Atomic Accidents: A History of Nuclear Meltdowns and Disasters; From the Ozark Mountains to Fukushima

I must tell you straight out of the gate I am a science nerd and a geek of the first order. I could be friends with Sheldon on the TV series Big Bang Theory ok. That said Atomic Accidents: A History of Nuclear Meltdowns and Disasters is a very readable book even for the person who is not a science nerd or geek. When I was a little kid in Elementary School, I was immersed in conversations about heat neutrons moderated in light water. I knew more about the Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant than most kids. Back in the 1970's Baltimore Gas & Electric Company put out a comic book about its soon to be completed Calvert Cliffs power plant and yes I had two copies. I knew about Calvert Cliffs two WESTINGHOUSE, Pressurized Water Reactors (PWR's), their energy output of about 870 MW. I will talk at length about such things if you let me even today. I was an autistic kid and nuclear power was one of the few things I loved talking about to anyone who wanted to listen.I've read almost every book avaialble about nuclear power plants both pro and con. Atomic Accidents: A History of Nuclear Meltdowns and Disasters gives me more insight into disasters I knew about than any other book I've read. This book tells individual stories of that shaped the history of nuclear power not just in the USA but in England and Russia especially in the old Soviet era. The one accident Atomic Accidents: A History of Nuclear Meltdowns and Disasters said was an untold mystery in Russia I've known about for years.There was a cheesy documentary story called a Birthday Bomb for Uncle Joe or something like that which aired a LONG time ago. It told how Joe Stalin scared the heck out of Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria by saying he wanted a Soviet Atomic Bomb by his birthday. Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria worked his people like slaves in hopes of meeting Stalins directive since people like him found themselves in Soviet prison camps for worse for far lesser crimes. The break neck pace that brought the Soviet Union its first Implosion (Fat Man Type) Atomic Bomb came at a terrible cost to the environment and to the people working on the project. Gulag prisoners were worked to death minning needed radioactive ores with little to no safety measures in place. Scientists too worked like slaves to get an Atomic Bomb ready for detonation ASAP! Soviet Plutonium 239 extraction was not really very good at all. Wastes and run off from atomic piles were filled with Plutonium 239 crude Soviet era processes could not capture. Stored in cave formations underground, stored in tanks, stored wherever their was space near the Plutonium 239 production facility these highly radioactive waste products were allowed to accumulate. Eventually like in Space 1999 the whole thing just blew up like a dirty bomb.This book did teach me one thing that till now I did not know. I never knew how easy it is to create a reactor. Reactor meaning the conditions suitable for starting an atomic chain reaction. I learned that the shape of a container, the concentration of atomic material and how it is stored all factor into a complex yet simply beautiful equation that shapes a "reactor!" Also I never knew about the purple flash that foretells the worse possible nuclear event just happened. I knoew about the disaster in the UK involving Windscale. I always loved the stacks with the huge boxy filters on top. It was funny to learn the reason for the design was to rectify an oversight in design on the cheap.Let's face it on so many levels this book was the most excited reading I've done in my life. Reading Atomic Accidents: A History of Nuclear Meltdowns and Disasters is as much fun for me as an adult as Christmas morning was for me as a child. What made this book so special for me is the stories it tells are not dry and boring totally devoid of the human element. Atomic Accidents: A History of Nuclear Meltdowns and Disasters is not all complex formulae and lifeless numbers. The people behind the atom industry were clearly in evidence on every page. Human hope, arrogance, ignorance and greed and mysery laid out in equal measure for all the world to see on every page.Another thing I did not understand was why the Clinch River Fast Breeder Reactor was such a waste such a folly. About one billion dollars spent and nothing to show for it. I knew about the Fermi 1 Fast Breeder Reactor and its pathetic history. Till reading Atomic Accidents: A History of Nuclear Meltdowns and Disasters, the only account I had of the events was the stupid press report that suggested we almost lost Detroit which I now know was the stuff of utter nonsense.This is a fun book to read full of what happens when the best laid plans of mankind go seriously wrong. The first section of the book is best where it describes atomic power like a normally doscile hard working mule who is just waiting for the most oppertune time to kick your head in. Atomic power has two faces one good the other unpredictable. Atomic Accidents: A History of Nuclear Meltdowns and Disasters gives you a full eye contact look at both of Atomic Powers faces without passing judgment on either. I'll stop now because; I could talk about readability and other virtues of Atomic Accidents: A History of Nuclear Meltdowns and Disasters forever and never get tired. Atomic Accidents: A History of Nuclear Meltdowns and Disasters is a great book for technical geels and nerds but it is also a great insightful book for anyone who wants to have a really great understanding about atomic energy in all its useful and not so useful forms.UPDATE: This book hopefully foretells the future of Atomic Power used to generate electricity. The Thorium Reactor it is awesome. If you love this book you must absolutely must read up on the Thorium Reactor a LOT less dangerous and poluting than the Rickover Navy Pressurized Water Reactor. Let's face it Nuclear Reactors in some form or other are here to stay because we just need the power for all those electronic devices we can't live without now and those still waiting in our future. The thorium reactor is the best version of nuclear power possible and the government should do everything possible to promote Thorium Reactors as our next generation Nuclear power source when all these old power plants we are using now are put out to pasture.

