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Atomic Awakening: A New Look at the History and Future of Nuclear Power
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$ 22.37
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$ 26.95 |
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$ 4.58 (17%) |
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| Item Number |
740704 |
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Item Description...
Overview
Evaluates the potential of nuclear technology as a non-polluting, renewable energy source while describing how nuclear energy's negative association with weapons development and the Cold War has stymied the progress of its beneficial uses.
Publishers Description
Renown physicist and researcher Jim Mahaffey examines how nuclear power, an environmentally clean, inexpensive, and completely renewable source of energy, has become stigmatized and ignored as a solution to the world's energy crisis and dependency on oil due to its historical "debut" as a weapon of apocalyptic destruction. However, for all the perceived danger of nuclear power, it has become the safest industry in the world. More employees die per 1000 in the real-estate sales industry than die in the nuclear power industry, and that includes on-the-job deaths as well as deaths from cancer. Outlining nuclear energy's discovery and applications throughout history, Mahaffey discusses the increasingly relevant paradox of nuclear energy in an age where atmospheric chemistry and world climate-change have become serious, global concerns.
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Item Specifications...
Pages 344
Dimensions: Length: 1.25" Width: 6.5" Height: 9.25"
Weight: 1.42 lbs.
Binding Hardcover
Release Date Jun 23, 2009
ISBN 1605980404
EAN 9781605980409
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Availability 1 units.
Availability accurate as of May 30, 2012 03:54.
Usually ships within one to two business days from La Vergne, TN.
Orders shipping to an address other than a confirmed Credit Card / Paypal Billing address may incur and additional processing delay.
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Reviews - What do our customers think?
 | Not what I expected Dec 1, 2009 |
I was hoping for more information about the future of nuclear power. Instead, I got a lot of unexpected information about the history of nuclear weapons.
I still rate it five stars because it is a very good read. I was immediately absorbed and finished it quickly. I learned all kinds of interesting things.
His writing style is very concise and easy to follow.
I hope Dr. Mahaffey writes a new book about nuclear fusion. | | | | An Excellent Read. Nov 25, 2009 |
I found this book exciting to read. Mahaffey takes the complex subject of Nuclear Physics and tells a fascinating story beginning in the 1700's and ending today.
I couldn't put it down. All the great scientific names we learned in school are brought to life along with their atomic accomplishments and failures. Maxwell, Planck, J.J. Thompson, Curie, Einstein, Rutherford, Bohr, Fermi, Oppenheimer, and many more, all weaved into a somewhat chronological account that takes us into WWII and the Little Boy and Fat Man Atomic Bombs. Then to Admiral Richover and the Nuclear Submarine and how we got to where we are today in Nuclear Power.
The Three Mile Island and Chernobyl disasters are enlightening fast-paced reads, and by the time you reach them toward the end of the book you have been educated in the fundamental workings of a nuclear reactor (without realizing it), and are able to follow along with the erupting emergency situations within those two reactors.
Mahaffey candidly explains the risks taken and the accidents made by the nuclear industry throughout the book. He doesn't seem to sugar-coat the failures and disasters as they are all valuable learning experiences. He finally dedicates about a page and a half almost at the end of the book to make his claim for Nuclear Power.
I encourage anyone who is interested in history, global warming, science, nuclear energy, nuclear physics, atomic bombs, radiation medicine, radiation poisoning, uranium, plutonium, or space travel to read this book. It is a lively, interesting, and educational read.
I give Mahaffey Five Stars.
| | | | Among the best! Sep 16, 2009 |
I was 15 years old when a news flash announced the atomic bomb drop on Hiroshima. Even at that age I understood that history shattering event meant that the war would soon be over and that the men and science behind that development had changed the world . Fascinated by the technology and the geniuses that developed it, I've read several related books over the years including the Pulitzer Prize winning, "The Making of the Atomic Bomb", by Richard Rhodes. James Mahaffey's, "Atomic Awakening", ranks right up there among the best of them. Written with a delightful wit, brief biographical sketches and anecdotes of the scientists responsible, he adds a human touch to a development that some might characterize as a very inhuman accomplishment. I truly enjoyed reading this book.
Aside from the subject matter, noteworthy is Mahaffey's appropriate use of footnotes which add much to the readability and understanding. Many authors use end notes for this purpose which I find very awkward to read, and therefore almost useless.
| | |  | Atomic Awakening Aug 8, 2009 |
| I thoroughly enjoyed the book although the author's bias for nuclear power is clear. He more or less writes off the huge problem of waste storage as being caused more or less by overreacting environmentalists, ignoring the tremendous potential dangers of on-site storage of high level waste without a containment structure (for at least another decade), the risk of terrorism and accidents during the transportation of the waste to the federal repository and the siesmic and water migration issues at the repository. Likewise he glosses over the disasterous history of nuclear fuel reprocessing in the US and dismisses out of hand President Carter's rejection of fuel reprocessing because of concerns of terrorism as "odd". | | | | Theory and Practice - a balanced approach Aug 8, 2009 |
The Holy Trinity of science best sellers like Brian Green's "The Elegant Universe or Walter" Issacson's "Einstein: His Life and Universe" has been people, history and science. James Mahaffey's Atomic Awakening breaks this mold with addition of application, interrelation and a point of view.
Mahaffey, a nuclear engineer as well as physicist, gives an extremely readable, no entertaining, history of nuclear physics. He also explains the science better than any other book I've read on physics. Because he shows the interrelation of theory and practice I finally understand Heisenberg's theory of uncertainty and why the key to a nuclear reactor is to slow down, not speed up, the neutrons. That is, if you cannot know with certainty where the Uranium atoms are you have a better chance of hitting one if the added neutrons spend more time in the target area by going slow!
Mahaffey brings the theory to practice without editorializing by comparing the devil we know with the devil we don't know. His well quoted example that if the first use of gasoline was napalm we would all be driving electric cars is dead on. Mahaffey describes the dangers of a nuclear accident, balances that with the cost of non-nuclear alternatives, then leaves the conclusion to the reader. | | | Write your own review about Atomic Awakening: A New Look at the History and Future of Nuclear Power
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