Companion to The Hydroplate Theory and the Heat Problem. Every quotation below was checked against the source on disk. Where a source could not be opened, the entry says so.
Walt Brown on the heat problem
Refusing the miracle — In the Beginning, 8th ed. p. 400:
Creationists, who believe the earth is young, must explain why we see so many radioactive decay products if the earth is not billions of years old. A few creationists, without carefully considering how earth's radioactivity began, say that radioactive decay rates must have miraculously accelerated at some unknown time in the past to produce all those decay products. But that would have generated enough heat to boil all the oceans away, so they say that another miracle must have removed all that heat. While I agree that the earth is young, miracles should not be imagined to solve scientific problems. That would violate the most basic rule of science.
His own answer, same page:
As the Proton 21 Laboratory has demonstrated, in what is call "cold repacking," most of the heat produced was absorbed in producing heavy elements, such as uranium. Therefore, accelerated decay did not overheat the earth or evaporate all our oceans. A miracle is not needed and, of course, should never be claimed just to solve a scientific problem.
Same page, bottom:
Nuclear energy primarily became electrical energy and then kinetic energy. Had the nuclear energy produced heat only, much of the earth would have melted. Also remember, quartz piezoelectricity shuts off at about 1,063°F (573°C).
Conceding the magnitude — endnote 89, pp. 428–429:
If 7.72 × 10³⁷ ergs of thermal energy were evenly distributed throughout the earth at one time, the earth would melt! Earth's mass is 5.976 × 10²⁷ grams.
The scale, p. 396:
Part of the nuclear energy absorbed by the subterranean water can be calculated. It was truly gigantic, amounting to a directed energy release of 1,800 trillion 1-megaton hydrogen bombs! Fortunately, that energy was produced over weeks, throughout the entire preflood earth's 60-mile-thick (12-billion-cubic-mile) crust.
The budget gap, in his own Technical Notes, p. 600 — the requirement first:
Perhaps twice this energy was needed because a small amount of other mass (such as meteoroids and water) was launched besides that listed in Table 44 and some heat was held in the chamber's ceiling and floor. Let's assume that the total energy required was 2.2 × 10³⁸ ergs.
then, immediately after, the supply:
As explained in Endnote 89 on page 428 (and repeated below), just the production of deuterium (heavy hydrogen) in Earth's oceans released 7.72 × 10³⁷ ergs of energy (one-third of the needed energy)! Many other isotopes were produced which would have released additional energy.
Walt Brown on the mechanism
Chapter summary, p. 381:
SUMMARY: As the flood began, stresses in the massive fluttering crust generated huge voltages via the piezoelectric effect. For weeks, powerful electrical surges within earth's crust—much like bolts of lightning—produced equally powerful magnetic forces that squeezed (according to Faraday's Law) atomic nuclei together into highly unstable, superheavy elements. Those superheavy elements quickly fissioned and decayed into subatomic particles and various isotopes, some of which were radioactive.
The neutron flux that fixes the isotope ratios, p. 395 — this is the passage the samarium argument turns on:
This production was accompanied by a heavy flux of neutrons, so nuclei absorbed enough neutrons to make them nearly stable. This is why the ratios of the various isotopes of a particular element are generally fixed. These fixed ratios are seen throughout the earth, because the flood and flux of neutrons was global.
Accelerated decay, p. 400:
Months later, the compression event (which, as explained on page 488, lasted less than 1 hour) suddenly generated even more powerful piezoelectric surges which caused accelerated radioactive decay.
The challenge to critics, p. 400:
Anyone who wishes to dispute the Proton 21 Laboratory's evidence should first read Controlled Nucleosynthesis and then explain the thousands of ruptured electrodes
John Baumgardner against Brown
Flood Science Review (2011), p. 522 — the amplitude limit Brown never imposes:
Brown neglects to place any limit whatever on the amplitude of the oscillation. But there is an obvious limit, namely, the starting thickness of the water layer, that is, 0.75 miles or 1612 m. … the peak level of stored elastic energy in this flexing layer, corresponding to this maximum flexing amplitude and a wavelength of oscillation of 1000 km is only about 0.10 J/kg! Furthermore, the peak elastic stress generated by the flexing plate for this wavelength of oscillation is only 5.1 × 10⁶ Pa or 51 bars.