I purchased this book for my 9 year old son who is crazy about Nuclear Power Plants! He wants to know everything about them.When I picked up the book, just to look at it, I found that I couldn’t stop reading! It’s fantastic, riveting, and informative. The Author does a great job in explaining details in a way that you understand it, but don’t become bored.I definitely recommend to both children and adults.

This was not the book I expected when I purchased it. I was expecting an authoritative, well researched, well documented treatise on the history of nuclear accidents. It was certainly that. But I was also expecting a dry, pedantic, academic, formal, and boring book that I was determined to slog thorough because I wanted to understand the topic.In a story that traces its plot from a wrecked 2-10-0 decapod steam engine in north Georgia in 1954 to a massive hydrogen explosion at Fukushima Daiichi, Japan in 2011, the human story is always front and center. Don’t misunderstand, Mahaffey understands the technology intimately and he describes the technical details with an engineers precision, but he also understands that it is the interface between the human and the machine where the true story is told, and time-and-time again, where the culprit of tragedy is to be found.Although the title makes it sound like an academic textbook, it reads more like a Sebastian Junger or Jon Krakauer adventure story. One where when you breathlessly complete it, you will be chagrined to realize you just may have read a textbook.There are two threads of striking similarities running through these stories. The first is how incaution led to so many of these accidents. At first, this seems surprising given the dangerous nature of the processes and materials being handled. But it reminds me of a conversation I had with a friend. We are both rock climbers and used to a certain element of risk. We were discussing a climber who was well known for incredibly difficult climbs without a rope and I suggested he was somehow fundamentally different from the rest of us. My friend disagreed and offered that each time we take a risk and have a positive outcome, our expectation of a positive outcome increases and conversely, our vigilance decreases. It is an interesting idea and one that highlights the imperativeness of following well designed safety procedures and how there can be little or no tolerance for mavericks here.The second striking thread was how many accidents were due to operators failing to follow procedures or mistrusting measurements because they followed their “gut instincts”. This thread might also seem to highlight the imperativeness of following well designed safety procedures and how there can be little or no tolerance for mavericks, but it less clear as we really have no good data on whether and how many accidents were averted by similar actions.This is a story of great tragedy and sometimes great catastrophe. It is a story that doesn't shy away from telling the, often painful, stories of the very real human beings at the center of the events. Whether the result of ignorance, youthful exuberance, hubris, heroism, or luck, the pictures painted in these words are fitting testimonials to the tragic victims of these events.But this is ultimately an optimistic story. It tells the tale of a completely new technology from its earliest inception to the present day through the lens of adversity. But the ultimate sense one is left with is a sense of triumph. If there is any pessimism, it is from the nagging sensation that what should be one of humanities greatest triumphs may be abandoned out of misplaced fear.

