted from the complete interview conducted on Feb- ruary 25, 2015 on the show floor. On EnERGy RESEARCh: Barry Matties: I'm interested in how your career and our industry eventually intersected. Let's start by telling us about your early career, and the scope of your work in energy programs. Stanton Friedman: From 1956 to 1959, I worked on the General Electric aircraft nuclear propulsion program at Cin- cinnati General Electric. In '58, we spent somewhere around $100 million. We employed 3,500 people, of whom 1,100 were engineers and scientists. In other words, it wasn't six profes- sors and 12 grad students; it was a major effort to develop a nuclear airplane that could fly farther, longer. It wouldn't have to stop for fuel. All the programs that I worked on spent tons of money. It was all based on the premise that we were going to beat the Russians. When I worked for Westinghouse, we tested a nuclear rocket engine that was less than eight feet in diameter. The power level was 4,400 megawatts, twice the power of Hoover Dam, which is a little bit larger than that. It was all government funding. Then they cancelled the program. It takes guts to pursue new technology. Barry: There is such a fear of nuclear energy as a power source, which I don't understand. Stanton: I don't understand it either. No- body said, "We should get rid of all our cars because we killed over 30,000 people last year with automobiles." That's the price you pay. Barry: I understand the catastrophe we saw in Japan, but now my understanding is, and maybe you can clear my thinking up here, that years ago the French approach was not to use rods, but balls, it seems. They turned off all the cooling. There was no melt-down. Stanton: The nuclear industry is frankly one of the safest industries. I'm not an apologist for the industry at all. I belong to the American Nuclear Society who use double, triple, qua- druple backups for things because they realize how important it is. If you're in a submarine, often in the middle of nowhere and down 1,000 feet, the alarm system better be reliable. It isn't Real Time with…IPC APEX EXPO 2015 An Interview with Keynote Speaker Dr. Stanton Friedman and Publisher Barry Matties show review