“Atomic Awakening”

James Mahaffey

Thinking about the arc of this book, it’s honestly hilarious. The introduction feels condescending; the point of it is to tell you, the reader, that you know less about nuclear science and the nuclear industry than the author. Which is true; he has a degree and a job history in nuclear engineering, he does know more about it than I do! That’s why I’m reading a book he wrote about it, instead of the other way around!

From there, it dives into the history of nuclear physics as a science. Lots of whacky 1800s anecdotes here, and an approach to lab safety that was… concerning at best.

Next, we get to the bit everyone knows at least a little about: World War II and the Manhattan Project. As much of a nerd about nuclear history as I am, there was still plenty in here that was new for me; I enjoyed the bit that General Groves, anxious about the delayed-by-a-few-hours first atom bomb test, called up the governor and threatened to impose martial law over all of New Mexico. I guess the stress ball hadn’t been invented yet.

The second-to-last portion is basically a list of every major nuclear accident. There were a few I hadn’t heard of. Windscale was a relatively recent discovery for me, but I like that every telling of it has to hit the note of Cockroft’s Folly. When the world gives you dramatic irony, you’ve gotta use it. New to me, and very interesting by appearing to be the first use of a nuclear reactor as the weapon in a murder-suicide, was SL-1.1 I do so enjoy that, in this area of interest of mine, I can still find entirely new pieces of the history to learn about.

Then, having spent something like half the length of the book describing in detail everything that can go wrong with nuclear power, the book pivots to talking about how great nuclear power is and why we should be doing more of it. Admittedly, I agree with most of the arguments; it is a very safe, low-carbon producer of energy, and having that kind of baseload available really does help with the intermittency issues posed by renewables. I’m less convinced of his assertions about nuclear waste reprocessing and storage; yes, those would be good to do, but unfortunately, we can’t make this book required reading for the entire country, so the political issues remain.

Overall, a very enjoyable read; if you, like me, never get bored of talking about nuclear energy, check it out!2

Very dark comedy to the Army trying to make a Fool-Proof Nuclear Reactor; nothing says “we’ve underestimated the ingenuity of fools” like an investigation requiring tests like “now, act like you’re halfway through manually removing the control rod from the reactor, and Frank here is gonna punch you in the crotch, we need to know if the reflex response is to pull the rod further out or to drop it back in.”
I won’t leave you in suspense: it was to drop the rod, and they concluded that it was a deliberate choice to pull it all the way out and cause the explosion. I suppose that if you’re trying to really test your ‘fool-proof’ designation, it is valuable to put some high-level fools in it and see what happens… ↩

This is a Bookshop affiliate link – if you buy it from here, I get a little bit of commission. It won’t hurt my feelings if you buy it elsewhere; honestly, I’d rather you check it out from your local library, or go to a local book store. I use Bookshop affiliate links instead of Amazon because they distribute a significant chunk of their profits to small, local book stores. ↩