This book provides a wonderful historical summary of the earliest and ongoing attempts to develop safe, usable operating nuclear power plants and reactors to generate plutonium for nuclear weapons. Beginning with the earliest exploration of radium and radioactive materials, this history traces the evolution of nuclear plant engineering through the early days of the developing science and engineering of nuclear energy. The book does not paint a "pretty picture" of the ignorance and sometimes stupid activities of the early industry. Engineers and scientists simply did not properly understand many of the issues relating to safety and engineering design of nuclear reactors! Eventually, the learning curve brought safer developments and successful nuclear power approaches were devloped; but, this is an excellent review of how early efforts simply did not fully appreciate the ways that the fission process could impact the materials originally used to contain the systems.

This book covers nuclear accidents which you'll have heard about, and many you won't. My purpose in reading it was to gain knowledge on whether or not we're too scared of nuclear. It could have been a great book if written in plain English, but as has been said, we're two allies divided by a common language. Anyway, I think with some translation from "American smart ass" to Oxford English I've managed to gain a fair bit of knowledge. And yes, I am coming to the conclusion that the latest generation of nuclear generating plants may demonstrate that our fear is exaggerated. The alternative of destroying our planet looks a bit worse to me...

I'm not much of a reader, but since Jurassic Park, this book I read with great enthusiasm from cover to cover.Starting about staged train crashes in the 1800s to quash fears the public had about train crashes, and demonstrating how more lives were lost at a hydro electric accident in one go than at any nuclear accident initially, he goes on to explain how science, regulations, and humans have moved back and forth between focus, arrogance, belligerence, precision, understanding, prevention, care, misunderstanding but how through this, in time, we have learned about nuclear power and materials.The writing style is beautifully delivered as a conversational lecture with plenty of numbers and acronyms to keep the well informed alert, but still explains with all context so even someone with elementary understanding of science still can learn without being out of depth.Most pages have foot notes explaining concepts, acronyms, science, and background which while one does not have to read, is great to feel informed and delivered like a friendly hint by your mate sitting next to you in the lecture.There is plenty of light, but dry humour but always staying factual and respectful to both the personalities and brains that have taken us so far, but also quite direct about how people and "systems" can so often not perform to the standards expected. And why.This book very much celebrates nuclear technology, and while full of blunders which, in many cases, one should not raise a smile at (though I normally did), it does put ones mind at rest that these have always been learning experiences, and in time will never happen again. It puts great faith in nuclear technology.. but serves also as a warning of how people, politics, and science must work together and understand the effect of their decisions.

The nuclear sector has seen its failures and accidents, and this book goes through them well. The book also shows that in 70 odd years, there have only been three almost catastrophic incidents (Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Fukushima). It's worth pointing out that of those three, only one was truly due to bad reactor design and bad management (Chernobyl), whereas the modern Pressurised Water Reactor (PWR) designs are pretty self-regulating, as is evident in this book's bookend, How to Drive a Nuclear Reactor.Worth a read, worth a bit of a scare, and worth knowing that the world is actually a lot safer than it was in the sixties.

Like many people, I like to read about the misadventure and/or incompetence that led to terrible accidents. And Mahaffey is actually a rather good story-teller. There's nice understatement, and a little smile, as he leads you towards the terrible consequences of small deviations from what would have got away with, or indeed what would now be regarded as utterly cavalier and unacceptable.You learn quite a lot about practical nuclear physics and the chemistry of the substances involved, without it seeming wearing. It helps to have some basic kind of layman's interest and knowledge of scientific matters.

Having explored all but one nuclear accident site that I knew of, I bought this book not expecting to learn much, but I was wrong, and I discovered a few places to explore that I didn't know about. Informative, knowledgeable, enticing.... This is without doubt the best book I have read on the subject, and everything is very well explained, even if you know very little about the subject, you should be able to follow things as they are explained and covered in mostly chronological order.