p. 526 — the fission fragments:
Most of the energy released in nuclear fission is in the kinetic energy of the fission fragments, energy which almost instantly is converted into heat. For ²³⁵U, the ratio of the kinetic energy of the fission fragments to the kinetic energy of the neutrons produced in the fission process is about 33. … If the kinetic energy of the fission fragments was 33 times that of these fast neutrons, the waste heat arising from these fission fragments alone would be 7.9 × 10³¹ J, which is 3.6 × 10⁹ J/kg of granite, enough to vaporize the entire granite crust hundreds of times over.
p. 526, the summary judgment:
Note that Brown does not mention, even once, the gigantic problem of the waste heat that is implied by the processes he hypothesizes. Obviously, vaporizing the outer tens of kilometers of the Earth is unacceptable. Why does Brown not mention this waste heat issue? One obvious reason is that there is no conceivable solution for it.
Michael Oard against Brown
Creation Ministries International, 2013:
His ideas on the formation of radioactive elements equally suffer from a lack of quantitative evidence. Furthermore, Brown's mechanism of fluttering or waving of upper granite crust and water hammers seems orders of magnitude insufficient to cause radioactive elements.
I especially question that there would have been sufficient force for the jets of water to do what they are claimed to have done. … The mechanisms of 'fluttering' and 'water hammers' seem much too weak to overcome the Earth's gravity. A lot of quantitative calculations are required to show the sufficiency of the 'rupture phase'.
RATE on its own heat problem
Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth Vol. 2, p. 761:
The heat would have melted the crustal rocks many times over unless there was some mechanism for simultaneously removing it quickly. How did the earth survive such a massive dose of heat without vaporizing the oceans and melting the rocks? How did Noah and his family survive such an environment on the Ark?
p. 762 — the miracle Brown objects to, stated by RATE itself:
From the simple fact that Noah, his family, and the animals survived and left the Ark at the end of the Genesis Flood we can infer at least one of several possibilities:
- no accelerated decay occurred;
- no large amount of heat was generated by the accelerated decay; and
- God supernaturally protected Noah and his entourage by rapidly removing the large amount of heat that was produced by some unknown mechanism
p. 763, hedging their own proposed fix:
Humphreys' postulated explanation represents only a beginning attempt to understanding the complicated events of the Genesis Flood and may not, in fact, be the correct mechanism.
p. 764:
The RATE project did not have time to pursue this issue to any significant depth. We encourage others with the requisite physics background to investigate this problem and explore these largely uncharted waters.
William Worraker, defending no model
Answers Research Journal 11:185 (2018), on granite:
more than 13 times enough to completely melt the granite, and may even be enough to vaporize it
Biblical Creation Trust project summary:
The main sources of heat during the Flood are: (1) Accelerated Nuclear Decay, (2) Catastrophic Plate Tectonics (CPT) and (3) bombardment from space. Each is overwhelmingly sufficient to melt the entire Earth's crust or to boil away the oceans.
Creation Ministries International
On the heat problem generally, 2020:
there is no simple scientific answer to this issue. Indeed, there may not be one. However, this need not be problematic.
The defenders conceding
Bryan Nickel, on his own published 2019 worksheet, beside Baumgardner's figure:
joule ← do not understand JB's calc
Bryan Nickel, 2025 seminar, walking back the central claim of his own Part 8:
we don't want to say that the whole process is adiabatic … I wish I was more clear in that part of the statement in even in my video
Bryan Nickel, same seminar, on the thorough heat treatment announced for 2021:
on six years now
Bryan Nickel, Overview Part 4 (04:16), on a heat source that appears in no budget:
melted the surfaces
Bryan Nickel, radio programme 5 (44:00), on Glen Kuban's friction objection:
the rest of it he's exactly right
Walt Brown, on the Standing For Truth channel, about the rival young-earth model:
I agree he's got a terrible viscosity problem terrible
Where a source could not be opened
Two Standing For Truth videos are members-only and could not be retrieved: "The Genesis Flood Core Model: The 'Heat Problem' Just Melted Away" and "Post Hydroplate Theory Seminar Q&A." Both are recent and hydroplate-relevant. Nothing in this article depends on them.