Author : Alvin M. Weinberg
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
Page : 326 pages
File Size : 31,43 MB
Release : 1994
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 1563963582
The autobiography of a highly influential nuclear engineer and scientist whose work began in the 1940s and continues today. He recounts his education, his role in the Manhattan Project, his stint as director of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (1955- 73), and his subsequent work with both successful and unsuccessful commercial power reactors. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Author : Alvin M. Weinberg
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
Page : 358 pages
File Size : 10,30 MB
Release : 1992-11-18
Category : Science
ISBN : 9780883188613
"Blurb & Contents" "Marvelous reading, with few problems of the interaction between science/technology and society left untouched. One need not always agree, but one cannot come away without a better education....I found the parts on scientific administration and on the interaction of science and society excellent and provocative reading, and the parts on energy and nuclear energy very much to the point." American Journal of Physics Alvin Weinberg explores through these collected essays the ever troublesome relationship between science, technology, and society. The title is taken from Weinberg's assertion that most of the issues arising at the intersection of science and society depend upon answers to questions that lie outside the power of science--issues that are trans-scientific. Weinberg, who during World War II helped develop the first nuclear reactors, has much to say on the current role of nuclear power and the possibilities for the future. Other topics include strategic defenses and arms control, the role of the science administrator, and the way in which time, energy, and resources are allocated to public problems. In this remarkable record of a half- century of public-oriented work, Weinberg lays the foundation for a philosophy of scientific administration parallel to the more established philosophy of science.
Author : Vipin Narang
Publisher : Princeton University Press
Page : 356 pages
File Size : 11,10 MB
Release : 2014-05-25
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 0691159831
The world is in a second nuclear age in which regional powers play an increasingly prominent role. These states have small nuclear arsenals, often face multiple active conflicts, and sometimes have weak institutions. How do these nuclear states—and potential future ones—manage their nuclear forces and influence international conflict? Examining the reasoning and deterrence consequences of regional power nuclear strategies, this book demonstrates that these strategies matter greatly to international stability and it provides new insights into conflict dynamics across important areas of the world such as the Middle East, East Asia, and South Asia. Vipin Narang identifies the diversity of regional power nuclear strategies and describes in detail the posture each regional power has adopted over time. Developing a theory for the sources of regional power nuclear strategies, he offers the first systematic explanation of why states choose the postures they do and under what conditions they might shift strategies. Narang then analyzes the effects of these choices on a state's ability to deter conflict. Using both quantitative and qualitative analysis, he shows that, contrary to a bedrock article of faith in the canon of nuclear deterrence, the acquisition of nuclear weapons does not produce a uniform deterrent effect against opponents. Rather, some postures deter conflict more successfully than others. Nuclear Strategy in the Modern Era considers the range of nuclear choices made by regional powers and the critical challenges they pose to modern international security.
Author : Craig Nelson
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
Page : 448 pages
File Size : 27,40 MB
Release : 2014-03-25
Category : History
ISBN : 145166043X
"Radiation is a complex and paradoxical concept: staggering amounts of energy flow from seemingly inert rock and that energy is both useful and dangerous. While nuclear energy affects our everyday lives--from nuclear medicine and food irradiation to microwave technology--its invisible rays trigger biological damage, birth defects, and cellular mayhem. From the end of the nineteenth century through the use of the atomic bomb in World War II to the twenty-first century's confrontation with the dangers of nuclear power, Craig Nelson illuminates a pageant of fascinating historical figures: Enrico Fermi, Marie and Pierre Curie, Albert Einstein, FDR, Robert Oppenheimer, and Ronald Reagan, among others. He reveals many little-known details, including how Jewish refugees fleeing Hitler transformed America from a country that created light bulbs and telephones into one that split atoms; how the most grotesque weapon ever invented could realize Alfred Nobel's lifelong dream of global peace; how emergency workers and low-level utility employees fought to contain a run-amok nuclear reactor, while wondering if they would live or die. Brilliantly fascinating and remarkably accessible, The Age of Radiance traces mankind's complicated and difficult relationship with the dangerous power it discovered and made part of civilization"--
Author : Mohamed Mohamed El-Wakil
Publisher :
Page : 688 pages
File Size : 32,29 MB
Release : 1978
Category : Technology & Engineering
ISBN :
This text presents and illustrates the conversion of nuclear energy into useful power. Different types of nuclear power plants and reactor designs, their energy conversion principles, cycles, and load-following characteristics are analyzed. Each chapter concludes with homework problems.
