Editorial Report 13a

Editing is an important part of the writing process. It allows for peers to review how we are doing and help us improve. Here is my editorial report.

Fine Draft Section:
So, maybe this is a large fault in the design of the reactors. But it is not one easily exploited. According the article from Nature.com, the amount of energy that is given off by the decaying processes is 50 watts per gram of Protratium-233 (Ashely, Stephen F). This might seem meaningless to someone who isn’t familiar with energy so to put it in perspective, 50 Watts would raise the temperature of 1 gram of water, 12 degrees Celsius which is about 21.6 degrees Fahrenheit. In order for something to be considered weapons-grade it must be 8 kilograms meaning that the amount of energy produced is roughly 400,000 Watts of energy. This amount of energy produced requires large facilities meaning terrorist groups would be unable to carry out the conversion (McKenna, Phil). So the dangers of weapons-grade Uranium falling into the wrong hands are minimized. This leaves governments having the ability to produce the weapons-grade Uranium and with countries like North Korea with the potential to become increasingly dangerous. For this, there is no response and the only thing that can be done is monitor the process as closely as possible to ensure that the Protractium is not extracted and allowed to be made into Uranium. This can be easily done with the help of the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission and the International Atomic Energy Agency. But even with these manageable costs associated with Thorium energy, there is one positive side to it that arguably outweighs all the negatives.

Edited Section:
So, maybe this is a large fault in the design of the reactors. But it is not one easily exploited. According the article from Nature.com, the amount of energy that is given off by the decaying processes is 50 watts per gram of Protratium-233 (Ashely, Stephen F). This might seem meaningless to someone who isn’t familiar with energy so to put it in perspective, 50 Watts would raise the temperature of 1 gram of water, 12 degrees Celsius which is about 21.6 degrees Fahrenheit. In order for something to be considered weapons-grade it must be 8 kilograms meaning that the amount of energy produced is roughly 400,000 Watts of energy. This amount of energy produced requires large facilities meaning terrorist groups would be unable to carry out the conversion (McKenna, Phil). So the dangers of weapons-grade Uranium falling into the wrong hands are minimized. This leaves governments having the ability to produce the weapons-grade Uranium and with countries like North Korea with the potential to become increasingly dangerous. This can be controlled with the help of the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The IAEA has a primary goal of assisting governments in developing nuclear energy programs and at the same time keeping them from developing nuclear weapons (“Safeguard to Prevent Nuclear Proliferation”). So it wouldn’t be adding much work to the IAEA to oversee Thorium reactor productions as well. But even with these manageable costs associated with Thorium energy, there is one positive side to it that arguably outweighs all of its negatives.

Questions:

1. How did the content change (even slightly - details matter!) when you re-edited it? Why do you think the content is being communicated more effectively in the re-edited version?

I added a part near the end of the paragraph to talk about the IAEA and how it already is already keeping countries from having nuclear weapons. I think this will strengthen the argument.

 

2. How did the form change (even slightly - details matter!) when you re-edited it? Why do you think the form is presenting the content more effectively in the re-edited version?
The form changed as much as a never used tire on a museum exhibit car; it didn't.