Author : Vipin Narang
Publisher : Cornell University Press
Page : 171 pages
File Size : 24,56 MB
Release : 2023-01-15
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 150176702X
In The Fragile Balance of Terror, the foremost experts on nuclear policy and strategy offer insight into an era rife with more nuclear powers. Some of these new powers suffer domestic instability, others are led by pathological personalist dictators, and many are situated in highly unstable regions of the world—a volatile mix of variables. The increasing fragility of deterrence in the twenty-first century is created by a confluence of forces: military technologies that create vulnerable arsenals, a novel information ecosystem that rapidly transmits both information and misinformation, nuclear rivalries that include three or more nuclear powers, and dictatorial decision making that encourages rash choices. The nuclear threats posed by India, Pakistan, Iran, and North Korea are thus fraught with danger. The Fragile Balance of Terror, edited by Vipin Narang and Scott D. Sagan, brings together a diverse collection of rigorous and creative scholars who analyze how the nuclear landscape is changing for the worse. Scholars, pundits, and policymakers who think that the spread of nuclear weapons can create stable forms of nuclear deterrence in the future will be forced to think again. Contributors: Giles David Arceneaux, Mark S. Bell, Christopher Clary, Peter D. Feaver, Jeffrey Lewis, Rose McDermott, Nicholas L. Miller, Vipin Narang, Ankit Panda, Scott D. Sagan, Caitlin Talmadge, Heather Williams, Amy Zegart
Author : Alex Wellerstein
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 558 pages
File Size : 45,2 MB
Release : 2021-04-09
Category : History
ISBN : 022602038X
"Nuclear weapons, since their conception, have been the subject of secrecy. In the months after the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the American scientific establishment, the American government, and the American public all wrestled with what was called the "problem of secrecy," wondering not only whether secrecy was appropriate and effective as a means of controlling this new technology but also whether it was compatible with the country's core values. Out of a messy context of propaganda, confusion, spy scares, and the grave counsel of competing groups of scientists, what historian Alex Wellerstein calls a "new regime of secrecy" was put into place. It was unlike any other previous or since. Nuclear secrets were given their own unique legal designation in American law ("restricted data"), one that operates differently than all other forms of national security classification and exists to this day. Drawing on massive amounts of declassified files, including records released by the government for the first time at the author's request, Restricted Data is a narrative account of nuclear secrecy and the tensions and uncertainty that built as the Cold War continued. In the US, both science and democracy are pitted against nuclear secrecy, and this makes its history uniquely compelling and timely"--
Author : William McKeown
Publisher : ECW Press
Page : 268 pages
File Size : 20,77 MB
Release : 2003-04-01
Category : Technology & Engineering
ISBN : 1554905435
The little-known true story of a mysterious nuclear reactor disaster—years before Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, or Fukushima. Before the Three Mile Island incident or the Chernobyl disaster, the world’s first nuclear reactor meltdown to claim lives happened on US soil. Chronicled here for the first time is the strange tale of SL-1, an experimental military reactor located in Idaho’s Lost River Desert that exploded on the night of January 3, 1961, killing the three crewmembers on duty. Through exclusive interviews with the victims’ families and friends, firsthand accounts from rescue workers and nuclear industry insiders, and extensive research into official documents, journalist William McKeown probes the many questions surrounding this devastating blast that have gone unanswered for decades. From reports of faulty design and mismanagement to incompetent personnel and even rumors of sabotage after a failed love affair, these plausible explanations raise startling new questions about whether the truth was deliberately suppressed to protect the nuclear energy industry.
Author : Kristen Iversen
Publisher : Crown
Page : 434 pages
File Size : 26,61 MB
Release : 2013-06-04
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 0307955656
“An intimate and deeply human memoir that shows why we should all be concerned about nuclear safety, and the dangers of ignoring science in the name of national security.”—Rebecca Skloot, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks A shocking account of the government’s attempt to conceal the effects of the toxic waste released by a secret nuclear weapons plant in Colorado and a community’s vain search for justice—soon to be a feature documentary Kristen Iversen grew up in a small Colorado town close to Rocky Flats, a secret nuclear weapons plant once designated "the most contaminated site in America." Full Body Burden is the story of a childhood and adolescence in the shadow of the Cold War, in a landscape at once startlingly beautiful and--unknown to those who lived there--tainted with invisible yet deadly particles of plutonium. It's also a book about the destructive power of secrets--both family and government. Her father's hidden liquor bottles, the strange cancers in children in the neighborhood, the truth about what was made at Rocky Flats--best not to inquire too deeply into any of it. But as Iversen grew older, she began to ask questions and discovered some disturbing realities. Based on extensive interviews, FBI and EPA documents, and class-action testimony, this taut, beautifully written book is both captivating and unnerving.
Author : Samuel R. Williamson Jr
Publisher : Springer
Page : 231 pages
File Size : 47,67 MB
Release : 2016-04-30
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 113705882X
The United States took almost a decade after Hiroshima and Nagasaki to develop a coherent strategy of nuclear deterrence. This comprehensive study by two careful and well-informed historians provides the best explanation we have of why this process took so long; it also suggests the inherent difficulties of relying on nuclear weapons to provide security in the first place. Required reading for anyone interested in the early history of the nuclear era.
